the normal content is too easy

[WildTamarind]

Theres a few talkings points i want to address. Pardon my grammar and spelling but im typing this in what little down time i have at work.

1) the idea that the low difficulty is by design for the sake of accesability. This is flat out not true. Its a side effect of Shb redesign of the holy trinity, tanking, healer and dps. Accessibility is a great thing and I like that this company takes the effort to do that but trusts are the best approach for that because its easier unless you get a group that carries you in multiplayer. It also allows you to learn at your own pace.

2) the idea that the game didnt become easier we as a player base just got better after 10 years of playing the game. This may be true but I have two friends of comparable skill one played before Shb and the other after. Pre-shb friend did Ifrit Normal and was like "man that felt like a real boss from like a single player game. I want to queue again." Mind you we didnt wipe. We cleared it pretty easy. But the spectacle of it was awesome. Second friend post-shb did Ifrit normal and was like "Thats it? That was stupid. Very dissapointing." And it was because we destroyed him super fast. Im sorry but no amount of increase in player skill can account to that. Thats straight up raw damage increase from Shb. And I like the Shb change. It always bothered me that melee classes would purposely nerf their damage. But this great buff came at the cost of the lower level enjoyment.

3) that the current system is working for them. Its not. What do we know? We know that the hype for this game that lead to such a large increase was streamer hype and story hype from Endwalker being the finale to the story. Gameplay hype was minimal. We also know that people quit this game at ARR both because tue story takes a while to kick in but also because the gameplay is boring.

Im actualy okay with ARR being a bit boring. Weed out the impatient. I love that in this game people have the patience to withstand wiping. In WoW imediately after a wipe people leave sometimes followed with the classic "uninstal the game and kill yourself". But of course im asking for a difficulty curve so ARR can be biring but ramps up slightly harder at HW and SB. It helps keep the game interesting.

4) the idea that hardcore players are being rude and inconsiderate regarding players who do find the game hard. This may also be true but again, a proper difficulty curve actualy helps those players.

Thise of us who like harder content should be mindful of those who this game might be their first mmo or hell even their first game period. But also also those who want to keep the games current extremely easy difficulty may want to consider that perhaps you are not helping these players succeed. Anybody can improve on tue game and with the right systems we can make it easier for those who striggle with harder difficulty actually achieve competency to overcome that difficulty.

[Ronduwil]

I mean, besides the fact that Yoshi P himself stated that the dungeons have been streamlined? Let’s compare jobs from HW to SB to ShB and now to EW. You can see the gradual downward trend of them being streamlined and simplified. Then look at the loss of a number of dungeons, and yoshi p going on record saying he wanted dungeons to be streamlined in EW. Now we get to EW and we have constant forced single pulls in nearly if not every single dungeon. It’s not hard to see it’s gotten streamlined over the years and especially in EW. I mean we can even just look at healers, where they lost all multiple dots and dps spells.

I get it now, and I agree with you. That having been said, I think SE was just going with the flow on this one. Players prefer streamlined dungeons. That's why the meta is to pull wall to wall. While I prefer exploratory instances, no one runs them that way. When was the last time you saw a tank clearing all the rooms in Satasha? I honestly queued unsynced for that dungeon just so I could see what it had to offer besides the straight path that everyone takes. While I don't like the current dungeon design, I understand it. Players want wall to wall pulls, and SE delivered with halls and walls. At this rate, they'll eventually do away with dungeons and turn everything into a trial because that's effectively how players want to run dungeons now: Pull all the packs to the wall and take them down in seconds before unlocking the boss fight, where all the time is being spent.

I mean this can go both ways. I could ask where is the simplification and streamlining going to end? The fact is it hasnt, its gotten worse and worse each expansion, and somehow this is okay.

Yeah, I think that's a completely separate issue from the streamlining that you pointed out. Streamlining didn't lower the challenge; it just made it easier for players to do wall to wall pulling, which seems to be what the overwhelming majority of high level players prefer. One thing I like about the leveling roulette is that I periodically queue into low level instances where the tanks have not yet been trained to run through the dungeon at breakneck speed without ever stopping unless they're forced to do so. I don't think those runs are any more challenging than the later streamlined instances.

[Ronduwil]

Here we have a patch intended to last us four months and unless you're attempting Dragonsong, none of that content will take more than a week. Even if you casually farmed Endsinger, it would still only take a few weeks. Everything else is one and done story content. Which is far from a bad thing. In fact, I welcome it. However, once you've completed each quest, there's nothing else. So we're taking breaks for 2-3 months at a time. I don't necessarily want FFXIV to demand my attention every waking second like some MMOs do but I'd like to more than a week's worth of content. It continues to baffle me why they delay the relic for so damn long when it's the ideal grind content to keep people occupied. Granted, longevity as a whole has been something FFXIV struggles with badly.

The patch is not intended to last month four months. There's a widely referenced Yoshi-P Q&A where a player asked how he was expected to keep his motivation up between content droughts. Yoshi-P's reponse was to play another game for a couple of months and then come back to FFXIV for the next content drop. SE isn't Blizzard. They don't introduce a bunch of busy work into the game to artificially extend its longevity. Once you've exhausted the content, you're encouraged to do something else and come back later. I personally think it's better that way.

[TaleraRistain]

The issue with this design philosophy is they simply don't make enough content to sustain it. Look at the upcoming 6.1. Here we have a patch intended to last us four months and unless you're attempting Dragonsong, none of that content will take more than a week. Even if you casually farmed Endsinger, it would still only take a few weeks. Everything else is one and done story content. Which is far from a bad thing. In fact, I welcome it. However, once you've completed each quest, there's nothing else. So we're taking breaks for 2-3 months at a time. I don't necessarily want FFXIV to demand my attention every waking second like some MMOs do but I'd like to more than a week's worth of content. It continues to baffle me why they delay the relic for so damn long when it's the ideal grind content to keep people occupied. Granted, longevity as a whole has been something FFXIV struggles with badly.

It's not intended to last 4 months. It's the content we're getting and then four months later we'll get more. We can make it last a week or whatever amount of time we want. There are players in this game who could make that content last the entire time. I'm not one of them. I tend to be a content piranha for what I enjoy. Then I go back to an old goal or whatever.

We also don't have all the details about the longevity of all planned content. We don't know that the Omega series or Tataru's line won't be intended to provide some sort of reward we work toward. And they're making changes to try to make PvP rewards more accessible. That's never been my content but it's still content for players. And some players finish relic steps on what, day one, day two? There is absolutely no way SE could ever make enough content for players who consume it like that. And their design has never been to do so. We partake of what we want. We find goals or rewards we want to work towards. And sometimes we take a break here and there or spend some nights on something else.

[Thorio]

It boils down to if the majority finds it fun or not, if you make normal content require pinpoint precision or it's over you'll surely appeal to the hardcore crowd, at the cost of the game becoming unsustainable in the long run because those kind of players are the minority.

[Deveryn]

I get it now, and I agree with you. That having been said, I think SE was just going with the flow on this one. Players prefer streamlined dungeons. That's why the meta is to pull wall to wall. While I prefer exploratory instances, no one runs them that way. When was the last time you saw a tank clearing all the rooms in Satasha? I honestly queued unsynced for that dungeon just so I could see what it had to offer besides the straight path that everyone takes. While I don't like the current dungeon design, I understand it. Players want wall to wall pulls, and SE delivered with halls and walls. At this rate, they'll eventually do away with dungeons and turn everything into a trial because that's effectively how players want to run dungeons now: Pull all the packs to the wall and take them down in seconds before unlocking the boss fight, where all the time is being spent.


Yeah, I think that's a completely separate issue from the streamlining that you pointed out. Streamlining didn't lower the challenge; it just made it easier for players to do wall to wall pulling, which seems to be what the overwhelming majority of high level players prefer. One thing I like about the leveling roulette is that I periodically queue into low level instances where the tanks have not yet been trained to run through the dungeon at breakneck speed without ever stopping unless they're forced to do so. I don't think those runs are any more challenging than the later streamlined instances.

The streamlining is all about time spent doing each piece of content. I come from the days when raiding meant spending hours on trash to maybe get to fight a boss, so when my friends who went through the same experience told me about XIV and how it had improved, I was very happy. We still catch glimpses of those days in places like Bozja and Eureka, but overall it's very satisfying to go through more segmented content than try to burn through it all in a day. The game feels less like a job, which is great when you have a real one. I disagree with the idea that the game is getting too easy. I think some just miss those bigger time investments.

[Nekokaori]

in the snow and the fight with zeno's was the only hard part of the game *chuckles* 2 stupid fun msq harder and more fun than 99% of the game

[LeonKeyh]

I think that the real issue is "Difficulty curve is too flat." or "Synced Content is made irrelevant." I don't think that anyone would disagree that it would be nice to have synced content closer to the way it was intended, where you actually have to do mechanisms and can't just face roll through it. Something that is even a little bit engaging.

[Xirean]

I think that the real issue is "Difficulty curve is too flat." or "Synced Content is made irrelevant." I don't think that anyone would disagree that it would be nice to have synced content closer to the way it was intended, where you actually have to do mechanisms and can't just face roll through it. Something that is even a little bit engaging.

I don't much care for the difficulty curve arguments, but I'd be 100% on board with item level sync being stricter.

[TaleraRistain]

I think that the real issue is "Difficulty curve is too flat." or "Synced Content is made irrelevant." I don't think that anyone would disagree that it would be nice to have synced content closer to the way it was intended, where you actually have to do mechanisms and can't just face roll through it. Something that is even a little bit engaging.

Even this is by design, though. We're not face rolling those things when they drop in the ilevel available. Things get easier over time because ilevel increases. But this is necessary. Take something like Shinryu. That was a pretty big bottleneck on drop. I know it took me a couple of PUGs to get it. My first group just ran out of time. It was rough on healers in the gear available. I finished it, got my gear, then ran it constantly to learn it and to be a solid healer helping people get through. At first, I saw people drop constantly when they got it. But over time we stopped seeing that as more made it through, got the gear, found it easier after that, groups wiped less, and people stayed. If our ilevel didn't allow things to get easier over time, we'd remain stuck on these bottlenecks and players would either leave or call for nerfs. There were calls for nerfs on Shinryu that eventually died out as more people were able to get through. It's not a perfect system, but it is functional for the intention.