Increasing difficulty in casual content ≠ Savage

[Sinh119]

Speaking strictly personally - casual to me is not a measure of skill. It is a measure of time.

I.e. a casual player may only play a few hours a week. Whether that's savage, ultimate, dungeons, or Eureka it matters not. A casual player can be incredibly skilled, or dead weight.

A hardcore player plays numerous hours a week. They may spend it AFK at their mansion, or sitting in Eureka, leveling jobs, or raiding. A hardcore player can be incredibly skilled, or dead weight.

This is a good definition, but under this definition, what exactly is casual content? Savage does not require more than a few hours a week in a lot of cases, but many would not consider Savage raids casual content. If we are deciding who is and who isn't a casual based upon the relative time spent in-game, casual or hardcore content becomes subjective, influenced by so many outside factors it would be impossible to determine what is and what isn't casual or hardcore content.

[Liam_Harper]

Difficulty is an interesting one. The gap between Normal and Savage/Extreme is immense. For example, you could queue Shinryu unprepared in bad quest gear in a pug, have deaths all over the place and muddle through first try, but wipe all evening in a prepared FC group on Shinryu extreme. As a casual player myself, I admit I'd like more of a middle ground than first try faceroll or high end raider.

Then 24 man raids are what you want

The 24 mans are interesting too. I always felt they mixed those up a bit. Rabanastre for example, trying to read and remember all the mechanics of all 4 bosses is a headache. You have 4 bosses in a row, that's a lot to prepare for first time, lots of things that can hurt the group and you have 24 random players. It's not really that hard, but groups do struggle.

Then something like Sigma Normal. Kefka for example is one single boss with a handful of mechanics that most don't even kill you outright. Easy to read up on, easy 5 minute one-shot. I'm surprised they didn't make 24 man the easier one and add a bit more mechanical complexity to the 8 mans, since they're in single-boss bites.

I don't want to bring up WoW again, because FF isn't WoW, but it's hard not to wish we had something like their flexible raid system. Moderately challenging, flexible group size that you don't queue for and encourages FC's.

[Sinh119]

Defining that...well, it could have a lot of meanings, I suppose. When I posed this question, I was pretty much referring to all dungeons that are currently in the leveling/expert roulettes. Not necessarily referring to players in these instances, just the dungeons themselves.

The reason I ask is because what is or isn't casual content is pretty subjective.

FFXIV is designed kind of like a hotel. There are various floors in the hotel, and each floor is different to one another, however every player will stop at a certain floor. For the sake of argument, I'll assume the first floor is the MSQ, regular Dungeons, Alliance Raids, Hunts, Beast Tribes, things we could all agree are very accessible to most/all players, the second floor is some Extreme Trials, Eureka grinding, High Level POTD, things that most players could complete but that require more effort than floor 1, and the third floor is Savage Raids, Ultimate Fights, some Extreme Trials, things that require above-average player skill. Right now, there are a sizable portion of players that stop at the first floor, and this could be for any number of reasons, but changing the first floor (Dungeons in this case) carries risk. If you were to make Dungeons more difficult, the equivalent would be changing the properties of the first floor to be more similar to the floors above it. Some people might not like the hotel at all any more and leave, others might move up or people on higher floors might move down. Either way the first floor and the people that inhabit it change, but that change is not necessarily positive or negative.

To make a convoluted analogy more succinct, difficulty is relative. Different content will appeal to different people, but when you change content to appeal to different sorts of people, you alienate the people who that content appealed to in the first place. You give a certain section of the playerbase more reason to play, and a certain section of the playerbase less reason to play, to which I ask, what's the purpose of changing the content at all? Sure, you open up more options for people on floor 2, but you are also decreasing options for people on floor 1, and not only that, you are shifting the current design of the game itself.

So this is slightly panicked because my Laptop is at 7% battery, but I guess what I'm getting at is I don't understand why exactly you'd want to increase the difficulty of things like dungeons. Now, if you want harder content that's not as difficult as Savage, that's fine, but asking to increase the difficulty of the current first floor content is a little odd, since it's on the first floor to begin with for a reason. Also sorry if this made no sense, my ADHD causes me to lose focus of my original point sometimes.

[Nora_of_Mira]

after reading most of the posts here, I would add my opinion that "casual" content is anything that can be cleared with minimal learning and minimal attempts required to complete it. An example would be ANY dungeon because you can clear them on Day 1 with 1-2 wipes total and not be bothered with guides. Mechanics are typically very forgiving to mistakes.

I woudn't ever get rid of this in favor of harder content, though. This content needs to exist so players with limited time to play can still progress on something, even if its just collecting tomestones and never touching extremes/savage.

24-mans are kind of harder than dungeons, but for different reasons than how extreme/savage are harder than dungeons. But realistically, you can clear any 24-man with 2-3 wipes and not knowing anything at all.

(experiences will vary but that has been my case since 3.0)

So really, to address OP: adding difficulty will only add time required for most people, and I dont think that's where FFxiv wants to budge. I think they want dungeons to be 15-25 minutes regardless of skill and making them any more difficult will only add time spent by player learning how to navigate the challenges.

I think those of us that want more casually-hard content just have to settle with extremes/savage/whatever PotD2.0 is.

[Dzian]

This is a good definition, but under this definition, what exactly is casual content? Savage does not require more than a few hours a week in a lot of cases, but many would not consider Savage raids casual content. If we are deciding who is and who isn't a casual based upon the relative time spent in-game, casual or hardcore content becomes subjective, influenced by so many outside factors it would be impossible to determine what is and what isn't casual or hardcore content.

The issue really is that many people don't like the word "Easy" so they substitute it with "casual" so it doesnt sound so bad. especially when its gets blended in with a time factor.... you can play 4 hours a week and still be clearing savage. kinda smoke screens the term "easy"...

after reading most of the posts here, I would add my opinion that "casual" content is anything that can be cleared with minimal learning and minimal attempts required to complete it. An example would be ANY dungeon because you can clear them on Day 1 with 1-2 wipes total and not be bothered with guides. Mechanics are typically very forgiving to mistakes.

kinda empahasises the point. if you take the word casual in that quote and swap it with easy it reads exactly the same. just sounds a bit more derogatory

I woudn't ever get rid of this in favor of harder content, though. This content needs to exist so players with limited time to play can still progress on something, even if its just collecting tomestones and never touching extremes/savage. .

On another side of it though. various topics pop up from time to time regarding difficulty and raiding and why players don't like it. and I tend to think that a big part of the issue many players have with difficulty on all levels of the game is that whatever players get out of content has to be worth whatever they put into it....

I think this true on levels and exponentially highlighted by the games reward system at every one of those levels..

players generally don't want dungeons and roulettes to be harder because what they get out of them is trash a few trashy tomes which they can spend on a trashy piece of gear that they'll throw away almost as soon as the next patch lands... gear is all cheap temporary junk none of it holds value or power. and as a result of that none of it is worth any real effort to get..

this is also why many players don't bother raiding because the increased effort isn't justified by rewards. if you clear sigma savage and get full 370 for example. it's worthless to you. as soon as 4.4 lands with a new raid tear there's going to be 380 crafted stuff. making all that raiding worthless..

this is the trouble nothing ever has value or feels powerfull. even the stats don't make a difference. a few extra points of a primary that you don't really need as you cleared the content before you got it... and a bunch of secondaries that do absolutely nothing....

crit being the big one that everyone wants. but why is beyond me? because it does nothing... my level 70 bard is rocking over 2000 crit and gets exactly the same number of crits it did in t5 against twintania with maybe 300 crit...... or against alexander with over 1200 crit. those extra 1700 points haven't changed anything...

higher level mobs you say? NOPE!!! take a 2000 crit bard into central thanalan and blow away 1000 level 1 lady bugs or squirrel things. your crit rate will be exactly the same as it is against kefka... the stat does absolutely nothing... skill speed,m spell speed all the same. flare is the same cast tiem now with 1700 spell speed it was in arr with 500 spell speed.......

the result of all of this is a massive lack of power, impact or value in absolutely everything players get as rewards. which is a big contributor to the problems the game has with player retention and also a governing factor over difficulty..

when all the rewards are as cheap and worthless as they generally are the difficulty has to be at a low level.. minimal junk out so minimal effort in..

I'm quite casual as a gamer but effort / reward is definitely a factor in things. in xiv I tend not to raid because the rewards aren't worth it. partly because theyre so short lived and secondly because the content will be nerfed to hell anyway.. I cleared coil had a title which to me worth the effort of getting. even if I knew the gear would be replaced. then they went and unsynced it and you could 2 man rofl stomp the whole lot... value gone.....

I think the general lack of value in all the rewards is why players kick off at the idea of making content harder... because why put effort in when you get nothing out....

I also think the fear of failure is an issue. or fear of losing. the idea that content should be clearable first time. but this again comes down to the rewards being trash thus must be easy to get I think..

[RiyahArp]

The problem with increasing difficulty is that you really can't do so in any means without borrowing from what makes savage savage; namely insta-kill mechanics and enrages. And the former may not even work; you can get instakilled by the last bosses cross water attack on hell's lid, but since the aoe is narrow, most players do fine with it. If you look at Hashmal, the toughest boss in casual content, he is tough mostly because he easily one hits people through his mechanics, and every boss in there has some add phase with an enrage that can actually not be met through low dps, mostly happening through tethers, bad positioning for aoes, or locked out of the add area.

They really don't have the tools to do a fairly fine level of difficulty. I mean, both Byakko ex and Susano ex are considered the easiest of ex fights by savage players here, but both can easily still nail pug groups because the "Easy" aspect is just less mechanics to memorize. I think we may see how it is when they release heaven on high, which is going to be hard 4 man content.

[Stanelis]

Alright…let’s talk about it. Been wanting to discuss this for some time, but of course, I had to go Kanye and run on tangents about other things – but here I am now. As the title suggests, I don’t feel that increasing difficulty in casual content equates to having Savage-level difficulty. I’ve made this point before, I’ll make it again – you can increase difficulty without touching Savage levels. But, naturally, some may disagree, so I wanted to start a discussion for the sole question of: why?

The issue with FFXIV isn't the "difficulty", but the lack of depths of its battle system.

[MageBlack]

Alright…let’s talk about it. Been wanting to discuss this for some time, but of course, I had to go Kanye and run on tangents about other things – but here I am now. As the title suggests, I don’t feel that increasing difficulty in casual content equates to having Savage-level difficulty. I’ve made this point before, I’ll make it again – you can increase difficulty without touching Savage levels. But, naturally, some may disagree, so I wanted to start a discussion for the sole question of: why?

Is there something in particular you are referring to? Cause the 24 man raids, difficulty wise, are at the high end of "casual" content (Looks at Haschmal) There is also doing any dungeon at the minimum iLev if you are looking for a challenge, I'd say that is difficult casual content. Theres PotD and the upcoming HoH that gets into difficult content at higher levels, There are now normal versions of the endgame raids (Omega and Alex normal) that I would also consider to be high end casual content.

So what is it we are actually talking about here? Have I missed the boat on what you were trying to get at? Am I misinterpreting what you mean by difficulty increase?

[Ghastly]

We get too many ilevels jumps.

Rabanastre was a really fun challenge until ilevel jumped, things that required us to be careful became tickles a few weeks later. if the ilevels were kept smaller it would help with how long these contents last. Same with some dungeons, and it's not the mechanics, as I pointed out...people still get hit by mechanics, they just take so little damage from them because of ilevel and the bosses die a lot faster because of ilevel.

But I agree..with devs it's always too easy or too hard instead of something in the middle.

[KaivaC]

We get too many ilevels jumps.

Rabanastre was a really fun challenge until ilevel jumped, things that required us to be careful became tickles a few weeks later. if the ilevels were kept smaller it would help with how long these contents last. Same with some dungeons, and it's not the mechanics, as I pointed out...people still get hit by mechanics, they just take so little damage from them because of ilevel and the bosses die a lot faster because of ilevel.

But I agree..with devs it's always too easy or too hard instead of something in the middle.

I have seen the other comments, but it's close to bed time for me (don't judge, I work nights, so I'm tired and this sun doesn't help :P ), so I'll post replies to the other comments when I log back on, but this post right here echoes some of my feelings. The ilvl jumps, while seemingly nice, are just too frequent - there's no sense of accomplishment with them. The difference between 325 and 370 is staggering...though I'm sure there was something similar with HW. I get that Savage needs to be higher, but that jump between Hell's Lid/Fractal Continuum and Sigma Savage drops is high. I'm not sure if other MMOs have this huge difference within a patch cycle, though, so feel free to correct me on that if other MMOs follow a similar path with gear progression.