I think SE needs to focus on making players feel important again.

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

A quick trip to the forums in its early days says otherwise. People werent peaches and cream with 2.0 nor in HW nor in SB.

Stop being in denial, its one of the biggest contributing factors in why this game refuses to evolve and be better.

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People are singing praises of the game still in Endwalker. What’s your point? That you can find dissent in any period of time? Is this news to you? =S…..

But I do agree with you the game needs to evolve out of this philosophy.

As far as my takes go ARR wasn’t that good, but it was okay. heavensward got better but the game hit its stride in SB.

Honestly the only thing that should’ve been removed was the TP system and kept around that level of job complexity. This is where SHB got it wrong by beginning to homogenize jobs and simplify too much. And EW continued that trend and that’s what has now made it awful.

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Originally Posted by Ath192

It actually feels awful to use lilybell or panhaima in a dungeon. It’s so overkill I actually feel like I wasted a hugely powerful ability…. That will never be needed for most of the game…

I know this is different in savage and ultimate, of course, but it’s getting to the point where you actually feel terrible using them elsewhere.

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I can't speak to Ultimate as I've never done those, but you absolutely don't need your whole kit in Savage unless something is going HORRIBLY wrong and at that point, it's a wipe anyway because fights no longer allow you to recover. There are so many body checks that you will wipe the moment people start dropping. Raidwide attacks in Savage are timed in a way that ensures either healer can just slap down an OGCD heal and not even think about it. It's kinda sad. Between little thought required and the fact that body checks have made rezing useless outside of prog, it makes me wonder why healers are even a role at this point.

The reason it feels like it's come to a head with Ew is because it's the expansion that has made the most obvious missteps - post 6.0 [no content longevity, poor rewards, missfires in the execution of certain content] and has also failed to correct or address longer standing issues [like loot distribution, job balance, encounter design etc] so it's sorta holding over all those issues of a much better received expac AND people are really bored so are gonna fight more.

Imo, why things felt better in past expansions compared to now, is simply because the historic response to issues from devs, especially with battle content, is to just remove remove remove - every time. Aggro management gone, timers on many jobs gone, healer dps kits gone, job synergy buffs gone, varied buff timers gone, OT responsibilities gone, TP gone, Accuracy gone - there's more I'm forgetting and I am not saying that all of these were good things! There are several listed there I'm glad to see the back of but we never got anything else in their place and it's just kinda reached a breaking point. This is what I think of when I wish for more complexity in battle content in general. It's like having phantom limb syndrome!

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

A quick trip to the forums in its early days says otherwise. People werent peaches and cream with 2.0 nor in HW nor in SB.

Stop being in denial, its one of the biggest contributing factors in why this game refuses to evolve and be better.

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Heavensward wasn't perfect but it was the game's first expansion so players were understandably willing to give the development team more room for error. That isn't the case with Endwalker as by their own admission they had material for multiple expansions but decided to squeeze them together and focus heavily on 'slice of life' and 'relaxed pace' content at the expense of content with staying power.

By this point the development team should have realised what is needed and what isn't for an expansion to have longevity. That's why Endwalker is more harshly criticised than Heavensward.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

The difficulty curve in normal modes feels almost completely static from basically level 50 to 90 and that really shouldn't be the case especially when healers/tanks keep getting expanded kits that oft end up feeling like unneeded fluff outside of extreme and higher content.

You don't even need to burn all of your CDs to do wall to wall pulls while maintaining 100% uptime on DPS nowdays.

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It isn't even the kits themselves but how comically undertone everything has become. Nothing epitomizes this more than Aetherfront where the last boss quite literally cannot kill Warrior. Despite intentionally collecting eight vuln and standing in three intersecting AoEs, I only took just slightly over 100k, which didn't proc Holmgang. What's even the point of dodging mechanics if they're so pitifully weak? Obviously, a DPS can't get away with this but it certainly highlights why healers feel so useless in a lot of content nowadays.

The dev team seems to be obsessed with making everything below EX a participation experience and nothing else. You can't fail unless you outright try, on purpose, for the most part. I certainly can't speak for everyone but it does make the content and jobs themselves much less enjoyable to play when I know nothing actually hurts.

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Originally Posted by Kreyd

Does anyone remember how hard simple trash mobs in 50-60 dungeons could hit?

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They still hit that hard in leveling dungeons. It has a lot to do with the fact our gear is far better than the dungeons we are doing. Only the most casual players, who only ever equip dungeon loot, experience a high amount of damage coming in from patch dungeons. But our tools to deal with it are also better than in ARR (for example a PLD wouldn't have Holy Sheltron, a regen and constant healing from Requiescat attacks.

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Do you remember stuff like the wasps in Temple of Qarn or the poison in Aurum Vale?

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We did have interruptable mobs in Shadowbringers that, if not interrupted, significantly buffed their damage output or did strong raid-wide aoes that could almost wipe depending on the healer. But obviously healers and tanks have so many tools to handle even this that many of them push through it despite tanks not knowing what interrupts and stuns are.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Heavensward wasn't perfect but it was the game's first expansion so players were understandably willing to give the development team more room for error.

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It was also the case that they listened more and expressed they were willing to. 1% of 300,000 players was 3,000. Now 1% is 12,000. The minorities have become louder and the division has clouded everything, so none of the minorities can be ignored. Instead they confuse everything for the developers so that they don't really know what to do or what to listen to.

Although things weren't great then, it was off the back of the failure that was 1.0, this extremely convenient version of an MMORPG (with /teleport and quests that only ask you to kill 3 enemies), the subsequent great story, a feeling that the story kept getting better and better, and that the visual and acoustic design got better with every patch with dungeons like Sohm Al and The Vault. When we got Final Steps, I was like wow! Then Xelphatol's visual detail just amazed me to look at it. Then Baelsar's Wall topped it. Then we got Stormblood's Sirensong Sea, Ala Mhigo with all the busy fighting going on in the background, The Swallow's Compass, The Burn completely topped everything for me and then we got Ghimlyt Dark which topped that.

At that point, the next dungeons like Holminster Switch were amazing, but that's really where it started to hit diminishing returns. They made dungeons as good as they could, visually and I'm sure it's not that they aren't making improvements, they just sort of reached the peak, so the "constantly impressed with how they keep making dungeons look better" became one of "this is just normal, it's always this good".

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By this point the development team should have realised what is needed and what isn't for an expansion to have longevity. That's why Endwalker is more harshly criticised than Heavensward.

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Yes, because staying power obviously hasn't been their goal. That was true in Shadowbringers to a degree, but WoW refugees would constantly talk highly of a quote from Yoshi-P saying he was alright with people taking breaks to play other games. With such overwhelming support for the concept of games not trying to keep you for long, is it any wonder that they double-downed on it in Endwalker?

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Originally Posted by Bonoki

I've been here since 2.X and remember when people loved it when things were challenging back then. As more new players and casuals come to the game, I've felt more like I'm the outcast despite being here the whole time. Like I'm the one who doesn't fit in anymore as the game has gotten dumbed down to appease the new wave of influx gamers.

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The problem with that example is there's a very easy thing that disputes it. Pharos Sirius. People would refuse to unlock it or leave on pop because it was more difficult than the other dungeons in that roulette. I remember seeing posts from people who said they felt punished by being unable to do the roulette since it required all the dungeons being unlocked.

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Originally Posted by Kreyd

It actually feels like difficulty gets down once you've hit 50/60 dungeons. I wipe more often in old content than I ever would in 90 dungeons. 90 dungeons are just wall to wall pulls, where I throw my endgame rotation like a maniac at trash that has the size of an ARR boss, but still dies in 20 seconds max.

Does anyone remember how hard simple trash mobs in 50-60 dungeons could hit? Do you remember stuff like the wasps in Temple of Qarn or the poison in Aurum Vale? Hells, do you remember Diablos in Amdapor?! What happened to stuff like that???

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Most groups I was in could cheese the diabolos fight.

As for leveling content in 2.0, part of the reason it was harder was because ilvl sync worked differently back then. Originally it synced you to nq gear stats, not hq gear stats. Which means you were nerfed going in over the level of the dungeon. When they changed that stuff magically got way easier.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

The problem with that example is there's a very easy thing that disputes it. Pharos Sirius. People would refuse to unlock it or leave on pop because it was more difficult than the other dungeons in that roulette. I remember seeing posts from people who said they felt punished by being unable to do the roulette since it required all the dungeons being unlocked.

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Well; it should be mandatory to unlock in order to run roulettes TBH. Since roulettes are optional by nature. It’s not only the difficulty that people cheese. People were cheesing the hell out of the praetorian and Castrum cutscenes and what did they do? They made the players put up with them. And I would argue that it made the game better, even if I personally don’t want to sit there and watch Gaius monologue for the millionth time I recognize it makes the gaming experience better.

The same applies to challenge. IRL people will avoid challenge too, but often times having to deal with it you realize the experience made your life better.

I didn’t want to put the effort in to work out and get in shape at one point in my life, but after putting it in I am thankful I did and I am glad and healthy.

We just shouldn’t be catering to people who don’t want to play the game. We should reward those that do.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Heavensward wasn't perfect but it was the game's first expansion so players were understandably willing to give the development team more room for error.

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Are you sure about that? I wasn't involved with the raid scene back then, but from what has been reported, Gordias was so ridiculous groups had to prog Faust... A gate boss. Players were dropping in droves, and the FFXIV dev team nearly killed their own game right after resurrecting it in ARR.

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By this point the development team should have realised what is needed and what isn't for an expansion to have longevity. That's why Endwalker is more harshly criticised than Heavensward.

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Again. Are you sure? I would actually say HW is more criticized now than it's ever been due to players acknowledging what a clusterfuq it was. From my own perspective, EW is criticized for different reasons. Instead of there being essentially no rhyme or reason to how jobs and encounters were designed back in 2.x, the flak the dev team faces now is for homogenization and over simplification, which was essentially their answer to the criticism from the past.

To help put things in perspective, tanks for example spent as much time as possible out of tank stance in order to maximize their damage output. They were quite literally telling the dev team, "Eff tank stance. That crap is for saps who don't know how to play tank." Their response: Since you would rather not switch stances because you have to sacrifice damage, we will just take it away and instead make it so everything you do generates enmity as long as it is on.

Tanks didn't like that too much, did they? Now, I'm not trying to gloat or say tanks got their just desserts. The dev team could have responded one of two ways. Either eliminate stance dancing, or to punish tanks for remaining in offensive stance in a similar fashion that DPS get erased when they greed excessively. One choice brings us to current design in EW, and the other moves them in the way of Gordias. These kind of decisions were made across all roles in the game for their own respective causations. If you were calling the shots, what would you decide?

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Heavensward wasn't perfect but it was the game's first expansion so players were understandably willing to give the development team more room for error. That isn't the case with Endwalker as by their own admission they had material for multiple expansions but decided to squeeze them together and focus heavily on 'slice of life' and 'relaxed pace' content at the expense of content with staying power.

By this point the development team should have realised what is needed and what isn't for an expansion to have longevity. That's why Endwalker is more harshly criticised than Heavensward.

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The devs took a break after 3.0 released, so there ended up being a 6 month gap between 3.0 and 3.1. Players rioted. I remember claims that there was nothing to do, gordias killed the raid scene, and the game was going to die. Diadem with the weapons? People rioted. People HATED stuff in heavensward. I remember people complaining about the warriors of darkness thing.

The problem with HW circles back to the devs extremely long pipeline and how they are so slow to respond to both criticism and the community when they get it in their head what went wrong

Let’s take the most famous example, HW PLD, PLD had 2.5 problems

1) it focused on physical mitigation in an expansion full of magical damage
2) it did 20% less damage than the other 2 for no real reason
2.5) hallowed’s long CD meant it struggled a bit in mitigation when there were fight timelines where high damage fell between the CD of hallowed and the other 2

This is the most commonly cited example by the devs as to why all must be sacrificed at the alter of balance, but so much of this was easily fixed in an emergency patch (redesigning a job is not something you can just shove into a dev timeline, but buffing potency by 20% and adding magic defence to Shelton is). So the devs respond so slowly to their own problems they make them worse in the eyes of the community and then use this as homogenisation justification

Would any of us really oppose an extra x.1.1 sort of balancing patch is very now and then to fix issues on balancing that crop up allowing them to stop being so afraid of remotely interesting job design.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

This might be a hot take, and I say this as someone who can heal, and tank some of the spicier pulls in like Bardam's Mettle or Mt. Gulg, but I feel like wall to wall pulls are not good gameplay. It is a hyper-efficient, but lazy strategy that has lead to stale dungeon design. And it's frustrating because CBU3 knows how to design engaging trash between bosses like in certain alliance raids, in large scale exploration zone raids, and in variant/criterion dungeons. I don't think dungeons should be incredibly difficult, they need to be approachable by everyone, but that is not an excuse for them to provide lazy gameplay. It really feels like dungeons are designed for players who only care about getting easy currency as opposed to those who want an adventure. The customer is always right, I guess...

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I'm quoting myself, whatever... I stand by these feelings.

I keep hearing this argument that the game is for casuals, and casuals require the game to be this easy or they'll quit.

I'm getting older, and real life responsibilities are eating into the time I have to game. If I want something mind-numbing and risk-free... I just curl up on the couch and watch Netflix.

We play games to have fun and get the feeling of overcoming some sort of challenge. The casual 30 year old something moms and dads who could've just watched a movie but chose to log onto 14 instead... You have to ask, why are they here? if zero risk entertainment was what we wanted, we wouldn't load up a video game in the first place.

I can tell you why I choose to spend my limited time playing games, sometimes very hard games. It's because I want my limited free time to be as enjoyable and as engaging as possible. There's a simple pleasure that comes with getting better at something. It takes your mind off of boring stressful life stuff and lets you focus on slowly hacking at away at something and enjoying the incremental improvements that come along with it.

Assuming casuals can't also enjoy difficulty is just... wrong. And more than a little insulting.

Some other thoughts. I've basically stopped tanking ""expert"" dungeons because I found myself using pathfinding techniques that like play offline with bots use to find the fastest route though a space so that I could start the next wall2wall as fast as possible. Not because I was trying to speed run, but because I knew if I wasn't playing at maximum efficiency I would no longer be another player, but an obstacle for the other players in the instance. I truly hate how these kinds of attitudes have shaped dungeon design.

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Originally Posted by Grizzlpaw

I keep hearing this argument that the game is for casuals, and casuals require the game to be this easy or they'll quit.

I'm getting older, and real life responsibilities are eating into the time I have to game. If I want something mind-numbing and risk-free... I just curl up on the couch and watch Netflix.

We play games to have fun and get the feeling of overcoming some sort of challenge. The casual 30 year old something moms and dads who could've just watched a movie but chose to log onto 14 instead... You have to ask, why are they here? if zero risk entertainment was what we wanted, we wouldn't load up a video game in the first place.

I can tell you why I choose to spend my limited time playing games, sometimes very hard games. It's because I want my limited free time to be as enjoyable and as engaging as possible. There's a simple pleasure that comes with getting better at something. It takes your mind off of boring stressful life stuff and lets you focus on slowly hacking at away at something and enjoying the incremental improvements that come along with it.

Assuming casuals can't also enjoy difficulty is just... wrong. And more than a little insulting.

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These kinds of '' I feel this way so everyone must also feel the same '' posts are unproductive. I'm a casual player and I have zero interest in '' getting better '' or tackling harder content.

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Originally Posted by Tehmon

These kinds of '' I feel this way so everyone must also feel the same '' posts are unproductive. I'm a casual player and I have zero interest in '' getting better '' or tackling harder content.

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Good for you. You can do crafting and gathering, housing, RP, fashion, gold saucer, join community events and god forbid you may do a Fate. Don’t take this the wrong way, but, Casual doesn’t mean no challenge/ not having to be engaged in gameplay/combat. I get there are a lot of people who don’t want any sort of gameplay whatsoever other than walking around and chatting, but joining a party of 4/8 people for a dungeon/trial/alliance raid is on you and you only. If you don’t want to put the bare minimum because “I’m casual” then you don’t want to play the game to begin with.

Duty support is just right there to help you clear dungeons and trials without having to worry about other people. Despite it being a good system I personally think it will kill a huge aspect of the MMO part FF14 has which is socialising and communication within the said content.

Allow me to make myself clear here, we’re not talking about just increasing difficulty “haha we’re hardcore players yay”, it’s more about your efforts and contributions having some value within the kind of content you’re doing, may it be in dungeons, trials and alliance raids, Which doesn’t have any value currently btw.

I don't think everyone shares my opinion. This thread alone is proof that people have many different takes on this topic. But I think casual players are one demographic that gets heavily misrepresented. Not all of us are allergic to challenge. The key takeaway is that even among casuals, many of us still enjoy difficulty. The amount we enjoy will vary, but I think this is a good reason why jobs should offer varying levels of difficulty. The ideal in my opinion is easy to play difficult to master.

Hard mode dungeons would also be a dream come true. Maybe one day.

Endwalker's dungeons and alliance raids are some of the most boring content in the game imo. They are just way too easy and predictable. Endwalker as a whole was disappointing to me with regards to content I want to do in the long term, especially due to the lack of Field Operations.

Dungeons are pack of mobs -> wall pull -> boss -> repeat. Alliance raids are cleared without wipes day 1 of release and require 0 coordination, being also just trash mobs -> boss fight -> repeat. Where is the creativity? Old dungeons had hard modes and old alliance raids had way more interesting mechanics (look at Void Ark or Ivalice, even Nier...). Both of these contents have been very disappointing on a GAMEPLAY level, regardless of how much players enjoy the twelve theme and find it interesting.

IMO the occasional criterion dungeon feels a lot more like a dungeon I would want to replay, requirement coordination and skill to beat. The normal dungeons should have a HARD mode that should be at this level of difficulty. Don't come at me with "oh it's a lot of work"... no it's not, it's just pure lazyness that made them stop doing dungeon Hard Modes that were available in ARR and HW. Sure there is criterion now, but that is 1 dungeon per what... expansion almost? Way to little of a hard dungeon experience for players who want that, and with lackluster rewards. I want to prepare for a dungeon, look up strats, bring necessary items, and actually adventure into them... not just "oh here we go again time to wall to wall and kill the boss easily yawn". World of Warcraft has WAY better dungeons and that's just shameful.

Alliance raid also needs a huge doze of creativity. There should be Alliance (Hard, Extreme or Savage) with a raid experience similar to something like Baldesion Annex (Eureka) or the Bozja raids. Those are actual multi party raids, that are fun to do, creative and filled with interesting mechanics. Parties have to split to accomplish different objectives, and prepare accordingly.

I'm literally a nobody that can just come up with these ideas to make Dungeons and Raids more longterm and interesting projects for the player, WHY ON EARTH CAN'T PROFESSIONAL DEVS not even bother to think as little as this and make these things interesting? I really don't understand. Yes I'm glad they are adding Field Operations again in DT, but please also fix the monotony of dungeons and alliance raids, thank you.

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Originally Posted by IvoryBadge

Duty support is just right there to help you clear dungeons and trials without having to worry about other people. Despite it being a good system I personally think it will kill a huge aspect of the MMO part FF14 has which is socialising and communication within the said content.

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Ah, it's interesting that you mention that, because Duty Support as it is currently is having the opposite effect I think. Yes, it is meant for people to enjoy FFXIV as a solo experience, without the pressure of other people. But if you, the player, die because you didn't know how the mechanic worked or because you weren't paying attention, you automatically wipe the entire boss fight, whereas with a normal party someone could rez you. Not to mention how the NPCs don't use aoes, or can be very, very late with healing sometimes. This makes fights a little more punishing and I think frustrating for newer, casual players... And paradoxically, I'm enjoying the raised stakes! The Dead Ends' 2 first bosses were really fun for me because of Duty Support! That's also why I've been running and farming all variant dungeons solo lol

So I'm not sure it's really "filtering out" the people who might benefit the most from a solo, pressure-free experience. I've raised an eyebrow whenever my roulette put me into a Hydaelyn trial with only one new player, and I think this is the reason why people would still rather queue and wait and suffer the wrath of other players rather than get an instant access to the duty with NPCs.

I'm fine with the Trust/Duty Support addition so long they don't change the vanilla non trust-version of the duties or forces all future duties to abide the AI limitation. I.e. all these 'must reset to center of arena' quirks that they add to many of these 'reworked duties' are annoying af. Or that part where they literally deletes the transmogs in Skalla. Is it so hard to make the AI be like "Oh what's this circl-- WOOPS" to keep that?

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Originally Posted by Grizzlpaw

It is a common trap to assume that the opinions we hold are secretly held by a silent majority. That is not the position I am coming from. The opposite in fact. I am pushing back against the narrative that the silent majority of casuals all want to keep the game as it is now. We assume they will quit at the drop of a hat if we raise the skill floor or skill ceiling even a little bit. We assume a risk of failure will drive casuals away. As a casual myself who's getting older, I thought I'd add a different perspective.

I think the skill floor is great where it is now. I like that 14 is an accessible game, but I'd love it if we could also raise the skill ceiling. I think that would be a good compromise the devs can make.

How about you? What is the content you enjoy doing the most? What is your biggest fear (if any) with raising the game's skill ceiling?

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This is not about fears, if this game becomes too frustrating for me to play I'm just going to quit instead of making several threads about it on this forum. If the devs decide you are the most profitable demographic to go after, I'm not going to stand in their way.

But from my experience and knowledge, the '' difficult '' casual content that exists in the game isn't exactly popular. And the difficult casual content that is too difficult has gotten nerfed before, like Ivalice. That tells me that a sizeable portion of casual players aren't exactly interested in getting better, much less for your enjoyment's sake.

Then there's just a general issue of things like '' skill ceiling, skill floor, engagement, value, difficulty '' and such being very much subjective things that varies from each player (which takes into consideration previous history with games, MMOs and the amount of time they've put into FFXIV) so finding consensus is difficult within players and devs. But of course, this doesn't mean that devs shouldn't try, but it also means that I'm not going to be offended when they don't necessarily hit the mark. This applies to most casual content in the game: some are great, some are dreadful. This is true to Endwalker and all the expansions before it.

Lastly, when we talk about casual content, sure you might raise the difficulty (a bit), and it'll be refreshing for a while but once you learn it, you have learned it and we are back to the starting point of casual content not being engaging enough. Some might think '' this is great, people are going to get better so all the next content is going to be harder as well '' but now you are on the fast track lane of doing real damage to enticing new players. MMOs just aren't the place where people go to test their skills, when there are other much better options available in both the single player and multiplayer genre of games.

In conclusion, do as you will, but I really don't think what you are suggesting is the correct maneuver for long term player satisfaction. And personally I don't think devs are being lazy for not accomplishing difficult things. Shoot me.

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Originally Posted by SchwarzwaelderTorte

Ah, it's interesting that you mention that, because Duty Support as it is currently is having the opposite effect I think.

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Personally I’ve only tried duty support once when it came out during EW 2nd trial i think? And yeah it was kinda bad i had to leave mid duty and queue up for the trial. I just assumed it got more polished since then and considering it keeps getting updated, But overall it’s still doable.

On the note of newer players in cutscenes, I genuinely enjoy having more sprouts during trials or alliance raids because it may shake things up a bit instead of the repetitive scenario of smooth 8/24 players hitting things till duty is over, which i think contributed in sparking this thread.

What we need to do stuff before getting actual rewards ??? NAYYYYYYYYYYYYY....
and "but i saw somebody die", "my pf/df group wiped" and because of that youre argument is incorrect/invalid and SE cant be wrong. PRAISE YOSHIDA - incoming.

Dungeons have no reason to exist at the moment. Make them Solo/NPC instance and nothing is lost or missing. No... wait when i play with NPC's there is sometimes a challenge because the NPC's are a little special with mechs.

Holy Trinity is also a empty shell. Tanks are DPS with defense CD's and healer's are gutted DPS with "can make the BLM survive his/her leylines a bit longer" CD's.

SE does not understand "easy to learn and hard to master" nor do they understand difficulty or rewards.
Give us the "FEELING" of the class and a complexity that allows us to dive deep if we wish to but allows on the same side Mrs-i-roll-my-cat-on-the-keyboard to beat the story. Not that hard.

If instructions are not clear : it is and was done by MANY games already. Look at them and look for "why do players like it". We are not in 1985 and nobody has a clue what they are doing or everything is new.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

HW PLD, PLD had 2.5 problems

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It was honestly frustrating that they didn't give PLD magical mitigation back then. I didn't understand why it took them so long, at the time, but as the expansions went on, it became clear they don't think they can make changes except every 2-3 years when an expansion releases. They have made some little overhauls in patches since, such as the mini Ninja and PLD reworks, so at least they've tried to respond in patches now.

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Originally Posted by Grizzlpaw

I keep hearing this argument that the game is for casuals, and casuals require the game to be this easy or they'll quit.

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If you do roulettes for years as I have, you regularly encounter sprouts and returners (flower icons). If a mechanic is not obvious, they are usually flat out unaware of it and never learn it. Or they just die to it repeatedly. It's hopeless. If you watch videos of them playing, they have damage buffs on their hotbar and never press them. Tanks have damage reduction buffs on their hotbar and often don't seem to use them at all. Unless SE makes it obvious and hard to mess up, many of these players just, don't do these things for the few days they return to the game for. I observed this happening regularly for years until SE made it hard to mess everything up and made all the mechanics extremely obvious in Endwalker.

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I'm getting older, and real life responsibilities are eating into the time I have to game. If I want something mind-numbing and risk-free... I just curl up on the couch and watch Netflix.

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Some people, like yourself, dig challenges even as they get older. But not everyone is like that. Many people are just hopeless. This is true in all professions. For example, some people are just not capable of programming even if you explain it to them for years. While other people can continue to do it into their 70s.

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We assume they will quit at the drop of a hat if we raise the skill floor or skill ceiling even a little bit.

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I don't think they quit at the drop of a hat. But over a long period of time, you can get lost in the overwhelming complexity of a game you don't understand. Take a game with several layers of skill trees that aren't very intuitive. That sort of thing can just put you off even logging into a game.

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I think the skill floor is great where it is now. I like that 14 is an accessible game, but I'd love it if we could also raise the skill ceiling.

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I agree. I think it is challenging to raise the ceiling without raising the floor, but not impossible. The primary way I've seen that the ceiling can be raised is by adding utility actions. For example, resurrects, raid-wide mitigation or damage reduction, rescue, knockback immunity, positional nullification, gap closers, retreat jumps. These actions are great, but thinking of more ideas like it, which aren't required but show skill and situational awareness, are one way to increase the ceiling without affecting the floor.

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Originally Posted by jdgev

Endwalker's dungeons and alliance raids are some of the most boring content in the game imo. They are just way too easy and predictable.

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The Thaleia alliance raid I was in yesterday was actually a near-wipe in many of the fights. It had a lot of new and returning players in. I was resurrecting a lot on SMN trying to hold it together. Our tank abandoned it so a tank buster destroyed me, because I had the most enmity. I see deaths pretty regularly in the latest dungeon too, especially to the second boss and occasionally to the last boss.

All of which begs the question of if it's that they are too easy, or if it's that the knowledge and experience of people on this forum has just outgrown them.

They are also just well-telegraphed now compared to prior expansions. The spider might not have shown us where it was going to go in advance for example and the quicksand would stay up for a few minutes instead of disappearing. Oschon probably wouldn't telegraph the bows like it does so that we just have to find the little arrows without any aoe telegraphs or indicators. AoEs would probably remain placed for a while, the adds would need separating, some players would have to place things that can be placed wrong.

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it's just pure lazyness that made them stop doing dungeon Hard Modes that were available in ARR and HW.

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They weren't hard. They were essentially just "sidequest dungeons". They only seem harder now because the sidequest dungeons didn't get revamped like main ones did.

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Sure there is criterion now, but that is 1 dungeon per what... expansion almost?

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3 per expansion. 3 in Endwalker, expecting 3 in Dawntrail.

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Alliance raid also needs a huge doze of creativity. There should be Alliance (Hard, Extreme or Savage) with a raid experience similar to something like Baldesion Annex (Eureka) or the Bozja raids.

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The phrasing suggested we're gonna have a large-scale raid to "clear" in Dawntrail's Field Operation.

But I agree it would be nice to have Bozja and Zadnor level difficulty in Alliance Raids. Particularly like CLL with its first boss split, rescuing prisoners, only telegraphing things once and not on subsequent casts, having 8 people fight a different boss that can wipe the raid, maybe like Dalriada's last boss where it was so fast that most of the raid wiped to it, where everyone has a different number of steps to take in the last boss of DR, or something that caught people like the hot and cold mechanics.

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Originally Posted by Tehmon

MMOs just aren't the place where people go to test their skills

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Why is an MMO not a place for people to test their skills?

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Originally Posted by Hycinthus

Why is an MMO not a place for people to test their skills?

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People CAN test their skill in MMOs and they certainly do, but MMORPGs don't offer the same ease of picking them up as many other competitive games, the barrier of entry is big and previous gaming experience will help you little, as things like rigid long rotations and triple the amount of buttons you need to press compared to most other games are things that only really exist within the MMO genre. This comment was specifically highlighting that for the most part it SEEMS that casual people don't really care about getting better in MMOs, and I also might add that if the barrier of entry is raised significantly in casual story content, it will be detrimental to the game in my opinion, as people don't seem to be joining the game to test their skill unless they are into hardcore raiding. And, well, these people do hardcore raiding, and are mostly concerned about hardcore raiding, nothing else.

^Good Post.

The bit about sprouts failing miserably due to not hitting their buttons is a good point to bring up. This isn't actually a FF14 specific issue. It's a very common problem in the multiplayer online genre. Not just in MMOs but even other games I've played. Off the top of my head Warframe, LoL, and GW2 all have this problem too. Arguably far worse than 14 does.

The problem stems from games not adequately teaching players the ropes. There's a lot SE could do to help with this.

The big one is giving new players their buttons core buttons much sooner. Your basic 1-2-3 combo shouldn't take 26 levels to unlock. Your basic AoE should really be available by the 1st dungeon. Skills like Holy that stun can offer players a weaker version so they can start to play around with these buttons sooner and start getting acquainted with them. By level 50 you should have all the important bits of your end game rotation fully unlocked.

The game should also do a much better job of communicating how and when to use role actions, buffs, and situational utility.

Here's one example. in the Dancer job quest, the game can direct the player to select a dance partner, then it can ask them to heal an ally. The game will ask them to try to position themselves so that the heal from themselves and their dance partner land on their target. Then it can ask them to do it again but with more stakes attached. Little things like this sprinkled throughout your game go a long way.

SE could also consider a job-specific hall of the novice.

There's a lot that SE can do to help ease these frustrations. A lot of them come from players not knowing what the game expects them to do. It's not an quick and easy problem to solve, but it is solvable.

Even if the community is largely opposed to raising the game's difficulty curve. I think there's a lot of value in revamping the way 14 teaches new and intermediate players. If nothing else, everyone's daily roulettes might go a bit smoother.

The current ceiling for skillset and threat level is so low, game actually rewards mediocrity. I fear more for my life doing open world events in GW2 than dungeons in FFXIV. There's no sense of "punishment" or failure of any sorts in normal content, except savage and ultimates. People are right to criticize Myths raids, I think it's worse than CT. Game is becoming easier each patch because SE wants to invite the newer and younger generation in, but they forget the ones that keep the game moving are actually adults.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

I'm fine with the Trust/Duty Support addition so long they don't change the vanilla non trust-version of the duties or forces all future duties to abide the AI limitation. I.e. all these 'must reset to center of arena' quirks that they add to many of these 'reworked duties' are annoying af. Or that part where they literally deletes the transmogs in Skalla. Is it so hard to make the AI be like "Oh what's this circl-- WOOPS" to keep that?

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I'm having a hard time accepting that the recent dungeon changes were made for the trust ai. The castrum abania boss with the elemental weakness&immunity was changed even though stripped to the studs the mechanic is indistinguishable from any other donut aoe. Something the trust npcs can already handle in other dungeons.

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Originally Posted by Grizzlpaw

^Good Post.

The bit about sprouts failing miserably due to not hitting their buttons is a good point to bring up. This isn't actually a FF14 specific issue. It's a very common problem in the multiplayer online genre. Not just in MMOs but even other games I've played. Off the top of my head Warframe, LoL, and GW2 all have this problem too. Arguably far worse than 14 does.

The problem stems from games not adequately teaching players the ropes. There's a lot SE could do to help with this.

The big one is giving new players their buttons core buttons much sooner. Your basic 1-2-3 combo shouldn't take 26 levels to unlock. Your basic AoE should really be available by the 1st dungeon. Skills like Holy that stun can offer players a weaker version so they can start to play around with these buttons sooner and start getting acquainted with them. By level 50 you should have all the important bits of your end game rotation fully unlocked.

The game should also do a much better job of communicating how and when to use role actions, buffs, and situational utility.

Here's one example. in the Dancer job quest, the game can direct the player to select a dance partner, then it can ask them to heal an ally. The game will ask them to try to position themselves so that the heal from themselves and their dance partner land on their target. Then it can ask them to do it again but with more stakes attached. Little things like this sprinkled throughout your game go a long way.

SE could also consider a job-specific hall of the novice.

There's a lot that SE can do to help ease these frustrations. A lot of them come from players not knowing what the game expects them to do. It's not an quick and easy problem to solve, but it is solvable.

Even if the community is largely opposed to raising the game's difficulty curve. I think there's a lot of value in revamping the way 14 teaches new and intermediate players. If nothing else, everyone's daily roulettes might go a bit smoother.

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While I'm generally of the belief that the game should teach you how to play the game, and you shouldn't need people on youtube and wiki sites to tell you how to play the game correctly, the issue here is that nobody really wants to learn video games. They want to pick it up and gradually become better. If you're bombarded with tutorials, you are going to get annoyed and frustrated pretty quickly, and it takes you out of immersing yourself into the video game world which is definitely detrimental for an RPG. So to figure out a method on how to teach the game effectively while keeping it fun and immersive is difficult by itself.

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Originally Posted by Rehayem

The current ceiling for skillset and threat level is so low, game actually rewards mediocrity. I fear more for my life doing open world events in GW2 than dungeons in FFXIV. There's no sense of "punishment" or failure of any sorts in normal content, except savage and ultimates. People are right to criticize Myths raids, I think it's worse than CT. Game is becoming easier each patch because SE wants to invite the newer and younger generation in, but they forget the ones that keep the game moving are actually adults.

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Depends. If you're an XIV veteran, you have already spent an enormous amount of money on the game and it's harder and harder each passing year to keep you happy. Meanwhile you got new blood who will go through the long long MSQ process and all the other content you have already done years ago, and this new blood will hopefully become veterans themselves. There's probably a lot more money to be made in enticing newer players than keeping the so-called adults who are 100x more picky and critical. But this is just a theory.

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Originally Posted by Saraide

I'm having a hard time accepting that the recent dungeon changes were made for the trust ai. The castrum abania boss with the elemental weakness&immunity was changed even though stripped to the studs the mechanic is indistinguishable from any other donut aoe. Something the trust npcs can already handle in other dungeons.

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Precisely. Henceforth their 'rework' never made sense to me and/or feels very rushed no matter how hard I try to perceive how they operate.

Ever tried to tank Grynewaht at Doma Castle 'the old way'? Grynewaht be like: "Nah, can't do that mate. Lemme just reset to the middle to start casting anything at all. Tankbuster, saws, proximity bombs, everything! We go together!!!"

... Well I suppose taking away so called player responsibility off their plate so they can never 'be at fault' is what, or at least partly what they tried to do:
"My brother in Hydaelyn, stop moving the boss!!! I can't hit the boss!!!"
> "Nah, ain't my fault mate. Blame the boss AI."

Hard to feel bad if it's not your fault, I guess.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

Precisely. Henceforth their 'rework' never made sense to me and/or feels very rushed no matter how hard I try to perceive how they operate.

Ever tried to tank Grynewaht at Doma Castle 'the old way'? Grynewaht be like: "Nah, can't do that mate. Lemme just reset to the middle to start casting anything at all. Tankbuster, saws, proximity bombs, everything! We go together!!!"

... Well I suppose taking away so called player responsibility off their plate so they can never 'be at fault' is what, or at least partly what they tried to do:
"My brother in Hydaelyn, stop moving the boss!!! I can't hit the boss!!!"
> "Nah, ain't my fault mate. Blame the boss AI."

Hard to feel bad if it's not your fault, I guess.

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To be fair, some people do get unreasonably mad when you do something out of the ordinary even if it doesn't affect them in any way. Ever tried spinning the P2N boss? He doesn't cleave, doesn't have positionals, doesn't move out of middle, but if you start spinning him, someone will get mad and scream at you to stop spinning the boss.

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Originally Posted by Tehmon

Depends. If you're an XIV veteran, you have already spent an enormous amount of money on the game and it's harder and harder each passing year to keep you happy. Meanwhile you got new blood who will go through the long long MSQ process and all the other content you have already done years ago, and this new blood will hopefully become veterans themselves. There's probably a lot more money to be made in enticing newer players than keeping the so-called adults who are 100x more picky and critical. But this is just a theory.

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I don't necessarily agree with this. What drives a MMORPG is not only content, but combat system as well. Homogenization of the jobs and skills is what makes a person bored in the long run. SE is worried about players min-maxing everything, but this is unavoidable in the long run. You don't have to be an XIV veteran of any sorts, just play any other MMORPG and you will see each one has a different niche, combat and flavor to it. FFXIV is becoming stale because EW failed to provide proper content and butchered uniqueness of the jobs. DT is coming with 2 new jobs, and 2 of them will be reworked (DRG and AST).

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

Precisely. Henceforth their 'rework' never made sense to me and/or feels very rushed no matter how hard I try to perceive how they operate.

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The reworks were mostly not for the AI. It's just obvious. They changed the exact fights that sprouts didn't understand or struggled with. That can't be a coincidence.

Maybe they wouldn't have handled Copper Bell mines blob boss because it involved clicking things, but from level 50 onwards the changes seemed more about making the mechanics easier to understand for new players. For example, there was functionally not much different about Fenrir, they just telegraphed the ice to hide behind so that it's far more obvious. They reworked Aetherochemical Research Facility, but if you think NPCs standing in black holes was not possible, they do it in Vanaspati when hiding in bubbles, which destroys the argument it was for that reason. They could no doubt handle the elemental boss as it was, because they stand in buff areas in Tower of Babil and towers in duties like Doma Castle.

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Ever tried to tank Grynewaht at Doma Castle 'the old way'? Grynewaht be like: [I]"Nah, can't do that mate. Lemme just reset to the middle to start casting anything at all.

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This one bothers me a lot. I used to drag it to the North West corner. This allowed you to dodge every single mechanic with minimal movement (and no boss movement, just rotated it a bit), except the person with the proximity marker who needed to run away.

The entrirety of MSQ and most most quests catering to the player as the one basically. Though of course quality of content is still a valid topic.
In my opinion, ARR and half of HW should be left out of rising difficulty.
That said, I suspect ego.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

If anything the difficulty curve goes down especially on the support classes when they are flooded with tools they don’t need when they hit level 90

You can’t tell me you use seraph every time she comes off CD and also don’t overcap your fey gauge and also have to use every aetherflow on CD, like why do I have even half those heals let alone the fact I can keep the tank alive spamming adlo if I really want

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Don't worry mister healer, i will just press Equilibrium and Blood whetting so you don't have to heal me. And i will use shake it off so you don't have to heal the rest of the group. Not like there's any downsides to my medic tank to counterbalance the ridiculous sustain that i bring because that would be unfair.

I feel like the dungeon example is partly because, likely people are overgeared even in your example the healer wasn't but you must have at least been pretty high up with the gear you had, so it made doing the duty possible without a tank. I think the Issue is that the item level synch makes tanks feel absurdly defensive where nothing matters, not even getting healed, It makes your DPS/Healer able to basically tank high amounts of damage, even taking like AOE stacks at the same time.

Theirs certainly also power creep with jobs such as tanks & healers through each expansion they usually just get better and better cooldowns, EW in particular Tanks got amazing mitigation tools which is fine, but the issue is you don't really need to even use them much in the first place (in fact you could likely use no defensives or OCGD's on healers and still be fine if you single pulled), Healers have so much OGCD healing that the Idea that you should have a balancing act of doing damage and doing healing is lost because you can do both at the same time. It's also funny that the game restricts you on pulls, when the pulls it allows you to do are incredibly easy and unfun. Bosses don't even do meaningful auto damage that pulls become the more fun part about tanking/healing but in EW that's fully lost on me now that it just doesn't pose any danger anymore. This also might be a hot take but I think tanks should take more damage from failing mechs, as bad tanks can just get away with not knowing anything about the fight which teaches bad habits.

With Dps the difficulty usually is rotational difficulty, obviously mechs play a part but dungeon mechs aren't meant to be hard, a lot of the time your job is to just make the duty or pulls go faster (which isn't a bad thing mind you), I do think Dps would benefit gameplay wise with the reduction of insane level synch as they would get punished (like other roles).

Casual content shouldn't be hard but it should also have some challenge to the player, some fights on release genuinely bring some difficulty, the issue is once one person knows the very basics it's not really going to be that challenging, but at least theirs a little bit of difficulty in learning the fight, but when gear gets better everyone can easily face roll through the fight without a clue in the world, It's clear that this game isn't design around that better gear. I think also giving more agency to the Tanks/healers in fight is needed, they need to actually lean more into their purpose, as "boring dps" isn't fun to play, even if that means turning them into more fun DPS or making their mechs more interesting, upping the damage? anything as theirs so much room for fun designs, when a casual fight is going wrong as a tank/healer but you make constant plays or saves to stabilize the fight, it feels amazing but 99% of the time ur just going to be mashing your 1 button or ur 1, 2, 3 tank combo throwing out the odd ogcd ability.

actually they need to rethink everything. This rinse, wash, repeat every patch cycle is boring as hell.