the normal content is too easy

[nick124]

(reposted from feedback forums on suggestion from other posters, i dont know how to move the entire thread so i copy/pasted my post w/replies, original thread with some helpful input at https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...nt-is-too-easy )

Why is the game so easy a person who is half asleep could play it with no problem? You wonder why no one knows how to play well, yet make all of the content ridiculously easy. I'm no pro, but its kinda silly how all of the content save extremes and savage is so easy to learn and play with no difficulty whatsoever. People play games to enjoy mental stimulation, and when every single mechanic is telegraphed, repetitive, and predictable, the content becomes very linear and boring. What ever happened to the final fantasy of old, where people had to actually practice and grind fights to clear them? You wonder why there's level 90 white mages casting cure 1 and dragoons single target attacking on dungeon pulls, when the normal game content is so easy it allows players to coast through without actually learning how to play. Just food for thought. Don't forget players who actually play games to enjoy a challenge. Don't leave them out to dry because many other people cry when something isn't spoon-fed to them. Make final fantasy great again! Encourage people to learn and get better, not rot and wither away in normal dungeons which poses about as much difficulty as connect four for a toddler.

R1:There is a difference between being "casual friendly" and downright childs play. The game has become the latter. It's gotten to the point that you don't even need to follow mechanics to clear the material. The game becomes essentially effortless to play since every single "mechanic" is so heavily telegraphed and announced that it becomes a matter of just responding to the same visual cues over and over again, in different settings. I'm not arguing that everything should be savage difficulty. But the normal material (dungeons, trials, most normal raids) is simply boring by how little effort it requires to complete it. It feels like busywork more than an enjoyable interactive game. I don't think every single AOE needs to telegraphed. Not every tank buster and stack needs a huge marker with a 5 or more second warning. Let people enjoy the game by learning the fight, even if it takes a few or more tries. ff14 will never be a great game if it just stays a mindless exercise. People who actually enjoy video games want more, they want to be challenged, they want to be frustrated, they want the opportunity to figure out something which is difficult. The entire game minus the hard content doesnt need to, and shouldnt be, a politically correct easymode that anyone with even a low level of consciousness can breeze through.

[nick124]

R2:I'm glad people agree with me and are getting fed up. Naturally in a video game, things should get more difficult as the level and story progresses. Howover, like we've all seen here, the game gets easier and easier as you level up. Not an ounce of challenge. Nothing gets the adrenaline pumping. I just hope Square sees this and decides to acknowledge that they've gone a step too far and made a game so easy that it's literally impossible to die or lose on most content. Square will have to decide if they want to keep pandering to those who want to face no difficulty, have no challenge, and are just being content with everything being handed to them, or if they want to appeal to most of us who, when we log into a game, wish to be stimulated, wish to grow, wish to get better, wish to be challenged. If they keep chasing the "casual player money" by making everything braindead easy, they will surely lose money from those of us who will quit out of sheer boredom and like of drive to play. And something tells me, especially seeing these replies, there are more people who share my opinion and sentiments than those who are content with a godmode game that hands everything to them.
(again, dont accuse me of spamming or multiposting, i was told to move the thread here but dont know how to move it all. Per suggestion by higher ranking members, i reposted my material here)

[kpxmanifesto]

Yep. I'm pretty sure I can do every mechanic wrong in norm Thordan and not die.

[Mesarthim]

Yep. I'm pretty sure I can do every mechanic wrong in norm Thordan and not die.

Challenge accepted. Last year I purposefully stood in all of those growing circular aoes (as many as I could) and as a dps I actually did die, for science.

[DixieBellOCE]

I'm very happy with how Tower of Zot turned out in terms of mechanics.

Its about the baseline level of mechanics I'd expect from the 4th expansion of a game, in regular dungeons.

Its a pity the level 90 dungeons didn't follow suit, since they are so easy in comparison.

Harder casual content keeps people engaged.

[Doc_Seraph]

I would leave the normals as they are due to the fact I would hypothesis the majority of the players (the money) are okay with doing these at the difficultly they are currently.

However, maybe opt in some added reward for an increased difficulty setting. That could be implemented in infinite ways (thus the problem 'resources') but I could see that perhaps happening eventually. Ex. Bosses or Final Boss has some mechanics sped up or added. Or simply just give all the mobs a boost *shrug* or a puzzle etc..

They did this already with hard mode dungeons I gather but extending this train of thought would be welcomed.

I would not mind a hard/tough Stigma kupo that dungeon in my opinion (obviously lol) is much easier than The Dead Ends. Perhaps it was done on purpose?

<3 kupo

[Renalt]

Yes. Normal content is easy. It's a Single Player first and an MMO second. If people get roadblocked but the casual content they they can't progress period.

Harder content does exist if you want it and besides they are implementing harder modes for everything later on...so yeah.

[Zarkovitch]

The reason is design like that it because succesful. It show by facts how popular the game is right now.

[LittleImp]

The reason is design like that it because succesful. It show by facts how popular the game is right now.

This game actually isn't that popular though. Sure, it's grown a bit within its lane over the years, but people in the community seem to overestimate how big this games reach actually is.

This game has never even managed to achieve 1/5th of what was WoWs peak subscriber count. There are games out there that pull in more users in a single day than this game manages to pull in over a span of 3 months.

Retention on this game is always surprisingly low when a major influx of players is brought in by an external source. Their content model actually alienates a lot of potential players, with lack of difficulty, MSQ gating and slow combat pacing being extremely common complaints. In my personal experience, of all of the friends I've introduced this game to, only 1 actually made it out of ARR.

[Striker44]

This game actually isn't that popular though. Sure, it's grown a bit within its lane over the years, but people in the community seem to overestimate how big this games reach actually is.

This game has never even managed to achieve 1/5th of what was WoWs peak subscriber count. There are games out there that pull in more users in a single day than this game manages to pull in over a span of 3 months.

Retention on this game is always surprisingly low when a major influx of players is brought in by an external source. Their content model actually alienates a lot of potential players, with lack of difficulty, MSQ gating and slow combat pacing being extremely common complaints. In my personal experience, of all of the friends I've introduced this game to, only 1 actually made it out of ARR.

It is actually very popular right now, all things considered. This isn't the age of the MMO anymore like it was in the early 2000's. WoW achieved its amazing feat by creating a casual-friendly game at the perfect time the genre itself was peaking. Speaking frankly, you could design the literal perfect MMO right now and you still wouldn't come close to reaching WoW's peak, simply because you have an entire younger generation of gamers who have moved away from long-term MMO's and to the immediate gratification of the Mobile, MOBA, and FTP genres. In this day and age, an FTP w/ microtransactions on a mobile device is always going to get more players than a subscription-based MMO. That's just reality.

Given that environment, EW has been an enormous success. It blew away all previous xpacs, and even the late-patch troughs (which happen in *every* game in this genre) are still miles above the number of players during similar late-patch troughs in previous expansions. Take a trip around YT or even Reddit (of all places) and you'll see a massive amount of praise for EW.