Player Drop Off and Accessibility/Diffculty

[Alice_Rivers]

My problem with savage isn't the "difficulty", it's just a memory game at the end of the day, my issue is that it's just a memory game - there is no skill expression, the mandatory damage is carefully calibrated to not kill you as long as the right buttons are pressed and the fail damage causes a wipe then and there, no room for healers to save the run, no room for tanks to do anything to save the run, no room for good dps players to beat the dps check anyway just "you slipped up, back to the start." From what I'm told Ultimate is the same but longer.

In terms of dungeon and trial content, I feel like partywide damage should be twice as high and thrice as often, that'd give healers an actual purpose to exist, tank busters too should be at least 50% stronger, if not 100%. Mitigate or die, also get healed or die and yeah, if tanks die on account of healers not doing their jobs then I'll be the first to complain with them about those healers not doing their jobs.

[Myotis]

My problem with savage isn't the "difficulty", it's just a memory game at the end of the day, my issue is that it's just a memory game - there is no skill expression, the mandatory damage is carefully calibrated to not kill you as long as the right buttons are pressed and the fail damage causes a wipe then and there, no room for healers to save the run, no room for tanks to do anything to save the run, no room for good dps players to beat the dps check anyway just "you slipped up, back to the start." From what I'm told Ultimate is the same but longer.

In terms of dungeon and trial content, I feel like partywide damage should be twice as high and thrice as often, that'd give healers an actual purpose to exist, tank busters too should be at least 50% stronger, if not 100%. Mitigate or die, also get healed or die and yeah, if tanks die on account of healers not doing their jobs then I'll be the first to complain with them about those healers not doing their jobs.

I felt that closest to something actually fun was a fight with valigarmanda - so each game have those patterns for circle and squares however not each one of them does punish the 8 players with restarts so often.

I wish the XIV was more skill oriented than boring memory games over and over till we all puke from them.

[Kandraxx]

Why even bother with raiding in a game that is infested with hacks and cheats. Like just go do some CEs in OC and it becomes obvious how many cheaters there actually are that all react to a mechanic way before it even becomes clear because <....> paints it on the screen instantly. I've also done an EO clear where one of the guys was clearly using <....> cause he knew exactly which mobs he can bypass by a pixel and also reacted to mechanics before the tell. These people don't even try to pretend and conceal their plugin use anymore because they perfectly know nothing will happen.

So, if people cheat in lol content what are they doing in "high tier" content?

This game is a fucking joke and I just wait for them to somehow fuck up deep dungeons specifically PotD solo as well so the only thing in this game which has an ounce of prestige is gone as well.

[Myotis]

Why even bother with raiding in a game that is infested with hacks and cheats. Like just go do some CEs in OC and it becomes obvious how many cheaters there actually are that all react to a mechanic before it even becomes clear because <....> paints it on the screen instantly. I've also done an EO clear where one of the guys was clearly using <....> cause he knew exactly which mobs he can bypass by a pixel and also reacted to mechanics before the tell.

So, if people cheat in lol content what are they doing in "high tier" content?

This game is a fucking joke and I just wait for them to somehow fuck up deep dungeons specifically PotD solo as well so the only thing in this game which has an ounce of prestige is gone as well.

cheating is unavoidable even with kernel access anticheats fail - example battlefield 6 to stop that and rise of the black market for skips it's only to increase accesability and rise the clear rate to 40%.
The game is for it's people..

[Exinias]

I don't think many people have unsubbed because DT is too hard, you're more apt to lose people if something is not hard/engaging enough. I know there have been people to bring this up but it's not good to punish 99% of the player-base because 1% is struggling. The easy solution is to allow trust/duty support avatars to revive you or you change the difficulty of the dungeon like how solo duties are for the trust/duty support. No one would be upset that someone cleared the most recent msq dungeon with revives from trust NPC's lol And I see people say there's a lack of content in DT but that's not even remotely true. It kinda comes down to what content you enjoy doing and if you don't enjoy doing extremes, field operations, pvp, deep dungeons, crafter/gatherer roles and alliance raids then there's just genuinely not much for you to play then aside from anything attached to msq lol

[RyoXander]

My problem with savage isn't the "difficulty", it's just a memory game at the end of the day, my issue is that it's just a memory game - there is no skill expression

This 100%. The rewards are not worth the tedious process imo; specially when they become obsolete by the next patch or two. If they were necessary for relic weapon progression, I'd be more inclined to do savage content.

[TaleraRistain]

This 100%. The rewards are not worth the tedious process imo; specially when they become obsolete by the next patch or two. If they were necessary for relic weapon progression, I'd be more inclined to do savage content.

That goes against the idea of relics, though. They're the non-raiding alternative.

[Amarande]

I think that it's not only the lack of content, diffuculty of content or whatever ... I think alot of older and/or disabled players that enjoyed the game and invested a lot of money through subs and/or online store purchases, have now decided it all too much and cancelled their subs. They cannnot progress any further, especially if, as Yoshi has said, it will get even more difficult.

I know my post is coming from only one part of the fandom, but I also know that many other parts are unhappy, so what should they do ... or will they go down the Blizz route and not listen to anyone?

Ironically, Blizz may lead FFXIV even further down this path of phasing us older hands out - Midnight is moving BIGLY to be casual raider friendly (see for instance the complete crackdown on any and all combat addons, which also implies the competitive, nitpicky logging will be gone from the game as well and the only public player records will be ones like Rio that draw from what is openly published on the Blizzard site), which will likely incentivize XIV to curry the hardcore crowd further (plus there will doubtless be "community" astroturf organized by FFLogs as it will literally be the only thing sustaining their business).

I don't trully understand what is there to gain if the hard content is being made by 3% of total ammount of people.
I ain't want to play a dead game where i'am unable to socialise because others just left.

Wasn't XIV made to be for everyone?

Not anymore it seems. There's a lot of content that seems intentionally designed with the expectation of a small clear rate, I guess "everyone else can just watch the stream" is good enough now.

I get a vibe that it wasn't the easiness of Endwalker that led to this, but the disaster that was its launch - I think there is a good chance this led SE to the conclusion that they were going to have to pick an actual target audience as the servers can no longer handle being "for everyone" during the busiest burst periods (and due to systems like housing, dynamically adding and removing worlds really won't work, either).

My problem with savage isn't the "difficulty", it's just a memory game at the end of the day, my issue is that it's just a memory game - there is no skill expression, the mandatory damage is carefully calibrated to not kill you as long as the right buttons are pressed and the fail damage causes a wipe then and there, no room for healers to save the run, no room for tanks to do anything to save the run, no room for good dps players to beat the dps check anyway just "you slipped up, back to the start." From what I'm told Ultimate is the same but longer.

Yep. No agency. Vuln stacks teach you from early on really that "you survived the AoE" isn't enough, they want you to do every mechanic a specific way. (In their defense I'm not sure there is a way to preserve the cinematic experience they have in mind without such railroading: players will cheese and optimize the fun out of everything after all.)

Mind you, maybe we should have expected "it was ever so" since this was basically how they approached the AV fight all the way back in FFXI, though ...

[Myotis]

Ironically, Blizz may lead FFXIV even further down this path of phasing us older hands out - Midnight is moving BIGLY to be casual raider friendly (see for instance the complete crackdown on any and all combat addons, which also implies the competitive, nitpicky logging will be gone from the game as well and the only public player records will be ones like Rio that draw from what is openly published on the Blizzard site), which will likely incentivize XIV to curry the hardcore crowd further (plus there will doubtless be "community" astroturf organized by FFLogs as it will literally be the only thing sustaining their business).



Not anymore it seems. There's a lot of content that seems intentionally designed with the expectation of a small clear rate, I guess "everyone else can just watch the stream" is good enough now.

I get a vibe that it wasn't the easiness of Endwalker that led to this, but the disaster that was its launch - I think there is a good chance this led SE to the conclusion that they were going to have to pick an actual target audience as the servers can no longer handle being "for everyone" during the busiest burst periods (and due to systems like housing, dynamically adding and removing worlds really won't work, either).



Yep. No agency. Vuln stacks teach you from early on really that "you survived the AoE" isn't enough, they want you to do every mechanic a specific way. (In their defense I'm not sure there is a way to preserve the cinematic experience they have in mind without such railroading: players will cheese and optimize the fun out of everything after all.)

Mind you, maybe we should have expected "it was ever so" since this was basically how they approached the AV fight all the way back in FFXI, though ...

Cool so let's hope that 3% of the whole population can keep up the whole XIV then if they are focused only over those people.
The game will be just empty as never before and getting that back on track to be running up it's a quite a challange.

[CuteBucket]

My problem with savage isn't the "difficulty", it's just a memory game at the end of the day, my issue is that it's just a memory game - there is no skill expression, the mandatory damage is carefully calibrated to not kill you as long as the right buttons are pressed and the fail damage causes a wipe then and there, no room for healers to save the run, no room for tanks to do anything to save the run, no room for good dps players to beat the dps check anyway just "you slipped up, back to the start." From what I'm told Ultimate is the same but longer.

Punishing vs challenging. This is the issue I'm having right now as a person who does the savage raids. I don't mind that part of the fights is like learning a choreographed dance, I can find fun in that aspect, but when that's ALL there is, it gets grating. Hell I don't even mind a couple of body checks during a hard fight, but M8S in particular is just Netcode Bodycheck Savage. It's not a fun fight when there's little to no chance of saving a run, just hours of "nope, wipe and start over." Like sure, I can use Cover as a Paladin on a healer while the LB3, but it doesn't even feel that cool because it doesn't matter, the fact that we had to do that at all means it's most likely a lost cause because the DPS were down for 5 GCDs so we might as well give up now and wipe because we won't hit the DPS check. Savage has always been difficult, that's the point, I know, but something feels different now. I actually really enjoyed M6S because I felt like I really got to shine as a tank and manage aggro and keep enemies apart and manage my shields well, but that fight stands out as unusual in that regard.