Heavensward Monster Difficulty /excitement

[Sylve]

Unfortunatly to true as evidenced so many times by all the cries of "too hard nurf nao!" posts. And I give em 15 minutes before :P

But:

Putting open world forced party content is only viable when enough players are doing it to get help to progress. Using an example to what many can relate. FFXI. before the last update getting parties for Dynamis was nigh on impossible parties where rarer than a honest politician, same with Aby. if you were very lucky you might find a raptor party , you had to solo most of the time. Assaults, no one was doing them, so getting past the assaults which needed parties where even more harder than dynamis eg the one where you have to feed the troops, get the mobs to do a certain attack to break the doors to free the prisoner etc. Salvage, Nyzul etc, etc where all the same. Those lamps :S

Same with WotG, ToAU, Zilart, CoP, only way you could do them is getting to 99 and geared enough (sparks gear is enough at ilvl 115) and soloing it.

Point I'm making is, is that old content becomes dead content and making it party only prevents new players from being able to progress. To be honest, if you had spent time running the content over and over and over to get your drops and after new stuff comes out, you wouldn't want to run the previous ones over and over and over to help someone else. So I can empathise with those who have left that content in the dust to move to new pastures.

I'm all for challenging content, I'm not so much for mandatory tough party content for normal progression for the above reasons.

You and many others are equating stronger mobs with "OMG we have to party up to kill anything now!"

Which is ABSOLUTELY not the case!
Individual mobs will be stronger, but 1v1, you should have no problems.
Difficulty goes up when you add a second mob, be it intentionally or linking.
Throw in random patrols and your 1v1 might just turn into a 5v1.

Yes he said there would be more elite monsters mixed in, but nowhere did he say he you HAVE to be in a group to move around the open world.

The quests themselves will take place NEAR these stronger mobs, but those stronger mobs and such wont be the focus of the quest.
All this change does is provide the world with some teeth. And it very badly needs those teeth, but there is not a single mob in the open world that can kill a player or get me to think "Well how can i kill that?"

Adding it as a baseline across Heavensward even lets them build alternate content around it.

People need to stop equating tougher mobs to forced party content.
"But the casuals!!!" Is also a stupid reason. The 'casuals' are just people with less TIME to play, not less SKILL.
Time played does NOT equal skill.

And I'll say again, if there are people who struggle against the open world mobs we have now they need to better themselves.

[Sapphic]

You and many others are equating stronger mobs with "OMG we have to party up to kill anything now!"

That wasn't my intention. It was for those wanting normal mobs at party difficulty and reasons why they aren't a good idea.

Also, your last comment. They don't need to, as SE keeps nerfing eveything instead XD SE needs to take a stand and say newp, it is at intended difficulty, git gud! :P

[Gooner_iBluAirJGR]

There are 25 days until release...

Which means 25 days + 30 mins until the first "this is too hard" posts start to appear.

LOL its so true. I'll bet you it happens in less than 30 minutes!
@the OP: I'm excited for this as well. I miss trying to slay tough mobs for the sake of slaying.

[Goodberry]

I am for harder open world mobs. Gives a much needed sense of adventure.
Some of my best moments in this game have been the first times I was doing the beastmen dailies in Southern Thanalan, sneaking around crowded camps. By night it was particularly fascinating.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Don't count on any challenge if you're already ilvl120 or higher until later in the game. Even then, we'll get powerful gear down the road anyway and once again wondered why the trash mobs are weak.

[Sylve]

Don't count on any challenge if you're already ilvl120 or higher until later in the game. Even then, we'll get powerful gear down the road anyway and once again wondered why the trash mobs are weak.

Not necessarily.
The way i understood it was that (example) if mobs are currently about 20% of the power of a player, then Heavensward will boost that to around 75%.
One mob at a time is not so much different from now, except they'll be slightly more challenging.
But when you add in a second one, things start getting hairy.

Sure, at launch 2 mobs will be tough but doable, by the time of the second round of patch content, 2 mobs might simply be doable.
Then again, Yoshi mentioned that there were going to be things like wandering patrols. So even if you have the best gear possible, You may still get overwhelmed if you aren't paying attention.

And thats a damn fine thing to happen.

First of all, they haven't said anything about xp rewards being scaled with difficulty. I wouldn't be surprised if the mobs were just as insignificant in terms of rewards, yet take longer to fight.

And I'm going to be honest finally, because I don't think I know many people who read forums in-game. I hope this doesn't come back to bite me. The fact is, I know a lot of players who are just plain terrible at this game, yet they are awesome people and they enjoy playing immensely. An easy main scenario, and an open world that doesn't destroy them at every turn, provides them with plenty of content to satisfy them. If I want a bit more challenge, I've got a half dozen game modes to choose from. I don't play the harder stuff with those friends, because it usually just ends up with constant wipes due to no situational awareness. Those players don't mind, because the open world stuff is there to satisfy them. A harder open world takes that away.

Lots of people say, "screw the casuals" and "let's make this entire game a challenge". But who do you think is spending stupid amounts of money on your marketboard sales? Who do you think makes up a large chunk of the fate and hunt parties you need to progress? I like the casuals, even if I can handle harder content myself. Without them, it would be a game full of pros and epeen, and I'm tired of that in games.


That's a perfect point. Most of the argument for a harder open world is coming from people that are 50 item levels or more above the content they are upset with. The beast tribes were in 2.0, and are scaled to be suitable for ilevel 45-50 players. Those zones didn't start receiving content until 2.1, when players were already at ilevel 90, and the last quest added in 2.35 involved us squashing mobs with ilevel 110 gear.

I read that the devs intentionally left open space in the world in 3.0, that will be filled in 3.x patches with new content, so this time they will probably add enemies that are more appropriate for the character power we gain over time. Maybe that will satisfy the itch people seem to have.

"They're bad at the game so we should never do anything that might cause them to improve"

Thats not really fair. If done right, by making it CLEAR why they can't/struggle to progress (in the case of your example, killing overworld mobs) you steer them towards self improvement. Which is better for the game as a whole.

If we lose subs because some people are so bad they cannot kill overworld mobs ... Then i honestly do not know what to say.

[Gunspec]

"They're bad at the game so we should never do anything that might cause them to improve"

No, what I'm saying is, if a video game has an "easy" difficulty, don't delete that difficulty option mid-game. If we say that open world and main scenario are easy, dungeons are medium, and raid is hard difficulty, there are players who are comfortable spending hundreds of hours on the easy difficulty. Sure, players can improve, and they have content they can already try to do just that. But if open world becomes comparable to the medium difficulty stuff (not that I'm saying it will be) you're going to lose a lot of those players.

It's ok to have some people in the game that like easy difficulty. Taking away their easy content is the same as nerfing the hard content. You are taking AWAY someone's previously included preferred difficulty level.

As to why there aren't more players here saying "leave my easy stuff alone"... Many of them don't know about the forums, they don't follow news on the game, and are constantly surprised and overwhelmed by the game around them. Taking what has always been the easiest content and RAMPING it up on them isn't going to help the game win a lot of new players. Whatever you think about them, those people are the lifeblood of the game's economy, both gil and real life subscription.

[Cakekizy]

As to why there aren't more players here saying "leave my easy stuff alone"... Many of them don't know about the forums, they don't follow news on the game, and are constantly surprised and overwhelmed by the game around them. Taking what has always been the easiest content and RAMPING it up on them isn't going to help the game win a lot of new players. Whatever you think about them, those people are the lifeblood of the game's economy, both gil and real life subscription.

That and tired of getting put down for disagreeing with those in favor of harder content.

[Hurlstone]

This sounds fair enough, so long as its not something that has to be done for simply tasks or necessarily forced upon players. I quite like 'peaceful environments!' when I just want to take in the atmosphere.

[Radacci]

Don't count on any challenge if you're already ilvl120 or higher until later in the game. Even then, we'll get powerful gear down the road anyway and once again wondered why the trash mobs are weak.

this: the mobs might be tough for someone who just got carried through SoF, with bare minimum ilv.
for tanks, everything is easy.
with a chocobo companion, everything is easy (provided you lv it a bit)
as a healer, everything is easy.
Unless all the mobs are "Elite" it still won't be difficult (i'm guessing)