Dear Square Enix! Make the game harder, not easier!

[Mithent]

In many cases it's not so much skill (once you're at a reasonable level) as it is time, which makes it difficult to please everyone.

Okay, you need to be able to understand and follow tactics, and know how to play your class. If you stand in pools of poisonous green goo and ignore the adds, you're not going to get very far. Equally, if your DPS rotation consists of spamming the first skill you learn, you tank exactly one enemy at a time and you heal as a BLM casting Physick then you're going to have a bad time. Barring that, once someone somewhere has worked out a decent strategy and your gear is acceptable, your success depends largely upon whether you can execute that strategy without making too many mistakes. That might require a fair bit of practice, of course, but you should get there eventually.

There's always going to be a limited amount of content, and the rate at which it's created is never going to come close to the rate at which it's consumed. And so gear starts becoming a limiting factor. Sometimes a hard one, because you'll inevitably fail a DPS check, sometimes a soft one, because as your gear improves, so does your effectiveness, so battles become more forgiving of the occasional mistake.

Practice is time and getting gear (through repeated dungeon runs) is time. "Hardcore" generally means "I am willing to dedicate a lot of time to this game in order to get to the top". If there's an ultra mega weapon that you can only get if you run through some particular dungeon 200 times, there are people who will run that particular dungeon 200 times as fast as they possibly can. They might complain about it a bit, but they will knuckle down and do it, and some will get there within a few days. If the next dungeon pretty much requires you to have that ultra mega weapon, you're gating that content to only allow people through who are going to spend many hours running through the previous one. And the next dungeon probably does need to require the ultra mega weapon, or there's not going to be much point in getting it, given that it doesn't set your achievement in getting it apart from people who ran that dungeon once and then carried on to the next one. Making that later content feel exclusive gives you a reward for all that effort. And the designers really need to try to hold these people back a bit by gating content to stop them burning to the end too quickly, at which point there's nothing for them to do, and they might get bored and unsubscribe.

But then there are people who might like the game a lot and are pretty competent at playing it, but only have time for a couple of dungeon runs a day. Maybe they have other commitments, maybe it's just one of several things they're enjoying right now etc. But they enjoy playing new content and learning new strategies just as much as anyone else. It just takes them longer, as they have fewer hours a day to dedicate to doing so. They get up to the point at which they pretty much have to run that same dungeon 200 times to continue, and, ouch. Sure, they'd like to see what's on the other side. But facing weeks upon weeks of repeating that same dungeon without moving on? They're probably not in a raiding FC that's going to guarantee a good group in return for 3-4+ evenings a week's commitment, either, so even if they have the tactics down, they might be regularly DF'ing with those who are still learning, further slowing down their progress. They could just try to bypass it and move on, but the later dungeon is just too hard without better gear. What can they do? Faced with never really progressing for the foreseeable future, they may give up and unsubscribe.

SE's answer seems to be to relax the requirements as time goes on, which makes sense. But it's certainly a difficult balance to reach: stop people who have large amounts of time running out of content too quickly, while stopping people who don't have as much time from hitting some near-insurmountable wall. I don't think anyone sensible wants high-level gear to be handed out for nothing, because then everyone is sitting at the top waiting for something new, and there's no sense of accomplishment in obtaining something that you haven't worked for. But the amount of time that different people are willing to put towards getting there is very variable, and everyone wants (and, in many ways, deserves) to feel some progression in the amount of time they have.

[Bahram]

If you haven't cleared the content then you aren't equipped to make that judgement.

I personally think the difficulty is fine. I am on AK/Ifrit and eventually Garuda here soon. Nothing has been super tricky, but I don't think it needs to be. This is raiding 101 and is clearly preparing you for Bahamut's Coil. If it's too easy, then clear it and move on to something that isn't too easy. The current MMO generation likes to bluster about how skilled they are, but they are not nearly as good as they think they are. Fun times seeing the other tank in my Ifrit act like he's hardcore 1337 and then cry like a baby because he doesn't understand that silence doesn't share DR with stuns.

Also, gear shouldn't be your indicator of skill. Your ability should be evident to those that play with you. Gear is just a tool to get from point A to point B. If you are looking at it like a status symbol, you are doing it wrong.

[Malamasala]

Things don't need to be hard or easy, but it would be nice if things were more equal.

A typical situation is boss fights which have gimmicks for the players, but that isn't covering pets, making SCH much harder than WHM to play. This is by no means a design for "hardmode SCH" but rather an oversight that they need to let pets be immune to certain things (or at minimum get the same effects a player gets).

[Hayward]

Wizardry Online is -----> that way.

I don't mind the difficulty as it is now. I do NOT want to run into roadblocks where specific jobs are almost required to even hope to get through a fight (see: Dynamis Lord circa 2006). Nor do I want things trying to attack me from every direction with other things jumping in (there are no cloaking items or spells here, remember?). More importantly, I don't want Tanaka-level drop rates for important items that are needed for our jobs (nearly everything in XI).

The gaming landscape is changing and for the better, if you ask me. People aren't trying to hear that delayed gratification garbage beyond a certain point. And nobody's trying to hear some joker posing like he/she's the most hardcore, all-pro gamer in the world blathering on about making games harder (read: harder for everyone else).

[Kyotae]

Dear Square Enix,

If you could please avoid making Final Fantasy too casual friendly or handing out welfare epics to players.If things become too easy, players become too lazy and then people get frustrated due to people failing at every turn.

For example I'm just waiting for the time when Garuda & Titan (Hardmode) gets nerfed because those "lazy" gamers are not able to get their relic weapon and because of people who worked to get their weapon, have it, that those lazy people feel that they should also have it with less work involved!

Do this and it will be a few "Doowi" type players, one server and free to play. That will make the "Doowie" types happy, will it make SE investors happy? Your game, your choice.

[StrangerousDangerous]

Yes, a hard game please.

Leveling up was far too easy lets keep endgame hard.

[EdwinLi]

Um they already have a Harder mode arriving. Still can't wait to see the Raging and Tears from those Rushers trying to get all those content done.

Patch 2.1

Good King Moogle Mog will returning as a boss fight. More than likely he will be accessible through the duty finder. Please look forward to it.

A new difficulty for Ifrit, Garuda, and Titan fights will be added in this patch as well. They haven’t quite decided if they’ll call them hard, super, ultra, extreme, or any other awesome intense name. I can see it now. “Ifrit, for real this time”.

Two hard level dungeons and the Crystal Tower, a 24-man raid dungeon, will be added.

Also new Hildibrand quests and FATEs are being added. If you didn’t know, Hildibrand was a comic relief NPC from version 1.0. He has his own… unique sense of humor.

The Wolves Den, a 4v4 and 8v8 arena will be opening in this patch. You can travel to it by boat from Lower La Noscea, and to enter the arena you must use the Duty Finder.

And lastly, Mists, the La Noscea player housing region will be unlocked in 2.1. Houses are available to Free Companies and individual players for a monetary value.

[StrangerousDangerous]

Just want to make everyone aware that an ultra-easy mode game is going to be launching in a few months and all the people complaining that things are too slow, too hard, and not given fast enough are just going to go there regardless.

[Moirweyn]

A dungeon can be hard the first few times you do it but, after the 5th time, it's not hard anymore, it's time consuming. There are people in my FC who can walk you through AK, step by step. The thing with MMOs is people mistake time consuming and repetitive for hard. An SP game on the hardest setting is hard, farming the same dungeon for weeks on end, to get gear, is not. That is the model this game uses, and that is fine and it will make a some people very happy, I just hope there are enough of them to keep the game alive in the long run.

Personally, I don't care. I'll play the way I want and if that means not having the best gear because I don't have the time/desire/need to do it, then I won't. I'll not call for a nerf of the dungeons or the big monsters because it doesn't fit into my play style, unless something is truly wrong. I'll get what I can and be happy and enjoy the game on my own terms.

I am just wondering how PvP will work in this game, gear wise that is.

[Doowie]

Do this and it will be a few "Doowi" type players, one server and free to play. That will make the "Doowie" types happy, will it make SE investors happy? Your game, your choice.

So what you are saying Kyotae, is that you want things to be handed to you by a simple non brain required interaction in the game and then gain everything and feel like you've actually achieved something? Or how would you prefer to show people that you can actually do something in the game and push the limit of what you can do with your character and then kill a boss and actually be proud of yourself and get that adrenaline rush.

Welfare epics is a disease to high end gaming. It allows the poor players (idiots) to cause more harm than good to people who want to progress. The sooner a vote kick system is added the better; however with dedicated linkshells to people who actually know how to play it does solve a lot of Duty Finder issues with ungeared/account sharing/no skill players