People Enjoy hard Games

[Renathras]

The only thing being spoken by the people in that case is that there's a lot of reasons to pick SMN. What people don't seem to realise is that not everyone who plays SMN enjoys it. Just like how not everyone who did Eureka enjoyed it.

Isn't this true of all content, though?

Not everyone who does Ultimates, Savages, Extremes, Criterion, etc enjoys it. Not everyone that plays X Job (fill in X with literally any Job in the game) enjoys it.

Unless you have a scientific, official poll of people to determine how many people play a Job and enjoy it vs those that play the Job and don't enjoy it, this is a meaningless argument since it applies to literally everything. "People like BLM because it's a challenge! This proves people want Jobs to be more challenging!" "Well, not everyone that plays BLM enjoys it, just like how not everyone who did Eureka enjoyed it."

Would you accept that as a valid counter argument?

You could try to move the goalpost "SURELY no one plays BLM unless they enjoy it! It's not like it does more damage, can be a ranged Melee, or has any advantage or benefit where anyone would pick it over an easier Job!" isn't really a valid argument, either because (as I sarcastically stated in that imaginary quote) there are advantages BLM holds over SMN and RDM that might make people feel pressured to play it even if they don't really personally enjoy it or what it requires of them.

.

So you can't really use this as an argument. ESPECIALLY since it's not in vacuum:

WAR is one of the top played Tanks (even before it became top damage, it was still highly played)
WHM is the most played Healer (despite it being the least meta choice and weakest overall)
DNC is the most played Ranged (this also destroys the argument WAR and WHM are only most played because they start at level 1, as DNC clearly does not)
SGE is the second most played Healer and is the second easiest and easier than its competition, SGE (again debunking the "starts at level 1" argument)
RPR is the most played Melee outside of JP (and 2nd there) and SAM the most played in Japan (2nd in the West), and they are the two easiest of the Melees to play to most people (again debunking the "starts at level 1" argument)

The people kind of have spoken.

My personal philosophy is the game should have a range of Jobs from simple to complex (but you know and disagree with this), but the alternative is them all being WAR/WHM/DNC/SMN-like. I just think they need to stop changing existing Jobs. Adding new Jobs for new playstyles is the way to go. If they want "simple BLM" in the future, they need to leave BLM alone and just add a new Caster "elementalist" or whatever to fill that niche. Don't take from people what they already have, that's my view. And this goes both for making Jobs simpler and for making them more complex than they currently are.

[Aravell]

Isn't this true of all content, though?

Not everyone who does Ultimates, Savages, Extremes, Criterion, etc enjoys it. Not everyone that plays X Job (fill in X with literally any Job in the game) enjoys it.

Unless you have a scientific, official poll of people to determine how many people play a Job and enjoy it vs those that play the Job and don't enjoy it, this is a meaningless argument since it applies to literally everything. "People like BLM because it's a challenge! This proves people want Jobs to be more challenging!" "Well, not everyone that plays BLM enjoys it, just like how not everyone who did Eureka enjoyed it."

Would you accept that as a valid counter argument?

You could try to move the goalpost "SURELY no one plays BLM unless they enjoy it! It's not like it does more damage, can be a ranged Melee, or has any advantage or benefit where anyone would pick it over an easier Job!" isn't really a valid argument, either because (as I sarcastically stated in that imaginary quote) there are advantages BLM holds over SMN and RDM that might make people feel pressured to play it even if they don't really personally enjoy it or what it requires of them.

You just....proved my point? People have a wide variety of reasons to play a job, player population does not equal player satisfaction, to get an actual number on player satisfaction you'd have to have an official poll, a fact that you also mentioned, so how can you say "The people have spoken" when the people were never given a voice?

If you really think player population equals player satisfaction, then SB WHM was the most played healer at the time, so bring back SB lilies, the people have spoken.

[Ivtrix]

Yet Summoner was a low played job before its rework. Now it's one of the most played Jobs.

The people have spoken.

People play it because you push 4 buttons to do 12k dps

The job is terrible but people play it because of how easy it is

It’s not an indication by any means that the job is good

[caffe_macchiato]

Baldurs Gate and Elden ring

Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate make a fraction of the revenue that FFXIV does. FFXIV is easy on purpose so that people can get to endgame as quickly as possible and enjoy social activities like clubbing and ERP. And FFXIV pays off without any of the work that other companies have to put in. So what's the loss here? You're subscribed anyway, so clearly Square Enix did something right.

Not to mention that Square Enix is nowhere near the size or scale of Larian or FromSoftware. Like, come on. It's like expecting caviar from McDonald's. It ain't gonna happen pal.

[Supersnow845]

Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate make a fraction of the revenue that FFXIV does. FFXIV is easy on purpose so that people can get to endgame as quickly as possible and enjoy social activities like clubbing and ERP. And FFXIV pays off without any of the work that other companies have to put in. So what's the loss here? You're subscribed anyway, so clearly Square Enix did something right.

Not to mention that Square Enix is nowhere near the size or scale of Larian or FromSoftware. Like, come on. It's like expecting caviar from McDonald's. It ain't gonna happen pal.

Wow so 14 dwarfs them in revenue, this revenue somehow can’t be used to make the game better but also square is small indie company

This is like three layers of defending square all in one comment

[Calysto]

Difficulty in FFXIV :
"let's make 15mn OHKO/TPK so it takes X wipes to learn each and repeat them all until the end"
I'm just a casual so my opinion isn't worth much on the matter, and I'm sure people enjoy that, but it just feels cheap to me.

[CelestiCer]

19 pages of people asking for optional complexity (example BLM a job so easy on the surface but that can be optimised to hell and back) and job depth and people still come on and say “but SMN popular” as if they just had an ascended epiphany we are all just too stupid to understand

They make it sound like the total subscriber count magically skyrocketed to Ultima Thule with SMN rework... when in reality? RDM and BLM are just the worse alternative choice vs SMN being idiot proof for Savage raiding, making it also the caster choice with least fluctuating damage performance as a bonus. The rework made SMN the dumbest DPS Job... By that logic? we should turn every Job into the dumbest possible version to improve FFXIV, regardless if that would ever result in more difficult complex optional content. I join Raiding Discords where SMN is picked not cause they like it? because its the most faceroll Job... that's not why players should play it, but that is a large reason...

[MsQi]

People enjoy a lot of things.

[ChonkGoblinSuprem]

lmao a turn based RPG is “too hard” just because the meta hasn’t cheesed all of the gameplay yet

lmfao about meta sheep bleating about a game being easy when you don’t even play it yourself…. You have other people tell you how to play it.

[Aldath]

Some people enjoy hard games. There's a difference between something challenging and something being hard.

I consider myself a midcore player, good enough to have succesfuly cleared some old extremes, but bad enough to stay away from Savage because of how badly I played tank against Alexander Prime (Normal) and Sephirot (Extreme). I think this game has more than enough midcore content, the problem is that nowadays the lack of an ilvl sync for most of it, on top of a long history of class changes, makes it a joke.

There's also the issue of how big of a leap in difficulty is going from Normal, to Extreme, to Savage. In my own experience, Normal does very little to prepare you for the extreme versions of Trials, and if what I've read holds true, Savage Raids are even worse. Normal introduces you to mechanics that either will completely change or become irrelevant on the Extreme version, giving you a false sense of mastery and security once you clear it, and confusion when you have no idea what the hell killed you. Also, the game does nothing to introduce players into harder content. The game teaches you that every instanced content you unlock can be queued for in DF, but no one has the will to go and do it for Extremes/Savage, so new players are faced with infinite queues, or with groups full of people who have no idea what they're getting into, usually led by a frustrated mentor because he does know how things will play out. Many people will say "you can do PF", but the game never actually bothers to teach you that alternative, and even then, very few people seem to be interested in doing old extremes without unsync, whcih might speak volumes of how "engaging" they find that content to be in the long run. I recall reading somewhere that Yoshi-P said they don't want people skipping old content because they worked hard on it, but I don't see SE making an effort to keep it relevant.

And speaking of encounter design, that's also a problem in FFXIV. The 2 Minute Meta has been so far what has really kept me on edge about trying Savages, and I consider it one of the biggest walls for new players to get involved in hard content and learn, as it's one of the most anti-PUG designs I've ever encountered in an MMO. The game doesn't takes into account personal mastery of the encounter and instead punishes good players for the mistakes of others.

Also keep in mind that usually, hardcore players in MMOs are a low percentage, and games that have tried to carter to said demographic usually fail. Sadly, it's the Limsa Catgirls and the Hrothgar Furries in Faerie that pay the bills for FFXIV Devs, and I am sure they'd rather lose 4 regular subs than that one player who will buy an entire catalog of outfits for alts and any new shiny cosmetic and mount. We in the forums of any game are usually the most passionate bunch, and also very vocal, but we aren't really a substantial part of the population.