please stop make the game easier.

[bass9020]

I like to think for the most part rather than tending to the player base already here for a while (not myself), they try to let newer players squeeze into these raiding scenes and all this jazz easier.

My last game required 30 people to attend a raid once per week, 1 person out of the 30 could easily kill the entire raid by failing, 5 tanks tank swapping, 5 healers having to coordinate there cleanse/ensuna for a bomb that does raid wide damage, each party of say 6 having 1 bomb each.

If you were a newbie or at the very least not overly geared from the previous content no 1 would invite you, I'm referring to Vergo if that rings any bells with anybody.

I guess I'm not helping but I have a suggestion, if you want a challenge then try miniIlvl the "easy" things, I had fun with Twintania though I got dumpster'd for a while before my first clear xD

This whole game is literally catered to newbies. The devs foam at the mouths for new players.

[RiyahArp]

It's a bit annoying that someone tells me to listen to actual arguments while not even understanding mine.

1. Its hard to make yojimbo's coins harder because of the mechanic of picking things up.
2. I think they made duty action to remedy this, because you dont need to click on things, just hit the action over the object.
3. Yes, rab has the mechanic too, but even easier; there is nothing to interrupt it.
4. People already do the mechanic perfectly, not missing any coins in most of the instances I've seen; if they miss it, its one or two.

you seem to be "omg! he forgot rab has it too!" without even reading anything else.

[Dualgunner]

It's a bit annoying that someone tells me to listen to actual arguments while not even understanding mine.

It's easy to say that, but the evidence shows you're the one ignoring/misunderstanding arguments.

1. Its hard to make yojimbo's coins harder because of the mechanic of picking things up.

No, it isn't. The mechanic of picking things up is easy in and of itself, and moreover, it can definitely be harder than "everybody went afk for this mechanic and we're fine."

2. I think they made duty action to remedy this, because you dont need to click on things, just hit the action over the object.

And yet we still have current content using clicking in Rabanastre, which came after 6s.
EDIT: Here's a hint for my point here: if they are using duty action to completely phase out clicking, they're doing a bad job of it because Rabanastre still uses clicking.

3. Yes, rab has the mechanic too, but even easier; there is nothing to interrupt it.

You can step on landmines and get interrupted.

4. People already do the mechanic perfectly, not missing any coins in most of the instances I've seen; if they miss it, its one or two.

But wait Riyah, I thought the clicking mechanic was too hard. It can't be so easy everybody does it perfectly, and yet so hard they can't make it punishing for not doing it.

you seem to be "omg! he forgot rab has it too!" without even reading anything else.

Your arguments are contradictory at worst and argumentative for argument's sake at best. You're missing the point on purpose: Yojimbo's mechanic isn't punishing enough if you were to just blatantly ignore it. It creates a precedent of carelessness.

[MilanFrozen]

So since you grossly misrepresented my argument I'll start off by trimming pieces of your argument that hold no value.

I always find myself sadly amused by people like you, who seem to think your enjoyment is the "correct" way and that other's just haven't found it.

Ad hominen - Who I am doesn't matter at all. All this does is make you look stuck up.

Also I don't recall stating anywhere in my argument that people aren't free to enjoy things how they want to.

As much as people want to believe that 'games are made to have fun', there is a such thing as 'too easy' even for the most casual player. Most often they don't even realize it. Because they're casual. They don't have any concept of gleaning enjoyment from challenge. Most people don't and that's why they ask for nerfs in the first place.

This states that "There is a such thing as 'too easy' even for most casual players". I also stated that most casual players do not even realize it. At what point does the horse become aware the carrot is attached to a string? Is it upon putting forth more effort than it deems the carrot is worth or upon indulging in it's taste? The answer is both for even a casual can dislike content for being too simple and even a casual is capable of being unaware that it is the carrot itself they are bored of.

Or perhaps you'd like to point out that I said "They don't have any concept of gleaning enjoyment from challenge.". Is this the part you took offense to? Being incapable of enjoying challenge does not beget negative connotation. With that said I could have worded it better. What was meant is that one who does not enjoy a challenge, does not seek it and therefore when it is met, calls for it to be removed.

It is not stated whether I agree or disagree with this viewpoint.

Next...

people have found their fun and do what they enjoy doing, and no matter how much you say "but but challenges and hard stuff is fun!", they will not find challenges and hard content fun. It's not that 'they don't realize it's fun!", it's that they do not find hard/challenging content fun.

Strawman - Where do I state "but but challenges and hard stuff is fun!" or anything close to it? The answer is I don't and you're creating an argument to fight that doesn't exist.

You may be surprised by this, but I actually don't think increasing general difficulty is the key to success and I don't actually enjoy the typical 'make it harder' content. Bullet sponge enemies are the least creative, least enjoyable method for increasing difficulty, but also the most popular. What I do enjoy is unique mechanics, a good story, great atmosphere and paths to individual achievement.

My statements were that games constantly become easier and more streamlined to a detrimental point. I provide circumstantial evidence later. A game with no challenge is not a game (for the point of a game is to provide challenge), but that does not mean it is a piece of a media that cannot be enjoyed. None of what I said was meant to be derogatory but spoken as perception. You took offense(clearly) when you didn't have to.



And although I don't think both of these are directed at me, they feel similar enough to lump together.

Actually, as has been found out in other games - if you make the game harder people don't 'get better', they leave the game and go play something else.

The problem for game dev's is how do you balance this? How do you have a balance of content that can keep the most players happy? Make everything too easy and those who like hard/challenging content will complain. Whereas if you make it too hard the players who like easy content will leave the game for other games that offer easy game play.

Do you have a single fact to back that up? What game has had an increase in difficulty that resulted in a quantifiable player loss?

While I can't argue that games die because they become too easy (in spite of WoW's decline in player base as homogenization set in as well as raid finder being added) most predominantly due to lack of interest in finding correlation, I can certainly argue that adding additional difficulties has had positive impacts. Terraria, as an example, added 'expert' difficulty to it's game and it was received in a positive light. The game still sits at overwhelmingly positive (whether this is a result of the game being good or not doesn't matter because a harder difficulty was added and therefore we know it did not have a negative impact on the game).

[RiyahArp]

Do you have a single fact to back that up? What game has had an increase in difficulty that resulted in a quantifiable player loss?

While I can't argue that games die because they become too easy (in spite of WoW's decline in player base as homogenization set in as well as raid finder being added) most predominantly due to lack of interest in finding correlation, I can certainly argue that adding additional difficulties has had positive impacts. Terraria, as an example, added 'expert' difficulty to it's game and it was received in a positive light. The game still sits at overwhelmingly positive (whether this is a result of the game being good or not doesn't matter because a harder difficulty was added and therefore we know it did not have a negative impact on the game).

For MMOs, there hasn't been one that started easy and went to hard that I know of. The recent ones that generally have been hard from the start, even if they target that niche, really suffer and fail to keep a large playerbase.

Two I can think of are Wildstar and Darkfall. Wildstar had pretty punishing pve raids, and that was one of the biggest factors in losing player interest. Darkfall was full loot pvp, but even then the time sink and relative difficulty of getting to a good level of play doomed it. I think Aion and in the past Lineage shed a lot of playerbase through punishing difficulty too. Terraria isn't really an MMO and its difficulty is optional and tailored to players who might want to use it when they are bored with the rest of the game. Its not a global change from the start.

I agree with Kamatsu in that not everyone will improve to the same level. I mean, if anything this game shows that they can't; or we'd never had stormblood needing to massively simplify everything.

[MilanFrozen]

For MMOs, there hasn't been one that started easy and went to hard that I know of. The recent ones that generally have been hard from the start, even if they target that niche, really suffer and fail to keep a large playerbase.

Two I can think of are Wildstar and Darkfall. Wildstar had pretty punishing pve raids, and that was one of the biggest factors in losing player interest. Darkfall was full loot pvp, but even then the time sink and relative difficulty of getting to a good level of play doomed it. I think Aion and in the past Lineage shed a lot of playerbase through punishing difficulty too. Terraria isn't really an MMO and its difficulty is optional and tailored to players who might want to use it when they are bored with the rest of the game. Its not a global change from the start.

I agree with Kamatsu in that not everyone will improve to the same level. I mean, if anything this game shows that they can't; or we'd never had stormblood needing to massively simplify everything.

Going at this in one go.

Wildstar and Darkfall were hard though from the start and the argument is that a game has it's difficulty increased. Aion and Lineage both also could be argued to have gotten easier (or more new player friendly depending on your point of view). I'd also argue with you till the cows come home that Wildstar is not unpopular solely due to difficulty, but that's because I personally view the game as having multiple major gameplay flaws, lukewarm story and a poorly conceived endgame. I've played the damned game enough to know that it's about as typical as an MMO gets barring the slippery slidey movement.

Coincidentally did you know Terraria supports up to 256 players per server? You won't be able to get that many on a run of the mill home pc for sure, but you can on a powerful machine. Say the same type of server they'd use for Final Fantasy? It's certainly no typical MMO type, but it has the required number to be considered alongside it (if we're getting pedantic about things). Also fine I relent that expert is optional. Though then I point to hard-mode through defeating the wall of flesh. The game play arguably shifts to a higher gear at that point.

In terms of games becoming more difficult rather than easier I was more so arguing in general. I'm ok if you want to point to any game not in the same genre that does it. I'd certainly like to know about it and the effects it had on it's player base. And no I don't mean something like nerfing an aspect of the game that makes it harder. That would fall more so under just modifying a game and how a player may disagree with the changes and is a whole other can of worms.

I don't remember saying that all players eventually reach the same skill (a skill cap). Not everyone is going to reach the same skill level, but everyone will be more skilled after starting than when they started and will continue to progress in skill. Even if the progress seems minor or insignificant.

Lastly, I want to point out that I'm not defending the OP's opinion in it's entirety, just some of it. I, for example, abhor the removal of skills, but I'm totally for being able to do old dungeons/trials at max level. I'm ok with them becoming obsolete and 'removable' from your bars to make things easier on players, but I believe that it's a horrendous waste to simply remove an ability because fitting all the skills on the bar is too hard for some. It really raises the question of 'which skills are on the chopping block for the next expansion?' and a skill effect/animation can be quite enjoyed and missed. I'd sooner the skills simply be there, but be pointless than to see them vanish. But this isn't quite so much about difficulty per say even that I argue. More so that I am saying that if the difficulty being lowered is the cause of the skills being chopped, I am against it. How long until my favorite ability is tossed because 'it was too hard to use'?

[RiyahArp]

Well, Wildstar i think declined mostly through endgame. I mean people will forgive a lot in general for a game, but my understanding of it was the endgame grind was so punishing it killed off players quite a bit.

Games that start easy and go hard in other genres? Hmm. Probably would go with both fighting games and real time strategy ones as genres. There's a big gap between SF2 and Tekken or Virtua Fighter in terms of mechanics, and recently the most popular games tend to be easier anime fighters like naruto or DBZ games. RTS games wound up being really hard due to player skill selection that they are a bit of a dead genre outside of starcraft. Both tend to attract the hardcore now, and struggle to keep casuals, especially in online play.

I think the point about skill raising is that usually people think that everyone can improve to the level they are. Like savage players really do assume everyone can do it. The argument that the game needs to be harder assumes everyone will rise to the challenge and succeed, and I think people downplay that not everyone can, or will want to, or will find doing so fun.

Well...the skills being chopped mostly were dead weight. You don't need to have two dots on a mob per class unless the class is made around dots, but every job had that in HW. It wound up being a mechanic that people failed more than one they found fun. Some stuff made little sense; why need multiple buffs taking up slots when all they do is increase percentage of damage? Just combine them, or fold the damage into the ability.

[Zeonx]

snip

The reason they don't make anything strong is because players like you begged for something like SOA in FFXI and SE came out and said it wasn't made for casuals, it was strictly for the elite players.

Right after all the hardcore and elite players bounced to FFXIV because it was too hard getting ripped apart by a single monster isn't fun while a few hardcore people stayed on FFXI the ones who wanted the tough content was complaining and had it nerfed.

I can honestly say I don't blame SE for not going extreme even look at binding coil ultimate barely anyone does it.

This is why they nerf they make content you guys want but you never play it and you might and a selected few but that doesn't mean anything the many out match the few.

[KisaiTenshi]

I think the point about skill raising is that usually people think that everyone can improve to the level they are. Like savage players really do assume everyone can do it. The argument that the game needs to be harder assumes everyone will rise to the challenge and succeed, and I think people downplay that not everyone can, or will want to, or will find doing so fun.

In most MMO's, every patch cycle obsoletes the previous skill set. FFXIV basically acknowledged this is what normally happens and instead "stacked" the skills that are basically the same, and scales them by level/level-sync. But other MMO's also tend to lock you to one class/job, so if you pick healer in another game, you are basically picking the hard/hardest class to level because you do so much less damage and have much less of DPS toolkit, if any. Where as if you pick a DPS class in other MMO's, you usually end up with no self-healing toolkit at all and have to rely on expensive pots. So if you are really good at getting money in the game, it's easy. If you're not, then it's a grind either way.

Like for all the flack FFXIV gets for being easy, it doesn't let you faceroll all the content by acquiring the best gear and no skill, which is what many other MMO's do. "Here's new gear, it makes (easy content) so easy that you 1-hit-ko everything, including the boss."

If they tightened up the ilevel sync to the original release values, it would be more fun when replayed, but it would make gear pointless.

[Kamatsu]

Do you have a single fact to back that up? What game has had an increase in difficulty that resulted in a quantifiable player loss?

While I can't argue that games die because they become too easy (in spite of WoW's decline in player base as homogenization set in as well as raid finder being added) most predominantly due to lack of interest in finding correlation, I can certainly argue that adding additional difficulties has had positive impacts. Terraria, as an example, added 'expert' difficulty to it's game and it was received in a positive light. The game still sits at overwhelmingly positive (whether this is a result of the game being good or not doesn't matter because a harder difficulty was added and therefore we know it did not have a negative impact on the game).

Due to time constraints, I'm just going to address the above. Sorry I don't have time to address anything else.

Guild Wars 2. The base game was dead easy. While it did have mechanics that pushed for things like dodging, CC'ing mob's, etc... you didn't have to. You could get through the story missions, every zone apart from the last 3, every 'quest' just with auto-attack (skill #1) and a healing skill. It didn't require a lot of skill, and the last 3 zones which started out stupidly hard got nerfed hard due to massive complaints about how hard they were. Note - the vanila game was EXTREMELY solo friendly, you did NOT need other players for anything at all... so it was up to you whether you grouped up or not.

Then came along the expansion - Heart of Thorns. There had been a vocal minority on the official forums crying for all aspects of the game to be made harder, for more mechanics to be implemented, for mobs to have smarter AI and work together, etc (hmmm, this sounds eerily familiar...). ANet listened to these people and HoT was harder than the base game, it was no longer solo friendly, it was much more group orientated. The mobs were more densely packed and had lots of CC skills they used on players - so to navigate maps required a lot more active thinking, proper use of skills... or be part of a zerg of players. Not only that, they locked many hero points (points used to unlock class skills) behind group-only champion fights (ie imagine having to fight the super-tough boss fate mobs just to get relevant job skills in FFXIV). To progress through the story you had to complete certain repeating 'fates' on the map to level up a map/zone specific 'skill'... in the base game it was easy to solo these, in HoT they were extremely hard to solo... and generally only got done with groups of players.

Result? within the 1st 2 weeks after the launch of the expansion the official forums were filled with thread after thread, post after post, from many, many different people complaining about how hard the expansion was compared to the base game. How it was unfair that people who were used to casual solo gameplay were being asked to 'git gud' and play with groups or never progress. 2-3 weeks after the expansion launched the forums started filling up with "Where is everyone?" threads as people started complaining they couldn't complete events due to no one around, that maps were never filling with people, that they couldn't find ppl to help them with the group-only-champion fights either via map chat or party-finder.

And after NCSoft earnings report came out... it showed a massive 67% drop in earnings for Guild Wars 2 after the launch of the expansion. While you will always expect a drop in revenue after an expansion, but never a drop of that much. It was so bad that ANet made a public statement apologizing for making the expansion so hard, as well as nerfing the mobs on the maps so it was easier to navigate maps solo, the 'fates' were made to be able to be done solo instead of group-mostly, the group-only-champion fights were changed into veteran mobs that could be solo'ed, etc.

There's a game that came out with easy gameplay, easy playstyle (much easier than FFXIV btw), listened to those who clamored for harder content, more mechanics, etc... and found out the hard way that the majority of their player base was not at all interested in harder content, or harder mechanics. So when I see in the few MMO's I play the exact same calls on the official forums to make the game harder, more challenging, more difficult, more group-focused, more mechanics heavy, etc... I get peeved off as I've seen what it does to these games and don't want to see that happen here.

And BTW, Terriaria is an 'apples and oranges' comparison as it's a completely different genre of game, different style of gameplay and appeals to different gamers/mindset than an MMO. So the fact that ppl who play that game liked/applauded harder gameplay has no relevance to this game.

It would be like saying that because I seem to be advocating against harder overall content in FFXIV that I dislike hard/difficult games. The hundreds of hours I've played in Dark Souls 1, 2, 3, NioH, X-Com 1 & 2 on Classic/Impossible/Legendary Ironman, etc beg to disagree.

And btw, I'm not against difficulty as per such. I'm not against making mechanics in the game need to be paid attention more. I am against calls to make all content harder, to make story stuff more like the non-required (hard) dungeons, etc. I am against keeping old out-dated content "hard" just for the sake of some ppl's ego. Do I think there's a place for hard content in a game like FFXIV? Absolutely, just as there's a place for dead-easy content. Keep the story stuff easy, let the non-essential stuff be harder, and revamp older non-essintal dungeons to introduce more mechanics and such... and have MSQ solo-fights actually have toned-down mechanics from the later/upcoming dungeons/trials/raids so ppl have actually dome it prior to these fights.