FFXIV and Risk vs. Reward

[ArchonCina]

First off, this is a first post and I'm sure there will be negative stigma attached to that. I'm not a new player though, even though I am a new poster here. Sorry for the weird paragraph breaks.

FFXIV: ARR pulled off a miracle and saved a game from destruction and made it into something great.

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.

Here we are waiting for 3.2, and I think that our expectations were very different from what the devs had in mind.

And sure, that's okay, since the most common rebuttal to where my argument is going is to say "but Cina, the majority of the playerbase is happy with the way things are and they're mostly casual players, you are in the minority and the game is not gonna change just for you."

But here's why it has to:

Any job can take out any single open world enemy in 5 or less hits. Some can just oneshot burst before their GCD resets. The caveat of course is hunts, but I'm not talking about hunts. I'm talking about the flora and fauna of Eorzea - the stuff that's out there and aggressive to players.

Why is this a problem?

"But Cina, how annoying would it be if I had to actually fight stuff that aggro'd me while I was running through Sea of Clouds!?" Okay, sure. You're telling me that while you're doing beast tribe quests or crafting or whatever, you'd rather just run away or burst it dead and move on. Does this make the world feel real to you? Does it make you feel like you're challenged at all, or that the world is a place that might harbor some danger? What if some enemies aggro'd to smell, sound, use of magic, or low HP? What if some enemies only came out at night or got stronger when the weather was rain or heat wave?

What if this stuff actually mattered? What if you could still burst that poor Paissa in 3 moves but a rather testy Bull Dahlmel could oneshot YOU if it was around? I do not argue that every enemy have 10x the HP they have and 10x the ATK power. No, I argue that the range of strength be bracketed and that enemies spawn that are easy for players to defeat, and some that are difficult, and some very difficult. This adds more flavor, more variety, and most importantly, more risk.

Why does Risk matter?

We forge strong memories when overcoming risk. It is when we get that adrenaline rush that drives us to continue to pursue adventure. Do you feel like an adventurer when you're stomping everything in sight without a care in the world? I'd argue this is part of why some players feel burned out. They may not even realize it.

Strong memories lead to nostalgia, to a desire to experience adrenaline rush again, and the associated feeling of adventure and overcoming difficulty with friends at your side.

FFXIV needs to implement Risk in 3.x and 4.x open world content, in addition to the challenges offered by raids. Furthermore, it needs to reinforce good play and discourage ineffective play at that level. It has to do this in a method that only allows players to progress once they've proven their ability through specifically tailored duties. "But Cina, you can't tell me how to play, I paid my sub fee, so what if I suck? I'm having fun." Again, not a problem. ARR is a theme park, and so far, so is Heavensward. It's virtually built for that kind of player. Anything that is a struggle for that kind of player is quickly reduced in difficulty by SE so that they can keep those players happy and keep them playing. But do you feel like you're a max-level elite player when the bar is lowered so much?

And why does that matter? Where's my reward?

Because Risk generates the desire for reward. You rightly ask for compensation for the risks you take. Currently, FFXIV trivializes reward by side-grading Raid gear and providing fast-obsoletion through vertical gear progression. The parallel raid experience attempts to solve the difference in ability between hardcore and casual players. It attempts to allow both kinds and those in between to experience the story associated with the raid while providing a difficulty appropriate for each group. However, inadvertently this trivializes the hardcore experience. It diminishes the reward, which diminishes the incentive to take the risk.

If you've read this far, you're going to tell me "Cina, casual players are the bread and butter of the sub base, you can't piss them off to please the hardcore players." If you're talking about short term goals, you're absolutely correct in that casual players are going to be your revenue stream. But if you're talking long term, over the length of the game, it's the hardcore players that keep coming back and that don't get bored and leave after they've done their first relic, or whatever it happens to be. 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.

EDIT: Thanks Voltyblast for showing me the ways of the edit button here.

[Voltyblast]

I recommend deleting all of the posts and just edit the first: you can bypass the (idiotic, yes) word limit that way.

[NoahArks]

FFXIV: ARR temporarily saved the game, till more content was patched in. But it atleast gave you the feeling you'll enjoy the game once more stuff released. It hid under the disguise of being casual friendly, yet the hardcore elitists were the only people with everything from the content catered towards the "casual". The Cash shop ruined my expectations of Yoshi-p.

FFXIV: Heavenswar ruined the game. It came with a class thats the exact clone of another class. were asking 5 years long for a full dps ranged attacker. Changed them into support casters, that are unwanted in raids, cause everything is a DPS check. Heavensward's story is skipped by most users. They just skip every cutscene, cause it isn't interesting.

Though, I have to say ARR had a great start storywise, that gradually became worse and got completely ruined in Heavensward. My sub will run out in 3 months, and I don't think I'll return at that point. I'll just stick to FFXI which I've done since we had to wait for 3.1 for like half a year.

[Colorful]

Heavensward's story is skipped by most users. They just skip every cutscene, cause it isn't interesting.

Though, I have to say ARR had a great start storywise, that gradually became worse and got completely ruined in Heavensward. My sub will run out in 3 months, and I don't think I'll return at that point. I'll just stick to FFXI which I've done since we had to wait for 3.1 for like half a year.

What? If Heavensward did anything right, it was the storyline. It was leagues ahead of the filler story that was ARR, and better than 2.0.2-5 (2.55 topped it though). Everyone I know feels the same way to, the story was fantastic. Now 3.1's story?... yeah, that was shoddy to say the least. But I suppose 3.1 has been a disappointing patch all around for most.

[Saccharin]

"But Cina, how annoying would it be if I had to actually fight stuff that aggro'd me while I was running through Sea of Clouds!?" Okay, sure. You're telling me that while you're doing beast tribe quests or crafting or whatever, you'd rather just run away or burst it dead and move on. Does this make the world feel real to you? Does it make you feel like you're challenged at all, or that the world is a place that might harbor some danger? What if some enemies aggro'd to smell, sound, use of magic, or low HP? What if some enemies only came out at night or got stronger when the weather was rain or heat wave?

What if this stuff actually mattered? What if you could still burst that poor Paissa in 3 moves but a rather testy Bull Dahlmel could oneshot YOU if it was around? I do not argue that every enemy have 10x the HP they have and 10x the ATK power. No, I argue that the range of strength be bracketed and that enemies spawn that are easy for players to defeat, and some that are difficult, and some very difficult. This adds more flavor, more variety, and most importantly, more risk.

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.

If mobs were unique and compelling then by all means make them more challenging but the variety of mobs of the same type are almost identical in how you approach them.

If they had 10x the health where's the challenge, that's just grind - tediousness is not compelling game play.

So if an enemy only came out at night what you would have is people camping it until 'night occurred' similar to what we have in hunts. 100 people on one mob might sound fun but as we know it has issues in practice.

If a mob attacked you at low health, where's the fun in that likely dying due to 'RNG'. If it was attracted to magic is that fun for melée and magic users.

I think they have that already in these single boss fates but no one does them because there's no reward.

Harder sound since on paper but it has repercussions.

[Devils_Lawyer]

In terms of making mobs more "fun" then i used to play a mmo where every time a killed mob would re spawn it had a certain chance to be given a special "bonus" to its statistics.

It could be anything from more hit points, increased physical/magical defense, increased damage dealt etc.

Maybe not a very big overhaul but at least something that would make 1 mob stand out a tiny bit from his/her million identical copies.

[TarynH]

Any job can take out any single open world enemy in 5 or less hits.

Thank God for that! Who wants to sit and hack at a mob for 5 minutes? What is this? FFXI? Do you want them to add BST, so everyone can bandwagon a job to get casual CORE content done? Or how about we add true sight/sound mobs so that gatherers can't use stealth?! Oh wait... they did! Nobody bitches about that in Diadem huh?

I don't mind if "hardcore" players want hardcore content. Just leave it separate from the main core of the game. There are various types of hardcore and casual players, that shouldn't be lumped into generalizations. I'll assume most casual players won't want to get a hunting party together to go around and do their daily beast tribe quests, all because someone wants random IT++ monsters tossed into the overworld. It's bad enough having to work around A ranks that nobody kills. I don't want to sit and /check everything before I run by it. It's a waste of time for a casual player.

But let's try to understand exactly what you want, without running down the content that we have in general. Going by the logic of your post, you want monsters that you can't burst kill in 5 or less hits. You want monsters that rise in strength by some sort of tier system. You want random harder monsters to spawn as you attack normal monsters, that can kill you in 1 hit. You want to grind and grind for hours, and not be able to "faceroll" content. May I introduce to you, Diadem. It's everything you've mentioned, and you can grind on it for hours for little to no reward (dependent on RNG).

But what it really boils down to, is you want FFXI in FFXIV. Which is fine if you do. It was a good game in its time. I personally don't want FFXI again. There are only so many years of my life, and I don't want to waste them waiting for /shout parties in Jeun... err Idyllshire.

[Krylo]

Any job can take out any single open world enemy in 5 or less hits. Some can just oneshot burst before their GCD resets. The caveat of course is hunts, but I'm not talking about hunts. I'm talking about the flora and fauna of Eorzea - the stuff that's out there and aggressive to players.

Why is this a problem?

"But Cina, how annoying would it be if I had to actually fight stuff that aggro'd me while I was running through Sea of Clouds!?" Okay, sure. You're telling me that while you're doing beast tribe quests or crafting or whatever, you'd rather just run away or burst it dead and move on. Does this make the world feel real to you? Does it make you feel like you're challenged at all, or that the world is a place that might harbor some danger? What if some enemies aggro'd to smell, sound, use of magic, or low HP? What if some enemies only came out at night or got stronger when the weather was rain or heat wave?

What if this stuff actually mattered? What if you could still burst that poor Paissa in 3 moves but a rather testy Bull Dahlmel could oneshot YOU if it was around? I do not argue that every enemy have 10x the HP they have and 10x the ATK power. No, I argue that the range of strength be bracketed and that enemies spawn that are easy for players to defeat, and some that are difficult, and some very difficult. This adds more flavor, more variety, and most importantly, more risk.

I was wondering how long it would take this to come back after mobs were 'hard' at the start of HW. I'd predicted it ages ago, and you could probably find threads here where I pointed out that ARR mobs at 50 in 45+50 ilevel gear were 'difficult' too.

Here's the thing, though, the only way to have open world mobs that are difficult for people in 200/210 gear is to have open world mobs that make large areas of the game inaccessible to people fresh at 60 in 150 gear. Which, in turn, would make getting up to 180 and then 210 almost impossible as that you need to travel all over the place to open up dungeons and do hunts and blah blah blah.

The open world is never going to be dangerous in a vertical progression game for more than 1 or 2 patch cycles because of gear. There's no way to really change this that's not going to be an incredible burden on new players/at the beginning of the expansion.

People whined about this through most of ARR's patch cycle, but I'd have enjoyed seeing any of them throw on some pre-darklight gear and solo their way through the sylphlands doing beast tribe quests. Would it have been possible? Sure would have. Would it have required a lot more thought, careful pulling, etc. than people generally do, and fulfilled most of their tick boxes for 'challenging over world content'? Yes.

If you've read this far, you're going to tell me "Cina, casual players are the bread and butter of the sub base, you can't piss them off to please the hardcore players." If you're talking about short term goals, you're absolutely correct in that casual players are going to be your revenue stream. But if you're talking long term, over the length of the game, it's the hardcore players that keep coming back and that don't get bored and leave after they've done their first relic, or whatever it happens to be. 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.

And this is, categorically, bullshit. It might have been true in the 90s but this isn't the 90s anymore, and a large portion of players who are called 'casual' aren't. They're playing for hours on end, grinding for ages to get the relic weapon, to upgrade their gear with tomes, etc. They aren't doing raids not because 'they only have a casual interest in the game' but because they are thirty years old. They have jobs. They have children. They have friends and social obligations. And they can not set aside four hours or more a night every week to learn the hardcore raids with a static. Or they can, but doing so would use up such a large percentage of their free time that they don't want to and would rather do anything else in that 4 hours.

We're no longer in the age when the average player is 15-25 and is in highschool or college and has no job. We're in the age when the average gamer is in their thirties. This is why games these days are shooting for easy exit points and the ability to feel like you've accomplished something in every 30-45 minutes of playing--because if it takes an hour or two to accomplish something in a game, and you've only got 45 minutes of free time after you've gotten off work, brought the kids home, had dinner, spent an evening with the family, and finally put the children to bed before you need to get up for work again the next day. . . guess what? You aren't going to be playing that game.

The people that hardcore 'raiders' like to deride as casual are actually the lifeblood. They're the ones who stick around. It's the Raiders who take a break between raid tiers. Look around these very forums, or reddit. Go back a couple months to when A4S was either being cleared or being given up on, and count the number of people complaining that their raid groups were falling apart because everyone was taking a break waiting for the new raids. Go back even further to after every turn of bahamut and do the same.

'Hardcore' raiders play seasonally when the game has new hardcore raiding content, and tend to cycle between games or play offline games in between those times. The 'casual' players, as a majority, don't--because their enjoyment is tied to crafting or fishing or gathering (all three of which would become incredibly frustrating for a portion of the player base that doesn't even LIKE combat if combat became much harder while they were trying to travel between nodes and get their gather on). Or because they're working on the current casual grind to upgrade gear. Or because they actually enjoy the easy 24 mans and dungeons and are willing to run it repeatedly. Or because they like running the marketboard. Or because they're part of a casual FC that spends its time helping newbies and organizing events around dungeons that are no longer going. Or because they're playing LoV/TT/whatever other minigames.

Or, in short, because they consume more than one piece of content that the game has to offer.

[KitingGenbu]

In terms of making mobs more "fun" then i used to play a mmo where every time a killed mob would re spawn it had a certain chance to be given a special "bonus" to its statistics.

It could be anything from more hit points, increased physical/magical defense, increased damage dealt etc.

Maybe not a very big overhaul but at least something that would make 1 mob stand out a tiny bit from his/her million identical copies.

I suppose you could relate that to the NM popping mechanic done in diadrem just in the open world to a less degree. Killing a certain enemy type having a chance to spawn a special enemy type (which was also done often in XI) that drops something good.

[Warlyx]

and here we gooooo again this topic pop ups from time to time ... and nothing is gonna change the fact that overworld is there for easy questing and traveling , no challenges whatsoever and thats by design... they can open new zones with new " ilvls in mind" diadem is the close to that u will see...