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

[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.

[Valence]

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

If you don't want to be lumped with dickheads, then don't behave like one (I can play that game too).

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.

Because you think I haven't made enough posts already about all of this....?

[BigCheez]

If you don't want to be lumped with dickheads, then don't behave like one (I can play that game too).

Because you think I haven't made enough posts already about all of this....?

You can be salty if you like but there isn't much point replying to my post if you aren't going to say anything of value.

The fight designers are doing an excellent job. The problem is the restrictions that other aspects of the game are forcing them to work under. The problem is absolutely not that difficult fights require players to build consistency.

[Valence]

You can be salty if you like but there isn't much point replying to my post if you aren't going to say anything of value.

You literally replied to me by being unnecessarily aggressive, calling me a scrub that's just using excuses to justify how I suck at the game, made strawmen, ad hominems, just because I used the word "artificial difficulty", and now you play all coy and patronizing because you're being called out for it? What did I ever do to you? Did that word tilt you that much? You know you could have just explained your point rationally and perhaps I could even have come to agree with a "fair enough" or "point taken"?

What's wrong with you?

[BigCheez]

You literally replied to me by being unnecessarily aggressive, calling me a scrub that's just using excuses to justify how I suck at the game, made strawmen, ad hominems, just because I used the word "artificial difficulty", and now you play all coy and patronizing because you're being called out for it? What did I ever do to you? Did that word tilt you that much? You know you could have just explained your point rationally and perhaps I could even have come to agree with a "fair enough" or "point taken"?

What's wrong with you?

Bruh.

I didn't call you a scrub, I said that the term "artificial difficulty" is useless because it has no clear definition and exists purely as a shield to be used by scrubs to deflect from the actual issue, which is generally that they suck at the game. Note the intentional use of words like "they" and "people" over words like "you". I even clarified this already in a previous post.

What's wrong with me? What's wrong with you? Seems like your insecurities might be getting the better of you here.

[Kohashi]

Bruh.

I didn't call you a scrub, I said that the term "artificial difficulty" is useless because it has no clear definition and exists purely as a shield to be used by scrubs to deflect from the actual issue, which is generally that they suck at the game. Note the intentional use of words like "they" and "people" over words like "you". I even clarified this already in a previous post.

What's wrong with me? What's wrong with you? Seems like your insecurities might be getting the better of you here.

Examples of artificial difficulty that can be applied to all fights are :

Blinding flashing effects from bosses sometimes covering the entire screen
Obstructed Character model, hidden by a spawned object or the boss model itself
Camera view
Overly large models of either bosses or mobs
General visual noise

UWU is a prime example of all of these. Ultima 3/4 of map view sometimes more, Titan, Garuda, and Ifrit all spawning randomly further altering your view.

FF14 does have a lot of noise that inflates the difficulty.

[BigCheez]

Examples of artificial difficulty that can be applied to all fights are :

Blinding flashing effects from bosses sometimes covering the entire screen
Obstructed Character model, hidden by a spawned object or the boss model itself
Camera view
Overly large models or either bosses or mobs
General visual noise

UWU is a prime example of all of these. Ultima 3/4 of map view sometimes more, Titan, Garuda, and Ifrit all spawning randomly further altering your view.

FF14 does have a lot of noise that inflates the difficulty.

These aren't intentional sources of difficulty. This isn't "artificial difficulty", it's just bad game design.

The exception being restricting the player's view, which is pretty commonly used to create a feeling of claustrophobia and force the player to move cautiously in horror games. I don't think that's inherently bad design unless it makes it impossible to see things that you're supposed to be able to see - then it's just bad game design.

[ExiaKuromonji]

Examples of artificial difficulty that can be applied to all fights are :

Blinding flashing effects from bosses sometimes covering the entire screen.

This is a bit of a problem (more annoying for me but probably worse for others). Currently P1 of FRU does this just before Utopian Sky.

You used UWU as an example of all of those points. But this first point only has flashes when there's literally nothing currently happening, as the boss stands motionless before the mechanic actually starts. This is how it works on other bosses too in every case I can think of it occurring but maybe I am missing 1 or 2.

Obstructed Character model, hidden by a spawned object or the boss model itself
Camera view
Overly large models of either bosses or mobs
General visual noise

These are basically all the same point as they can all be resolved by either letting the player zoom out further or reducing the model size of the entities on screen. Ultima itself is definitely a massive boy with bright effects on him so that's fair I guess.

[ExiaKuromonji]

The fight designers are doing an excellent job. The problem is the restrictions that other aspects of the game are forcing them to work under. The problem is absolutely not that difficult fights require players to build consistency.

The problems with restrictions doesn't only come from the game's netcode or engine. There's also restrictions placed on the devs by players who complained about certain mechanics because of various reasons. It's why everything is just "place AoE here" or "spread/stack" in different formations.

We used to have very creative and unorthodox fight design in Alexander. While some of those things were kinda whack (A2S gobwalker thing for instance), but a lot of other stuff was just complained about because "muh uptime". It's no wonder we just have spreads and stacks in the game now when every time they try something different the parse brains shit on them for it. Players were complaining about the fights then, so SE fixed it, and players are still complaining. It got way worse in EW when tanks were just an easier DPS role that kitchen sinked or invulned every buster. And I hear healer wasn't much better.

I do agree they have kind of put themselves into a corner with the design. But I think there's more than just the general game design at fault.

[BigCheez]

The problems with restrictions doesn't only come from the game's netcode or engine. There's also restrictions placed on the devs by players who complained about certain mechanics because of various reasons. It's why everything is just "place AoE here" or "spread/stack" in different formations.

We used to have very creative and unorthodox fight design in Alexander. While some of those things were kinda whack (A2S gobwalker thing for instance), but a lot of other stuff was just complained about because "muh uptime". It's no wonder we just have spreads and stacks in the game now when every time they try something different the parse brains shit on them for it. Players were complaining about the fights then, so SE fixed it, and players are still complaining. It got way worse in EW when tanks were just an easier DPS role that kitchen sinked or invulned every buster. And I hear healer wasn't much better.

I do agree they have kind of put themselves into a corner with the design. But I think there's more than just the general game design at fault.

There are a lot of limitations on the fight designers.

Some of them exist because of snapshotting and the game needing to be playable on up to 100ms or so, given some people's proximity to the nearest servers. Some of them exist because of modern job and role design.

It's less a case of "muh uptime" and more a case of "my rotation will be irrecoverably scuffed for the rest of the fight if you force me to miss more than 2 GCDs per 1 minute cycle". GNB was one of the best examples of this before they made double down only cost 1 cart. If you didn't generate 3 carts in time for your next no mercy window, either gnashing fang or double down had to drift, which would cause problems for the entire duration of the fight. Making damage rotations less rigid would open up a lot more creativity in terms of fight design.