The difficulty curve in the game has... problems...

[Colt47]

The issue with the mod discussion is that really it is coming down to the fact that difficulty should be a player choice because historically it has been a player choice. Both the gameshark / game genie (remember that guy?) and the easy / normal / hard difficulty paradigm are different directions for adjusting difficulty of content in a game so that all rewards are achievable by players. So why would people not try to do the same for a game that is an MMO?

The problem with end game in MMOs is that they are mixing people who want the reward for the sake of completing a look or feel of a character with people that want to do end game for the achievement of completing difficult content. This is happening because they have a system that literally has zero ways to separate or define the two, so they end up in the same pool.

At the end of the day they need to be tighter with controls and options for end game content.

1) Gear should be level synched to the min level needed for the savage.
2) There should be an option for echo that groups can turn on and adjust, with higher level of echo reducing the rewards available from the run.
3) Pentamelded gear needs to be restricted from these runs because unfortunately, level sync does not work with materia and it mostly just creates a gil wall for newer players who want to break into the tier. Also it probably is a headache for even HC raiders since they got to pentameld / megacraft now out of necessity instead of wanting to do it.

Like if a group just wants to get the stuff done, or just wants to learn all the mechanics of the fight, yeah let them flip on echo.

[UkcsAlias]

This is absolutely false. Will and dedication is important but what is needed to get through content is will, dedication, and proper Leadership / teamwork.

And plain skill and reflexes. Being able to remember a lot of things is still a skill, and reflexes to identify things also is. And something that especialy at diffirent stuff is important (knowing the animations related to mechanics).

There is always a point at which you simply cannot perform the task anymore, and this is fine. Even in PvE content, you are not required to finish everything! Some things are made to be overly difficult. And often when it isnt, players make their own challenges: speedruns.

A streamer doesnt even have to complete such content, that is not necessarily the primary task, most streamers are only streamers to entertain. And entertainment can be done in several ways.

[QT_Melon]

No one in WF race gives a crap about a twitter post. They want all the publicity of an official event and none of the overhead or responsibility. None of this would be an issue if XIV wasn't stuck in 2013 UI design.

He stated before that he wanted to do more for World's First and now can't because of the add ons.

I'm not discussing the issue of whether or not the game needs add ons. There's multitude of threads on this and actually have not been against them. I'm looking at it from a promotional standpoint of a game that has raised a lot of popularity and how they have to take a stance of blatant disregard by streaming it or showing it publicly when it crosses over to a general audience.

[Ranaku]

I do like to train and overcome fights, but...

If someone wants to use third party tools, not just parsers, but also auto-combos and whatnot, why should I care ? I know, I know, SE does now, and that may be for the best, but why would you care about what other peoples are doing to get something they want ? The fights I overcame and the rewards I got do not get diminished by them.

Idk why you should care but just for example, why should other athletes care if the other competing athletes are on steroids and winning all the medals? I know that analogy doesn't work exactly since players here aren't competing directly against each other but it still devalues the achievement overall, for example when all players just buy their way through Ultimate it makes the status symbol of your weapon less worth it in the eyes of others. Yes for you that might not be a big problem cause you got your personal value out of the fight and the reward for yourself but others do want to show off what they achieved and furthermore this is what the devs envisioned. They didn't created Ultimate etc. so people can just cheat their way through it, it's just disrespectful. It's like someone building a fun maze for you and you just decide to go around it.

But i also think people have to differentiate between the different tools. I personally think damage meters are alright cause self improvement is important and lets be honest the training dummy doesn't deliver any data that is worth it. On the other hand tools that basically tell you what the boss is casting next or where you have to stand etc. is blatantly cheating. One tool is to prepare to play good and the other one is so you don't have to play the game basically.

[Colt47]

Idk why you should care but just for example, why should other athletes care if the other competing athletes are on steroids and winning all the medals? I know that analogy doesn't work exactly since players here aren't competing directly against each other but it still devalues the achievement overall, for example when all players just buy their way through Ultimate it makes the status symbol of your weapon less worth it in the eyes of others. Yes for you that might not be a big problem cause you got your personal value out of the fight and the reward for yourself but others do want to show off what they achieved and furthermore this is what the devs envisioned. They didn't created Ultimate etc. so people can just cheat their way through it, it's just disrespectful. It's like someone building a fun maze for you and you just decide to go around it.

But i also think people have to differentiate between the different tools. I personally think damage meters are alright cause self improvement is important and lets be honest the training dummy doesn't deliver any data that is worth it. On the other hand tools that basically tell you what the boss is casting next or where you have to stand etc. is blatantly cheating. One tool is to prepare to play good and the other one is so you don't have to play the game basically.

The problem is the line drawn between accessible content and rewards vs trophy worthy events. FFXIV end game design is not at all built to properly deal with trophy / achievement style rewards in a professional way. The difficulty curve has no customization to it that is accessible from the players own end, which is one of the major reasons that people end up making ways to make the content easier.

And there is zero reason to not have tighter control over difficulty curve in end game content. The idea of having a slow gear ramp up until the next content patch to make content easier is dated and lazy design. If someone wants to down the savage content with 15% echo on from day one because they want to complete the content and go do other content they are releasing because they lack the time to deal with min-iLvL and pentameld, they should have the option to do so with a group. And if this makes savage overall easier to complete all the better because right now the savage experience deteriorates into the floor after the first month for progression. People clear content and then go on to do reclear groups with other people that clear content. And with the new class designs there are a lot more people trying to clear savage now than there was even in Shadowbringers.

There is not a single person on this forum who can say with a strait face that they have a "fun and enjoyable time" doing PF after the first wave of prog is over and everyone is now stuck on something like p3s because of fight design. Not to mention this applies for statics that can't get in more than two days in a week.

I mean, level sync the gear in savage and let people have a difficulty slider via echo. Problem solved. If people want to achieve clearing at the min-ilvl, they can go back and do it after learning how the fight works so the field is actually fair.

[Amarande]

And there is zero reason to not have tighter control over difficulty curve in end game content. The idea of having a slow gear ramp up until the next content patch to make content easier is dated and lazy design. If someone wants to down the savage content with 15% echo on from day one because they want to complete the content and go do other content they are releasing because they lack the time to deal with min-iLvL and pentameld, they should have the option to do so with a group. And if this makes savage overall easier to complete all the better because right now the savage experience deteriorates into the floor after the first month for progression. People clear content and then go on to do reclear groups with other people that clear content. And with the new class designs there are a lot more people trying to clear savage now than there was even in Shadowbringers.

There is not a single person on this forum who can say with a strait face that they have a "fun and enjoyable time" doing PF after the first wave of prog is over and everyone is now stuck on something like p3s because of fight design. Not to mention this applies for statics that can't get in more than two days in a week.

Yep, something on these lines is probably it, in spades.

A big reason people use things like mods and other means in order to expedite content clearing is not only a matter of skill, but because the pace the community expects of players these days is insane. I mean, ABSOLUTELY INSANE. Back in the day when I was caught up to current endgame and did not have Tuesdays off work I could swear I've seen EX trials where even by the time I got home from work on patch day, PF was dominated by Duty Complete Farm. (I should note at this juncture that XIV players are even more rigid about bending on experience demands in PUGs than WoW players are, despite all the complaints about WoW being "exclusive" ...)

Fall behind the vanguard and you might as well wait till next tier or even next XPAC (and then be basically forced to settle for unsynced).

So much this on statics too. For reasons I'm still trying to wrap around, XIV statics seem to depend on an inordinate amount of days per week to be considered viable, even though the tiers are ostensibly much shorter here ... WoW guilds routinely got away with a couple nights a week and would get to Ahead of the Curve or even Cutting Edge in a tier, meanwhile ...

On another point brought up, people feel they "need" do Savage because it can impact other content they might want to do. EX, especially (many people aren't really raiders but they'd love to do EX - which seems intended as casual-mid endgame? - for the mounts and pretty weapons) - while it's nowhere near as awful as the gear situation in WoW, I will often especially see odd patch launch days where you need (CAP - 5) ilvl to join a large percentage of the PFs for the new EX, meaning you HAVE to have Savage on farm to be that geared that soon ... and then that ties in with the "rush or dust" mentality the community seems to, again, adopt for anything at all difficult in this game (Baldesion Arsenal seems to have been the main exception honestly).

[Colt47]

Yep, something on these lines is probably it, in spades.

A big reason people use things like mods and other means in order to expedite content clearing is not only a matter of skill, but because the pace the community expects of players these days is insane. I mean, ABSOLUTELY INSANE. Back in the day when I was caught up to current endgame and did not have Tuesdays off work I could swear I've seen EX trials where even by the time I got home from work on patch day, PF was dominated by Duty Complete Farm. (I should note at this juncture that XIV players are even more rigid about bending on experience demands in PUGs than WoW players are, despite all the complaints about WoW being "exclusive" ...)

Fall behind the vanguard and you might as well wait till next tier or even next XPAC (and then be basically forced to settle for unsynced).

So much this on statics too. For reasons I'm still trying to wrap around, XIV statics seem to depend on an inordinate amount of days per week to be considered viable, even though the tiers are ostensibly much shorter here ... WoW guilds routinely got away with a couple nights a week and would get to Ahead of the Curve or even Cutting Edge in a tier, meanwhile ...

On another point brought up, people feel they "need" do Savage because it can impact other content they might want to do. EX, especially (many people aren't really raiders but they'd love to do EX - which seems intended as casual-mid endgame? - for the mounts and pretty weapons) - while it's nowhere near as awful as the gear situation in WoW, I will often especially see odd patch launch days where you need (CAP - 5) ilvl to join a large percentage of the PFs for the new EX, meaning you HAVE to have Savage on farm to be that geared that soon ... and then that ties in with the "rush or dust" mentality the community seems to, again, adopt for anything at all difficult in this game (Baldesion Arsenal seems to have been the main exception honestly).

Oh it's bad for people who lead statics as well. There is something to be said that people have to find the right pace and group for themselves to be happy, but there's also the factor of finding people who are available. After trying out the two days a week thing it became obvious that the longer someone has to spend clearing content, the more effort that is needed by the leader to keep the group running. It really does take a toll on folks and it's why so many people prefer blitzing content over steady progress.

[kizumiayamame]

What's the difficulty in this game exactly?

[Packetdancer]

Would I like some improvements? Absolutely. I could not make my debuff button big enough when I was progging P1S. I'm on a friggin 2K monitor and even the largest debuff bar setting is about half the size of what I would like. I had to learn to stare at the spot where I moved it for Fourfold Chains as the cast went off so I would know immediately where to run. It just took a bit more practice.

I swear, no UI change I've made in this game has done more to ease annoyance in savage raiding for me than breaking my buff/debuff bar into Buffs, Debuffs, and Persistent Status. (No mod required for this, just mucking around deep enough in the normal HUD layout tools.) I leave persistent state -- FC buffs, food buffs, etc. -- down at the bottom of the screen, and then stacked buffs and debuffs on top of each other directly above the party list, and made them a bit larger. It was E12S phase 2's Relativity mechanics that drove me to do it, but I've never regretted it since; it's been nice to have this tier as well, both back in P1S and for P4S phase 2 Curtain Call timers.

ANYWAY... I have little use for mods that tell me how to play the game (as it seems you also feel). I have a great deal of hypothetical use for mods that make the UI a little less dumb about things. (Look, I have opinions on UX. They are sometimes very strongly held opinions.)

If I have the boss as a focus target, I don't need to see the first like... 5 buffs/debuffs from everyone, I'd probably like to see just the ones I put there. I likely don't care about how long is left on the SAM's Higanbana if I'm the healer... but I might about my own Dia or Eukrasian Dosis. Yes, you can tell the game to only show the things you applied on the main target, but I actually do want things there, so that -- for instance -- I can see when the NIN has Mugged the target even if I'm not the NIN. Or see which Condensed Libra another BLU has applied if I'm doing BLU duties. Etc.

(While on the subject of the target UI, I would also like a way to highlight which buffs or debuffs are mine on a target while showing the rest. But that's really more a nice-to-have in like alliance raids or something, where you wonder "Is one of those two Higanbana mine? We do have four SAMs in here...")

The party list can get really crowded with buffs/debuffs, especially in some fights. I probably don't care whether the RDM is Verfire Ready, nor do I care if the BLM's got Thundercloud for their next Thunder spell. Conversely, as a healer, I might want to see whether the Regen I put on the tank is still there. Or whether or not everyone in the party actually got that Kerachole or Medica II which I tossed out there. Wouldn't it be nice to have a list of "unless this buff is mine, I don't care whether it's there or not" status effects which just get omitted from the party list, so that the ones you do care about don't potentially get pushed off the side and vanish? I sure think so!

Is it dumb that you can only store five waymark presets for all the instances in the game? It absolutely is, considering the waymark presets are stored client-side rather than on the server! And you can only use a preset in the instance it goes with, so why can't I have several sets? I'd sure like for those five marker presets to be duty-specific, or to be able to swap them in and out! Or something so that, for instance, I can have waymarks for the current raid tier and for all the current extreme trials; I love to help folks in my FC who want to try things for the first time, but it's really annoying if I no longer have marks for, say, Zodiark EX because I didn't have space!

(I'll concede that the waymarks are backed up to the server when you manually archive your settings, so if someone had 11 billion waymarks that could actually be a problem for servers. But if it only backed up your current five while also letting you swap those five in and out for others you had saved locally, even just that would still be a massive improvement.)

I'd really, really love it if I had a "Greed All" or "Pass All" button in loot windows. I'd love it even more if I could tickybox a thing that said "Apply to all loot for this duty." before clicking one of those, so that I could tickybox it at the beginning of Stone Vigil or Dzemael Darkhold and click "Pass All" and then just ignore loot for the rest of that dungeon run. Because the chances I actually want something from Halatali or Haukke Manor when all my jobs are at level 80+ are pretty close to absolute zero, let me tell you!

Etc.

None of those are meaningful changes in terms of actual gameplay mechanics; they're just QoL changes that make existing UX better. (Or at least, give options for behavior I think is better.) I can't speak for anyone else, but that -- UX improvements for QoL -- is honestly all that I'd use mods for, and if there were mods that gave me those specific UX tweaks... then I'd be really dang tempted to look at mods.

So as much as I think the current fuss over UI modifications is kinda overblown, I'm choosing to take SQEX's statement that they're going to look at popular UI modifications and maybe add them to the game as a net positive, because -- as someone who plays on both PC and Playstation 5 -- I would really like it if I could have those sort of improvements natively in the game, and thus available on both platforms (and without having to ponder breaking ToS to get them).

[Colt47]

What's the difficulty in this game exactly?

Well, if you envision a strait line that slightly goes up when you level up through the MSQ and then starts quickly accelerating at max level into the sky, that's what the curve looks like. It's not normally like this when they start a new expansion, but when they start ramping gear at end game the challenges of normal content, if any, become way smaller. Unreal -> Extreme Trial -> Savage -> Ultimates is sort of the end game curve, but practically speaking most people just skip the unreal and extreme trials to go do savage and consider those other two things as side content. At least for the people who are seeking the challenging content.