Addressing the problems of unbalanced parties ( Both skilled and unskilled players)

[Amineri]

In my opinion,

1. If the game is made "too easy", then it basically discourages team work because everyone can solo and it defeats the purpose of playing a mmo if you ask me. Worse, it creates a cycle and slowly kill the community because it does not draw you into the online world anymore.

2. If the game is made "difficult" enough, sure at first it may be frustrating that you cannot easily progress through the game by yourself. Remember though, there're always people around who are willing to help others out and that is one of the beauty of playing a mmo - making new friends! You don't have to be super good at battles in order to enjoy a more difficult game because your friends will "compensate" something that you're not too good at and at the same time you can provide what they lack of as long as the game provides goals that require teamwork.

I completely agree that FFXIV as it stands is slipping into your category 1. There aren't enough challenging encounters to promote much of a sense of teamwork. The current team I regularly run leves with is slipping more and more into a "race to kill" than really pulling together as a team to fight more difficult challenges. Ironically, the leves were more difficult at rank 25, and have become progressively easier as we have moved up to around rank 35. There may be a bit of a bump when we jump to the rank 40 leves, but the process of encounters becoming easier is a "slow death" as you point out.

In regard to your point 2 ... many great single player games are great because they slowly increase the difficulty level in an intelligent progression. However, players self-select these games based on game type. The type of difficulties of God of War vs. Minecraft vs. Katamari Damaci vs. SOCOM 4 vs. Starcraft II are all very different. What I'm suggesting to the SE dev team is that they try and create an environment that allows for different players with different strengths to come together as a team, rather than the "being carried" mentality. If, for example, SE makes quests that are very much like SOCOM 4, then sure, everyone not good at that style of gameplay will have to be carried, ultimately leading to many of the issues raised in the OP.

I'll admit that it's not a trivial issue to grapple with, and it is certainly much easier to cater in an MMO to one playstyle. SE certainly has been stretching with FF XIV to reach a wider community, so perhaps they will make the effort, and perhaps it will even work ...