MSQ Difficulty and Exclusion

[hagare]

Of course. It has to be loud, doesnt it?

what if you get a mute guest?

[Amenara]

I think my biggest disappointment was how much fun I had with Tower of Zot (Specifically the trash pulls being akin to Holminster Switch and the last boss fight) and then going through the rest of the MSQ dungeons and being disappointed at the drop off in fun. It was all a big bait and switch and kind of annoyed me until I got to Dead Ends which was fun again because of punishing mechanics. You mentioned Titania and I remember how it took a couple of different groups through the roulette to finally clear it back when ShB launched and thinking about how difficult it was vs the Zodiark fight and clearing it in a couple of pulls in one group. I think one of the worst parts of encounter design in EW is that the difficulty curve is like an inverted bell curve with the level 81 and 90 dungeon being the hardest points and everything in between being pretty simple comparatively. I do remember that Holminster Switch in ShB was the hardest dungeon because of the trash pulls but even then, the rest of the dungeons still felt difficult at the time, especially compared to the EW dungeons.

As for what I think it should look like. I do agree that the difficulty curve should ramp up as you go through the MSQ of an expansion and think that the difficulty of Zot and Dead Ends would have been good for the 89 and 90 dungeons and the difficulty of Hydaelyn would have been good for the 90 boss, but I also think that the level cap dungeons should be of the same difficulty as a Dead Ends instead of being brain dead easy comparative to it. I am all for having the MSQ be used as a way to encourage players to improve as they continue through it. That being said, if you just want to steamroll through story mode MSQ, soon enough all of it will be able to be done with trusts so that option will exist.

[technole]

Considering you can do all the EW dungeons with trusts, along with Venat's trial it's about as mute as it gets. I did that trial with trusts because I didn't want to wait but also it was cool to experience 8/8 scripted people who actually know their roles and won't give me unnecessary drama. They always bring the stack marker to the center, whereas some random DF will run away somewhere lol. If anything some players can learn a bit from the Scions.

Zodiark I liked being forced to group up, you can tell who doesn't own a waffle presser right away and that's good comedy.

[Jojoya]

The question I ask is, who determines the skill cap for the MSQ?

The development team, of course. They can see actual player performance. They can tell at what point increasing numbers of players start having trouble progressing.

All we have as players is anecdotal evidence of what the player base as a whole is capable of, and it's natural for us to tend to end up surrounded by others of roughly the same skill level.

Leave it to the developers to make the decision if difficulty should be increased. They know what their goals are for the game and what they want the base difficulty to be.

[Packetdancer]

I feel like we already have a good bridge with the quality video guides that are out there. Unfortunately, people don't want to do a little studying beforehand.

While I'm not one of those who thinks the MSQ content needs to be made harder, I disagree that video guides are a sufficient stepping stone between the content we have and the higher-end content.

Yes, video guides and Toolboxes and such are great at explaining how mechanics work, though many people -- and I include myself in this -- only really fully grasp the mechanic after we've seen it in play for ourselves. (Having watched a video beforehand or run through a Toolbox for a strat certainly makes it click a lost faster, though.)

But I know a lot of people who will watch a video and understand the mechanic, but still have trouble executing it. Maybe it's because they can't figure out how to keep casting while also doing a mechanic. Maybe it's because they aren't used to watching for environmental cues as opposed to ground telegraphs. ("Okay, this is counter-clockwise, jumpy knight's at A, where are the eye and Thordan...") Maybe it's because they're used to being able to focus on one mechanic at a time, not needing to remember things where you have paired mechanics like "okay, this time was In and then Spread, so the next time this mechanic happens it will be Out and Stack".

And while videos can help bridge the gaps in terms of how a mechanic works, there's not a lot of content that allows someone to actually practice/polish the skills that serve you well in endgame content except... well, that endgame content itself.

Now, it's possible to find learning groups, of course. For instance, my FC periodically organizes another incarnation of our newbie static, the Rookie Raiders; the Rooks exist to introduce interested folks to savage for the first time, help them get their feet under them... and then the Rooks dissolve and the new raiders go off into other statics, and eventually another incarnation of the Rooks forms.

And there are learning groups advertised on /r/FFXIVRECRUITMENT or various data-center raiding Discords, etc. Or sometimes people run learning parties in PF; I've run a number of learning parties for this savage tier when I have nothing better to do.

But short of going into actual endgame content to learn -- and hoping people are patient -- there's not a lot of content someone can just queue into on their own to practice those things. You can try to make do by running current normal raids or the current alliance raid ad nauseum, and that will help, but I agree with others that the game could do with an intermediate step of difficulty between what the MSQ requires and what the endgame expects.

I just don't think that intermediate step needs to be the MSQ itself; plenty of people play this game largely for the story, and that's a fine way to engage. We don't need to chase them off. It'd just be nice to provide some tools for those who do want more than the story to more readily start out on that journey.

i actually find EW dungeons engaging. I think the alliance raid is too easy tho.
but yes casual contents are too easy. I don't think ppl are really that bad but just too lazy to press few more buttons.

Alliance raids are always going to be tricky to balance. You need them to be doable with comparatively low gear ilevel, because they exist in part as a "catchup" mechanic, giving people who aren't raiding savage a way other than just capped tomestones to improve their gear prior to the next patch. But as soon as people have gained that gear... once a majority of people have the gear, a mishandled mechanic becomes maybe borderline survivable, you can kill the boss that little bit faster and skip the one mechanic, etc.

I do think that this one did seem to lose its teeth remarkably fast, but I'm also willing to attribute that to a combination of the aforementioned 'alliance raids are tricky to balance to start with', combined with this being the first gear tier with the new stats squish; I expect they'll have more of a handle on how to balance things in our new squished reality with the coming gear tier.

Wildstar says hello

*cries*

[Imora]

I still don't get why people hate square/circle boss arenas. I personally prefer them. Nowhere for morons to LoS my heals, no elevation nonsense making lalafell unable to see the tank/healer/boss.

The hell kind of arena you want? Even wow primarily uses big open spaces.

[EnigmaticDodo]

....that some of us might be elderly or disabled or both and would likely be excluded by your elitist vision of what the game should be like...

I saw a man complete savage content with his feet (because that's all he could use to play) on youtube way back when. Think of that how you will.

--------

On another note; it's your boy! EnigmaticDodo, back again, once again with an incredibly hot doomer take!

This game is going to go the way of the casual. Full speed. Yoshida had said previously (paraphrasing), "that we're not going back to the heavensward like design". Pair this with Very Easy solo Duties, pair this with how free the game is as is, pair this with how they keep dumbing down everything, pair this with your own assessments, etc. etc.

I never wanted to give up on the idea of this game trying to cater to more than just the lowest common denominator, but you see what happens whenever you try to discuss anything promoting people getting better or increase difficulty in any facet. You get argued down until exhaustion and accomplish nothing. Also, the developers themselves are working against you.

Folks have suggested playing other games to me and others who share a sentiment of wanting the game to challenge us outside of just savage and ultimate content. I think that's a legitimate ask and a legitimate thing to do at this point if FF14 isn't doing it for you. It probably never will again, in terms of combat.

[Raoabolic]

The development team, of course. They can see actual player performance. They can tell at what point increasing numbers of players start having trouble progressing.

All we have as players is anecdotal evidence of what the player base as a whole is capable of, and it's natural for us to tend to end up surrounded by others of roughly the same skill level.

Leave it to the developers to make the decision if difficulty should be increased. They know what their goals are for the game and what they want the base difficulty to be.

Then by going by the trends I worry about the future when things like mitigation can be considered "tryhard" to many, lol.

[Axxion]

I saw a man complete savage content with his feet (because that's all he could use to play) on youtube way back when. Think of that how you will.

--------

On another note; it's your boy! EnigmaticDodo, back again, once again with an incredibly hot doomer take!

This game is going to go the way of the casual. Full speed. Yoshida had said previously (paraphrasing), "that we're not going back to the heavensward like design". Pair this with Very Easy solo Duties, pair this with how free the game is as is, pair this with how they keep dumbing down everything, pair this with your own assessments, etc. etc.

I never wanted to give up on the idea of this game trying to cater to more than just the lowest common denominator, but you see what happens whenever you try to discuss anything promoting people getting better or increase difficulty in any facet. You get argued down until exhaustion and accomplish nothing. Also, the developers themselves are working against you.

Folks have suggested playing other games to me and others who share a sentiment of wanting the game to challenge us outside of just savage and ultimate content. I think that's a legitimate ask and a legitimate thing to do at this point if FF14 isn't doing it for you. It probably never will again, in terms of combat.

you mean him ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogCRNvghbiw

[Packetdancer]

I still don't get why people hate square/circle boss arenas. I personally prefer them. Nowhere for morons to LoS my heals, no elevation nonsense making lalafell unable to see the tank/healer/boss.

The hell kind of arena you want? Even wow primarily uses big open spaces.

I assume when people want more complex arenas, they mean things like the Rivenroad from 1.x. (For those not familiar, the Rivenroad was a multi-level arena where you fought Nael van Darnus; the main platform survives as the arena for the Nael fight in T9.)

Personally, I don't care about the shape, I just wouldn't mind more fights where the arena itself is an integral part of the fight, rather than just a patterned surface on which the fight takes place. E3S, E4S, E9S tiles phase... heck, I'd argue that even P2S is a decent example.

(The arena in P3S is part of the fight too, but that's less due to actual mechanics involving the arena and more due to really bad color palette choices.)