Quote Originally Posted by Gath View Post
Yet none of it was tedious, now was it?

All content can be easy with practice, but a lot of times people don't want to practice because of the tedium.
The only answer is that you need all types of content (easy drop/quested, tedious grind, and challenging but rewarding), and a lot of it. Dynamis relics were not difficult, they just took time, money, or scamming the LS. They were still very good for the game and kept some playing with something to shoot for. Dynamis overall was fairly shallow though, just relic armors and currency for weapons, and shadow mantle and ring. For a better example you can look at Apollyon and Temenos. These let you upgrade your regular artifact to +1 (bringing something from the past back into relevancy is always nice), added plenty of useful accessories purchased by collecting ancient beastcoins, and the end goal was of course the boss fights for Homam and Nashira armor sets. It's not hard at all to target the correct areas for your artifact items and then just hope it drops, it's not hard to get 75 beastcoins eventually, and after a bit only far below average linkshells will wipe to Omega, but that's okay.

Final Fantasy XI was very, very tedious, even the majority of the fights were, and the major challenge to the game was making sure each person was fulfilling their role, not the roles themselves, but the content was robust and repeating it wasn't too much of a hassle, it usually spread its rewards out in a way to reward people who go back in at least some way (ancient beastcoins being bazaarable, currency/alexandrites being worth something is a nice boost while you're farming relic armor/DKP in dynamis or getting your salvage armor materials, sky triggers being bazaarable, etc.) To say that there is no room for tedium in a well designed game is pretty blind because when you can get the incentives and weight of effort correct it only adds to the longevity and depth of the game's content. The tedious things should be done along the way to the goal though, not the focus of it, and that's where XIV has failed so far. The content (if you call it that, I don't) we have now is shit, of course it is, with everything being made useless by each new patch and having to grind out a boss until luck favors you on a drop, but making the drop rates higher would only make you finish it faster. You need to make it deeper, not quicker.

No one would play FFXI for 8 years if the only boss fight was the Ifrit avatar battle either, we get that, Yoshida gets that, and he's working on it. I feel as though the content in XIV has been deflated, it just feels empty, and not specifically in the sense of challenge. It would probably sit easier on people's stomachs if the weapon drop rates were five or so percent better and the totems were used for other things as well, such as unique accessories or buff potions and good food, or unique synth materials that fighters could sell. It really just feels incomplete to any other event imaginable. Raids get solved in a week, that's normal. Fights get beaten in a day or two as well. The true test is things like maybe Crystal Tower, and the large, large style content overhauls that are comparable to Dynamis, Sea/Limbus, Abyssea. Ifrit is small fish, if it bugs you so much, quit playing for a bit. Won't be missing anything.

Also, to Nidhogg and Byakko being hard: lol

They were powerful, not hard. That's what happens when you design monsters for a game that is okay with you dying. FFXIV right now is stupid in the sense that it is designed for one tank 8-man parties, so it's never okay for the tank to be in peril, by design. Nidhogg didn't give a fuck about one tank, he had terror, mighty strikes, shadow wiping wing attacks, double attack, and god help you if you were in front of his mouth, and that's not even mentioning Spike Flail if you mess up the positioning or aggro. The same thing with byakko, paralyze, diaga, triple attack and fast speed. They were allowed to kill you because death was okay. They didn't jump away and dash around the arena being completely ineffective for 30 seconds while you recovered MP and healed the tank up.