MSQ Difficulty and Exclusion

[Packetdancer]

Okay now explain to me how saying “this isn’t the game for them” isn’t toxic when it’s coming from people saying the game needs to stay easy but is 100% toxic when it comes from people asking for the game to be more complex because I’ve been called toxic for exactly the same sentence but coming from the other direction

I mean, I don't think it's that the positions are inherently more or less toxic than each other? But when the portion of the game that is tied specifically to the main scenario is currently easy, people saying they'd like it to remain easy are arguing for the status quo, while those asking that it become more difficult are asking for change.

Saying "this is the way the game is, and if you don't like it, maybe it's not the game for you" is a statement of fact -- whether or not the game should be that way, or if there's reason for it to change, that doesn't alter what it is right now.

Saying "this is the way I think the game should be, I want it all changed, and if the new game wouldn't be to your liking maybe this isn't the game for you"? What the game should be is subjective; what it is right now... that's somewhat less so.

After all, I don't think anyone in this thread is arguing that the MSQ is too difficult as it stands; I don't even think anyone's arguing that the game couldn't do better with its difficulty curve in some way or another -- right now, anything else aside, a lot of people demonstrably feel like there's a gap between "MSQ difficulty" and "extreme trial difficulty", and not a lot of content that bridges the gap.

(And some of us who don't think the MSQ difficulty being ramped up is necessarily the best approach also believe firmly that the game could really use some more content with some actual teeth. I'm a healer main; believe me, I know precisely how little healing this game requires in the vast majority of content, unless stuff goes catastrophically wrong -- and honestly, the catastrophically-wrong runs are often the more interesting ones because of that.)

But one side is basically saying "this is the game right now, it works for me, and if you don't like it there may be other games out there more suited to your taste." And if the counter-argument boils down to functionally "right now, this game matches your wants, not mine; I want the game to match mine instead, and if you don't like that, maybe you should leave" -- whether or not it's meant to be confrontational, there's some confrontation kind of built-in there, because it's demanding a change to the status quo.

This isn't to say there isn't a way to accomodate both, mind you. SQEX's efforts to make more and more of the game's content playable with trust means that hypothetically, they could make more difficult versions of content and have the more-approachable ones that are story-centric based around trusts instead, if they added trust support for the various trials as well.

Things don't necessarily have to be an all-or-nothing.

Mind you, all of this is probably moot, since the chances that SQEX will actually make meaningful changes to game balance based on random threads on the forums are, if not zero, so close to such that it probably qualifies as a rounding error.

(Okay I'm done for now, before I make enough posts that the forums put me back into the Talky Timeout Box.)

[TaleraRistain]

So what about the people who are actively turned away from the game because it is in their worlds excessively easy to the point of being unenjoyable, sure this is anecdotal but I have seen more than 5 people turned off the game because crucial lynchpin fights like endsinger, hades and thordran go down because you breathed too hard on them. Are there opinions not relevant to this situation at all. The MSQ just feels so hollow because all these enemies that you have been working towards for dozens of quests just get bowled over before they can even do a full mechanical loop

Again there is a difference between what we currently have and savage difficulty, raidwides hitting a bit harder, vuln stacks being tuned up a bit more, maybe a few more x come ruins or harder execution mechanics like starfall wouldn’t go astray

If these bosses can’t hurt us the entire design of the story comes crashing down

Went in PUG on Endsinger first time and it took like 3 or 4 tries. And it's still spicy when I get it in roulette sometimes.

For Thordan and Hades (especially Hades) they may be easy but the fights are still entertaining because of how extra they both are. And I still see new folks die on Hades because they miss one too many mechs, so there are still people out there who are challenged by him.

What was the experience level of the other people with the 5 people you said quit? What was their own experience level? If the rest of the party were pros, then that is going to affect the experience of the new people. This game is a vastly difference experience in a premade group versus a PUG group.

[ForteNightshade]

They dont. The tuning is fine as is

Yes. the tuning is so fine that an entire role has been rendered obsolete in Endwalker MSQ. There is not a single dungeon throughout this entire expansion three of the four tanks cannot heal themselves through with very little difficulty. While we all like to meme on the absurdity of Bloodwhetting in a dungeon, Paladin and Gunbreaker are just as capable of solo-ing everything. Even Dark Knight can solo dungeons. They just need a good DPS group for pulls and some spot heals from a Red Mage. The fact tanks can accomplish this means healers are literal gimped DPS. If you're not spamming your AoE, you're actually less useful than Alphinaud or Urianger who will DPS. The latter, surprisingly, does more damage in some of the leveling dungeons than geared players.

Regardless of how you feel about the MSQ combat as a whole. I don't know how anyone can justify the tuning of Endwalker when it reduces an entire role to their secondary utility. Nevermind the fact prior dungeons have suffered so much power creep, they barely even tickle. I've gone through old Heavensward dungeons using less than five heals on new tank players. Bosses many dungeons can't even get through their scripted mechanics because they explode so fast. Once again, nobody is asking for the MSQ to be immensely hard or anything remotely equivalent. Many of us want our respective roles to feel like they have a purpose. Healers right now have almost zero relevancy.

[VerdeLuck]

Yes. the tuning is so fine that an entire role has been rendered obsolete in Endwalker MSQ. There is not a single dungeon throughout this entire expansion three of the four tanks cannot heal themselves through with very little difficulty. While we all like to meme on the absurdity of Bloodwhetting in a dungeon, Paladin and Gunbreaker are just as capable of solo-ing everything. Even Dark Knight can solo dungeons. They just need a good DPS group for pulls and some spot heals from a Red Mage. The fact tanks can accomplish this means healers are literal gimped DPS. If you're not spamming your AoE, you're actually less useful than Alphinaud or Urianger who will DPS. The latter, surprisingly, does more damage in some of the leveling dungeons than geared players.

Regardless of how you feel about the MSQ combat as a whole. I don't know how anyone can justify the tuning of Endwalker when it reduces an entire role to their secondary utility. Nevermind the fact prior dungeons have suffered so much power creep, they barely even tickle. I've gone through old Heavensward dungeons using less than five heals on new tank players. Bosses many dungeons can't even get through their scripted mechanics because they explode so fast. Once again, nobody is asking for the MSQ to be immensely hard or anything remotely equivalent. Many of us want our respective roles to feel like they have a purpose. Healers right now have almost zero relevancy.

You're talking about going into casual content completely overgeared and thinking it's too easy. No one runs the MSQ at max ilvl for dungeons. If you think it's boring you can just not run those roulettes and dungeons.

[ForteNightshade]

You're talking about going into casual content completely overgeared and thinking it's too easy. No one runs the MSQ at max ilvl for dungeons. If you think it's boring you can just not run those roulettes and dungeons.

... you can't overgear leveling dungeons, my dude. At least not the Endwalker ones where we're synced pretty much on par with what's expected and don't have the benefit of power creep. Which is another issue with older content. Ilvl doesn't mean much when the jobs simply aren't balanced whatsoever. Even at ilvl, Endwalker don't require the slightest bit of healing outside of Tower of Zot's massive pull. The tanks simply have too much sustain. When I mention tanks solo-ing bosses, they were doing that at level, on release. I should know. I was one of them. I solo'd Hermes in a hodgepodge of 80-85 gear. He never once got me below 15k.

There were even threads complaining about how insanely strong tanks are when Endwalker released. This isn't simply an ilvl problem, though I'll admit ilvl sync is a problem. Frankly, I think content should be synced closer to its relevant ilvl so things like Weeping City and Rabanastre aren't a shell of themselves. Hashmal used to actually have several mechanics we almost never see even in particularly bad parties.

[Rilifane]

... you can't overgear leveling dungeons, my dude. At least not the Endwalker ones where we're synced pretty much on par with what's expected and don't have the benefit of power creep. Which is another issue with older content. Ilvl doesn't mean much when the jobs simply aren't balanced whatsoever. Even at ilvl, Endwalker don't require the slightest bit of healing outside of Tower of Zot's massive pull. The tanks simply have too much sustain. When I mention tanks solo-ing bosses, they were doing that at level, on release. I should know. I was one of them. I solo'd Hermes in a hodgepodge of 80-85 gear. He never once got me below 15k.

There were even threads complaining about how insanely strong tanks are when Endwalker released. This isn't simply an ilvl problem, though I'll admit ilvl sync is a problem. Frankly, I think content should be synced closer to its relevant ilvl so things like Weeping City and Rabanastre aren't a shell of themselves. Hashmal used to actually have several mechanics we almost never see even in particularly bad parties.

Can confirm.
I've solo'd Hermes two times while leveling GNB shortly after EW release and had more runs where one or two dps were still alive and I healed them as well. Same for Vanaspati last boss, same for pretty much every boss in Babil. In ShB tome gear, so that argument "You just overgeared it" is moot. And I had a lot more tanks that did the same while I was leveling dps. Saw healer DC right after EW release a few times and we just finished the dungeon without a healer because they couldn't get back in. Single pulls are easily possible on every tank, WAR can just meme the way through wall to walls and PLD and GNB as well if they play decently well.

[Packetdancer]

Ya know, I wouldn't have so much of an issue with them tuning up the difficulty a bit if they'd actually make the arena designs less painful for those of us with visual impairments. Adding artificial difficulty via arena/dungeon design isn't the way to go about it, and that strategy is why so many of us disabled folk don't want it.

Oh, trust me, the arena designs are sometimes painful even for people who don't have visual impairments. (E6S and P3S both wave hello.) Even if people in this thread might see eye-to-eye on literally nothing else, I think everyone can agree that Mistakes Have Been Made with regards to some arena designs in the past.

Did you even read my comment I said people are turned away in their first play through because when they do get to do something that’s not talk to Alphinaud for the 79th time the bosses and instances don’t live up to the hype the game itself builds for them, the literal personification of the concept of nihilism is so easy 6/8 of the party can be on the floor for 90% of it with no problems, that is turning prospective players away

So, anything else aside, the game does not scale stats well... and I don't think on-level trials sync your ilevel at all, at least not that I recall.

The Final Day could demonstrably be a challenge for the average PUG with part of the group down during the first week Endwalker was out, when people had at best i570 gear (if they'd finished the game and ground tomestones of aphorism in order to get a Moonward set); most people who were coming in there, especially if it was for the first time, had i560 left side and then right-side accessories lower-level than that, putting them far closer to the i540 minimum ilevel required.

Nowadays, if it comes up in roulette, you might have one or two new folks, but you've got a tank and two healers in i600 savage raiding BiS gear, etc. And even the new folks might've bought themselves a full set of HQ Classical gear (i580) that they equipped upon hitting level 90.

I can queue into Aglaia as a healer and see that my co-healer has literally nearly 10k less health than I do, because they're in the minimum gear required to queue in and I'm in BiS with an Asphodelos weapon.

That sort of gear progression does trivialize a lot of mechanics.

Plus, even in content that does sync your gear ilevel, the ilevel syncing in this game is... let's go with "a little wonky".

The Crystal Tower raids aren't a faceroll because they don't have mechanics; there's all kinds of mechanics in there. Quite a few of which would probably wipe the average roulette group! It's just that we never see those mechanics, because the ilevel synching makes the content more or less a joke.

Now, there's certainly an argument to be made that this is a problem, inasmuch as content that gets balanced to be possible to clear at the minimum ilevel required can become quickly trivialized by better gear -- and not just "this is slightly easier" but "we can skip large portions of the fight".

I won't lie, I definitely know sprouts who have been disappointed by the Crystal Tower raids being built up into this big challenge, only to basically have it be a mindless mob rushing onwards. (My FC has organized synced min-ilevel-no-echo runs of old content for folks, to try to restore that feel of danger and challenge. The old Praetorium, prior to its reworking, was actually pretty intimidating in places if done MINE. To say nothing of Coils.)

But I think there's an important distinction to be made between "this content is balanced for the minimum requirements but allows you to vastly outgear it extremely quickly" and "this content is designed from the start to be a complete faceroll".

Because they are different issues, and have different solutions.

[Packetdancer]

I think I've expressed that I don't see the MSQ needing the base difficulty ramped up, though I do think it would be super great if it did a little more to teach players about other things, like "the white bar over an icon means you can Esuna a thing" and "if the cast bar is blinking, you can interrupt the cast".

(I would, of course, be thrilled to have more higher-challenge content in the game overall; I just don't think it needs to be required content that blocks people from progressing the main story.)

However...

You are an example of those who I mentioned who simply do not understand the situations of those of us who struggle from time to time on the MSQs because of our conditions. Please understand that for some of us, we really are at our physical limits when we have difficulties and it has very little to do with the game teaching us how to play.

Do you mind if I ask what the specific limitation/struggle is? (If you've detailed it elsewhere in the thread, I may have missed it; this thread is 35 pages long and I suspect will hit 40 within the next day, so finding stuff on earlier pages is a bit of a mess.)

Obviously, this is none of my business and you should feel free to tell me such. (Or note that you'd prefer to talk offline/outside of a public thread.)

I ask mostly because, as detailed in a previous post, I do try to approach my own game design efforts in a way to make things accessible to people. And I do firmly believe that accessible content doesn't have to be easy content. (And that conflating "accessible gaming" with "people want easy mode on everything" does no favors to anyone.)

For instance, I don't have to make a fight easier to make it friendly to both folks with visual impairment and hearing issues; I just need to make sure that every move where I want the players to pay attention to the telegraph has both a distinct visual cue (for those hard-of-hearing) and an audio cue (for those who have vision issues).

For instance, if I were designing P4S, during the Pinax phase where you need to see whether the sword or the cape is glowing, to know whether it will be the cleave or the knockback... the visual cue (which thing is glowing) is already there, but I would make a distinct audio cue. It might be the sound of a sword being unsheathed (if the sword is glowing) or of a cape being unfurled (if the cape is glowing), or two voiced lines (one for sword, one for cape). It doesn't have to be obvious, but it should be there.

Regardless, that audio cue would mean that someone with vision issues doesn't have to squint to see whether it's the sword or cape glowing -- or rely on me as a raid-caller in Discord -- as they could listen for the audio cue instead.

Haptics, too, are a good way to offer subtle feedback. In the game I'm working on with a friend right now, I'm actually trying to use subtle controller vibration to telegraph if you're on unsteady ground; the texture of ground that might crumble will be visibly different, but as you step onto it the controller also starts a very, very faint vibration, just enough to pick up on almost unconsciously -- but certainly making it easier for folks who may not see fine details in texture (like crackled/crumbling masonry) to not plummet to their death.

Jumping puzzles are a source of much fury and frustration even to people who don't figure they need accessibility options, much less people who have trouble being precise enough with a controller to make a particularly finicky jump; as a result, the movement system in the aforementioned game will also detect if you'd just barely miss a jump and has a "pity" mechanic (though I actually call it a "sympathy mechanic" in the code) where it will accelerate your character just slightly, enough to ensure you make the jump rather than falling short (and thus falling, period).

(Frankly, that consideration is for me as much as anyone else, though literally no one I've shown the sympathy mechanic to has had any other response than abject relief. I think many of us have jumping puzzle trauma.)

Stuff like that. Anyway...

Since this is a thing I think about fairly often from a design standpoint, I find myself curious what part of this game you find yourself struggling with. Both because maybe there's a workaround present in the game already (just poorly documented, which is sure as heck a Thing), and because maybe it's an accessibility consideration I'm not already thinking about for my own game design stuff.

Again, feel free to decline (or ask to take the answer private); I just always want more data on what people do find to be places where a game is unintentionally difficult to play due to poor choices... like, say, orange and red mechanics on an orange and yellow arena, with some extra orange and yellow and red thrown in for visual spice. (As opposed, obviously, to intentional difficulty, e.g. mechanics.)

Of course, there are some challenges that are harder to tackle by just keeping accessibility in mind; for folks who have cognitive issues that make it hard to track mechanics and such, for instance, I have a lot of sympathy but few good fixes.

[redheadturk]

snip

For me personally I have the type of colorblindness where if it's two different shades of the same color and there isn't enough contrast between the two shades, I cannot differentiate them. Which is why Peacekeeper is so painful for me, and P3. Also, Ra La, gold on gold on cream yellow, spare me, please ><. I also have depth perception issues [which is why I hate jump puzzles and will never have flight in The Ruby Sea] and poor reaction times. So arena design that forces you to rely on fast reaction times and randomly placed mechanics are the bane of my existence. If it's something I can actually memorize I don't have a problem, though.

[ZedxKayn]

For me personally I have the type of colorblindness where if it's two different shades of the same color and there isn't enough contrast between the two shades, I cannot differentiate them. Which is why Peacekeeper is so painful for me, and P3. Also, Ra La, gold on gold on cream yellow, spare me, please ><. I also have depth perception issues [which is why I hate jump puzzles and will never have flight in The Ruby Sea] and poor reaction times. So arena design that forces you to rely on fast reaction times and randomly placed mechanics are the bane of my existence. If it's something I can actually memorize I don't have a problem, though.

tbf for the colorblind part its more of a clarity problem than difficulty problem if that makes sense

even as someone with good sight p3 is an absolute pain im the ass. no clue how that made it thatway past testing phase even if all the testers have healthy sights