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

[Wildsprite]

my opinion on the difficulties selection is simple. the story mode should be simple, worry free so you can do the story. multiplayer content being more difficult I'm quite ok with but frankly I don't see solo/with NPC(not the trust system NPCs) content as something that should cause stress and to many people it does. they just want to go through the story and enjoy themselves. not to mention those role play quests toss you in a situation that SHOULD simply be a CS but the devs thought it might be fun to toss you into a situation where you have unfamiliar skills that you have on NO other jobs/classes. personally I hate these things I don't care the difficulty of them. I want to do fights as my own character not as some over-powered or under-powered NPC.....


derp. forgive the necropost please. I didn't notice the date of the last post till I hit quick post >_<

[linay]

my opinion on the difficulties selection is simple. the story mode should be simple, worry free so you can do the story. multiplayer content being more difficult I'm quite ok with but frankly I don't see solo/with NPC(not the trust system NPCs) content as something that should cause stress and to many people it does. they just want to go through the story and enjoy themselves. not to mention those role play quests toss you in a situation that SHOULD simply be a CS but the devs thought it might be fun to toss you into a situation where you have unfamiliar skills that you have on NO other jobs/classes. personally I hate these things I don't care the difficulty of them. I want to do fights as my own character not as some over-powered or under-powered NPC.....


derp. forgive the necropost please. I didn't notice the date of the last post till I hit quick post >_<

I understand the idea, but I just think the regular difficulty is easy enough, especially if you keep up with gear upgrades. If you don't mind multiplayer content being more difficult, then I think the solo content doesn't need to be made easier because you can practice it on your own without being pressured by your party.

[Wildsprite]

I understand the idea, but I just think the regular difficulty is easy enough, especially if you keep up with gear upgrades. If you don't mind multiplayer content being more difficult, then I think the solo content doesn't need to be made easier because you can practice it on your own without being pressured by your party.

I disagree with you, I don't feel any of this solo content makes me a better or worse player. I get better with multiplayer content by doing it with multiple players....all most of the solo instances do at normal levels is serve to frustrate me and honestly I don't think I'm the only one on that. I want to do the solo instance stuff and be done with it then move on, not practice it(I find the idea of practicing a solo instance you will never do again once you clear it silly). I play this game for multi player interactions not for the solo stuff.

[linay]

I disagree with you, I don't feel any of this solo content makes me a better or worse player. I get better with multiplayer content by doing it with multiple players....all most of the solo instances do at normal levels is serve to frustrate me and honestly I don't think I'm the only one on that. I want to do the solo instance stuff and be done with it then move on, not practice it(I find the idea of practicing a solo instance you will never do again once you clear it silly). I play this game for multi player interactions not for the solo stuff.

Almost all mistakes that I see in multiplayer content have to do with individual mistakes, usually by not dodging avoidable mechanics or not dealing damage to the right enemies. These are the same type of mechanics used in solo contents, so they should not pose a problem or be a hassle to anyone.

I don't think FFXIV should be impeding story content for the more casual gamers

Solo content doesn't impede the more casual gamers. I should know as I'm one of those gamers. Also, those solo contents are part of the story content as the story in FFXIV involves combat, including dungeons and trials and solo content fights.

[Shurrikhan]

I disagree with you, I don't feel any of this solo content makes me a better or worse player. I get better with multiplayer content by doing it with multiple players....all most of the solo instances do at normal levels is serve to frustrate me and honestly I don't think I'm the only one on that. I want to do the solo instance stuff and be done with it then move on, not practice it(I find the idea of practicing a solo instance you will never do again once you clear it silly). I play this game for multi player interactions not for the solo stuff.

Given that bold part, it all seems a bit moot to me.

I'd say there are at least some things we ought learn from solo instances, but, honestly... they're usually pretty distinct from anything you'd take a group to. The "challenges" they present are pretty well absent from group content, except perhaps stack markers still meaning "stack here" as much as they do anywhere else, and even at normal difficulty the challenges we face in group content are largely absent from solo instances if only because the latter is so leniently tuned. By the time it could actually teach anything of value, without being specifically reshaped to do so (which I'd be fine with, but is a fanciful notion at best for now), it'd feel out of place yet again -- just, in the other direction.

I guess all I can hope for is to see some revised guildhests that are worth doing despite continuing a difficulty curve upward, that leveling dungeons can be retuned or revised slightly to have at least some bite -- and increasingly so over time -- and... nope, that's pipedream material again already.

I'll just say this, then: there are opportunity costs on both sides. What people do in their solo time can matter to you when you later group with them, in the same sense that whether your classmates in a discussion-based class have done their homework matters to your learning; you can't force anything, and it's probably not worth doing anything about it specifically, but it is a factor when you'd like to see [A] and are therefore willing to do [B] while others are unwilling to do [B] and therefore will keep you from seeing [A]. And of course the reverse is true as well. If most people want more content that doesn't feel like a joke, what they want will slate you for having to improve a bit more. Those interests may conflict. The trick to design is then making them conflict as little as possible, not by splitting the two groups away from each other and giving them each their half, but reducing the irritations of reaching and playing among that average level while increasing the enjoyment that can be gleaned even when playing content made for that average and expanding the number of playstyles and difficulties the content can accommodate. Some things will still be split, of course, but that shouldn't be the first tool design reaches for.