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

[SilvertearRen]

IF we're gonna talk about difficulties, let's go with something that actually scales. In EVERY ASPECT of the game.

I want an option for "Easy" "Moderate" "Hard", for Dzemael Darkhold. Otherwise, my friends are quitting the game and I'll be all alone! ;-;

To be frank, THEY aren't happy with only one difficulty mode for all of the content (aside from Leves, that was so well-done and well-thought out...), that they've started thinking about going to GW2.

[Denmo]

SE's in a particularly difficult bind with this problem. On one end they want to keep the players they currently have, and on the other end they want to attract new people. People who remember FFXI and thought, "that was too hard".

It's a difficult thing to balance, but I agree with most of this thread, thus far I've seen very little content that's actually challenging to the point of being endearing. We're getting all the easy stuff first while they fix their broken systems. It's fun for a couple of weeks but then just dies on you.

Here's hoping for more challenge in the future.

[Rutelor]

SE's in a particularly difficult bind with this problem. On one end they want to keep the players they currently have, and on the other end they want to attract new people. People who remember FFXI and thought, "that was too hard".

It's a difficult thing to balance, but I agree with most of this thread, thus far I've seen very little content that's actually challenging to the point of being endearing. We're getting all the easy stuff first while they fix their broken systems. It's fun for a couple of weeks but then just dies on you.

Here's hoping for more challenge in the future.

I don't think the issues most had with FFXI were problems of difficulty. The problems had to do a player base that felt alienated by the game. This, by association, made the world feel difficult and unwelcoming. I went, and I know I'm not alone in this, through the pain of trying to bring throngs of friends to the game; I did it just to crash against the disappointment of seeing most of them unable to get past the eccentricity of the user interface, or the painful learning curve, or the backwards lack of streamlining to the processes and the procedures in-game. I like challenge, and minimal spoon-feeding, but my first PC video game was Myst, which told you nothing, and gave you little. FFXI was made my size.

However, many of those friends, having come to FFXI from playing things like WoW, or EQ2, had trouble with what people back then started calling the "Unforgiving Learning Curve." Many of them did not have the patience to adapt to the world (well, the city, really) and wanted to start killing anything right away. I always thought that more than anything, the game had an issue with rhythm and pace, and a rather alien feel, for the average, testosteronal, generational/gender/nationality group that made a success story out of World of Warcraft.

The exception to that rule was the vast numbers of American, male and young players that had fallen in love with the Final Fantasy franchise. Alas, this group encountered one enormous conceptual obstacle when faced with FFXI: They couldn't understand why they had to pay a subscription to play yet another installment of a game series that traditionally was one-charge only.

So, for the average American gamer of the early 2000s, (still mainly Male and Young) the game seemed alien, esoteric, clumsily designed and incomprehensibly conceptualized. To say nothing that it almost forced them to play in a console-like manner, even on their PCs. (And these were the years in which, because of the market's obsession with FPSs, the console acquired a reputation for clumsy, kiddy, playstyle. The base and the media defined it's player-group's identities as juvenile or ghetto, whereas the PC, on the other hand read as adult and sophisticated. To a certain extent, you still encounter long threads or rants, hyping the very un-gamelike combo of keyboard and mouse--a pairing the computer world cannot wait to shed--as superior to the more ergonomic design of the gamepad.)

On the other hand, for the one subset of that group that was culturally prepared to receive the game well, and understand it, the legacy Final Fantasy fan, XI seemed perversely expensive, and illogically burdened with group drama.

Hence the double-edged alienation of the game. The ability to maintain an average 500k subscribers over more than 9 years is one of the unheralded success stories of the genre, btw, completely obliterated by the general audiences' infatuation with the fantastically designed, but conceptually diluted, World of Warcraft.

[Spuffin]

At the rate they are releasing easy mode content the more likely it's going to stay Free to Play... I would never pay to play a game that is just as easy as every other free to play mmo let alone an unfinished easy mode mmo...

In fact, I don't even play as we speak. I have not logged in for months. I check in every now and then hoping to read some good news...

[Chardrizard]

Wtf is this no quest to get chocobo thingy? You clearly have to go through grand company quests first then put an effort to get 3k marks, reroll a character then think again.... because jesus i swear ppl stop thinking after an official post.

[Zahak]

oh....go play in darkhold!

[thepinksupervisor]

Casuals = $$$$$$$

[Murugan]

Casuals = $$$$$$$

SE getting more $$$$$$$$$$$$$ does not = me caring if they are designing a crap casual focused game I don't want to play.

I don't invest money in Square Enix, I did invest money in EA because of STWOR, but I never planned to play it myself (and I am in the beta). I know that what I want isn't in line with what the "unwashed masses" desire from a video game, I take pride in that actually because I have confidence in my taste. So I can recognize that a casual cash shop game is going to make a ton of money, but there is no way in hell you would get me personally to waste my time on such a travesty.

I don't care how many people play, I don't care if this game improves SE's bottom line. I only care that there are people on my server I can play with (which means not casual/solo trash running around contributing nothing to my experience but lag), and that I have content to play. FFXI managed this just fine for many years. WoW on the other hand made tons of money, has millions of players, and I really don't care because it completely excluded anyone who desires complex MMO mechanics and has turned their server communities into cesspits. It could sell another 20 million copies I wouldn't waste 5 minutes playing it.

Luckily since Yoshi took over they are catering to "hardcores" again (making them the only major MMO developer to do so in the past 5 years).

[thepinksupervisor]

SE getting more $$$$$$$$$$$$$ does not = me caring if they are designing a crap casual focused game I don't want to play.

I don't invest money in Square Enix, I did invest money in EA because of STWOR, but I never planned to play it myself (and I am in the beta). I know that what I want isn't in line with what the "unwashed masses" desire from a video game, I take pride in that actually because I have confidence in my taste. So I can recognize that a casual cash shop game is going to make a ton of money, but there is no way in hell you would get me personally to waste my time on such a travesty.

I don't care how many people play, I don't care if this game improves SE's bottom line. I only care that there are people on my server I can play with (which means not casual/solo trash running around contributing nothing to my experience but lag), and that I have content to play. FFXI managed this just fine for many years. WoW on the other hand made tons of money, has millions of players, and I really don't care because it completely excluded anyone who desires complex MMO mechanics and has turned their server communities into cesspits. It could sell another 20 million copies I wouldn't waste 5 minutes playing it.

Luckily since Yoshi took over they are catering to "hardcores" again (making them the only major MMO developer to do so in the past 5 years).

You may seem to not care about casual play but if SE only cater to the hardcore that means they won't have an enough player base to help fund FF14

BUSINESSES WORK FOR MONEY
MONEY=DEVELOPMENT FOR FF14

[Murugan]

You may seem to not care about casual play but if SE only cater to the hardcore that means they won't have an enough player base to help fund FF14

BUSINESSES WORK FOR MONEY
MONEY=DEVELOPMENT FOR FF14

I'm going to go out on a limb and say you aren't a professional video game industry analyst, and if you are then I am truly sorry for you and your unfortunate choice of career. I don't think they need to make the game WoW-casual exclusive in order to have enough money to develop a game I would enjoy.

Not to mention if they don't develop content that I can enjoy=I'm not playing it=I don't care.