One heck of a nice run!

[Sierra Nazrin]

Here i am running Steps of Faith with a duty finder group, this was the result. two gates before the end of the entire run, we took out Vishap during the second burn phase.

[Sylentmana]

Whoa, that's crazy! I didn't even know that was possible.

[Oli!]

I believe I once managed that because our entire DPS team was single-target.

 

It was actually kind of hilarious.

[Seriphyn]

Nicely done, but I do hope they increase the difficulty of older content somehow. The dramatic impact is lost and the gravitas of the battle becomes trivial.

[Dravus]

Nicely done, but I do hope they increase the difficulty of older content somehow. The dramatic impact is lost and the gravitas of the battle becomes trivial.

 

I don't think they ever will, unfortunately. Which means that no new player is ever going to see the likes of Castrum Meridianum or The Praetorium as they were originally intended. Not that they were super difficult, of course, but you can completely ignore mechanics for the most part these days due to how poorly they scale.

 

Compare it to the likes of The Vault and it's disappointing. The Vault scales brilliantly - the last boss is still a threat since even with better gear you can still count on dying if you mess up even once given how intense the fight can be.

 

Thankfully it wasn't made easier - I was a tad worried that it would be, especially given what happened to Steps of Faith.

[Oli!]

Nicely done, but I do hope they increase the difficulty of older content somehow. The dramatic impact is lost and the gravitas of the battle becomes trivial.

 

I don't think they ever will, unfortunately. Which means that no new player is ever going to see the likes of Castrum Meridianum or The Praetorium as they were originally intended. Not that they were super difficult, of course, but you can completely ignore mechanics for the most part these days due to how poorly they scale.

 

Compare it to the likes of The Vault and it's disappointing. The Vault scales brilliantly - the last boss is still a threat since even with better gear you can still count on dying if you mess up even once given how intense the fight can be.

 

Thankfully it wasn't made easier - I was a tad worried that it would be, especially given what happened to Steps of Faith.

 

 

Due to the way that gear is scaled, I feel as if the final fights for 3.0 are going to be just as obsolete as the 2.0 content come 4.0. It's the result of gear scaling, and people are going to want better gear for 4.0 content in order to maintain some sense of progression, especially with the lack of a level-cap increase.

 

It's become rather accepted now that the endgame gear treadmill is XIV's choice of progression, and as long as that continues with future expansions, previous content is going to get easier and easier unless SE finds a way to rework their scaling system.

[LiadansWhisper]

I do believe they are more focused on getting newer players through those hurdles than they are on making them suffer through the experience of wiping repeatedly on bosses that shouldn't have been difficult in the first place.

 

If they're not going to ungate the experience from 2.0 to 3.0, they're going to do the next best thing by making the required encounters as smooth and easy as possible so that they don't slow people down.

[Caspar]

I had hoped Steps would be a "wake-up call" preceding a gradual increase in content difficulty. While the overworld is slightly more lethal in HW, nothing has really struck me as terribly hard. The nerfs made me worry for the longevity of the game, a bit.

[Oli!]

I had hoped Steps would be a "wake-up call" preceding a gradual increase in content difficulty. While the overworld is slightly more lethal in HW, nothing has really struck me as terribly hard. The nerfs made me worry for the longevity of the game, a bit.

 

It's important to remember that not everyone wants it hard all the time. Some players are more laid-back, and might even have thought that the difficulty increase for HW's mobs was too much. It's important that the devs strike the happiest balance that they can so that chunks of the playerbase don't complain / leave.

[Caspar]

I had hoped Steps would be a "wake-up call" preceding a gradual increase in content difficulty. While the overworld is slightly more lethal in HW, nothing has really struck me as terribly hard. The nerfs made me worry for the longevity of the game, a bit.

 

It's important to remember that not everyone wants it hard all the time. Some players are more laid-back, and might even have thought that the difficulty increase for HW's mobs was too much. It's important that the devs strike the happiest balance that they can so that chunks of the playerbase don't complain / leave.

Yeah, that's why I'd hoped it would gradually ease into it to allow players to get used to it.

 

It's mostly a selfish motivation though, lol. I largely want the increased difficulty because a lot of my friends are XI immgrants, and the thing that keeps them from staying consistently subbed and continuing to play with me is the lack of difficulty, which they endlessly whine about.

[Warren Castille]

To sound like a grognard:

 

I long for the playerbase that meets a challenge and rises to it instead of bitching straight to the developer for nerfs.

[Berrod Armstrong]

To sound like a grognard:

 

I long for the playerbase that meets a challenge and rises to it instead of bitching straight to the developer for nerfs.

*~*~*~*dramatically turns, his hair flying in the breeze as he looks longingly back at 2.1 Pharos Sirius*~*~*~*

 

Agreed, and I'm a casual.

 

However, I do believe Main Story Quest trials and dungeons should be tuned for everyone to complete without too much difficulty. Unlockable side dungeons though.

 

Hurt me. Hurt me good.

[Telluride]

To sound like a grognard:

 

I long for the playerbase that meets a challenge and rises to it instead of bitching straight to the developer for nerfs.

*~*~*~*dramatically turns, his hair flying in the breeze as he looks longingly back at 2.1 Pharos Sirius*~*~*~*

 

Agreed, and I'm a casual.

 

However, I do believe Main Story Quest trials and dungeons should be tuned for everyone to complete without too much difficulty. Unlockable side dungeons though.

 

Hurt me. Hurt me good.

 

Thing is, there is no one Playerbase, as the above exchange is already showing: Grognard, Casual, PVPer, RPer, Raider... while there are people who fit all the categories, or more than one, many people tend to have much more regard for one aspect of a game than the other, and if a change to one aspect impacts another, the buzzing starts.

 

I take examples from my gaming past, particularly from LOTRO and SWTOR, as examples, but these are common to every game. In both of the aforementioned games, nerfs were applied to certain classes for PVP purposes, when the changes were completely unnecessary for PVE, and threw off playing strategies for raiders and solo PVE players. The non-PVPers were incensed and lashed out at both the devs and the PVP folks, the latter of whom, of course, lashed back.

 

It's hard for a single playerbase to rise up when a large part of it feels as if they've been ripped off/screwed/nerfed to satisfy another part of the base, with which the former part hasn't much reason to care about, in their opinions.

 

I've actually seen LESS of this sort of thing in FFXIV than in, well, just about any other game. We're arguing more over hairstyles than much of anything else at the moment, and if you step back with a wider perspective, that's not too terrible a place to be. As negative as some people may think I am, I look at FFXIV, and then remember when my Champion got nerfed in LOTRO, and when the Orbital Barrage ability in SWTOR got nerfed, and how much of a furious impact THOSE made, and realize that, well, I can live without fancy hair.

 

Don't neglect those occasions when a playerbase DOES rise to a challenge, and handles it so well that the devs step in and break up their solutions, because exploit, yadda yadda. Sometimes nobody actually has a problem EXCEPT the devs, and those generate nerfs, too.

 

We've talked about biases, and I have mine - I have some criteria that I like in a game of this sort, and I stick with FFXIV because it's done the best job of meeting those in a good while, even if it fails at some others.

 

Also, I stand by a personal mantra - just because something is harder doesn't mean it is automatically more fulfilling and BETTER. Give the grognards and the difficulty seekers things to do - that's what all those endgame options are about - but valuing difficulty ONLY for difficulty's sake is, in my opinion, pretty ridiculous, especially when you have a game that intends to stick the same content over and over again in our faces in the form of dailies. Difficulty is not always its own reward.

[Caspar]

To sound like a grognard:

 

I long for the playerbase that meets a challenge and rises to it instead of bitching straight to the developer for nerfs.

*~*~*~*dramatically turns, his hair flying in the breeze as he looks longingly back at 2.1 Pharos Sirius*~*~*~*

 

Agreed, and I'm a casual.

 

However, I do believe Main Story Quest trials and dungeons should be tuned for everyone to complete without too much difficulty. Unlockable side dungeons though.

 

Hurt me. Hurt me good.

I LOVED Pharos on release. The unforgiving mechanics. The need for every player to contribute. It's length and non-traditional room shape. For a long time it was that one dungeon tanks feared and disappeared from the moment they queued in, whereas it was excellent practice for me. I used to use Pharos as a kind of training routine where I got better at WAR by running it when others queuedodged it.

However, I understand not everyone can be a masochist like me. It takes a certain mindset and not everyone is keen on it. Also, a lot of XI players like difficulty, but I find their idea is different than mine. They seem to equate tedium with challenge.

[LiadansWhisper]

I liked Pharos.

 

What I didn't like was doing it in the Duty Finder, primarily because it made the dungeon ridiculously harder than it was intended to be.

 

Actually, Caspar, you talked about wanting dungeons to be harder.  I'm sure you'll agree with me that Sohm Al really isn't tough, right?  I spent nearly an hour in there on the last boss because we had a Bard who simply could not get out of the fire.  We explained the tactics to him again and again and again, and every time he'd do exactly the wrong thing.  And I simply couldn't keep him alive through one-shot damage, nor could I afford to repeatedly res him as an Astrologian.

 

Thing is, when something has to be completed with a random group, there's a fairly hard limit on how hard they can make it.  Because, well, there will always be that Bard that has no idea what he or she is doing and ends up wiping the group repeatedly until he leaves in embarrassment (mind you, we didn't ask him to leave, and no one was mean to him).

[Caspar]

Sohm Al is not hard per se, but the boss is tricky until you recognize the small circle that appears right before chaos blast. I think it is not so difficult people leave without attempting it like Pharos.

[LiadansWhisper]

Sohm Al is not hard per se, but the boss is tricky until you recognize the small circle that appears right before chaos blast. I think it is not so difficult people leave without attempting it like Pharos.

 

I'm not saying it is.  I'm just saying that there's a limit on how hard they can make a random dungeon and avoid a large number of groups having issues.  Even then, you may still have issues because you get a player who just doesn't understand how to play.

[Oli!]

 

 

 

there is no one Playerbase

 

 

I've always maintained that the idea of the One True Playerbase is a construct proposed to get people to design the game the way they want it to be designed.

 

No group will like all of the same things, even among a group that still likes a common thing, such as a game.

[Telluride]

Sohm Al is not hard per se, but the boss is tricky until you recognize the small circle that appears right before chaos blast. I think it is not so difficult people leave without attempting it like Pharos.

 

I'm not saying it is.  I'm just saying that there's a limit on how hard they can make a random dungeon and avoid a large number of groups having issues.  Even then, you may still have issues because you get a player who just doesn't understand how to play.

 

In my view, this hearkens right back to that gating issue we keep circling around. In short, if a dungeon is hard, but isn't required for advancing into other, unrelated things to do, then no problem. If a dungeon is hard, and locks story/main/unrelated/exploration content behind, then the problem arises.

 

It's why many people still cringe at getting Aurum Vale in the DF. Do most people know how to do it? Sure. Do we WANT to? Well, I sure as #$@%# don't. I still kind of resent that the game literally locks HOUSING behind that dungeon, since housing requires one to make max level in one's Grand Company, and there are not one, but TWO quests for Grand Companies that say, no Aurum Vale, no GC promotion, no housing for you.

 

It's one thing to require completing dungeons to be allowed to do more challenging raids - those things require the same skillsets to be done well with others. But... Housing?

 

Now, I'd concur that there's an issue for people wanting to do dungeons but being incapable of following basic directions, though; that messes things up for everyone. But this is part and parcel of FFXIV's mechanism for recycling content as long as possible. If a veteran player wants this or that reward/token, he or she may have to volunteer to do old stuff, and this requirement keeps newer players able to find parties and progress through required content - that's what the Duty Finder is designed to do. It's frankly a great way of making sure that it remains possible for people to progress/build new characters/classes, true, but it's set up so that said veterans can't even pick a single dungeon and say, "I hate that @#$@$#: I'll do any dungeon but that one."

 

So, we can blame players for being incompetent when they are, for better or for worse, but we're also looking at the very core design that SE has created with this game, which basically puts existing players in service to newer ones, to help them get through required content so that SE doesn't have to do so much work WITH that old content, nor have to come up with more palatable content for older areas.

 

We aren't just players for ourselves, the game says - we're in service to each other and saving work for the devs. That may be outside of the scope of this thread, though, to really discuss.

[Caspar]

 

 

 

there is no one Playerbase

 

 

I've always maintained that the idea of the One True Playerbase is a construct proposed to get people to design the game the way they want it to be designed.

 

No group will like all of the same things, even among a group that still likes a common thing, such as a game.

I do kinda agree, it's a bit of a buzzword. Yet there is something to be said for encouraging certain kinds of player behavior. 

 

I think the purpose of doing hard content should correlate to the reward. I do think it's sorta dumb that aurum vale is a wall against housing, though it came out long before, so that was clearly unintentional. But say, I would be disappointed if to level crafters I needed unique untradeable mats from Vale. I actually like that dungeon; it's the people who attempt it and leave midway with their tails between their legs (sorry miqote) that ruin it.

That being said, I still think there should have been a gradual ramp up in difficulty in main content. There seems to be a notable jump around steps and the chrysalis, rather than a gradual increase, and a quick drop back down to trivial.

[Warren Castille]

I was glad they nerfed Omega Weapon in FF8 once FF9 came out. I didn't want to have to gather a bunch of Holy Wars and stuff to get my Proof of Omega. /flimsystrawman

 

Housing isn't really a good example of a content lock. It requires you to do a shitty dungeon, yes, and it also requires you to have several millions of gil to acquire the thing. If some newbie player can't find help or the desire to ask someone to assist them, they're pretty likely to not have stumbled onto a fortune on top of things.

 

If you're talking FC rooms, which only cost 300k, I have to wonder why it's such a big deal to ask someone to unsync a lv60 and just steamroll it for you in a few minutes. If you're in an FC that won't do that for you, are you sure you want to spend 300k to be locked to them?

[Telluride]

 

If you're talking FC rooms, which only cost 300k, I have to wonder why it's such a big deal to ask someone to unsync a lv60 and just steamroll it for you in a few minutes. If you're in an FC that won't do that for you, are you sure you want to spend 300k to be locked to them?

 

I'll grant you that point. We've already brought up most of the content locks in other threads, so it seemed a fresh example, though one could just as well ask why rooms/houses should be GC Rank-locked at all, for that matter, at which point it stops being about difficulty and starts being about time investment, which is a completely different discussion, and one I imagine we'll probably be much more in agreement over.

[Warren Castille]

I'll grant you that point. We've already brought up most of the content locks in other threads, so it seemed a fresh example, though one could just as well ask why rooms/houses should be GC Rank-locked at all, for that matter, at which point it stops being about difficulty and starts being about time investment, which is a completely different discussion, and one I imagine we'll probably be much more in agreement over.

 

The challenge then becomes "what is this new person doing with their time if they aren't playing the game?" Ranking up at your GC is something you may or may not be doing on the side as you level and play through dungeons. AV is a good source of gear, experience, and is required for Grand Company progression. I'll grant you that they didn't have to lock it at all, but I suspect it was partially to make sure that people kept playing their game. There's a lot of strange level/MSQ locks that are to be blamed solely on gil sellers, and as mentioned above the requirement for AV was in before housing to be max rank.

 

I know it's a slippery slope fallacy, but why even bother needing to pay for a room at all? If you've already spent millions on a house, why not just open instances to members? The answer's the same: They want people playing, not just logging in once a week to look at their house. I wasn't trying to infer any sort of True Player Society or anything, I just miss the days where hard shit was either beaten or it wasn't, and there was a modicum of pride of being able to say you beat something tough. I confess "difficult" is incredibly subjective, but that's a discussion for another thread. Before we had patches and the like, you either beat the game or you didn't. Seeing the True Ending to Kingdom Hearts meant something before Youtube. Conquering secret bosses in RPGs was a badge of honor. I will concede that this is slightly apples to oranges; Steps is hardly Demifiend-from-DDS level difficulty, but I think the thought is the same. "This is hard, and I don't want to / can't do it, but I want what comes after it."

 

Comes back around to my not understanding not wanting to play the game. I just think of the less-fun stuff as the Sewer Level of MMOs.

[Oli!]

 

 

I just miss the days where hard shit was either beaten or it wasn't, and there was a modicum of pride of being able to say you beat something tough. I confess "difficult" is incredibly subjective, but that's a discussion for another thread. Before we had patches and the like, you either beat the game or you didn't. Seeing the True Ending to Kingdom Hearts meant something before Youtube. Conquering secret bosses in RPGs was a badge of honor. I will concede that this is slightly apples to oranges; Steps is hardly Demifiend-from-DDS level difficulty, but I think the thought is the same. "This is hard, and I don't want to / can't do it, but I want what comes after it."

 

Comes back around to my not understanding not wanting to play the game. I just think of the less-fun stuff as the Sewer Level of MMOs.

 

 

To invoke Player Choice, there's nothing really stopping people from doing this. If I want to sit down and play Kingdom Hearts and view the True Ending as a reward, all I have to do is not look it up on YouTube. If people want to do content the way that it was intended, all they have to do is get some level-appropriate gear and some friends, and belt it out as best they can.

 

The challenge hasn't been removed, it's still there, it's just that there are ways to bypass it that people are taking. It's possible to hop off of that train at any point and do things the way that they were built if that's really what people want.

 

For those that don't want to do that, the ability to have things be "easy" or whatever is there as well. Everyone can be happy that way, I feel, unless people feel that one option or the other shouldn't exist at all so that everyone can play in one way, which isn't something that I personally endorse.

[Warren Castille]

The challenge hasn't been removed, it's still there, it's just that there are ways to bypass it that people are taking. It's possible to hop off of that train at any point and do things the way that they were built if that's really what people want.

 

For those that don't want to do that, the ability to have things be "easy" or whatever is there as well. Everyone can be happy that way, I feel, unless people feel that one option or the other shouldn't exist at all so that everyone can play in one way, which isn't something that I personally endorse.

 

Coil nerfs, Pharos Nerf, and Steps Nerf are all a Thing, though. The original difficulty of these things were removed because (at least partially) people were unable to do them as they were designed. They were possible, barring Twister bug, and in the case of Pharos and Coil they were already completely optional. I will concede that steps threw a bunch of mechanics into Trial Roulette that most people weren't prepared for, but the original versions are gone.

 

I'm articulating it badly, as I'm not trying to say "Everyone must play the way I deem it!" I just miss when challenge was met with determination and not surrender. I blame FFXI.

 

Edit: I consider it a personal failing of my own, hence my claiming position as a grognard earlier.