Embracing Diversity: A Belated 10th Anniversary Reflection

[Lyth]

A lot of the issues that you raise have less to do with the content itself and more to do with how players network and communities get built. Even before Ultimates were introduced, players would go back to speedrun raids or do minimum ilvl challenges with their friends until the next tier. Even if the content doesn't exist, players will create it as long as there's a sense of community present. Likewise, I'm sure there's plenty of people out there who didn't originally have a goal of raiding but ended up trying it out because their friends were doing it. If your friends are still logging on, then you'll always find something to do.

During the time of ARR, a lot of that networking would have primarily happened within the framework of the game itself. Now, people mostly ignore in-game frameworks like Free Companies and primarily interact with statics and game communities using social media tools like Discord. This is especially important if you're interested in a more niche bit of content, like Deep Dungeons or BLU raids, where you'll find next to nothing formally listed in PF, yet there are lots of runs happening on a daily basis, and new players are generally welcomed. It's a waste of time creating an equivalent in-game social media platform that can compete with this. You'd just be reinventing the wheel.

The downside of this approach is that it leads to communities being fragmented. The game doesn't really need to provide more communication tools, but it does need to play more of an integrative role in bringing these communities together.

I will also say that one big advantage of content like Bozja and Eureka is that it has that 'Barrens chat' effect that results from bringing a lot of players into the same zone at the same time. You end up starting up conversations and friendships by proximity. Interconnected players generally stick around.

[Aurelle_Deresnels]

I am one of those people who came to FF XIV having played the single-player FFs (yes, all of them) and I do play purely for the story. I'll never do any of the high-end content in the game. Not because I am a poor player, not because I am lazy, and not because I can't make a time commitment. I don't do high-level raiding because I am in FF XIV to relax and have fun and I don't want to do high-level raiding content. And that isn't going to change. And there are millions more like me in the game.

Don't make the mistake of assuming that players who don't raid, want raiding to be easy. Most of us couldn't care less about raiding regardless of the difficulty.

I agree with the premise of the thread. A healthy MMO appeals to a broad variety of players and personal tastes as opposed to a select few. I am very much a casual player but casual does not equal wanting to see the game stripped of any and all difficulty and depth. I'd like to see more content with staying power that is geared towards midcore and hardcore players.

Eureka and Bozja fulfilled that niche for me. Perhaps Crystalline Conflict could have if I were able to queue up for it with my partner - but that isn't an option, unfortunately.

Indeed, there are millions of casual players like you who are perfectly happy to get along with midcore and hardcore players! And likewise, there are plenty of midcore and hardcore players who are perfectly happy to get along with casual players.

But I do occasionally run into toxic elitist players who say "MSQ should be hard so that players can't reach endgame without getting good", or toxic casual players who do insist on removing all depth because they can't stand the idea of someone getting even slightly more results for putting more effort into the game. Those few players I can't really get along with, because their demands entail pushing players away for no reason, and thus are destructive to the playerbase ecosystem. It's the paradox of tolerance applied to MMOs.

Likewise, I get frustrated when players - or SE - make the mistake of thinking that there's only one type of player interested in a part of the game, because unnecessary exclusion and resentment comes of it. Why are the early floors of Eureka Orthos full of one-shot mechanics? Casual Deep Dungeon players waited just as long as hardcore enthusiasts for a new Deep Dungeon, and deserve their 30 floors just the same! Why do jobs keep losing their optional depth in the name of "accessibility"? When it comes to difficulty, accessibility is for those players who won't take such options, and may not even notice them!

One of my most memorable dungeon runs was tanking Cutter's Cry back in ShB. I noticed that the sprout SMN not only moved like a new player, but they were using Ifrit all the time. (Back then, Emerald / Garuda was the AOE pet outside of niche optimizations, so the usual flow for dungeons was to use Ifrit only on bosses and Garuda on the rest.) I offered them advice, and they accepted, so I told them that Emerald Carbuncle was stronger in AOE situations - and just in case, I also told them that they could switch pets on the run. (I checked their level and they couldn't have had Garuda yet; they were quite new.)

Then the NIN, who moved like a veteran, protested "you don't pay his sub". I wasn't even telling them about weaving, when I could have explained wildly skill-inappropriate things like when and why to decouple Bahamut in hybrid timeline E12S.

I replied "neither do you, and he seems interested". After all, I did offer advice, not demand they take it.

The NIN went "I'm just showing my friend the game". Which only raises the question of why they didn't teach their friend the basics themselves!

I finished explaining the usual dungeon flow, and let the sprout go through a couple of pet swaps. Then I took advantage of the facts that a) I had queued in with the healer and knew they could handle big pulls, and b) it was Cutter's Cry... and I took off running to pull the entire route between the second and third bosses.

It's a big pull, and it often fails if the DPS aren't using their tools, but I wanted to give the sprout a "wow, I can do that" moment to put their new knowledge into practice. And it worked! No one died.

After the dungeon, my healer friend informed me that the NIN had started a kick vote on me. (And it had failed because even the SMN thought it was unreasonable.) Some people just have no tolerance for someone else learning something. :|

[Aurelle_Deresnels]

I also disagree with the game needing more hardcore players as they tend to be the most annoying to play with, having little to no patience, and just making the experience less enjoyable for everyone around them.

I would counter that that issue isn't due to hardcore players, it's due to inconsiderate and obnoxious players.

I've had the pleasure of queueing into roulettes with plenty of hardcore players, even a few of the world's best... and you'd never know without recognizing their character name. Most are there to have fun, just the same as the casual players, and go into roulettes fully expecting to get casual players and newbies. If we don't want to take the risk of getting a first-timer watching cutscenes, we'll make a full premade or do something else. And since we expect to get casual players in casual content, why say anything that even implies skill level other than maybe offering advice?

But there's always a few insecure players who feel the need to show off or put others down in order to feel better about themselves, and that behavior is annoying whether they do it in roulettes or in Savage. In fact, the few times I've gotten them in Savage have been worse than just impatience, because their showing off tends to wipe the raid!

The obnoxious ones are a loud and memorable minority within casual and hardcore alike. The considerate majority simply has no need to say anything about relative skill levels - so you've probably been around plenty of us too.

[Teno]

There’s a huge misconception on what makes someone a casual player in this thread. Casual players enjoy challenging content just like the hardcore players do, but a lot of them simply lack the free time that is required to devote to the game. I myself never get into savage or ultimate raids, but it isn’t because i don't want to. I simply have other priorities in life that prevent me from being able to participate in a consistent manner.

I also disagree with the game needing more hardcore players as they tend to be the most annoying to play with, having little to no patience, and just making the experience less enjoyable for everyone around them. Casual players are what makes the game successful. The more you have, the more longevity your game will have. There’s more to gaming than trying to rush and min/max everything.

You have a lot of time in between tiers to clear savage. And you don't need to commit to one group, PF works well for savage. If you're flexible in what role you can take you won't even wait that long for a group to form, which is usually the biggest time sink.

[Tyintheron]

All the 10th Anniversary of A Realm Reborn stuff got me in a reflective mood, and sometimes it takes a while for me to put things to words. With the EU Fan Festival on the horizon, now seems like a good time for a post about playerbase diversity.

I've been a professional game designer for over 20 years. Thanks for posting this. It was a good read.

When I started my career, it was at a company that was renowned for being very "smart" in terms of how they designed their games. Most of them involved complex, open system designs, and people who had been there for some time were fond of saying that players just didn't know what they want from a game, so you shouldn't listen to "what they want." They were game design snobs, for want of a better word. And so when I started out in game design, I was trained to be one too.

But for all the plaudits the company got for its design, by far the most informative part of my game design career was actually working in a video game store.

Having a guy come in and excitedly pick up his copy of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, who then went on to talk excitedly about how long he'd been waiting for the game because it featured his favourite car of all time. How he and his friends loved the series so much, because they'd hang out on the couch with some pizza and spend the weekend trash-talking each other. Having more people come up to the counter asking about the game because that guy was so excited. Having some of those friends come in to pick up their copies with him because his enthusiasm for nothing more than his favourite car and hanging out with his friends was just so contagious.

Complexity for its own sake can have its place, but it shouldn't be the goal. Nobody's managed to get their friends playing FF14 after an enthusiastic conversation in a video game store about Materia melding for optimized stat break points.

Or, to put it another way: "It has really cool boss fights" is a much better selling point for the vast majority of potential players than "it has really complicated boss fights."