More BLM feedback and opinion

[Sylvain]

Can a MMORPG be made too easy? Sure. But it's not as easy as you might think, due to how MMOs work as leisure time brain relaxation experiences for many, not high-stress-high-focus exercises. It can also absolutely be too difficult. It's a balancing effort. There is no simple solution.

A good example would be Wild Star.
This mmo was just pure gold for any HC raider. It was hard, ruthless. You had to aim for everything. I'm currently main healer and GOD FFS that healing in that game was just a total blast.
Players could freaking dodge your heal, you had to do the boss mech while adapting to your party movement and throw heals.
Tanks had to actively dodge the boss attacks, not just "tank n spank" like current. Basically, any tank that would get hit without actively smashing everything they had to mitigate dodge etc would get wrecked.
The difference between a good heal/tank and a bad one was just outstanding. Basic dungeons were ruthless, f@ck even leveling was hard, any random mob could kill you if you weren't careful.
I LOVED that game, it was amazing.

It failed, utterly failed because simply no one could play the game. It was a game made for the HC players, except that for every HC that could enjoy the game you had 20 casuals who couldn't. (and casual range from week 10 savage clear to daily roulette dungeon only).
The end result was that the select few that could actually clear the game cleared it and then well... the exact same than FF. wait for the next raid.
The difference is that the game didn't have millions of casuals pouring money.

Where does this line of thinking end?

Exactly, you get it. It never ends, hence the whole difficulty,..
what should be hard?
what should be easy?
How hard... how easy...
Because everyone plays the same thing, it needs to correctly affects everyone.

Basically ask yourself the question, what would be your relationship with the game if, even by putting A LOT of efforts, you'd find every single job but 1 or 2 difficult. Like genuinly difficult to the point you're not having fun because everything keeps falling appart (like loosing enochian all the time or equivalent result even if they don't currently exist). You could say "i'd just laern to get better", sure, but let's assume you've already tried that.
Like, default game. Just playing regularly is already consumming most of your ability...
You wouldn't be having fun. Simply because nothing in the game would be within your reach. It could be mitigated by playing the easiest job but... what if you just dislike the visual?
You're a BLM right? I don't know you but just for the record, let say the only "range" you'd be able to play is the one you dislike the visual the most (like dancer i dunno..) Would you consider "I dunno man if you suck at the game just play dancer..." to be an acceptable response? Wouldn't you be like "NO! I wanna play BLM, I wanna throw some freaking huge @ss fireball at my enemy and not throw some dancing flowers and bird as my enemy" ?

Obviously the issue many of us have is the opposite, we consider that too many things are just too simple to handle and don't stimulate us enough.

Imo, (and that's just me), I think that the right call is to transfer difficulty from the jobs to the content. Because content is what separates a good from a casual.
Ultimate get to be as hard as the dev judge possible, and if you can't do it? well git good. And that's fine. The chill-island gets to be as chill (and boring to me) as it get, and that's fine, I won't play it.

Jobs design isn't. Everyone is affected by job design.

If you take 2 players who want to play BLM because the job fantasy appeals to them (like me and my bf), well BLM is hard enough for him and is almost boringly too easy to me.
You're a dev what do you do? Tell one of them "well too bad you suck at the game, just play smn scrub" ?
But then what about the HC summoner, "well SMN is for scrubby casual, just play BLM and be a real caster" ?

like, it is ridiculous and obviously no matter what you do someone won't have it good.
However, content is different. If you make savage harder, you get to decide what savage difficulty is because it is that, a difficulty level.

A mmo can be made too easy and I believe EW reached that point where too much of everything was too convenient like "no melee range" because of hti box the size of the arena, etc etc etc.
But they can be made too hard too. Obviously ff14 is more on the side of "maybe you're pushing the easiness a bit too far" but like, the gap in skill between two players is just so vast it's mindblogging. I take my bf again leveling a whm... a dungeon is effectively rough to heal for him and the whole time i'm watching him i'm like I scream in my head "... but;.. no..; wait.. omg.. wtf ... no this is wrong... why do u do that T_T... OMG PRESS THAT FUCKING ASSIZE FFS ITS BEEN OFF CD FOR 2 FREAKING MIN!!!", (but then I calmly go over what he could do to improve himself. I see change, but god what would it be if he were truly alone, and there are a lot of players who just kind of attempt to figure things by themselves.

And when I see that, I'm like, would it be right to make all those jobs more intricate to play considering how already overwhelmed some people are? Perhaps... perhaps not.
Atm I feel like the lesser devil is to just make hard content cleared with "simple" jobs.
At least casual who struggle at everything get to play the game.