Please scale the difficulty of Royal Menagerie

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Originally Posted by bswpayton

Bismark, ravana, garuda, ifrit , Id actually say that royal is harder than all of these and lakimismi extreme just saying

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When they were relevant? No way.

Bismark required a modicum of coordination, and upon its release, the DPS checks were mildly difficult.

Ravana actually has mechanics that are somewhat complicated (i.e. prey, swords and following divebombs).

Garuda also required coordination with regard to adds, dodging slipstreams, and actually being cognizant of the spiny plume.

I am of the opinion that Ifrit was always one of the easiest extreme primals, but I did the fight on DPS when it was current content, so I didn't really have to worry about searing wind.

The big difference between the extremes and RM, in my opinion, is how ridiculously forgiving RM is. You can have two to three people dead at all times and still clear the fight with little difficulty. As far as I know, there are no DPS checks, the healing is trivially easy, and none of the mechanics are new. Not to mention, failing any given mechanic doesn't usually result in death.

Sure, RM is harder than the absolute faceroll nonsense that unsynced primals are nowadays...but that isn't a good metric.

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Originally Posted by Chiami

Many people never do Ex Primals. They have no interest in that, they don't have the time to practice their FFXIV job endlessly, they have, you know, lives.

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If you have time to hit 70, you have time to clear menagerie. It seems like people spend more time being upset about whether the effort they're expected to put in exceeds the amount they think they should have to put in, instead of whether or not they can. It's definitely a hard fight compared to the rest of the MSQ, but it's going to feel a lot harder if you keep telling yourself it's unjustified. Sometimes things are hard and sometimes that's fine.

The trial is fine the way it is. Leave it alone SE. Some fights should be rewarding when completed and should require some effort.

I would like to start out by saying that people manage to clear midcore (Ex Primals) and hardcore content (Savage) all the time. People also know their jobs well, all while having "lives". The Royal Menagerie is the final boss fight of the MSQ, so it's meant to be a bit of a challenge. That challenge consists of mechanics most people should have seen and know how to handle after 70 levels. If they don't, people will often explain in great detail what to do, because most people are decent. Objectively, it could be nerfed eventually, but I personally hope it isn't. It's a great test to see how much people know, or don't know.

I already cleared it on the week it were released, but i agree on nerfing it too! we have a lot of casuals and they should be allowed to see the rest of story too. They're part of the paying customers and the game needs all of them to keep playing.
If not nerf at least add that echo thing in there, so if you want to clear without nerf do a one shot, if you have trouble clearing it you go stacking echo until you're able to do the clear.
For the people that is like "omg they'll ruin my fun", don't worry the ex version is coming soon on 4.1 so you'll be able to show how awesome you are.

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Originally Posted by Chiami

Lets face facts: Royal Menagerie, in terms of difficulty, easily is on the level of some Ex Primals.

The thing though is: Many people never do Ex Primals. They have no interest in that, they don't have the time to practice their FFXIV job endlessly, they have, you know, lives.

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I've never beaten an EX Primal on my first attempt so I'd immediately call BS on it being as difficult as some EX Primals.

And nice needless jab at calling players no lifers.

If you think Royal Menagerie is on par with extreme primals, you haven't done very many extreme primals.

And as stated above: huge LOL saying people who can beat extreme primals don't have lives. I've cleared every fight in the game only raiding 3 hours a day 2 days a week, it's not hard.

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Originally Posted by bswpayton

Again if we want to talk about ilvl Id say the royal menagerie is harder than one of our current ex primals lakismi extreme whats the excuse there

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No, it is not.

Royal menagerie may be intensive in terms of the mechanics it offers, but that's where the difficulty stops. The fight itself only requires knowing how to position yourself and actively participate in the fight without waiting for the rest of the group to take you by the hand as if it were a primary school class. Also, add that anyone who has completed previous fights of any primal in hard mode can see and deduce what is going to happen in combat. Even if it takes you by surprise the first time, you only need to remember his moves and anticipate them. The only thing that requires is to have attention to the surroundings and to know to move in the same area of combat.

It's hard? It has to be, it's the end of an expansion, just as Nidhogg needed to have head and cooperation at the time when everyone had the ILevel just to do it.

@Legewiel: Echo will most likely be added anyway come next patch, it's what happens everytime.

What I dont want to see happen is mechanic/boss nerfs such as
HP reduction
Mechanic related damage reduction
Boss damage reduction

Things which happened to SoF basically. Since we are already inevitably nerfing it by ilvl/echo, it would be nice to not completely trivialize the entire fight by making boss hit light enough to not be felt.

I found the Royal Menagerie difficult when I first did it. Even after becoming far more comfortable with it and having much better gear now, it's still not something I look forward to seeing pop up in my trial roulette, if only because people doing it for the first time can make it more of a slog than it has to be.

With that said, I hope it doesn't get nerfed or at least not nerfed too much beyond just the echo buff.

The difficulty is certainly out of step from the rest of the story content, but not so much that its on par with doing an ex primal IMO. That half-step up in difficult makes for an exciting conclusion to the main SB story up to that point. It if became too easy it wouldn't quite feel as epic. And this is coming from a player who avoids savage/ex content most of the time because I don't want to deal with the learning and the difficulty.

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Originally Posted by Greedalox

And nice needless jab at calling players no lifers.

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I somehow missed OP saying that...

At the risk of sounding like somewhat of a braggy-boots, I one-shot both Susano and Lakshmi. This translates into very little time spent trying to get clears on those extreme primals.

OMG TOTAL NO-LIFER, REEE.

I just want to say that it's clearable with 2 decent tanks and a single healer. Long as you're killing the tail every time it pops you don't even need DPS. I know this because I've personally seen 3 or 4 of the DPS dead for almost the entire duration of the fight and still cleared.

There's no stacking damage buff/soft enrage.

As an aside, if they do nerf it, I won't shed too many tears. I had my fun with it.

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Originally Posted by hydralus

I just want to say that it's clearable with 2 decent tanks and a single healer. Long as you're killing the tail every time it pops you don't even need DPS. I know this because I've personally seen 3 or 4 of the DPS dead for almost the entire duration of the fight and still cleared.

There's no stacking damage buff/soft enrage.

As an aside, if they do nerf it, I won't shed too many tears. I had my fun with it.

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Actually, there IS a soft enrage for Shinryu. Eventually, enough squares will be destroyed by Shinryu's tail that a Tidal Wave is guaranteed to knock you off the edge (unless you have something like Tempered Will to avoid the push). I was with a group last night via Mentor Roulette; DPS just couldn't stay out of the bad so we were pretty much running the fight with just tanks and healers. Was a long grind, and eventually there was no safe place to stand for Tidal Wave. Eventually that Tidal Wave came - and we barely managed a win anyway, thanks to dots and the Paladin using Tempered Will. Everyone else was off the edge, though.

Still, to address the original poster, these kinds of situations aren't very common. Most of the time when I wind up in Shinryu, folks are more than skilled enough to cover for one or two who struggle. Even at its current difficulty, Shinryu is quite doable, even by casual players.

I have not seen a party disband/quit this since maybe the first week of July.

Also on a personal note I absolutely love this fight, like every single detail. I don't think some people apparently having issues is a reason to nerf it. You can clear it with some passable DPS and half of your tanks/healers being on the ball.

That is not an EX primal.

Note that OP has yet to reply to anyone's criticisms, must have realized their reasoning was flawed.
I also cleared this on my first go with having no idea what to do (no videos, didn't even know the fight existed). I wiped many times on EX primals even with video guides.
I don't have any experience with pre-SB primals (I started the game after SB), RM is definitely beatable within a few tries even with a pug group. I quite enjoyed the step up in challenge from the MSQ.
But again, still very doable.

As others have mentioned: Royal Menagerie is fine as-is; no adjustments are needed.

Also: Extreme Primals are not hard either. Sure, they got one-shot mechanics, but it doesn't take that long to pick up. The true difficulty is finding 7 other players who can pay attention. So some patience is required to get the right groups.

Oh and before you say anything, OP, I work three jobs and I can still down them in PUGs. So let's not say "it's too hard for people who have a life."

Come on man, we're level 70 now. Why would we want a level 50 challenge?

I get that it may be difficult for some, and that effectively being gated from endgame by it would be frustrating, but it's literally a mashup of old boss mechanics and things you'd dealt with all along on the way up to it. That begs the question whether people struggling with it were paying attention all along or not? If it suddenly threw all new, never before seen mechanics at players, that'd be one thing, but if someone is unable to handle the combination of all they've dealt with previously (which usually makes sense for a final challenge), the fault really lies with them.

Wrong on all Accounts

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Originally Posted by Chiami

Lets face facts: Royal Menagerie, in terms of difficulty, easily is on the level of some Ex Primals.

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Not even close to Ex in terms of difficulty.

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The thing though is: Many people never do Ex Primals. They have no interest in that, they don't have the time to practice their FFXIV job endlessly, they have, you know, lives.

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You don't have to do Ex to finish Royal Managerie, its a recap of mechanics that you already seen with little variations.

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Yeah, I can hear already all you really expert players say "but it's not hard, leave it as it is" and "but the finale of the MSQ should be hard", just as "but once you get better gear in a patch or two everyone can faceroll it" or even the atrocious "git gud".

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I'm no Expert player, but I finished it just fine and I finished this with only ilvl 290 the free ones you get from finishing the Job MSQ

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But no. There is a considerable part of the player base who MASSIVELY struggles with Menagerie, and that is even without disabilities or health issues or latency coming into play, that make some players UNABLE to ever beat something of that difficulty, period. And telling people to wait until they get better gear, which is difficult to get if you don't finish MSQ, also not okay.

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And you got this data where? Because almost all of the people I talked too finished it already, sure the learning curve was high, but persistence got them through it.

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People who play FFXIV only casually (the majority, and that.is.okay) also deserve to enjoy the MSQ instead of having this massive source of stress and frustration at the end of the story line.

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Casual player here, and I enjoyed it pretty much, and again "Majority"? where are you getting all this data?

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Don't get me wrong here, I managed Menagerie just fine, but the amount of wipes I see in there is ridiculous. And I know people who due to health issues are all but kept from finishing MSQ thanks to this. Not.Okay.

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Wiping is part of the game, if you and friend can't handle it, then maybe a more mellow game is the game for you.

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Therefore I think it would be good to tune down Royal Menagerie for MSQ, and keep the current difficulty as a "Hard Mode" option, maybe even to chose from "normal" and "hard mode" right away as you enter it the first time to finish your MSQ. That way those who want a challenge to finish the story of SB can have that, and all the players who would struggle with hard mode (or unable to finish it at all) can enjoy the end of the MSQ without stressing out or quitting out of sheer frustration.

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Nope, no and Hell to the NO, finishing the Royal Menagerie is the best part of the MSQ, it would cheapen the achievement if people are just breezing through it.

During the first few weeks of the expansion, it was a chore because not everyone could do mechanics, but now a days it's usually a walk in the park. Also I know from experience all you need is one decent tank and one decent healer to clear it, along with good dps, doesn't have to be perfect either.
https://youtu.be/4HWMY3fWiPQ

every time I went to Royal menagerie, we killed it around the 3rd or 4th try.

Now if you're saying people GIVE UP AFTER ONE TRY and then blame the content's level of difficulty or the "useless scrubs" they're running with, well... that's not on SE to fix. Sorry.

You can carry pretty hard on this trial now that people have pretty good gear, it doesn't need to be changed. It was originally pretty tough when everyone's dps was really low in comparison but as long as your healers don't both die at the same time you should be able to get a win

RM difficulty is just fine, no nerf pl0x. Shinryu is one of my favorite fights in the game. It's the final boss, you can't go full derp mode and kill the final boss. But it doesn't require high skill levels nowadays either.

And please stop insinuating that casuals are bad. Playing casually tells nothing about the players skill level. Bad players can't clear the fight. Bad players can't finish the story. But they can't do that in single player games either.

I wouldn't say it's on par with EX trials. Unfortunately, I think the biggest problem new players have is the community. I've gotten this a fair amount in trial roulette since SB and quite often there is a wipe and then a vote abandon after just the one wipe. Then if it doesn't go through, some might drop out. I try to help new people if they take me up when I offer tips, but the others in the group are too impatient. And if someone has gotten to 70 without knowing some of those older mechanics, it's not always on them, because that same impatience is present in those lower level trials as well.

I would have to agree with you, OP. I think the difficulty spike goes up too much on this fight in comparison to the rest of MSQ. I've campaigned since it dropped that it needed adjustments. People who are trained by EX trials and raids, like myself, to have these sort of snap reflexes don't have as much trouble. But those who aren't used to that environment I have seen struggle. And the unhelpful rush rush rush attitude of the community is not helping.

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Originally Posted by missybee

I somehow missed OP saying that...

At the risk of sounding like somewhat of a braggy-boots, I one-shot both Susano and Lakshmi. This translates into very little time spent trying to get clears on those extreme primals.

OMG TOTAL NO-LIFER, REEE.

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Comments like that irk me. Even if you do play the game for hours upon hours. What business is it of anyone else's how you spend your free time? It only becomes an issue if you're disregarding real life obligations.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

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See, I haven't really had this issue if I see it come up in roulette. Most groups are there to win, and usually do within a few attempts. I recall only 1 time where it straight up fell apart. It was after wipe 2 or 3 I think, and people just weren't getting it. At all. People started leaving, so I decided to join them to avoid the debuff. No words were really said aside from "gotta watch for this/that". Impatience? Yeah, definitely. But a lot of people have been around long enough to see when something's not gonna work out. If there's obvious progress being made, people usually stick around. If not, then they're gone. And sometimes it just doesn't work out, plain and simple. But as I said, I've only see this happen 1 time in RM. Same thing can happen in any content of the game, however. These issues aren't exclusive to one instance.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Snipperino

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Oh, samesies.

I would agree that, generally speaking, MMOs are more of a time investment than your standard single-player jaunt, but that doesn't mean that your life has to revolve around said MMO.

As always, I can only speak to my own experiences, but if I am raiding three nights a week and capping tomestones, that's a grand total of about 10 or 11 hours...and that's only because we're still in prog. Definitely plenty of time to focus on other aspects of my life.

And heck, if people don't want to focus on other aspects of their lives, that's up to them. If people want to make XIV a career or a huge part of their life, assuming they have the means to do so, what's the issue?

To say that you have to be a 'no-lifer' to beat extremes though is beyond silly. I think the extreme I personally struggled most with was Sephirot...and by "struggled most" I mean it was about two hours of learning and seeing mechanics before we cleared it. MAH LIFE, HALP.

The difficulty is just right. If you have a group of people who aren't on the ball then of course you're going to fail- it's the FINAL BOSS and he's very eager to have a no-holds-barred showdown featuring his demi-god powers and the WoL's pluck (and choice in friends). I've been more groups than have made it than not. Many of them were a struggle to clear with but it was a very satisfying thing to reach the end after wiping. The group needs to be willing to learn and willing to try again- a prerequisite for any kind of video game out there. If Shinryu's too tough for some people then they need to practice, plain and simple. That's how you get better and overcome challenges in games.

A large part of it is the healer burden of the fight is higher than other similar trials. Usually there's moderate down-time for healers to regen mana, do safe resses, and DPS a bit. Shinryu has us constantly on our toes watching for the next mechanic and saving people who screwed up. People who coasted through up until now got a rude awakening for sure. If both healers aren't ready to hit the ground running then it will be a bad time for everyone.

I, for one, am pleased that SE thinks players can handle rapid-fire mechanics in regular duties though. It's so much better than them assuming we're getting matched with the worst players out of the Tales from DF thread.

Thread doesn't matter, YoshiP was already on-record in an interview almost a month ago that they are okay with how it is, and having a final battle with some mechanic difficulty is expected. You'd think some people would remember simple things like breaking the chains from The Vault, but they get to level 70 and still can't do the mechanic.

As for 4.0 extreme primals which are kind of snoozer, Shinryu Extreme in 4.1 is supposed to return to something closer to Thordan Extreme was.

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Originally Posted by Legewiel

I already cleared it on the week it were released, but i agree on nerfing it too! we have a lot of casuals and they should be allowed to see the rest of story too. They're part of the paying customers and the game needs all of them to keep playing.
If not nerf at least add that echo thing in there, so if you want to clear without nerf do a one shot, if you have trouble clearing it you go stacking echo until you're able to do the clear.
For the people that is like "omg they'll ruin my fun", don't worry the ex version is coming soon on 4.1 so you'll be able to show how awesome you are.

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Being a casual player need not mean bad player by default. Casual used to mean someone that cannot devote the time to learn a complex fight. Shinryu is a far cry from a complicated fight. All echo does is increase healing, HP and damage dealt. In otherwords, it won't stop those that just flat out fail the few mechanics that can kill you. Dying to a mechanic forces you to learn it, rather than just barely squeeze by. Keep just barely passing and you'll have other people being forced to compensate for your screw-ups. Bad players are players who just want a clear without learning anything.

Personally, I'd say Royal Menagerie is fine. What people tend to mess up are the "rapid fire" mechanics (there are far worse offenders to these types of fights than Royal) and the fact that it's "random" which mechanics Shinryu will do. The only reason I could lend any kind of validation to those saying it's as hard as an extreme trial is because most, if not all, of the primals have no randomness in them- those are generally only found in savage raids. Unlike savage, however, there is a decent time between each mechanic in Shinryu. Unlike Lakshmi where DPS might get a mechanic and then not worry about anything for a minute or two before they need to pay attention again.

If anything, I'd say Royal Menagerie is on par with Hallowed Diablos found in Dun Scaith. Only done with 8 people instead of 24.

This reminds me of a tale I once heard as a kid about two gnomes. They both had to do work moving bags, and every time they were done they had to move a bigger bag. They both used magic to make it easier though. One gnome made himself stronger each time to lift the increasingly heavy bags. While the other just kept making the bags small.

Then the second gnome reached the royal menagerie and decided to complain about it on the forums.

I havent met a casual yet who had serious issues with this fight. 4-5 tries when it was new content, now thats it outdated its basically one-shot with trial roulette, maybe 2-shot if too many new people. Those mystery casuals that are unable to do ANYTHING dont exist.

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Originally Posted by Chiami

People who play FFXIV only casually (the majority, and that.is.okay) also deserve to enjoy the MSQ instead of having this massive source of stress and frustration at the end of the story line

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We REALLY need to get over this “everyone should be allowed to do everything with little effort” mentality that pervades this game and its community.

People don’t DESERVE anything from this game. Put in effort, push yourself, ask others for help learning what certain things do or how to handle things, succeed.

Have you ever worked really hard at something? Like really worked hard at something? The moment you succeed is a relief and feels a heck of a lot better than when someone hands you that clear.

In terms of RM, it’s not that complicated of a fight. All of the mechanics are recycled, there’s no enrage, so as long as one or two people are alive, you can feasibly clear it, most moves don’t hurt at all, and best of all, it’s not just a spectacle, but feels like you are fighting a final boss.

So no OP, I do not think that they should nerf this fight.

Also, I bet that 90% of the disabled players of this game would be pissed off at you for attempting to white knight them like they need your help. All of the disabled players I’ve played with work hard and don’t complain about their disability, and if they didn’t tell me they were disabled, I wouldn’t even know. And every single one of those players does not let their disability define them.

This all sounds like git gud, and I guess it is, but the real world doesn’t owe you anything, and neither does this game.

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

Actually, there IS a soft enrage for Shinryu. Eventually, enough squares will be destroyed by Shinryu's tail that a Tidal Wave is guaranteed to knock you off the edge (unless you have something like Tempered Will to avoid the push). I was with a group last night via Mentor Roulette; DPS just couldn't stay out of the bad so we were pretty much running the fight with just tanks and healers. Was a long grind, and eventually there was no safe place to stand for Tidal Wave. Eventually that Tidal Wave came - and we barely managed a win anyway, thanks to dots and the Paladin using Tempered Will. Everyone else was off the edge, though.

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Huh, I thought you could plan for where the tail lands to avoid things like this? The tail lands where the person with the green marker over their head stands. Granted I think Shinryu also takes a square away no matter what with his earth 100% aether skill, so that could count as a soft enrage, yeah.

I don't really see a problem with the fight. There are a lot of mechanics present, but most all of them are familiar and only a couple of them are actually dangerous. Most of them are only fatal if you do something dumb, like moving during diamond dust. Getting repeatedly smacked by the tail is bad too, but that's really a user error rather than the mechanic being too hard. The huge 95% room aoe knockback looks intimidating, but the actual knockback distance isn't very big at all, so at worst you should be taking a vulnerability stack from it.

The only mechanic I've seen consistently be a problem is Akh Morn not being handled properly, often with the healers not paying attention or the tanks not realising they're supposed to stack on one another to prevent the one tank getting steamrolled.

Edit - and besides, the more geared everyone else gets the easier it's going to be to drag others through the fight as the expansion goes on. It will be nerfed by proxy.

I would argue if people are struggling with Royal Menagerie, they need prob need to practice and get better. I feel like most everything at lvl 70 should be at least a little challenging.

If you can't beat Royal Menagerie, then what are you going to do when 24 man raid comes out? Ask for them to nerf that too? No thanks. Making everything super easy is causing the game to be really dull already.

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Originally Posted by AlexRaines

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If I could like this post more than once, I would. Agreed 100%

i think the only problem is that nothing is really that obvious on the first few tries. some probably do not even know that you can avoid Hellfire's massive damage by simply standing in the water puddle, and the the energy wing blasts are focuses solely on the two tanks of the group; if one of them is down, those energy blasts are going to tear anybody who is not a tank apart.

for example: diamond dust, or whatever, really got me on the first try. there is nothing that says "dont move!" besides your own team.

its a really fun boss if you know how to do it. just a little more chaotic and random.

If the vendor wasn't gated (awesome gate :(, I doubt this thread would even exist. I will say if a healer is laggy(or has issues) and other isn't way over geared you will probably never clear. A fresh geared healer can't solo heal this. But it is way more forgiving then other fights, you can get raised even after falling off. A dps that can give out the odd raise helps greatly as well.

The player base wants difficulty (Super Savage) but also doesn't?

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Originally Posted by Fredco191

The player base wants difficulty (Super Savage) but also doesn't?

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It would appear that a fair amount of people want to be challenged if this thread is anything to go by. If difficulty wasn't asked for or even wanted by most of the player base, the devs wouldn't have done so in the first place. The devs will always hear that something is too hard, or that it's too easy. Royal Menagerie however is a nice middle ground. It's not too easy, but it's not overwhelmingly hard either. Just requires situational awareness.