Player Drop Off and Accessibility/Diffculty

[Mesarthim]

"The speed with which aoe's are chucked out is ridiculous for some players except almost professional players"

So the boss actually doing something other than standing around doing nothing but 3 autos in a row and saying hurr durr is for professionals now? Can't wait for 7.4's inevitable "this dungeon is too hard!" thread. You know it's coming and the cycle repeats.

[Jaltaer]

"The speed with which aoe's are chucked out is ridiculous for some players except almost professional players"

So the boss actually doing something other than standing around doing nothing but 3 autos in a row and saying hurr durr is for professionals now? Can't wait for 7.4's inevitable "this dungeon is too hard!" thread. You know it's coming and the cycle repeats.

Adding to this - in later/newer content, a lot of the time, if you can see the orange AOE marker, you're already too late to dodge. Most bosses and enemies have other tells and cues before their AOE goes off (using M7 as an example - Brute Abominator has an attack that can either be a point-blank or donut AOE. It's telegraphed beforehand by both the name on the castbar, as well as which of his weapons is glowing), the orange is pretty much there to let you know how far in/out you should be dodging, it's there as something you can remember for the next time the mechanic happens or you're in the fight. While I don't doubt that yes, there are people lazy enough to use plugins to solve mechanics for them, it's far more likely these hypothetical people being accused of cheating are simply paying attention and have learned the fight and its tells. Add that to the fact that pretty much every new fight is on a script these days, and it's not hard to preposition yourself for a good 80-90% of mechanics.

[Valence]

Adding to this - in later/newer content, a lot of the time, if you can see the orange AOE marker, you're already too late to dodge. Most bosses and enemies have other tells and cues before their AOE goes off (using M7 as an example - Brute Abominator has an attack that can either be a point-blank or donut AOE. It's telegraphed beforehand by both the name on the castbar, as well as which of his weapons is glowing), the orange is pretty much there to let you know how far in/out you should be dodging, it's there as something you can remember for the next time the mechanic happens or you're in the fight. While I don't doubt that yes, there are people lazy enough to use plugins to solve mechanics for them, it's far more likely these hypothetical people being accused of cheating are simply paying attention and have learned the fight and its tells. Add that to the fact that pretty much every new fight is on a script these days, and it's not hard to preposition yourself for a good 80-90% of mechanics.

Those cues are garbage. I'm not playing Seikiro, I'm playing a MMORPG.

What the fuck has happened to this game in pve over the years I don't even

[Yeonhee]

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.

Harder content pretty much always have rather low clear rate because, well, they're harder and not everyone wants to bother with that. If you want content like savage/ultimate to have a high clear rate you would have to severely reduce the difficulty probably to normal raid level or, at the very most, extreme-level. But then you have to also reduce the actual normal-level difficulty otherwise it makes no sense. So you ends up with the high-end difficulty content to be easy and nothing in the game is remotely hard and challenging to do. You also alienate the majority of the players because all content are a snoozefest and nothing is remotely interesting to do. Overall, you end up with a dead game.

Hardcore raiders only gets 4 savages like every other patch and one ultimate once in a while, they've not remotely become the target audience. I would say that DT's target audience are the average casual people who don't necessarely want savage-level of difficulty but still don't want to fall asleep while doing every single piece of content.

Those cues are garbage. I'm not playing Seikiro, I'm playing a MMORPG.

What the fuck has happened to this game in pve over the years I don't even

And most MMORPGs have visual/audio cues for mechanics and not just a orange danger puddle on the ground for 30 seconds. And with most jobs now being braindead to play, you should be able to focus on something else than your rotation anyway.

[Myotis]

Harder content pretty much always have rather low clear rate because, well, they're harder and not everyone wants to bother with that. If you want content like savage/ultimate to have a high clear rate you would have to severely reduce the difficulty probably to normal raid level or, at the very most, extreme-level. But then you have to also reduce the actual normal-level difficulty otherwise it makes no sense. So you ends up with the high-end difficulty content to be easy and nothing in the game is remotely hard and challenging to do. You also alienate the majority of the players because all content are a snoozefest and nothing is remotely interesting to do. Overall, you end up with a dead game.

Hardcore raiders only gets 4 savages like every other patch and one ultimate once in a while, they've not remotely become the target audience. I would say that DT's target audience are the average casual people who don't necessarely want savage-level of difficulty but still don't want to fall asleep while doing every single piece of content.

I don't see how your personal skill could affect anything - current clear rate is a complete joke and disaster for an game like this and effects of it we can see each day seeing empty towns and waiting longer and longer in queue to get any duty done.

For the harder content you only need patience to learn certain quite boring dance where they want you to stand in certain position - your personal skill is unable to save the party from a wipe if anybody does a mistake.

I would say that normal content is made out to be too easy while it's fun to avoid the orange puddles the game does not promote anything requiring "skill" more of pattern learning i felt that a change was in valigarmanda fight and it was nice.

Extremes i find quite balanced if you are into DDR fight schemes
Savages - annoying and constant wipes during the prog are meant to exteend your grind on memorizng the patterns as the dps checks what require some better equipment later on.

as for Ultimates at first i tought they are unique but it's the same as the savage but just longer so you need quite more of the patience to learn your pixel standing spots.

Right now the clear rate for an mmogame is a pure disaster the effects of it we can see each day while we wait longer and longer in queues , while watching empty towns or quite less ammount of active PF's.

The game has massive issues with scalling, boss mechanic smoothness and there is insane visual clutter to only exteend the grind.

If this won't be fixed as you see now people won't bother - even top ultimate clear teams ain't bother at least 2 of them are being caught cheating each new ultimate is being realised.
This will only promote futher growth of black market for skips and cheating.

[Yeonhee]

I don't see how your personal skill could affect anything - current clear rate is a complete joke and disaster for an game like this and effects of it we can see each day seeing empty towns and waiting longer and longer in queue to get any duty done.

For the harder content you only need patience to learn certain quite boring dance where they want you to stand in certain position - your personal skill is unable to save the party from a wipe if anybody does a mistake.

I would say that normal content is made out to be too easy while it's fun to avoid the orange puddles the game does not promote anything requiring "skill" more of pattern learning i felt that a change was in valigarmanda fight and it was nice.

Extremes i find quite balanced if you are into DDR fight schemes
Savages - annoying and constant wipes during the prog are meant to exteend your grind on memorizng the patterns as the dps checks what require some better equipment later on.

as for Ultimates at first i tought they are unique but it's the same as the savage but just longer so you need quite more of the patience to learn your pixel standing spots.

Right now the clear rate for an mmogame is a pure disaster the effects of it we can see each day while we wait longer and longer in queues , while watching empty towns or quite less ammount of active PF's.

The game has massive issues with scalling, boss mechanic smoothness and there is insane visual clutter to only exteend the grind.

If this won't be fixed as you see now people won't bother - even top ultimate clear teams ain't bother at least 2 of them are being caught cheating each new ultimate is being realised.
This will only promote futher growth of black market for skips and cheating.

I pretty much agreed with most of what you said. The only skill expression you have in the game is indeed pattern learning and that's a bit sad.

I don't think savage and ultimate clear rate has anything to do with the game losing players, it's mostly thanks to every other big issues the game has. Majority of the game's playerbase wouldn't be much interested in savage even if they had more skill expression or different kind of difficulty.

People using plugins in world first clears and selling clears is hardly something new. My FC was selling Titan hard clears for gils back in 2.0 and you had several website selling it and Bahamut's coil for real money. Pretty much the same for cheating plugins, the big difference now is people becoming more careless and dumb with them, streaming or screenshoting their game with visible plugins on it. Anyone seriously believing that any world first competing team doesn't use plugins is just delusionnal.

[AyumiCosplayGlam]

Harder content pretty much always have rather low clear rate because, well, they're harder and not everyone wants to bother with that. If you want content like savage/ultimate to have a high clear rate you would have to severely reduce the difficulty probably to normal raid level or, at the very most, extreme-level. But then you have to also reduce the actual normal-level difficulty otherwise it makes no sense. So you ends up with the high-end difficulty content to be easy and nothing in the game is remotely hard and challenging to do. You also alienate the majority of the players because all content are a snoozefest and nothing is remotely interesting to do. Overall, you end up with a dead game.

Hardcore raiders only gets 4 savages like every other patch and one ultimate once in a while, they've not remotely become the target audience. I would say that DT's target audience are the average casual people who don't necessarely want savage-level of difficulty but still don't want to fall asleep while doing every single piece of content.



And most MMORPGs have visual/audio cues for mechanics and not just a orange danger puddle on the ground for 30 seconds. And with most jobs now being braindead to play, you should be able to focus on something else than your rotation anyway.

Sorry but the 4 savage and 1 ultimate excuse dosn't fly anymore when hadcore raiders have been eating exceptionally good in dawntrail while everyone else had borderline 0 content until Occult Crescent.

They currently have 8 savage raid, 1 ultimate, 1 chaotic, 1 alliance raid (Forked Tower) and for some reason now we also have the Deep dungeon boss accessible by que with the difficulty cranked up to 11.
Meanwhile Casual players have: 8 normal raids, 2 alliance raids, Occult Crescent without an ending because of forked tower, ill be generous and say that the new deep dungeon is casual but its actually debateable due to requirement for entry aaaaaand thats it i guess.

I always laugh when YoshiP says in an interview that they want to make content for everyone from now on and thats why we have the new deep dungeon stuff shoehorned in, while forked tower and chaotic is still unplayable pieces of...content. Somehow the content for everyone means we also get a hard version of things, but for some reason i highly doubt the next ultimate will have a normal mode when you actually survive stuff and normal raids with the savage exclusive boss forms.

All in all lets just stop the copium, its obvious that square wants to cater to the hardcore raiders and it is objectively, actively reducing the playerbase in dawntrail and overall interest in the game.

[Shistar]

[...] ill be generous and say that the new deep dungeon is casual but its actually debateable due to requirement for entry [...]

You just have to finish the "tutorial floors" so to speak and beat one boss with a grand total of two mechanics which boil down to run away, come close, run away. You can literally get it done in one evening and do it fully blind. It truly doesn't get any easier than this...

[AyumiCosplayGlam]

You just have to finish the "tutorial floors" so to speak and beat one boss with a grand total of two mechanics which boil down to run away, come close, run away. You can literally get it done in one evening and do it fully blind. It truly doesn't get any easier than this...

Its not about the difficulty, its the accessibility.
Lets start here: You have to be at the npc to enter the que usually in some very remote location, this is a dumb decision plain and simple. If its a que anyway, just put it on duty finder. This is not a Deep dungeon specific issue, but also true for Bozja Raids and Variant dungeons, except Variant is only hidden inside multiple menus instead of just 1 obvious place.
As far as im aware you still need to do PotD to unlock the rest of the deep dungeons which is something barely anyone does nowadays.
Then comes the dumb "save file" system, when you have to save your progress in the dungeon with specific people you will likely never meet again.

You know how this deep dungeon should have been handled?
- Unlock with quest
- No PotD requirement
- new tab in duty finder for deep dungeons
- que up for specific floor range
- when floor range is completed forced exit
- que up next floor range (give a choice for players to pick a few pomanders or whatever they are called as if they had it from previous floors)
- Profit

No dumb requirements, no save file bs, rng is restricted between every 10 floor.

[Yeonhee]

Sorry but the 4 savage and 1 ultimate excuse dosn't fly anymore when hadcore raiders have been eating exceptionally good in dawntrail while everyone else had borderline 0 content until Occult Crescent.

They currently have 8 savage raid, 1 ultimate, 1 chaotic, 1 alliance raid (Forked Tower) and for some reason now we also have the Deep dungeon boss accessible by que with the difficulty cranked up to 11.
Meanwhile Casual players have: 8 normal raids, 2 alliance raids, Occult Crescent without an ending because of forked tower, ill be generous and say that the new deep dungeon is casual but its actually debateable due to requirement for entry aaaaaand thats it i guess.

I always laugh when YoshiP says in an interview that they want to make content for everyone from now on and thats why we have the new deep dungeon stuff shoehorned in, while forked tower and chaotic is still unplayable pieces of...content. Somehow the content for everyone means we also get a hard version of things, but for some reason i highly doubt the next ultimate will have a normal mode when you actually survive stuff and normal raids with the savage exclusive boss forms.

All in all lets just stop the copium, its obvious that square wants to cater to the hardcore raiders and it is objectively, actively reducing the playerbase in dawntrail and overall interest in the game.

I'm sorry but I disagree. While I agree about Forked Tower, Chaotic is imo unlikely to get any more of them since it's a nightmare to do, getting 24 people together that have the basic skill to run it and that aren't prog lying isn't an easy thing to do. Occult Cresent released in 7.25 and by that point there was already 8 normal raids and 1 alliance as well as Cosmic Exploration, so I'm not really sure how it has zero content until then.

And saying that the new Deep Dungeon is for hardcore raiders just because you have to do a bunch of easy PotD floors and one laughable boss to access it is just plain ridiculous. Being a casual doesn't mean you somehow are utterly unable to Google how to access new content.

Overall, hardcore raiders have been eating a tad bit better in Dawntrail but again they only have two more raid than usual to do. For a damn long time the devs were unable/unwilling to pump interesting content in good number, it has very little to do with the big evil hardcore raiders.