Please stop asking SE to make FFXIV more easy!

[Purrfectstorm]

I don't want SE to make FFXIV easier, I just want them to make it a different kind of hard.

[Mercutial]

Why does it always have to be glamours, story or gear? I return to many of these fights because they're actually fun to play. You know... the whole idea behind video games.

[RiceisNice]

Why does it always have to be glamours, story or gear? I return to many of these fights because they're actually fun to play. You know... the whole idea behind video games.

Fun is subjective. It's a matter of making it appealing to as many people as possible. If you have the option of being able to cater both sides of the playerbase, why not? I don't enjoy PvP because of the queue times and overall class balance. I don't forum the PvP section enough to know if people actually enjoy frontlines the way it is right now, but you can make the same discussion on whether or not they should change frontlines so it appeals to more players than it does right now.

[Mercutial]

I agree. But how often do people really discuss how fun a fight is? It's either a loot grab or an attempt at clearing thats being talked about. SE rarely gets enough credit for creating some really entertaining boss fights. Are T5, T7, LeviEx, ShivaEx, etc etc a faceroll now? Sure. But I'll keep poking my head into clear parties because it's really fun to do the "pew, pew, pew".

[Havenchild]

How do you consider players to be bad? There's so many reasons behind to not being able to clear T5 or t9 even at this stage of the 2.0 cycle, finding a stable group is one of them. This is the point of the game where the incompetence of one or two players can lead to the wipe of the entire raid. If we were to take your example of new players banding together to create a group, that's fine and all. But realistically speaking, there simply is not enough of them for it to actually happen. All of this goes back to how it was presented (making coils available in random DF for one). When you make content like that, there is no urgency or implications that you need a pre-formed party to succeeded...which I guess is really the root of the problem.

Right about now, if you haven't cleared T5, I am convinced you are either lazy, a bad player, or simply do not care for it enough.
The instance with echo and current gear is so easy that you can eat divebombs and survive. It is even possible now to do this fight on DF reliably.

As for the Alexander/Coil content just for story, I'm ok with it granted that it gives absolutely NO rewards.
Players should not be rewarded for doing the easier option. I am also on the side that should they ever make a savage version of either BCOB or FCOB, they should reward players with dyeable gear upon clear, some gratification beyond a title would warrant many people in the hardcore audience to pursue higher difficulty content.

Players who do not take the hardcore content in the game serious and who do not pursue to do this content, should not be catered to outright with nerfs for the sake of nerfs regarding this end-game content. Echo is already more then enough to HP tank mechanics that would virtually be one shots most of the time as well as allowing DPS to beat most checks with little worry.

All mechanics nerfing does for end-game content, is reward players for playing bad and not optimally.
Perfect examples of this is in T6 DF, players just bulldozing through Blighted Bouquet with no regard for it or T7 Cursed Voices/ Shireks + Petrifaction outright ignored soemtimes.

Making fights simple tank and spank is not the way to progress players. Even a tips menu per raid would be more helpful in educating players and actually helping them adapt to future instances, as often enough some mechanics resemble something else in another raid.

I'm all for opening access to people to experience these fights, both for the epic fights and the story, but I do not support the mechanic nerfs that SE always does. Simply allowing Echo and the fight to be DF'd is enough for anyone to clear the fight if they chose to pursue a win by allowing on the fly, the ability to enter the instance, or make a PF on their server to do it.

[RiceisNice]

I agree. But how often do people really discuss how fun a fight is? It's either a loot grab or an attempt at clearing thats being talked about. SE rarely gets enough credit for creating some really entertaining boss fights. Are T5, T7, LeviEx, ShivaEx, etc etc a faceroll now? Sure. But I'll keep poking my head into clear parties because it's really fun to do the "pew, pew, pew".

I thoroughly enjoy fights like Levi, Shiva (when you actually two tank it), Titan (now that my rig is capable of playing beyond 5 fps during plumes) and the overall atmosphere of T9. I like having the synergy of the party actually working together (specifically from a tank perspective, such as ramuh and again, Shiva when you actually use two tanks). And this is where I don't mind leaving the difficulty intact; so players have a choice to experience the fight for the way it is.

...

Divebombs will more often than not wipe or kill off people because you will get flung into the allagan fire. Same with twisters if someone runs it into you by accident. I wouldn't say its to the point that it's DF-reliable. This is what happens when you try to put content that's meant to be tackled as a pre-formed party into a DF-ish system.

3.0 has Alexander come in two raid difficulties, the harder one being accessible after clearing normal and reward higehr ilvl gear. IIRC, normal is supposed to be slightly easier than current coil, while hard is savage+. This IMO is a right approach in getting that middleground between difficulty and accessibility, because from what I've seen in the changes to SCoB, they always lean one side more than the other.

SCoB was filled with mechanics that you couldn't really overgear or echo would help (t6 blighted and t7 voices). If they wanted to make it more accessible then they had to nerf the mechanics directly...which should really be done in a different difficulty setting to keep the original encounter intact because at this point, its a completely different fight all together.

FCoB is where echo would help and I firmly believe they should not change any of the mechanics there.

[Havenchild]

3.0 has Alexander come in two raid difficulties, the harder one being accessible after clearing normal and reward higehr ilvl gear. IIRC, normal is supposed to be slightly easier than current coil, while hard is savage+. This IMO is a right approach in getting that middleground between difficulty and accessibility, because from what I've seen in the changes to SCoB, they always lean one side more than the other.

Yet we know they will nerf mechanics to make it so that the people who currently struggle on T5 will be able to experience these fights in FCOB. I'll never understand this accessibility through nerfing mechanics. Makes no sense that the people who fail at these encounters should be catered to through nerfing fights.

[Moqi]

Makes no sense that the people who fail at these encounters should be catered to through nerfing fights.

Who else should they cater to? People who cleared it on release aren't doing T5 now. The only people who are still trying it are the ones who have not cleared it yet, and they clearly need the nerfs.

[Mercutial]

Who else should they cater to? People who cleared it on release aren't doing T5 now. The only people who are still trying it are the ones who have not cleared it yet, and they clearly need the nerfs.

And that's the thing.... why aren't more people revisiting these fights? Do people just not enjoy them? And if so, what's really the point of playing this video game?

I know that last one is a very loaded question, but still.... People will grind the hell out of much more "mechanically unfun" content - beast tribe dailies, daily logs, etc. Why not keep coming back to what is ultimately the meat and potatoes of this game... the encounters and instances? The things that actually should be providing some sort of pleasure response in the traditional way we interact with video games. I press button "A" and "B" monster goes "kaploey".

[RiceisNice]

...

We don't know that for sure considering that First coil was left intact for the most part (but instead, echo allow them to skip mechanics). The encounters in FCoB are in the same line as BCoB where echo/overgearing would actually help.

And even then, I'm still against them directly nerfing FCoB and not leaving the fight intact (outside of echo). That's why they should have two types of difficulty (and two types of rewarding circumstances) to cater to both. The reason why I'm fine with echo is that we can just click it off and still experience the fight as normal, we have the option to do one or the other. Something that didn't happen with SCoB and should happen with Alexander in 3.0

And that's the thing.... why aren't more people revisiting these fights? Do people just not enjoy them? And if so, what's really the point of playing this video game?

I know that last one is a very loaded question, but still.... People will grind the hell out of much more "mechanically unfun" contents - beast tribe dailies, daily logs, etc. Why not keep coming back to what is ultimately the meat and potatoes of this game... the encounters and instances? The things that actually should be providing some sort of pleasure response in the traditional way we interact with video games. I press button "A" and "B" monster goes "kaploey".

There's so many factors that surround something that's subjective. To me, I straight up do not enjoy doing fights like T5 or Titan EX with random people who I cannot count on (which crosses out DF and PF to an extent). It is not fun to die because someone was out of position...Unless I came in with a pre-made or playing with familiar friends then we'd just laugh it off instead.

If i wanted to do those encounters for fun, I'm already selective with who I'm playing with. But in my circumstances, I can do just that with current content. I won't be able to do just that if it just gets nerfed down to oblivion and we don't have any say on it.

I'd personally enjoy fights like T9 or T13 regardless of the difficuly once in a while, if only because of how atmospheric it can get.