If you continue to dumb down the game, you will lose half your player base

[DPZ2]

Not just making every class be so similar that the only difference is the weapon.

I suspect you might be happier with one of the Korean MMORPGs available. Of course, if you dislike gender-locking classes, it'll be difficult. But ... gameplay is absolutely guaranteed to be different for each class.

Um, Lost Ark, in this case, isn't really an MMORPG. It's a Diablo-style game, whatever that's called these days (Action-based?)

[RyuDragnier]

I suspect you might be happier with one of the Korean MMORPGs available. Of course, if you dislike gender-locking classes, it'll be difficult. But ... gameplay is absolutely guaranteed to be different for each class.

Um, Lost Ark, in this case, isn't really an MMORPG. It's a Diablo-style game, whatever that's called these days (Action-based?)

If there's any korean MMO I'd suggest for them, it'd probably be Dungeon Fighter Online (DFO). Lots of unique classes (sadly gender locked), but man is the gameplay fun. I only quit because the grind was getting to be a bit much for me.

[Souljacker]

FFXIV seems to be doing just fine. I gotta say, the latest changes have made me come back and level another character. I mean another character, on another server, not just another job. Thats one more sub they wouldn't have gotten if they had just rammed another super-twitchy ultimate through.

You know, not everyone has to cater to the hard core. Sometimes, those of us who want a fun experience will also drop some dollars on that. And that's okay. I don't begrudge you your experience.. but don't begrudge me mine.

Let your challenge be in the battles, not in the buttons.

[IdowhatIwant]

That argument still makes no sense, why should you put development time into something that is enjoyed by only a small fraction of the playerbase?

That fraction I would say is probably about 1/3 to 1/4 of the players enjoy the hard core content. That's a pretty hefty fraction. I think the big mistake many casual players are making is comparing savage raiding in FFXIV to Mythic raid in WoW where there was only about 2% - 5% participation. WoW mythic raiding is a niche thing, a lot of players do not want to do through the raid 4 different times on 4 different tiers of difficulty.

Just speaking from a economical standpoint here, i mean i would also like harder dungeons where healers have to actually heal and SE butchered my main job machinist more times than i can count but i try to see the things from a logical standpoint. SE wants to make investors and shareholders happy and putting effort into a really niche part of the playerbase might not be lucrative enough, that's why we see that they lean more towards casuals.

And i don't think that will ever change since it's a downward spiral. The game attracts with its current philosophy more casuals than hardcore raiders. As long as the players who really enjoy hard content are not getting overwhelming in numbers the game will continue to dumb down. Not the direction i would like but the numbers clearly speak for themselves, they have success with their methods and you can't deny that.

Focusing all effort into a niche part of the game attracts a niche demographic of gamers. If anything it would only hurt sales not improve them.
Imagine if you will, they revamp pvp again, to be a FPS, and it attracts lets say 5 million new active and consistent subscribers. Do you think the game would benefit from suddenly shifting focus to FPS and dropping things such as MSQ, or alliance raids simply because the players that prefer the FPS PvP is greater than the over all players that enjoy the MSQ.

In reality though your view point is highly skewed to cater the game to the way you want the game to be. Which is exactly what you are stating that the hard core end game players are doing. It's an example of the pot calling the kettle black.

[KizuyaKatogami]

FFXIV seems to be doing just fine. I gotta say, the latest changes have made me come back and level another character. I mean another character, on another server, not just another job. Thats one more sub they wouldn't have gotten if they had just rammed another super-twitchy ultimate through.

You know, not everyone has to cater to the hard core. Sometimes, those of us who want a fun experience will also drop some dollars on that. And that's okay. I don't begrudge you your experience.. but don't begrudge me mine.

Let your challenge be in the battles, not in the buttons.

Except for healers the buttons are supposed to be the challenge, because mechanic wise there isn’t much there. The mechanics for a healer are supposed to be healing but they aren’t so we’re left to press one button for 90% of a fight. There’s no defending it.

[Liam_Harper]

That argument still makes no sense, why should you put development time into something that is enjoyed by only a small fraction of the playerbase?

Because you need variety. Most games make a bulk of content for the average casual player, in our case it's MSQ, Normal raids, Alliance, Dungeons, Glamour and so on. Normally you'd then have a variety of niche content for different playstyles, PvP, crafting, gathering, harder combat, different classes and so on. This was the case in ff14, but more and more the developers are trying to take the niche content away from the enthusiasts and give it to the big crowd of average casual players on a plate so they have even more to do.

Let's say for example you have 100000 players who just like MSQ and Normal mode stuff. You then have 20000 hardcore raiders, 10000 crafters, 5000 PvP players, 5000 gatherers and 20000 who play jobs that are more complex and rewarding. You look at the numbers and all the other activities besides MSQ and easy content has a low participation rate. So you decide to rip that content away from the players who loved it, dumb it down and hand it to the casual crowd.

Now you have 100000 players who dabble in everything! Participation for everything has jumped! Looks great! ...Until you realize you still only have 100000 casual players, haven't really gained more and over time you're slowly starting to bleed the 60000 other players who were spread across various niche activities.
The casual players have short attention spans and never really liked PvP or crafting or such in the first place and you made the content fast to complete for them, so they get bored and play something else very quickly and are difficult to retain.

Casual players don't need niche content or classes sacrificed for them. They'll rarely quit just because they don't like the niche activities, they might complain occasionally, but generally they keep playing because they get the bulk of the content either way. All you do is shed the players who found various things to get really invested in. MSQ and Normal content isn't enough for them. Your participation rate may be through the roof, but your playerbase won't expand because of excess simplification.

[Pells]

...but your playerbase won't expand because of excess simplification.

Just how much expansion are you imagining is possible for these types of games? This isn't a new niche, and is probably already saturated. Infinite expansion just isn't a reasonable goal.

[anhaato]

FFXIV seems to be doing just fine. I gotta say, the latest changes have made me come back and level another character. I mean another character, on another server, not just another job. Thats one more sub they wouldn't have gotten if they had just rammed another super-twitchy ultimate through.

You know, not everyone has to cater to the hard core. Sometimes, those of us who want a fun experience will also drop some dollars on that. And that's okay. I don't begrudge you your experience.. but don't begrudge me mine.

Let your challenge be in the battles, not in the buttons.

No, I think I will begrudge you yours. People like you who combat requests for job complexity by reducing it to "muh buttons" are the reason every job is braindead. EVERY job. Every job at this point behaves similarly and has an extremely static rotation, or none at all. If they want to split jobs with some of them being more difficult than others then it'll still suck for those of us who want to actually think while we play, but it won't be THAT bad because then at least we have something for us. But right now, we don't, so it's no longer as simple as that. And your comment about the challenge being in the battles doesn't work the way you think it does. I will remind you that savage is something you only do once a week, meanwhile dailies are composed entirely of content that gets facerolled and is pure tedium for people who aren't challenged by """expert""" dungeons. Why should we "hardcore" players not have more repeatable content for us? It wouldn't detract from your content! The game wouldn't be truly dumbed down if they were simply expanding content options in both directions, the problem is that it's only going in the direction of casuals now.

If you're going to come in here and say "I know the game got more simple over time and it's no longer the game you enjoy, but I enjoy it so stop complaining" then you can't claim you "don't begrudge us our experience" that's not how it works. All you're doing is saying that we don't deserve to have content we enjoy as long as you can get yours, how is that not begrudging our experience?

[Larirawiel]

That argument still makes no sense, why should you put development time into something that is enjoyed by only a small fraction of the playerbase?

With this argument you could remove all jobs with four exceptions: tank, healer, range DPS, melee DPS. The jobs are useless when they do not vary and there are no differences between them.


Cheers

[Nizzi]

Let your challenge be in the battles, not in the buttons.

Cool, the "challenge" is in the battles now, but we can't make the casual content too hard, so the solution is to go play Savage/Ultimate then if you don't find spamming 1 button over and over in all content as a healer enjoyable, right?
Do you not see how this type of thinking is incredibly exclusionary towards everyone? I don't have the time to dedicate to doing Savage or Ultimate in this game anymore, nor do I particularly want to slam my head against a wall for hours a night trying to get a clear. Should I just not be allowed to enjoy any of the battle content in this game because I don't think spamming 1-1-1-1-1-2-1-1 is the pinnacle of job design?

If we give jobs more depth, people are able to have fun with them in all content. If you make them boring, you force people to have to treat this game like a second job to get enjoyment out of the battle content. Because it's casual content, you'll be able to "free style" and "play my way" while I'm able to try and get better at my job and we can still clear because casual content isn't designed around doing top DPS and minmaxing your job. Why shouldn't I be allowed to have ONE job in this game that appeals to me on the role that appeals to me and I consistently play in every other game? There is 0 justification for why every healer is as boring, repetitive, and poorly designed as every one in this game is. If the only fun comes "playing with bad players" or "doing the fights day 1 when nobody knows the mechanics" that is embarrassingly bad design that punishes me for not playing this game all the time or right as patches come out.

Let people be able to have fun with their jobs having depth instead of trying to force them into playing content they don't want to play. "Just play Ultimate" or "do Savage" is an awful and condescending thing to say to a player when this playerbase consistently swoons over how "casual friendly" this game supposedly is. I'm sorry I don't have the time to do anything but roulettes anymore. I guess I don't deserve to have fun with this game at all, right?