Progressive difficulty is the only way forward

First, I'm just going to say that my overall experience with the encounter design in Dawntrail has been great, fantastic even. I play all roles but have mostly raided as healer. I'm going to elaborate on specific points about DT encounter and fight design that stand out and should be specially mentioned so that these elements are considered in future design choices as well:

• Using the stage or environment for mechanics
• Faster pacing means cooldowns actually need to be used
• Random attack patterns and non-telegraphed attacks that draw my attention to different things
• Imaginative mechanics that are familiar enough
• Respectable damage output from enemies
• Sensible, unique punishment for making mistakes
• Raids are 10/10 for the full suite of tracks and the fight/boss design. Was also impressed by EX1 and EX2

The game got slightly harder but do you know what? It's OK. It's fine if you die, or collect 16 vuln stacks, or get the DoT of shame. It's not the end of the world if your party wipes. If players in your party make this a bad experience, that is reflective of them and it's always in your power to be unphased. It falls to all the other types of players out there to help when asked and to be patient with everyone. We all died on our first runs in these new dungeons and raids, don't let anyone fool you into thinking they didn't, or that you are bad because you also made a mistake

The hard truth of the design process is that if we don't allow for the content to push us, then the content we do get will never offer us challenge. We will get stale job changes and additions because the content can't accommodate anything greater, or we will not get any major roles to play or decisions to make because whenever we do (Zone 6) parts of the community resist the challenge put in front of them

To the ones that enjoy struggling and understand that FFXIV needs to be challenging, here's a challenge that's on brand for DT: find a new player and ask if they need any help with anything. Adventure with them for a bit, make a new friend. As cheesy as it is, we can overcome whatever difficulties in this game if we just stay cool and help each other out in the long run. As a fellow player and WoL, that's the least I can do when I log in anyway

Thanks for reading!