Thread by @lucentile

Everyone laughed when our WoL reacted to hunting Atmas. Then the designers put this in. The devs *know the farm is something we dislike, that we find it boring/tedious.* Joking about it doesn't make it better. Being fourth wall breaking meta actually makes me more annoyed.

Occult Crescent's fate grind was pretty terrible. The only interesting thing is Fork Tower, and I've had zero chance to actually get into it. But, even if I did, as a casual player, Fork Tower is an example of the problem for casual players -- difficulty comes in two varieties:

Spoil the content and look up video to learn the call outs/pattern ahead of time or have an excessive wipe tolerance that you'll only get with a full party.

Your other type of content is brain dead easy dungeon/other content where the challenge is not getting killed by netcode.

As a casual player, the most fun I have is release Blind Runs of 24-man content because I can get groups together to do that. Sure, after the first run, most 24-mans shift to the brain dead easy content, but for that brief first run or two, this feels like good casual content.

Just so you don't think this is some person who barely plays complaining -- I used to play a lot more, but have steadily been playing less and less since I hit my goal earlier this year of top 500 achievements on Gilgamesh (and looks like that's decayed since last I checked.)

(I'm not even touching the story aspect -- because that's pretty hit or miss, and I've felt Dawntrail was a pretty big step back too, but I think most casual players don't really pay that much attention to the story anyway.)

-- I'm not sure why Twitter ate the first post, which was just a link to this video and me saying that I'd try as a casual to express why I'm unhappy with the state of FF14.

I do wonder if part of this is being a healer main -- which basically means I do nothing that matters in 95% of content with mildly competent players. As a casual player, in nearly every content I zone into, if I were a Warrior or Paladin, we'd do things faster and safer.

But, as a casual player, I also can't reliably settle into a raid schedule, and while FF14 raids haven't been as warped by guide/add-on culture, I know by not having cactbot or studying videos, I'm basically on the backfoot. I've done extremes before and the rare savage.

So, as a casual, the content I'd generally want is content where player skill matters with player interaction. OC and moon crafting were failures here; 24-mans can be this -- but like WoW Heroics, have a very thin band of time where they work before they're just zergfests.

It'd help if I thought the designers actually had a clue what players want -- instead we get effort put into making it so you can't skip pulls in Cutters Cry instead of doing something, anything to make sub 90 content interesting.

Skill usage should matter -- I should feel like my buttons make a difference, but as a healer, I'm mainly in casual level group content in case someone makes a mistake. And it has to be a pretty big one, otherwise even non-tanks are getting 3-4 stacks in OC without dying.

I think the problem is when people hear casual, they think "oh, person who is just here for the story/see numbers go up." Yes. I like both of those things -- but I want some level of skill expression. I'll play games on high or the hardest difficulties; I'll read tooltips. But...

But, I want to feel like spending time/effort yields better results. But, the way casual content is currently designed, there's major throttles that prevent that. We can't over pull if the tank/healer are good -- I can't really coordinate chain CCs/etc.

Casual content is engineered and safe -- I get not wanting to leave people behind on MSQ roulette, but I don't get like removing the Astrologian's stun and limiting AoE kits in leveling dungeons. Every change makes the worst parts of the games a longer slog.

So, there we go. I doubt this is a good answer -- and I'm sure there are some arguments against it (is someone who is level capped on everything, finished multiple mooncrafting tools, got his relic weapon, etc., etc., REALLY casual, for example) -- but, hopefully this helps.

But, if it doesn't, at least I got a chance to healthily vent about my issues with Dawntrail -- well, except the story part, which I'm not going to subject the internet to today.

But, that's just the complaining. The next tweets will be the "what would I like to see."

The answer is: A lot of what they have, but refined. Like the island was a great idea, until I realized I'd have to go around gathering for hours on end to make spreadsheets. I like spreadsheets, but efficiency spreadsheeting isn't exactly what I want as casual content.

Variant dungeons and Deep Dungeons are an interesting attempt at casual content, but they're bolted onto the basic dungeon experience. There needs to be something that helps set them apart -- or what I think most dungeons need, a nerf to monster health while increasing danger.

People fall asleep in dungeons because monster health takes a bit to chew through, while the threat from monsters is nonexistent as long as the tank puts on tank stance. Make basic dungeon trash interesting -- something I feel MMOs have felt scared to do for, what, a decade?

A lot of people say crafting/gathering in general isn't casual content at all, and while that may be true, I'd still like to see something that makes it more fun. I enjoy burning down my leves every now and then to get achievements and my weeklies -- this might actually be fine.

Make PvP easier to get into -- I really like Crystalline Conflict. I think a lot of casual players would actually like it if the barrier to entry wasn't so high, because it does what I say I want: Roles matter, individual skill expression exists, and it's easy to drop in/out.

Finally fix it so I don't have to right click, hand over -- and in general -- make it so there's more game play in the main story. The next expansion should have more dungeons, especially if they're going to be basic dungeon packages with window dressing + boss.

But, also, make it so that solo duties are more properly scaled for non-DPS roles. Being a healer in a solo duty is the worst gaming experience I've had in a game I did not get specifically to see how bad it is. I have no idea how FF14's solo duties launched in such a state.

Finally, take the good idea for Khloe's book... and do something to make the old content interesting so people get excited to do old content.

FF14 is between 25%-75% there with good casual content outlets... but they leave half discarded concepts littering the game world.

@threadreaderapp Unroll please.