This game is just way to hard...

[Lillia]

-snip-
I don't get why everyone assumes a post that is written kind of sloppily is a troll post :P

Not to attack anyone here, but my personal opinion on the internet is that the word 'Troll' is loosely used to generalize people others don't agree with or that just talk the opposite of them. It's a word that is easy to use in order to classify someone in a category of people, I'm not saying that people aren't trolls on the net sometimes. I will say sometimes I don't think some people even know what a troll really is though, they just say it to generalize and provoke the person they claim to be a troll honestly.

Thats just... my own feelings about the internet overall though and is completely unrelated to the topic thread itself. @-@

[lxSch]

it requires a small amount of memorization and the ability to pay attention at least half the time. not that hard. people are just bad

Not really: people value their time not to waste on a mindless platformer like many fights are. It has nothing to do with RPG skill since basically all you do is repeat a certain set of actions until your muscle memory have it memorized. Builds - none, gear grind - none, team composition - none, dancing - yes, muscle memory - yes. Many people are bad at wasting time on creating a muscle memory for some useless stuff that is supposed to make them feel good and important - true.

[alhandra]

Not really: people value their time not to waste on a mindless platformer like many fights are. It has nothing to do with RPG skill since basically all you do is repeat a certain set of actions until your muscle memory have it memorized. Builds - none, gear grind - none, team composition - none, dancing - yes, muscle memory - yes. Many people are bad at wasting time on creating a muscle memory for some useless stuff that is supposed to make them feel good and important - true.

the only truly difficult fight in this game that is purely muscle memory is titan x. if you think builds, team comp, and gear arent important for stuff like coil or the other x primals then you just proved my point. people are bad

also, if the atma/animus + myth/solidiery armor isnt a gear grind, then wtf is your definition of grind?? 0.o

[lxSch]

the only truly difficult fight in this game that is purely muscle memory is titan x. if you think builds, team comp, and gear arent important for stuff like coil or the other x primals then you just proved my point. people are bad

also, if the atma/animus + myth/solidiery armor isnt a gear grind, then wtf is your definition of grind?? 0.o

I think you lack the perspective of what builds, buffs and grind were in older games. While ffxiv has a small space for character and team customization, it is so small - many people do not notice it. Regarding repeating battles - consider that in older games bosses spawned on the open maps (like fates) while loot box was only one and those were open pvp games, with exp penalty on death and gear drop. Buffs were like +100% crit chance, +100% crit damage, +50% max health, +30% attack speed, etc - there were several dedicated classes meant to buff different damage dealing classes.
Atma is a masked by grind attempt to make fates useful. Not my definition, but in other mmos it takes half to full year before you enter the high level tier (1 year for endgame), by playing every day for 2-4 hours - this is what people called grind before and it served it's purpose. In FFXIV it takes somewhere around 4 weeks to enter high levels and 6-8 weeks to enter the endgame - it's not a grind, just keep subbed and do some fates for new players.

[Vhailor]

The main problem is that DF and PF to a lesser extent are extremely unreliable ways of attempting higher-echelon content. The game is still tuned around using a "static" group to complete end-game content, despite virtually everything up until that point minimizing the need for this type of interaction. It makes finding groups rather difficult, and places an artificial layer of difficulty over everything.

There are a few things SE could do to fix this. For instance, I would absolutely love to see a solo-oriented "barrier of entry" before being able to join PF or DF groups for the Extreme-mode Primals, in particular. Something where you'd have to maintain a certain amount of damage on, say, a modified version of Titan, while dodging his full ability rotation two or three times in a row. Once you've accomplished that, then you're able to queue up. Almost a tutorial of sorts, or a practice arena - with the extra condition that you have to pass it in order to join the real thing.

Realistically, though, the game isn't overly "hard" so much as it's overly grind-y. Atmas are bloody ridiculous - I actually feel I have better chances hunting specific items in Diablo 3 (anyone who has played that will know what a statement that is). The probability of those dropping is set waaaaaay too low, and the RNG has no buffer built-in to minimize the effects of bad luck. This is also, of course, just part of an upgrade quest that merely takes your weapon to i100.

Crafting, of course, also falls into this vein. The new Mastery tomes require massive amounts of relatively expensive or difficult-to-acquire materials just to get to the point where you can attempt the recipes. Of course, all of this is for items that arguably pale in comparison to the top-flight non-crafted armour - barring multimillionaires who can afford to penta-meld high-tier materia.

The common theme here is that XIV is currently requiring massive amounts of work to even access the new content - and the rewards feel extremely incremental even if you put in the time. In this sense, it is a very "difficult" game - not through skill checks, but through gear checks, time requirements, and party requirements (such as the aforementioned failure of DF / PF for Titan Extreme). I'm sure the developers are aware of this, but for now, I agree with the OP.

[lxSch]

Is the result of removing the need to work for gear and levels: people form statics to separate good players from bad - grind did the same but on a much larger scale. No matter how much times devs will try to remove the gear/exp wall - it is needed and thus will be recreated again and again in various forms by players themselves.

[Yumi_umi]

I wish it was as casual as SE and others claimed it to be but imo all that casual and omg it's so easy only applies to ppl with statics.
If you don't have 1 like me, then the game is almost impossible to progress thru in terms of coil.

[Gormogon]

FFXI was mainly a "patience" thing. What you can do in 5 minutes in FFXIV it takes hours to do in FFXI. As for fights it was mainly auto-attack and try and skill chain.
FFXIV is more of a "learning curve" thing. Dodge, memorize your abilities, damage, buff, debuffs, utility, etc and apply them.

Regardless it's not really difficult if people put the time and effort. What's more difficult is trying to deal with people that rage over 2 wipes and don't want to do it anymore because they can't get their special snowflake gear and can't take criticism because they are already frustrated about the lack of perfect runs.

It's why I don't even bother with end-game because of the drama.

Glad I ain't forced to do it.

[Doo]

FFXI battles were more fun while FFXIV is more frustrating. Always some guy that can't dodge causing the group to wipe for hours.

Example -

FFXI - Kirin - Summons 4 gods bosses, Genbu (Slow Turtle, hits hard, invincible), Suzaku (high evasion bird, chainspell firagas), Seiryu (Dragon, 100 fist, wind spells), Byakko (White tiger, perfect dodge, banish spells, high eva).

FFXIV - Twintania- hours to learn conflag because can't dps down conflag or not paying attention to fireball, hours to learn divebombs because of lag or just too slow, Twisters, fairly easy, Hatch, easy. Someone messes up a certain part, redo the entire fight. So you waste hours upon hours of doing the same repetitive motions again and again in hopes everyone catches on.

Titan EX - Tank falls- run over, DDs falls - run over can't dps down the heart . Healer falls - run over can't keep up the heals.

That's why run selling is such huge business in this game and why PF standards are off the charts. The fights are annoying as hell to most of the player base that don't have a good fc.

[Tashigi]

The game has some flaws, yes. But the only difficulty I've found in it, usually comes from party members.
There is some seriously bad players in this game. I've played MMO's for nearly 15 years and this game by far has the highest number of poorly skilled players. I am trying not to exaggerate when I say even WOW's playerbase is more skilled/dedicated than what I see here.