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

[Teknoman]

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.

The same may be true in XIV. We're supposed to be able to use these birds in battle soon. Not to mention they keep making emphasis on the fact that company issued chocobos are all male. Eventually we'll be able to breed chocobos...just not yet. These are just company issued chocobos for personal use anyway.

[Murugan]

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.

This post doesn't make sense. Are you saying that Batraal/Deepvoid are easier than the r50 NM's? Or that you think Beastman strongholds look easier than Darkhold? Granted we don't know how strongholds will play out but the video along with the new linking system looks like we will have no choice but to deal with massive amounts of (hopefully) fairly strong mobs (as Ixali/Kobalds of the same level are usually considerably stronger than Oboron/Imperials/moles/ghosts).

The way I look at it content keeps getting progressively harder, requiring more teamwork, and as long as that continues by the time we get alliance content (along with a fully balanced combat system) I expect some really epic encounters that will hopefully blow all of XI out of the water.

As it is, the content is already better than similar offerings in most new MMO's in my opinion (challenge wise). I mean you can rag on Darkhold all you want but have you done similar dungeons in Rift/Aion/AoC/WAR/WoW/etc? It is definitely more challenging than those.

I like a challenge too but we are just going to have to wait until they finish balancing like Matsui said before he can put in much better encounters, but I still expect Ifrit/the beastman strongholds to one up Darkhold. Unless, and I really hope this isn't the case, these are meant to be more casual content. I really hope they aren't though because it would be such a missed opportunity after watching the beastman stronghold video to not make that thing a challenge with all the possibilities for linking/multi-strong mob encounters. Please don't let them make them just open world versions of Faction Leve-esque difficulty encounters.

Everything they have said (and honestly everything they have done/are doing development wise) still supports the idea that they are trying to give us challenging end game content. The "hardcore" community among the NA population might be a minority these days, but I have faith that the JP's (who they always listen to anyways) are demanding tough/complex content and that will be the salvation of the game in the wake of what is honestly the era of Casual/Easy-mode MMOs.

[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).

[Rhomagus]

I agree and disagree.

Should there be difficult content: Yes, definitely.

Should everything be difficult to acquire just to impose a false sense of accomplishment: No.

The 'personal chocobos' aren't really all that personal. I'm hoping that they'll implement some female chocobos as all of the rental and company issued chocobos are male and then we can get into the intricacies of former Final Fantasy titles.

As of right now though, no, you shouldn't have to do anything to rent a chocobo. That idiotic four hour waste of life in XI was absolute BS in my opinion, and the raising aspect in XI was a bit over the top, especially for the randomness in outcomes and reward involved.

Tone down XI's breeding requirements and make getting the desired outcome a little less random and I think you have a fairly balanced chocobo system. Honestly though I'd rather they get the battle/armory/job system foundations pinned down before adding more intricate events.

As of right now I'm okay with the simple implementation but I do hope they have something more in store in regards to chocobos and airships.

[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.

[AceofRains]

So I guess take off tracers and describe location in the quest description?
Easily done... if we had more diverse areas