Dungeons we need to talk dungeons

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

That would be a nice addition, but I wouldn't get my hopes up.

Dev seem to be happier to create a larger-scale contents because it leaves 'less responsibilities' to each participant (At least they're enjoyable most of time though), so it's pretty unlikely.

[Jirah]

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.

Outspoken as this person sounds, this is the demographic for radical nerfs or radical stagnation. We desire things to remain the same because we don’t want to try and learn new mechs, we desire nerfs so it’s easier for us to clear it.

In all their arguments not a mention of progress or fun, which is how the casual audiences losses me. Modern games knowing well enough how lucrative it is for short term gratification and accessibility, seems the argument is at a loss. Money talks, even if the dim dont

[Artemiz]

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.

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.

[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.

[Nishira]

What you say Daeriion would be my guess too. If you look at the way MMO’s have evolved over time, it’s quite clear. MMO’s that tried to appeal to a more hardcore crowd sank or are in the process of sinking. I think only games that are not MMO’s and preferably singleplayer can survive being hard, because there is no way you as a player can force strangers to play optimally. So instead of having people improve organically over time, you get a lot of complaining on both sides haha.

Personally I do enjoy it when trash hits harder. When roles matter. When cc has a use. It promotes teamplay and consideration of your fellow players and how classes mesh together. But I don’t know whether one should wish for a return of that there where everyone plays with everyone. It’s just not everyone’s cup of tea. And where one can feel it promotes better play, another will experience it as punishment and exclusion.

[Jirah]

Personally I do enjoy it when trash hits harder. When roles matter. When cc has a use. It promotes teamplay and consideration of your fellow players and how classes mesh together. But I don’t know whether one should wish for a return of that there where everyone plays with everyone. It’s just not everyone’s cup of tea. And where one can feel it promotes better play, another will experience it as punishment and exclusion.

Alternative being you don’t matter and contribution between roles is skewered for the sake of “fear of punishment” if I understand that correctly?

I’ve pointed out ARR had harder dungeons that even Sastsha requires some DPS and tank to priorities that’s entirely absent in most 80s dungeons. Which goes against the whole point really, also this is a video game difficulty and strife is one of the pillars of foundation. Have we regressed so far that we don’t desire any effort? And joined hands with the people saying “bottomless pitfalls in Mario games are a enemy to my accessibility and doesn’t respect my time” or any regressive argument from the Pokémon fandom? Yes dungeons are casual content, all in all they have to be as 4 mans are restrictive but we need to reevaluate what causal is? Is casual no risk no reward corridors with barely a ounce of challenging ideas rivaling children’s games? Or is casual lax and a calmed downer version of the harder content with basic team work elements?

[Artemiz]

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.



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.



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.



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.



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.

Did you guys hear that? I think I just heard a mic drop.

What you say Daeriion would be my guess too. If you look at the way MMO’s have evolved over time, it’s quite clear. MMO’s that tried to appeal to a more hardcore crowd sank or are in the process of sinking. I think only games that are not MMO’s and preferably singleplayer can survive being hard, because there is no way you as a player can force strangers to play optimally. So instead of having people improve organically over time, you get a lot of complaining on both sides haha.

Personally I do enjoy it when trash hits harder. When roles matter. When cc has a use. It promotes teamplay and consideration of your fellow players and how classes mesh together. But I don’t know whether one should wish for a return of that there where everyone plays with everyone. It’s just not everyone’s cup of tea. And where one can feel it promotes better play, another will experience it as punishment and exclusion.

I'd say you have the right of it, the one thing people who argue for more hardcore gaming experiences never want to discuss is economics. MMO's are by far the most expensive games to make and maintain so viable economics matters. Every hardcore MMO that launches goes into maintenance mode in a few years and fails to hold a significant player base.

People like to use FFXI as an example of hardcore being a successful formula but they either don't recognize, or choose to ignore the 20 years of QoL changes which have radically changed FFXI into a game that is very casual friendly today. It was hardcore when it launched sure, but today it has a better transit system than FFXIV, throws rewards at players just for logging in, has removed a vast plethora of punishing and time gating mechanics and has made it easily possible to make logging in for an hour or two worth it. The trust system alone is significantly more advanced than the one in FFXIV and being a one player army is available to every player within a few hours of starting a new character. If it didn't do any of this it wouldn't be here today.

[Jirah]

snip.

Why are we discussing economics? I hope people know we don’t want causal content to go away right? I’m fully aware how everyone overreacts to suggestions but again we just want improvements of the dungeon design as it’s the only explorative content in the game as raids are just trials, this doesn’t mean “ make it Hardcore” nor does it mean “Make it too difficult to comprehend” if you cleared Dancing plague or SoS or Eden 4,8,11 then it shouldn’t be a tall order to ask for some more variables, at the very least have tanks do something else now that aggro is a non issue.

[Nishira]

I don’t know Jirah, I meant that sincerely when I said I don’t know. Would I like to see some changes in the formula as it has evolved over time? Yes absolutely. Do I think going back to what was is realistic? I think that’s automatically considered ‘niche’ these days. And that’s just not what game devs will put a lot of their resources in. I’m trying to figure out what would work and I come up blank myself (good thing I’m not a game dev )