Why is FFXIV considered to be so hard/hardcore?

I don't necessarily find the content to be to difficult but I dont want to play a game where it's practically my second job. I dont mind putting the effort in, I don't mind if the content is 10x harder than what we have right now. What I do have a problem with is "having" to rely on other people to be perfect to do an encounter.

It's not even necessarily that they are bad (some are and some aren't) it's that having 8 people in the group means each dps check makes it 8 times more likely something could go wrong from a finger slip to my nephew grabbing my power cord and yanking on it. Each mechanic x 8 people x several unforgiving mechanics in one fight = headaches after a while.

And I'm not even getting paid to put up with them. I'm not an elitist, I don't blame them for stuff going wrong because thats life, no one is perfect and **** happens but damn.. just... ya know.. damn.

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Originally Posted by myahele

Its a shame that these new dungeons are so easy due to the facts that
A. Ilv 90 gear is easier to get
B. Many people are slowly upgrading to soldiery gear sets.

There's PLENTY of dungeons that fresh 50s can go to. I just wish there is an ilv 90 +dungeon thats not coil.

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Agree. The latest HM dungeons are completely and utterly pointless. ilv80 dungeon for which playerbase? the one that has been i90-100 for ages now? I just don't get the point of these 3 new dungeons. A waste of development.

I think it is because if you dont have an FC that is good about getting everyone through things, or a nice core group of friends willing to help, you are left with Party finder. All you see on party finder most of the time is "MUST BEE LEET NO NOOBS WILL KICK IF YOU MAKE A MISTAKE".

"My First MMO" issues + people that don't research fights + Ease of getting groups with those people= constant wipes.
Not difficult, just a flaw in how the community groups.

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Originally Posted by Barimu

Try playing WoW without any addons, you cheesed your way through the game just like everyone who used addons to help them. The amount of people that used DBM/Healer assisted addons was ridiculous. You made the game easy and addons ruined that game.

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I never used healing addons in WoW, it was surprising how many did. Was in a raid team that couldnt raid new content as soon as it dropped until healbot was updated because the other healers couldnt heal without it. I didnt use DBM either. Though I have been called a "baddie" by people who found out I didnt. Though I was fairly good at memorization and having a decent system of prioritizing targets (triage healing) while healing that it took someone telling them I didnt have either because they couldnt tell by watching me.

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Originally Posted by Eclipsed

the whole "one person dies, it's over" is a fallacy.

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Depends on the situation, really.

If someone falls off of Titan before heart phase, good luck. Heck, around release you were pretty much screwed if the healers didn't get rid of the determination down debuff, much less if someone had weakness.

I agree that one person dying isn't always a wipe, but at the same time, some deaths really are that catastrophic, and there's not a lot you can do about it. . .

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Originally Posted by Viridiana

Depends on the situation, really.

If someone falls off of Titan before heart phase, good luck. Heck, around release you were pretty much screwed if the healers didn't get rid of the determination down debuff, much less if someone had weakness.

I agree that one person dying isn't always a wipe, but at the same time, some deaths really are that catastrophic, and there's not a lot you can do about it. . .

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Mmmm like a tank botching up a swap on ramuh ex... And the other tanks debuff just dropped. ;)

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Originally Posted by Viridiana

Depends on the situation, really.

If someone falls off of Titan before heart phase, good luck. Heck, around release you were pretty much screwed if the healers didn't get rid of the determination down debuff, much less if someone had weakness.

I agree that one person dying isn't always a wipe, but at the same time, some deaths really are that catastrophic, and there's not a lot you can do about it. . .

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What surprises me is even before 2.3 when I would run that fight how few healers actually removed the buff as soon as the Gaol was broken, if at all. A critical mechanic that ensured the person who came out would live through the next tumult or plume, was being completely ignored. There are debuffs and mechanics I noticed in other end game dungeons i've never seen healers remove (hell even putting protect back up on a player who has been rez'd doesn't happen). This kind of situational awareness I think makes some of these fights harder than they are. But i know lots of people who FFXIV is their very first MMO ever and so I can sympathize with those who find so many problems with these fights (i for one have yet to beat Titan Ex or T5, but admittedly this is one of the first MMOs i'm raided endgame seriously).

I really don't understand what all the no recovery situation on all mechanics stuff is about. You can recover pretty much anything if your group is good. It seems a lot of you just give up immediately at the first sign of trouble.

In the end the game isn't necessarily the hardest or most hardcore game I would say, but has some of the coolest and enjoyable fights with lots to do (usually) and lots to pay attention to. Which is a good thing in my opinion.

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Originally Posted by Edli

Look at the freaking ranged DPS, they all stay in one place for ages. That's typical MMO experience for me.

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Props for watching his video, but I'm quite sure you haven't actually done that boss. Most everything in that fight can make you un-rezable and the things that don't can wipe the entire raid simultaneously. Yet, I'd easily pug that on my alt healer and kill it pretty much anytime I tried. We'd take just about any random person and still usually kill it.... You think the community in this game is unforgiving if you mess up? Imagine trying to explain to 19 people, all random pugs, why you didn't do your interrupt on time and wiped the raid 15minutes into a 20 minute encounter!

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

So you guys have cleared 2nd coil savage mode? Grats!

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Actually, has anyone cleared savage 2nd coil? Gee maybe if it dropped something nice, more people would try. I don't think there is any other mmo that would throw *no drops at all* behind their most difficult encounter. Sure, you might say "Do it for the glory!" but to me that just sounds like a e-peen measuring contest. What glory is there to be had in this game? Say I did manage to clear it, I'd get "shamed' for being a no-lifer. You honestly can't say that people don't get mocked for being "too good" in this game. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Except the "don't", the people who don't even try, they can just complain the game is too hardcore. And that answers your question OP. This game isn't hardcore at all, we all just say it is because if we actually clear it we get "shamed".

See this is what I don't get. The OP states "Why is FFXIV so hard/hardcore?" and they go and list 1 piece of content in the entire game. That one piece of content that is, by design, suppose to be the hardest content in the game for the "hardcore" audience.

FFXIV is not hard/hardcore, Coil is hard/hardcore though and it's that way on purpose.

The majority of FFXIV is neither hard nor hardcore. This is fine though, as long as it's fun. Some people have fun wiping for months to figure out fight mechanics in order to beat "the hardest content". I'm not one of those people personally, but I can see the attraction. It's the "Look, I'm so LEET" club. And there's nothing wrong with that, they get the ability to be slightly better than the rest of us by clearing the most difficult. Doesn't bother me really. I know I'm just as capable if not more so than they are personally, I just don't like wasting months dying in order to learn something new for a very slight improvement in gear; not to mention the whole static party thing. That's okay, I'll let those "hardcore raiders" feel special.

I mean, their gear certainly looks cool at least. There's always that. Go you guys.
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Edit: Wait, what the heck? Dude edit his OP? Now it seems like it says something else like what I just wrote, more or less.

Anyway, I don't get it either. Nothing in this game is overly hard except coil which requires good teamwork and knowledge of how the fights work, as well as high end gear just to be able to tackle them.

Primal fights are designed in stages and once you know the stages it's pretty much rinse and repeat. The only thing that makes these hard is doing them with people who lack the skill (be it personal skill or hardware skill) messing thing's up for people who might otherwise be able to beat the boss is there were 7 more players just like them. Case in point: I've done Garuda HM via duty roulette with group in i90+ that can work well and know the boss mechanics to down her before she's even able to summon a second set of sisters and then I've had groups with i90+ people that for some reason dragged the fight out, dying constantly due to positioning, not dodging or not moving at the right time (to the point I felt like I was warped back in time to when I was in Darklight gear trying to get my relic for the first time). The latter had people who just apparently had no idea how the fight worked, as well as one individual who didn't care because "This is just Garuda HM, it's so easy I don't need to dodge s__t. This ain't EX." I think I was more annoyed with that individual than the geared newbies.

So basically, dumb people make content harder than it needs to be.

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Originally Posted by Eclipsed

Knocked off at Titan? If you can't move a quarter of an inch in the insanely long cast time that landslide gives you then well... I have seen pugs deal with far worse dodges a million times. What is it about this game that suddenly they can't? Other MMO's would have adds, fire walls, bombs, etc at the same time as landslide and the MMO community beat those fights just fine!

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Well it could be lag. Other MMO's typically have separate servers for east/west coast USA, or you know, Europe.

don't get me wrong. I never said I thought FFXIV was hard or hardcore, I don't at all. This is one of the easiest MMO's ever created imo. But there are constant threads on the forums and it is near impossible to even find people to try fights let alone commit to a static/fc and I wonder why this game is unique when this is a phenomenon that I have not seen to this extent. Any other MMO it is beyond easy to build a raid team of at least somewhat competent people (even low pop MMO's like AoC!).

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Originally Posted by Barimu

What addons do you love and what addons are you excited for to become a regular use?

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Flight HUD, Deadly Boss Mod, NPC scan with overlay, Carbonite, Bartender, AtlasLoot, Postal, Livestock, Archy.... I'm having trouble remembering others. I use a ton, I'm a bit of an addon whore.

As for this game... I'd love to have more customization options with the HUD. A better map system, one that would allow notes to be put on the map. Something like DBM for the boss fights. Something like NPC Scan to alert you when rarespawns are detected nearby. I know there's an addon like that in use, but right now it's unfair because it gives PC players an advantage over console players who (as far as I know) have no way to use it. An addon utility from SE that would work on both PC and Playstation would even things out.

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Originally Posted by Eclipsed

don't get me wrong. I never said I thought FFXIV was hard or hardcore, I don't at all. This is one of the easiest MMO's ever created imo. But there are constant threads on the forums and it is near impossible to even find people to try fights let alone commit to a static/fc and I wonder why this game is unique when this is a phenomenon that I have not seen to this extent. Any other MMO it is beyond easy to build a raid team of at least somewhat competent people (even low pop MMO's like AoC!).

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Hi, have you heard about hunts?

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Originally Posted by FritoBandito

Flight HUD, Deadly Boss Mod, NPC scan with overlay, Carbonite, Bartender, AtlasLoot, Postal, Livestock, Archy.... I'm having trouble remembering others. I use a ton, I'm a bit of an addon whore.

As for this game... I'd love to have more customization options with the HUD. A better map system, one that would allow notes to be put on the map. Something like DBM for the boss fights. Something like NPC Scan to alert you when rarespawns are detected nearby. I know there's an addon like that in use, but right now it's unfair because it gives PC players an advantage over console players who (as far as I know) have no way to use it. An addon utility from SE that would work on both PC and Playstation would even things out.

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The only addon I agree with really is to change your HUD how you want it DBM you should not need that defeats the purpose and the game pretty much plays for you, npc scan is cheesy addons ruin mmos.

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Originally Posted by Eclipsed

don't get me wrong. I never said I thought FFXIV was hard or hardcore, I don't at all. This is one of the easiest MMO's ever created imo. But there are constant threads on the forums and it is near impossible to even find people to try fights let alone commit to a static/fc and I wonder why this game is unique when this is a phenomenon that I have not seen to this extent. Any other MMO it is beyond easy to build a raid team of at least somewhat competent people (even low pop MMO's like AoC!).

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The only problem is that raid size is so small, when compared to endgame raids in pretty much every other MMORPG out there. You get in a group with people you like, but it's only 7 other people. And then you -have- to stay with them so that everybody is on the same page and can progress together. There's no room for swapping other people out (unless they're just bad). I feel like larger raids like CT (if you could actually form an alliance and then enter) are the more ideal style for real raid content. The problem with CT is that you can only put together 1 party before you enter. The other two are still comprised of completely random people who you are not likely to know at all and aren't likely even from your server. Which more or less puts us right in the same problem for Coil raiding. It's such a small group.

I'd like to be able to put together a real full alliance and then do CT like raids. Hell just imagine if we could form alliances before going into content, 24 people in an FC together (or just friends on the same server) could raid together. Now imagine that raid is like coil in difficulty. Whaaaat? Well, okay maybe not quite -that- difficult (though what's really wrong with that?), but more so than the standard level of CT. That sounds like fun, and a real endgame raid to me and not just a high level difficult dungeon that one party fights through.

Edit, Added: Also I am not a fan of the whole 'static party' idea. I hated it in XI, and I really don't like it here either. I mean, I don't mind if a few people that I know are reoccurring. It's natural to want to party with people you know and like, but when you know a lot of different people you can't play with them all because they are forced to be in their own small static party. You can't do the same content with them because of the lock out timer, so if they go with you and not their static group then they and yourself put your own statics at a disadvantage because they now can't rely on you and ...then all sorts of other drama can open up and make the whole thing generally a very unpleasant experience.

I'd like to just be able to go with someone when I want to go do the content, not be confined by specific times and specific days. I don't like playing my game like it's a job where I HAVE to be on at a certain time on certain days. That doesn't seem fun to have to be on a schedule for a game you are suppose to be having fun in.

If one person messes up one thing the mechanics can be very unforgiving.

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Originally Posted by Eclipsed

So many people consider Coil to be impossible to get a group for and incredibly difficult. People struggle on extreme primals for months... Etc.. Etc..

Personally I have never understood it, nor have I seen an MMO community with this kind of fear of the content.

I have played virtually ever major MMO

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i cant speak for everyone but the reason i struggle the most is getting assimilated into a MMO environment.
if this didnt have a 'Final Fantasy' on it, i wouldnt be here. and im guessing there are quite a few of us like this.

we can play solo games like a champ. we can beat the bosses AI. we can recover this or that.
but through it all, WE controlled 3-5 characters. dammit just got hit, ok have character B do this while character C does that.
with this game you have 3-7 independent minds joining you into one task and the only control you have is over yourself.
for some of us, that is the most difficult part of this game. not the mechanics.

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Originally Posted by Barimu

The only addon I agree with really is to change your HUD how you want it DBM you should not need that defeats the purpose and the game pretty much plays for you, npc scan is cheesy addons ruin mmos.

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You are aware that those bright telegraph overlays and icons serve the same purpose as DBM, right?

It isn't.
/10char

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Originally Posted by Canopia

snip

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You know the funny thing about healing? It's easier for another healer to take up your slack without you being called out for it, unless you are on the bleeding edge of progression and just by the way you describe your experience I can tell you were never on the bleeding edge of progression. So, I'm not surprised that no one ever said anything to you.

Complaining about someone who prefers to use a proper set of raid frames as opposed to the over-designed garbage the stock UI gives is a little silly. The best thing about healbot and Vuhdo was the customization features so that you could use click\modified clicks instead of awkward mouseovers to perform healing tasks. Much, much more efficient and precise.

Memorizing a fight isn't difficult, finding 7 others who have is the challenge. I would much rather see more randomized read and react type of mechanics then this telegraphed stuff. I like the last boss of stone vigil hm, if only they were more difficult and tuned to challenge players at a much higher ilvl. I can certainly see why people would say to themselves "f&#! watching a video, that is lame"

Not to mention 99% of videos out there are either

a. obnoxious
b. wrong for the strategy you are doing
c. not from the PoV of the role you are playing
d. not narrated very well
e. just someone's overtuned PC with explosions all over the place of everyone's effects to make you have an epileptic fit

I will read over a guide if someone has written it, but a video? No thanks.

I think it also has to deal with many taking the game more seriously than it actually is. In other words, people give off the air that's a hardcore player's game, but in reality it's what you make out of it. That's one reason why I like this game: I can be casual or hardcore any time I want.

OP has a good point, even if he doesn't have a large perspective on the situation. Alot of players do think this game is harder than it is. I've been seeing this in the Roulette's lately. Playing a healer is iffy sometimes. Not because its hard to keep peeps alive. But its because of something simple as enmity. We've all heard horror stories about DPS ripping off the tanks by AOEs, attacking wrong targets.. whatever. But my issue has been more serious. I'm getting threat from healing. And I'm not talking about an AOE heal going off at the beginning of a fight, or a Regen ticking from the last pull. I'm talking about a first round Cure or Physick. Why is something so simple, so hard for people to do?

Yeah, its easy to call them bad tanks. But why are they bad tanks? Why are there so many of them? Do they not care? Do they not know what they are doing? Do they have a lack of confidence in their own ability? This isn't restricted to just tanks. There's plenty of healers and dps that display this as well. It just feels like with these 'bad' players that there is a lack of motivation for them to do their best. A lack of motivation that would normally drive an ignorant player to learn, an apathetic one to care, and a wary player to dive in and do their best.

When I said the OP has a lack of perspective, I mean in the general MMO community. Its not just limited to FFXIV. Everquest was a really big offender of it. The fight mechanics were simple and still are. Currently one of its end game level 100 raid bosses simply does an attack that draws 5 people in and AOEs them if they don't run out in time. But yet there are many players afraid of doing such content.

ITT: A handful of players believing that everyone should have the same skill level as them and nobody should struggle with anything ever...

I can only assume you apply this logic to everything in life right? So you are all good enough to be in the NFL, MLB, and NBA all at once? smh

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Originally Posted by Kaethra

OP has a good point, even if he doesn't have a large perspective on the situation. Alot of players do think this game is harder than it is. I've been seeing this in the Roulette's lately. Playing a healer is iffy sometimes. Not because its hard to keep peeps alive. But its because of something simple as enmity. We've all heard horror stories about DPS ripping off the tanks by AOEs, attacking wrong targets.. whatever. But my issue has been more serious. I'm getting threat from healing. And I'm not talking about an AOE heal going off at the beginning of a fight, or a Regen ticking from the last pull. I'm talking about a first round Cure or Physick. Why is something so simple, so hard for people to do?

Yeah, its easy to call them bad tanks. But why are they bad tanks? Why are there so many of them? Do they not care? Do they not know what they are doing? Do they have a lack of confidence in their own ability? This isn't restricted to just tanks. There's plenty of healers and dps that display this as well. It just feels like with these 'bad' players that there is a lack of motivation for them to do their best. A lack of motivation that would normally drive an ignorant player to learn, an apathetic one to care, and a wary player to dive in and do their best.

When I said the OP has a lack of perspective, I mean in the general MMO community. Its not just limited to FFXIV. Everquest was a really big offender of it. The fight mechanics were simple and still are. Currently one of its end game level 100 raid bosses simply does an attack that draws 5 people in and AOEs them if they don't run out in time. But yet there are many players afraid of doing such content.

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Oh, I played EQ. even won multiple world firsts raiding there back in the day. I wouldn't have said EQ was hard either. The main difficulty was organizing that many people!

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Originally Posted by L-D-Omlette

ITT: A handful of players believing that everyone should have the same skill level as them and nobody should struggle with anything ever...

I can only assume you apply this logic to everything in life right? So you are all good enough to be in the NFL, MLB, and NBA all at once? smh

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Totally missed the point. Not trying to say I am better than anyone, in fact I am trying to say that many players are actually better than they think they are! They just need to get over their fear and try, nothing in this game is new and we have all beaten far worse before in other games.

Kaethra said it best above in the second paragraph.

People treating this as their second job yes, hard/hardcore hahahahahahahah /slap knee good one. Hard would be were even the hardcore gamer wouldn't be able to defeat the first boss in the first dungeon it would be desinged to be brutal with the mind set of experienced mmo players. It was designed around though with the opposite in mind with easy access and moderate challege so all the so called new to mmo's players out their by the millions wouldn't feel like a loser when they played just my thoughts.

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Originally Posted by joshsecret

we can play solo games like a champ. we can beat the bosses AI. we can recover this or that.
but through it all, WE controlled 3-5 characters. dammit just got hit, ok have character B do this while character C does that.
with this game you have 3-7 independent minds joining you into one task and the only control you have is over yourself.
for some of us, that is the most difficult part of this game. not the mechanics.

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You havnt played crystal cronicles multiplayer or any other multiplayer FF game?
Because what you say makes no sence to me, in FFXIV there is no time to recover, if timing is off you will wipe!
It is the mecanics and Chrono Trigger, Grandia2, Star Ocean or any other games would be much more fun in multiplayer than current FFXIV...

You know, that is a hard question to answer. From my perspective, it might be a negative thing. The end game has proven that mixing new and old players in hard content is a serious issue that creates a sort of negative feedback loop where one group becomes increasingly insensitive to the other while the other becomes afraid to even attempt content. People want a supportive environment to get better in while also not being held back by a conveyor belt of new players who are behind the curve.

I really liked suggestions on these forums for a practice mode and added my own two cents to that by bringing up the idea of Maat from FFXI being brought into FFXIV as a story driven tutorial for the harder bosses in game. It would inject some light hearted humor into the situation and also help by giving new players a place where being new is always guaranteed to be okay.

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Originally Posted by Yukiko

You havnt played crystal cronicles multiplayer or any other multiplayer FF game?
Because what you say makes no sence to me, in FFXIV there is no time to recover, if timing is off you will wipe!
It is the mecanics and Chrono Trigger, Grandia2, Star Ocean or any other games would be much more fun in multiplayer than current FFXIV...

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Complains timing is off you wipe yet brings Star Ocean where for example, if you don't cancel Freya's Ether Strike in 4D it's an insta wipe :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Dwill

Complains timing is off you wipe yet brings Star Ocean where for example, if you don't cancel Freya's Ether Strike in 4D it's an insta wipe :rolleyes:

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Well... Star Ocean... the problem here is we have many versions :)

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Originally Posted by Cherie

Actually, has anyone cleared savage 2nd coil? Gee maybe if it dropped something nice, more people would try. I don't think there is any other mmo that would throw *no drops at all* behind their most difficult encounter.

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*sigh* why do people keep bringing that up? Savage coil was put in as a test, there was no real development time spent on it, was put in as a test to see if it is worth continuing to add that kind of content, if it had failed it would have been a waste of time designing and adding new gear for it. They stated that if it was succesful they would look to add new gear sets to savage versions in the future.

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Originally Posted by Ecks007

Some people have fun wiping for months to figure out fight mechanics in order to beat "the hardest content". I'm not one of those people personally, but I can see the attraction. It's the "Look, I'm so LEET" club.

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Not everyone who raids cares about their ego, so nice generalization there. I like to raid to beat content with friends. I dont care about posing like an AFK attention deficit turnip in a public place posing with said gear. Neither do I think that im better than anyone else just because of playing a game.

For me the drops are just to help us get through said content.

Anyways back on topic :D

One thing I've noticed in many years of playing MMOs to various levels (raid member, guild leader, world firsts etc) that many players stuck at content have an ego problem, they find it impossible to admit to their own mistakes, even to themselves. But find it easier to blame others thus the potential for self improvement is lost. You can't improve until you self admit that you need to improve, which doesn't just apply to games but to everything.

The only diffyculty really is what kind of party you happen to fall into.
If you could trigger all of the mechanics yourself this would be a cakewalk.

Problem with Coil is it's purely single tiered content, tuned at one specific difficulty which by default is 'hard'. (Ignoring Savage Mode)

WoW's raids are three tiered in content with Raid Finder difficulty, normal difficulty and heroic difficulty.

In my opinion, the difficulty of the content can be organised like this

Least Difficult
Raid Finder WoW,
Normal Mode WoW,
Coil,
Heroic WoW,
Savage Coil.
Most Difficult

Hence why FFXIV is hard by nature, there's no 'easy' setting.

An open question to all the hardcore - or whatever you want to be called - players out there who have turns of Coil 2 on farm already and are so dead set against easing turn 5 in any way; why would it mater to you in the slightest if the difficulty of turn 5 was eased considerably to allow more players to at least see the story elements of it? Several people have suggested a easy mode that gives no reward but eases the difficulty a lot. Why would having a mode like that impact you in any way? Why are you so against it?

To answer the OP, the reason it's so hardcore is that to participate in the raid content you have to be in a static group and learn to team jump rope, and face the wrath of moron when you don't achieve perfection ever single run. The end-game in FFXIV is a total turn off for many players who simply do not want or need that crap.

It's because of the game's lack of challenging content. There is challenging content, but very little of it. Most stuff in this game is a cakewalk that requires less than minimum effort to clear. The game coddles poor players too much, and more often than not, if you try to give someone that's doing the bare minimum advice, they don't care and the group beats the fight anyway, which just goes to reinforce that kind of behavior. This is the drawback in having an MMO that tries to appeal to everyone. You get many players that differ in the way that they play, and stick them in the same dungeon.

Because of this, you get DPS who don't use cooldowns as well as have bad rotations, full-spam on healers, healers who just stand there, and tanks who either cannot keep agro, cannot cycle between their 8+ defensive cooldowns (which breeds full-on spam healers because healing a MRD who doesn't mitigate makes you do this, and when you as a new tank, see a healer full spamming you, why bother with defensive cooldowns? It's a vicious circle.), or both. Doing these things is not min-maxing, it is using your class skills that the game gives you, and you should do so. But because the majority of content let's you get by without doing any of this, players who either don't know any better or are just plain lazy keep doing what they're doing. This is also a result of too many fights with negligible mechanics that players ignore, and a small handful with mechanics that will kill you if you don't handle them properly (as they should).

On the other hand, you also have players that are playing their classes well, and have huge egos because they're performing...as they should perform. So you get self-proclaimed hardcore players who don't want to play with new people, a handful of new people that are willing to take advise and improve, a ton that do not and throw the word "elitism" around like hotcakes, as well as good players who like to help, but have become jaded with the "don't tell me how to play my class" responses as well as "I've never even seen a 5 minute video, but I expect you to tell me about the fight and wipe tons of times" who have experienced this scenario too many times and groan when they have to do it again, and are also just tired of seeing new people unwilling to listen, as well as people that call themselves "pro" blaming others. It's all a big headache, really.

The only hardcore component that applies to 2nd Coil is the artificial restrictions SE put on it through the turn/weekly lockout system.
One week you might 1-shot T6, 7 or 8 and the next week spend 4 or 5 hours stuck on one turn because 2 or more members of your static couldn't make it to the raid.

2nd Coil in and of itself isn't actually hard, what's hardcore is getting a competent (hopefully pleasant to deal with) group together every week (preferably the same 8 people so you can allocate loot, previously Sands and Oil before they became household items). Having to PUG for anything in FFXIV is the worst, I'm sick of dealing with people who pay more attention to their parsing program than what's actually happening on the screen. I'm also sick of having to party with people who rage and point the finger when things go wrong. Give me 2nd Coil, unrestricted, in solo queue Duty Finder, every day of the week so I can click J and be happy. I'm more than competent with Turn 6-8 but I just refuse to bother revolving my life around a dysfunctional static in the middle of the night, or joining a PUG group where my DPS and skill rotations get critiqued by a bunch of elitists. I'd rather join a practice group and help players who actually appreciate it.