A request for some tough content.

[Velhart]

As much as I play the game every night, I still consider myself a casual.

While I play the amount a hardcore player would usually play, I still don't make myself believe I have to be on every night, or in a LS that demands my time. I go out, away from my computer, without feeling of regret that I am falling behind in FFXIV, at least not yet. I love how this is set up, at least so far.

As someone said beautifully, since you are a casual player, doesn't mean you lack the skills and organization a hardcore player would. It simply means that you cannot put the kind of time a hardcore would. I think the main difference is that hardcores are more ahead of the game. If you can't handle the difficulty a game presents to you, what do you do? Play a game that does cater to your difficulty.

I say this because difficulty is one of various things that keeps a player addicted to an MMO. You have a tough raid to beat, you keep coming on in hopes of overcoming it, and when you do, you keep going until you get the gear you want. If you take away the difficulty, the content gets blasted through and developers can't keep up with giving you more content. People feel less of an incentive to play if they have all the best gear without much effort put into it. Not only that, it takes away the rewarding factor of the game, which FFXI actually excelled in.

I will make another WoW comparison here.

Firelands is currently the newest and most difficult raid in WoW right now, and the game having 11 million+ subscriptions, obviously a portion of that are casual players. WoW has set up a way that raids are hard, fun, rewarding, and accessible by anyone hardcore and casual, and can play them based on how they like to. Rather it being one time a week, or do a portion of the dungeon in one night, then more later that week, this is balancing hardcore and casual play, while being difficult and challenging at the same time. Not to mention, they made raids that satisfy people the majority of the time it takes till new content comes in.

Point I am making is, if you make content easy, people will blast through it, get bored, and stop playing till something new comes in to blast through. Content needs to be difficult, and at the same time, cater to a hardcore and casual player's interest. This is actually a problem with the Darkhold dungeon in FFXIV. While I myself have not gotten every piece yet, most hardcore LS's have already gotten everything they need for all their classes, and I believe they are just doing it for the hell of it now. Or rather leveling classes, just so they have reason to go in again. Then again, Darkhold is still more of a dungeon than a raid, I don't believe major end game raid content will work exactly the same as a dungeon. I want content I can set a long term goal into till newer content arises.

[HiirNoivl]

Point I am making is, if you make content easy, people will blast through it, get bored, and stop playing till something new comes in to blast through.... most hardcore LS's have already gotten everything they need for all their classes, and I believe they are just doing it for the hell of it now. Or rather leveling classes, just so they have reason to go in again.

This has happened to one of my friends. He's a high ranking DoM in a hardcore LS. His current activities are spent toying with his stats to see how low he can get his VIT. It's sad.

[syntaxlies]

i dont think now is the time for real challenging content. Id like to see the battle system completed first or all the content in the world wont matter.

[Gukswar]

I haven't changed the meaning of your words in the slightest, its quite clear your post is calling for content meant for the chosen few rather than the unwashed masses. Whether you intend for it to detract from casual content or not is irrelevant as any efforts focused toward the hardcore players will inevitably take away from development time spent for casual gamers.

Like I said, SE needs to take care of the casual gamers first or it'll be you and your 7 buddies running "tough" content on an empty server dropping loot only NPCs are willing to buy. While it may be inconvenient for those of us who are hitting level cap on multiple classes and finding little to do, its still the best thing SE can do to ensure the long-term survival of this game.

Dude casual player's only has 20 minute to play a day not every month can they play- They have time to play games like Chest or- Dota on war craft for hence- A MMO is meant to be played by MULTI PLAYERS and requires time to do things- what's the point of playing multi player games if you don't have the time to play with multi players? or then if you do why do you want to turn a multi player game into a MINI party game? don't you rather play the XBox with your friends 4 player mode instead? and MMO who FOCUS more then 50% of their time for Causality played run out of business or has less population then MMO who focus on causality more then 50%. You see Every MMO succeeded at first because everything was base on MULTI PLAYERS and for players who has time to play it- Once they change the tactic turning everything into Casual style play or more then 40% then end up losing players and then the server becomes tiny. Se is trying to make everyone happy and by doing that they lost a bunch of players from the start of the game. NUMBER one mistake about THE BEST MMO OF the year since EQ was that they made everything easy and fast to do before they all ended up shutting down server and combining server because of lack of players. Besides players who doesn't have time to play Long term games... why do they bother? I sometimes have no time to play that is why I love Casual style, but even with casual style this game keeps you busy everyday until you reach 50 on all your jobs what do you want to do then? I've only level up my job casually and yet i'am almost 50 with all jobs ;/... I really think they should TAKE away all the free transportation and the anima. traveling through from limsa to grid then to coertheas take's 28 minute without anima.
TELEPORTING takes 2 second... (instead of anima they should of done it like FFXI where you'd need to get teleports from mages, then the game would actually take some time to level up and actually funner ways to level other then doing the same thing over and over and over and over....)

[Gukswar]

Hardcore pretty much means ppl who put more time into it and wants to be rewarded.

Casual are the players that just want everything to be dumbed down cause they themselves dont have time to put in as much as other players so they scream for things to be super easy and just wants to get it done with no effort at all and wants to feel accomplishment.

Its retarded the players who dont have time cry about things being too hard when in reality its not.. they just need to put more time into it.

ROFL totally agree

[Murugan]

With all of the requests for casual content on the forums lately, I would like to make an addition to the requests:

I would like to see some content that is complex, takes a diverse group, requires strong play skill and strong character development with mechanics that need tactic changes on the fly.

The speed run for the 50 raid is a good start, but can not really be defined as "tough". The speed run was "unknown" and please do not confuse "not knowing how to accomplish something" with "difficult to accomplish" because they are not the same. "difficulty" comes from having to properly time skills, actively manage MP, use tactics that strain the party configuration and make decisions on the fly. This is what I am looking for in new content. Most of the "difficulty" of the batraal 5th chest run is just getting through the dungeon. The fight itself is easy and does not pose a challenge in itself. Tank it in the corner, drop the circles, kill the skeletons.

So, with that said, I would like to see a boss fight that lasts 30-45 minutes, complex in the ways of what needs to be accomplished to put damage on the boss, actively changing tactics in order to do so, and dependent on good, diverse party makeup.

I know many people will say that getting the speed run accomplished is "hard" but I can say that compared to even most normal HNM in FFXI, speed run is nowhere near the same difficulty. Thats like saying getting to ROC was tough because you had to run through Garlaige Citadel...... Hardly....

So, thanks for reading. I must make a final note, and that is that I do not wish to take away from content for casual players. I hope this content can co-exist and not pull from what a casual player could accomplish. Maybe the same stats as another item, just looks different or something.

TL : DR

We need some content that is tough to accomplish, not tough to figure out.

A few things. First of all I am completely in support for more tougher content (no matter what definition of that you use).

However, I don't think any of your suggestions accomplish your goal of "Tough to accomplish, not just tough to learn". What made FFXI endgame hard (and yes it was harder than WoW) is because much of it was so unforgiving requiring long attention spans and focus.

I think that is exactly what is needed here, because I don't think Matsui slacked off designing the darkhold encounters. I find it hard to believe that either Ogre or Batraal were meant to be tanked stationary (as most including your group, and mine most of the time do them). By doing this you are completely ignoring what is one of if not the most key mechanics of that fight: the ghosts.

If you have tried a jousting tank method on either encounter I think you'd agree it is much harder to execute (which is why it is not as popular). The problem with designing encounters that force you to do them the correct way (having to account for all mechanics), is that it must be very punishing. Your ideas sound good on paper (I'd like to try them, if I didn't already know what they did, and maybe even still), but I have a feeling within a very short time workarounds for many of your well thought out mechanics would be developed by the community under the current mechanics/balance.

Ultimately I hope the base challenge of execution will be greatly helped by the implementation of the job system and finalizing battle changes. I think for it to have better than XI encounters (which I think should be its goal), it needs to require highly cooperative play (know what you do in relation to others, and not simply your own role).

I'd like to see incapacitation and the new battle regimen system when it returns be key points of focus for endgame shells as well as overcoming environmental obstacles (which I find significantly less difficult/more boring). Jousting/kiting should not be the end-all-be-all raid tactic (though it is especially sad when your joust mechanics can be simply avoided by ranged DD/soaking).

[odette]

Dude casual player's only has 20 minute to play a day not every month can they play- They have time to play games like Chest or- Dota on war craft for hence- A MMO is meant to be played by MULTI PLAYERS and requires time to do things- what's the point of playing multi player games if you don't have the time to play with multi players? or then if you do why do you want to turn a multi player game into a MINI party game? don't you rather play the XBox with your friends 4 player mode instead? and MMO who FOCUS more then 50% of their time for Causality played run out of business or has less population then MMO who focus on causality more then 50%. You see Every MMO succeeded at first because everything was base on MULTI PLAYERS and for players who has time to play it- Once they change the tactic turning everything into Casual style play or more then 40% then end up losing players and then the server becomes tiny. Se is trying to make everyone happy and by doing that they lost a bunch of players from the start of the game. NUMBER one mistake about THE BEST MMO OF the year since EQ was that they made everything easy and fast to do before they all ended up shutting down server and combining server because of lack of players. Besides players who doesn't have time to play Long term games... why do they bother? I sometimes have no time to play that is why I love Casual style, but even with casual style this game keeps you busy everyday until you reach 50 on all your jobs what do you want to do then? I've only level up my job casually and yet i'am almost 50 with all jobs ;/... I really think they should TAKE away all the free transportation and the anima. traveling through from limsa to grid then to coertheas take's 28 minute without anima.
TELEPORTING takes 2 second... (instead of anima they should of done it like FFXI where you'd need to get teleports from mages, then the game would actually take some time to level up and actually funner ways to level other then doing the same thing over and over and over and over....)

you are wrong, well you think casual content = just soloing
in wow casual and hardcore can do raids, the real differents are the difficult and reward
any wow raid is more tough that any hnm of ffxi

[Chiz]

A few things;

Difficult content is content anyone can do. Casual to hardcore. Don't assume casuals are stupid and cant complete difficult encounters.

I didn't make any such assumption, but you've made the distinction repeatedly in both this thread and others that this "tough" content is not meant for "casuals". If it were, why disclaim and differentiate between the two in your OP?

So, thanks for reading. I must make a final note, and that is that I do not wish to take away from content for casual players. I hope this content can co-exist and not pull from what a casual player could accomplish. Maybe the same stats as another item, just looks different or something.

With the number of likes my OP has, it is pretty clear that my "7 friends" is a much larger part of the population than you think looking for a challenge.

There's 20 servers, looks like par for the course. All kidding aside we could get a thread going about this game needs ANY content and I'm sure it would get a lot more likes than this thread's call for "tough" content meant only for the few.

Oh wait, no need, we already know an overwhelming 37% of the playerbase identified Lack of Content as the #1 problem with this game back in January: http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...98e4034b898102

And finally, if they don't do SOMETHING that proposes a challenge, the playerbase looking for a challenge will eventually just move on to another game.

I think its pretty clear they've already looked beyond us in their plans for salvaging this game. Whoever stays, that's great, but all of the changes to-date and their future roadmaps and time tables are clearly geared toward making the PS3 release a success rather than any attempt to save what's left of the PC Open Beta population of ~40K players.

Losing the "hardcore" group is just as bad as losing the "casual" group. Without both, your game dies. Or you should have just made Hello Kitty online clones, because thats about what it becomes if there is 0 challenge.

No, losing the casual group is clearly the worst scenario, as that's what pays the bills and the bulk of your development costs. While the hardcore group certainly gives the casual players something to aim for and keeps the high-end content relevant, you can't sustain a game that caters to such a small subset of the population. See: any successful MMO.

[Murugan]

No, losing the casual group is clearly the worst scenario, as that's what pays the bills and the bulk of your development costs. While the hardcore group certainly gives the casual players something to aim for and keeps the high-end content relevant, you can't sustain a game that caters to such a small subset of the population. See: any successful MMO.

XI was a successful MMO yet to many modern "casual players" it is extremely prohibitive to that kind of playstyle, more-so than any other MMO. In fact among "casuals" XI is often heralded as the great example of evil hardcore-ness.

You know what though I don't really care for this part of the discussion because any MMO that can't hold my attention I won't be playing. People have different definition of what it means to be casual or hardcore, unfortunately some people are under the unfortunate impression that it is "hardcore" to want a game which challenges you. I'd rather have a "failed game" than one catering exclusively to people who simply want to escape reality with a mindless distraction, they are implementing jump after all I personally think that should be enough to keep that whole demographic busy.

[Chiz]

Why should SE make significant design changes based on arbitrary information though - especially when the basis of this arbitrary information is 100% subjective?

I said my % were arbitrary based on what I've seen in other MMOs and populations, not that SE would make any definitive plans or changes based on them. Again, I've seen enough of these statistics to understand there's a very steep pyramid when it comes to player-base demographics.

Since it seems you want more specifics, we need only look as far back as the FF Player's Polls from Jan/Feb of this year. Certainly you're not suggesting SE ignore this information are you? Again, every company needs to identify their core demographic and SE certainly made an attempt to do so as well in their 1st Player Poll. The usual distinction between casual and hardcore is generally defined by playtime per week, and SE did similar in their 2nd players poll (Item 3): http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...16083b634f7678

Its not the best indication as most polls generally ask how many hours per day, and I think the 1st players poll asked this as well but they perhaps didn't release the results. In any case, 24% of the respondents said they would spend 3+ hours a day on both weekend and weekdays for party-play, so that's a pretty good indication of how many "hardcore" players you are looking at. It also does a good job of illustrating how much of the population might not even experience content if it exceeds their expected playtime amounts on any given day.

Your premise contradicts what you are proposing SE should do. You suggest that SE needs to first satisfy the "other-than-hardcore" 90% of the player population by implementing content that is "other-and-less-than-difficult", but you assert (arbitrarily, I would assume) that the range of difficulty of any given content should be measured by a function of how much of such content has been completed from the "hardcore" (sic) 5%-10% of the entire active player base. So how, then, should SE measure "toughness" of any content if they do not consider this arbitrary 10% which you suggest? Further, how does SE cater to this arbitrary 90% if they, in fact, don't first consider this arbitrary 10% "hardcore" player base?

No, it doesn't contradict anything. It should be obvious what I'm referring to, content that anyone from Rank 1-50 can experience, complete, and enjoy along the way. That's in stark contrast to what Mog wants, content that only 5-10% of the endgame population might be able to clear. Because lets be honest, if 100% of the population could clear it, it just wouldn't be tough enough for Mog, amirite? Also, to be clear, I want more tough content too, but the difference is I understand FFXIV will never get to that point they're cranking out tough end-game content if they don't first lay the groundwork with content for casual players to enjoy along the way.

Sorry, heh, that's 100% subjective... again.

Not really, again, 37% of the population identified lack of content as the #1 problem with this game in January. Item #7: http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...98e4034b898102

40% said they wanted more story-based quests and mini-quests, interestingly, only 10% listed Large Scale PvE as #1 on their wishlist and a paltry 2% wanted more NMs.......