Who Thought Adding Difficulty Levels To Instanced Quests Was A Good Idea?

[Harmonea]

I don’t think this is as big of a problem that you and others are making it out to be. I don’t believe there’s a huge wave of bad players being gated behind solo content and that this patch will burst the floodgates and we’ll be inundated and party content will be unable to be completed. I think this can go into that list along with the 5.0 healer changes as “things that killed the game but never materialized as bad as the doom sayers said it would”.

That was my first post in this thread, and I didn't say anything about it being a "big problem" let alone that it would be a thing "that killed the game," so how about you reign in the strawman for a minute?

I stated facts. Titania and Innocence in DF have a lower clear rate than some people find acceptable, to the point where they'd rather eat a 30 minute penalty than spend that time wiping to repeated DPS check failures. This is something that really does happen, it's observable, you can't debate this.

And I hope no one advocating for (essentially) the removal of solo DPS checks is among those who dread groups who can't clear things due to DPS checks.

If you bail on Titania, if you bailed on Shinryu when it was new content, if you lower your ilvl so you don't get Orbonne... you should not be supporting this change.

[Eli85]

OP, I'm going to explain to you why this happened. Metrics and analytics, plain and simple. I don't think S-E has specifically commented on this, but developers on many other MMOs have said something to the effect of, "Players typically don't rise to the challenge. They give up and play something else." This is why the change happened. Yeah, it stinks for those of us (myself included) who want to weed out the bad players who already infest end game, but they likely saw far too many casual players hit a wall (in questing) and outright quit. This small, little change? That keeps those players, which makes better business sense for S-E.

As a player, I dislike the change as much as you do, but this is ALL about money and retaining players.

[Johaandr]

Why is this a problem? I dont really understand cuse idc about msq difficulty overall since i know i will progress thru it anyways.
Its just a darn option dont make a fuss about it.

[SannaR]

I thought that this was just for NG+ and not for anything new/will be current. If this is only connected to NG+ then it doesn't really matter if there is a difficulty choice as most will just be redoing fights that they've already beaten. That is if you didn't use a skip potion. To me if you can't clear a solo you either need better gear or to learn how to play your job better. If you still can't clear it after doing either one of those then it falls down to paying attention to what's going on. So many have some sort of a stack machanic or a run this away type thing.

[Berethos]

That has to be one of the dumbest ideas ever because it basically gives a free pass, especially for new players who were just given an excuse to not make an effort in playing the game. If someone from Square Enix came up with this idea, they need to be fired.

Would you like to know how the current system works?

Current system - if you fail a few times, it gives you the Echo buff. You don't have a choice and the game nerfs the fight for you automatically.

New system - if you fail, you can choose whether or not you get the easier version or continue to try and beat it at its intended difficulty.

You're literally whining over being given the choice of whether the instanced battle will be nerfed or not, when currently you are not given that choice.

I thought that this was just for NG+ and not for anything new/will be current. .

It will show up if you fail an instanced quest battle (until you log out, then it resets to default for the first attempt). It's basically the current system, but with the ability to dictate when and if the instanced battle gets made easier, whereas right now you don't really have control over that (I'm not actually sure if you can click off the buff it gives when you fail a fight a few times, in which case this new system is more about giving explicit control over when/if the Echo buff is given).

[SannaR]

It will show up if you fail an instanced quest battle (until you log out, then it resets to default for the first attempt). It's basically the current system, but with the ability to dictate when and if the instanced battle gets made easier, whereas right now you don't really have control over that (I'm not actually sure if you can click off the buff it gives when you fail a fight a few times, in which case this new system is more about giving explicit control over when/if the Echo buff is given).

Hmm... because I know it reads like it's for all msq solo instances, but when they went over it in the last LL they talked about it while talking about NG+. I could be wrong, but they never made it sound like it would apply to any solo instance outside of NG+ use. We'll have to see on tuesday. Course we could also not even have a new one in this patch.

[Berethos]

The main reason I'm certain that it will apply to all instanced quest battles and not just experiencing them in the form of NG+ is because it's not under the NG+ heading that their patch notes format uses, but instead has its own heading under the broader overall "Quests" category.

Each change or addition to the Quests category has its own heading, with additional features specific to one of those being placed under that heading. So with the format they use, the addition of NG+ and the addition of control over the difficulty of instanced battles are separate additions (though obviously they can be used in conjunction).

[Sated]

Someone's preferred difficulty setting doesn't reflect their skill. Period.

[Chalbee]

That has to be one of the dumbest ideas ever because it basically gives a free pass, especially for new players who were just given an excuse to not make an effort in playing the game. If someone from Square Enix came up with this idea, they need to be fired.

You know, this morning as I was reading the patch notes I saw that update on solo duty difficulty, and I instantly thought "oh, there will be some threads complaining about this on the forums" Thank you for proving me right, I guess?

[Nepentha]

This is actually a great thing for people who have physical or mental handicaps.