Feedback: Dawntrail MSQ dungeon difficulty

[Saraide]

Because nobody has shown up here saying that. Nobody in the git gud crowd has talked about personally being frustrated to the point of Endwalker being unplayable. I also took a glance at threads current around Endwalker's launch (not a full read, but it's like 20 pages in?) and there was no exodus of players off the back of the quality of dungeon gameplay at the time. No wave of hardcore casuals throwing up their hands and quitting. Indeed, dungeons seemed relatively unremarked at the time compared to how divisive they've been in DT.

By contrast, for DT, I have seen people saying they're done either because of the quality of the story, scenes and voice acting and pointing out how well Genshin fills that niche, or because of accessibility issues in MSQ and combat content with GW2 being pointed as an alternative. I don't always understand why these people have those problems, but I do believe them when they say they have them.

In other words, I think that, frankly, if the MSQ dungeons were nerfed to EW levels, all the hardcore casuals will grumble and moan and still stay subbed whereas if no course change is applied, at least some people will leave and the community will be worse off for it. So the business case I think is really clear; having an accessible game with a reasonable amount of rewarding casual combat content makes FFXIV bigger and more profitable.


And again, I think having a Story Mode checkbox that trivializes a Duty Support pass of the problematic dungeons with a giant buff would be an extremely low cost way of at least providing accessibility.

Oh we got a business expert in the house. You know amount of hours played in endwalker was kinda low compared to how many players were subbed, right? That's by itself a worrying sign because those people are the closest to just stopping entirely, on top of more likely not engaging with the cashshop. I'm sure as business expert you know this though.
Also, how do you know people will actually quit over this supposedly insurmountable difficulty? People have complained about hades, shinryu, holminster, seat of sacrifice being far too hard. And yet they made it through.

[Mlem]

Oh we got a business expert in the house. You know amount of hours played in endwalker was kinda low compared to how many players were subbed, right? That's by itself a worrying sign because those people are the closest to just stopping entirely, on top of more likely not engaging with the cashshop. I'm sure as business expert you know this though.
Also, how do you know people will actually quit over this supposedly insurmountable difficulty? People have complained about hades, shinryu, holminster, seat of sacrifice being far too hard. And yet they made it through.

I'm not a business expert. Never said I was. I'm just pointing out the obvious. All of the folks here rejecting the experiences of players not able to do the same things they do were perfectly happy playing Endwalker.

Here's another thing I'm not though. I'm not a particularly long time player. I did not clear any of those difficulty gates you mentioned while they were on content and not outgeared. Why? Because like a huge number of other players, I joined during the pandemic, during a period when FFXIV's population grew rapidly. In that regard, low hours played compared to subs during EW, if that is indeed the case, makes sense because you have lots of casual players throwing money at Yoship on the regular without putting that many hours in. If that's the case, catering to that population is even more important.

[Saraide]

I'm not a business expert. Never said I was. I'm just pointing out the obvious. All of the folks here rejecting the experiences of players not able to do the same things they do were perfectly happy playing Endwalker.

Then you dont know what the best financial choice is in this situation and are not pointing out the obvious. Being subbed is not the same as being perfectly happy either.

[Saraide]

Here's another thing I'm not though. I'm not a particularly long time player. I did not clear any of those difficulty gates you mentioned while they were on content and not outgeared. Why? Because like a huge number of other players, I joined during the pandemic, during a period when FFXIV's population grew rapidly. In that regard, low hours played compared to subs during EW, if that is indeed the case, makes sense because you have lots of casual players throwing money at Yoship on the regular without putting that many hours in. If that's the case, catering to that population is even more important.

Catering to MSQ andies who will unsub one month in because they are done with MSQ?

[Mlem]

Catering to MSQ andies who will unsub one month in because they are done with MSQ?

After buying an entire expansion?

If all it takes is an option in the Duty Support, I'd say at that point, they've paid for your alpaca.

[Magikazam]

After buying an entire expansion?

Where you think all those people who's are 24/7 AFK in Limsa come from?

[Volgia]

It's probably been said already, but after 90 levels it's not unreasonable for the devs to trust you know how to play a job, or to do the many repeatable mechanics in their high level content. If this isn't the case, you can ask friends to carry you, if you have no friends to carry you or are extremely socially anxious you can just do the dungeons via teh trust system, it'll take longer but you'll get through it.

Do any dungeon 5+ times and you will not have any trouble.

[JadeCurtiss]

If all it takes is an option in the Duty Support,

That's not how game development works. You can't just say "just do this" with having no knowledge of what goes into the game. Plus, if you want to trivialize a dungeon why even play it at all? Watch the cutscenes on Youtube and you don't need to play anything.

[Jinglypockets]

Plus, if you want to trivialize a dungeon why even play it at all? Watch the cutscenes on Youtube and you don't need to play anything.

To be fair, I play plenty of story-heavy games on the easiest setting when the type of challenge presented isn't one that's enjoyable for me. Pretty much any tactical turn-based or pause-and-play RPG, for example. There's no part of me that wants to watch a Let's Play of some random jerk playing Dragon Age.