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

[Zakuyia]

If you need sim to do your ultimate raids and your telling ppl u better sim or kick...congrats u might as well like the stalker program ur ok with third party tools either they bad or not. XD man i love this community double standards

[TaleraRistain]

If it cannot be supported natively in the game for both PC users and console alike then it has no business being a factor in design process.

This. Why would SE design around something that isn't available in their game? They've repeatedly said they design these fights to be able to be done without any third party tools for years now. The only way this will change is if they bring that type of tool into the game natively. Then they can design around it since it would be a feature in the game.

[Krokov]

What pray tell is SIM?

[Shougun]

What pray tell is SIM?

Simulator, copy paste from a Reddit post:

Hi everyone

Just sharing https://www.xivsim.com - An FFXIV simulator that allows you to connect with your static/friends and practice specific phases of difficult fights in real time.

The tool runs directly in your browser and doesnt require any installations. You can request a server, and share the url for your friends to join.

Once inside you can choose specific phases or mechanics to play/strategize around.

The tool will be openly accessible this weekend (more info on the discord server https://discord.gg/3A7fGmemPc), for initial feedback with an official release a couple of weeks later.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/o61br2/introducing_xivsimcom_an_ffxiv_raid_mechanic/

[Valence]

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.

Isn't that a little rich coming from the one that was literally building one by making up groups of people that just throw the word aimlessly and "can't explain it"? And then acting entitled because I don't engage with your (frankly aggressive) reply? Instead of asking me why I thought it was artificial, you instead chose to make a direct ad hominem attack by associating me within this label, so please excuse me if I'm not indulging you there.

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.

Yes, you definitely weren't... I wonder why you brought it up then

At least have the honesty to stand by your words.

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.

Yes that's definitely for consistency. And for content lifespan. And because it's part of the difficulty.

Doesn't mean I can't call it artificial. You don't like it when I do?

The reason it's artificial isn't because it enforces consistency. The reason it's artificial is because it enforces a gameplay where you spend 95% of your time trudging through 10+ minutes of fight just to be able to prog for 10s before the next wipe.

That's artificial. That's literally gameplay denial.

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.

Stop making excuses for them. They and the community brought it up upon themselves, and they can start working to correct the problem like any developer facing a problem should. That of course, would have higher chances to happen if they actually agreed that it is a problem, which their course of action seems to prove otherwise. They like their DDR long dances and they don't see a problem with it.

[Kaurhz]

This. Why would SE design around something that isn't available in their game? They've repeatedly said they design these fights to be able to be done without any third party tools for years now. The only way this will change is if they bring that type of tool into the game natively. Then they can design around it since it would be a feature in the game.

My problem with it is largely the precedent that it would set for future design if they were to account for extrinsic tools and resources, who's to say they don't eventually steer down the path of "Well a lot of people also use this tool, so perhaps we should also account for this tool in our design process". It just generally makes for bad design.

If they can develop xyz natively in the game, then by all means factor that into a design process. But if you cannot natively support it, then don't do it. - Then you have the whole skill discrepancy that it creates with those that can access it easily, and those that cannot, e.g., those accessing on console.

I am just considering it from a design perspective. - I feel like if people want harder content then they should just straight out ask for harder content -- Not content designed around something that isn't even native to the game.

[mallleable]

Sims don't really work for me as a learning tool, and I think they're kinda lame. I don't like how normalized they are.

[CaedemSanguis]

This. Why would SE design around something that isn't available in their game? They've repeatedly said they design these fights to be able to be done without any third party tools for years now. The only way this will change is if they bring that type of tool into the game natively. Then they can design around it since it would be a feature in the game.

it's because it seems to me that a lot of people are using SIM, that's why

[AmiableApkallu]

Sims don't really work for me as a learning tool, and I think they're kinda lame. I don't like how normalized they are.

They're normalized? I guess I live under a rock, then.

[BigCheez]

Isn't that a little rich coming from the one that was literally building one by making up groups of people that just throw the word aimlessly and "can't explain it"? And then acting entitled because I don't engage with your (frankly aggressive) reply? Instead of asking me why I thought it was artificial, you instead chose to make a direct ad hominem attack by associating me within this label, so please excuse me if I'm not indulging you there.



Yes, you definitely weren't... I wonder why you brought it up then

At least have the honesty to stand by your words.



Yes that's definitely for consistency. And for content lifespan. And because it's part of the difficulty.

Doesn't mean I can't call it artificial. You don't like it when I do?

The reason it's artificial isn't because it enforces consistency. The reason it's artificial is because it enforces a gameplay where you spend 95% of your time trudging through 10+ minutes of fight just to be able to prog for 10s before the next wipe.

That's artificial. That's literally gameplay denial.



Stop making excuses for them. They and the community brought it up upon themselves, and they can start working to correct the problem like any developer facing a problem should. That of course, would have higher chances to happen if they actually agreed that it is a problem, which their course of action seems to prove otherwise. They like their DDR long dances and they don't see a problem with it.

If you don't want to be lumped in with scrubs then don't parrot their mantra.

If you want to understand why I can't stand the term "artificial difficulty", do me a favour and Google the term yourself. You'll get a mile long list of 100 different people citing 100 different criteria for what constitutes "artificial difficulty". And a lot of them will directly contradict each other. The term serves no purpose other than allowing people to convince themselves that they aren't bad, the game is bad, whatever the problem might be. If the game is bad then play a different game.

You could make a fair point for something like corpse runs (which don't exist in XIV) being gameplay denial but reaching your prog point again is gameplay. If it wasn't gameplay, it wouldn't require consistency.

I'm not making excuses for SE. I'm trying to explain that this is not a fight design issue but a symptom of the slow and steady degradation of every other facet of the game. If you want to complain about something, complain about the aggressive over-streamlining of jobs and role responsibilities, because that's the root cause. That's the reason that SE has to put all of their eggs in the fight design basket.

At the core, I think we actually agree, but you're trying to treat the symptoms rather than the disease.