[ffxiv-future] A request for "Player-Selectable Difficulty Scaling"

[Isaaru]

Tell your friends to get some meds. Honestly though, they should go see a doctor if theyre getting anxious over a video game to the point where it affects their health.

[Jynx]

I have friends who have difficulties handling stress and anxiety, and they also want to be able to participate in the Lv50 content in Final Fantasy XIV. As it exists now, Dzemael Darkhold and the Hyper Ifrit Fight are too stress-inducing for these people, and their personal health can suffer as a result.

Riddle me this, if your contending some sort of "Training" mode should exist for players who get....Stressed? you said.

If someone is playing a video game and mere death causes them "Stress" I think there are other issues that should be looked at before asking the game to conform to their every whim. Not trying to be rude or anything but people need to take their mental health needs into consideration before undertaking a potentialy stressfull task to them.

Thankfully for these people the game has it's own built in training system...death.

There is 0 repurcussion for failing a darkhold run aside from some durabillity loss, take doing the dungeon and being killed...training. You can't expect the game to toss on some fleece mittens to let you feel out every nook and cranny of a dungeon prior to actually playing it.

Hell if you don't want to learn the dungeon hundreds of people have it the dungeon and all it's quirks document on the internet, in turn creating a training manual of sorts that just takes some practice to learn.

Asking for a "Easy mode" for everything is just a massive redundancy when learning the game can come through existing mechanics inside the game.

If someone finds the death of their pixelated character "Stressfull" I suggest they avoid video games, or at least the ones that include death (And often a more serious pentalty than just armour repair)

[SilvertearRen]

Tell your friends to get some meds. Honestly though, they should go see a doctor if theyre getting anxious over a video game to the point where it affects their health.

Comments like these are not welcome in this thread. I specifically asked for you people to be more considerate, and you're failing quite horribly at that.

I'd try to justify everything, but the point of this is to give people flexibility and choice. This isn't about just my friends' health, but a fundamental aspect of the game that needs to be addressed.

I don't like it when games force a tough battle on me without the option to adjust the difficulty - I don't always have time to spend one whole hour on a single boss.

[Alerith]

I don't like it when games force a tough battle on me without the option to adjust the difficulty - I don't always have time to spend one whole hour on a single boss.

Then don't do that content. Nothing is being "forced" upon you. And if I'm not mistaken, there is no boss battle in the entire game that is one hour long.

I don't mind the idea of a difficulty setting for various reasons:

Easy - Strictly for mission completion. Less enemies, lower level, etc. No drops.
Medium - Basic level and combat style. Normal levels, average drops.
Hard - Intense combat, should require advanced jobs, higher level enemies, higher chance at drops.

That would be fine. But do not parade the idea around because you feel your being "forced" into doing hard content.

[kensredemption]

Hmm...it's kinda hard to make a compromise for something like this. I suppose it's fair though. If you want better loot: You're going to have to work for it. :/

[Belial]

Firstly, you state that you don't have "an hour" to do certain content. Well, nothing currently available really takes an hour to accomplish. Ifrit is easily done within 15 minutes (and only has a 30 minute timer, at that.) Darkhold is also easily beaten within 30 minutes, so again, not an hour. That wraps up your end-game. So that point is kinda moot to your argument.

Second, "casual" players, or "easily stressed" players have been given a WHOLE video game of content that is easy to accomplish and stress-free. Story missions, class misions, crafting, gathering, materia/spiritbonding, several lower-tiered dungeons, camps, behest, leves, escort missions, Strongholds, a higher-tiered dungoen (Darkhold is not difficult to accomplish, all that is required is a little knowledge on the instance, and several practice attempts.)

So with all this available in-game for the type of people you are looking out for, please leave the one challenging battle currently available alone. For the record, I'm not opposed to opening up the option to "re-do" to 4-man Ifrit fight. However, leave the current and all future Hyper modes alone. They were implemented for players who want a challenge and to feel rewarded as such.

[Teakwood]

I do like the idea of scalable difficulty, quite a bit. (For what it's worth, in Toto-rak you can already decide which path you're interested in taking and how difficult the instance will be as a result, and it works fairly well, so I think the devs are already thinking along these lines.) At the very least, it's nice for when you're unsure about the strategy on something and want to test it out and gradually work up to the highest difficulty level with a group.

In general my suggestion to your friends, in perfect seriousness and kindness, is that XIV probably isn't the game for them - different forms of entertainment will appeal and be tolerable to different people, and an MMO like XIV probably just isn't a good fit. Please refer them to the 'A Word To Our Players' message that pops up at the opening screen to FFXIV. However, I feel the basic idea has merit regardless.

[Tanoshii]

if people doing it on easy mode can never get what drops form the hard mode version I am completely fine with this method for everything.

I honestly think players have been spoiled by scalable content in WoW and the clones, it does not exist anywhere outside mmos for the most part with a few exceptions here and there. But to make everyone happy, as long as the drops are segregated where easy mode can never get good endgame gear I am all for it.

Have you ever played a console game, ever? Most console games have multiple difficulty settings, hell most PC games have multiple difficulty settings.

[Belial]

Have you ever played a console game, ever? Most console games have multiple difficulty settings, hell most PC games have multiple difficulty settings.

The obvious answer to this is: Not the good ones.

Edit: Before you get in a huff, this was a joke.

[ZDamned]

I just have to ask, did your friends level up to 50 in a group of 8 fighting enemies 5 levels below themselves the while time? My hp bar constantly goes to yellow no matter what I do in this game, and if I had their stress management issues, I would never play anything where death can happen.