please stop make the game easier.

[RokkuEkkusu]

I don't think OP want the game to be too hard but they don't want it to be brain dead easy either.


Most players are under preforming and I don't think that has anything to do with how easy or difficult the content of the game is. People simply do not understand how to play their jobs. This game has a somewhat complicated battle system compared to other games. Though the dev team tried to simplify the rotations, seems it is not working.

If you stand still and do mechanics, you'll realize that mechanics are not hard. But when you try to keep track of your rotation and other things around you it becomes a challenge. You make mistakes, you under preform and you die.

People tend to underperform because they don't care. At the end of the day, all they care about is clearing the content. They'll do harder content when they're ready. Casuals do tend to pay the bills and all.

[Vstarstruck]

I don't think OP want the game to be too hard but they don't want it to be brain dead easy either.


Most players are under preforming and I don't think that has anything to do with how easy or difficult the content of the game is. People simply do not understand how to play their jobs. This game has a somewhat complicated battle system compared to other games. Though the dev team tried to simplify the rotations, seems it is not working.

It isn't working, you are right. I am thinking rng needs to be dropped out of all rotations completely, as people don't seem to know how to adjust to the changing situations based off it. Also MCH is a problem because all your DPS comes from wildfire windows.

So even with all the changes brd and MCH got, a lot of people still can't handle the classes and do respectable damage with them. BLM needs more ways to fight server tics harming DPS as well

[Vidu]

On one hand maybe..

on the other hand as wide as the audience may be it does a real bad job at keeping them interested... and I think the lack of difficulty is likely a part of that.

there's no satisfaction or accomplishment in clearing content that's virtually impossible to fail...
and if the game isn't rewarding players are going drop it very very quickly..

Yes, but its not as if that would be the case with the game - the game still has difficult content.
Its just that thats current content and that your shinies are becoming less shiny over the years and getting replaced by new shinies.

Shinryu EX is just as failable as Nidhogg EX and Leviathan EX were (comparisson drawn because all are dragon-like, not because of difficulty - just for the visual).
Heck, I'm even seeing people fail Byakko EX, a rather easy primal! Just how we saw people fail Shiva and Bismarck EX.

The difficulty is still in the game - its just in the new content and you dont contain absolute bragging rights for clearing 4 year old content - what seems to be what the OP is missing. Not actualy difficult content, since they appear to not even set foot into it.

If you want the feeling of accomplishment for clearing a difficult fight, you can still have that - either by running old content syched at minimum ilvl (if you only care for the challenge) or by doing the new, difficult content (if you care for the challenge and the bragging rights). Its not as if Kefka Savage just tips over once you poke him.

[LineageRazor]

on the other hand as wide as the audience may be it does a real bad job at keeping them interested... and I think the lack of difficulty is likely a part of that.

Lack of difficulty for whom? Keep whom interested?

Seeing folks complain about the ease of endgame content that can, and does, stymie 90% of the playerbase, is as common as breathing on these forums. Choose any Ex or Savage fight - ANY, old or new - and I guarantee there were plenty of folks to consider it difficult, often insurmountably so, at the time it was released. I remember folks in a thread being incredulous to hear that there were STILL folks who could not skip Soar on Zurvan toward the end of Heavensward - but it was even worse that that; not just some folks, but MOST folks couldn't do so, even in farm parties. Skilled endgame players have VERY poor conception of the actual skill levels of the majority of players in this game, and tend to assume that most are at least near their level. This is absolutely not the case.

For SE, the sweet spot for endgame content is when the most players possible find the content to be difficult, but not impossible. That level of difficulty is, naturally, going to be incredibly low for players at the top of the curve; folks who can devote three or more nights of practice to the game per week, never have any trouble capping tomestones each week, spend time researching stat weights and optimal DPS rotations and can execute them with near-spot-on regularity, and so on and so forth. Folks that meet those criteria are an extremely small proportion of the game's population, so it's not a big surprise that SE isn't going to tune a lot of content to favor them.

[Kamatsu]

Skilled endgame players have VERY poor conception of the actual skill levels of the majority of players in this game, and tend to assume that most are at least near their level. This is absolutely not the case.

They have what I call 'Associative Bias" - Most people will tend to associate with people of similar values, past-times, hobbies, etc. What this means in games such as this is that those who are higher personal skill level will tend to associate more/only with those of similar skill level - this means their view on the 'player base' skill level is warped, since the majority of players they see / deal with are of similar level to them.

While FFXIV has random grouping via the Duty Roulette, how many of these players use it just by themselves? I'd bet most of the time these players are in groups of 2/3/4 when queuing for dungeons/trials/raids via DR, so their contact with other players is either limited or none. How many of these players enter end-game raids & such solo? Doubt many do, they most likely have a groups/FC/Static/etc to do it with... and these will all be players of equivalent skill level to them.

Thus their contact and knowledge of other players skill level is limited, and what they view the common player as... is based on the skill level of those they associate with - ie associative bias.

This IMO is the main cause for people saying "oh, it's easy for everyone"... because that's all they see. Players of equivalent skill would naturally make the content easy, and even if there is 1-2 'normal' players in a duty... 2-3 highly skilled players will easily manage the fights regardless of the 'lesser skilled' players mistakes/handicaps/etc. So to them they still see the content as easy, and believe that all players find it easy... because they don't realize that with 2-3 skilled ppl in a group can easily carry 1-2 bad players and still make everything look/seem easy.

[Dzian]

This IMO is the main cause for people saying "oh, it's easy for everyone"... because that's all they see. Players of equivalent skill would naturally make the content easy, and even if there is 1-2 'normal' players in a duty... 2-3 highly skilled players will easily manage the fights regardless of the 'lesser skilled' players mistakes/handicaps/etc. So to them they still see the content as easy, and believe that all players find it easy... because they don't realize that with 2-3 skilled ppl in a group can easily carry 1-2 bad players and still make everything look/seem easy.

While I don't deny there's certainly some truth to that. I do think it's only one side of the coin.

When you read a lot of the posts people make about the game being easy. they don't mean its easy for them. they genuinely do mean it's easy for everyone. and in many cases they go on to validate there arguments by giving examples of content that is literally so easy it would take more effort to actually fail it than it would to succeed.

one of the biggest and more recent examples of this is kugane castle. even at like i280 ish with your 290 job gear and whatever right side junk you got. you simply cannot fail at yojimbo.. it is virtually impossible from a mechanical point of view. your entire party can afk and let daigorro pick up all the coins. you still will not die....

another example is the drowned city of scaella. I'll be totally honest here that second boss. I don't know any of the mechs for. I just stand there on my blm and nuke the hell out of it. stood in a puddle, got some tether? none of it matters even if I end up with 7-8 stacks of whatever that debuff is I will not die...

these level 70 dungeons are actually less dangerous than things like brayflox longstops / haukke manor around level 30.. and that's incredibly backwards in design choice.

even raids are going the same way. first time my friends and I did o5 for example we must have been whisked off to the passanger cars so many times often leaving no healers on the freight car or something and still no one was ever in any real danger..

we cleared o6 2 or 3 times before half of us even noticed the duty action button was a thing......

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Seeing folks complain about the ease of endgame content that can, and does, stymie 90% of the playerbase, is as common as breathing on these forums. Choose any Ex or Savage fight - ANY, old or new - and I guarantee there were plenty of folks to consider it difficult, often insurmountably so, at the time it was released. I remember folks in a thread being incredulous to hear that there were STILL folks who could not skip Soar on Zurvan toward the end of Heavensward - but it was even worse that that; not just some folks, but MOST folks couldn't do so, even in farm parties. Skilled endgame players have VERY poor conception of the actual skill levels of the majority of players in this game, and tend to assume that most are at least near their level. This is absolutely not the case.

This stems from the fact XIV has little to no difficulty curve. Expert dungeons, trials and normal mode raids are all incredibly easy with very few exceptions. The next logical progression is Extreme, which is considerably harder than anything which came before it. Skip Soar persisted because people have no idea how to execute a proper opener. Is that an issue with Zurvan's difficulty or perhaps XIV doing precisely little to explain how jobs function? Newer players shouldn't be expected to use third party resources, however you have little choice should you want to learn anything beyond a standard combo. Scaling down the difficulty does nothing to incentivize improvement. In fact, it does the opposite. Stormblood made numerous shifts towards being easier yet... nothing changed. People have no reason to improve, or believe themselves better than they actually are. Countless times where people get agitated about damage in chat, they're the ones failing.

No. Skilled players are plenty aware of how poor the overall playerbase is. They simply don't make excuses for them. Many of those same players are more than willing to offer advice; they are usually the ones making guides. Being skilled does not inherently mean you lack objectivity.

Because look at Wildstar, a game made for the raid and content elitists.

Man it sure is doing good.

Oh wait, it went free to play because no one will play it.

A common misconception; one I used to assume based on bad word of mouth. Wild Star failed due to poor combat design, lackluster secondary content and an aesthetic which didn't appeal to its demographic. The raid focus certainly contributed, but it was merely one reason among many.

[Tridus]

Lack of difficulty for whom? Keep whom interested?

Seeing folks complain about the ease of endgame content that can, and does, stymie 90% of the playerbase, is as common as breathing on these forums. Choose any Ex or Savage fight - ANY, old or new - and I guarantee there were plenty of folks to consider it difficult, often insurmountably so, at the time it was released. I remember folks in a thread being incredulous to hear that there were STILL folks who could not skip Soar on Zurvan toward the end of Heavensward - but it was even worse that that; not just some folks, but MOST folks couldn't do so, even in farm parties. Skilled endgame players have VERY poor conception of the actual skill levels of the majority of players in this game, and tend to assume that most are at least near their level. This is absolutely not the case.

^ This. Players are terrible at judging the skill level of the playerbase. We don't have the data necessary to do it well (because we don't have attempt vs clear rates across the entire playerbase), but we try and do it anyway and the result tends to be not pretty. You see the same thing in the other direction with high end players that insist they're average. No, no you're not. Not even close. It's a skewed definition of "average" that uses the forums and the savage data on FFLogs, ignoring that most of the playerbase doesn't exist in either of those things.

The other difference is that we want content that's fun and challenging for us. That's going to vary from person to person, but we're very good judges of what is fun and challenging for us individually. SE has to cater to as many people as realistic to make money. It's a very different thing than a savage raider saying "stuff is too easy."

[Narcotics]

^ This. Players are terrible at judging the skill level of the playerbase. We don't have the data necessary to do it well (because we don't have attempt vs clear rates across the entire playerbase), but we try and do it anyway and the result tends to be not pretty. You see the same thing in the other direction with high end players that insist they're average. No, no you're not. Not even close. It's a skewed definition of "average" that uses the forums and...

The definition of "too easy" is when you would literally have to not try in order to fail. When you can ignore mechanics and clear, the content is a joke. As a casual player of this game, I still want to play well...a game. It's not much of a game when it's been designed to baby you through content. Like what's the point? Really? What are we playing for in the end if we're just having everything given to us unless we're doing savage content which makes up for about .1% of the game?

[MilanFrozen]

It's almost as if they're a company that wants to make money from as many people as possible so are reaching out to a wider audience...

I think the problem with this is that most people don't realize that eventually everyone will increase in skill. Even the worst players will get better and eventually the game has to reach a point of critical mass where it becomes so easy that the only way to go is back up in difficulty, but they won't be able to do that. You might think or even say 'sure they can', but they won't because the upward trend of making the game easier gives the incorrect assumption that making the game EVEN EASIER will bring back players that they've lost and only further put them in the hole. Wanting to get out of the hole by making the game even easier, and so on, is just going to keep digging it deeper.


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.