MSQ Difficulty and Exclusion

[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.

[VerdeLuck]

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

Those people won't quit, they'll kick and scream on the forums about how the game is being "dumbed down" and throw tantrums but they're so addicted to the game they're never going to just quit.

[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.

[Eraden]

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.)

THANK YOU for taking the time to ask what is causing me difficulties. It is so refreshing to see someone actually take the time to ask about something rather than throw out an uninformed opinion. I have no problem telling you about my condition. I have Parkinson's Disease. That coupled with me being elderly, makes it extremely difficult at times to complete content. My limbs, hands and even at times my whole body tend to shake if I get emotionally excited or engage in even minor physical activities (holding a full cup of water for example). Content that is even mildly complex or requires a somewhat significant amount of hand/eye coordination can be a daunting task for me at times. At the moment, the MSQs are tuned so that I am able to get through most of them without going to easy modes. For some I have to go to the easiest mode in order to complete them. For those who think I can get better at doing this I can guarantee that no amount of pushing or prodding me is going to make my condition magically disappear.

I still fail to understand why people keep clamoring for making the MSQs harder for everyone. If the developers simply made a hard mode for those who want a real challenge, wouldn't that be good enough? Why are they so hell bent on forcing everyone else to have to conform to their standards?

[redheadturk]

THANK YOU for taking the time to ask what is causing me difficulties. It is so refreshing to see someone actually take the time to ask about something rather than throw out an uninformed opinion. I have no problem telling you about my condition. I have Parkinson's Disease. That coupled with me being elderly, makes it extremely difficult at times to complete content. My limbs, hands and even at times my whole body tend to shake if I get emotionally excited or engage in even minor physical activities (holding a full cup of water for example). Content that is even mildly complex or requires a somewhat significant amount of hand/eye coordination can be a daunting task for me at times. At the moment, the MSQs are tuned so that I am able to get through most of them without going to easy modes. For some I have to go to the easiest mode in order to complete them. For those who think I can get better at doing this I can guarantee that no amount of pushing or prodding me is going to make my condition magically disappear.

I still fail to understand why people keep clamoring for making the MSQs harder for everyone. If the developers simply made a hard mode for those who want a real challenge, wouldn't that be good enough? Why are they so hell bent on forcing everyone else to have to conform to their standards?

My husband is also a Parky! I think his brain would explode if he tried to play this because flashing lights affect his Parkinsons.

[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

[Packetdancer]

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 ><.

You are not the only one I know who has trouble with the Ra-La fight due to the yellow-orange telegraphs on golden grass.

I firmly believe that a huge number of difficulty complaints people have with regards to this game would be solved if they made ground telegraphs either have a user-settable color, or made them just be (as I've done in a past game) the negative/inverted color of the ground texture.

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.

FWIW, you can have someone else who has a multi-seater mount fly you up to whatever aether current you're missing in the Ruby Sea; I've done this for folks before.

(Heck, I could log in my poor neglected Mateus alt and give you a lift; she's still back somewhere in Shadowbringers since I haven't touched her in ages, but she's got flight in that zone and a multi-seater chocobo carriage.)

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.

As for random mechanics, fwiw, almost no mechanic in this game is truly random, though they're pretty good at making it feel like they are sometimes.

In my experience, generally there's between 2 and 5 possible patterns at most for anything. The worst I can think of is something like Act IV or Curtain Call in P4S phase 2, where you could be tethered to any of the eight positions... but even then, Act IV you resolve your mechanic in one of only two possible ways, and Curtain Call in only one possible way.

That said, speaking of Act IV... I really wish that all mechanics that put a marker over your head also put a debuff on your status bar. I know people who have trouble seeing limit cut markers and such over their heads (especially if people are standing together), but who can increase the size of the status bar and put it somewhere easily visible to them.

Meaning they had little trouble with mechanics that put things there (like Intermediate Relativity in E12S phase 2, or Aetherial Shackles in P1S) but much more trouble with things that rely on you seeing a specific icon that appears over your head for a bit without any matching debuff in your status icons.

[Packetdancer]

THANK YOU for taking the time to ask what is causing me difficulties. It is so refreshing to see someone actually take the time to ask about something rather than throw out an uninformed opinion. I have no problem telling you about my condition. I have Parkinson's Disease. That coupled with me being elderly, makes it extremely difficult at times to complete content.

Ah, that's right! We did have this discussion earlier in the thread, I forgot; I mentioned that my father has Parkinson's -- progressed to the point that he's developing cognitive issues, which is depressing and terrifying -- and that I'm considered high-risk myself due to that family history.

(Apologies for forgetting. My own challenge is chronic migraines, and while my medication works very well, it also is a once-a-month medication that lasts just over three weeks. I get to next take it on the 14th; as you might guess, my brain is presently reduced to tapioca and my world is pain for the next four days. Frankly, it's a miracle I can compose coherent posts; I'm functioning on caffeine, painkiller, and possibly spite.)

My limbs, hands and even at times my whole body tend to shake if I get emotionally excited or engage in even minor physical activities (holding a full cup of water for example). Content that is even mildly complex or requires a somewhat significant amount of hand/eye coordination can be a daunting task for me at times.

Out of idle curiosity, do you play with a controller, or a keyboard/mouse?

I know from helping my father that the tremors/shakes, at least as regards hands, are not actually that different in nature from the nerve damage my friend Bryan had; I thus wonder whether the issue you're having is similar -- e.g., not that you can't see what you need to do, just that it's really hard to hit the correct keys with a hand tremor -- and so whether the solution we worked on for him might not also help in your scenario.

As I touched on in a past post, the solution we came up with in his case was a program that he could run that mapped multiple keys on the keyboard to a single key; for instance, taking 'Q', 'W', and 'E' and mapping all of them to 'W' so he could more reliably move forward, etc. We basically just made a keyboard map of regions of the keyboard, and mapped a given set of keys -- usually about six, two rows of three each -- to the keys he was likely to need to use.

Now, we never got past the experimental phase before he died of flu complications (side note: get your flu shots, and if you run a high fever go to the damn hospital); I lacked the heart to finish the project after that, and tossed the code out there into the wild for someone else to use.

Still, the early experiments had been promising, and now I wonder if the same sort of tool might not also help in the case of things like Parkinson's. Obviously it wouldn't be a perfect solution, but...

Edit: Alas, the forum says I've posted enough for today and I'm being cut off. Guess I'll return tomorrow!

[redheadturk]

As for random mechanics, fwiw, almost no mechanic in this game is truly random, though they're pretty good at making it feel like they are sometimes.

Limit Cut and Kampos Harma [my static before we had to break because our raid leader is currently on night shifts were progging P2S] are the two mechanics I'm having issues with. Kampos because of the random nature with which he chooses who to hit first, Limit Cut because I can't see the damn marker if I'm in a crowd. That is the same reason that as far as I'm concerned Four Fold Shackles can burn in the deepest pit of the Seventh Hell lmao.