FFXIV Difficulty, Addons, Accessibility, and The Line

greetings travelers you know exactly what i'm about to do that's right it's time to make a boring video about boring things that aren't as funny as what i'm most known for when i'm not playing final fantasy 14 in my free time i have other hobbies as well such as playing other video games sometimes i even like to talk about those video games with other people who enjoy playing video games this often causes me to think about stuff when it comes to game design the meaning of life which i already know and the dewey decimal system some of my favorite games that i've played are sekiro and bloodborne as many of my fellow travelers probably already know i recently completed dark souls 3 not the dlc though and i didn't like the game now that's just my opinion and my opinion is that sekiro was harder but it's really simple though my favorite thing about bloodborne and sekiro is parrying that's what gets me rock hard so unsurprisingly in dark souls 3 i like the second phase of abyss watchers and both the gundyr fights despite not liking just about anything else in the game now why do i bring any of this up because this got my train of thought to think about difficulty in games and simply put how i also think about difficulty in final fantasy xiv in final fantasy 14 you do have hardcore content technically extreme usually savage but especially ultimate what about eureka it is designed to take more effort to learn compared to the normal game content where you can stroll into it completely blind and expect to clear it in one try 99 of the time unless it's misdragging from the burn impossible content it takes a bit of work to get a clear and high in even the easiest high-end content requires you to do mechanics and learn it with that being said one thing that pisses me off are the gatekeepers of hardcore content and hardcore games in general that try and claim you need to have the biggest schlong or be able to swallow the most amount of to be able to clear hardcore anything it's more like you have to be willing to put in the work in order to clear it at the same time it's not for everybody some people either don't want to put in that amount of effort or simply don't have the time to do so you know people who aren't me have lives outside of the game that's okay too especially in final fantasy 14's case where it's such a small sliver of what the game has to offer that it's fine to make stuff that not everybody wants to do many people never buy something like a popular from software game because they don't want to deal with it and the creators get to decide if the impact of sales is enough to change their game to make it more widely appealing there are plenty of mini games in ff14 like mahjong and other gold saucer nonsense that most players never even touch but it's there for the people who want it and the dev team still deems it as a good use of resources i don't really think there is any harm in trying to see if you like some niche content or not and everyone has to start somewhere when it comes to learning more complex stuff great i don't think i said anything controversial or spicy yet so let's talk about add-ons final fantasy xiv as an authority does not endorse the use of add-ons and they are very upfront about being willing to punish players for using them it is a sharp contrast from other mmos especially where add-ons can be so baked into the experience it's almost as if the developers of the game are subcontracting out essential programming to random freelancers you don't have to fundamentally agree with the stance of the developers in this regard just like how you don't have to fundamentally agree with the rules of anything you do have to keep in mind though what the rules are even stuff that just changes aesthetics is considered a violation of tos which i think is stupid but that's how it is of course this brings me to one of my greatest enemies of all time authority i am not a big fan however i don't actively use any add-ons while gaming in final fantasy i definitely haven't used a ct to see how much damage i'm doing you can't prove anything so this is the territory of where things get weird i don't like using things such as act triggers for anything really or using add-ons of any kind to make hard content easier that is my personal opinion on the matter i don't like them the problem with this is that this is where i draw the line i think it defeats the purpose of doing hard content when you go around the game rules to make it easier the funny thing about the line of acceptability is that everyone's draws it just below whatever they themselves do i am not saying that's a bad thing it's just part of human nature i'm not exactly someone who has the best behavior in the world and yet i don't consider my rampant swearing to be problematic the reason why you have to understand this principle is because you can't just assume that your own view of what's considered okay when it comes to add-ons is going to be the same for everyone else that's why developers have to draw the line somewhere it's almost arbitrary but they have to come up with a set of rules that they expect everyone to follow in this game's case it's because of playstation support where they can't use add-ons as easily and they want to make sure that the playing field is even to reiterate about a thousand times this is just the way that i look at it but i consider every single annoying thing about hard content to be part of the difficulty that includes clicking the same three buttons in a row consistently paying attention to your raid buffs reading the boss tells and knowing how to time your cooldowns i consider all of that to be part of the difficulty some people draw the line elsewhere because they think some of these factors should not be part of the difficulty oh it's okay this spot is simply doing basic call outs it's not any different from a human player who isn't always consistent on their timings or is capable of making mistakes even for myself there are things that frustrate me in high-end content i don't like putting harder mechanics later into encounters it's easy to make something artificially harder in my world view by simply only allowing you to try it every hour you bazja duels it might take you less tries but it'll take you more time i would love to be able to practice hard mechanics in a hyperbolic time chamber where i can get it down before incorporating it into the whole fight that's because i played piano for a long time and literally every music instructor ever will tell you that if you're struggling with something you work on that part that you need to isolate and you don't keep playing everything up until that point every single time even though i think about it that way in the case of hard fights that is part of the challenge it does take some extra time to learn things because the endurance is also part of the experience in the developers world even though it's something that i don't like and i'd consider a practice tool to be very nice and acceptable not everyone would share that opinion so i don't recommend using tools to make stuff easier i think people should be discouraged from using these type of add-ons here's where i throw you a curveball though if you use these tools to make the hard content easier i don't personally give a i can't tell if people are using them in the first place and i also don't bother to pay enough attention anyways if you want to make your own experience easier because you don't want to deal with some aspect of the difficulty that's your choice however here are a few things that piss me off one if you clear with the use of add-ons don't expect to be held in the same regard as people who clear without just in the same way that people who clear ultimate on release are more impressive than people who clear it after everything has already been solved or if you're me only make real progress in e12 s with echo it's not as impressive as doing it without on the flip side don't pretend like clearing this content with the use of add-ons is a complete joke you still have to do things and all the add-ons and all the advantages in the world are not going to guarantee a clear for anybody it's still hard in many aspects even though i consider the use of add-ons to be a step too far i've done savage with echo or i've done content with close to best in slot gear and listened to call outs i don't make it as hard as it can be i just use things that are within the rules of the game which is once again where i draw the line it's not going to apply to every single person who plays the game just keep it in the back of your mind you can get in trouble for using add-ons and that's the risk that you're willing to take to stand by your principles the last thing that pisses me off is people still trying to justify their position because they don't want to feel guilty about breaking the rules man you really just need to own it if you're feeling guilty sucks to be you people already know that they're going to be breaking the rules one thing i hear get thrown around a lot is what about people with disabilities that's not the kind of argument that people seem to think it is you're going to try to frame this in the way of oh you think it's fine that something is hard enough that most able-bodied people won't be able to clear it guess you hate disabled people it is impossible to be against that argument unless you have no humanity left in you but just think about this for a second where do you draw the line of what needs to be accessible are you going to get pissed at a mountain trail for being too steep for most people how about the american ninja warrior obstacle course are we getting upset at stuff that's designed as a crazy challenge i will always remember what one of my professors said i wish we could give everyone a's but if we just handed the degree to anyone then it wouldn't mean anything even among all the able-bodied players in the game most people don't clear an ultimate myself included that's part of the allure of clearing something like that beyond the tangible rewards that you get in game there's going to be a bar that is set to make it exclusive i think it's crazy that people are complaining about accessibility for content that's literally inaccessible by design that is the point not everyone can climb every mountain but before you get ahead of yourself though i think accessibility is a good thing in fact final fantasy 14 is one of the most accessible games i've ever played you can clear basically all the normal content by doing absolutely nothing it's great you can recommend this game to just about anybody because it's one of the game's greatest strengths you don't have to put a ton of time into it to be able to enjoy the plot and you don't have to be super good at the game to just have fun with friends that's awesome you can run around and rp while rubbing your keyboard on the side of your desk to your heart's content simplifying the gameplay like they have done for shadow bringers is part of why the game has grown as much as people want to pretend like it isn't a factor in how final fantasy 14 has become more popular even without the wow exodus reducing the skill floor allows more people to play the game even the most recent change being made to the new icon for sage which only affects a small number of players is honestly a good thing to do the content intended to be played by literally everyone should be accessible they should try to reduce effects that can cause seizures they should try to make things easier for people who are color blind what's nice is that when the dev sees something like a bunch of players using a tool for a certain mechanic their response is usually do we think that this is a feature that the game should already have or did we design this mechanic harder than we intended maybe in the future something as simple as an accessibility feature that just reads the cast bar of the boss could be within the realm of what they deem acceptable i am not going to deny that add-ons can help bring about positive changes but you cannot possibly complain that content that is marketed towards dedicated players and is advertised as being difficult to complete is not accessible to everyone it sucks when there is something that you want to do and something holds you back that is out of your control i am not saying it's a good thing but it's reality yes i think the developers can and should make an effort to try and prevent disabilities from being a hindrance but there's going to be an arbitrary cutoff somewhere i have a hard time seeing the tethers on lions but i consider that to be part of the challenge of the mechanic i haven't completed the current savage rate there and it's been out for like a century and a half but i'm not complaining that it's too hard that's just the limit of what i can currently do and don't be one of my viewers who comes to me and says that it's my teammates that are holding me back uh riddle me this of the people who rotate out to play with me all the time what's the only consistent factor huh if only there was some way to know i can't do it right now but that's okay too because i would never discourage people from trying and seeing how far you can get because the experience can still be worth your time even if you don't complete it i had fun running you cobb for like an hour and a half and we didn't make it very far at all at the end of the day though i know why some people use little cheaty things in this game it's because many times you don't get to run things at your own pace people not only learn things differently from one another but also have different speeds at which they learn some people can just read how a mechanic works and immediately know how to execute it while other people have to watch a video of it to understand or if you're me you have to physically do it in game before it makes any sense and something like a single player experience you can just try something over and over and over and over until you get it but in a multiplayer game you have at least seven other people relying on you to perform nobody wants to be the person that holds back everyone else from progressing and so many people will get pressured into using something to make it easier for them even though nobody is directly saying that people need to use these add-ons to succeed they see it as a way out it's why the hardest part of hard content is finding people who can be patient not just with you but also with themselves at the end of the day to summarize my feelings if it gets people to run the content where you need other people to populate it and people feel like they need these tools in order to function just do it how else are you supposed to get a farm party going playing on eight computers by yourself but you can also probably understand why people who clear without add-ons also known as playstation players might get a little frustrated to know that they had to put more work in to get the same results and the same rewards i'm not going to give you a definitive answer on what's right and what's wrong i'm not your parents i'm not going to tell you to sit up straight and to stop cursing at the dinner table i've seen some insanely heated discussions on the issue of add-ons from both sides and honestly it's just pointless everyone has their own line for what they think is acceptable their own idea of what's a legitimate challenge their own limits if someone's already using an add-on they've probably already drawn the line somewhere else from you but let me be clear no one is entitled to a clear of any hard content it's why having someone play the content for you is considered wrong by just about anyone and it's okay to not clear something that doesn't mean that it wasn't worth trying it just represents the limits of what you can do right now and i don't think it's a terrible thing to try to put some more accessibility features in the game because that's how things improve however if it came down to it for me i would rather not clear something than download a tool to make it easier now let's get out there and just use x plugin that makes y mechanic a joke why doesn't everybody clear ultimate why don't you just cheat

Channel: Misshapen Chair

Views: 94,690

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Id: qvpsdO8dmns

Length: 14min 56sec (896 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 16 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/droppedmyravioli]

babe wake up, new mishappen chair video just dropped

[u/GrieverXIII130]

Pretty interesting video. Hoping he watches this one on stream.

[u/Koxk]

He his the point on so many things.

I've said this for a couple of expansions now.. I'd like to see a world first race in WoW mythic raiding where they use 0 helping addons, like DBM, WA etc.

See how long it takes then

[u/Skorj]

Chair always brings nice thinks