[Personal Opinion] FFXIV is too casual friendly

[Lambdafish]

Personally when I want fear and adrenaline rush I play survival horror games. Play Silent Hill 1 and you will piss in your pants, guaranty. Definitively THE scariest game.

I wasn't equating fear and adrenaline rush in theme parks to fear and adrenaline rush in MMOs. What I am discrediting is the idea that theme parks do not have challenge to them. The challenge in theme parks is this fear and adrenaline rush.

[Seoulstar]

I personally wouldn't mind the game being a little more challenging. It gets tiring after a while when things can be done with little to no effort. Am I saying make the game extremely hard? Heavens no, but having everything practically easy mode isn't exactly fun either. I remember hearing how a lot healers wouldn't do certain fights because they were "too hard". I found them fun, I found them engaging, I found myself not falling asleep mid fight.

[NatSilverguard]

Any good theme park has more than just stuff like this :^)

i wholeheratedly agree, thats why i said, "most" and didn't say, "all", but my point still stands that themepark mmos are designed to accomodate casual players more than the hardcores.

[Zojha]

I remember hearing how a lot healers wouldn't do certain fights because they were "too hard". I found them fun, I found them engaging, I found myself not falling asleep mid fight.

And that's why most games these days offer multiple difficulties. I've said it before - the same difficulty can be perceived very different by people of different endowment.

The curious thing in MMORPG now is that people demand better rewards for getting more fun, being engaged and not falling asleep mid-fight as if those three weren't something positive and "rewards" in their own right.

[Caitlyn]

Back then, FFXIV 2.X was really challenging, especially its endcontent. It was rewarding, fun and makes you play as a group.

A few years later, 3.X came and it gets easier and easier. Doing old content unsync is nice to have, but almost kills the entire experience (especially for coil and primals). Even worse, new players are getting dumber and dumber (sorry). I ve seen so many new players without knowing the basics of the game (dodging aoes, classes, skills, no job-crystal, damaged gear, no communication at all, wrong melded materias, missing job-quests, s.o.). The main reason is: the game became to easy. Sure, it takes over 45 mins for one dungeon, but you can do it with no effort in anything. Just sit back, grab your smartphone and let other people do your job - thats how FFXIV 3.X is today!

Only a few players will know how hard Titan Hard (not only Extreme) was back then. Some healers had to wear 2 pieces of tank accessoirs to survive the last phase long enough. Now its so easy, you can do it in no time with a random group.

Remember Ampador Keep in 2.X and the infamous Demon Wall? It was pretty tough to beat this boss, especially when both adds appears. But SE came and patched both adds away.

Yes, I miss the good old days. 3.X made many things right, but one thing really bad: Making content (especially old content) to easy. FFXIV is meant to be challenging! I came to FFXIV, because of its great gamepad controls and the harder difficulty.

[S-r-ex]

i wholeheratedly agree, thats why i said, "most" and didn't say, "all", but my point still stands that themepark mmos are designed to accomodate casual players more than the hardcores.

Sure, but what we want is to upgrade the minimum height limit on lv60 dungeons from three feet to four, so to speak. Still casual friendly, just now requiring a semblance of effort instead of staring hard enough at the screen like we do these days.

[Lokier]

I disagree...

[LefeinNoel]

I can scarcely believe I'm going to respond in this thread at all; it's like asking to be set on fire.
That said and out of the way: I agree to a degree. I personally believe the content training (early dungeons and the like)
Should be a little bit more difficult than they are currently. The early dungeons, from when ARR was new Aurum Vale, being a great example
made an excellent training ground that wasn't so difficult as to be impossible to the average or even newer player.

Doing anything beyond that would be too much in my personal opinion.
A better suggestion: again in my opinion would be to institute training content.
A duty queue intended to educate and train players who are in need of getting to a content appropriate skill level.
Simply by: Using old content (T9 would be perfect)
Battle opens, the system instructs a pull: Tank pulls. All movement stops. System gives an explanation.
System explains the next step just after the pull.
Battle ensues. First major mechanic: All movement stops. System explains why the game has stopped. System explains a mechanic is taking place, and what this means for a raid. System strong advises swift reaction to mechanics like this.
(Actual mechanic is explained)
Battle ensues. Second major move based mechanic: System stops. Explanation ensues. Mechanic is explained. Safe zones, how to find them are explained.

This can be role specific; It can also be done with 8 players simultaneously. Each player receiving different instructions. All in real time.
Most of the major raid events from this raid would be explained. Complete with expectations, reaction advice, and solutions to commonly made mistakes.

If we, the community; Want better players, higher skill caps and more human resources in the community pool and we're not willing to teach: This is the only option left to us.
I'll be turning this post into a thread of it's own.

[ckc22]

Given the amount of "farm" ex primal parties I join - no thank you.

Making it more difficult will just mean having a harder time finding someone competent to do stuff further limiting who can clear what - are you in a big raid FC that runs stuff all the time? Congrats you're now the only ones who get to do anything because the rest of us will be saddled with people who are crappy whose crappiness will only be enhanced by increased difficulty.

The issue is that most fights in FFXIV are styled as "wipe or win" meaning that one person not knowing what they're doing/being bad can ruin the fight for 7 other people because few fights are recoverable once a big screwup happens.

I have no interest in wiping a dungeon 4 times with terrible players 5 times and having it take an hour+.

[KrenianKandos]

I disagree...

The worse is when you have the ability to get all three lines, and the last two stickers go completely off the board and you don't even get ONE line.

Happened to me this week's book. I was not impressed because after 7, you can't actually flip your stickers around.

So annoying...