Thread: Patch 2.2, Accessibility, Difficulty Levels, and Throwing Away Content

If you want harder content, it should be because you enjoy harder content and that in itself should be all the 'reward' you need.

As I've said in another topic, through various games, I've seen people say they want harder modes and more challenging content introduced because they enjoy pushing themselves and overcoming a challenge. Then when it gets suggested it have the same reward, the response is inevitibly, "WTF? Why would I do it then? If I can just get the same thing for doing the easier stuff, why would I force myself to endure something so annoying/tedious/difficult?" :-/

It really is pathetic when people complain about their "accomplishments" being "invalidated". Simply unsub because nobody would miss you. None of you are special little snowflakes so please stop thinking you are.

Originally Posted by Dovah

It really is pathetic when people complain about their "accomplishments" being "invalidated". Simply unsub because nobody would miss you. None of you are special little snowflakes so please stop thinking you are.

Like for Fight Club reference!

Originally Posted by skho01

Like for Fight Club reference!

*punches skho for mentioning fight club*

they were going to "throw away" the content eventually anyway. no point and delaying the inevitable. or ushering it for that matter.

back to viewing everything with indifference.

I, for one, am glad SE's doing it this way. Why? Because there's story content in them thar hills!

But seriously, SE has locked story content behind the hardest difficulty events in the game. Now that the rewards are being outdone by something better, them making the story and the (what will be) mid-tier rewards available to players is only an increase in accessibility. This is something SE's doing that I've not seen many other games do and it's fantastic. It was one thing I was honestly upset about with EverQuest2 in that a lot of important story events happened through the raid content and I had come along to that game after the fact so couldn't really see it anymore. No worries here.

Originally Posted by Caraway

I, for one, am glad SE's doing it this way. Why? Because there's story content in them thar hills!

But seriously, SE has locked story content behind the hardest difficulty events in the game. Now that the rewards are being outdone by something better, them making the story and the (what will be) mid-tier rewards available to players is only an increase in accessibility. This is something SE's doing that I've not seen many other games do and it's fantastic. It was one thing I was honestly upset about with EverQuest2 in that a lot of important story events happened through the raid content and I had come along to that game after the fact so couldn't really see it anymore. No worries here.

The story content isn't that great. Also there isn't much in Coil you're missing, as far "story content" goes. Over all SE isn't doing their job properly and this is Final Fantasy 14 version 1.0 all over again.We all know what comes next.Another world ending^-^

You people can't see the forest for the trees. Do you even have a concept of power creep or a vibrant endgame?


The OP is exactly right. What kept XI alive and interesting for so many years (granted they kinda held onto it all a bit too long and then changed everything in 1 update so it was a massive shock all at once, as opposed to a gradual thing) was the horizontal progression. It's not *just* about validating the effort put into the game; (and just because that doesn't matter to you doesn't invalidate it as a legitimate thing - the only difference between an accomplishment in a video game and one in a sport is that one is more based on physical activity and the other mental, so either they both count or neither does. I'm not gonna listen to any Fascist telling me otherwise.)


It's about having a wide variety of things to do, a REAL "theme park" with something for everyone. Stuff that the casuals or average player can do, and really grindy or hard as balls content for the hardcore player who has nothing better to do (or simply chooses to ignore other obligations lol) than play the game. XI was great for that for a good 7 yeas, with all kinds of endgame content. I'm all for accessibility, don't get me wrong - XI had a lot of problems that I'm glad are gone and don't care to see repeated (in most cases the concepts were good but the implementation was awful. like absurdly low drop rates on NMs. Forced partying is another example, it was a good method but the grind itself was just far too tedious for entirely too long.)


What we're getting with this current design philosophy is effectively just the flavor of the month. The only content that effectively matters is the current patch's, and that is an incredibly narrow and shortsighted approach to design. As the OP stated, power creep will eventually come back to bite them hard as we're all just hamsters on a wheel. The difficulty isn't ever truly increasing, only the bar of entry - to the point that our gear will be so absurdly strong that it'll throw all semblance of balance out the Window. WoW has been struggling with this for a while now, and so is XI with the introduction of the Delve weapons (not to mention how badly the pissed off al the REM weapon owners).


We don't gripe because we're spoiled little children. We're complaining now to get the Dev's attention in the hopes of steering the ship away from the rocks that we're drifting ever closer to before it's too late because we genuinely like this game and want to enjoy it/see it do well.

Originally Posted by NefGP

You people can't see the forest for the trees. Do you even have a concept of power creep or a vibrant endgame?

What we're getting with this current design philosophy is effectively just the flavor of the month. The only content that effectively matters is the current patch's, and that is an incredibly narrow and shortsighted approach to design. As the OP stated, power creep will eventually come back to bite them hard as we're all just hamsters on a wheel. The difficulty isn't ever truly increasing, only the bar of entry - to the point that our gear will be so absurdly strong that it'll throw all semblance of balance out the Window. WoW has been struggling with this for a while now, and so is XI with the introduction of the Delve weapons (not to mention how badly the pissed off al the REM weapon owners).

We don't gripe because we're spoiled little children. We're complaining now to get the Dev's attention in the hopes of steering the ship away from the rocks that we're drifting ever closer to before it's too late because we genuinely like this game and want to enjoy it/see it do well.

Great post. I think this explains 'our' side well. It's really not all about what Synaesthetic keeps touting.

Anyways, it looks like Yoshida has set his course. I have a feeling there's no going back at this point. It really sucks.

Originally Posted by NefGP

The OP is exactly right. What kept XI alive and interesting for so many years (granted they kinda held onto it all a bit too long and then changed everything in 1 update so it was a massive shock all at once, as opposed to a gradual thing) was the horizontal progression.

Nope. What kept FFXI alive was the fans of the game. Horizontal progression was just what FFXI fans liked.

It remains to be seen how long this model will keep FFXIV alive, but I have serious doubts that FFXI's model would do much better in this day and age.