People Enjoy hard Games

[Rolder50]

Creativity is rewarded in Elden Ring. You can beat the same boss in wildly different ways depending on your build, the tools you use, and the way you approach the fight. FF14 offers none of this. FF14 asks you to dance a specific dance, and if you are at-level there are generally no alternative steps you can take. FF14 has right answers and wrong answers, and sometimes a continuum between them along which you can be more or less right. Creativity can help you find the solution, but it can't help you find a meaningfully different one.

FFXIV Gameplay in a nutshell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz8ssH7LiB0

[CelestiCer]

Here's another thing I could note... XIV has been designed to not encourage players to improve from the get go.

Job wise you do not need to know what the hell you're doing. Square will drag your dead bodies through the finish-lines in casual content. And while this can be relaxing and Fun, this also creates an environment where players do not wish to strife because there is no urgency to, the complete opposite of the message in the Endwalker MSQ. Why would you ever wanna improve when you can Echo-Unsync brute force it later anyways? Then once the players are met with an ounce of difficulty or hurdle to overcome? they already been conditioned to find it to much of a hassle, a challenge to much and avoid it. Nowadays? reading Tool-Tips of the Jobs they play being is burden to heavy... The Jobs are so hollow that they essentially play themselves. Between Black Desert login rewards and feeding my workers beer? there's literally no difference for me between that and an Expert roulette. At least not in feel for me... and that's terrible...

Keep casual content or 95% of FFXIV's content below Extreme easy? sure. But don't hollow out both the content and the Jobs we play, even the optional complexity we can master. Like one or the other. Yet Square seems to go to the direction of both if all these simplifications we have been hit with isn't a sign... then not just Yoshi P but everyone can just tell us to " Just go Play Ultimate ". I do not enjoy doing the hardest mechanics of having the mechanics be so astronomically difficult that we have to spend a full week bashing our heads into it, with hopefully a scheduled Static instead of a sporadic party-finder you have to constantly find or create... I do not see the fun in this, not me. I had more fun when my Job had more complexity. I used to love doing roulettes and dailies. I really spammed the crap out of Experts just for the hell of it... it was relaxing to do because it was Fun. But not anymore, now because it's so easy? its so unfun... that it becomes stressful, because I don't feel any excitement like I used to for playing well. In fact I feel like the game is just playing itself which is horrible... made worse when I know Square can do better because they have done better, mhm.

[shiraneko]

Creativity is rewarded in Elden Ring. You can beat the same boss in wildly different ways depending on your build, the tools you use, and the way you approach the fight. FF14 offers none of this. FF14 asks you to dance a specific dance, and if you are at-level there are generally no alternative steps you can take. FF14 has right answers and wrong answers, and sometimes a continuum between them along which you can be more or less right. Creativity can help you find the solution, but it can't help you find a meaningfully different one.

Other games also have a "correct" way to beat an encounter, but either the meta isn't there yet or the community doesn't push into it. In elden ring and other souls games you can say you have creativity to beat a boss, but there's always going to be the build or rotation or strategy that beats it the fastest. Elden ring being a single player game, there's no push to play optimally other than speedrunning.. but take Monster Hunter World for example, after the DPS meter became standard in coop it's clear what builds are better sometimes you would even get shunned for not doing enough dps or not being meta. Same in Tera where before the DPS meter was standard people did whatever they want, then afterwards it became about playing optimally. So, you can be creative and play as an ice mage in 14 too, but that's obviously not optimal. Similarly pretty much any encounter that requires doing damage has "the" solution. This is especially true in 14 because doing damage is the only metric that matters in a boss fight (ex: CC, dispelling, almost doesn't exist at all), and the way that you output that damage has basically no variance because they're tuned around job rotations that are balanced to all be within a few % of their role. Also because 14 is a tab target where you just lock on the boss and do damage, unlike other action combat games where active evading/blocking and hitting/missing the target is a thing.

[RitsukoSonoda]

Other games also have a "correct" way to beat an encounter, but either the meta isn't there yet or the community doesn't push into it. In elden ring and other souls games you can say you have creativity to beat a boss, but there's always going to be the build or rotation or strategy that beats it the fastest. Elden ring being a single player game, there's no push to play optimally other than speedrunning.. but take Monster Hunter World for example, after the DPS meter became standard in coop it's clear what builds are better sometimes you would even get shunned for not doing enough dps or not being meta. Same in Tera where before the DPS meter was standard people did whatever they want, then afterwards it became about playing optimally.

The "DPS Meta" for Monster Hunter games however was a double edged sword that created it's own share of problems due to the builds being glass cannons that got carted if the monster so much as sneezed (or farted in the case of a certain pink monkey) on the player resulting in a higher percentage of failed quests due to people playing with something beyond their skill level just because something online told them it was the "correct build". World/Iceborn/Rise/Sunbreak I primarily used an "Immortal" Gunlance build that may take an extra couple minutes to kill a monster but would shrug off just about everything that did hit me. Exceptions would be autocart skills like Safi Jiva's Sapphire Star and Behemoth's Ecliptic Meteor. However I could face tank Alatreon's unmitigated AoE when people failed to break it's horns. Rise/Sunbreak lacks monsters with instacart by design attacks so I could literally AFK in the middle of fighting anything and still be standing when I get back to the game. Clearing 100% of hunts going 2-3 min slower is still far more productive than only clearing 30% of hunts because of quest failures due to excessive carting.

FFXIV's "DPS Meta" exists because the game lacks these kinds of variables. It's basically just get highest ilvl gear, slot materia for preferred substat not already capped on each gear piece by default, then press skill buttons in order while following footsteps on dance floor. For the most part it's just a matter of how long it takes people to paint said footsteps on the floor for others to follow.

[Kansene]

I enjoy many games that are considered difficult.

I do not however, enjoy the way FFXIV's difficult content is designed, so I play the easy bits because they're fun.

[ChonkGoblinSuprem]

> has someone else tell them the mathematically calculated best way to play this game

> complains this game is too easy

lollers

[kaynide]

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.

I mean, if I wanna play hard games there is a smorgasbord of them ready for me to play.

It’s not wrong/bad to want more midcore/hardcore content in FFXIV, but it is folly to want this one game to be every possible game and cater to every possible want a gamer might have.

The devs have the data on what sells and keeps subs high, and they are going to build the game in that direction to the Nth degree; they absolutely know they will lose, say, 100 people who want a harder game…but they also know that loss will keep the 500 or so candy-crush moms who just wanna chill/faceroll the game.

So, they try to cater to everyone like mentioned above, but generally speaking the bulk of resources are going to be put towards whatever people engage in/burn game time on.

[Supersnow845]

If nothing else for the sake of the MSQ it would be so easy to add a “cleric stance” you could toggle in solo duties that turns your oGCD heals into damage spells

You’d still be spamming your nuke and DOT but at least you’d have 4-5 oGCD’s a minute to juggle

[RitsukoSonoda]

IMO in regards to souls-like games. They aren't as hard as people place them to be. They are built to be challenging however it's also normally paired with a design that will essentially punish the player if they do not learn the game's systems and mechanics. It's those 2 factors put together that created that image of the games being made for those that like "hard games" or are "gaming masochists"

FFXIV on the other hand can be seen as the opposite. It's been systematically removing every system and mechanic while toning down what little challenge it had initially.

I personally enjoy just about any type of game out there that isn't Fortnite, CoD, or a sports game like madden, 2K sports, etc...

[Aword3213]

IMO in regards to souls-like games. They aren't as hard as people place them to be. They are built to be challenging however it's also normally paired with a design that will essentially punish the player if they do not learn the game's systems and mechanics. It's those 2 factors put together that created that image of the games being made for those that like "hard games" or are "gaming masochists"

FFXIV on the other hand can be seen as the opposite. It's been systematically removing every system and mechanic while toning down what little challenge it had initially.

I personally enjoy just about any type of game out there that isn't Fortnite, CoD, or a sports game like madden, 2K sports, etc...

Don't know why lots of people hold souls games as golden standard of "hard" when, in fact, they're not hard at all.

Just....don't panic roll