Should SE scale high end content difficulty towards the usage of SIM ?

[caffe_macchiato]

I find it hard to believe that "the dance" was intentional gameplay design instead of the only thing they could do in a few months of crunch after 1.0. All of FFXIV is duct-taped together as if the only reason this game exists is to cover up 1.0 and keep Square Enix from bankruptcy. The existence of "snapshotting" shows this. People salivate over snapshotting and "the dance" but there's a reason why the majority of FFXIV players and the vast, VAST majority of MMO players don't put up with this. Without add-ons, plugins and sims, this game would be extinct outside of Japan.

[BigCheez]

And pray tell, how does that give PC players an advantage against console players? you do not need to own the game on PC to use simulators, as it runs separate from the game, you only need a halfway decent PC, and most modern user-level laptops will be able to run it no problem, at most you will have to deal with WASD movement for a bit while practicing, as I am not sure sims supports controller, but I can't imagine that having a gargantuan impact as the goal is to see and understand mechanics, and even if it doesn't, this also affects PC players as plenty of people play on controller.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if you could run the sim on a phone.

[Clockworks]

Well then PC players (who uses sim) will have a huge advantage over console players + SIM is not illegal technically, and as you can see in this thread a lot of people consider it as a «*training tool*»

"huge advantage" in FFXIV... Really ?

[Valence]

I don't understand what this has to do with the point that I made.

Being able to practice part of something in isolation does not detract from the difficulty or consistency required to complete it from start to finish in one attempt. Adding a checkpoint would mean that you don't need to complete it in one attempt.

This was a jab at SE's design, not at your point.
The lack of checkpoints in a conscious design choice they do to artificially increase lifespan of progression and the time people invest into running the content (this was the obvious answer).

[CaedemSanguis]

"huge advantage" in FFXIV... Really ?

Well it makes the fight easier by 30-40% for ultimates ?

Tell me if it's huge or not

[BigCheez]

This was a jab at SE's design, not at your point.
The lack of checkpoints in a conscious design choice they do to artificially increase lifespan of progression and the time people invest into running the content (this was the obvious answer).

I'm really not a fan of the way that people attach the word "artificial" to words when they want to turn something that isn't inherently negative into a negative. "Artificial difficulty" usually translates to "difficult in a way that I don't like and can't explain", yet people throw the term around as if it's some kind of objective standard.

"Artificial difficulty" is the mating call of the scrub. It reminds me of the people who get filtered in fighting games because lows and throws are "cheap".

Games aren't a naturally occurring phenomenon. They're intentionally designed experiences. Game design in its entirety is contrived. That's why it's called game design. All difficulty is artificial. Ultimate raids requiring the party to build enough consistency to make it through the whole gauntlet in a single attempt is the design philosophy of the content.

[Valence]

So you're saying that I cannot explain why 1) I do not like it and 2) consider it inherently artificial?
That i'm just making mating calls and I'm a scrub?

[BigCheez]

So you're saying that I cannot explain why 1) I do not like it and 2) consider it inherently artificial?
That i'm just making mating calls and I'm a scrub?

If you have to preface a statement with "so you're saying..." and paraphrasing it, you're probably making a strawman argument. Otherwise you could just reply directly to the point that was made.

But you didn't explain why you think ultimates requiring consistency was bad, you just said it "artificially" extends the amount of time required to prog the fights - implying that the design is inherently flawed. If you can explain why you don't like it, or why you think it's bad, then do that instead of slapping the word "artificial" on it and calling it a day.

A scrub is a player who blames their lack of success on the game or their opponent rather than their own lack of skill or poor decision making. You can decide for yourself whether you're a scrub or not. I wasn't directly calling you a scrub as much as saying that dismissing a source of difficulty as "artificial" instead of either getting good and overcoming it or deciding that the game isn't something that they want to play is scrub behaviour.

There are many forms of difficulty in game design. The player is expected to have or develop different skills to meet the needs to content. Asking players to meet a level of consistency to beat the content is entirely valid. Aside from ultimate, another good example of this would be any boss with a very high health pool in Souls or Monster Hunter. They force the player to correctly resolve mechanics and survive for a long time, i.e. the key to winning in these fights is consistency.

Personally, I wish there was a wider variety of content in FFXIV, with different forms of difficulty that ask different things of the players. But given the snapshot-based netcode and current game design whereby jobs and roles are easy enough for the absolute bottom of the playerbase barrel to play, there isn't much else they can do. The devs have designed themselves into a corner so to speak. They can't really leverage mechanical skill or reaction times because the game is too sluggish and they can't really leverage tight DPS or role checks because jobs and roles have been degraded so much that the only way to create a challenge here is by making things so tight that they're a crit variance dice roll.

[Kazuke_Miso]

I find it hard to believe that "the dance" was intentional gameplay design instead of the only thing they could do in a few months of crunch after 1.0. All of FFXIV is duct-taped together as if the only reason this game exists is to cover up 1.0 and keep Square Enix from bankruptcy. The existence of "snapshotting" shows this. People salivate over snapshotting and "the dance" but there's a reason why the majority of FFXIV players and the vast, VAST majority of MMO players don't put up with this. Without add-ons, plugins and sims, this game would be extinct outside of Japan.

There were a lot of fights that weren't just the dance early on in this game's life. Vets would know. Stuff like T7, A6S. Dungeons were also way spicier and had interesting mechanics, like Tonberries chasing you in WP.

So I don't think it's engine limitations. It's way worse - it's that they no longer know or want to innovate on mechanics and gameplay.

[UkcsAlias]

Consistency is consistency. Not difficulty.

With that logic a driver only needs to make 1 proper turn in a race, instead of being able to perform full laps for over an hour.

Consistency is part of difficulty. And depending on the lenght of the content (10mins or 20mins) consistency takes a bigger portion. If content gets made long enough, consistency can be the only difficulty part, which is what makes a lot of retro games high scores such a big achievement. Being consistent for 8 hours is extremely difficult. Even in easier content, it becomes the difficulty.