MSQ Difficulty and Exclusion

[Dzian]

And, I mean, the current approach is working wonders. That "more than 5 people" honestly draws a chuckle when we consider there's literally hundreds of thousands of active players, even now during a content lull. Anecdotal evidence can be great for case studies, but doesn't really mean anything if trying to generalize it to a larger population.

Even that's anecdotal though.. The game boasts that over 26 million people have played the game. so in comparison to say a few hundred thousand are active isntt exactly great.. even if we say 900k thats still over 25 million that dropped it.

it's quite likely that if the game was tuned just a bit harder. enough to add a hint of credibility to the story that more of those 25 million players would have kept interest for longer.. and equally possible that the game would have millions of active subs instead of hundreds of thousands..

again all annecdotal but when you look at the forums, the login queues, lucky banchos sweeps various other stuff. you seeee a hell of a lot of players getting bored very very quickly..

[Eraden]

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.)



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...

I play with a keyboard and mouse. My shaking, when it gets really bad, makes it so that pressing the proper key or mouse button becomes enormously difficult ( I either miss, press a nearby wrong key by mistake, or press the key/mouse button multiple times). The best option for me that I have found is to wait for a period where my condition is not flaring so bad and I have mentally prepared for each step. Extended periods of combat though, always tend to overwhelm me as there is just so much that I can handle before my brain begins to go haywire. This is why I rarely engage in raid content and I NEVER engage in Savage mode. I don't mind missing these however, as I still get to enjoy the storyline.

Addendum: You need not apologize for forgetting. You were polite and asked for clarification. I really appreciate that. As for your descriptions of what you do as a game developer, I find that quite fascinating. It seems like a very complicated profession!

[ZedxKayn]

I play with a keyboard and mouse. My shaking, when it gets really bad, makes it so that pressing the proper key or mouse button becomes enormously difficult ( I either miss, press a nearby wrong key by mistake, or press the key/mouse button multiple times). The best option for me that I have found is to wait for a period where my condition is not flaring so bad and I have mentally prepared for each step. Extended periods of combat though, always tend to overwhelm me as there is just so much that I can handle before my brain begins to go haywire. This is why I rarely engage in raid content and I NEVER engage in Savage mode. I don't mind missing these however, as I still get to enjoy the storyline.

If you haven't tried a controller yet, it might be worth a shot, I think with the ergonomics and how spread apart the buttons tend to be, it might be easier.

[redheadturk]

Even that's anecdotal though.. The game boasts that over 26 million people have played the game. so in comparison to say a few hundred thousand are active isntt exactly great.. even if we say 900k thats still over 25 million that dropped it.

it's quite likely that if the game was tuned just a bit harder. enough to add a hint of credibility to the story that more of those 25 million players would have kept interest for longer.. and equally possible that the game would have millions of active subs instead of hundreds of thousands..

again all annecdotal but when you look at the forums, the login queues, lucky banchos sweeps various other stuff. you seeee a hell of a lot of players getting bored very very quickly..

some of the drop out is for story related reasons, so ya know.

[novamare]

Even that's anecdotal though.. The game boasts that over 26 million people have played the game. so in comparison to say a few hundred thousand are active isntt exactly great.. even if we say 900k thats still over 25 million that dropped it.

it's quite likely that if the game was tuned just a bit harder. enough to add a hint of credibility to the story that more of those 25 million players would have kept interest for longer.. and equally possible that the game would have millions of active subs instead of hundreds of thousands..

At a glance, I imagine it's very, very unlikely that those millions of "lost" players that you mention dropped the game because it was too easy.

Many of the abandoned accounts I've seen personally (because yeah, without great publicly available official statistics, we are limited to anecdotes and attempts at censuses) don't even have a single job up to 50 (sometimes they don't have a job at all). And I can't say I've ever heard ARR sprouts complaining that the game was too easy. If anything, to your point of "keeping interest," I've heard that the game is too slow, which is a fair opinion if you're not someone who enjoys the sort of pace the story in this game sets. But the solution to that isn't making the combat harder, it's making the breaks between combat encounters in the MSQ shorter. (For clarity, I'm not advocating doing this, at least not on a large scale, but we see how helpful the trimming of post-ARR MSQ was...)

While I'm sure that there does exist a population of late game players who quit because they didn't feel challenged, I'd wager that you've overestimated that population by an order of magnitude. Especially considering that, as you increase in level, more and more optional high-end content becomes available to you to scratch that itch for a challenge. If those players are annoyed by having to complete the MSQ in order to unlock said high-end content, then I would encourage them to (*gasp*) purchase a story skip.

So frankly I don't think the percentage of active players is a very compelling argument here.

[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.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

Even that's anecdotal though.. The game boasts that over 26 million people have played the game. so in comparison to say a few hundred thousand are active isntt exactly great.. even if we say 900k thats still over 25 million that dropped it.

it's quite likely that if the game was tuned just a bit harder. enough to add a hint of credibility to the story that more of those 25 million players would have kept interest for longer.. and equally possible that the game would have millions of active subs instead of hundreds of thousands..

again all annecdotal but when you look at the forums, the login queues, lucky banchos sweeps various other stuff. you seeee a hell of a lot of players getting bored very very quickly..

Total accounts is irrelevant - WoW has 100mil+ accounts total (which was back in 2014 when Blizzard even bothered to announce it, probably way, way higher by now), but 2022 statistics show they're about 5ish mil players active. Even if we ignore the fact that 8 years later the total lifetime accounts is likely well, WELL above 100mil, they still only have about 5% of their total playerbase these days.

Total accounts is an irrelevant statistic since the immense, vast majority of players will play a game for a bit then move on, never to return once they move on to the next shiny thing in the industry. The relevant statistics are active accounts, which bancho has shown on an expansion by expansion basis, have been increasing. <1mil players in SB to slightly over a million in SHB to 1.3/4ish mil in EW.

Not to mention as I mentioned earlier in this topic, The paradigm for the industry has shifted. Gamers who play to relax, Gamers who want an easy time and not to be challenged, etc. Are quickly becoming the predominant demographic in gaming. There's a reason Square is pushing the 'solo player experience' - because it's empirically proven its working. Making an MSQ that's more difficult is the literal antithesis of trying to expand the game, when the ever-increasing demographic of gamers taking over the industry want casual, relaxed experiences.

If you want to see what happens when the MSQ begins to delve into content that is more than faceroll, look no further than the huge backlash the more casual players had that came from "In from the Cold" this expansion. To the point the devs had to respond and intervene & had to intentionally nerf the instance even more on easy/very easy so that people could get by.

It's the blunt reality. MSQ and any content tied to it will never be hard. No ifs, ands or buts.

[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.