The constant disbanding of Steps of Faith

[Alberel]

Difficulty is subjective. I've never played 1.0 so I really cannot comment on the difficulty just by looking at it, I jsut see a lot of standing around, rupping up the stairs to destroy meteors, and not step in laser.
1.0 Nael also did not gate you from playing ARR. That being said though, SoF is still presented very differently from every other main scenario fight (or fights that are put on DF immediately) that it's causing enough problems for a low clear rate. You really do not want the latter when its a requirement for an entire expansion

The trouble is all story content up until now has basically consisted of 'burn the boss until it dies'. Most mechanics involving dodging things do so little damage that far too many players have gotten used to them being inconsequential. Now we have a fight that simply requires players to fire three cannons and detonate some dynamite to kill him and players find it too hard because they simply cannot adapt. This is just a case of lazy players stuck in their ways unwilling to play a different way to defeat the boss (using the environment instead of directly attacking them). These players will NEVER learn unless they are forced to do so to progress.

The real issue I have here is that if SE has to nerf this fight to let the bad players through does that mean we can't have any medium difficulty content that doesn't just consist of burning the boss and ignoring AOEs? If a bunch of idiots can't learn how to play through an easy fight (and yes it is OBJECTIVELY easy, you literally just push a bunch of switches when an NPC tells you to during the fight) do the rest of us have to suffer through monotonous, anti-climactic and disappointing storyline encounters for the rest of the game's lifespan?

What if all story content in the expansion is of a similar calibre to SoF? What point is there in nerfing the fight if all these players will just get stuck on the next encounter anyway?

[Sapphic]

This is just a case of lazy players stuck in their ways unwilling to play a different way

Sounds like quite a few FFXI and 14 1.0 players that switched to FFXIV ARR XD

[Eidolon]

Sounds like quite a few FFXI and 14 1.0 players that switched to FFXIV ARR XD

Chains of Promethia. Yea. us XI players never had challenging content to get through our story mode... :P

[Sapphic]

Chains of Promethia. Yea. us XI players never had challenging content to get through our story mode... :P

Cutscenes of Promethia, as I call it ^_^

Still, Prishe! Still one of my fave chars in XI, then Lillisette. Plus CoP got teh nrefed :P

Also my post you quoted was in reference to those from XI and 14 1.0 who presistently asked for things to change to XI and 1.0 respectivelly and they complained tht 14 wasn't like those.

[RiceisNice]

...

What if all story content in the expansion is of a similar calibre to SoF? What point is there in nerfing the fight if all these players will just get stuck on the next encounter anyway?

Then maybe it should be the case at a beginning of the game/expansion, rather than do a 90-180 turn in fight mechanics for main scenario. So far, most of the fights for MS don't even make proper use of the 8-man composition because you never really need more than 2 tanks.

And no, difficulty is still subjective. It's different, that's about it. Its not as simple or straightforward as "hitting the switch when the NPC tells you" because as far as I know, they don't even tell you when to hit it, simply to ready it. From that point, one of two things can happen.
A. You miss because you shoot it when Vishap walks into the AoE, but misses because he wasn't channeling his cleave.
B. It hits because you shot the dragonkiller at the correct timing.

And for the record, you'd be hard pressed for the enrage timer if you didn't have people attacking the boss at all times (having two dps stay on Vishap, with cannons shooting both vishap and the adds) because as far as I was concerned, I was under the impression (by an NPC dialogue no less) that my direct attacks will "avail little against this foe". And honestly, this wouldn't be the first time that a fight mechanic (or how it should be done) came off as incredibly vague or even misleading, I never figured out the mechanics to interrupting Madison's musket spam in Sastasha(HM) until someone straight up told me.

I'm all for making main scenario fights actually difficult and worth a damn for a change (levi HM was my biggest disappointment, zzz), but either way, it seems really silly to do something completely different at the end of a content cycle which makes it also required for the expansion. The overall clear rates alone is showing that something was done differently from the previous fights and just isn't a good design for the game's lifespan if you want the expansion to hit a good start.