A plea to SE : make it difficult !

[Anty]

Exactly why I say they should have built off of FFXI as a foundation (yes yes I know people will kill their first borns just because I mentioned FFXI):

"Light" content, e.g Assaults (this alone could have been in place of Guildleves or Guildleves built around this, it has much more variance than eventually being a kill quest.)
"Light" content like Limbus except for bosses (which were challenges back when they were introduced, i.e Proto Omega/Ultima)
"Light" content like Missions with hard fights sprinkled in, CoP was almost perfect in this regard.
"Light/Hard" content like Campaign which varied depending on if you're doing OPs (Shadow Lord fight for example) or the plain battles.
"Hard" content like Dynamis, Sea Gods, Sky Gods, Shinryu (unless you brew it), Abyssea Zone bosses, Neo Omega etc.
"Hard" content like Salvage which was more strategizing than difficulty at times.

So on, XI had the perfect set up in terms of content, while people hated having to work with others (....) It scaled beautifully in terms of what was and wasn't a challenge. For example if SE were to introduce a new Bahamut fight in FFXI, it'll be a challenge, if they were to introduce a Bahamut fight in XIV, it'll be a push over because they have to please the casual playerbase as well as the "hardcore" playerbase so the overall difficulty would be set very low in order to fit all playstyles. Like Ifrit is a decent challenge, but realistically latency problems from poor servers optimization gave it the slight challenge it does have.

i agree 100%, nice post, and the best was the part with the first born

[syntaxlies]

11 had like ten years to implement all of that, give it some time they are still developing the game,lol

Exactly why I say they should have built off of FFXI as a foundation (yes yes I know people will kill their first borns just because I mentioned FFXI):

"Light" content, e.g Assaults (this alone could have been in place of Guildleves or Guildleves built around this, it has much more variance than eventually being a kill quest.)
"Light" content like Limbus except for bosses (which were challenges back when they were introduced, i.e Proto Omega/Ultima)
"Light" content like Missions with hard fights sprinkled in, CoP was almost perfect in this regard.
"Light/Hard" content like Campaign which varied depending on if you're doing OPs (Shadow Lord fight for example) or the plain battles.
"Hard" content like Dynamis, Sea Gods, Sky Gods, Shinryu (unless you brew it), Abyssea Zone bosses, Neo Omega etc.
"Hard" content like Salvage which was more strategizing than difficulty at times.

So on, XI had the perfect set up in terms of content, while people hated having to work with others (....) It scaled beautifully in terms of what was and wasn't a challenge. For example if SE were to introduce a new Bahamut fight in FFXI, it'll be a challenge, if they were to introduce a Bahamut fight in XIV, it'll be a push over because they have to please the casual playerbase as well as the "hardcore" playerbase so the overall difficulty would be set very low in order to fit all playstyles. Like Ifrit is a decent challenge, but realistically latency problems from poor servers optimization gave it the slight challenge it does have.

[AmyRae]

No. I came up with an answer after talking with a lot of friends from many MMOs. When we talk about the good souvenirs we have, the best ones are always when it was hard! When we struggled for days or weeks to defeat that boss, when we wiped so many times in that dungeon just to succeed in the end. The sense of accomplishment that only something difficult can bring. This forges the souvenir you will have about a game, this makes your players stay in your game, and this creates the legend of it.

But, what if you only had one year to get that stuff? And you had multiple classes to equip?

Wouldn't you rather have a decent chance of getting everything you wanted before it was too late?

[KumaAkuma]

Everything that was hard has been shaved off with a cheese grater this year.

[Ruisu]

I haven't even fought Ifrit yet, but from flowcharts that I've seen, he looks far more difficult than any average raid boss from any other MMO that I've played. Yoshida even stated that the developer of Ifrit wants to make Good Moogle King's fight even harder than that. You're talking about Timesinks, my friend, and that is exactly what we don't need in this game.

[Murugan]

I haven't even fought Ifrit yet, but from flowcharts that I've seen, he looks far more difficult than any average raid boss from any other MMO that I've played. Yoshida even stated that the developer of Ifrit wants to make Good Moogle King's fight even harder than that. You're talking about Timesinks, my friend, and that is exactly what we don't need in this game.

Ifrit is not so much a difficult fight, it is just obtrusive and that is compounded by factors like server lag. It doesn't require people to excel in their roles or as a group. It just requires them to do X when Y occurs.

The stronghold bosses are more difficult fights (not difficult, just more difficult than Ifrit). You can take a complete noob tank/healer/DD to Ifrit and do fine as long as they are able to avoid specials. That same group can wipe multiple times to a fight like Flamefist Ahlygg Roh without hope of winning.

I understand why Matsui designed Ifrit like he did (he is unhappy with the current battle system and doesn't believe it can facilitate difficult encounters) so he made a fight that is about gimmicks and not player skill.

I share the OP's concerns about their design philosophy going forward and whether we will see fights that push players', groups, and linkshells' skills like we had in XI. However, until we get the battle system and mechanics they want in place I don't think we have any evidence of their intention one way or another other than vague comments which are either reassuring or worrisome depending on how you read them.

[KumaAkuma]

Everything that was hard has been shaved off with a cheese grater this year.

I haven't even fought Ifrit yet, but from flowcharts that I've seen, he looks far more difficult than any average raid boss from any other MMO that I've played. Yoshida even stated that the developer of Ifrit wants to make Good Moogle King's fight even harder than that. You're talking about Timesinks, my friend, and that is exactly what we don't need in this game.

Ifrit isn't difficult at all. Most of the annoyances he does provide are caused by bad server(programming).

And I wasn't talking about timesinks.

[Nero]

Funny how i see people in this Thread which want more difficulty and were the same people which screamed for Easy Mode 10 Month ago. Make up your mind finally.

[lamerider]

hmm i suck at playing games , but making the game harder generates more newbie/skill-less hater , and kills PUG.
so i think i say no, i mean i don't care how i get treated in anyway ,
but..just worrying about total population decreasing..

[Andrien]

what you guys probably want is time consuming stuff. I'll pass on that, but welcome it if it arrives.

You want an Absolute Virtue, or a Pandemonium Warden like bosses?

At one point PW was so difficult in FFXI, players kept at it for 11 hours nonestop only to scratch off 10% of its HP. It made first page on Yahoo.com