The constant disbanding of Steps of Faith

[RiceisNice]

..

Then why not start it with 3.0 rather than gating to it? Even if you try to tell them to get better at the game, soemthing like SoF is much more team oriented where you can't outcarry 2 or 3 baddies (or trolls), even if they were DPS who typically have the most leeway for performance.

You could say its a babystep to endgame...except this isn't even required for coil so I'm not sure what it's supposed to lead to. If it's leading to what 3.0 is expecting, then I'd like to vouch that it'd be the wrong time to do so (at the end of 2.0 instead of one of the story trials in 3.0).

Comparing it to Dark Souls is a little much... just because you personally find it irrationally more difficult than it actually is does not warrant a comparison to suggest everyone does. This line of argument is basically saying that we can never have any variety in content because people can't adapt. Is that what you want? Nothing but fights where everyone just burns the boss whilst ignoring AOEs that do too little damage to actually bother dodging them?

It's incredibly sad that the creative direction of future storyline content is going to be completely inhibited because a few players don't want to have to think about anything...

My point was that Dark Souls started off without pulling any punches with it's difficulty or curve balls. I'm not saying we should have difficult fights, but we shouldn't ahve difficulty spikes (which we also see in T5, T9 after nerfs, but those are supposed to be side, end game content)

Think of it like this.; you're only doing main scenario. Do you feel that the difficulty jump fight expectation (meaning party communication, group composition and all that) transitions smoothly from Good King Moggle Mog XII-> Levi HM -> Ramuh HM -> Shiva HM -> Mr.Ascian > SoF? I do not feel that's the case because of how the fight work, how the NPCs give you vague advice which can be perceived as the wrong strategy, the "requirement" of a 2/2/4 party breakdown, and the degree of execution required from every single party member (can you afford to carry 2 deadweights that can't dps or even manage cannons?)

Like I mentioned before, I'm all for main scenario fights being more difficult or even interesting, Levi HM was an utter disappointment to me and honestly EX should've been for main scenario instead, but I feel this is a wrong way to immediately introduce it (being at the end of a game cycle and being required for the expansion) all things considered.