The MSQ Endwalker Trial Bosses are WAY too hard for newer players to FFXIV

I mean it doesn't get much easier than Endwalker. FF14 does a pretty good job of showing you what a mechanic is and then ramping it up throughout the fight. They're never going to throw 4 mechanics at you right off the bat. So I hate to be this guy but it sounds like a player issue because these are some of the easiest trials we've had in a while.

I can see the rotating stage on Zodiark being a challenge for newer players, but that's pretty much it.

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Originally Posted by AziraSyuren

I can only imagine how some of these people would've reacted to on-release Shinryu, lmao.

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The funny about that was people wouldn't stop complaining about how impossible it was, and then people went on to 4 man the fight, still extremely early into the expac, just to show it's easy if you just follow the tells.

It's weird though how not putting an 8 second delay'd indicator on the ground suddenly makes the mechanic super hard, even if every other part of the tell still exists. Like you know, how he's literally shouting "I AM GOING TO BURN YOU WITH A FIRE ATTACK" in skill name, attack quote, and having puddles of water that boost fire resist and people don't go in and go "Why did that kill me"

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Originally Posted by AziraSyuren

I can only imagine how some of these people would've reacted to on-release Shinryu, lmao.

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People just wanna one shot stuff with no effort. Its sad really. Shinryu was a little difficult at launch sure, but it was still clearable after a few pulls if people just paid attention.

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Originally Posted by Jijifli

The funny about that was people wouldn't stop complaining about how impossible it was, and then people went on to 4 man the fight, still extremely early into the expac, just to show it's easy if you just follow the tells.

It's weird though how not putting an 8 second delay'd indicator on the ground suddenly makes the mechanic super hard, even if every other part of the tell still exists. Like you know, how he's literally shouting "I AM GOING TO BURN YOU WITH A FIRE ATTACK" in skill name, attack quote, and having puddles of water that boost fire resist and people don't go in and go "Why did that kill me"

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Yeah but that's still after raid and tome gear came out, if I recall.

The mechanics are easy but people need to keep in mind that they, at the time, demanded more of the player than any other story mode trial. Stormblood in general was a step up in terms of mechanical difficulty of story and normal mode content, especially the Ivalice raids. It was pretty jarring. Shinryu normal was arguably harder in DF than Lakshmi EX was in PF.

Shinryu was a knowledge check more than anything. Most of his mechanics are recycled from old primal fights.

Nowadays the opening Tidal Wave is usually the biggest killer.

I mean if someone is in Endwalker, they aren't a new player by any stretch of the word.

And if they story skipped, that's on them to get up to speed on all the mechanical stuff that's been introduced over the game.

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Originally Posted by AziraSyuren

Yeah but that's still after raid and tome gear came out, if I recall.

The mechanics are easy but people need to keep in mind that they, at the time, demanded more of the player than any other story mode trial. Stormblood in general was a step up in terms of mechanical difficulty of story and normal mode content, especially the Ivalice raids. It was pretty jarring. Shinryu normal was arguably harder in DF than Lakshmi EX was in PF.

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Bingo. The tome gear was locked behind clearing Shinryu. And it was punishing without that gear. So what really helped was people getting through, getting access to that better gear, and being able to survive to carry others through in trial roulette so they could get that gear then rinse and repeat with the next up and comers. I don't remember how many weeks I got that every day but it was a while until enough people were geared up to start overpowering it more in roulettes.

I like how they learned from that with gear availability in both ShB and EW.

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Originally Posted by Alexandre_Noireau

If you are level 80 in a game, you don't get the "casual" card anymore.

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Are you trying to say that casual players shouldn't finish the game? This is such a weird thing to say. Why should you get your "casual card" revoked just because you're playing the latest expansion? I've seen many gatekeepers of what is and isn't casual, but this is the first time I've seen player level used to define it. The best description of a casual that I've ever seen is in Josh Strife Hayes' 12-minute video on the topic: https://youtu.be/ZGCFxHUsSGU

By his definition, most of us on the forums lean more towards the hardcore end of players, regardless of what level we are. Keep in mind that with millions of players playing the game, we only ever see hundreds of likes on posts on these forums. I think your definition of casual is pretty far out there.

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Originally Posted by Unaki

Friend of mine gets severe motion sickness and can barely do Zodiark.

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I have this issue, too. I need to zoom the camera way out to play. Sadly, most of the newer games (not just this one) are designed to be optimal from a first person perspective. Playing like that makes me physically ill. One thing I loved about WoW back in the day was that I could tweak the game settings to let me play from an overhead perspective without missing any mechanics. This game puts a very restrictive limit on how far I can zoom my camera out, and on top of that, most of the mechanics aren't visible if I try to play from an overhead perspective. It really makes content for me a lot harder than it should be. My brain tries to block out background movement to keep me from getting nauseous, but lots of the mechanics are precisely where I'm trying not to look. Combine that with my aging eyesight that can no longer focus properly, and it's definitely a struggle to take note of the position of the stars in the background.

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Originally Posted by technole

Mt Gulag at level 79 had the same mechanic as Zodiark, nice try though. If you can't make the comparison of reading stars in the sky as a location compared to a pancake maker, that's on you.

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Yeah, but it was front and center there. I didn't have to strain my aging eyes to make out the configuration of the blurs in the background. The giant tic-tac-toe board with giant golden faces is much easier to read, especially when it's also the boss that you're beating on.

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Originally Posted by Ronduwil

Yeah, but it was front and center there. I didn't have to strain my aging eyes to make out the configuration of the blurs in the background. The giant tic-tac-toe board with giant golden faces is much easier to read, especially when it's also the boss that you're beating on.

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Not to mention we're conditioned to look at the floor for things happening. In my first few runs, people just said "Follow the pattern" and it wasn't until someone took a second to say "Point your camera up at the sky and you'll see" that I finally saw where to find the pattern. I make sure when I help anyone now I explain that tidbit.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

Not to mention we're conditioned to look at the floor for things happening. In my first few runs, people just said "Follow the pattern" and it wasn't until someone took a second to say "Point your camera up at the sky and you'll see" that I finally saw where to find the pattern. I make sure when I help anyone now I explain that tidbit.

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To be fair, they did introduce the whole meteor mechanic thing the if I recall correctly level 87 dungeon.

Honestly the only answer I can give is deal with it. This is what 99% of the game being a faceroll causes. Players don't have to use their brains in almost all of the content because it's so easy and unchallenging so in the few instances that it is actually a challenge they want it made easier instead of just getting better. This what happens when you spoon feed and hand hold.

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Originally Posted by LukaRoselia

This what happens when you spoon feed and hand hold.

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It really irks me when players compare a video game with raising and/or educating children. The other popular comparison is a workplace. A video game is none of those things. The game has one and one purpose only: fun. If it's not fun for someone, then it has failed in its purpose. You could argue that it's fun for you, and I'll buy that. However, the argument that, "It's fun for me so it would have been fun for you if only you hadn't been treated like a baby all game long," just doesn't fly. If the player had fun all the way up to level 87, and suddenly they're faced with a mandatory roadblock that isn't fun for them, then the game has failed in its purpose. The beauty of this game is that instances like that are few and far between, which is why they're so jarring when you encounter them. 99% of the game is a faceroll to the hardcores who tend to post on these forums for a good reason: it's intended to be fun for the general public to play, and a faceroll is what most players prefer. I realize that's hard to believe if you only ever solicit feeback from your fellow forum dwellers, but it's the truth.

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Originally Posted by Ronduwil

Yeah, but it was front and center there. I didn't have to strain my aging eyes to make out the configuration of the blurs in the background. The giant tic-tac-toe board with giant golden faces is much easier to read, especially when it's also the boss that you're beating on.

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Additionally, the Mt. Gulg patterns are all symmetrical; you don't have to decide whether it's a view of the arena seen from above (in which case, boss-relative 'north' would be the top of the pattern), or a waffle iron lid that closes down on the arena (in which case, the bottom of the pattern is the side of the arena the pattern is on, so for Mt. Gulg would make the boss-relative 'north' the bottom of the pattern). Two of the patterns on the level 83 trial are symmetrical -- no matter what side you think is what, you'll be safe in the same spots -- but one is not. And in my experience getting that fight in trial roulette, it's that non-symmetrical one that most often nukes first-timers.

But as I've said before, I think some of us -- myself included -- have a skewed idea of what "easy" is. Those of us who do savage raiding are very used to needing to read the environment for (slightly) more subtle cues as to where to go for a given mechanic, even in sometimes visually-cluttered or indistinct arenas. (P3S waves hello, and dumps a giant pile of yellow, red, and orange crayons on your head.) Moreover, we're used to the fact that most things have a relatively straightforward solution, even if that solution is obscured behind a lot of smoke-and-mirrors flashy visuals, as I've noted before.

Whereas the number of fights where you need to do anything like that in normal content -- versus having giant floor markers -- is fairly small. There's the aforementioned boss fight in Mt. Gulg (with attacks telegraphed on its face), as well as the miniboss after it who telegraphs attacks with giant raised fists (a method also used on the second boss of the Swallow's Compass among others), there's the final boss of the Drowned City of Skalla (where the attacks are telegraphed by raised hand, raised tail, etc.), and so on. Moreover, even when they are telegraphed by something other than giant danger floor markers in normal fights, it's often very large and hard to miss. Like the "raised fist" mechanic, or the time-lasers on the final boss of the Twinning; when a giant laser cannon is pointed at your face, generally you're going to move regardless of whether or not there are "this is bad" markers on the floor!

I still feel like objectively, the mechanics themselves in the trials are not that hard; once folks know how to read the patterns they're pretty easy for most folks I've encountered. However, watching non-raider friends do the trials and get frustrated, it has become clear to me that things some of us take for granted -- i.e., "be aware of the environment at all times for any cues to upcoming mechanics" -- is not reflexive for folks who don't raid. And I think that is where folks are feeling like the mechanics are difficult. Not because the mechanics themselves are difficult, but because unless folks tell them, it likely just seems like where is safe and where is not is kind of arbitrary.

Or because when they are told, they're still not used to knowing a fight timeline and to look towards where the cues will be ahead of time; I do think the timing on some of those mechanics is not super forgiving if you're like "OH NO WAIT THIS PART" and spinning your camera wildly at the last moment to find where the thing that tells you what to do is.

(Whereas after farming for the mount from the extreme version of that fight, I reflexively know what the third meteor hit in that version of the fight will be just from the first two, because there's only like 4 patterns and they got ingrained in my brain.)

I suspect the other part of it is being self-conscious. With a dungeon, someone can run it with Trusts as many times as they want and not worry about annoying strangers. Trials -- with one exception -- cannot be run with trusts, and in my experience people who are having trouble with a mechanic worry that they're going to annoy everyone else or make them impatient or whatnot... and when you're flustered and self-conscious, that is not a recipe for something to 'click' for you.

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Originally Posted by Ransu

To be fair, they did introduce the whole meteor mechanic thing the if I recall correctly level 87 dungeon.

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While you're right (though it was level 85), those happen one row at a time (and where you're already looking towards the boss), whereas the waffle irons cover the entire arena and come from three different directions.

As noted, I suspect the latter is harder to read for those not used to it.

Honestly to keep the game consistently boring they should nerf first two trials, the third one isn't that hard and it will keep getting easier with ilevel.

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Originally Posted by Ronduwil

It really irks me when players compare a video game with raising and/or educating children. The other popular comparison is a workplace. A video game is none of those things. The game has one and one purpose only: fun. If it's not fun for someone, then it has failed in its purpose. You could argue that it's fun for you, and I'll buy that. However, the argument that, "It's fun for me so it would have been fun for you if only you hadn't been treated like a baby all game long," just doesn't fly. If the player had fun all the way up to level 87, and suddenly they're faced with a mandatory roadblock that isn't fun for them, then the game has failed in its purpose. The beauty of this game is that instances like that are few and far between, which is why they're so jarring when you encounter them. 99% of the game is a faceroll to the hardcores who tend to post on these forums for a good reason: it's intended to be fun for the general public to play, and a faceroll is what most players prefer. I realize that's hard to believe if you only ever solicit feeback from your fellow forum dwellers, but it's the truth.

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"The truth" - because you said so?
The problem isn't the difficulty itself because believe it or not, most players are not as dumb as you may think and can adjust naturally to a slightly, gradually increasing difficulty without even noticing. The problem is that the absolute majority of the MSQ content is designed to be extremely easy with an option to make it even easier and then SE suddenly adds something with a noticeably increased difficulty. Titania was notorious, still is to some degree, because besides some mechanics that required some attention and watching the battlefield, like the star markers, she also had a dps check that was easy enough to fail for the average MSQ player.
And not because it was so tight -- it wasn't. But the MSQ doesn't usually have those and people got used to not having to do anything. You could auto most bosses to death. It would take extremely long but it was entirely possible.
The 2nd trial itself isn't overtuned or unfair but if the game teaches you for 87 levels, with a few outliers, that you don't have to pay attention or push buttons, it's all fine anyway and then suddenly requires you to just that, it will come across as much more difficult than it is. People are able to adapt to a certain degree but it needs to be something consistent. I'm not saying every trial, starting from story Ifrit, should be on mommy level but the back-and-forth difficulty isn't doing the players any favours either.

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Originally Posted by Rilifane

"The truth" - because you said so?

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Because YoshiP himself said so. He admitted that he doesn't make the game to suit his preferences because he's a "heavy player" who prefers harder content. Instead he tailors the game's difficulty to whatever the company's research indicates is suitable.

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Originally Posted by Rilifane

The problem isn't the difficulty itself because believe it or not, most players are not as dumb as you may think and can adjust naturally to a slightly, gradually increasing difficulty without even noticing.

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Most of the late game difficulty isn't a matter of intelligence. The days when the difficulty lay in puzzling out mechanics and strategizing accordingly are long gone because now the solutions are crowdsourced and published to the internet in a matter of hours. Instead, it's a matter of reflexes, and many players just don't have them, especially the older crowd (of which I am a part). Sorry, but I can't anticipate and dodge as easily as I could 25 years ago. Maybe in your eyes that makes me stupid, but my mom always had a Spanish saying about that which translates to, "Someday you'll see yourself the way you see me."

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Originally Posted by Rilifane

The 2nd trial itself isn't overtuned or unfair but if the game teaches you for 87 levels, with a few outliers, that you don't have to pay attention or push buttons, it's all fine anyway and then suddenly requires you to just that, it will come across as much more difficult than it is. People are able to adapt to a certain degree but it needs to be something consistent. I'm not saying every trial, starting from story Ifrit, should be on mommy level but the back-and-forth difficulty isn't doing the players any favours either.

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TBH, it doesn't even require anything of you. Most likely, if you can't hack it, you'll just get carried by the seven other players who can. Does it feel great to floor tank your way through a crucial part of your quest though? I would say not.

Your friends need to take Cranky's Advice and acquire more skill

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Originally Posted by Ronduwil

Because YoshiP himself said so. He admitted that he doesn't make the game to suit his preferences because he's a "heavy player" who prefers harder content. Instead he tailors the game's difficulty to whatever the company's research indicates is suitable.


Most of the late game difficulty isn't a matter of intelligence. The days when the difficulty lay in puzzling out mechanics and strategizing accordingly are long gone because now the solutions are crowdsourced and published to the internet in a matter of hours. Instead, it's a matter of reflexes, and many players just don't have them, especially the older crowd (of which I am a part). Sorry, but I can't anticipate and dodge as easily as I could 25 years ago. Maybe in your eyes that makes me stupid, but my mom always had a Spanish saying about that which translates to, "Someday you'll see yourself the way you see me."


TBH, it doesn't even require anything of you. Most likely, if you can't hack it, you'll just get carried by the seven other players who can. Does it feel great to floor tank your way through a crucial part of your quest though? I would say not.

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Way to completely miss the point of my post and put words into my mouth I never said.
I never implied anywhere that players, let alone you specifically, are stupid.

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Originally Posted by Ronduwil

Most of the late game difficulty isn't a matter of intelligence. The days when the difficulty lay in puzzling out mechanics and strategizing accordingly are long gone because now the solutions are crowdsourced and published to the internet in a matter of hours. Instead, it's a matter of reflexes, and many players just don't have them, especially the older crowd (of which I am a part). Sorry, but I can't anticipate and dodge as easily as I could 25 years ago.

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I raised similar points a number of pages earlier in this thread pertaining to my own poor performance with regard to the gameplay. Sadly, the implied "there is no excuse for being poor at the game at X point/level" responses put me off commenting further. There are clearly those who think that one should be good at the game by default after reaching a specific point/level. I don't agree at all, but I'm not going to argue the point further.

You'd have a point if this was an ARR trial, but once you're level 80+ haven't you played the game enough to roughly know how to do mechanics?

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Originally Posted by Raim

You'd have a point if this was an ARR trial, but once you're level 80+ haven't you played the game enough to roughly know how to do mechanics?

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Not if they Jump Potion. Doing that they're essentially the same as any new player who hasn't played - just with all the bells and whistles and job complexity to boot. It's a lot to jump into the frying pan with nothing to save you, and most players don't understand their job half the time when they're still new and jumped unless they've played other MMOs. Back to topic, what was said in the 2nd post of the first page is the point: Players who are new and overwhelmed will have a far different experience in XIV compared to starting from the beginning in ARR and travel through the MSQ to Endwalker. To put it simply, think of ARR as training wheels. They wean you off as you level, and eventually at Lv 50 they start to throw some difficult things at you - mechanics to understand. It only gets harder from there as they continue. At Lv 80+? You're basically close to the end of the MSQ, which is akin to the endgame of FFXIV's story. Player competence is expected around that level since Shadowbringers brought forth different mentalities that were accepted by the community - but at best, we should do what we can to help them learn until they can clear. That is the only way lest they decide to quit the game altogether.

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

Not if they Jump Potion. Doing that they're essentially the same as any new player who hasn't played

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maybe they shouldnt do that

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Originally Posted by MagicalChase

maybe they shouldnt do that

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They'll do it if they want to catch up to their friends. We don't have the agency to make that choice for them, so the best one can do is teach.

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Originally Posted by Raim

You'd have a point if this was an ARR trial, but once you're level 80+ haven't you played the game enough to roughly know how to do mechanics?

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Please reread what we were discussing. It's not a matter of knowing mechanics. It's a matter of having the coordination, reflexes, and eyesight to do them in a timely manner. Back when I was 23, I would set all the fonts on my computer to the smallest setting so that I could cram as many windows onto my screen as I could to make multitasking easier. I could look up from my screen, hold a brief conversation, and immediately glance back down and pick up where I left off from. Here I am almost thirty years later, and half the time I have to take off my glasses and scoot up closer to the screen just to read some of the smaller text. It doesn't matter how long I've played or for how many levels. The stars in the distance are still going to be confusing blurs that take a couple of seconds to focus on and process. By the time I've figured out where to stand, the mechanic's already hit, and I've failed it. My eyes just don't focus the way they used to. As someone pointed out, Mount Gulg has the same mechanic, but it's much more visible. I never fail that one. Like you said, I was trained on it, but I'm telling you that I'm still going to fail the star mechanic most of the time because instead of being laid out on a big tic-tac-toe board, they're laid out in blurs that I can't even make out without squinting and concentrating for a couple of seconds. Getting old sucks, but we all go through it at some point.

It would be smart if devs made a very, very easy mode for those having a difficult time even with very easy...it's not going to hurt op players so why not? There's a lot more to ffxiv than just fighting and some people just don't do combat well.

Can’t you like use trusts and afk the endwalker trials? For zodiark there’s only like 2 combinations you need to need to be aware of (nw/w, then c/n, then ne/n) and follow the pack if your unsure. In normal mode you can also soak at least 1 comet. I don’t think getting “old” is an excuse either, I’m over 40 and still do pretty good. The whole game operates in 2.5 second intervals, if that’s not enough time to make critical decisions, I’d suggest turning in your drivers license and never try to cook anything.

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Originally Posted by Ronduwil

If it's not fun for someone, then it has failed in its purpose.

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I totally disagree, not every game can possibly be fun for everyone.
Something failing to be fun for someone doesn't mean it's a failure of the game or wrongly designed.
It doesn't matter if it's the whole game or a specific part of it.
Most people in the game really doesn't seem to have issues, I think the general level of competency in the game is good enough to clear the base content without issues.

I don't want the base game to become even easier than it already is because of a small portion who have issues.
And I don't think that the average player is as incompetent as a lot of people like to say.
I think people have a tendency to underestimate '' casual players '' quite a lot most people are at least somewhat decent.

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Originally Posted by MagicalChase

maybe they shouldnt do that

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SE hears you and understands. :^)

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Originally Posted by CrayonsAndPaint

Let me start off by saying the trials are easy for me, because I’m used to harder fights like those, but my friends who are new to the game, couldnt for the life of them understand what to do when doing the Zodiark trial. There’s honestly no need to make MSQ trial bosses that hard.

I just think it’s a bit extreme.

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Mmmmhmmm. Yup this is some good bait. If it's not bait...it's just dumb.

I don't think required content for the MSQ should be that hard. I understand the raid and trials that are not pat of the MSQ, make them as hard as you want they are not required.

So yes I agree with OP that the MSQ dungeons and trials should be easy. Other than that make everything else as hard as you want.

this thread shows up every new expac btw
last time it was titania

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Originally Posted by Lihtleita

this thread shows up every new expac btw
last time it was titania

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And Shinryu before that. OH the Shinryu threads. So many people posting that it was "impossible". I guess the rest of us all hallucinated the shadowbringers and endwalker stories.

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Originally Posted by Frizze

And Shinryu before that. OH the Shinryu threads. So many people posting that it was "impossible". I guess the rest of us all hallucinated the shadowbringers and endwalker stories.

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I wasnt on the Forums during that time, but I can only imagine.
Shinryu tore me up for a little while when it first came out.

Nothing new; steps of faith going into HW was also a major problem point.

Twintania comes to mind also. (Binding coil)

Heck, there was a time when the only reliable way to survive 2.0 8 man trial “limit breaks” was to farm and wear VIT+ rings, plus food for all jobs. (This was ex I think so that’s fair)

I forget exactly but it was some kind of nonesense back when Darklight gear was the top tomestone thing to get.

No offense, but get good. This game already heavily caters to new and casual players to the point where the game's difficulty balance is almost complete lopsided.

I may not be the best player, but I do my best to get better at this game and I'd prefer others to do the same instead of asking the devs to give you even more ways of cheating the experience of the game they intended for you to play through normally.

Again. Get good. Suck it up if you can't get past a certain point in the game and try harder and get help from others. There are more than enough people in this game that are kind and willing enough to help you get better at this game. No need for the devs to hold your hand through your own personal experience of the game, because then you might as well be watching a personal interactive movie and not playing a video game at all. :)

Hear me out here, but players should probably do this crazy thing called "learning" as they approach higher levels and face tougher opponents with a wider, stronger toolkit.

I agree the fight with Venat was ridiculously hard and I considered not playing this game anymore...waited a day and tried again on easy mode and just barely managed but I did it.