MSQ Difficulty and Exclusion

[DPZ2]

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.

Sounds like a reason to nerf Tank damage and mitigation, not to make dungeon instances harder.

< yes, I know. Tank damage and mitigation are so high-end instances don't wipe. Just don't use them as examples of the need for 'harder' MSQ content then >

[Semirhage]

Sounds like a reason to nerf Tank damage and mitigation, not to make dungeon instances harder.

< yes, I know. Tank damage and mitigation are so high-end instances don't wipe. Just don't use them as examples of the need for 'harder' MSQ content then >

Yay, once tank sustain and mitigation is nerfed the healer role will be saved. Then they can go back to oGCD healing once a minute and spamming Glare for the entire instance. So engaging, I don't know why anyone asks for dungeons in this very difficult impossible to complete MSQ to have anything more to them.

[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.

[Packetdancer]

I hit my post limit earlier and got put in the forum's "Talky Timeout" for a bit, sooooo let's just dump all the stuff I couldn't post...

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.

I mean, I know plenty of people who had trouble with the chaotic nature of Kampeos Harma without any other factors in play. Especially since, unlike most other things that get referenced as "Limit Cut" in this game, you don't have different colors for odd vs. even numbers.

(Whether or not it is a limit cut is a matter of debate; my ultimate static actually has a "Limit Cut Alignment Chart" a'la D&D alignments, based around what you consider to be a limit cut.)

Contrast that with P3S Darkened Fire, or the Flood Ray mechanic in Diamond Weapon EX, or most other limit-cut-like mechanics where you have the odd numbers in blue and even in red, meaning you have an additional visual cue to sort of 'speed up' recognition of the count over your head; if you think at first glance the number over your head is "six" but the pips are blue, time to double-check.

That said, even with Kampeos Harma, the mechanic can be broken down into only a couple of possibilities -- albeit by doing so in several steps.

1. Do you have a tether? Two possibilities: yes/no.
2. If no tether, just read the number and head to where that number is stuck on the map. (Four possibilities.)
3. If you have a tether, without thinking too hard about the number over your head, just notice if it's odd or even. If it's odd, go opposite the boss. (O = Odd = Opposite.) If even, huddle under the boss. (Two possibilities.)
4. If the other person at your square has fewer pips over their head than you, you ought to be further back than them for the first hit. If you have fewer pips, get up front. (Two possibilities.)

I have a friend who has memory issues, and who raids savage, and I like to come up with bite-sized approaches like that to mechanics to help her. Plus, little bite-size approaches do tend to make a mechanic easier to teach in learning parties, which I also enjoy periodically running.

Mind you, Kampeos Harma is also a perfect example of what I mean when I say I wish that marks like those also appeared as a debuff on the status bar; for folks who are visually impaired, they can put the status bar somewhere clearly visible and blow it up to like 180% of the default size -- for mechanics that do give you a debuff, that tends to make it much easier for them to resolve than relying on a visual cue that may be harder to make out, especially in a crowd.

Because frequently it's not that mechanics need to be easier, they just need to be communicated in a way that is accessible to more people.

And I suspect if the game was better about that, a large number -- not all, but many -- of the folks who feel they have issues with higher-end content would find at least some of their struggle went away.

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).

As I sort of expected, this maps 100% to the issue Bryan had: he'd jitter and hit a key multiple times, or he'd hit a nearby key by mistake.

The software I was writing for him basically solved those two problems by 1. letting him hit any key near the key he wanted, and have it process as the key in question, by mapping sections of the keyboard to stuff (and sometimes even to a series of things, where it advanced one each time you hit something in that area), and 2. repeated taps of a key within a certain window of time were 'eaten'; e.g., if he tapped '2' three times in 400ms, it would read that as likely a mistake and swallow two of them before passing the input on to the game.

I'm now tempted to go dig up that old codebase and see whether finishing it out might not be beneficial in situations like yours.

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.

Obviously I can't speak for Eraden, but I know the issue my friend faced was that with the tremors, he'd jerk the joystick around -- moving his character or shifting the camera unintentionally -- and it made movement more difficult for him, rather than less; not twitching the mouse a huge distance was easier for him than not having a thumb twitch on the controller joystick, especially since you can adjust mouse DPI.

I mean, it never hurts to try, though!

[Eraden]

I will say this, SE seems to really care for those of us who struggle occasionally. The new event which involves navigating a jumping puzzle, is almost impossible for me to do but SE included a bypass for players like me so that we can get the glams. My only regret is that there is an optional extra jumping puzzle to get to the very top, that does not seem to offer any reward if successfully done. It would be nice if there was a reward for that so that skilled players could get an additional reward. I have no problems with players who complete harder content, getting rewards that I will not be able to get. After all, those players earned it!

[Supersnow845]

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.

You just hear whatever you want to hear and reply to that don’t you, these people I’m talking about were new players that decided to pick the game up after hearing about it or recommendations, they aren’t addicted, they aren’t whining on the forums, they are gone because the game didn’t respect them at all

Then, frankly, maybe this isn't game for them. That's okay. Not every game is going to appeal to every person, even within the same genre. I like FPS games, but I personally just can't get into the ones that are set back in WWI or WWII...I prefer the modern ones. I don't go around insisting that games set in that era add modern weapons just for me; I pick the games that already fit the design I'm looking for. FFXIV isn't an eSports game like WoW has become, with the focus on pushing ever higher M+ keys and going for world-first Mythic+ raids. That's just not FFXIV. It's a story-driven game with an immense focus on the plot and the soundtrack, and is meant to attract a different audience than those looking to push the difficulty as high as they can. That's okay. It means it won't be for everyone, but nothing will, so...

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.

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 on this thread no less but coming from the other direction

[Packetdancer]

I will say this, SE seems to really care for those of us who struggle occasionally. The new event which involves navigating a jumping puzzle, is almost impossible for me to do

To judge from the frustrated/exasperated /shout-ing I saw in Costa del Sol when I arrived to do the event (and the cursing about jumping puzzles on my static's Discord), apparently it's almost impossible for a whole bunch of people.

Though really, this game's engine is not particularly well-suited to jumping puzzles, and I say this as someone who routinely climbs Kugane Tower and jumps down onto the lamppost while waiting in party finder. I don't think there's a jumping puzzle in this game that I haven't done, including some things that may not actually be meant to be jumping puzzles, like how to get on top of the market gate in Shirogane.

(It's possible this qualifies as a video game variant of Stockholm Syndrome, and I've just convinced myself I like jumping puzzles as a coping mechanism...)

[Bobby66]

Personally I feel ease of accessibility should be in the opt in side not the other way around. I feel the MSQ should be harder baseline and if people want it easier SE should expand the trust system to accommodate said players.

Hopefully the new 4 man content is content with a bite that people will run more then once after they clear. (Exaggeration on the once part.)

[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.)

[Aravell]

Personally, I don't think the MSQ content needs to be made harder. I disagree with the sentiment that it would force players to get better, Nidhogg, Shinryu and Titania didn't force players to get better, all they did was spawn endless complaints on the forums and social media.

However, I would love to see alliance raids, extreme trials and the earlier floors of savage get some teeth back again, those are all optional and wouldn't affect people who don't want to do them, they could stand to be harder and bridge the wide gap between the ease of the MSQ content and the difficulty of savage/ultimate.