In Defense of Dawntrail's Difficulty.

[royox]

I think you can survive playing for 5 minutes with a character that has literally 5 skills against an enemy that does the same 3 mechanics over and over again.

At this point you people sound like "why should I play the game in order to play the game?"

[Lady_Silvermoon]

I put off doing the Expert dungeons after hearing how hard they were, but in the first dungeon I did, when everyone but the tank died at like 65%, he just soloed it. While it's true the new dungeons are harder, if you have an experienced tank and/or healer they can carry the group.

[Jaxtaro]

Adding on to this, the people who play the game the most are also the ones giving square the most money through subscriptions and cosmetic items. They are also the ones most likely to keep playing the game in the future through pre-orders and deluxe editions. Catering to dedicated players is always the smart business move.

Whatever one's position is on difficulty, the above claim is unsupported.

1. There is no evidence of any kind that hours played translates to dollars spent.

2. There is no evidence that current hours played translates to long term continuous subscription continuity.

3. None of this has any impact on the issue of dungeon difficulty.

4. Evidence actually shows the opposite of the notion that default dungeon difficulty leads to increased subscriptions, as the dual expansions of Shadowbringees and Endwalker both are associated with less challenging dungeons, alongside significant growth in playerbase. This is not to claim a causal relationship between them, only that there was not a measurable exodus which coincides by a lower challenge level.

5. In the MMO industry, the conclusion that you reached is quite literally the opposite of what has occurred. Catering to "dedicated players", especially those who call for standard content to be a significant step up in difficulty have historically led to catastrophic population collapses.

There are much better arguments in defense of the current difficulty level, and even though I am strongly in favor of an additional, lower tier across the board of dungeon boss challenge, I too enjoy it as it currently is, and would make the case that repetition takes the edge off of the harder encounters, and that given enough time, not only do those who struggle have a strong chance of overcoming, but the rest of the teams become much better as well, increasing the carry potential of even one who just can't get it (with the excption being healers, who are harder to carry if they aren't getting it).

[Xylira]

There's a line between difficult and obnoxious, and honestly a number of the boss encounters in DT feel like they dip more into obnoxious territory. The swarming adds that pin you down during the first Strayborough boss are a perfect example of an obnoxious boss mechanic. Sure, it's more difficult than the average mechanic, but it's also just incredibly irritating to constantly deal with and makes the entire boss fight unenjoyable for me. And it's not that I fail at it, I get through it perfectly fine the majority of the time. I just don't enjoy the fight at all because there's too much going on at once, and of course the game's janky netcode makes dodging moving encounter mechanics really finnicky.

[sarahnight]

The hardcore and midcore love the new dungeons... the casuals in my guild want to quit the game over them. Hardcore and Midcore always have raids and other content to enjoy... Making MSQ dungeons be like prog lite raids will ultimately cause this game to lose subs. The pattern is clear from Endwalker on the dungeon team has ramping up the difficulty of MSQ dungeons. You will cheer this on i guess, but the vocal hardcore and others who claim MSQ dungeons are boring, ignore the fact that if you keep making the dungeons harder and harder you will alienate a large group of subs from your game. It happened in WoW it will happen here. I know of at least 2 10 year veterans of this game are contemplating canceling their subs over this. You may say, don't let the door hit you on the way out, but is that our community?

This has become a very dividing issue in the community with loud screaming the DUNGEONS ARE AWESOME, and frustrated silence from players who feel like they are hitting a wall and cannot get over it.

Do we just wish them well and goodbye? Or can we find a way to bring everyone forward? Too many posts seem to say get gone you bad players.

I just wish we could make it so everyone can get through Dawntrail without mental breakdowns, abandoning FFXIV or whatever. Yoshi wanted to stress us he said, he has succeeded.

[royox]

The hardcore and midcore love the new dungeons... the casuals in my guild want to quit the game over them. Hardcore and Midcore always have raids and other content to enjoy... Making MSQ dungeons be like prog lite raids will ultimately cause this game to lose subs. The pattern is clear from Endwalker on the dungeon team has ramping up the difficulty of MSQ dungeons. You will cheer this on i guess, but the vocal hardcore and others who claim MSQ dungeons are boring, ignore the fact that if you keep making the dungeons harder and harder you will alienate a large group of subs from your game. It happened in WoW it will happen here. I know of at least 2 10 year veterans of this game are contemplating canceling their subs over this. You may say, don't let the door hit you on the way out, but is that our community?

This has become a very dividing issue in the community with loud screaming the DUNGEONS ARE AWESOME, and frustrated silence from players who feel like they are hitting a wall and cannot get over it.

Do we just wish them well and goodbye? Or can we find a way to bring everyone forward? Too many posts seem to say get gone you bad players.

I just wish we could make it so everyone can get through Dawntrail without mental breakdowns, abandoning FFXIV or whatever. Yoshi wanted to stress us he said, he has succeeded.

Let's be honest here...what are we considering "hard" from the MSQ dungeons? Because on my first time on each we defeated every boss with no more than 1 wipe (always caused by some funny unexpected mechanic that you learn, laugh and try again). Where is the difficulty? AOE markers on the floor that we have been dealing with since lvl5? The boss holding his sword marking the RIGHT side of the arena for whole 6 seconds showing "i'm gonna cleave this whole area?" The zig zag pattern of the lizard-guy soldier that gets dodged by just staying not moving on the "curve" side of the whole marker? I really can't see where is this so called difficulty spike. If something, the dungeons are funnier and more entertaining that the borefest that was the Endwalker MSQ dungeons.

The people complaining sound like people that have 0 tolerance to frustration or dying in a videogame and that have 0 intention of learning how to play the game. Like...come on you have the "trust" system, just follow the AI if you think everything is so hard.

We are level 100 now. If players can't deal with mechanics that we have been seeing since lvl18 in Tam-Tara it's on the players and not on the game.