Feedback: Dawntrail MSQ dungeon difficulty

[Banggugyangu]

I mean I'm not wrong. You've abandoned the argument in favor of it.

More insults seasoned with insinuations of lack of understanding.

Where have I insulted you, exactly?

I'm not a good target for 'oh yeah?! when's the last time you...' I run everything but Savage/Ultimates and with regularity.

I'm not exactly sure what your point is here... or how this is relevant in the slightest, but cool?

Playing your own game does not in fact make you the target consumer. It's like me running a restaurant and eating there for a meal most days when I get a complaint that things are too spicy. Then a customer that likes it says the commenter should be quiet because they also like the spice and I'm also eating it so it's okay.

This is a poor analogy, as a food order is typically tailored to the person making the order, where as that's simply not feasible for game development. Tailoring content to order in an MMO would exponentially multiple the necessary labor. You make the content apply to the target audience. Here's the kicker, ok? FFXIV is chock full of content for quite literally any skill level, period. There's far more casual content in this game than any other MMO. On top of that, the entirety of the story of the game is easy. The required skill level to complete the story start to finish is what most players would consider bare minimum. It's a very low bar. Couple all of this with the fact that there are quite literally no stakes in FFXIV for anything outside of Eureka, crafting, and Deep Dungeons, and you have a huge game that caters to the casual. Again, no RPG in history lets the player skirt by without some form of improvement, and even then, FFXIV's ask in that regard is miniscule. The game is fine. Expecting players to show improvement over the span of a game is fine. It's not a new concept, and countless beloved games in the past, including every single title in this game's own series, have done it. Telling someone "Hey, try again, do better" is not the same energy as "git gud scrub". Rather than white knighting for these players, why not spend your energy trying to help them improve their gameplay? Who doesn't enjoy something even more when they can witness themselves improving at it? I imagine that you've probably attempted that and gotten the typical "<insertYOUDON'TPAYMYSUBresponsehere>".

Use copy paste and edit.

Doesn't prevent the 3000 char limit.

[Jaxtaro]

Tailoring content to order in an MMO would exponentially multiple the necessary labor.

Not sure how much programming you've done, but it's a lot easier than you would think. To begin with, no one is advocating customizing it at the individual level, but even that wouldn't be that difficult, since it is just a matter of adjusting variables. All mechanics, triggers, etc could be identical, with changes to timers, amount damage, etc. It would only require a 2 tier, maybe 3 varset to make distinct difficulty settings. This is already done with solo MSQ duties. Creating it initially and doing the coding would be easy. Getting the tuning able to be universally applied to any instance wouln't be too bad, the only labor intensive component would be manual QA testing of all instances.

I would posit that the worst part would be creating the design documents.

There's nothing "exponential" about it. To personalize it, creating a performance tracker, which serves as a variable multiplier is all it would take.

None of these are technically challenging.

[Banggugyangu]

Not sure how much programming you've done, but it's a lot easier than you would think. To begin with, no one is advocating customizing it at the individual level, but even that wouldn't be that difficult, since it is just a matter of adjusting variables. All mechanics, triggers, etc could be identical, with changes to timers, amount damage, etc. It would only require a 2 tier, maybe 3 varset to make distinct difficulty settings. This is already done with solo MSQ duties. Creating it initially and doing the coding would be easy. Getting the tuning able to be universally applied to any instance wouln't be too bad, the only labor intensive component would be manual QA testing of all instances.

I would posit that the worst part would be creating the design documents.

There's nothing "exponential" about it. To personalize it, creating a performance tracker, which serves as a variable multiplier is all it would take.

None of these are technically challenging.

Being a mod dev for several games (obviously not for this one), I've done a pretty strong amount of coding. You missed my point where I was laying out how bad faith the comparison the other commenter was making actually is. Yes, you could have a system as you've mentioned that would be fairly easy to implement, but in reality, that would be detrimental to the health of the game in the long run if later content eligibility weren't contingent upon clearing without said system. It's very bad to dumb a game down. This always ultimately leads to less interest. You don't want the game to be too hard in general, but you do want your player base to feel challenged. By and large, the majority of gamers seek a challenge. They may not be seeking a savage level challenge, but they're not looking for a walk in the park. As I've mentioned multiple times in the multitude of threads already, the expectation of player skill, including Dawntrail, is miniscule. The only "difficulty" difference we see in Dawntrail equates to a paradigm shift of requiring the player pay attention to the boss and their surroundings instead of staring at the ground for the Toxic Tang. Making a mistake should be felt. Dawntrail's damage output makes mistakes felt, and that's ok. Because of the total absence of stakes in FFXIV for nearly everything, there's no lasting effect of failure. Get up and try again. Reflect on what happened so you can learn from it and you'll improve.

[Jaxtaro]

So I don't agree that there is a detriment to the long term health of the game to have an easier, less rewarding track, but that's not my point, all I was responding to was the specific part I responded to about the coding requirements. I have already said my piece on the topic, and there's not much more productive to be added on my part.

[Banggugyangu]

So I don't agree that there is a detriment to the long term health of the game to have an easier, less rewarding track, but that's not my point, all I was responding to was the specific part I responded to about the coding requirements. I have already said my piece on the topic, and there's not much more productive to be added on my part.

You don't see the detriment of bolstering players with a lack of skill as opposed to creating a situation where their skill needs to improve over time and how that can bring down the overall state of the game in the long run? The audience of an MMO can be broken down into the following:

A Small portion makes up the low skill players. This is typically around 15% of the playerbase.
A small portion makes up the high skill players. Typically around 10%, but in FFXIV, it's closer to 20%.
A LARGE portion makes up the mid-range player base. This is usually 75% of the player base, and the breadth of skill level is very large, but mainly consists if players that primarily run content around the DT Normal raids up to EX trials. in FFXIV, it's about 65% of the player base.

Now, very few of these players start out in the 2nd or 3rd group. Almost everyone starts at the bottom and progresses. The time spent in the first group varies player to player, but very few remain there through the whole game. Typically those incapable of progressing beyond that group quit. Now, I'm not advocating for anyone to quit the game, and I never have. I believe that if someone doesn't find enjoyment, it's better for them to find a game in which they do find enjoyment or figure out why they don't. Almost no one dislikes something "because it's too hard." They may say that in the beginning, but the majority of the time, a player feeling something like that tends to find enjoyment in the very same thing once they improve at it. Bolstering the first group, however, stymies that whole process and leads to the very situation we're currently discussing. Endwalker stymied that progression for many players. Dawntrail returned to status quo, and now we have drama. Endwalker into Dawntrail is, in itself, an example of my point.

[Zakuyia]

the only thing i wish is that they bring back Hard version of the dungeons man that would be so damn fun.

[Jaxtaro]

Please cite your source for the playerbase/skill breakdown

[Elfidan]

Yeah, I always liked those if for nothing else than to see what changed since the last go around. Haukke Manor comes to mind.

[Banggugyangu]

the only thing i wish is that they bring back Hard version of the dungeons man that would be so damn fun.

I would welcome this, both as just a revisit to an old location and/or an actual harder difficulty dungeon.

[Banggugyangu]

Please cite your source for the playerbase/skill breakdown

Various MMOs have posted census data on what percentages of their playerbase has completed X content, which is a pretty accurate representation of their players' skill level. FFXIV has done this, and I have absolutely 0 desire to dig through the lodestone to find it, as it was ages ago.