Zepla: The Players Endwalker Left Behind

[caffe_macchiato]

Didn't read the OP, just wanted to give thanks for Zepla for speaking the truth at the risk to her own personal safety. Fighting the mob is hard and fighting a multi-billion dollar megacorporation is even harder, but someone's gotta do it if we want a fun MMO to play. If Blizzard can be brought to heel with some constructive criticism, so can Square Enix.

[R041]

Didn't read the OP, just wanted to give thanks for Zepla for speaking the truth at the risk to her own personal safety. Fighting the mob is hard and fighting a multi-billion dollar megacorporation is even harder, but someone's gotta do it if we want a fun MMO to play. If Blizzard can be brought to heel with some constructive criticism, so can Square Enix.

It's pretty clear Zepla feels she finally broke free of the fear, after knowing she can actually play other games and retain views - In some cases surpass them. So she's speaking her mind appropriately. If that sounds like an exaggeration, it's not. We have a pretty abusive community here that tend to love-bomb, but completely trash you when you don't do or enjoy things exactly the same way they do.

(I'm a Eureka enjoyer)

[Recon1o6]

assuming ren's summary is accurate her takes about what counts as midcore are fairly off but her point about no midcore content is spot on


Extreme fights are midcore. In theory. They run the gamut of being barely above casual to harder than some savage floors. Zodiark for example is a joke of an extreme but Sephirot is harder than some savage fights.
BA is hardcore. Too big punishments for death, too much prep work in terms of study and grouping requirements. Its closest competitor is delubrum savage.

Delubrum normal however is just an alliance raid with inflated hp bars and not in the duty finder for some bizarre reason.

Dalriada and Castrum are midcore. They have some penalty and the fights can trip you up sometimes and some coordination is neccessary but the lack of enrages means a couple of people can scrape an eventual clear.

Shes completely correct on criterion being normal, savage and ultimate difficulty instead of normal (easy) extreme (medium) hard (savage). Some of those mechanics are killer.
Fun fact: alexander was supposed to have 3 tiers of difficulty but time constraints meant they had to cut it to 2.

[ReynTime]

assuming ren's summary is accurate her takes about what counts as midcore are fairly off but her point about no midcore content is spot on


Extreme fights are midcore. In theory. They run the gamut of being barely above casual to harder than some savage floors. Zodiark for example is a joke of an extreme but Sephirot is harder than some savage fights.
BA is hardcore. Too big punishments for death, too much prep work in terms of study and grouping requirements. Its closest competitor is delubrum savage.

Delubrum normal however is just an alliance raid with inflated hp bars and not in the duty finder for some bizarre reason.

Dalriada and Castrum are midcore. They have some penalty and the fights can trip you up sometimes and some coordination is neccessary but the lack of enrages means a couple of people can scrape an eventual clear.

Shes completely correct on criterion being normal, savage and ultimate difficulty instead of normal (easy) extreme (medium) hard (savage). Some of those mechanics are killer.
Fun fact: alexander was supposed to have 3 tiers of difficulty but time constraints meant they had to cut it to 2.

Just came to agree with this. There's no way BA can be considered 'mid' core, and Extremes can vary a lot, specially some from ARR and Heavensward.

[Supersnow845]

Just came to agree with this. There's no way BA can be considered 'mid' core, and Extremes can vary a lot, specially some from ARR and Heavensward.

People seriously overstate the “punishment” for dying in BA, if you are anywhere besides ozma extremely likely a healer will sac you, if you are at ozma and you are a new player often a vet will sac you anyway even if it means they get sucked out instead, if you get sucked out to ozma well you still got 15 obscures, 18 eureka fragments for upgrades and a chance at both zenteksuken swords and the conditional virtue, that’s how BA was setup to work, you chipped away at it and used eureka fragments to do more damage and get further in

In the extremely rare case there is a wipe or too many die for the number of sacs the party has then it takes about 10 minutes at sprite island to get back to 60 and you get 500 conceptuals/fundamentals out of it

New player setups for logos actions are also easy as hell these days, bring a damage essence, bring a support action or 2, have SOTR up and don’t bring platebearer

Considering you can oneshot it (and the majority of people do) just by mindlessly following someone else’s call-outs I think it’s pretty hard to justify BA as hardcore

[Zairava]

Snipped the OP for length

Again, I agree with essentially most if not everything she's had to say in the video. You summarized what she had to say and she put them more refined and detailed than I will here.

I've discovered, too, that I'm definitely a midcore player that just naturally leans towards more difficult content, I revel in the chaos. Endwalker's fatal flaw is that it does not have this content for reasons Zepla mentioned.

Without it, there's only two separate extremes: piss easy casual and break-neck hardcore. There is no medium difficulty that actually helps players try to get into harder content. Eureka and Bozja fit this bill, especially when you include the likes of NM's, Critical Engagements, CLL, Dalriada, Baldesion Arsenal, and Delebrum Reginae. However, that isn't here this expansion.

I'm of the same mind when she says she expected for Variant/Criterion/Criterion Savage to be Casual/Medium to EX/Savage and not Casual/Savage/Savage to Ultimate, and I'm of the belief most other people did as well. Criterion had the potential to be another form of medium difficulty content to help ease people into hard-core raids, but they missed the mark miserably by both making it too hard to perform that purpose and excruciatingly lacking incentives BOTH releases so far.

Eureka/Bozja were something anyone could go without the requirement of going in with a group every single time, and always have something to do and gain. I do believe that loss of exp/whatever progression system in the next field zone should not be included in as well. That seems to be a common complaint even if it doesn't bother me that much.

Relics, in my opinion, are the epitome of casual content with incentive to go and do without involving high-end raiding and such. You had to put in effort in prior expansions, so that you felt accomplished when you obtain it. That's gone as well, there is no sense of accomplishment with the manderville relics because of it literally just being a glorified tome weapon. It's even easier to get than the tome weapon because it only requires the prior tome currency, not 7(reduced to 4 later) runs of the latest last-fight of the raid tier and 500 of the current tome currency.

I also appreciate her actually putting in the effort to ask casual players on their input and opinions, it helps open my eyes to how varied their time is spent (obviously differs from person to person) as well as other people who may not actually have thought that openly otherwise.

[Renathras]

assuming ren's summary is accurate her takes about what counts as midcore are fairly off but her point about no midcore content is spot on

Thanks. You can watch it to verify if you like, but I tried to keep it slim and her points without interpretation.

I agree that BA was more like DRSav. I disagree on Extremes. Zodiark was the only Extreme this expansion that I would call midcore. One reason I tried P1S (and cleared P1S a bunch, P2S a few times, and later P5S; the first time I've ever done at-level Savages) is because of friends telling me that HydEx (which I had cleared) was Savage level, so if I could do that, I could do Eric Savage. Zodiark is also the only Extreme this expansion that doesn't actually have a body check. This was somewhat countered, though, by the mechanic being weird. To this day, people still have trouble with the Snakes. Something about the rotating battlefield really throws people off.

I would also say DR normal was on the same level as Dal. If anything, CLL is the easy one. But all of them have penalties (Mettle loss, which IS significant to people; for a while people wouldn't run CLL because the rewards were small, you got very little Mettle for clearing, but lost a ton from deaths doing it. The Devs kept saying the Mettle loss was insignificant, but apparently they realized the playerbase disagreed, so they boosted it and people started running it again).

Interesting fact on Alex. I didn't know that.

Again, I agree with essentially most if not everything she's had to say in the video. You summarized what she had to say and she put them more refined and detailed than I will here.

Yeah, I pretty much agree with most of what she said here (again, other than the BA thing). I also have discovered I'm apparently a midcore player that just enjoys chilling most of the time. And obviously I very much agree we need something in the middle that we're lacking, and as you say, it's really good that she went to casual players and asked them how they feel to get a more informed overall viewpoint.

I also kind of agree on Relics. I think the beauty of all past Relics - all of them, honestly - is that they are for all difficulties. ARR was FATEs and Roulettes, though you could also farm Light in Coils if you really wanted to. HW, you could get the parts from either buying with Poetics (random roulettes) or doing Savages (hardcore) or everything in between. In Eureka, unless you wanted the +2 versions (same visual model and effect, so no need for glam), you didn't even have to do BA. Bozja let you collect parts doing easy content (including FATEs) all the way up to DR Savage still dropping the Timeworn Artifacts. Though it didn't always get it right, it had a spread you could do.

The beauty of that kind of content is that it CAN be a grind that all skill/commitment level players can engage in together.

EDIT:

Exactly, he thinks everyone bullies him, he even thinks Zepla is personally bullying him, that's why he's so bitter, it's really weird and I don't know why he thinks that.

No, Fenyx, I'm not going to entertain your derailing. You have a whole 140 page thread to do that in. Go there and I'll give you the link to my OP in that thread - AGAIN - and ask you to quote where I said I was personally attacked - AGAIN - because I never did and you made up that lie the last time.

Do it in that thread. This one is for serious discussion, not your pot stirring.

I'm sure several of us read the thread before you edited it. It was purely venomous.

Oh, I still have it.

No, it wasn't "venomous". I thought it was funny the people who have spent months saying Zepla and Happy can't be trusted suddenly saying she's so spot on when she just agrees with them but nothing else about her changed. I didn't edit it to save face or whatever you're arguing, I edited it because someone asked and I want productive discussion.

Clearly, you do not since you've not yet mentioned the video nor Zepla's points and seem to want to engage in a personal crusade against me to derail this thread.

I might also add that taking screenshots so you can use them as future attacks isn't exactly something one would consider good faith...it seems to speak to a mind wanting to attack someone else and looking for evidence they can bring up in the future to hammer them with. You make a far better Umbridge than I, my friend.

I have no interested in entertaining it. Again, we have a 140 page thread for that. Go there if you want to continue. This thread is for serious discussion, not your vendettas and venomous derailing attempts.

Damn, busted, OP. It was a nice try I suppose.

"busted"?

1. If you really want discussion, leading with the snarky "takes Zepla's word as law" isn't the best idea

Someone gave an honest suggestion, and I adapted the OP since they asked since I think Boblawblah was right. I didn't hide it, so there's nothing to be "busted" about. Someone made a good faith comment and someone else took that on board and made a change based on that good faith comment.

Unlike the attempts to derail that have followed.

[FenyxRising]

I thought it was funny the people who have spent months saying Zepla and Happy can't be trusted suddenly saying she's so spot on when she just agrees with them but nothing else about her changed.

None of us said that.

thank u, next

[Renathras]

Setting aside that "(without the snark)" is pretty snarky, you actually posted your opinion, just in the wrong thread.

To help you out, I'm putting it here so it can be part of the discussion. You're very welcome. <3

Now for my actual thoughts, which I am going to put outside of the main original post:

I completely agree with Zepla, but she only mentioned a little bit about how casual content is unexciting. The way I see it, casual players also got screwed over by Square Enix, you can see that with Island Sanctuary. Island Sanctuary has no depth and more importantly no soul, it's completely unlike Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing, it's about spreadsheet management ? Really ? Doing numbers is not casual content. It should have been about fulfilling the vacation fantasy and having a hideout to destress and slowly set up your own farm and grow your crops and watch your animals grow and have babies, so you can get a lot of cute puppies and chicks and all that, and more importantly, to have a ton of small organic stories that pop up like having a chicken run missing one day and you have to find it. Right now the casual content is so formulaic, but casual players don't deserve that either. Casual doesn't mean you put in zero effort into their content. Stardew Valley didn't succeed because it has a spreadsheet behind it, it succeeded because you can play the game normally and have an organic story develop about your journey through your farm, like do you help the corporation or help the small town, it makes you feel like you really inhabit the world.

EDIT:

I even sacrificed one of my daily posts to present your thoughts here.

Oh, and for the record: I actually agree with pretty much all of that. I thought it was a good post. I wish you would have posted that here instead of posting what you have here and trying to hide that there. But I do genuinely agree with this, so thought it was worth reposting here. Thank you for sharing your viewpoint.

EDIT2:

And thank you for doing this bit of research. Added here as well:

By the way here is the forum post Zepla mentioned:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/473728

...though I think she posted a picture in her video, people can go there and have a read as well. Thanks for that.

[FenyxRising]

If people want to have a proper discussion without forum users who hate Zepla and think Zepla is a big bully, feel free to post in this thread:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...t-the-snark%29