People Enjoy hard Games

[Ath192]

I don't think that difficulty plays a bigger role than world building/design and player expression/immersion.

To me it does to some extent, a problem I feel is that after a dungeon or any multiplayer experience of the "Casual" variety doesn't feel special. It never feels like we did something meaningful together. We didn't need to talk, the boss just dropped dead and now everyone move along pls, next instance.

We are just mindlessly doing things. So perhaps more collaboration needed would feel more immersive. Just my 2 cents on that.

[Nizzi]

I really just think job design needs to improve. I don't care if "casual content" is easy because the game already allows us to form into different groups and do the type of content we want, which is great. I don't want to force someone who is just wanting to chill after work and farm glams from an alliance raid to have to smash their head against it, wipe after wipe, for 2 hours just to clear; but the gutting of the skill ceiling on jobs means I have to do high end content to get any enjoyment out of the gameplay of the game anymore... so basically I play once a week on Tuesday reclears and then don't have anything else to do.

Making an encounter harder doesn't make your job more engaging, and the job is how you interact and engage with the encounter. If your job is fun to play at a baseline in all content, then all the content you want to do becomes fun.

[CelestiCer]

I really just think job design needs to improve. I don't care if "casual content" is easy because the game already allows us to form into different groups and do the type of content we want, which is great. I don't want to force someone who is just wanting to chill after work and farm glams from an alliance raid to have to smash their head against it, wipe after wipe, for 2 hours just to clear; but the gutting of the skill ceiling on jobs means I have to do high end content to get any enjoyment out of the gameplay of the game anymore... so basically I play once a week on Tuesday reclears and then don't have anything else to do.

Making an encounter harder doesn't make your job more engaging, and the job is how you interact and engage with the encounter. If your job is fun to play at a baseline in all content, then all the content you want to do becomes fun.

PREACH IT !! ...mhm

[Rolder50]

The recent success of Baldur's Gate 3 really shows this off. Sure it has variable difficulty settings, but even on the lower settings there are still TONS of options for how you want to play your character, set up your party, all that fun jazz. They don't dumb it down even if you pick easy.

[PercibelTheren]

The recent success of Baldur's Gate 3 really shows this off. Sure it has variable difficulty settings, but even on the lower settings there are still TONS of options for how you want to play your character, set up your party, all that fun jazz. They don't dumb it down even if you pick easy.

I mean yes, the options in that game are amazing. But the game isn't that hard, either. Not if you know what you're doing and know how DnD works, at least.

[Deo14]

I mean yes, the options in that game are amazing. But the game isn't that hard, either. Not if you know what you're doing and know how DnD works, at least.

It's still rocket science compared to FFXIV or FFXVI.

[Jeeqbit]

People Enjoy hard Games

SOME people enjoy hard games. Some people like easy games and just want something easy to occupy their attention or to relax with. That is why I believe games are best when they have a "hard mode" and an "easy mode" (that you can choose from the very beginning).

The issue with FFXIV is that this hard mode is only available by unlocking the extreme, savage and ultimate modes and people only do these with a pre-formed party. You usually can't just queue for them, so a lot of people just end up doing the easy versions most of the time through roulettes.

An alternative way to do it would be to make the "hard" mode a client setting where you can disable telegraphs in the character config, so that orange telegraphs and tank buster indicators don't appear even in normal modes. Then the players that aren't very good with mechanics can keep the indicators on and the people who want a challenge can disable the indicators.

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.

There are a lot of people that like hard content, sure. It is pretty split.

Most of the people who want to do hard content don't actually end up doing it because of anxiety. I made a linkshell back in Heavensward catered to such people and within 2 days it had filled to 128 people and a lot of them told me they wanted to do this content but PF looked toxic so they didn't. Many of them were women.

It's a lot better now because there is cross-world PF, a [Practice] tag and the [Duty Complete] tag replaced the "2 chests, no bonus" toxic description we used to use. But I think it's most likely still a big issue.

So that is one of the challenges. A lot of people want to do it but never actually will. The other factor is they want to but they are too busy to put a serious focus on it because of work and real life.

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.

Majority or not, they exist and I remember Koji once said in response to people saying content is too easy that "easy is good... for us". A blunt response that a lot of people knew already. Easy is good for their statistics and people feel like they beat hard content when they win, even though it was in fact easy. He was usually translating for Yoshi-P then, so it may have actually been Yoshi-P.

they both outperformed FFXVI which is a story game with incredibly easy gameplay.

It was PS5 exclusive. If streams are anything to go by, tens of thousands of people per streamer watched the archived streams of FF16, obviously because plenty of people don't want to get a PS5.

[PercibelTheren]

I like having the option of different difficulty. Sometimes I feel like being challenged and sometimes I just want to come home after a long day at work and relax.

Also, no, the people who enjoy difficult games are not a majority. Just very vocal. In fact, many of them won't shut up and will constantly push their idea of fun on everyone else.

[ThaCa]

Someone should force the devs to replay the story as Healer. It's incredibly tedious, easy and boring.

[PercibelTheren]

Someone should force the devs to replay the story as Healer. It's incredibly tedious, easy and boring.

Can't disagree there. I somehow suffered through playing as a healer through ARR, then switched to DRG for HW because it felt thematically appropriate and it was so much better. Ended up playing story content as DPS and dungeons as healer.