People Enjoy hard Games

[Supersnow845]

"In from the Cold" was not a combat skill issue. No one I knew that was failing had problem understanding how to use the 3 actions.

It was a puzzle-solving issue and we hadn't been presented with that in the MSQ before.

Not everyone is good at reasoning out what to do. They rely on guides to tell them. Adding an extremely visible timer counting down in their face increased the anxiety and stress they were feeling. Those who have trouble keeping a sense of direction in a game (even with a mini-map to help) would have those other issues compounded. I can remember needing to calm down a couple of friends who were experiencing severe anxiety and talk them through what to do after they failed and thought it was impossible.

I really don’t know how to say in a nice way that if you are having anxiety attacks at failing in from the cold you cannot reasonably expect content to be catered for you (outside of say “very easy mode”)

It’s the same as the argument where accessibility is good to a point, but if you make it accessible enough that your quadriplegic 134 year old grandma can clear all content then you are going to drive a measure of people who have the full range of accessibility away

[Lieri]

The game direction will always follow their biggest consumer/player base. And XIV have so many casual players so they dumbed the game down to keep casuals around.

But XIV is overdoing it. Because this game's GCD is very slow. 2.4-2.5 secs GCD mean you can weave petting your cat before pressing the next ability and wont miss a thing. So when they nerf mechanics to the point where you can stand in fire and not die, the game loses all meaning, this type of gaming is not more than just watching a video because not only can you ignore the GCD for the most part, you can also ignore the mechanics. Mechanics should still kill people, easier mechanics should be about easier to notice/dodge and not encourage facerolling gameplay.

The game can still be easy without it being absolutely braindead. Which in turn will raise the bottom levels of players and open up the possibility of them jumping to harder content. Lets talk about an example, normal trials are much much easier than extreme trials. I think that says a lot, how can you go from "its ok you wont die lol just queue up" to "watch 5 aoes at once and rotate clockwise while remembering what the boss casted previously because you need to dodge it right after" and expect the players to ever improve? You dont push a baby into a swimming pool and expect them to swim.

[Supersnow845]

The fact that very easy mode actually exists always just shocks me, like is very easy “in from the cold” the game just auto succeeding tha instance for you

[VelKallor]

The fact that very easy mode actually exists always just shocks me, like is very easy “in from the cold” the game just auto succeeding tha instance for you

Just a quiet reminder that easy mode is only available after you fail the instance at least once, said settings also include a very hard mode. So theres nothing stopping you from going full ham on Nightmare difficulty.

IFTC had bugs and was badly designed.

I'm on the "this quest is a bunch of horrible [ redacted] that should be scrapped and thrown out with the baby and the bathwater"-wagon. Not because of the story - that's fine. Not because of the fact that you're depowered and weak. But because of the completely arbitrary walls of You-Shall-Not-Pass red dots that just.... Were there for no reason. Railroading me into following objectives I had no idea about.

Moreover, the premise of the quest seemed to promise that as long as I made it to the camp, I'd be fine. ...(snip) only without any sort of guidance as to what those actually were or how to find them, and which essentially had nothing to do with the stated objective of 'make your way to the camp'.

You were dropped into a ruined city block with adds everywhere and told to find some guy in a six city block radius, with no idea of where, or how, or who, with a time limit, no map and no markers.

Whilst that did add sense of urgency, you did find yourself running around in circles. A few markers or at least some idea of where to START would have helped. As another player put it...you can indeed find a needle in a haystack..if you know which haystack to start with.

[WeebPolice]

People Enjoy hard Games

Yep, I sure do. Baldur's Gate 3 is one of the best games I've ever played.

[Eraden]

Mao thinkings is not game being hard that peoples enjoy. Is game being INTERESTINGS and FUNS that peoples enjoy. What makes game interestings and funs can be differents with each individual person.

[MsMisato]

I find it interesting that everyone criticizes forum posters asking for harder content and they dismiss us for being the vocal minority on these forums but to be honest we may be somewhat of the silent majority with a few outspoken people.

The game has repeatedly doubled down on making itself easier because it has been under the false impression that people calling for an easier game were in fact the majority.

If anything, market trends have telling data that a games difficulty is actually something gamers enjoy. If we take a look at Baldurs Gate and Elden ring both of them became main stream hits despite being more difficult titles to beat, and they both outperformed FFXVI which is a story game with incredibly easy gameplay.

We could argue that using the PS5 platform only hurt them however, it doesn't change the fact that making an engaging and difficult game DOES NOT mean you are reducing your playerbase and hurting the games bottom line.

In short, XIV is too easy, and recent commercial successes reveal there is no reason to dumb the game down to where it is today.

In short, whenever hard content is introduced even in dungeons for example. People always said the stuff was too hard or too complicated when they asked for it. Yoshi even said he was tired of it introducing hard content only to hear complaints on hard it was and this is what we get. It didn't have anything to do with the PS5 platform though. I mean people complain about Orbonne for so long they nerfed Thunder God.

[kidknee]

1) There is a reason why classic wow is more popular than retail. Content isn't extremely challenging but it isn't a cakewalk either. Most players are midcore and a midcore game generally would be more popular.
2) Even then wow does a good job of gradually getting people into the raid scene.
In a tier there are 12 boses.
First 4 bosses are easy to down , next 4 bosses are a step up and last few bosses are dangerous.
3) Regardless there is still some sort of engagement with the content no matter what kind of player you are.
A midcore group might reach the 3rd last or 2nd last boss or maybe the last boss of the tier is easy.
The more casual ones might clear only first 5-6 bosses etc.
Only the final 2 encounters are 10-15 min long fights with insane level of precise mechanic resolution.
In ff14 fights are extremely long (roughly 10mins) and require you to use giga brain all the time in savage.
Wow fights (first 7-8 bosses) are 5-7 mins at most. So periods of concentration are less.
4) ff14 does a bad job of teaching mechanics to players. The default ui is not upto the mark when it comes to debuffs and watching other people's debuffs etc.
And since ff14 uses a lot of old telegraphs ... The old players get it but new players struggle.(like orange triangle means predator stack).
I remember doing my first extreme and I was completely overwhelmed. Screen had so many mechanics and bombs going off that i couldn't make sense.
It's a lot of catching up to do before a person can step up to the level of a savage raider, which can seem overwhelming. Only reason I was able to clear 2 savage tiers was because of work from home.
Otherwise overwhelming catching up can seem discouraging.
5) Also in ff14 raiding everyone has a responsibility in a mechanic. Like p10s harrowing hell, each person has their part to play.. form the web, bait the conal etc.
In wow the raid size is huge20 so responsible task can be allotted to few better players... Like castle nathria artificer xymox ... Good mages can place seeds. So not the same amount of responsibility on everyone. Which means a raid comp can have a mix of players which are unequal in skill.
Resulting in more participation. (But people who are not so good benifit from the exposure and grow in skill as a result)
ff raid design philosophy results in creates a huge divide between players.

The only reason I don't play wow is bcoz, the company has bad malicious predatory practises and ff story is really good.

[Supersnow845]

^this is a good summary of 14’s problems and where WOW excels

1) 14 has no large scale difficult raids so everyone has to perform all mechanics on savage
2) 14 relies excessively on old telegraphs which you can argue standardises it but also doesn’t teach you half of them
3) 14 has no midcore content that funnels you into savage, Bozja CE’s are the closest in actual difficulty but really if you join a party you can spend the entire CE dead on the ground and still get gold

So if you bounce off savage (don’t like it’s structure, don’t want to commit or are good enough to try but not good enough to clear) the game has no content for you, if you are good enough for savage then you get 4 fights per half year

[VelKallor]

I really don’t know how to say in a nice way that if you are having anxiety attacks at failing in from the cold you cannot reasonably expect content to be catered for you (outside of say “very easy mode”)

Supersnow, tell ya what.

Come to Sydney, we can go into the city. Ill drop you off in the middle , tell you that there is a ceruleum tank and a wounded pilot with a key to a damaged car somewhere in 6 city blocks..but I wont tell you where..oh and you have 40 minutes time limit