the normal content is too easy

[ForteNightshade]

Ask Wildstar how well it went for them when they catered to the specific population that was high end raiders.

They quickly found out that that population is actually a niche.

Except nobody is asking for FFXIV to be "hardcore" focused. This is a constant strawman people love to bring up whenever someone remotely suggests the game is simply too easy. There's such a thing as a middle ground between easier content and baby's first MMO. FFXIV falls into the latter category where the game is almost impossible to fail until level 70. And even then, remains incredibly easy. Healers asking for more engaging gameplay, be it in the form of additional DPS abilities or higher outgoing damage, aren't asking for the game to become hardcore. They want something to do besides spam one button.

[Ronduwil]

Except nobody is asking for FFXIV to be "hardcore" focused.

Except for the OP:

People play games to enjoy mental stimulation, and when every single mechanic is telegraphed, repetitive, and predictable, the content becomes very linear and boring.

He's decided that we all want untelegraphed and unpredictable mechanics. You can move goalposts around and claim that this is casual play, but many casual players feel otherwise. That's what this entire thread is about.

Seriously we need an official copy paste for people who keep thinking this is what people are asking for. It’s not. You are confused.

How could he not be confused when the OP literally said that we should make the mechanics in normal content untelegraphed and unpredictable? On top of that we have 10 pages of players defending that position while simultaneously claiming that they're not trying to make the game more hardcore. And you wonder why we're confused.

[Ath192]

Except for the OP:

He's decided that we all want untelegraphed and unpredictable mechanics. You can move goalposts around and claim that this is casual play, but many casual players feel otherwise. That's what this entire thread is about.


How could he not be confused when the OP literally said that we should make the mechanics in normal content untelegraphed and unpredictable? On top of that we have 10 pages of players defending that position while simultaneously claiming that they're not trying to make the game more hardcore. And you wonder why we're confused.

Easy. It’s not binary. This is not ultimate or Dora the explorer levels. People need to stop thinking black and white and admit difficulty is a gradient. That gradient right now is skewed pretty far to the Dora levels. We need it to skew back to somewhere in the lower middle to full on middle, and leave extreme, savage and ultimate for the high end.

If some mechanics are untelegraphed and some bosses are more unpredictable that doesn’t mean they won’t have other visual cues or that you will have milliseconds to respond before being one shot. It just means that you won’t have 30 seconds to walk out of a radioactive orange warning sign that will do a whopping 10% damage to your health if that.

[Ronduwil]

If some mechanics are untelegraphed and some bosses are more unpredictable that doesn’t mean they won’t have other visual cues or that you will have milliseconds to respond before being one shot. It just means that you won’t have 30 seconds to walk out of a radioactive orange warning sign that will do a whopping 10% damage to your health if that.

We already have that, and the complaints that we're seeing even in this thread are that those mechanics might as well not even be there because healers heal right through them without breaking a sweat, and the player doesn't learn. A good example of this is the Yeti in Snowcloak that has to sneeze on the rabbits to create snowballs that you kick at him to interrupt his AoE. A couple of months ago I ran through that instance as a healer, and even though we repeatedly failed that mechanic, I was able to power through and keep everyone up, creating the impression that the mechanic was simply a group-wide AoE. Was I mad about it? Not really. It kept me on my toes as a healer, and it was kind of funny to see us power through that, to be honest. The point, however, is that 3/4 of the group members were able to sleep walk through that fight, which completely defeats the "purpose" that you're claiming the mechanics have: to teach players to be end game raiders.

[Ath192]

We already have that, and the complaints that we're seeing even in this thread are that those mechanics might as well not even be there because healers heal right through them without breaking a sweat, and the player doesn't learn. A good example of this is the Yeti in Snowcloak that has to sneeze on the rabbits to create snowballs that you kick at him to interrupt his AoE. A couple of months ago I ran through that instance as a healer, and even though we repeatedly failed that mechanic, I was able to power through and keep everyone up, creating the impression that the mechanic was simply a group-wide AoE. Was I mad about it? Not really. It kept me on my toes as a healer, and it was kind of funny to see us power through that, to be honest. The point, however, is that 3/4 of the group members were able to sleep walk through that fight, which completely defeats the "purpose" that you're claiming the mechanics have: to teach players to be end game raiders.

I never claimed that. To me the purpose of the mechanics should be to be fun and create real sense of excitement and danger. If I wanted to learn about endgame raids I would join a practice group of said endgame raid. But yeah people should learn how to play the game and mechanics do help. That’s just not my focus.

And for the record I disagree, you shouldn’t have been able to power through that. One time tops, so that people get the message they’re doing it wrong and the second time you fail that mechanic you should probably have a vulnerability up that would make you wipe. Hardly hard core stuff we’re talking about given that’s the only thing that boss does basically. It has one gimmick.

[ForteNightshade]

He's decided that we all want untelegraphed and unpredictable mechanics. You can move goalposts around and claim that this is casual play, but many casual players feel otherwise. That's what this entire thread is about.

... did you intentionally read what you wanted to here? Because that isn't even close to what nick said. Even taking this at face value, you're simply arguing the opposite extreme. Regardless, they weren't asking for everything to untelegraphed and unpredictable but for more variety in mechanic execution and difficulty. How often do the devs reuse stuff like Clock spots and Stack/Spread? In fact, nearly every Savage fight last tier had some version of those two mechanics.

Nevertheless, putting all that aside. Nothing that nick said would be classified as "hardcore". Once again, this is simply arguing in extremes. Hence my example regarding healers. Asking for higher outgoing damage or more DPS buttons isn't makes neither the game nor role "hardcore". It's simply asking for it to be relevant. When current dungeon design is so woefully undertuned, three of the four tanks don't even need a healer to survive. Asking for more engaging gameplay isn't demanding the game suddenly become "hardcore".

[SieyaM]

Except nobody is asking for FFXIV to be "hardcore" focused. This is a constant strawman people love to bring up whenever someone remotely suggests the game is simply too easy. There's such a thing as a middle ground between easier content and baby's first MMO. FFXIV falls into the latter category where the game is almost impossible to fail until level 70. And even then, remains incredibly easy. Healers asking for more engaging gameplay, be it in the form of additional DPS abilities or higher outgoing damage, aren't asking for the game to become hardcore. They want something to do besides spam one button.

People keep asking for these two things but I don't think it will have the effect people think it will. More damage abilities will still leave you feeling like you're not doing anything but running the same 2 or 3 button rotation ad nauseum and increasing the outgoing damage will just turn you into a GCD heal spamming bot instead. Right now most healers already use their oGCD abilities on a schedule so adding more damage will make them dip into GCD heals more often, but will that really be the engagement they want? For healers what they need is a redesign of either the kit or the encounter, their kit needs to have some kind of interaction instead of all these independent abilities or an encounter that is not scripted and timed so strictly.

[Ath192]

People keep asking for these two things but I don't think it will have the effect people think it will. More damage abilities will still leave you feeling like you're not doing anything but running the same 2 or 3 button rotation ad nauseum and increasing the outgoing damage will just turn you into a GCD heal spamming bot instead. Right now most healers already use their oGCD abilities on a schedule so adding more damage will make them dip into GCD heals more often, but will that really be the engagement they want? For healers what they need is a redesign of either the kit or the encounter, their kit needs to have some kind of interaction instead of all these independent abilities or an encounter that is not scripted and timed so strictly.

Will it? Healers loved their kits in SB. Maybe not WHM but seems to me that xpac struck the right balance there.

[HyoMinPark]

Will it? Healers loved their kits in SB. Maybe not WHM but seems to me that xpac struck the right balance there.

I feel like healers were better in SB than they are now. Even with the defunct Lily System, at least WHM had mana economy, and more than one button they pressed 100+ times in a fight.


The issue with healers is that the developers are reluctant to give them either more damage to heal or a more interesting damage rotation. What they seem fine doing is continuing to give them shiny new healing toys that are overkill in most content because we can’t have said content pose even an ounce of difficulty. So it comes to be that healers are stuck in this most boring design. Until the developers either change their design philosophy for them, or, perhaps, take the time to observe how healers are actually played in this game, this is how things will remain.

[Ath192]

I feel like healers were better in SB than they are now. Even with the defunct Lily System, at least WHM had mana economy, and more than one button they pressed 100+ times in a fight.


The issue with healers is that the developers are reluctant to give them either more damage to heal or a more interesting damage rotation. What they seem fine doing is continuing to give them shiny new healing toys that are overkill in most content because we can’t have said content pose even an ounce of difficulty. So it comes to be that healers are stuck in this most boring design. Until the developers either change their design philosophy for them, or, perhaps, take the time to observe how healers are actually played in this game, this is how things will remain.

I wish the raid/complexity/difficulty levels went back to SB. The Burn was an actual fun dungeon, befitting of the expert moniker, the raids were much better as well. Even the extremes were a lot more fun.

Ivalice? oh wow, running those Saturday night was a fun past time.