Please, Developers, Please! Put an end to Easy Mode thinking

[Rutelor]

"Your quest is to kill 5 Stuffed Dodos...! Oh... Yes... BTW... Here's the exact spot where they will be waiting for you to slaughter them."

That should've been enough to ring alarm bells, but, optimistically, I ran to the indicated spot, thinking that perhaps, on the way there, I would be overcome by difficulty and strife... but no. It was just a stroll in the park to get to the spot. Actually, that day, I didn't even cross a r1 mob, NONE!

But nothing really prepared me to what was going to follow: On arrival to the loudly marked point on my map, I encountered 17 fat, non-agressive, low-rank Dodos impatiently fighting each other for the turn to meet my deadly wand. I killed 10 of them with one AoE and the completion message appeared. I was r25 at the time, and the sidequest might have been a r5 one, but still... really, SE? Not a brief search, or some environmental puzzle, not even a brief wait for re-spawn???

Still, my optimist self decided "Oh, it's too early for complaints, they cannot be this obvious! They'll fix the spawn rate later, or something.... They just introduced the sidequests, there's tweaking to come, no doubt...! Besides, it's only a r5 quest!"

Ha!

Let's jump over the myriad other disappointments concerning challenge in this game that have slowly but surely set on since then. Let's turn to today's announcemets:

And now, you are introducing one of the most sought-after features to the game, one of the most desired items ever, and without any sense of build-up you announce simultaneously that any player (ok, not "any" but almost) will be able to both rent AND own chocobos. And I say to myself "Ah, but no doubt the quest to acquire the right to own them will be formidable... it will be peppered with peril, sacrifice and death!!"

Well, not really. You might as well have planted 17 grazing chocobos right next to the dodos, and made us go to the spot, touch one and have it instantly develop feelings of affection for us. For crying out loud!!!! We can still rent them! Do you really have to give us a title of ownership for meager 3k seals????

Is this how this game is going to be? For real?? I've wasted myself and my reputation defending, you, SE. Now, please, please... Deliver!

We come to these games to feel like heroes, not to pay you so that you stroke our egos by calling us one at the turn of 3000 seals. Just getting the right to rent chocobos, one of the great stimulating engines of low-level FFXI players was ten times harder (and more fun) than that!

Depth, complexity, challenge... not easy, breezy, hello-kitty stuff. I already own a Free Realms account, thankyouverymuch!

[DoctorMog]

I keep telling myself that all these things that they are adding can be simple and easy to accomplish because maybe they are required for the content they PLAN on producing later might be hard?

But they just keep making everything easy and I die a little inside each patch.

[indira]

i remember in the old days there was prerequisites for stuff even when you needed to kill a single mob every time. now you just need the right level which is easy mode sad day for mmo's when you follow modern mmo's foot steps.

well SE just look at the rest of the mmo's out and now there are more are going free to play by next month, why because they follow the same easy and thoughtless gamplay and everquest is still going 12 years later and that game was HARD.

people already have just about all the jobs lv50 and it took years in ffxi to do that.

[Avraym]

Agreed. Key features of the game should be earnt, not handed to us on silver platers.

Takes away any sense of accomplisment in my opinion.

[Cycloptichorn]

Do you really have to give us a title of ownership for meager 3k seals????

A meager 3k?

If you haven't done every existing company quest - including DH - you can't even get 3k guild marks. And if you do, that's the vast majority of your marks.

You're only complaining b/c you've done the work already. For someone who is brand new to the game, it would take a long time to get to that point (r45 char for most takes a few months). At the very least you have to hit r25 to do toto-rak, and then maybe flesh it out a bit with some caravan defense.

Some of you guys here really lack perspective on anything, yaknow that? Let me ask: are you regularly killing the r80+ mobs that we see around the world? No? Well, go challenge yourself instead of wasting time bitching about things being not challenging enough.

[yukikaze_yanagi]

oh really ? Because chocobos in ffxi was SO much difficult to obtain, right ? trading a gyhsal green every hour is SO hard and amusing.
Actually we know personal chocoboes require 2 things:
-ranking in a company (= quest or seals purchase)
-3000 seals. Seems meaningless to rank 50 who did dzemael, but isn't so oblius to new characters. Also, if ranking in companies mean using previus seals, we actually need to farm it)
To me the effort seems the same, if not superior.

[DoctorMog]

If you haven't done every existing company quest - including DH - you can't even get 3k guild marks. And if you do, that's the vast majority of your marks.

Wrong, I have over 6k in each city by only doing the current grand company quests.

4k is a joke.

[Xatsh]

A good personal choco in XI was actually fairly long and grueling actually. Had to raise it feed it the right food, possibly bread with other chocobos to end up with one that was not 100% subpar in everyway.

Rentals in XI was a short meaningless quest basically.

[Felis]

Wrong, I have over 6k in each city by only doing the current grand company quests.

4k is a joke.

Don't count the R45 Dungeon reward in your math. A player with only a r25 class don't get so many seals as recruit.

[Ferth]

I say it all the time, in many of the debates I have on these forums.

Casual doesn't mean easy.