Dungeons we need to talk dungeons

[RitsukoSonoda]

*snip*

The "casuals" you're referring to don't even need tomestone gear unless they plan to do the content people like to label as "hardcore". So then these "casuals" then get the gear needed to meet the ilvl requirements to jump into the "hardcore" content because they want the shiny mounts, sparkly trial weapons, etc. They spend 95% of the time on the floor because they were allowed to stand in AoE markers pressing 2-3 buttons most of the time due to current dungeon design and easy mode settings in the MSQ.

As for it being a grind. Yeah anything feels like a grind when its boring. Dumbing it down to run until you hit wall then mash AoE until duty is finished just makes the content boring right from the start even on the first run because it's already boring by initial design. Instead make the dungeons more difficult and involved. So the people running them repeatedly are at least getting practice dealing with mechanics and variables they will see in that harder content and these "casuals" become less likely to be a drag or hinderance to people when they decide to jump into other things.

You could jump into EX trials in DF in ARR and have a fairly good chance at clearing it. There was a reliable chance of clearing HW's 2 initial EX trials with random people before they nerfed the 8 player duty at the start of the HW MSQ after players not doing the mechanics complained non stop for weeks about being "gated" then the rate of failure started increasing. The initial 2 trials in Stormblood were the same. They were cleared with random people reliably until they nerfed Shinryu normal after people again complained for weeks that they were being "gated" out of content. I see all content as accessible to everyone so long as they are on a version of the game that allows access to it. However doing said content should involve the player actually learning how to effectively play the game. The dumbed down 4 player duty design and nerfs to various duties and the MSQ is nothing but an act of appeasing lazy players and enabling their behavior. Something that I feel should not be done because it does nothing but damage the player base. It's the game equivalent of giving a child screaming and throwing a tantrum in a store, toys and candy because you don't want to listen to it. And when others lacking morals, ethical standards, and integrity see rewards being given out for essentially being a little prick they start being a little prick as well.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

The "casuals" you're referring to don't even need tomestone gear unless they plan to do the content people like to label as "hardcore". So then these "casuals" then get the gear needed to meet the ilvl requirements to jump into the "hardcore" content because they want the shiny mounts, sparkly trial weapons, etc. They spend 95% of the time on the floor because they were allowed to stand in AoE markers pressing 2-3 buttons most of the time due to current dungeon design and easy mode settings in the MSQ.

And? They still pay the same amount you do every month. Perhaps even more, depending on your mogstation habits and extra retainers. Everyone likes having goals, gaining stats and feeling more powerful than before; it's irrelevant if they want to step into harder content or not. I have plenty of casual friends who'd never set foot into EX+ content but feel so happy and proud whenever they get a new tomestone gear, or a new upgrade drop from the 24 mans. You don't get to dictate whether they need the gear or not.

Spoiler alert: they also outnumber you many magnitudes over in number.

You could jump into EX trials in DF in ARR and have a fairly good chance at clearing it.

We talking about the same ARR DF where Titan hard was such a crapshoot until well into the end of the expansion? Or how the steps of faith & Chrysalis were utter wipefests because they required even the slightest thought process? ARR DF wasn't as magically more awesome as you remember behind those rose tinted glass. My memories of Garuda EX DF queues for the short time before I learned to use PF like everyone else were quite the opposite, batting nearly 20 attempts with most not getting past the first set of sisters. Ifrit was probably the only one that you'd have a decent chance at in the DF at the time, since only people who managed to beat 'Titan EX: the bad player annihilator' could do it.

They were cleared with random people reliably until they nerfed Shinryu normal after people again complained for weeks that they were being "gated" out of content.

Shinryu normal was never nerfed, iirc, Only made easier over time as more players got better gear. Go ahead and look over the entirety of the 4.x patches and link me the one that specifically says Shinryu normal was nerfed; I'll wait. People also whined about final steps of faith and that was never nerfed either. Only normal steps of faith ever received a nerf. The devs don't nerf everything oh willy-nilly the moment people whine & cry, they look at it objectively and decide from there.

The dumbed down 4 player duty design and nerfs to various duties and the MSQ is nothing but an act of appeasing lazy players and enabling their behavior.

It's called appealing to the infinitely vast majority that pay your bills. Hence why so many games include difficulty options, or in the absence of them, balance their game around the most common denominator you'll find that'll be giving you their money. In the case of FF14, they want an easy, casual way for anyone to build up tomes and get new shiny gear, so when they can only make one dungeon a patch, they're naturally going to target the portion of the playerbase that is in the vast majority. It's simple business economics.

I wonder if they'll ever encounter the passing thought that we wouldn't so need to help players "keep up with" the grind if there wasn't so much (predominantly dull) grind to begin with...

Sure, but dailies & weekly number grinds are the easiest way to skinner box a majority of players than having to come up with a much more creative way to keep the masses logging in daily. : )
~~Hence part of the reason why mobile games make ridiculous amounts of money for such little dev time.~~

[HappyHubris]

And? They still pay the same amount you do every month. Perhaps even more, depending on your mogstation habits and extra retainers. Everyone likes having goals, gaining stats and feeling more powerful than before; it's irrelevant if they want to step into harder content or not. I have plenty of casual friends who'd never set foot into EX+ content but feel so happy and proud whenever they get a new tomestone gear, or a new upgrade drop from the 24 mans. You don't get to dictate whether they need the gear or not.

So why not make all the skins available for purchase from a vendor with gil. I don't give a rat's arse about rewards and just enjoy tough content for tough content's sake.

[Shurrikhan]

So why not make all the skins available for purchase from a vendor with gil.

Because then crafting and market manipulation would be the sole (glamour) endgame progression mechanism?

[RitsukoSonoda]

snip

A majority of your responses simply indicate a blind belief that your side is a majority with no indication of understanding of human behavior or any actual data to back any of your claims up.

If you had extremely poor success rates clearing EX trials in ARR with randoms then either you were extremely unlucky or one of the problem elements was you. And if you're going to post a contrary statement then YOU provide proof. Demanding the other party do so simply indicates you were too lazy to verify your own claim before posting it and just points to you being part of that minority that want everything handed to you without having to work for it which your claims of EX trial experiences are also pointing to. All you've succeeded in doing with most of your post is destroy any credibility you might have had beforehand.

The people supporting the game difficulty being nerfed into oblivion fall primarily into 3 categories.
1. Lazy players that want everything handed to them.
2. People that think siding with them will make them look good and get them likes or make them popular. They jump on the side that they think will make more people like them or think they are a better person.
3. People that are only siding with them because they hope the noisy minority that make up category 1 and 2 will stop being loud and obnoxious.

At the same time the side wanting this formula the game has been following to change is also a minority.

The actual majority of players are indifferent. They simply play the game as it is not saying anything or making any waves or ripples. They play it as it is as long as they get an amount of enjoyment from it they feel is sufficient to pay a sub for (provided they aren't just playing the free version). They stick around because it's something they can play with their friends either IRL or the ones they made in game. There are also those that stick around simply because they have a completionist mentality and want to see how the game ends. The actual majority will just take any changes that happen and roll with it making any adjustments needed to keep going as they have been.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

A majority of your responses simply indicate a blind belief that your side is a majority with no indication of understanding of human behavior or any actual data to back any of your claims up.

I've worked in AAA professional game development environments with massive marketing and analytic teams, even once on an MMO. Why do you think the industry as a whole has been creating games with more accessibility or easier difficulty? Because that is the name of the game in today's industry to make profits. Jimmy with his two kids, a 9 hour job and maybe 1-2 hours a night where he likes to relax and enjoy a fun experience are becoming the ever predominant majority in the video game playerbase, and pretty much every major game company knows this and actively designs their games with these people in mind, whether it be inclusion of lowered difficulty, difficulty options, microtransactions to save time, etc. It's no different with Square Enix. I'd say its even more blatant with them, considering how ridiculous JP work culture can be to the point many working adults barely have time to play.

Besides, both our opinions are pretty irrelevant on this. Square likely has terabytes of metrics data floating around on their servers which is literally the only thing they need to make profitable decisions. Their very dev cycle decisions are already proof they know the vast majority of their audience far better than either of us. Data talks, and data is what makes profit.

If you had extremely poor success rates clearing EX trials in ARR with randoms then either you were extremely unlucky or one of the problem elements was you.

Ah yes. Because I, as a Black Mage, can literally do anything when tanks fail mitigation or fail to swap spiny, when the healers fail to keep people healthy. Or when all the other dps kill the spiny.
Yes, the common problem was totally me. I had all the tools to save every run and just kept casting Fire 1 instead : )

...You have done ARR EX trials right? You get bad tanks on Ramuh, and there's literally nothing you can do to win. Get bad healers and you're boned on any of them. Get dps who won't listen and you're boned on Gardua & Moogle mog. Not to mention this was the age of WARs not having provoke because they didn't level GLD, meaning if you were unlucky, some fights were over before they even began! If you were DF queuing EX trials back in the day and getting successful clears on the average, you were either on JP, in partial premades, or getting lucky. Of course, this is all anecdotal arguing that'll simply go in circles anyway, so we'll have to agree to disagree.

And if you're going to post a contrary statement then YOU provide proof. Demanding the other party do so simply indicates you were too lazy to verify your own claim before posting it and just points to you being part of that minority that want everything handed to you without having to work for it which your claims of EX trial experiences are also pointing to. All you've succeeded in doing with most of your post is destroy any credibility you might have had beforehand.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof


You're the one who made the initial claim that Square is dumbing down the game as an appeasement to lazy players (and in the process, literally said false statements like the Shinryu bit which didn't exactly win you any favors). I made the counterpoint using Twinning/Akademia, two dungeons that are completely optional and thus would be primed for Square to do any sort of higher difficulty with, that it's a game design decision around a core audience based on limited resources and prioritizing resources to that which makes up the majority of their playerbase that they know based on data, so burden on proof is on you to prove that the majority is indifferent and that Square just listens to the wrong crowd. And now you're bordering on Ad-Homimen territory considering you know literally nothing about my personal wants in the game lol.

But just for my ego on the 'you're part of the crowd that wants everything handed to them' bit: I grinded out every step of the ARR & HW relics while they were relevant & un-nerfed and never complained (multiple times too, 2x during ARR for Bravura + Curtana, and x3 in HW for all three tank weapons). I've world progged every tier since the beginning of HW, taking time off work and wiping literally hundreds of times and spending an upwards of 50+ hours to get week 1 clears on every tier since Deltascape (Since Manipulator & BJ were impossible week 1-2 back then due to overtuning & I was in a casual static for creator.) I've even done well over 100+ duels in Southern Front before Zadnor came along grinding out Gabriel keys for my friends to save them money. I don't need things handed to me on a silver platter. I simply understand business economics from my own work experiences and have many casual friends that I interact with daily and understand their mindsets when it comes to this game.

That being said, if you want to claim the people Square are designing their game for aren't the majority, prove it. Until then, we'll both enjoy our opinions, only mine was formed by observing the FF14's dev's development trends over a 6 year period which are in turn based on hard data Square has along with time spent with professional game development environments where I had to interact with publishers who used analytics, market trends and player data to make decisions on what features or changes we'd be implementing into the next update. But given that neither of us can access the data Square uses to make their development decisions and thus anything we say is merely opinions based on anecdotal evidence, we'll have to agree to disagree.

The people supporting the game difficulty being nerfed into oblivion fall primarily into 3 categories.
1. Lazy players that want everything handed to them.

OR, hear me out. Sometimes people just like having an easy game to play and turn your brain off in after a long day at work that still offers a sense of progression towards working for rewards. Shocking concept, I know, I bet I just blew your mind.

Oh I remember this well, back when even Demon Wall in Amdapor Keep would was too high a DPS check for some parties Titan HM was a PUG stomper. People cleared it sure, it was mandatory content, but even though the difficulty difference between level 50 tome farming dungeons and Titan HM wasn't that big, it was still cause for some.... interesting parties. The idea that by making dungeons harder, players will suddenly level up in skill and make extreme fights more manageable is pure pie in the sky, wishful thinking. The history of this very game proves it.

God the Demon Wall. So many fond memories of waiting 40mins for a queue to pop due to insanely congested instance servers and then spending 30mins of your run wiping to that boss because someone got flung off by repel for the 50th time and you no longer had the dps to make the check it due to how bad most players were back then when everyone was new. Assuming the healer didn't just outright fail to heal me through the bees, despite rolling mitigation.

[Nyarlha]

God the Demon Wall. So many fond memories of waiting 40mins for a queue to pop due to insanely congested instance servers and then spending 30mins of your run wiping to that boss because someone got flung off by repel for the 50th time and you no longer had the dps to make the check it due to how bad most players were back then when everyone was new. Assuming the healer didn't just outright fail to heal me through the bees, despite rolling mitigation.

OG Demon Wall was definitely something. So many things could go wrong.

And yeah, queues were so long back then, between a lack of tanks and the instance servers... That's why I laugh nowadays when I hear people saying "tanks and healers are leaving the jobs because they are too easy/homogenized", despite the fact that I'm getting consistant 5 minutes queues as a DPS.

[Shurrikhan]

Square likely has terabytes of metrics data floating around on their servers which is literally the only thing they need to make profitable decisions.

Ahh, yes, that metrics-driven decision making that has worked so well for Ian Hazzikostas or has offered us the objectively (metrically-proven) 'better' experiences of microtransaction hell, etc.

[Artemiz]

I'm not sure why we're assuming that the only way for dungeons not to feel like mere unvaried hallways is for us to have side-routes that get one no nearer to the core objective...

One (bad) approach does not make for an exhaustive list of possibilities.

True, but I just think that players will very quickly find the fastest route to finishing a dungeon and insist on that. Square could come up with the greatest dungeon layout in history but players are like water, they seek out the line of least resistance.

actually, in brayflox longstop there is a big room with a few packs. Every time i get brayflox longstop the party seems to take a different path through that big room. We could have more dungeons like that where rather than being a literal tunnel, its more of a big room with mobs.

aurum vale's first room is quite similar to this. the reason pulling big in aurum vale is so dangerous is because classes dont have the means to handle that much damage at that level. we could easily have another aurum vale with our high level kits and it wouldn't be nearly as disastrous, just like brayflox big room isn't.

I like those area's too, there isn't much decision making going on though, the tank just picks their favourite route. I don't think more area's like that would be a problem though and I'd welcome it.

Ahh, yes, that metrics-driven decision making that has worked so well for Ian Hazzikostas or has offered us the objectively (metrically-proven) 'better' experiences of microtransaction hell, etc.

Wow has done a bad job of integrating metrics into their decision making, all game companies use them though. The art of making good decisions is understanding the relationship between metrics and feedback, Square seem to have a good handle on this, Blizzard are obviously terrible at it.