(Spoilers) Ghimlyt difficulty was a step down from the Burn...and that needs to stop

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Originally Posted by splinter1545

I was so hyped for Ghimlyt when Yoshi said that it would have the final dungeon "feel". I thought we were going to have tough and memorable battles along the way.

Needless to say, I came out disappointed.

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Tough? Definitely not. I do think it was at least somewhat memorable though. The last boss(es) had more personality than most of the Scions. Still wish I could leave that dang organization.

I felt it was an interesting atmospheric piece, and it was kinda cool seeing some of the leaders actually getting off their butts for once (has Kan-E-Senna ever been in a fight scene before? I can't remember one), but the combat itself was pretty straightforward. A whole lot of "don't stand in this" and not much else. Then again, we've all outgeared it before it even launched. Come back in 5.0 when new players barely scraping the minimum item level for it are going at it and it might feel like there's more bite.

Honestly has there been a difficult dungeon since Stormbloods launch?Because i dont think there has.Then again for those of us who have played the game longer than most its obviously going to feel this way.
For newer players they are likely more challenging.There's a reason why dungeons have a lower difficulty curve than 24 man raids,8 man raids and ex's.One is a completion requirement to progress.The other isnt.But if you feel you want a challenge then i suggest go equip lower ilvl gear on your left side and higher ilvl gear on right to gimp your stats and do it with a bunch of friends doing same thing.

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Originally Posted by Vrankyl

When it was originally released the platforms on the final boss of Sohr Kai were far from too many. Most times groups ended the fight with one or two platforms left standing, and I'd seen more than a few groups wipe it. Back then figuring out positioning was key cause otherwise you'd end up killing yourself. Now it may be too many, but that is because everyone over powers it now even when synched down. Any dungeons that have teeth when it comes out will eventually fall prey to being out geared. That said I will agree the SB dungeons have been lacking the needed difficulty levels when compared to some of the HW dungeons.

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That last bit is only natural.

And i didn't see any of that during Sohr Kai, i did it like 2 hours into the patch and all i saw was a cool arena being completely wasted because it's apparent risk, was just that, apparent. Is ok for dungeons to slowly fade into simplicity due to gearing up, level caps, etc. What's not ok, is that difficulty wise, initial tutorial dungeons are equal (and some cases harder...) than end game top level dungeons. The burn is exemplary: Environmental Threats that are empty and meaningless. Annoyingly positioned enemies which only challenge is to keep them on camera... Darkhold and Aurum Vale were far more interesting that anything we have today.

The game already has tons of "easy" content, side content, alternative content, full of casual and mindnumbingly content for players that cannot be asked to press more than 1 through 3, there is eureka, the gold saucer, FATEs, leves, hunts, solo quests, deep dungeon, etc, etc, etc, where they can go and enjoy playing while chatting or watching netflix and whatnot. Dungeons should demand player attention and have real risks. They are called DUNGEONS. They are supposed to be at least, somewhat threatening. Not mere pull and go 3 corridors 3 arenas without nothing particular to them.

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Originally Posted by Metalwrath

Honestly has there been a difficult dungeon since Stormbloods launch?Because i dont think there has..

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Bardam's Mettle seems to be the usual culprit, but that's less about difficulty and more about a gear spike.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

Bardam's Mettle seems to be the usual culprit, but that's less about difficulty and more about a gear spike.

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It had a single interesting "Fight". Refreshing indeed, but also very easy. And yeah, most of the time, is the leveling dungeons where the difficulty spikes but is mostly due to undergeared players. Honesly, gear requirements for these should be more strict, so not anyone can just go in and enter, allowing devs to prepare the dungeon with that in mind.

And i would love omre fights like that, more complex, maybe complexity based on diferent levels, separated players facing diferent patterns, etc, etc, etc.

Game needs to break away from the 3 corridors 3 circules. Same applies for "raids" that can barely be called that, at least the 8 man ones.

Ghymlit is great in terms of audio and visual aesthetic, but yes, it's far too easy...then again I have been pulling wall to wall in every dungeon save for Skalla on day 1 of release of said dungeon.

Competent players make these dungeons way too faceroll. Cleared the Burn last night in barely more than 15 mins.

I understand they can have ungodly ilvl requirements due to returning players, but I'm of the same thought as OP in that the Burn should be the bar. Ghymlit falls short of that difficulty bar by a healthy margin.

Dis game hard, I gotta press more than one button. Pls nerf!!11

Ya know, I am actually not that bothered by it. After all, we are the Warrior of Light. We are the Eikon Slayer. We should be going through Garlean Troops like a hot knife through butter. :cool:

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Originally Posted by Barachim

Ya know, I am actually not that bothered by it. After all, we are the Warrior of Light. We are the Eikon Slayer. We should be going through Garlean Troops like a hot knife through butter. :cool:

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A sword that is never unsheathed is doomed to lose its edge and rust.
We are the warrior of light because our inherit will to overcome the odds. The imperial might has been hyped over and over, what was cool about Zenos was exactly how unbeatable he was. The dungeon should indeed be far harder a real test of strength.

The warrior of light has stopped being a combat prepared sword, is more like a flashy ornamental decorative one now. The warrior of light needs to be broken, completely defeated, be teached that the world is far larger than himself, and that even blessed he needs to ever improve and fight ever higher challenges in order to prevail. The Emperor said war. War i saw but i didn't feel.

I honestly don't mind dungeons being easy. And this coming from a player that enjoys Savage and Ultimates. Just bring new things so we can have fun with. Don't make them tedious. Stormblood has brought a lot of these but Ghimlyt, in its majority, surely feels like a step down away from that.

Specifically the long uncontrolable downtime between you sections you are actually playing the game for the sake of cinematics is what bugs me. If a dungeon brings nothing new at least let players have their time dictating how fast they can steamroll throught it.

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Originally Posted by Alexandre_Noireau

A sword that is never unsheathed is doomed to lose its edge and rust.
We are the warrior of light because our inherit will to overcome the odds. The imperial might has been hyped over and over, what was cool about Zenos was exactly how unbeatable he was. The dungeon should indeed be far harder a real test of strength.

The warrior of light has stopped being a combat prepared sword, is more like a flashy ornamental decorative one now. The warrior of light needs to be broken, completely defeated, be teached that the world is far larger than himself, and that even blessed he needs to ever improve and fight ever higher challenges in order to prevail. The Emperor said war. War i saw but i didn't feel.

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Not really disagreeing with you there, and I totally expect to get into another hard fight with Zenos. I loved all the encounters we had with him and how we utterly lost the first few fights. But not everyone is Zenos. While yes, gameplay wise it's somewhat disappointing that the dungeon wasn't more challenging, story wise it doesn't bother me in the least, since I basically ran through grunts.

Honestly, I wouldn't even be surprised if it was intentional. Every time I discussed with friends what it would be like if we actually started a war with Garlemald, I joked how we should single handedly kick the door down and decimate half their army without breaking a sweat. After all, I defeated Shinryu and even the Omega Weapon. What's some Magitek Colossus and a Garlean Soldier compared to that? Yoshi-P might have had the same thought. So they give us this little power trip with the Ghimlyt dungeon, and in the next patch or the upcoming Expansion we get to eat a big piece of humble pie.

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Originally Posted by Alexandre_Noireau

Seriously, if players cannot handle such content after 70 levels worth of dungeons and the whole massive tutorial that is levels 1 thought 50, then they just don't haven't earned the right to participate of such content and thus, they have to improve.

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This would be a valid argument if jump potions didn't exist.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

This would be a valid argument if jump potions didn't exist.

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And is why i personally was so against them in the first place. And i am still are. And indeed i think jump potions should be removed even.

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Originally Posted by Alexandre_Noireau

And is why i personally was so against them in the first place. And i am still are. And indeed i think jump potions should be removed even.

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I was and still am against them, but sadly it's not something that can be put back into the bottle. It's here, and will be here until the servers shut down. SE technically could remove them but they have no incentive to do so.

There are people who appear to be under the impression that an MMO should require ever-expanding skill in order to complete essential story content. One must finish the MSQ in this game before one can move on to the next expansion. If the difficulty of a main story Dungeon exceeds the skillset of a player, can the player progress to the next expansion? No.

If enough players fall into that category (and, remember, not everyone raids or does non-MSQ dungeon instances or trials), then said players abandon the game. Not a good thing for business.

Who do you satisfy first, the customer paying to get through the game, or the customer who easily gets through the game and also runs the harder content? Does it become clearer if we suppose that a company can sell 10 subscriptions by making essential content simple vs 7 subscriptions by making it too hard to complete for 3 of those subscriptions?

As a company, which of these approaches do you think your shareholders will appreciate?

Expanded skill requirements should be reserved for non-essential content.

The thing that makes this game unique is that the story requires you to play non-solo through a number of instances.

Otherwise, it would be something like WoW, where you can get through an expansion without ever running a single dungeon instance. Leveling has never been hard in that game.

I sort of agree with you DPZ2. While this game being an MMO you've a lot of different players grouping up to do the same content together so you don't want to do ever increasing difficulty because new players will always be joining here and there and jump potions exist.

What can be done in XIV due to its MSQ nature though is treat each expantion as its own learning curve going from easier leveling content to somewhat harder (not hard, just harder than before) casual content later in the same expantion's story. The easy first dungeons would be welcoming to new players while making older players feel like they're still powerful coming from the past expansion. This way trusting the player to ride along the difficulty curve during the five patches of the expanston.

Mind you, I'm not advocating for hard content in MSQ, just saying they could do a proper difficulty curve. And every kind of player would benefit from it.

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

There are people who appear to be under the impression that an MMO should require ever-expanding skill in order to complete essential story content. One must finish the MSQ in this game before one can move on to the next expansion. If the difficulty of a main story Dungeon exceeds the skillset of a player, can the player progress to the next expansion? No.

If enough players fall into that category (and, remember, not everyone raids or does non-MSQ dungeon instances or trials), then said players abandon the game. Not a good thing for business.

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No one is saying we need our dungeons to become dark souls. But if at level 70, you are not adequately skilled to make full use of your skills, then you shouldn't be doing level 70 content. That simple.

The game has plenty of forgiving content where those players can go. For main game progression, skill progression should be a must.

To me the bosses were bad mechanics wise.

For it to be the last dungeon of the expansion it was very boring to me. The stuff going on in there was cool, but it really made the dungeon to where the alliance leaders outshined you. One example being the last iron giant who has stupid amount of HP and then the alliance leader( its random each time) or lyse comes in with a LB and 1 shots it.

IMO it would have been a much more memorable fight if Ascian Zenos was there.

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Originally Posted by Derio

To me the bosses were bad mechanics wise.

For it to be the last dungeon of the expansion it was very boring to me. The stuff going on in there was cool, but it really made the dungeon to where the alliance leaders outshined you. One example being the last iron giant who has stupid amount of HP and then the alliance leader( its random each time) or lyse comes in with a LB and 1 shots it.

IMO it would have been a much more memorable fight if Ascian Zenos was there.

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He'll be coming as the final cutscene suggests, we just don't know how yet. Hoping it'll be a solo trial at the very least followed by the fight we saw in the trailer where everyone was going at him.

The Burn wasn't really all that tough. Mist Dragon is a bit tougher than most dungeon end bosses I'll admit, but not by all that much.

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Originally Posted by Alexandre_Noireau

No one is saying we need our dungeons to become dark souls. But if at level 70, you are not adequately skilled to make full use of your skills, then you shouldn't be doing level 70 content. That simple.

The game has plenty of forgiving content where those players can go. For main game progression, skill progression should be a must.

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Meh, I disagree with this to a certain extent. For example, I have a lv70 DRK that I pretty much speed leveled back when SB dropped. DRK has gone through some changes since I leveled it. If I were to get back in to re-learn DRK I'd rather do it in lv70 expert dungeons, opposed to say, jumping in on Extreme or Savage fights to learn.

If we think more in terms of high-intensity or low-intensity encounter design, dungeons should probably remain on the lower intensity side.

The Burn as a dungeon itself was fairly normal the Mist Dragon does trip people up (Even now with me and my positioning sometimes).

I'd like SE to take the idea of G.Dark (varied mobs doing different attacks similar to what we see at midbosses) but mix it with the same difficulty as the Mist Dragon the whole way through.

People would struggle with it first thing but I think it's a great way to get people aware of what they're doing and give people some experience into what EX/Savage content can lead into. But obviously people will adpat and learn and that will lead into the best stuff overall.

We've all gotten used to the idea of picking a bunch of mobs and mowing through them at one spot. I'd like the danger of more focused mechanics while we do it. Something to spice up our daily runs past people new people not knowing mechanics.

What are my current benefits from dungeons?
- Leveling.
- Learning/Practicing a job.
- Tome stones.
- Grand company seals.
- Glamour.

The reward is not worth the effort.

If I'm gonna run expert everyday for my weekly tomes, I'd rather have the dungeons be 'fun' than hard.
Nice music, visuals, mechanics is what matters to me personally when it comes to dungeons. It's something I like to do while chilling.

I do agree that there is an issue with having easy only content, it does not help players improve.

Best thing SE can do is make solo content a bit harder (MSQ & job quests). Let players run into that wall where they have to retry the quest multiple times until they get it right. The key word here is solo, so the players can take their time to learn. No need to wait for queues or feel the pressure of failing multiple times in a party. In the end, everyone is going to clear MSQ & job quests thanks to echo buff.

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I do agree that there is an issue with having easy only content, it does not help players improve.

Best thing SE can do is make solo content a bit harder (MSQ & job quests). Let players run into that wall where they have to retry the quest multiple times until they get it right. The key word here is solo, so the players can take their time to learn. No need to wait for queues or feel the pressure of failing multiple times in a party. In the end, everyone is going to clear MSQ & job quests thanks to echo buff.

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No though you are entitled to your on opinion. The last thing a company should do is increase the barrier for entry or difficulty in the main story. The MSQ is where most content is unlocked. It's bad enough people have to wait on queues, sometimes a long time. Playing XI some content was considered too hard for standard players, some of the genkai quest(mostly solo job quest) had some players quitting the game due to frustration. Half of the player base did not even get to through the CoP expansion which was not even the difficult endgame content locked behind it, until it was nerfed to high heaven years later.

If they want their main target demographic to be bleeding edge difficulty they could do that but I doubt it. For side content they can make content give headaches, vitriol, finger gymnastics, twitch reflexes, content so hard it makes babies bleed. But keep that away from the MSQ.

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Originally Posted by Sandpark

No though you are entitled to your on opinion. The last thing a company should do is increase the barrier for entry or difficulty in the main story. The MSQ is where most content is unlocked. It's bad enough people have to wait on queues, sometimes a long time. Playing XI some content was considered too hard for standard players, some of the genkai quest(mostly solo job quest) had some players quitting the game due to frustration. Half of the player base did not even get to through the CoP expansion which was not even the difficult endgame content locked behind it, until it was nerfed to high heaven years later.

If they want their main target demographic to be bleeding edge difficulty they could do that but I doubt it. For side content they can make content give headaches, vitriol, finger gymnastics, twitch reflexes, content so hard it makes babies bleed. But keep that away from the MSQ.

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Just to be clear I'm not asking for a sudden big spike in difficulty.
What we have now is like you're running the game on beginner mode. I'm asking to rise it to a normal difficulty.

Don't forget the echo buff which increases you HP and attack if you continue to fail. The players will not get stuck and left behind.

When you only get DPS Players with about 2k DPS, Tanks without using CDs and only spaming Aggro-Combo and Healers just standing around, i think the difficulty is just fine o:
As a Healer i'm always Top DPS in this Dungeon, when i go with DF Players.

And i think the Burn is as easy as Ghimlyt o:
Nothing special at all in 70 Dungeons, all are the same. Mass Pulls and easy Bosses :shrug:

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

The Burn wasn't really all that tough. Mist Dragon is a bit tougher than most dungeon end bosses I'll admit, but not by all that much.

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Yeah pretty much this.

I will add though that I find the Burn just generally rather annoying to tank, those giant ass mobs pushing each other everywhere.

Ghimlyts person sized mobs are bliss in comparison.

Im not gonna call The Burn difficult
BUT Mist dragon is a very good boss everything about him imo should be standard for the final bosses of dungeon
hes got a lot of mechanics and some decent momentum to the fight
and its a neat reference

not so much on difficulty
but i hate the last two bosses in Ghimlyt just so much waiting and the bosses just go away so frequently
its pretty annoying for melee dps

The Burn wasn't that difficult. I didn't feel like Ghymlit was a step down. It was just the same kind of difficulty not difficult at all. A dungeon will be difficult at the time where tanks won't be able to take several packs at the same time and rush. Period.

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Originally Posted by Yeol

Just to be clear I'm not asking for a sudden big spike in difficulty.
What we have now is like you're running the game on beginner mode. I'm asking to rise it to a normal difficulty.

Don't forget the echo buff which increases you HP and attack if you continue to fail. The players will not get stuck and left behind.

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Is the later MSQ dungeons all really challenging? Not really. But it is far from beginner mode. Beginner Mode is A Realm Reborn Dungeons particularly the early, early ones.

HW on is more liked veteran dungeons or what you call normal difficulty. Good amount of mechanics.
Hard is normal difficulty but different locale and mechanics, but still normal difficulty.
Extreme is above normal difficulty, introduction to higher difficulty.
Savage is a step above that.
Ultimate is the highest difficulty.

Extreme onwards will come later. Final Steps/Shinryu/Burn vanilla skipped the process of having a normal mode even though they were called normal, and got ninja nerfed later. I don't want them skipping tiers of difficulty.

Are you asking for the omitting of normal mode?
If so starting in hard? Starting in extreme?

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Originally Posted by Campi

When you only get DPS Players with about 2k DPS, Tanks without using CDs and only spaming Aggro-Combo and Healers just standing around, i think the difficulty is just fine o:
As a Healer i'm always Top DPS in this Dungeon, when i go with DF Players.

And i think the Burn is as easy as Ghimlyt o:
Nothing special at all in 70 Dungeons, all are the same. Mass Pulls and easy Bosses :shrug:

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But don't you think the reason to why those tanks and DPS aren't pushing a bit harder is because they don't have to? What you said just proves the point that even if you stand still smashing the same key over and over, either to heal, tank or dps, you can still finish the dungeon without any issues or whatsoever.

To me the main issue is that walking around in order to get your gathering nodes is more dangerous than anything you'll ever face in a dungeon. If the game got progressively harder as levels went up, I'm pretty certain that tanks would have to put some effort into surviving and soaking damage, dps would have to pull their weight on finishing a check and healers wouldn't be able to get away with casting one spell every 8 seconds.

Content doesn't need to be extremely difficult, but when we the players have to go out of our way to make it a little bit (small, small bit) more challenging by doing big pulls (that were cut by invisible walls), I think the difficulty curve is the issue. However like other people pointed out, myself included, big difficulty should come with big rewards.

Dungeons haven’t been hard since Pharos Sirius was current content. This one is no different from the super easy ones before it. Most dragon isn’t hard, it just has mechanics you can’t just ignore.

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Originally Posted by Aomine1992

Dungeons haven’t been hard since Pharos Sirius was current content. This one is no different from the super easy ones before it. Most dragon isn’t hard, it just has mechanics you can’t just ignore.

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And Ghimlyt is the exact same. My first group wiped on the Iron Giant due to not understanding his rotation. It's almost like mechanics matter.

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Originally Posted by Aomine1992

Dungeons haven’t been hard since Pharos Sirius was current content. This one is no different from the super easy ones before it. Most dragon isn’t hard, it just has mechanics you can’t just ignore.

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And PS pre-nerf wasn't even hard.

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Originally Posted by Barachim

Ya know, I am actually not that bothered by it. After all, we are the Warrior of Light. We are the Eikon Slayer. We should be going through Garlean Troops like a hot knife through butter. :cool:

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Yeah but, as a writer, I’d rather not my main character have a bunch of Mary Sue-esque qualities. We don’t have to be completely and totally infalliable. That’s why I’m hoping ShB brings a good storyline where we aren’t The Perfect Hero. The whole idea of us being so infalliable is annoying to me, personally.
Doesn’t help that my head-canon of my character directly contradicts it: she’s certainly not an infalliable person, but the game has essentially made her perfect and completely subordinate/submissive to those around her.

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Originally Posted by Yeol

If I'm gonna run expert everyday for my weekly tomes, I'd rather have the dungeons be 'fun' than hard.

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The issue with this statement is that “fun” changes per individual—
You want the dungeons to be “easy and fun”—because otherwise, they are just tedious to you, to give an example.
But Johnny, on the other hand, finds them so easy that they are not fun—they’re snoozefests to him, which makes them boring and tedious—and wants them to be more challenging because he likes challenging things: they are more “fun” to him.


So, whose definition of “fun” gets prioritized? Which is “more valid”? Yours? Or Johnny’s?
Inb4 “THE MAJORITY’S DEFINITION” response...

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Originally Posted by DevilsDontFly

But don't you think the reason to why those tanks and DPS aren't pushing a bit harder is because they don't have to?

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No. The reason these tanks and DPS aren't pushing harder is because there is NOTHING in this game that forces people to learn how to push it harder on their own.

Most of those people are carried. They don't notice the drudgery that is the dungeons when they completely suck at their job because they end up partied with someone competent more often than not. Then they falsely think THEY are the good ones...because some people simply have difficulty dividing fact from fiction, to say the least.

If there were mandatory walls for solo content, the bad players would end up behind whether they wanted to or not. If you're good solo then you're also going to be good in a party. Not necessarily great, but good. The kind of good that right now you think of "Finally! A fully competent group!", which should be standard at lvl70...but is not.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

So, whose definition of “fun” gets prioritized? Which is “more valid”? Yours? Or Johnny’s?
Inb4 “THE MAJORITY’S DEFINITION” response...

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Sorry, but I won't bring "the majority" argument because it's stupid in this case (duh, I mean, that's what you bringing that up was all about).

However I will bring the "design" argument.

This game was made with the casual, low-skill player in mind. Simply speaking, it is an MMO that strives to bring a game with an enticing story that anyone can follow on their spare time without putting much effort. This is how it was from the beginning and changing that would be betraying their customers.

That means that, yes, the opinion of the players that want easy main story content IS more important than yours because THEY are the primary target audience. You are the secondary, the more hardcore people, for which there are the more hardcore/skilled optional things like extreme, savage and ultimate.


Now before someone says "I'm just bad and I want the content to be easy so I can snooze through it.". I'm good enough to have solo-healed Titan (Hard) when I was level 50 in Heavensward all the way from first landslide to the end, good enough to trio Ravana (Hard) on a Red Mage with a tank and another Red Mage that was constantly out of mana (probably didn't have Lucid Dreaming) from about 20% to zero, good enough to solo Chimera in Cutter's Cry from 80% to zero on slightly undergeared Bard and to heal and keep reviving healer and DPS while keeping the tank healed in Burn on the dragon throughout the fight while on Red Mage throughout second half of the fight.

I don't think I'm good enough for proper extreme content or savage so I don't do it (and my laptop and sometimes PING sucks, so there's that).

And I don't put the effort on the side to get better because in most Duty Finder parties I lose focus way too easily due to bad players and my inability to stay focused through people single-target attacking a pack of mobs, dying to simple AoE's time and again or similar. I can't get a static for various reasons either.


So no. I'd like it if the game WAS more challenging. I'd want it to have challenging solo content where I could get good with my class without having to roll the dice for the duty finder. But this game never was that and as such it should NOT become that. As much as I hate getting a person in the duty finder that still single-target-kills enemies in lvl70 dungeon, runs from a stack-up marker and such...too bad. I hope that the next Final Fantasy MMO will be geared towards the people that actually want to learn as they go. This one is lost cause in that.

I see a lot of "but the game was build for casuals, not the hardcore"

But...when did being casual equate with being bad? All I hear is that casual does not equal bad in other posts but now its being used as an argument for faceroll content. Pick your poison.

We can get a tic up in the difficulty dept without alienating the casual playerbase. It takes maybe 5 minutes of research to learn your rotation, if you want to remain bad because you are casual, that's on you. You can be as casual as you want to be, they already dumbed jobs, stats and dungeons down so much that if you have not learned even the basics of your job and how the basic dungeon mechanics in ffxiv work by lvl 70 that is more willful ignorance than simply being casual.

The Burn was only difficult due to it being released at the beginning of a gear cycle. Meanwhile Ghimlyt Dark was released at the end of said gear cycle.

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The issue with this statement is that “fun” changes per individual—
You want the dungeons to be “easy and fun”—because otherwise, they are just tedious to you, to give an example.
But Johnny, on the other hand, finds them so easy that they are not fun—they’re snoozefests to him, which makes them boring and tedious—and wants them to be more challenging because he likes challenging things: they are more “fun” to him.

So, whose definition of “fun” gets prioritized? Which is “more valid”? Yours? Or Johnny’s?
Inb4 “THE MAJORITY’S DEFINITION” response...

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Everyone has a different view on what is fun, scary, exciting, and various other feelings. The underlying truth that is not variable is that the highs or lows of any feelings are driven by the unknown and novelty. Once you do something many times regardless of how it makes you feel, the emotions, senses, and passion to do it over and over is lessened, changed, or dull. And the difficulty of what you do does not dictate your fun and enjoyment long term, it can for moments but that is fleeting.

As for what should be prioritized. When has any developer in the last 10 years prioritized one means of playing over another in an mmo?
Rare, today's market is all about giving options for players to consume content.
Go full hardcore like Wildstar? Hello cancellation.
Go extremely easy? It's a pickup and put down game.

I'll reiterate. It's not difficulty that has anyone playing a game over and over. It's either introducing novelty over and over or the carrot on the stick.

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Sorry, but I won't bring "the majority" argument because it's stupid in this case (duh, I mean, that's what you bringing that up was all about).

However I will bring the "design" argument.

This game was made with the casual, low-skill player in mind. Simply speaking, it is an MMO that strives to bring a game with an enticing story that anyone can follow on their spare time without putting much effort. This is how it was from the beginning and changing that would be betraying their customers.

That means that, yes, the opinion of the players that want easy main story content IS more important than yours because THEY are the primary target audience. You are the secondary, the more hardcore people, for which there are the more hardcore/skilled optional things like extreme, savage and ultimate.


Now before someone says "I'm just bad and I want the content to be easy so I can snooze through it.". I'm good enough to have solo-healed Titan (Hard) when I was level 50 in Heavensward all the way from first landslide to the end, good enough to trio Ravana (Hard) on a Red Mage with a tank and another Red Mage that was constantly out of mana (probably didn't have Lucid Dreaming) from about 20% to zero, good enough to solo Chimera in Cutter's Cry from 80% to zero on slightly undergeared Bard and to heal and keep reviving healer and DPS while keeping the tank healed in Burn on the dragon throughout the fight while on Red Mage throughout second half of the fight.

I don't think I'm good enough for proper extreme content or savage so I don't do it (and my laptop and sometimes PING sucks, so there's that).

And I don't put the effort on the side to get better because in most Duty Finder parties I lose focus way too easily due to bad players and my inability to stay focused through people single-target attacking a pack of mobs, dying to simple AoE's time and again or similar. I can't get a static for various reasons either.


So no. I'd like it if the game WAS more challenging. I'd want it to have challenging solo content where I could get good with my class without having to roll the dice for the duty finder. But this game never was that and as such it should NOT become that. As much as I hate getting a person in the duty finder that still single-target-kills enemies in lvl70 dungeon, runs from a stack-up marker and such...too bad. I hope that the next Final Fantasy MMO will be geared towards the people that actually want to learn as they go. This one is lost cause in that.

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In the first part of your post about design, you just described every Final Fantasy in existence.

I lose focus for three reasons in the battle content in this game.

1. The rotation system feels like I am playing a solo game even if I am in a group of 4-24 people because there is little synergy between me and another player and how our skills interact with each other on a moment by moment basis.
2. The enemy mechanics and environment are the novelty that drives my focus. Once the novelty runs out after doing said content multiple times, my focus goes bye bye.
3. AOE and mass pulling is one of the biggest culprits of me losing focus on the player end. To me this means the enemy mechanics are so trivial, that they can be ignored. The gameplay as a DPS feels like me mashing the same keys over and over like a hack and slash game which is the game type I abhor most. It gets even more boring the more and more enemies we fight at once.

If there ever came a point where an FF game is so difficult that I could not experience they story. I think I am done with FF at that point. Because the story, interesting open worlds, horizontal progression, and party synergy is what I enjoy most about this franchise. The latter three have already been stripped from the game. You take away my story and I am a sad panda.