Artificial Difficulty

[Iromi]

Artificial difficulty to me is locking content behind gear, even if you have the skill to be it...that is crap.

This. Player skill should ALWAYS come before gear. Gear should make a difference..but not to the point where its more important then the skill...

[ShaneDawn]

:

• DPS checks aka performing perfect rotations

This is just the icing on the cake. You have to remember, that on any of the current Savage content you habe to pull both the dps and mechanics (near) perfect, or at least adequately. The DPS check is there to see if you can perform under the pressure, or if you're the type that can only dance around the mechanics. It also prevents a carry of players that always lie dead, and rolling the content over with extra healers.

This game could use more fights with reactive gameplay. I liked T10 a lot in regards of how it originally played out. I hear too many people arguing that there's no hard content when everything's a game of memorization, but I never see them doing any of the current hardest raids, at least before they'e nerfed.

[hagare]

Artificial difficulty to me is locking content behind gear, even if you have the skill to be it...that is crap.

yea! Why can't I beat T13 naked!

[Higashikata]

DPS checks aka performing perfect rotations
1) learning a half decent rotation so you can do more than 700 dps in i180 isn't hard at all.

RNG
2) RNG is a staple part of any MMO or RPG for that matter.

Twitch Mechanics
3) Ok, so you don't like twitch mechanics, you must be the kinda guy who likes to memori-

Scripted mechanics aka memorization
4) So you don't like doing and you don't like learning fights?

Team jump rope aka finding 8 people who know the fight
5) Oh my stars!!!! I have to play with people in a freaking MMO?!?!?! what was SE on when they decided to put multi-player content in an MMO?

Content gates or lockouts
6) These aren't even hard.

Sounds like OP got called a baddie and went to the forums to list off things he doesn't like for some reason.

[ElHeggunte]

The only thing I'd really consider artificially difficult would be the overworld mobs in the Heavensward areas.

[Zephyranthes]

Not putting contents in Duty Finder is Artificial Difficulty.

[Yukiko]

(..) I hear too many people arguing that there's no hard content when everything's a game of memorization, but I never see them doing any of the current hardest raids, at least before they'e nerfed.

^
so true

(..) This game could use more fights with reactive gameplay. (..)

^
Thats dynamic programming, i like to have fights with action and reaction.
When they said they added a FFXII system for bosses i thought we will get some nice combos depending on what we do, but ... i guess they just ment the targeting line.

[Havenae]

It means implementing complexity for the sake of being complex rather than the sake of making content challenging. Complication != Heightened Difficulty

and by the way.. the original post wasn't him listing things he doesn't like. He was listing the general topics of threads he'd seen 'artificial difficulty' mentioned in.

Apparently reading comprehension isn't a strong point for many of you.

[Krylo]

Snip

You're not very good at reading comprehension.

I clearly wasn't talking about 'finely tuned' things or I'd have mentioned any of the Alex savage. I'm talking about--go play Dead Space. Now play Dead Space on the highest difficulty setting. It's no longer balanced, it's just increased parameters in a way that breaks normal flow of gameplay (get startled->regain control->kill enemy turns into get startled->die or have every jump scare memorized and kill enemies before they have a chance to react).

I mean, I, literally, multiple times, pointed out the ways FFXIV avoids those specific traps, and used a made up example drawing a contrast to what was actually done.

Also, Artificial/Bad/Punishing difficulty all mean the same thing. They're used interchangeably in game design and are in contrast, respectively, with Designed/Good/Challenging difficulty, which are also interchangeable.

Lets say you are in a game where the checkpoints are 30 minutes apart and nothing is retained between deaths.

Punishing: This mechanic is too punishing. It breaks game flow and causes an unintended exit point in play.

Bad: This mechanic is badly designed. It breaks game flow and causes an unintended exit point in play.

Artificial: This mechanic presents an artificial difficulty curve. We already know our players can make it past these things, and forcing them to go back this far breaks game flow and causes an unintended exit point in play.

They're all just different ways of saying the same thing.

[Deathgiver]

Just to point out, I'm not the one that thinks the things in the initial list are artificial, I have just seen them mentioned. Personally, I really think that strict gear checks are the only artificial difficulty in the game.