MSQ Difficulty and Exclusion

[aveyond-dreams]

I do think that nowadays the difficulty of the MSQ has been significantly reduced due to a number of factors, but this hasn’t always been to the benefit of the player experience. Fundamentally, video games should provide logical and increasing challenges as time goes on in the main campaign. In single player titles these challenges can be reduced via difficulty options, which in FFXIV’s case would be the use of Duty Support/Trusts whose AI behavior provides clues about how to handle certain boss mechanics, or the difficulty options that appear after one fails an instanced battle.

Lately however it feels that main story content just isn’t really at the level where it used to be, and there are very little ways in which the player’s combat skill is checked and assessed in ways not reliant on team gameplay. This has the effect of widening the gap between players who are ready for more difficult content like EX or Savages and those who are not. At the end of the day I think it would be more beneficial to increase the difficulty of MSQ battle content (dungeons, trials, instanced battles) in order to provide an experience that leans less toward the easy side and more of a well-rounded approach. While some players may feel left behind by such a decision, I do think it would be in the interest of the majority to try and find a better balance than what we’ve been seeing nowadays.


If I had to provide specific examples, I think the difficulty and mechanics of the following fights are good examples of what we should see in the main story:

• Titania
• All 3 NieR raids
• All 3 Ivalice raids
• Delubrum Reginae


And these are ones whose difficulty I do not feel was appropriate for the level at which the encounters take place:

• Tower of Babil
• The level 87 and 89 dungeons
• The level 83 Trial
• The level 90 Trial

[Atelier-Bagur]

Difficulty is sorta subjective here. I'll be honest the most fun I had in terms of balanced difficulty in EW msq was Tower of Zot and the last fight with the Magus Sisters where they all combine their big attacks to you. It wasn't necessarily difficult but you wound up moving around and dodging a lot which at least to me kept the pace of the fight very active.

I was a tad disappointed the further story fights weren't as engaging as that but still enjoyed most of the dungeons and bosses regardless anyway.

[HanWenqing]

better add all the dungeons, all the dungeons are very casual the only memory of failure that I have in mind is in the dungeon with the boss pampa who asked you to follow a strategy or wipe and since 99.99% of the players only know how to press the attack button...

It's like with the missions in GTA 5 when the objective is not to just kill everything that moves it becomes impossible for players to finish the mission

[Bsrking5]

It'll never grow over time and will always be a pushover since jump pots exist. You can't make sprouts first dungeons require any functioning brain cells.

[DPZ2]

I do think that nowadays the difficulty of the MSQ has been significantly reduced due to a number of factors, but this hasn’t always been to the benefit of the player experience. Fundamentally, video games should provide logical and increasing challenges as time goes on in the main campaign.

The primary problem I see with your argument, and the examples of what 'main story' combat should be like, is that, while single-player games can afford to be as difficult as possible from the start, working their way down in difficulty via 'cheats' or 'easy modes' for the player, MMORPGs cannot.

The primary goal of an MMORPG is player retention.

MMORPGs do provide increasing challenges to players over time, even in the main campaign. I certainly found that to be so while playing this game across nearly 8 years.

A problem rises, however, when players who are used to the so-called 'difficult' single-user video games are disappointed in the level of challenge in an MMORPG.

In this game, there is both Savage and Ultimate mode (and whatever level of challenge can be found in Criterion dungeon instances). If they are not "hard" enough to satisfy your tastes, it is far better to either accept the fact that this game will never be as hard as one of the single-player games you enjoy or look for an MMORPG (or single-player game) that will satisfy.

Unlike a number of single-player games, this main story is designed to be completed, not to thwart players attempts at success.

While some players may feel left behind by such a decision, I do think it would be in the interest of the majority to try and find a better balance than what we’ve been seeing nowadays.

You appear to be extremely confident that a majority of players would stick around if main story encounters reached Normal-mode 8-person Raid (or higher) levels of difficulty.

The bottom line for the company is to keep those players who "may feel left behind" subscribed. The difficulty of the main story line is geared to that retention. You may not like it, but companies depend on players with multiple levels of video game experience.

Since this seems to be the first MMO for a large number of those players, one would be foolish to ignore the possibility that "harder story line = fewer subscribers = lower income".

I can guarantee that "harder story line = more subscribers = higher income" is not a possibility in the video game MMORPG industry, or someone would have done exactly that at some point in the last two decades. [Rest in Peace, Wildstar].

[Deveryn]

Things used to be more difficult. It can be argued that they were needlessly so. You have things like inconsistencies in markers which don't help matters. There are still tank busters with little or no warning. As they work to make things more consistent and allow people to have time to respond, things might seem to be getting easier. Not everyone is able to play as much and learn as much as others. I pick up on things pretty quickly, but if I go to explain it to some people, it might take a few tries til they see what's going on. Sometimes it's my fault.

The primary problem I see with your argument, and the examples of what 'main story' combat should be like, is that, while single-player games can afford to be as difficult as possible from the start, working their way down in difficulty via 'cheats' or 'easy modes' for the player, MMORPGs cannot.

Mods like ACT are a thing though. If people stopped using them, content would be difficult again and they would actually have to put some effort and thought into their clears. It's quite ironic when folks like this pat themselves on the back for clearing this and that and then try to fault others that don't use cheats, but instead try to remember everything and adjust to situations. If I could always see the cooldowns for the boss or get audio cues for what to do, I'd probably get bored too.

[Kamatsu]

Since this seems to be the first MMO for a large number of those players, one would be foolish to ignore the possibility that "harder story line = fewer subscribers = lower income".

I can guarantee that "harder story line = more subscribers = higher income" is not a possibility in the video game MMORPG industry, or someone would have done exactly that at some point in the last two decades. [Rest in Peace, Wildstar].

Another example of this is what happened in Guild Wars 2 with their 1st expansion "Heart of Thorns" Many players on the official forums decried how easy the base game was and wanted the game to be harder, more group focused, erc... and made the same claims as you see in these kinds of threads - that making the game harder would motivate ppl to get better, that it would make the game more enjoyable to more ppl, that it would bring in more $$$, etc. ANet listened and made the HoT expansion exactly that - way harder, locked character & MSQ progression behind either super hard solo stuff or group-only events, etc.

The result being Guild Wars lost a huge chunk of it's player base, and ANet had it's biggest ever, 6-month loss in revenue. Things were so bad for ANet that they had to make public apologies, nerfed the content hard, changed most of the group-only content to stuff that could be solo'ed, changed character progression & MSQ stuff from super hard to hard, etc just to stop the player bleed and stay in business (had it kept going, they'd likely have ended up shut down by NCSoft within the next 6 months, that's how bad it was looking for them).1

Fact is, the vast majority of MMO players are not the Savage, extreme, ultimate, etc players. They are ppl who just want to sit down and relax after a hard day/week at work... who don't want to have to have stress trying to get through a video game. If they hit a brick wall, most will try once or twice... and if they can't get past, they will quit and go elsewhere. This has been shown and proven to be the case so much over the years, and yet we still have ppl tryign to push for non 'opt in' difficulty changes forced on everyone./.. as if this this it will go a different way than every other time in in the past.

I really wish these ppl would push for more optional & opt-in difficulty, rather than trying to force it on other's who are not interested in it. Optional like a setting that sets the MSQ solo duties at a higher-than-normal setting... as SE has shown these can be scaled from 'normal' to 'very easy', so why not also scale the difficulty upwards as well for those who want it? Or add in a DR for 'forced min ILVL" for those who want to do dungeons/trials/raids aat a harder state with like-minded ppl - sure it might not queue as quickly as normal DR, but at least you'll be getting your optional harder content.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

I want you to realize something: think about how bad the average player you meet in the DF is, and then realize that half of them are somehow even worse than that by the law of averages.

It's a simple reality, but there is a substantial chunk of this playerbase that plays purely for the story, who's 'savage' equivalent for their personal difficulty perception is one of the easier 24man raids; a sizeable chunk that plays the game because they don't want to be challenged, to simply lay back and enjoy some relaxed, casual content for some tomes and have fun with friends. With a game that has content and future story locked behind MSQ content, it's an important goal in its design that anyone, regardless of their skill, can be brought to the finish line, whether through being carried by other players, or given 100% echo to trivialize instances. Otherwise, that player, who mind you, might be a massive whale on the mogstation and might pay 50x you ever will on your sub in mogstation items and thus has more intrinsic value to Square as a customer than you do, will find another game.

Asking for MSQ to be harder is the literal antithesis to what Square wants. The MSQ has to be so easy anyone can get through it no matter what, so all the instances tied to it have to be easy. Otherwise, you get stuff like Final Steps of Faith/Royal Menagrie where those people are calling for nerfs because they're getting hardwalled and simply waiting until they can find a group that can carry them, or they just leave the game entirely. Not even old content is exempt from this either, even during the game's "glory days" as many like to remember, the original Steps of Faith was so unforgiving compared to any DF content before it the devs had to literally nerf the content so hard, because asking for people to have basic teamwork and know the bare rotation is too tall an order. Even Yoshi-P has said they prefer larger scale group content since it allows the skilled few of the party to more easily carry the many bads.

There's also the fact that due to jump potions existing, every expansion has to be a casual 'jump in' point that can ease these low-skilled players in. Making later content harder and saying 'screw the jumpers, let them trial by fire for purchasing it' is how you get a stale, aging playerbase with little lifeblood coming in, and Square knows that all too well.

Putting a mandatory, difficult challenge in front of these players will not make them get better. For many of them who play video games to relax and not have to deal with a challenge, it will make them give up and find something else. It's a blunt truth many people in favor of making stuff harder like to pretend otherwise. This has been a point discussed well over half a decade now, and the devs have ignored it or simply gave evidence to the contrary; your energy is better spent asking for optional difficult stuff to be added to the game, not trying to force mandatory content to become more difficult that will alienate a sizeable chunk of the playerbase.

Also I dunno what experience you had with the 83 trial; but that place is ridiculously wipeapalooza to the point I stopped queueing trial roulette when >= 83. it places so much difficulty on the healers due to how ruthless that stack marker is when <8 people from people dying to everything imaginable in that fight that if your group doesn't have good ones, you're basically guaranteed to have to wipe at least once or twice to get some echo.

[Illmaeran]

Otherwise, you get stuff like Final Steps of Faith/Royal Menagrie where those people are calling for nerfs because they're getting hardwalled and simply waiting until they can find a group that can carry them, or they just leave the game entirely.

This describes me. A couple of days before Stormblood released I was diagnosed with a very serious illness and started extremely aggressive treatment. That treatment led to significant reduction in both my physical and mental reflexes, making the solo duty in Azim Steppe undoable, no matter how many times I tried on Very Easy. It was so frustrating to get hard walled on an MSQ point that I left and didn't come back until just before Endwalker. Thankfully, over time my situation's improved, but I'm never going to have the reflexes or processing speed I did pre-treatment. Some of the EW MSQ dungeons/trials were very challenging for me; a couple to the point where I had to put them on the back burner until I could get friends to help me through them.

There are people in my FC who are retired and max out at MSQ/DF difficulty and, like me, at times have needed help getting through fights like the three sisters. People like us absolutely do exist in the player base and absolutely do appreciate the lower difficulty of MSQ compared to things like Savage and Ultimate. No content required by the MSQ should be so difficult that it limits any player's ability to get through it. Likewise, anything that winds up on the general DF/Roulette list should be doable by all players. The exception I grant to this are alliance raids that need to be unlocked. I know my limits and have specifically left things like Eden and Omega locked to keep from getting them in DF. If Ivalice wasn't required for Bozja, I'd have left that locked too.

Increasing challenge should only come as optional content. I firmly believe this game needs this challenging content to meet the desires of the portion of the player base who seek it out; it's only fair that paying customers have that at their disposal. I hope the Criterion dungeons help fill the gap between DF-level challenge and Savage; that's another area the game needs to address.

As one of the previous posters mentioned, MMOs are a massive investment and depend on player retention to remain viable. In order to accomplish this, content needs to be as accessible to as many people as possible. This means they can't reach the difficulty of single player games or those MMOs focused on high-end raiding, ala Wildstar and current WoW without risking losing a significant portion of their player base. The vast majority of people I play with are looking for a fun time playing through casual content with friends in a good social atmosphere. We are the bread and butter of the MMO community that any MMO developer needs to design for in order to maximize their customer base. We're also the group of people a contingent of the people here on the OF call "actively bad". In all my years of playing this game I've never met anyone who's intentionally played poorly. They may only want to play the game at DF difficulty, but none of them have ever actively expressed that they only want to hit a basic combo and forget everything else in their skill kit.

It is a balancing act though. As ramp it up to much and engagement becomes frustration and drives players away just as quickly as setting the bar to low does..

This happened in Heavensward. Players during original ARR asked for more difficulty and SE provided. However, the response from the larger portion of the player base was that it was too difficult so SE tuned it downward. Every adjustment toward being more easy is a response to the majority of input SE receive. They're not doing it in a vacuum and would be foolish to make arbitrary changes without referencing player input to see where the largest portion of their customers lay.

I believe we're now at the point where SE are looking to increase the offerings of optional, more difficult, content while keeping MSQ and general dungeons/trials at the point the majority of the community are seeking.

[Kuroka]

Lately however it feels that main story content just isn’t really at the level where it used to be, and there are very little ways in which the player’s combat skill is checked and assessed in ways not reliant on team gameplay.

Idk if we just got too good, partially its surely the fact that you end up with an rdm on most 8 man content and jobs just got more toys to survive etc....

But overall yes, it become too easy unless you end up with ppl which literally have 0 idea of what they're doing...

Edit:

Lool hi once more my long lost sis :3