FFXIV and Risk vs. Reward

[Yuumei]

In my opinion OP is just trying to get FFXI mob mechanics pasted over here.
Keep in mind XI mobs were "challenging" because the solo player is so weak - even an "evenly matched" crab can own you if you do not know what you are doing. (that's before XI raised the lvl cap, and yes i saw a JP paladin in full abjuration gear died to a crab in kuftal tunnel solo)

Also, we are errand boys/girls of light, slayer of elder primals and saviors of Eorzea many times over. I certainly do not expect to get killed by a giant toad or some flying cabbage while taking a stroll thru a forest thank you.

[Callback]

snip

Good idea, but that only works in a game where combat is more than just beating your face against a wall and seeing which one, the wall or your face, breaks first.

[Magis]

Awesome post OP but a lot of people on the forum won't get it (and can see it in the replies). They see it as an either or; instances HAVE to be brain dead casual or HAVE to be punishingly hard. So when you ask for content that takes some basic problem solving skills you hear them quickly paste their canned responses of HUR HUR ALEX SAVAGE, HUR THE CHALLENGE SHOULD BE GOOD ENOUGH.

The risk (or difficulty) and reward are intertwined. The risk makes the reward more valuable, more desirable, and more memorable. People remember getting that item from a hard fight over the vendor trash you get completing the billionth fetch quest. On the other hand, the reward is the prime motivator to push through the difficulty. It's the light at the end of the tunnel, the carrot on the stick. Put the correct reward and players will push through even the toughest content. Put a crap one and people won't do it at all. This isn't some rocket science, this is fundamental game design.

And this is what FFXIV's content has turned into; a pendulum swinging between two extremes because SE's content designers can't seem to do basic game design. You have content like Alex; super hard but barely any reward (dyable subjectively ugly gear, that's it). No wonder it failed, there is no motivator. Then you have Diadem; High reward but low difficulty, and people began to bemoan how boring it is. Both lead to boredom, both are shitty design. You need to balance difficult content with an appropriate reward, not settle with BS half-measures like "clearing it is reward enough". So is playing the Pain Station but I wouldn't call that a "good" game.

Oh great. Another casual vs hardcore topic where the casual argument will ultimately win because hardcore players are the minority blah blah blah.

I love how dumb that argument is. Look at any subset of the total player base and you'll find minorities and can bring a justification to ignore them. People who play Triple Triad are a minority, better garbage that content. How about those doing Chocobo Racing or the new LoV? People who buy stuff on the cash shop are probably a minority, let's garbage that too (I hope)! Housing, gardening, etc, etc...

If the game was what only the majority cared about or did, it would be nothing but two dungeons and a currency grind, with a shit ton of inactive accounts except during Tuesday reset and patch month.

[Zojha]

The risk (or difficulty) and reward are intertwined.

Let me ask you a question: Why is glamour a thing?

It's tedious to get the pieces, often takes lots of money and effort. Not only that, but you also have to buy or make the stupid prisms and it clogs up your inventory.
However, there is no reward for it whatsoever. You don't get tomestones, you don't get money, you don't get a title, nor a mount nor a minion, nor better stats for doing a good outfit. Nothing. It's only effort and cost. And yet, it's immensely popular. How can this even be?

Note: It's a rhetorical question. The answer is:"Genuine enjoyment". Something hard content apparently sorely lacks.

[TarynH]

The risk (or difficulty) and reward are intertwined. The risk makes the reward more valuable, more desirable, and more memorable. People remember getting that item from a hard fight over the vendor trash you get completing the billionth fetch quest.

The problem is how do you define "reward" for thousands of subscribers? What might be a "reward" to you (gear from Alexander? 210 gear?) might be utter trash to me. Surprising as it might sound, some people don't play this game to get the best gear for the moment and unsubscribe. Some people play the long game. What you call "casual" players, can sometimes be players that "casually" and steadily get out of the game what they want. They don't unsubscribe right after new content. They stay subscribed, and slowly gather scrips, or esoterics, or enjoy beast tribes. Or perhaps they take their time between patches, actually getting geared up to a level they feel is appropriate to their play style.

I understand the OP's explanation of "risk." They're basically saying they want everything about FFXI that I hated. We have sight and sound aggro mobs already. Scent? Low HP? Magic? All of those things were annoying as hell in FFXI. Especially when you were after a certain objective, or goal, that had nothing to do with those mobs. It was annoying because they would aggro you while you had no reason to fight them in the first place.

And that is where the OP fails to explain the "reward" side of their post. What is rewarding about overworld mobs aggroing you, or possibly killing you? Example: You're out farming those dhalmels for skins. But wait! A stray elemental enters the fight! Why? Because you happened to cast magic too close to them.

So while you are beating down on your "new and improved" dhalmels, that take 2? 3? times as long to kill, the elemental starts casting Tornado on you. Out of nowhere, you lose half of your HPs (a la FFXI style). You look at the elemental and scream "WHY?!" You're capped on wind shards/crystals/clusters, and all of your retainers have 9999 of each. You have no need to fight, let alone look, at that Wind Elemental. But now you have to kill it, or die. You can't run away, because in your flight path are skeletons that just spawned at night. And guess what... they aggro to low HP.
There was nothing "rewarding" about FFXI's overworld mob system. Everything took forever to kill. Could kill you, if you let it. And absolutely never dropped anything remotely worth it, unless you were farming a particular item. I guarantee I never felt "accomplished" getting that one crystal to drop from those elementals either.

[Moomba33]

I can't say I see the appeal of a dangerous open world.
For me open world content is stuff to do solo while I'm waiting in DF (like daily hunts and beast tribe quests) and I don't particularly want those to take longer or be harder.

I don't think casual and hardcore necessarily has anything to do with difficulty.
To me casual means that you probably don't play every day or you only participate in a few specific activities while hardcore means that you invest a lot of time and effort into the game.

For myself, I play a few hours everyday. I spend most of my time on easy content such as leveling alternate classes and running dungeons with my FC.
I generally only try the more difficult content once it's on DF. I will likely never try Alex Savage since I already got the story from normal and am not really interested in challenge.

I wouldn't find a more difficult over world more rewarding. I would find it an irritant just slowing down my activities.

[Magis]

The problem is how do you define "reward" for thousands of subscribers? What might be a "reward" to you (gear from Alexander? 210 gear?) might be utter trash to me. Surprising as it might sound, some people don't play this game to get the best gear for the moment and unsubscribe. Some people play the long game. What you call "casual" players, can sometimes be players that "casually" and steadily get out of the game what they want. They don't unsubscribe right after new content. They stay subscribed, and slowly gather scrips, or esoterics, or enjoy beast tribes. Or perhaps they take their time between patches, actually getting geared up to a level they feel is appropriate to their play style.

I understand the OP's explanation of "risk." They're basically saying they want everything about FFXI that I hated. We have sight and sound aggro mobs already. Scent? Low HP? Magic? All of those things were annoying as hell in FFXI. Especially when you were after a certain objective, or goal, that had nothing to do with those mobs. It was annoying because they would aggro you while you had no reason to fight them in the first place.

And that is where the OP fails to explain the "reward" side of their post. What is rewarding about overworld mobs aggroing you, or possibly killing you? Example: You're out farming those dhalmels for skins. But wait! A stray elemental enters the fight! Why? Because you happened to cast magic too close to them.

So while you are beating down on your "new and improved" dhalmels, that take 2? 3? times as long to kill, the elemental starts casting Tornado on you. Out of nowhere, you lose half of your HPs (a la FFXI style). You look at the elemental and scream "WHY?!" You're capped on wind shards/crystals/clusters, and all of your retainers have 9999 of each. You have no need to fight, let alone look, at that Wind Elemental. But now you have to kill it, or die. You can't run away, because in your flight path are skeletons that just spawned at night. And guess what... they aggro to low HP.
There was nothing "rewarding" about FFXI's overworld mob system. Everything took forever to kill. Could kill you, if you let it. And absolutely never dropped anything remotely worth it, unless you were farming a particular item. I guarantee I never felt "accomplished" getting that one crystal to drop from those elementals either.

I never actually specified gear. Reward could be the story as it is for me. It could be glamour as the other post said. But in Savage's case, both rewards were already given out for normal, so you have to fallback to stats which is useless in XIV anyway. This is what killed Savage for me and many in my static; not the difficulty, but lack of reason to bother with it.

And to your crystal analogy: That was just a piece of the bigger puzzle. You got crystals to gain gil or to synthesis items or to turn in for rankups which had a bigger impact in value than it does in XIV due to what you had to do to get it. Even killing things in general gave EXP, and through the long haul got you to max level, which was an achievement back then and many people look back at it as a big point while playing XI. You are taking a small experience and aren't looking at the other things it effects.

[TarynH]

You are taking a small experience and aren't looking at the other things it effects.

Of course I'm looking at the other things it impacts. I played FFXI for years. It was my first MMO experience. I quit FFXI for FFXIV, to have a completely new and different experience. I remember the overworld in FFXI being mundanely annoying to get anything done. Sometimes you wouldn't even get through a CS for a mission before the mobs respawned and aggroed you again. Most of the time you couldn't run away. The mobs would follow you to the zone lines, and you had to pray you'd get into the other zone before they killed you. Random harder mobs would wander through your experience camp and slaughter you. There was a ton of "risk" with very little "reward."

As far as my example of the crystal drop... That wasn't my point. My point was setting out to do one objective, but being interrupted by something aimless, and needless. Even on FFXIV, I sometimes get annoyed when Titan aoes a mob I don't need. Because it's pointless for me to kill that mob. It wasn't my goal to kill it. Yet, sometimes I have to. FFXI was ten times worse in that regard. There were so many annoying ways to aggro some other pointless mob, that you never intended to fight in the first place. And nothing ever is rewarding about defeating a mob you don't need; on either game.

[AylmerOfFamfrit]

Some of the things you mentioned were attributes from ffxi. Features that made it great and allowed it to hold strong for so many years. Idk if thoses featured existed in 1.0 and led to its overhaul. In new areas the could introduce theses elements but not throughout the game. That would mean another full game reboot.