Why is all new content such a cakewalk?

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

A lot of the mechs were familiar but I also do 8 and 24 man raids. I think some things we just don't see as much in MSQ so it could be spicy for someone who only does story.

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Which brings us to an age old issue, the MSQ gameplay is so utterly non-threatening that people are overwhelmed by the most basic normal mode mechanics.

Idk everything has felt just right so far. I think they hit a nice sweet spot

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Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer

Idk everything has felt just right so far. I think they hit a nice sweet spot

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Gonna agree there. The normal trial and normal raid seemed pretty good for what they are.

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Originally Posted by Ranaku

When i think back to stormblood and bosses like the mistdragon or the ivalice raids which had some challenging bosses (especially for uncoordinated alliances lol) i really can't help to feel like the content nowadays is just is just...way too easy.

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I'm a bit confused, what's "too easy" about it? They fights seem to have a lot going on, failing to respect the mechanics too much will KO you, the party can wipe if people are too careless but if people pay attention they can get through things. My first runs of stuff like Mist Dragon didn't go badly as I recall. And while nothing will every be Orbonne Monastery again, the 24 mans so far have felt similar in difficulty to Ridorana Lighthouse or Goug.

I'm not sure "should cause wipes in normal 4 man content" is a good metric for "cakewalk" vs "appropriate difficulty". Good content SHOULD be clearable without wipes if people are paying attention to mechanics and/or you have good Healers. The parties I did the Trial with the first time we had a wipe (same for P9N and P10N), my other runs of the Trial didn't have wipes just because some of the players had already done it and had seen the trickier mechanics, likewise my second run of P9 and my runs of P11 and P12 had some people who had already done it today.

There were wipes in a lot of other people's runs, too.

Maybe you just ended up in parties that had already done the runs or something, I dunno. Either way, the difficulty felt about right to me for NORMAL content.

I haven't done the Extreme yet (and obviously the Savage isn't out yet), but the new content felt "about right" not "cakewalk", per my metrics.

Is your judgement that content is only good if people are wiping to it over and over again?

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Originally Posted by Ranaku

Oh yeah i see also many deaths but not many wipes. If we take Cidolfus Orlandeau from the ivalice raids for example, before they nerfed him, if one party of the raid didn't do their job the whole raid would wipe. Or back then the first boss in dun scaith was a huge dps check, it was a timed fight that had a guaranteed wipe if people didn't deal enough damage or too many players died. Today what kills most people is the insane amount of foliage and grass when fighting Nophica.

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Again Cid was - bar non - the SINGLE HARDEST FIGHT EVER IN A 24 MAN IN THE GAME'S HISTORY. I'm not going to say Savage, but that fight was on par with an Extreme fight and 24 man meaning the "more people to mess up" problem. I don't think it's right to compare anything to that.

Also: I don't recall EVER having a wipe to Dun Scaith's first boss due to a "dps check". It has an Enrage? I remember it occasionally wiping due to people being blown off the side (one time as it died it did that and ONE person in the raid popped Arm's Length. Literally everyone else died and that one person finished the 0.1% it had left to prevent a wipe. We did the "1-0, we win" meme), but never heard of it being hard due to a dps check. Even running it in at level gear in HW, I don't recall ever wiping to a dps check on that fight...

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Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer

Idk everything has felt just right so far. I think they hit a nice sweet spot

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Also agree with this. It felt just about right to me as well.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Which brings us to an age old issue, the MSQ gameplay is so utterly non-threatening that people are overwhelmed by the most basic normal mode mechanics.

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It's MSQ. They throw in a spicy thing or two here and there but it's story content. It's at a good level to keep that story content accessible.

For something a bit more, we can look toward the 8 man and 24 man content. Those can and do get away with more spice but those tackling that content understand that.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

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First of all yes the first boss has indeed an "enrage", he covers the floor with these squares that if you stand in them when he casts the respective attack it will automatically kill you. If the fight goes on for too long, was fairly common back then in HW, all tiles of the arena will be covered by it and that is a guaranteed wipe!

I ofc can't speak for everyone and only for myself and a couple friends what i perceive myself as way too easy. Nidhogg for example back then wasn't really forgiving at all, not like the latest trial where 3/4 of the players can die and you can still clear no problem by just brute forcing your way through it with rezz after rezz.

My biggest problem is that it seems that SE doesn't know what midcore content is. You can ask most healers and they will tell you that they fall asleep almost when healing in dungeons etc. cause ofc there is not really much to heal and their job rotation is non existent. Would be kinda nice if SE would give us something that isn't savage but also not completely braindead afk dungeon runs, trials and normal raids. (And ofc alliance raids) It can't be that hard to give us slightly more engaging content that isn't a huge time commitment but as i said SE seems to only know the extreme of both sides.

Just feeling like it is a huge loss for SE not tapping into that market and playerbase. It makes a decent chunk of the playerbase just suffer and resent certain roles like healing cause it isn't engaging at all anymore. Even in raids healers usually don't have to heal beyond raidwides and the usual tankbuster, besides that it is again just glare spam.

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Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer

Idk everything has felt just right so far. I think they hit a nice sweet spot

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Happy to hear that you like them! Every opinion is valid. Me personally i would've wished for maybe more addphases or some quick time events and maybe a tank lb like we had to use with the WoL. But i feel like it isn't the last trial of the expansion so i delay my despair over that a bit.

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Originally Posted by Zeastria

Just because YOU find it easy, dosnt mean others will...

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The others could get better at the game, nobodys asking for dungeons to be extreme difficulty, but they could at least hit harder than random mobs out in the world

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Originally Posted by Zeastria

Just because YOU find it easy, dosnt mean others will...

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What a stupid take lmao, why not make the mobs in dungeons hit for 1 damage then ? You know, just in case it's too difficult for someone

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Originally Posted by Noox-115

FFxiv is getting easier and easier, ARR dungeons hit harder then the newest dungeons

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With Trust implementation, they've actually made the older stuff hit for less than it used to. It still feels tougher than the 90 stuff though, just because you don't have as many mitigation skills or healing abilities at that level, but I swear to god this stuff used to hit harder before they added solo options and remapped the places. Expert/90 is in a sorry state though, I agree. You straight up don't even need a healer for it. In fact, you're better off without one. Like, wtf lol

I cant speak for you but I've been playing mmos like this for years now!

Everything is so easy due to my fantastic skill and it's prolly similar for alot of others.

I call it the dark souls 3 principle!

I mean, it's orolly also due to the content being super easy but... I like the first way more :D

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Originally Posted by Zeastria

Nobody is born good - it's learned, and some need more time to learn.

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People don't want to learn in FFXIV, what do you mean? :D

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Originally Posted by Stormpeaks

What a stupid take lmao, why not make the mobs in dungeons hit for 1 damage then ? You know, just in case it's too difficult for someone

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I never said anything about damage..you did

Many things in this game isnt clear rigth away and takes some tries to see the patterns..
for a long-time player..it may seem easy af...but for a new player it's a lot to take in.

In an MMO you need to take in consideration of new players.
and normal content will be the content they play first.

I'm not saying it need to be easier then it is now..but it dosnt need to be much harder..
we got EX,Savage,Ultimate.

stormblood dungeons and normals were pretty much the same difficulty tbh, if anything this last normal tier had more difficult things to execute in a df environment than any of the stb ones did. i can't really think of a stb dungeon boss or hw dungeon boss i'd call harder than what's been in dungeons now.

none of the stb alliance raids were that difficult people just got cleaved by hashmal and that's all anyone remembers. anyone who played back then was worse at the game than they are now, and job changes over time affect perception of difficulty as a lot of jobs did have a lot of things removed from them they'd have to manage to some degree back then (ie: threat).

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Originally Posted by Zeastria

Nobody is born good - it's learned, and some need more time to learn.

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Nobody is asking for some huge ball buster difficulty in a dungeon or normal mode but to have content actually threaten the player. I shouldn't be able to collect vuln stacks and it not even matter. A perfect example is Stigma Dreamscape. You know those Omega and Dragon adds that spawn and blow up if you don't kill them in the last boss? That explosion did paltry damage on content. It's actually better to simply ignore both and just DPS the boss. Think about that for a second. It's better to completely ignore a boss mechanic and simply zerg it down faster because the outgoing damage is that pitiful.

This is what people are criticising when they say content is too easy. A tank should feel like a tank yet most EW dungeon bosses seem to take forever and a day to do a tank buster. And when they finally do, it tickles. Naturally, the healing requirements are extremely low. So you end up spamming Glare more than anything else. Upping some of the damage wouldn't spell do but would give the content some needed bite.

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Originally Posted by Alaray

stormblood dungeons and normals were pretty much the same difficulty tbh, if anything this last normal tier had more difficult things to execute in a df environment than any of the stb ones did. i can't really think of a stb dungeon boss or hw dungeon boss i'd call harder than what's been in dungeons now.

none of the stb alliance raids were that difficult people just got cleaved by hashmal and that's all anyone remembers. anyone who played back then was worse at the game than they are now, and job changes over time affect perception of difficulty as a lot of jobs did have a lot of things removed from them they'd have to manage to some degree back then (ie: threat).

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Mistdragon was a real barrier for many players, have a couple friends that even had the dungeontimer back then ran out cause people couldn't beat it. Dungeons in HW were overall more engaging cause enmity wasn't just generated by the snap of a finger and healers had to heal actually more and had to swap between damage and healing cause cleric stance was a thing.

Stormblood raids were actually pretty challenging, the first boss of ivalice and lighthouse for example. Construct beat people up who couldn't do math. The dragon people who don't understand magnetism. Hashmals cleave and the adds you had to kill otherwise they explode and deal massive amounts of damage to the whole raid. Construct back then just killed you outright even at full health when you had 2 wrong answers.

Compare that to today where you can have only 1/3 of the group stand in their area when halone does her addphase and they still can kill it and ofc if the others kill the middle spear they can also join in. Which is just sad. Completely wrong positioning but it doesn't matter at all. So i ask why have an addphase at all when you don't even have to do it right? It's like cloud of darkness nowadays you can have 3 players in one circle and they still manage to kill the add no problems, just now in the latest alliance raid which is just hilariously sad.

I've noticed it too. There's next to no innovation in fights anymore, before in previous expansions it would've taken a good few attempts to get through raids, now everyone can do it first try. The same stack/spread attacks over and over and over every time.

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Originally Posted by Ranaku

Mistdragon was a real barrier for many players, have a couple friends that even had the dungeontimer back then ran out cause people couldn't beat it. Dungeons in HW were overall more engaging cause enmity wasn't just generated by the snap of a finger and healers had to heal actually more and had to swap between damage and healing cause cleric stance was a thing.

Stormblood raids were actually pretty challenging, the first boss of ivalice and lighthouse for example. Construct beat people up who couldn't do math. The dragon people who don't understand magnetism. Hashmals cleave and the adds you had to kill otherwise they explode and deal massive amounts of damage to the whole raid. Construct back then just killed you outright even at full health when you had 2 wrong answers.

Compare that to today where you can have only 1/3 of the group stand in their area when halone does her addphase and they still can kill it and ofc if the others kill the middle spear they can also join in. Which is just sad. Completely wrong positioning but it doesn't matter at all. So i ask why have an addphase at all when you don't even have to do it right? It's like cloud of darkness nowadays you can have 3 players in one circle and they still manage to kill the add no problems, just now in the latest alliance raid which is just hilariously sad.

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Mathboss can be killed by four people who live if everyone else makes a mistake and dies to something, I know this because they refused to just wipe it and held everyone hostage for 20 minutes in a run I did back then (and a 20 minute boss encounter sticks with you). Especially since failing the add just kills the group in there, not the entire alliance. Even Rofocale adds were easy to kill, plenty of times it was me + 3 others in our place and we'd win. Just. A lot more people were a lot worse at the game, either from when they were new in that expansion, or due to not knowing a lot of the job mechanics (I mean, tank-stance only tanks were common, and that neutered your damage output. Barely any healer players touched Cleric Stance, even the StB version).

Mistdragon I purposefully got 16 vulns on for fun and... it really wasn't hard to down, even like that, with a bunch of friends while we were drinking. It's a little less clear about how to do 1 mechanic on it, I guess? But it's ultimately just a divebomb. And even if you get hit, you only really die (and, to be fair, still generally do) if you end up in a snow gaol + proximity on you. I mean, I still remember the general discussions around the game back then regarding how easy dungeons were, since the "hard" dungeons in StB were a letdown for most players looking for a challenging dungeon. I do remember people saying -this- encounter was hard, which is fair, but it was generally an exception and not the rule (I mean, Fractal Continuum Hard was... not very hard, nor were... any of the StB dungeons, even if I gave Mistdragon as 1 encounter out of... how many dungeons?)

But Alte Roite? Easier than any normal raid fight since. Chardanook? Phantom Train? normal Kefka? Normal Omega where the entire mechanic is "do you know your lefts from rights"? Chaos? None of these were ever that difficult, most of these were snooze fests while a couple were fun, or the difficulty had more to do with understanding how the game registers your position, which... I'm not going to say that's inherent difficulty. Even the math encounter... the math portion is extremely easy, most people I knew who had a hard time with it misunderstood the mechanic (not realizing you're using your HP, and not just standing in a number that corresponds to something like... "Multiple of 3").

Most of those mechanics are just as easy as what we have today, with a few that you just need to die to, or it's not clear which of the 2 possible answers is the right one off the bat (ie: the Magnetic Lysis where after he tosses you up). Pretty much all of these were pretty basic, none really stood out as "particularly difficult". They were all generally cases of "People didn't pay attention to the giant flaming hand", or misunderstanding a not so clear presentation of something. I don't think people, generally, genuinely struggle with "what's a multiple of 3" or "what's a prime number".

And... even with all of this, is wiping because one group did bad damage to their add... difficulty? It's not in your control, there's nothing you can do to change that outcome other than ditch your group to help theirs. It's not a mechanical dance, and people have always been bad at damage somewhere. Is it satisfying to fail that? Do you learn anything when you do? If its your group, do you take it as a "I should practice my rotation" or would you think it's your gear, or your teammates struggling first? Or, does failing it just make everyone annoyed? What's the benefit of failing the Halone adds and it wipes everyone? Is it really satisfying to die to that? Is it fun?

Even then, how would you balance a DPS check where every player would be taken into consideration? People in BiS? People in Crafted? People in Normal raid gear? People who are less optimal in their gameplay? People who are way *more* optimal in theirs? People who use food + pots? People who don't? Balancing variance alone would be a pain with how big that alone is in XIV.

Hardest thing on Yiazmat was just positioning the boss correctly, but that's... 1 player's responsibility, so.


I mean, I'm not against more complicated fights. But I'm not seeing how StB fights were harder, at all. Maybe slightly more punishing? But, even then, it's... so slight.

Hello earth to Ranaku, this is a theme park MMO. It is supposed to be easy.

Quit whining.


P.S. I love my blind runs and getting wow-ed.

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Originally Posted by Zeastria

I never said anything about damage..you did

Many things in this game isnt clear rigth away and takes some tries to see the patterns..
for a long-time player..it may seem easy af...but for a new player it's a lot to take in.

In an MMO you need to take in consideration of new players.
and normal content will be the content they play first.

I'm not saying it need to be easier then it is now..but it dosnt need to be much harder..
we got EX,Savage,Ultimate.

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Sorry you are not a new player anymore once you reach lv90. If you didnt learn anything by then, you dont deserve to play the "BUT NEW PLAYER" card

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Originally Posted by Zeastria

I never said anything about damage..you did

Many things in this game isnt clear rigth away and takes some tries to see the patterns..
for a long-time player..it may seem easy af...but for a new player it's a lot to take in.

In an MMO you need to take in consideration of new players.
and normal content will be the content they play first.

I'm not saying it need to be easier then it is now..but it dosnt need to be much harder..
we got EX,Savage,Ultimate.

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By the time you get to end game normal raids and expert roulette, you should have a few hundred hours in the game. You ARE a long time player.

https://i.ibb.co/HHMmJ70/kaiten.pnghttps://i.ibb.co/Q67vX04/X.gif https://i.ibb.co/HHMmJ70/kaiten.png

( Meanwhile me in new content at the final Dungeon boss )

https://i.ibb.co/YcQyb8V/DOUHASKAITEN.png

Q-Q-Quality Content we been asking for!! ( obviously )

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Originally Posted by Ranaku

When i think back to stormblood and bosses like the mistdragon or the ivalice raids which had some challenging bosses (especially for uncoordinated alliances lol) i really can't help to feel like the content nowadays is just is just...way too easy.

Just for context, i am by no means some elitist raider who wants every piece of content to be as hard as savage raids. But at least some midcore challenge would be really neat.

I cleared the new dungeon now multiple times with random groups and we had no wipe at all. The new trial is hilariously easy, we got in fully blind and no wipe. Same with the normal pandemonium raids. And we don't even talk about the alliance raids who are difficulty wise just a huge disappointment, especially after we had the Nier raids.

I don't really get what is going on with SE lately, feels like we have either just savage/ultimate difficulty or content that is so easy even a blind and drunk moogle could complete it.

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Did you just forget that extreme's exist? Barb and the most recent ex are both great imo. Nice 'midcore' content. Normal modes should be pretty accessible since they are all story.

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Originally Posted by Aelin_Ashryver

Did you just forget that extreme's exist? Barb and the most recent ex are both great imo. Nice 'midcore' content. Normal modes should be pretty accessible since they are all story.

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Yes extremes exist and they can be really fun but it's not content you do daily or for a long time. I don't think anyone really goes into extremes beyond getting their weapon and the mount maybe? The raiding content is really nice but afterwards people go back into hibernation.

I personally would wish for more midcore content that doesn't have a shelf life of some weeks. You know maybe some hard versions of dungeons which give you more tomes, something people can do daily through roulette and don't fall asleep. I did hope criterion would fill out that role maybe but it didn't really hit the mark.

I feel this way too, especially in Endwalker. Normal modes have never been "hard" but I feel like they used to put up enough resistance to make clearing them satisfying. Now they are so easy that it feels like my input doesn't even matter, the group will clear whether I play well, average, badly, or just do nothing. That is very boring, and so I now tend to actively avoid doing normal content unless I really want something from it. It's even more true of lower level content, with ARR and Heavensward content now being so undertuned due to battle system changes over the years that failure is almost impossible.

Dungeons now seem completely standardized of 2 packs - wall - 2 packs - boss - repeat. There are no longer any sections where you can try to do a really big pull, and in fact you're often limited to single pulls. Bosses can't kill unless you fall off an edge, get doom, or fail multiple mechanics simultaneously (and if you're a tank that's not enough either).

Alliance Raids have suffered the most, I think. EW alliance raid bosses die before you see all their mechanics patterns even on-content. Like 30% of the time is just nothing happening while the boss casts. By the time the boss has gotten through the "tutorial" versions of its mechanics and is starting the harder versions, it's almost dead. Nald'thal is even killable before he does the scales mechanic, the signature set piece of the entire fight. Even if you don't care about challenge at all, you have to at least acknowledge that it's not great as a spectacle experience to skip everything the boss does and kill it before you even get through 1 loop of the music. Its such a far cry from legendary bosses like Ozma, Hashmal and TG Cid.

The 6.4 normal raid and trial at least feels a -little- stiffer than usual, I think owing to what seems to be larger boss HP pools. However that may just be because it's early in the patch and no one has any new gear yet.

I think people sometimes tend to forget how well trained they might be to see markers and react fast to them. On top of this, people have different capabilities, different reaction times. I have hardly seen many mechanics, since I avoid everything beyond normal story in current content, but still, I now recognise a good number that are recurring that I would not have known about before. People in this game will be on a rather wide spectrum of this knowledge, depending on what they have unlocked and when. The story at least has to accomodate all of these people.

For some of you, the sheer number of mechanics you will have mastered in the years you've tackled the more challenging content is immense. To come up with something completely unique has to get harder and harder for content designers, just because of the amount of things you have seen. On top of this, the kits to handle said mechanics get stronger (not wider or more variant, as I understand it), you just have more and more potent tools than in synched stuff. That power creep is there in the potencies and I'd expect in the gear for everything endgamey too.

That talk about the 'midcore' feels a little off for me, when it tries to shift the normal, main story relevant modes to be challenging for people who are clearly beyond it. If the game demands said content just to advance the story, it has to be manageable for people with a vast array of experience. You can be in the endgame without having unlocked any of the older raids and most of the alliance raids. And then, some of the mechanics some of you will easily recognise and master, will be new and more challenging because of the lack of experience/ability.

The story content can only consider what it, in itself, teaches, imo. And this is getting better, because markers get more generalised and dungeons pick up toned down versions of things others might have first encountered in raids.

For me, normal content isn't that much of a breeze, especially the trials. It is not that I do not understand what I am supposed to do (I usually watch guides beforehand), but that i have a hard time seeing and reacting to some of the tells fast enough, not because of the mechanic, but because of the pacing they have. I get one right and fail the next because I've missed one crucial tell. I do get better, when I've played those things a few times, but that brilliance some of you seeminigly have on first tries eludes me.

Yes, you can answer now, that people have to improve their gameplay. But to what degree just to see the story and nothing more than that? I personally think, you might be asking more for changes to things beyond normal story content, if you seek the challenge you got used to in extremes and savages or beyond that.

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Originally Posted by ValCat

For some of you, the sheer number of mechanics you will have mastered in the years you've tackled the more challenging content is immense. To come up with something completely unique has to get harder and harder for content designers, just because of the amount of things you have seen. On top of this, the kits to handle said mechanics get stronger (not wider or more variant, as I understand it), you just have more and more potent tools than in synched stuff. That power creep is there in the potencies and I'd expect in the gear for everything endgamey too.

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Dumb argument because the moment you actually get some of those old dungeons or raids in the roulette your wipe rate just went up by 200%, currently. It's not nostalgia when you can literally experience the difference right now.

You only have things in your roulette you've unlocked. But people tend to run old content unsynched, where they will not see the actual mechanic if they do not go the extra length and look it up - and this unlocks them for roulettes too. So people end up in a roulette in things they do not know. Wiping in this doesn't necessarily mean it is harder, but that people do not know what to do. Half of the group might know essential mechanics, others might have forgotten and still others don't know them and then do not solve them. Then this very instance might not show up again for ages, so this will not change.

Veterans on the other hand, and especially those heavily invested, might have run that very instance so often, they still know everything by heart. Usually it really helps, if someone explains that one thing that kills everybody and then understands that there still is a gap between understanding and doing for people new to it.

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Originally Posted by ValCat

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Tbh i find it fair that the story content is kinda slow paced and easy, that is totally alright cause everyone no matter what skill level should be able to enjoy the games story without worrying to first play their job to perfection.

But there is a huge void of lacking content that is between the both extremes which is brainded msq content and raiding. As i said before raiding is something you usually spend a day with and it is timed content, you will get your rewards and that is it. You do the extreme and get the mount and weapons and beyond that you won't do it. That most people achieve like after a week or two? But what is with the rest of the 4months? You could say there is savage then, yes. Which you learn and then spend one day on reclears. Which leaves 6 days of the week open.

SE should maybe try to provide engaging content that will last, raiding is great and a good challenge for people but it slowly dies down and leaves a lot of time open. I honestly can't see how the argument of "Yes but once every 5 months you will be able to actually use all your healing actions for maybe a week or two" is a good argument. Healers overall are i think most hit by SE philosophy of having only hyper casual content or content in which you have maybe sometimes to heal when a raidwide comes in or a tankbuster goes off.

If we need an example, i kinda wish SE would adapt the mythic difficulty from WoW. Or in general the difficulty of dungeons from WoW. Ofc that system isn't perfect but it would be really nice if we had some sort of engaging content in the game that people could do daily which isn't just braindead roulettes. There is a reason why many raiders only sub for the raids and then leave again after they cleared and it is a huge loss for SE overall tbh. cause they seem to not be able to keep the midcore playerbase engaged.

the difficulty is trying to stay awake

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Originally Posted by Ranaku

If we need an example, i kinda wish SE would adapt the mythic difficulty from WoW. Or in general the difficulty of dungeons from WoW. Ofc that system isn't perfect but it would be really nice if we had some sort of engaging content in the game that people could do daily which isn't just braindead roulettes. There is a reason why many raiders only sub for the raids and then leave again after they cleared and it is a huge loss for SE overall tbh. cause they seem to not be able to keep the midcore playerbase engaged.

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I think WoW's exclusive concentration on mythic dungeons and raids has lost them a lot of players. You can see it in the changes they are implementing now, they are trying to shift it back again a bit. Why would they do that, if the numbers would'nt suggest it to them? I think what had worked better in WoW were the old hard modes (the ones before the mythic system was introduced not that step in between). But you'd outgear those too.

I can understand your need and wish for recurring content you find challenging. I applaud, if people with different tastes get their wish. But i think SE still will need to find something beyond msq content to do that. Because, if people (not necessarily you, you seem more nuanced) get their wish there, it might simply render the game unplayable for people below a certain skill level and for all I can see, SE doesn't want that.

Maybe they will build up on the criterion dungeon idea, make that more flexible, so it cannot be predicted as much and then have it as a roulette. I, personally, think, that is one of the better ways, since experienced players will always learn encounters fast and if they know them, they will be trivial to them. I don't think there will be any good ways to aleviate this other than making instances unpredictable. For me, these criterion dungeons seem like a test right now. I can be wrong, though.
Another thing along those lines is the duty-support I percieve as a fall back or safety net. Maybe this will someday cover all of the msq and then, you can always experience the story and the other things can be a bit more flexible.

I am not adverse to job-changes (or role changes). I just think it will always be hard to satisfy demanding players and not overwhelm struggling ones with the same content.

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Originally Posted by ValCat

I think WoW's exclusive concentration on mythic dungeons and raids has lost them a lot of players. You can see it in the changes they are implementing now, they are trying to shift it back again a bit. Why would they do that, if the numbers would'nt suggest it to them? I think what had worked better in WoW were the old hard modes (the ones before the mythic system was introduced not that step in between). But you'd outgear those too.

I can understand your need and wish for recurring content you find challenging. I applaud, if people with different tastes get their wish. But i think SE still will need to find something beyond msq content to do that. Because, if people (not necessarily you, you seem more nuanced) get their wish there, it might simply render the game unplayable for people below a certain skill level and for all I can see, SE doesn't want that.

Maybe they will build up on the criterion dungeon idea, make that more flexible, so it cannot be predicted as much and then have it as a roulette. I, personally, think, that is one of the better ways, since experienced players will always learn encounters fast and if they know them, they will be trivial to them. I don't think there will be any good ways to aleviate this other than making instances unpredictable. For me, these criterion dungeons seem like a test right now. I can be wrong, though.
Another thing along those lines is the duty-support I percieve as a fall back or safety net. Maybe this will someday cover all of the msq and then, you can always experience the story and the other things can be a bit more flexible.

I am not adverse to job-changes (or role changes). I just think it will always be hard to satisfy demanding players and not overwhelm struggling ones with the same content.

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WHat shift? If anything, Dragonflight focuses even harder on M+ and Raids for gearing. Theres also alot less casual cosmetic grinds compared to Shadowlands. Overall Dragonflight feels more like a FF14 Expansion but with more content and better combat.

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Originally Posted by Shinkuno

WHat shift? If anything, Dragonflight focuses even harder on M+ and Raids for gearing. Theres also alot less casual cosmetic grinds compared to Shadowlands. Overall Dragonflight feels more like a FF14 Expansion but with more content and better combat.

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And better story.



Oooooooooh! Im sure thats gonna tickle the "what was up with that lackluster story in EW" thread andys their funny bones in validation

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

And better story.



Oooooooooh! Im sure thats gonna tickle the "what was up with that lackluster story in EW" thread andys their funny bones in validation

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Couldnt care about that tbh. WoWs story was always a rough justification why we are killing someone or something. And FF14s story is every shonen anime ever with just as much filler and needless fanservice.

I shouldn't have brought it up, since it might seriously derail the topic. My bad, sorry. Not talking about huge shifts here (that's why I have said 'a bit') and I don't play, just go by my friends' experiences (all a bit more like me). But with that game, even little things for groups like RPers are a surprise for me. These things have just never happened before. Very, very low expectations here.

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Originally Posted by Ranaku

SE should maybe try to provide engaging content that will last, raiding is great and a good challenge for people but it slowly dies down and leaves a lot of time open. I honestly can't see how the argument of "Yes but once every 5 months you will be able to actually use all your healing actions for maybe a week or two" is a good argument.

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Many people play FFXIV precisely because they can do their mandatory reclears for an hour each week and then go back to playing other games. Raiding in FFXIV is largely a chore because it’s a game of Simon Says and rote memorization. It’s a “dance”, as people call it. Except dancing isn’t a video game. It’s just a chore that you have to do every Tuesday because you have to, but thankfully it’s over quickly and you can play games that are actually fun.

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If we need an example, i kinda wish SE would adapt the mythic difficulty from WoW.

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Uh oh! You said the wrong thing! Uh…Bobby Kotick! Breast milk in the fridge! Bill Cosby! Shadowlands! Borrowed power! Haha, you’ve been defeated, now give up and bow to the best MMO of all time, which of course is the game that lets you play other games.

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

By the time you get to end game normal raids and expert roulette, you should have a few hundred hours in the game. You ARE a long time player.

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MSQ dosnt teach you that much when you look only at the MSQ ( it's mostly story driven).
It's easy to miss the other alliance raids too (60,70,80 ones)
1-90 took me 4 weeks ..i have played for 4+months now...and i still learn new things.
Many hours ingame dosnt necessarily mean = a lot of experience --> that depends on the content you interact with ingame.
(For all u know somone could spend 1year just doing RP..)

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Originally Posted by ValCat

I think WoW's exclusive concentration on mythic dungeons and raids has lost them a lot of players. You can see it in the changes they are implementing now, they are trying to shift it back again a bit. Why would they do that, if the numbers would'nt suggest it to them? I think what had worked better in WoW were the old hard modes (the ones before the mythic system was introduced not that step in between). But you'd outgear those too.

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You need to explain what you're talking about here - Because I'm not quite sure that's true.

How are they shifting it back, and what's the difference between old hard modes, old Mythic, and new Mythic? How are they focusing on raids?

The dungeon scaling with Normal, Heroic, and Mythic is a varied system of all degrees. Hard modes are just steps without a proper ramp. Like how we have Normal and Savage, there's no ramp. It's a single large step up into pain. WoW has ramps players use.

A lot of XIV players don't understand how WoW dungeons work, so using blanket statements gives them a bad impression - When it's not bad, it's just different.

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

By the time you get to end game normal raids and expert roulette, you should have a few hundred hours in the game. You ARE a long time player.

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Go do 300 hours of MSQ, not only do they rarely see combat content, but the content they DO end up doing will be much easier than if they did it on release. Chances are you won't be gearing much because you'll just always have max ilvl for each expac.

If you're DPS, you can get hit by more than half of the mechanics and be fine, then the fight is over because most fights with high ilvl are only half as long anyway. If you're Tank, you're basically invincible.

As soon as they hit current expac at min-ilvl, it may as well be a completely different game to them, where they need to actually dodge mechanics more than once a fight.

Normal Raids pre-Endwalker are a joke because of ilvl scaling.

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Originally Posted by R041

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How are they shifting it back, and what's the difference between old hard modes, old Mythic, and new Mythic? How are they focusing on raids?

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Okay, I don't buy into the notion of ranking games universally. Different things in different games just fit preferences more or less.

For the dungeons:
Pre-Draenor, you wouldn't have had that triplet of dungeon difficulties. You had normals and heroic dungeons. I, personally (!), liked that better.
The introduction of mythic dungeons was meant to reflect higher raid difficulty in content for smaller groups. Mythic + deepens that system (it is a progression system where the dungeons get increasingly more difficult). So yes, more effort went into that content since Draenor.
And WoW's always put emphasis on their raids, that is nothing new. The focus of the game is much more on the endgame, than it is here.

WoW had become increasingly difficult to play with alts (this would take a lot of time to explain) and you need to do that in contrast to ff14 to experience different classes.

The shifts I have heard about, are small things, really. Toys you can use for RP (like skybox changes, or that just stay a bit), the one group that stuck with WoW forever and was never catered to. Or the halfed cost to upgrade gear for alts, that I've heard about, more satisfying world exploration. More and divers overworld-content. If they'd been sure that a focus on pure progression on main characters were the werewithal, they would have stuck with that, imo.