Final Fantasy XIV Letter from the Producer XXXVI

[Loony BoB]

You can have all your other points, because they ultimately just come down to differences in our approaches to the game, but let's not pretend that Final Fantasy XIV is remotely difficult.

I disagree. If you aren't told exactly where to stand, exactly what to do, have people tolerant enough to put up with you failing your first five attempts, etc. then you will struggle immensely at any primal battle, let alone the later Grand Company/Dalamud quests. Again, some of them will be easier when you have the time to do them 20 times over, sure, but not everyone has that amount of time nor the people to do it with. My LS is amazing, I love them, but to get us all on at once without one or two of us held up with something else is nigh on impossible. Endgame in this game is designed to be difficult and the only reason anyone might think it isn't is because they either have epic gear or they have been trained to do exactly what they are told from day one. There is nothing more helpful, though, than having a group of people who you can play with consistently. I wish I had this, but I don't. We don't all hop on every night, we don't schedule times at all - we are a social LS. I don't have a static. If this game is ridiculously easy then I don't want to touch a game considered to be hard by you.

You don't have to be super-hardcore to accomplish what I've accomplished. Especially because someone who was super-hardcore would have accomplished that and more by the end of the summer. I won't disagree that I play a lot (especially the past month since I've been working from home), but keep in mind I've been out of town for over a month since I've started playing, so we're looking at everything I've accomplished in about three months of playing.

Just what have you accomplished, then? I'm starting to think we're playing different games.

I don't view what I've done as super-hardcore. Super-hardcore is the couple I know who just leveled four classes each to 50 in the past week.

I don't view leveling as hardcore, I view endgame as hardcore.

And you know what? They are some of the worst players I've ever had the misfortune of partying with. They're so bad at this game, that one of them--after playing for over a year--has still not grasped the basic motion controls. They've both done more in this game than I have.

Maybe you're just really smurfing good? But yeah, motion controls, wow. I wouldn't call them hardcore, ever. Eeeeeeeever. Hardcore isn't how fast you level, it's how seriously you take the game and how much time you invest in perfecting your skills in it. I have leveled up pretty fast and PL'ed about four or five classes to L30 in two days, probably could have done two or three to L50 in a couple more if I really wanted to, but I didn't. Doing it wouldn't make me hardcore. Hardcore is Relic, it's doing raids almost daily, farming primal gear and darklight.

Let's not make any illusion about this game being difficult. It certainly won't take Raistlin "years and years" to accomplish what I have.

I said "if you play as often as you have been" - he's been on once or twice last I checked. If he plays all week he'll be fine, I'm just going by what I'm seeing.

I'm not saying he's gonna get it done before the first, but come on. You said yourself the biggest reason that you haven't accomplished a lot in the game: you will keep failing the same things over and over because you want to help new people. That's all well and good, but even one person who doesn't know what they're doing can make an easy fight like Ifrit (Hard) difficult. I'm not super-hardcore just because I play with a group of about a dozen people who know what they're doing. I also don't appreciate the implication that I don't also help people out with things that have no benefit to me. I just draw the line at "I'm helping you" and "Let's own trout" time.

I wasn't intending on helping them. The parties I join up to just happen to have people who are new to things. You clearly have a LS that has people more dedicated to the game than mine. The only person I know like that is Tony and he has a static so isn't available very often. He's still chatting on our LS daily, and is great help on many occasions (he's one of the "main group" on our LS) but yeah, Val/Steely/Ari/Vaughn/Lumos/Smitten/Me/Tony are just rarely online at the same time and if we are, it isn't generally for long. So we shout for help, call in friends, join other shouts and then come across a person new to a fight and that's that. Having said that, we got about five people beating Batraal on their first attempt yesterday. Was great.

[Ouch!]

I'll offer another reason why someone would consider Final Fantasy XIV easy: because compared to other games in the same genre it is. The level of coordination and movement required during any boss battle is minimal compared to a lot of other games. That said, it still does require coordination, and you're rarely going to win anything if you can't get at least a core of solid people who know what they're doing. Playing with people who don't know what they're doing doesn't mean the game is difficult; it just means you're playing with people who don't know what they're doing.

Just what have you accomplished, then? I'm starting to think we're playing different games.

• Ifrit Primal
• Moogle Primal
• Dzemael Darkhold
• Cutter's Cry
• Grand Company Missions
• Second Flame Lieutenant
• Hrystmill Hamlet Defense 60,000+
• Aleport Hamlet Defense 60,000+

I haven't put much effort into clearing Garuda (only gone on a couple runs, but we've made it to the third form), and I haven't been on a run to try and clear Aurum Vale yet. Also only recently started doing Hamlet; I haven't been on during a Grand Bazaar Hamlet Defense yet. We do them on the fly with a core of at least 5-6 and pick up the others as we need.

Seriously, though. Any game is going to be hard if you're constantly doing everything in pick-ups, but that has nothing to do with the inherent difficulty of a game and everything to do with a rag-tag team of people who have never worked together before trying to accomplish a cooperative task.

[Loony BoB]

Well maybe we'd have been better if you were on our server to fight with us. ;_;

[Ouch!]

Frankly, from the sound of it, because there's a lack of a group of people regularly doing content together, I probably would have rage quit ages ago if I was on your server. D:

[Loony BoB]

Oh, there are a lot of those groups, I'm just not in them. ^_^ Although some of them sound really rude, too. With dramabombs here and there.

[Ouch!]

Oh, the endgame drama is just something you eventually learn to ignore. The endgame group I'm part of caused all sorts of drama just forming. Our social shell had been doing endgame together, but there were so many people (many of whom had never done any of it before) who wanted to go to events that we were rotating party members between runs, leaving people sitting and waiting 30-45 minutes at a time while we waited for our turn. And then when you got in, somebody was always new and we rarely won because of it. So a few of us split off to form our own dedicated endgame group. People left behind (like that couple who really suck at the game who I mentioned) were VERY OFFENDED. Somehow I'm the only person still on good terms with everyone, and I think it may be because they're unaware that I split off...?