FFXI vs FFXIV Difficulty

[Tricksy]

Difficulty in an MMO... (Hmmm)

IMO Difficulty in an MMO usually comes down to one thing; TIME. Some people like to think of it as a Tedious Time Sink and some people see it as a means to forging relationships through long periods of time with a person/people. But every goal in an MMO is usually going to come down to a calculation of time.

Once a strategy is understood (and this happens within hours of every new patch/expansion), you follow said strategy or your own and its only a matter of TIME before you-get your desired achievement.

I would venture to guess that an MMO is quite easy for most people nowadays. Besides games like Tera, that are action based (really just twitch relexes... But Im sure many an FPS player will tell me how this is a skill. hehe just playing. Its a skill; in the sense that its a developed motor function that some are better at then others.)

What was I saying?... Oh right, the mechanics of the game. The mechanics of an MMO are prevalently easy nowadays. (besides action MMOs and the like) They can't be difficult because then you have a "barrier to entry". I would say that mechanically UO and FF11(before it's end days) we're difficult. Examples, from FF11 would be; strict party lvl ranges (prior to lvl sync), strategic battle mechanics, mob difficulty and map placement, aggro system, reliance on full parties of a strategic build to finish content (or a few high levels), "milestone quests" such as chocobo, airships, kazham, limit breaks. But even saying that these things are "mechanically" difficult is semantics on my part, because they all come down to one thing- TIME.

Same with FF14. EX. Your Ifrit/Moogle weapon, your AF gear, your chocobo, lvling to 50. You know the strategy is to stand in the right spot and only cast two spells after Ifrit does a move. So you do it, over and over again. You make sure ur heavily loaded with archers in Moogle and other new endgame content. You watch the youtube videos of your AF body fight and know exactly what to do. You get a party together and zerg shit to lvl to 50 or do leves. What makes any of this inherently difficult?

I think this discussion has really misunderstood the nature of difficulty. What does difficulty mean? How is difficulty measured? Difficulty is described as something that requires effort. So what types of effort exist in MMOs?

In terms of brainpower(or raw intelligence) Im going to go out on a limb and say MMOs really don't require much( especially once you have researched online how to do something). Although I would say FF11 required on-the-fly strategic thinking in a lot of its content. Physical effort, ie twitch gaming, action based MMOs etc, doesnt seem very relevant in most MMOs. There may be more ways to make a person "work" in an MMO, that Im not thinking of but the measurement for effort put forth is in my mind; always going to be in units of time.

So imo, MMO Difficulty= X/units of time (including the time it takes you to research and apply a strategy.

Now that we have a loose concept that difficulty in an MMO is most often measured in units of time; we can think a moment on what we are doing in this thread? We are basically trying to pinpoint what in a game makes us "work" and whether that "work" is tedious or difficult. The only difference is an arbitrary personal opinion. In our own minds when something takes too long like getting an Ifrit weapon, we either decide its tedious or its hard. When some people think about Anima they think in units of time; it is either an "easy button"(the opposite of hard) or its a convenience(the opposite of tedious).

The OP actually, imo, pointed out a few things that mechanically can be considered difficult; mob AI and stats/abilities and strategic weapon use and party builds for grinding. These are actually things that require brainpower, such as strategic on-the-fly thinking during fights.

IMO when I think of partying, I want high mob stats, "hard" AI and high exp bars because in my mind, its not tedious to grind (especially in FF11 where the gear was so well developed in aesthetics, lore and usefulness). In fact, I understand that the time I spend making a party and then partying is time spent with other people, which is the driving force behind an MMO(though of late you'd begin to question that). I personally think that the journey to 50 should be a time sink as much as grinding Ifrit, Moogles or Aurum Vale is a time sink, because thats how you build a thriving and positive community; force people to work together as much as possible. Although we uber need level-sync.

Well that was a huge rant. I dont apologize. I use these forums to take up my time. And there is some time well wasted. Hope you enjoyed.

[YuriSan]

Please make it difficult to where a party actually needs a tank and cant get away with 7 DD and a healer, each DD soloing a mob well enough that the healer only needs to throw one heal at the end of their battle.

Could you make a vid doing Ifrit without a tank?

[TirionCrey]

FFXI has never been difficult, just time consuming.

People could take 2 years to get their first job to 75, that doesn't make them skilled enough to get Dynamis Xarcabard cleared, or defeat Bahamut v2.

Time=/=Skill

[Tonkra]

well i agree with you... difficulty is not all about timesink.

but i also can understand the topic opener when he says that everybody being lv 50 at each class doesnt feel that "special" anymore. because almost everyone has maxed out each class/job.

on the other side, this isnt the maximum cap forever i think.

[Isaveron]

Stop confusing time sinks with difficulty. Leveling in FFXI required a lot of time and patience, not skill.

[Rokien]

If it's hard on your mental state, it can be thought of as difficult, whether that's a grueling grind or not. It challenges your mentality. It may not be hard or take "skill" to level up, but it takes patients, and that is a skill. So, when something is a time sync, you have to battle it with your mind, not necessarily with your hands.

Tl:dr
Time syncs are hard on your mind, not your hands.

[JakeRoon]

I guess the real question is:

regardless of definitions,

do you want to level up forever? Or not?

[Sagagemini]

i lol'ed at they guy who said that Ifrit Battle is harder than any FFXI fight.
Obviously that'

[Malbeth]

Ahh the old group vs solo debate. This same thread is going on in every mmo forum and blog out there and probably will until the end of time. I understand the OP's take on things but as the majority of the replies on this thread can attest, most people don't want forced grouping in an mmo. I for one am very thankful for this. To balance out the new solo-friendly gameplay trend, developers offer rewards that are gated by group-only content. A solo player can't get that reward. That's just the way it is.

I know that's a little off topic but that's essentially what a XI vs. XIV argument boils down to. The whole group vs solo, risk vs reward, blah blah mostly comes down to how much time you have to dedicate to playing a game.

Not all of us can waste hours and hours a day playing a game. I like having a choice as to whether I group or not. And as someone that can only play an hour or so a day, I dont' see myself reaching the cap, let alone unlocking a class or getting AF gear anytime soon. So yeah I think the pacing in FFXIV is just right. Especially if you like to level DoH or DoL and take time to smell the flowers along the way.

[Exekutor]

I want content. Sure being able to have level 99 in the far future would be nice, but worthless without content like Primal-Fights, HNMs, Quests, Besieged for example. SE is implementing more and more content now, and thats what the game really needs. I see no reason to raise the lvl cap in the near future. And thinking about the difficulty in FFXI and FFXIV: When the lvl cap of FFXI was raised to 80, 85... 99, there were always some nerds who needed few weeks to achieve the new maximum level. So there will be always ppl who get everything to the max. That has nothing to do with difficulty, just with the amount of time you need. Iam studying and dont have as much time as in the past when i went to school. I dont have the time to play FFXI any longer. FFXIV is more casual-friendly, and thats one reason why i play it. FFXI and FFXIV are different games for different customers. If one of them pleases u, the other one doesnt, why not stick to the one you like? I dont know where the problem is...