"You Will Die" Difficulty... Can I Have It?

[Kinseykinz]

If Darnus was considered hard, and you want a "You Will Die" mode. Will only .001% of the population complete it?

To be fair, some of the population simply didn't beat Nael Easy or Hard due to the timing of those battles and server save dates. Populations of many LS's declined that they either didn't have the manpower or the time to do it plus other 'must do pre 2.0' items. If we could still be playing, many many more people would have beaten both battles by now. Not dissing those who did it in a timely manner, but not everyone is able to keep up with all the most current content at all times.

(the rest is just how I feel about the topic at hand)
Having sliders on fights might be okay...really depends on how they implement it. I'd prefer if Sliders ONLY existed on storyline battles...everything else should be one difficulty level, or tiered like it was in 1.0. (So you have to beat Baby Iffy, before Normal, and Normal before Extreme). Otherwise, in my opinion, it diminishes the achievements of the whole community. I just don't get why you'd need to have different difficulty levels of NON-storyline battles.

I am of the opinion that it is OKAY for some battles to take a long time to clear because when you DO finally get the win it feels like you accomplished something. It is also okay for there to be battles and Mobs that 'not everyone can beat'. Personally, I don't want to beat 'Baby' versions of Mobs and move on...I want to beat the exact same baddie as everyone else. Even if I do it 3 months after them.

I just see 'sliders' allowing a bunch of groups to be 'lazy' and for it to be much harder for anyone outside an Elite Free Company/LS to get access to the Hardmode battles. (And yes, world parties might be an option, but usually for battles such as this, you want to go in with the same people so you can form strategies etc). Not everyone who has the skill can join an elite LS...mostly because while their skills might be in line with the recuitment, their playtimes etc. are not. So in this case, people are in Mid-cores shells. In the past, they do end up getting their clears and items same as the Elite, just in a slower time. But if they allow sliders, I see many going 'we can just do the normal mode, no need to try for hard'...leaving many who'd like the option to try Hardmodes, without people to draw from. This is further compounded by the whole 'you can only be in one free company' thing. The free company you join might be who you are friends with> who you game at the same difficultly level at.

But as someone who's been in mid-core groups, I can tell you it is an UPHILL battle convincing them to do events/battles that require committment and teamwork at that sort of level consistantly. Going back to Nael, it took me from the time Nael Hardmode came out until 2 weeks before the final save to convince my LS to even attempt the battle (they heard it was hard and were concentrating on Relics). Even when they did attempt, they only dedicated 2ish hours to it 2 nights a week. Not near enough time to get a solid clear in. (Once they realized they needed to do it every night, they did get the clear the day before the save, but I had lost power due to Hurricane Sandy and missed out).

If Nael had a slider, I would have never gotten them to even attempt the 'Hard' version...and since the LS team DOES have the clear, they were in fact, capable of doing it...but with a slider, they would never even have attempted it at Hardmode level.

[Zantetsuken]

If this actually existed, I would have been gone a long long time ago.

It did for a bit, and it's coming back, but not officially.

I suppose your days here are numbered...

[Wolfie]

Kotaku link, nothx

[Zantetsuken]

Kotaku link, nothx

it's like rickrolling, but cruel.

[Wolfie]

Every time you click on a Kotaku link, a gamer gets punched in the balls/ovaries.

[Orophin]

I'm sorry but you're wrong, it is true that everyting will be easier for the eventually futur new players, but they want to satisfy the actual players as well

That's all well and good, but there's no way ARR will survive with only 50,000 subscribers. Yoshida has to develop this game to appeal to the greatest common audience, else the last 2 years of work they've done will mean nothing.

[Venat]

A Realm Reborn
FINAL FANTASY XIV

Prepare to die edition

[Firon]

They do. They want to pull in non FF fans as well, the fans used to super easy games with occasional hard encounters that you do only once.

The quickest turnoff to a casual player is something being hard/too hard or taking longer than 30 minutes to complete and SE wants to avoid alienating anyone because people WILL COMPLAIN if the content isn't accessible to their level 20 just like it is to their 50.



Yes, Japan also doesn't release tougher RPGs out to the west because it doesn't mesh well with western gamers, i.e some RPGs have permanent death, something western gamers would bitch about heavily, especially in the early days, i.e:

"I put all this work into this character and s/he is completely gone?! HORRIBLE GAME DESIGN RABBLE RABBLE"

Thus word of mouth and lower overall sales they may as well not have localized it.

Take it you never played fire emblem or any american rpgs cause a ton of them have hardcore mode I.E Torchlight 2.

Also a great deal of the population never beat garuda.... or Darnus normal or hard. If garuda/darnus is any indication how to content s gonna look i'm happy it can only get better.

[Wolfie]

Yeah, I guess western players are all babies and want everything handed to them on a plate.

There's no such thing as D2/D3/TL/TL2 hardcore mode, Dark Souls, or Dungeons and Dragons in the west.

And it's all babby games like WOW and Modern Warfare.

And it's not at all that a majority of Japanese developers don't have the resources or inclination to do a world wide release, or that western players don't like the massively linear storylines that are typical of JRPGs.

[Zumi]

I'm not saying I'm against hard content, but is it worth developer's time to create super hard content.

This is a bell curve. If you ever learn statistics, this is used constantly


Making content that is for the farther right (like SD+1 or SD+2), more hardcore, group worth their effort? Content that 16 to 2% of player can will enjoy? Or is it, as a developer, better to make content for more left, less hardcore, group. Like at the SD-1 spot would be probably ideal, for profit. 84% of the population could handle that.

In short, hardcore content is not really cost effective from a development stand point. Resources to to appease 2 to 16% of the player base is hardly worth it.

EDIT: This is just a sample bell curve. Just used to make a point.

Oh there's a reason to make content for less then 1% of the player base. It gives casual players something they can try to work for but never achieve so they can feel like they are never done because they have not beat all the raid bosses on hard mode and do not have the best gear. Less then 0.1% of the WoW playerbase can beat Hard mode raids on current tier. Its often the hard core less then 1% that make a bunch of videos and stuff of your game which is basically a bunch of free advertising.

It's the carrot on a stick that you can never reach that keeps people playing.