Patch Notes are up!

[AdamFyi]

Totally belaboring the point i made a little bit back, but does the change to SoF somehow invalidate your eventual win after 30 attempts? Or is it a case of 'I walked uphill to school, both ways, through 10 foot snowdrifts, at absolute zero-so everyone else should too!!!!!!' ?

It's the case of the skill level of the playerbase. It's a legitimate concern. Players don't have any incentive of improving their skill if they are spoon-fed nerfs every time they demand it. The Steps of Faith trial isn't even hard to begin with.

[Starcade]

Totally belaboring the point i made a little bit back, but does the change to SoF somehow invalidate your eventual win after 30 attempts? Or is it a case of 'I walked uphill to school, both ways, through 10 foot snowdrifts, at absolute zero-so everyone else should too!!!!!!' ?

I think there has to be a real look, on the part of Square-Enix, as to what level of play they are willing to accept with respect to their playerbase as they enter 3.0 content.

It's clear we have a borderline-incompetent playerbase, if you take it as a whole. It's just time that SE has to take a real look at it and wonder if the $ and quantity so far outweigh the quality that the players who are good are going to have very little to really do.

[Crescent_Dusk]

I think there has to be a real look, on the part of Square-Enix, as to what level of play they are willing to accept with respect to their playerbase as they enter 3.0 content.

It's clear we have a borderline-incompetent playerbase, if you take it as a whole. It's just time that SE has to take a real look at it and wonder if the $ and quantity so far outweigh the quality that the players who are good are going to have very little to really do.

Let me think......YES. Sorry Mr. Skills, deficient players make up the majority of the playerbase and they pay the same monthly sub fee.

If you are so hardcore, try clearing Alexander without guides and without echo when Heavensward releases. You'll see that there is plenty to do when you aren't mimmicking successful strategies you had to put no effort into figuring out.

[Starcade]

Let me think......YES. Sorry Mr. Skills, deficient players make up the majority of the playerbase and they pay the same monthly sub fee.

I'm not claiming Mad Skills, Crescent. I am claiming that you could take most of these players and hit them with the Dummy Stick and it'd be an improvement!

If you are so hardcore, try clearing Alexander without guides and without echo when Heavensward releases. You'll see that there is plenty to do when you aren't mimmicking successful strategies you had to put no effort into figuring out.

I'm hardcore against players who need to either be completely handheld when it's clear they will ignore it in the first place, or couldn't kill a bee in North Gustaberg without illegal programs. We're getting both those types here.

[Ashkendor]

I think there has to be a real look, on the part of Square-Enix, as to what level of play they are willing to accept with respect to their playerbase as they enter 3.0 content.

It's clear we have a borderline-incompetent playerbase, if you take it as a whole. It's just time that SE has to take a real look at it and wonder if the $ and quantity so far outweigh the quality that the players who are good are going to have very little to really do.

This is a vertical progression themepark MMO. If you're going to stick around here, you're going to need to accept that most of the content is going to be tuned for a very casual style of player. Very little hardcore content will go into the game because that doesn't appeal to the majority of the players. The more hardcore players will have no problem absolutely facerolling the vast majority of what the game has to offer. Anything even remotely challenging will eventually be nerfed so that a bigger portion of the playerbase can be shuffled through the queue to their next month's subscription and eventually to the game's next expansion. Ultimately, SE is concerned about their bottom line and a casual player's money is just as green as a hardcore player's money.

No clue on other servers, but there were a crap ton of people willing to to SoF again on Cactuar. The problem was that when people realised how horrible some DF groups are with players not communicating, it isn't far fetched to see why players abandon the trial,

Yeah. When I land on it in trial roulette, I always give it a try if I have time and if the group isn't already falling apart when I get there. If it's got 4 DPS and one lone tank staring at each other when I queue in, screw that. SoF is the reason I stopped ticking the "In Progress" box for trial roulette, actually. But seriously, if I give it a try or two and people clearly aren't listening then I'm not gonna stick around. I have better things to do with my time. :|

[Starcade]

If you're going to stick around here, you're going to need to accept that most of the content is going to be tuned for a very casual style of player. Very little hardcore content will go into the game because that doesn't appeal to the majority of the players. The more hardcore players will have no problem absolutely facerolling the vast majority of what the game has to offer. Anything even remotely challenging will eventually be nerfed so that a bigger portion of the playerbase can be shuffled through the queue to their next month's subscription and eventually to the game's next expansion. Ultimately, SE is concerned about their bottom line and a casual player's money is just as green as a hardcore player's money.

Then what's the use of ever making content difficult in the first damn place? Your goal, at that point, is access for all -- so why make it that difficult in the first place so that only maybe 10% of the runs end in clears?

[Spiritreaver1217]

..Snip...

You know SE had a mindset like you wanted during the mid-aughts. And you know what it achieved? It polarizing effect on their playerbase(talking FFXI btw) and a limiting of said playerbase to a fraction of what it could have been had they gone with a game design philosophy that was inclusive of more types of players instead of a small single subset of players.

SE is a business and they have, after all this time, have started to learn their lesson. Using totally pulled out of my butt percentages, 3 out of 4 happy-ish players is better for business than 1 out of 4 happy-ish players. Outside of that, i really doubt they give a fig about the skill level of their customers. And to be totally honest, i'd be hard-pressed to believe that even 1/4 players is even a close guess; imo its probably much less.

[mirta000]

I think there has to be a real look, on the part of Square-Enix, as to what level of play they are willing to accept with respect to their playerbase as they enter 3.0 content.

It's clear we have a borderline-incompetent playerbase, if you take it as a whole. It's just time that SE has to take a real look at it and wonder if the $ and quantity so far outweigh the quality that the players who are good are going to have very little to really do.

How would you have liked your quality, if everyone was stuck in pre-expansion content and expansion content never popped after the first wave of hardcores cleared it? Surely that sounds like a great idea!

[Ashkendor]

It's clear that the number of players who were clearing content was completely unacceptable to Square-Enix, so crap on all of us (yes, even me who went 1/30 or something) who actually cleared it unnerfed.

I don't understand this attitude at all. As someone that cleared all of FCoB without Echo, I don't see the addition of Echo as crapping on my achievement. I see it as them allowing more people to have the enjoyment of earning the achievement. More people earning the achievement doesn't have any impact on how "valuable" my achievement is. The same thing goes for this. You cleared SoF unnerfed. Awesome, me too. Some other people haven't been as lucky, and now perhaps they'll be able to progress with their MSQ and finish up so they can get into the shiny new content we'll be getting in June. Ultimately, that's the goal here. SoF isn't meant to be a roadblock - it's meant to be a gateway. It's not meant to keep people out of the expansion. It's there to usher them into it with an engaging story and a memorable trial.

I think SE underestimated just how much of a hurdle SoF would actually be when done by eight random people. The mechanics are pretty nifty, but the unforgiving nature of the battle made it a real pain in the ass to do in DF. You miss a couple of dragonkillers, you mayaswell just all AFK until the thing resets and pray that half the party hasn't left in the meantime. It's just a matter of effort vs reward - right now it requires too much of the former for not enough of the latter, so many people just automatically leave when they land on it. I would've rather seen a reset button go into it so that you could just wipe a run that you knew was a failure (the aforementioned misses with dragonkillers, for example).

[Starcade]

I think SE underestimated just how much of a hurdle SoF would actually be when done by eight random people. The mechanics are pretty nifty, but the unforgiving nature of the battle made it a real pain in the ass to do in DF. You miss a couple of dragonkillers, you mayaswell just all AFK until the thing resets and pray that half the party hasn't left in the meantime. It's just a matter of effort vs reward - right now it requires too much of the former for not enough of the latter, so many people just automatically leave when they land on it.

I think SE clearly OVERESTIMATED the skills of the playerbase -- a playerbase weaned on Windower-XI and cheats and bots and all that kind of crap.

This is one of the largest reasons I loved Steps forcing people out of 123 Kick 123 Kick... You could almost bot that. You can't do it on unnerfed Steps.