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

[Heat]

it always starts like this (we don't want hardcore game, just some hard things to do) then it goes to (hey why are casual gamers even play an MMO, it's an MMO, it's to do things with other people, casual gamers should play PS3 or non online game)
I'll tell you, for FKS drop it.

[DoctorMog]

They should have just made FF14 a facebook game.

Then I wouldn't be so upset about a FF title being the complete opposite of its MMO predecessor.

They are really taking this game in the extreme opposite direction.

[Murugan]

The person you quoted made a valid point so you turn to vague personal insults? Always a good way to win folks over.

Hardcore players are a dying breed. The people who used to play hardcore have (mostly) grown up and now have jobs, kids, and/or sex to worry about.

What exactly is this if not a vague personal insult at anyone who enjoys content that is not simply handed to them for the 15 dollars a month they pay nothing ("hardcore" players).


That's like saying anyone who enjoys a narrative given in a form longer or deeper than a comic book or thirty minute network television show clearly has "no life" because who in their right mind has an attention span like that? Don't even ask a "normal" person to read more than 114 characters! This is the 21st century....

This whole equating playing "hardcore" (again meaning just wanting content that requires a little effort) with abnormal/unhealthy time investment, comes from people like AmyRae who either make huge assumptions about other people or who personally may have had a serious problem balancing their life with an MMO when they were young and are now intensely bitter about it (yet strangely still play MMO's...).

I would imagine I play MMO's much less than many of these so called "casual players", I bet I play MMO's considerably less than most Farmville players spend on their farms, and I certainly spend less time on the forums than many of them here. Let's not sit here and pretend the whole "make it casual "accessible"' argument has to do with time constraints alone. That argument might work if we are talking about a leveling grind that requires months of daily effort, or an in-game economy with items costing the equivalent of a part time job's amount of work, but simple quests for a chocobo? Having to unravel a mystery? Difficult encounters?

Is it that these "casuals" don't have a lot of time, or do they just have an issue with thinking?

[DoctorMog]

Is it that these "casuals" don't have a lot of time, or do they just have an issue with thinking?

Your posts shouldn't be so long. Casuals don't have time to read it all, nor do they have the comprehension to complete it.

ZING!

Seriously though, it's a good point you make.

[weeble]

i read something in another post yesterday someone said, how hard can content be, we are all rank 50 and most this stuff is like rank 10-20 stuff that is needed to be maybe challenging for them at that level. basically the game is ruined for anyone playing and is rank 50 already. what everything in this game really needs is caps on everything to make it at the level challenging it supposed to be or else this game will never have good, challenging content. even if the game launched perfectly i'd still agree to this, caps is what makes playing things where and how it's supposed to be. without them makers can just copy paste every mob and they will all fight the same and it won't matter.

to the op's thoughts, leves have always been a joke. it's like a repeatable version of wow quests that sucked in that game let alone this one. i think if they didn't have such problems with the game, leves would of been alot more in depth, even behest might of been more like campaign battles ...but instead they are bland, boring and pointless.

[Seif]

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.

I've had those thought too but honestly after over a year of development with player feedback how long can you keep lying to yourself about the direction in which this game is heading?

There's not apparently going to be even any quest to unlock the airship "ride".

[Rutelor]

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.

We're talking video-game accomplishments here, not real life. All sense of accomplishment in games is based on artificially imposed difficulties, obstacles that someone planted. But that doesn't make the exhilaration that comes with vanquishing them less real. I'm not talking about arbitrary difficulty, but cohesively deployed hurdles that are part of system, make sense within the world, and contribute to its sense of depth and complexity.

Think of Chess: you could've devised easier moves for the horse, say, with less restrictions... but that wouldn't be as much fun, would it? Besides, the horse moves in a way that is consistent with the stylized world of the 8x8. And if you capture a key piece, or escape from an ambush, by using it's peculiar, artificial move pattern, the sense of achievement is extremely gratifying, because it was not easy. I still remember the immense thrill of beating RDM Maat in FFXI. I want to feel like that again. I worked for months to do it... i gradually improved my equipment, my tactics, and my reflexes. I learnt to play my job at another level, and I became a good RDM

Game designers should not be operating in routine mode, they should be catering to the enjoyment of the genre aficionados by being supremely in touch with the way they think and the things they like and by anticipating the direction their collective taste is moving in, before the player base even knows where it wants to go. What we want them to do is challenge themselves to devise captivating, fun mechanisms for us to explore. Not send us to kill 5 dodos that are parked somewhere waiting for us to do so.

[Ashaylin]

People (mainly developers) are relating casuals to players who want instant gratification. Which is not true. People who want instant gratification are people who want instant gratification no matter if they are casuals or hardcore.

I categorize myself as a casual due to my limited time frame for playing games, but even I feel like the game is lacking in challenge. "Challenge" does not have to be quantified by time. You can play something challenging within a 30 minute time frame or a 4 hour time frame. In real life whenever I have a minute, I pull up Sadoku on my cell phone and challenge myself for those several minutes. It's up to the developers to relate that kind of thinking to an MMORPG and innovate.

[Bled]

is something really a challenge if everyone can achieve it in a short amount of time?

[Ashaylin]

It can if you don't use time as a gauge to how challenging it is.