Difficulty of the Game...

[Meshico]

There's a problem with making content difficult though and that is that theres a huge number of incompetent players. The other issue is that dungeons are fun for the first X number of times you run them, but when you start getting into double digits it's no longer fun. This is where incompetence and repetitiveness would compound to create a really frustrating experience.

Sure struggling through a difficult dungeon is fun the first time, but can you imagine doing it over and over? This game is molded out of repetition. Whether this design was due to the fact the game had to have a really fast makeover when 1.xx flopped and the repetition is to buy them time to make the expansion, or whether the expansion will just be more of the same, who knows?

This is true.

Going through a dungeon at a fair pace with i70 gear, it does something for me and I definitely feel like it's fun, not a grind. Another thing I enjoy is taking new combers through it, the teaching and learning different tactics with lesser gear is a fun experience (again most of the time).

Some have mentioned in a game like Dark Souls, it's ok for people to just not play it since they have already invested in the Hard Copy of the game, producer/director/company has made it's mark. But in a game with this difficulty it's easy for us to make it challenging and well I enjoy it.

For first timers that go through a dungeon with a blind fold, it can seem like a grind. IN MY OPINION if it was slightly challenging, it would create that tiny little nostalgia that some of us felt when completing the dungeon, taking it slow, taking in the music/environment, going out of our way for that extra chest that may or may not contain a minion or a Mimic!

The point of the OP was to point that out, that I would like people to experience the game in a way that is fun for them, and in my opinion a challenge (self imposed) is heck-a-fun


-Tari

[FranSeara]

wut?!

I can't seem to draw a comparison between the Souls' series to FFXIV.

The Souls games are a punishing game. meaning that in order to accompish goals, you almost need to literally punish yourself either in order to complete objectives or because you completed your objectives. If you are comparing this to FFXIV being a grindfest, I don't think that's what the post of Demon/Dark Souls was about.

Those games were often VERY Challening, in my memory. with circumstances such as getting overwhelmed by enemies if you didn't take it very slow.


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I wish this game was more like Dark Souls, then It would be more open and less closed to trying new ways of thinking. As it stands now, this game is NOTHING like the Souls Series. To say otherwise is a joke.......

[Shougun]

There are still some hardcore MMOs out there (not all old), they just don't come with the money bag backing like big name games do. I love Souls games but I don't have the time to play and enjoy a game that is as challenging as Souls and as grindy as every MMO I know of (Souls games are not nearly as grindy as an MMO, and without making it something like a Sandbox you cannot "not" make it grindy). I think in a Sandbox MMO you might be able to find a happy balance of extreme hardcore specially since the content sort of comes about through play and is less based on strict railroading (more about you and other players actions). In a themepark I don't think many will have time to shout 3 hours to have a 4 hour party to kill 20 monsters and gain 2 levels - and that is why they are not as popular now.

That said I'm not necessarily suggesting themepark MMOs have to be easy, I think SE could have used a bit more intelligent* and stronger* monsters that you would need to approach with a lot more thought than "haha running through slyph lands, 20 monsters on my tail". *AI/Abilities, not straight buffs and more thoughtful abilities and counter strategies - like monsters that can run at your sprint speed and don't let down so soon, lunge and slow, the frog tongue grab in game is actually pretty good imo, monsters that use more deadly positional abilities, NM or NM like monsters breaking up expectations (greater level diversity of a set of monsters in an area - needing to pay attention to name and level disparity), the 'need' to stun more non-positional attacks (or be hurt greatly), making status effects seem a bit more serious or at least to match the theme of particular monsters (poison is weak, paralyze is actually pretty annoying on mage - imo that is good). Minor tweaks to make things a little bit scarier without making it impossible to go alone, though some monsters you would avoid or sincerely challenge.

Still difficulty but less expected I miss traveling forms (and related, more seamless areas loaded by grids instead of zone), and i don't mean 30 minute boat rides, not needed to be like WoW but as an example it had a number of .5-5 minute zeppelin/boats between islands and I just really liked the feeling that things had a scale that couldn't quite be trivialized and yet weren't incredibly annoying (or when you could teleport it felt powerful, mage portal to town was neat - nothing like FFXIV's teleporting feeling). Stopped around TBC though, so if it changed I'm not quite aware besides seeing occasional patch notes and videos.

So I guess tl;dr I agree a little bit but also I think in a themepark mmo that it is important to have tangible gain and plausible catch-up without having to skip every piece of side content, be a teen again (jobless, or unique job like that guy who says: 'I work at a server farm, and play games at work'), or be incredibly slow if you cant or are unwilling to sacrifice other parts of your real life (FFXIV is fairly easy to create tangible results without extreme amounts of time). I like that Yoshida follows something described like a rolling mountain.

Edit: Yes difficulty != grind, but if you keep them truly separate then you will still skew rewards greatly - there are a lot of good players and they would get these rewards nearly instantly and if repeatably then that too.. in an MMO grind is important and so regardless of higher difficulty you'd also need grind (now I'm also a huge fan of RNG that tracks failures so you don't become that super unlucky person as that isn't fun, but the grinding is important and imo inseparable in discussion of a themepark mmo).

From what Yoshida said, the overworld of 3.0 will be a bit more serious and that sounds nice. I'm curious how they went about that.

[Kazumac]

I look back at older MMOs from 10 years ago with fondness as well. The dedication, time spent to gain achievement, fear of death. Hours and hours spent preparing even to go into a raid. All great memories and I get warm fuzzies thinking about it but... Reality, I can't do that kind of game any more, not really. My time is more limited and I find the more difficult parts of this game fun but not the time sink MMOs used to be and that's undoubtedly good for me right now. But I admit to daydreaming about the nostalgia of a different era and am just happy I was there to experience it at that time.

[snugBubz]

So, I've read everyone's posts, and in more than half of them I've read grind = challenge in some regard. I don't understand. Any sort of grind is not challenging at all, it's tedious. The whole idea of grind is to lengthen content, not to make that content more challenging. Sure, grind can be a factor in challenge, but it's not a good one. Don't get me wrong and think I want everything easy. I like a challenge. I like failing, learning from my mistakes, and going at a problem with a new idea. FFXIV's dungeons aren't challenging. If the content is new, it will only take one boss encounter to understand what needs to be done to complete it. That's not challenging, that's easy. And it's set to easy so SE can make you grind it. To lengthen the life of their content. There does indeed need to be a balance--if something is too hard for the majority, then it needs to made easier--but I feel like SE has just made everything unbearably easy that when I die in a dungeon, it's because I've stopped paying any amount of attention because the content is easy or I've run this dungeon x amount of times I'm probably sleeping through it at this point.

TLDR; grind does not equal challenge, and is actually a very poor mechanic for challenge. Grind also doesn't equal the amount of dedication put into a task.

[Warlyx]

the grind is there to keep u playing and paying , nothing more nothing less.

[Yukiko]

The key is not the difficulty itself, its how the individual player feels!
In a group of 8 players each one have a different feeling of how hard or easy the content is...
The problem as developer is now to find and create a system where you can satisfy each individual player...
The problem we have in FFXIV is static programming (just adding RNG does not mean it becomes dynamic)...
In physics we know about action and reaction (maybe thats why older final fantasy feels more satisfying) and thats what is missing the most...
Mostly it is called AI and it is one of the most hardest thing to programm, please keep that in mind...

[gzuscry]

How is it even possible to offer you a chalange where every action you do or is done upon you is based on dice roll. Numbers on your gear decide your readiness for 'raid' and not your brains cappabilities to react and forge strategy on the go with tools at your disposal. Tell where is the chalange in ANY MMORG be it old or new, where this so called raid is just getting muscle memory for strict sript. It is always the same route, thats like playing one minesweeper layout over and over again, untill you complete it and all thats left is maximazing your speed in pressing right locations. Thats is how i see raids in todays MMO's they are always the same layout and the only encumbrance to you is that you have to do it together with other people. So in reality completing raid is just doing some mass dancing, geting into that unison to the beat.

[gzuscry]

Mostly it is called AI and it is one of the most hardest thing to programm, please keep that in mind...

Raid bosses,Elite hunts even dont have AI per say, they have strict script they follow, they are the blandest and dumbest characters in whole game, all they have is one rotation, no variations none at all. From start o finish they are as same as tides. They have only 2 checkpoints, percent of hp and time.

[Oce]

How is it even possible to offer you a chalange where every action you do or is done upon you is based on dice roll. Numbers on your gear decide your readiness for 'raid' and not your brains cappabilities to react and forge strategy on the go with tools at your disposal.

You need both. Gear alone isn't going to get you through FCoB when one mistake on your part can wipe your raid team. BCoB and SCoB can be, for the most part, outgeared at this point.

T13 is a gear check, as it has the most predictable rotation of all the bosses (timer based).