FFXIV and Risk vs. Reward

[Toguro]

First of all, I don't know what is going on with people are talking about when they say "Want stronger more dangerous overworld enemies? Diadem!" No. Diadem is not a dangerous overworld.

Diadem: Diadem is basically a scripted thing as soon as you get in. You can only play it a certain way. You kill monsters to get star ranks and get gear. Or you gather. That's it. Gathering is already broken. You can't use sneak. That's not difficulty, it's stupid. Why not just have sneak unusable? Why not use the enemies that don't use sight as the only ones that can find you? No. Everything can find you. Now, Diadem HM so far, is broken. You go inside and there are no groups. You can be the only 8 out of a map that's supposed to have 72. When this happens, your Diadem was is over before it even starts. You won't be killing any star ranks by the time you retire from your job. You CAN'T go out alone because you CAN'T kill anything alone.There's no in-between. There's no difficulty just death. And then those strong enemies with like 3million HP have no mechanics. Just AoEs that you can easily dodge. And after 5mins of smacking them mindlessly, you get that juicy ilvl150-ilvl180 piece. I'm not going to talk about star ranks. Those have like 90million HP. In HM, with the drop nerf, there is only one way to play. Zerg it. Have 72 people zerg it because lets face it, there's nothing in Diadem. You can't play Diadem with only 8 people. It just doesn't work. It's broken. You find a coffer in a "dangerous" cave, "Woooooo a ilvl150 belt!!!".

You have a map so you know exactly where you're going at all times. I've had the most fun running around panicking in a cave because the team split up and scattered in a place they should NOT be scattered. It is a cave right? Dark, dangerous cave. I had no idea where I was going and those monsters could kill me easily. Diadem does not give that feel ever but it's supposed to be exploration. You EXPLORE. How are you going to explore something if it's already on the DANG map!!?!

Here's a thread one the Gamefaq complaining about the same thing.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/67805...eborn/72944093

[Sekki]

XIV is a glorified sims game.
The playstyle is not dynamic, compare it to blade and soul, tera online (granted I hate this game, the combat was fun).
There is no risk/reward because we cannot further our own ability to play. There is no specific skill tree, where somone could be more proficient in a certain element etc. There is no dodging, there is no tactical play at all in reality. There is maybe one or two set in stone ways to complete a duty and that's that - the only difference is how many numbers are being put out and the occasional luck with RNG.

Think about it, has there ever been a time where you've been told to dps harder? Or to survive something longer?
XIV is heavily based on math, not actual skill or intelligent plays. You simply CANNOT dps any harder than the game allows you to. The same could be said for any other game, but XIV is even more restricted to it.

Even a simple game like League of Legends offers a more dynamic playstyle, even the weakest champion can overcome the greatest opponent if they outplay them. You CANNOT outplay anything in XIV because everything is linear. EVERYTHING, including the rotation and phases of a boss.

[Colorful]

See, you had me and then you had to go and be so mind-warpingly wrong that I don't even have words to adequately capture the depth of it.

I will cry for the monumental loss that is the great RyuRoots.

But I'm basing this off the increased amount of complaints on both the official forums, Reddit, and my in-game friends. Yoshida set us for disappointment, "We had to play it safe for 2.0, but we'll try new things with 3.0", "We had to play it safe for 3.0 as it was our first expansion launch, but we'll bring new things with 3.1", and then we got... the Diadem. Content hated by a substantial amount of people, a 90 minute grindfest that had my fingers hurting after 2-3 runs. The 3.1 story was a setup chapter, in a similar vein to Alexander part 1, but no one liked that either. Duty finder was broken, Anime weapon and the side quest line was delayed. Oh, and last but not least, no Ishgard housing.

Void Ark is probably the best piece of content for me since 2.4, great story, great boss design, great music, etc. I don't think it makes up for the Diadem and the dungeon we had to give up for the Diadem (I find dungeons infinitely more fun than that piece of content).

[Vivi_Bushido]

I want more content over housing. They could go forever without adding new housing for all I care as long as they released better content.

[Evtrai]

Yip, that's right the playerbase for ANY MMO is casual and in FF14 case it's very casual. Have a look at the Savage Alex thread to see that they are likely going to nerf AS3 (maybe 4) because the 'hard core' crowd just isn't big enough.

This is a terrible misconception going on around in about why there's low savage clear numbers, and one that seems to be segregating to make the developers think this is the case.

Alexander isn't that hard, the fights is boring, people already knew what was happening, the bosses are extremely bland, people stopped raiding mainly because the new raid is incredibly boring and the boss designs being uninteresting and the fact that they recycled the mechanics as far as going to make the boss nearly identical to first coil snake boss didn't help at all, this alone ruined most of people's motivation to continue trying, the fact that all classes are now DPS, healer and tanks included, all this did make groups I know loose interest, and it did for my group.

OMG GUYS! REMEMBER THE MANIPULATOR??? WHERE YOU FOUGHT IN THIS ROOM THAT LOOKS THE SAME AS THE OTHERS!? so epic of a fight, what a memorable boss.

I recently for fun went with my group to do a full run of binding coil of Bahamut and remembered how amazingly designed the fights were, mechanic wise they were pretty awesome, and they did have DPS checks aswell but also ability checks which Alexander does not have, it's literally the worst raid I have played in any of the MMO's I have been, the fact that it's "Hard" had nothing to do with the actual reason the Alex clears are low.

[DenebPunkin]

Casual players, by their nature of being casually interested, will come and go. But the hardcore player subs and subs and subs. Unless they're no longer happy with the way the game is developing, and I worry that that is beginning to be the case here.

Anyway, the TL;DR is that FFXIV needs to provide risk and reward in the open world, needs to gate max-level content behind ability checks, and needs to do this in order to remain a healthy community, regardless of what players currently think about casual vs. hardcore. It's not really about that, it's about creating a difficulty curve game-wide that increases both risk and reward so that reaching the 'endgame' community content puts players in the strongest position to forge powerful positive memories of overcoming challenges and draws them to come back to the game again and again. And this demands that the endgame content not be a faceroll.

Say what? Last time I checked.. the Hardcores gorge on new content within the week, spend the next week complaining about a lack of content... cap something for the next 2 weeks... and then dont resub for the next few months till the next patch.

Also, endgame content was never face roll easy. On release, the content was quite difficult even for the truely avid hardcores, Ultima HM, Titan HM/EX, Ramuh EX, Coil 1, Coil 2, Coil 3 and currently AS3 which has most of the hardcore raiders still stumped and the most recent with Thor EX.

[Gaddes]

Now, Diadem HM so far, is broken. You go inside and there are no groups. You can be the only 8 out of a map that's supposed to have 72. When this happens, your Diadem was is over before it even starts. You won't be killing any star ranks by the time you retire from your job. You CAN'T go out alone because you CAN'T kill anything alone.There's no in-between. There's no difficulty just death. And then those strong enemies with like 3million HP have no mechanics. Just AoEs that you can easily dodge. And after 5mins of smacking them mindlessly, you get that juicy ilvl150-ilvl180 piece. I'm not going to talk about star ranks. Those have like 90million HP. In HM, with the drop nerf, there is only one way to play. Zerg it. Have 72 people zerg it because lets face it, there's nothing in Diadem. You can't play Diadem with only 8 people. It just doesn't work. It's broken. You find a coffer in a "dangerous" cave, "Woooooo a ilvl150 belt!!!".

Yeah, For HM they really need to put something in place where the game makes sure your party is placed in an instance where there's at least one full party in there as well. It's incredibly frustrating to spend the time and resources gathering people up for Diadem Hm and enter just to find the instance completely empty, or with a handful of gatherers.

Also, yeah killing star ranks in there as a single party is practically impossible, if you're unlucky and get a Wisent or one of those Brontosauruses or anything that doesn't have incredibly basic mechanics. How awful it is to smash your head against hp-sponge mobs in a single party for a chance to spawn a mob you have no chance of beating. Maybe they should handle it like FATEs, where if there's only one party in the instance, the mob's HP is scaled accordingly.

[Vivi_Bushido]

Say what? Last time I checked.. the Hardcores gorge on new content within the week, spend the next week complaining about a lack of content... cap something for the next 2 weeks... and then dont resub for the next few months till the next patch.

Some do, some don't. Same can be said about casuals to. That isn't just a hardcore thing.

[Kaurie]

FFXIV: Heavensward had a lot of different expectations set upon it by different types of players. For some of us, we understood that ARR had to play it safe in order to rebuild trust in the game and draw in new players who may not have played MMOs before. We were okay with that. When 3.0 was being discussed, the dev team mentioned that they would be more experimental and felt more confident after ARR's success. Players like myself interpreted this to mean that the training wheels would come off, and that new content would be difficult or at least would require a higher level of skill and participation than content in ARR did, and that the open world itself would also follow this model.

I agree strongly with your risk vs reward argument. However, this is not how I understood what they were saying about 3.0 at all. I thought they were talking about them taking risks in game design and features. ARR was to set the baseline for the game, and 3.0 would add things which add variety in the way you play (things like traits, customization, builds, varied armor, interesting stats and new gameplay modes). They've (kind of) done this with Diadem, but the execution is very low-risk, and in my opinion did not turn out as well as it was hyped up to be.


(OK Now time to read the 4 pages of replies....)

[Kaurie]

See, you had me and then you had to go and be so mind-warpingly wrong that I don't even have words to adequately capture the depth of it.

Well.. 3.1 story wasn't that great. I mean, especially compared to 2.4, 2.5, 2.55 and 3.0. I'd give it a 6, as it was mildly interesting, but had no real spins, twists or character development, and it was light on humor, action, romance, and drama.

Features wise? 3.1 has been pretty disappoint.

New Dungeons? Quite uninteresting / easy
New Void Ark? Way too easy, no coordination needed, the entire epic feel of the 24-mans was just absent - the best part of this is the story
New Exploration Missions? Would be nice if we actually explored in these. Nah, let's just stand still and kill mobs with zero to few mechanics in the same spot for 90 minutes, wipe our eyeballs clean of blood, and queue up again!