[Personal Opinion] FFXIV is too casual friendly

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Then we move onto expert roulette and this is where the casual pandering should stop. You've got pretty respectable gear, can do whatever you want to do in the open world, and can experience a good chunk of the game.

Like Frowny said, it should stop. When a Scholar can tank because the mobs hit for so little, you're not exactly hitting a good balance. There's a reason tanks always pull the room. It's because they have literally no risk of dying otherwise. Healers spend more than 50% of their time in Cleric Stance if they aren't lazy. None of these scenarios should be possible in supposedly Expert dungeons. It provides no incentive for players to improve since they'll be fine wearing gear over a year old.

[Naunet]

Actually, I think the game is striking a pretty perfect balance. Allow me to illustrate.

Why are we not allowed to have fun, challenging content at ALL levels? I've now done all dungeon content through the Gubal Library and I STILL have not encountered a single challenging dungeon. At all. It's tiresome and I disagree completely that there is some sort of "good balance" in this game. The vast majority of content is ridiculously easy. I shouldn't have to wait until the last sliver of content (and ONLY 8-man content) before I feel remotely challenged.

[Lokier]

The worse is when you have the ability to get all three lines, and the last two stickers go completely off the board and you don't even get ONE line.

Happened to me this week's book. I was not impressed because after 7, you can't actually flip your stickers around.

So annoying...

I kept resetting after that and got a perfect 3-line but the stickers went straight into fucking corners. Ended up with 2 lines.... At least I got one of the two minions though... finally... ._.
This reset there was nothing good to obtain but the 30k MGP... Get the feeling I'll be doing the books the long way to get that stupid Fenrir mount. >_>

At least I get a title if I keep going....

[Miyha]

I do agree, it would be nice to see the difficulty go up in content other than Savage and EX trials. (Actually, I personally think this Savage tier and Sophia EX were made a bit too easy as well.) But I don't think the general player base would be very happy with this. I know, it would technically "improve the quality of players"; or, it could make a significant amount of them get frustrated and quit. Rather than changing the difficulty level overall, perhaps an alternative could be adding more "midcore" content or actual hard mode/difficult dungeons as an option for players who want to challenge more difficult content, and give certain worthwhile rewards to those who challenge that content.

[Gardthorne]

Nah. Keep the bar low. The meat of the game should be accessible to everyone. Tougher content exists for those who wish to engage in it. The game doesn't need harder casual content, it needs a mid-core raid difficulty.

[Roth_Trailfinder]

Nah. Keep the bar low. The meat of the game should be accessible to everyone. Tougher content exists for those who wish to engage in it.

I would say the meat of the game is the MSQ. It provides the most content in the game, after all.

All instanced content other than MSQ related content should be middle difficulty. MSQ dungeons and content should remain relatively easy. Extreme trials should be Savage level difficulty, and Savage should be downright hard. Right now, Xelphatol should be easy, and Great Ghubal Library (hard) should be harder, given that one is MSQ and the other is not.

Unfortunately, SE is unlikely to intentionally introduce even medium difficulty content outside of Savage raids. I doubt that the current Extreme trials are actually as difficult as they had hoped, but they won't ever make somehting more challenging, only less (if they adjust its difficulty at all).

[Meeka19]

Hardmode dungeons no, but the CURRENT EX trials are considered "midcore" content. If you can't agree with that then you've obviously never set foot in a current EX trial that CAN'T be unsynched/facerolled with gear.


If you think Savage is on par with the difficulty level of 24mans, EX trials, and other casual to midcore content, you've obviously never set foot in Savage raids and can't really speak for them not being hardcore content.

I never said savage compares to 24 mans and ex trials, I literally said the opposite, so.....

Alex normal and PotD are, again, meant to be easy and accessible for casual/midcore players.

You know... when gamers hear "raid", they tend to think "end game content that requires a good reaction time and knowledge of your class". But by all means, lets reply to my emphasizing that most game content is very casual, even the traditionally challenging things by saying "yes they did it on purpose". If this is their way of labeling 24 man dungeons, well ok I guess.
When it comes to potd.... my problem was with the gating of 3-4h before you can reach the challenging content. 1-50 are usable by low lvls in particular, and 51-100 can serve as teaching area for fresh 60s. It's used for lvling atm so it's a good idea to be a friendly environment. And yes I don't disagree that story content should be easier.
.... But if you don't see anything wrong with people doing 51-150 after they've reached mastery I don't know what to tell you. It's sort of like asking someone to gather for 3-4h as a prerequisite before they fight.

Again, do the primals that require unsynched and are more current to the gear level. Sephirot (due purely to mechanics, and possibly Thordan for that matter) and forward are certainly not "facerollable" unless you and everyone in your group has farmed it forever.

Having seen what they made of "raid", "expert", "extreme", and gating of potd savage (in their own words) final floors I fully expected everything to follow this trend short of alexander savage. I'll observe the current trials as you put it. They may change my mind if they can be feasibly farmed for scripture and gil.

Now I do agree vehemently with this. It would be nice for there to be some incentive to do older content at its intended item level, as well as more difficult things that can be challenged without a static. Was actually thinking about this just the other day wishing people would do Shiva unsynched just because it's a fun fight, or that ilvl could be synched for Thordan for the same reason.

10characters

[thegreatonemal]

Since when have MMOs been known for hard content? Oh right, never.

The other point FF14 is a gateway mmo its not really meant to be hard. Hell until you hit 60 this is a single player rpg for all intent and purposes. Also there is not much you can do to make GCD style mmos more challenging the only way to do it is make any kind of avoidable damage kill you instantly and anything unavoidable almost kill everyone if they aren't at full hp and to do it over and over in rapid succession.

[Subucnimorning]

Since when have MMOs been known for hard content? Oh right, never.

MMO's have ALWAYS had challenging content, not sure where you get the idea that they haven't

EQ1 had challenging content when they went to instanced content, WoW had challenging content, Rift had challenging content, Wildstar had challenging content (all these pretty much just involve raids being challenging, although Wildstar had challenging group content which was great). I am sure others have had challenging content as well but those are just the ones I played most extensively

[Meeka19]

Since when have MMOs been known for hard content? Oh right, never.

The other point FF14 is a gateway mmo its not really meant to be hard. Hell until you hit 60 this is a single player rpg for all intent and purposes. Also there is not much you can do to make GCD style mmos more challenging the only way to do it is make any kind of avoidable damage kill you instantly and anything unavoidable almost kill everyone if they aren't at full hp and to do it over and over in rapid succession.

I don't know if that's really what people need. It seems more interesting, for me at least, to be kept in high pressure situations (low hp after taking a mechanic, and needing not to mess up the next, could be a stacking debuff that makes it so only the next actually wipes) than to make a boss aoe gaze kill everyone and u just .... press s every 3-5 min for example, or wait on a rev and just watch everyone from then on.

My emphasis is on demanding activity and thought of players, not "you didn't do this therefore you may now do nothing", and if you mess up again well now you're doing nothing again. Oh and here's a debuff for dying to make you more likely to die. (probably a defense against botting that should be there though)

An example of a mechanic that requires attention is in potd higher floors where dots tick for a lot more than usual and will kill someone if you're not careful, but not in one tick. It's fairly minor but it's different when every mob is meaningful and you're not pulling 6-8 mobs that your tank can almost tank without being healed.

Floor 180 boss of potd actually does just what you said, unvoidable big aoe, but it doesn't kill you if you're not full hp, yet seeing as he keeps casting it over and over, you're forced to address your fail if people weren't shielded or healed right when the first one hit by trying to optimize your casting time/buffs so the pt can keep taking meteors until boss dies.

Regarding your example, it's technically exactly these sort of unforgiving mechanics that don't favor learning that're pushing people away from challenging content.
What I'd look forward to is simply content that requires you to pay attention and adjust on the fly rather than giving each boss a set rotation, I guess. It becomes a memorization exercise rather than strategy or requiring a decent reaction time.

Reaching a good balance between how visible the cast is, how long the mon cast is and how strong the impact is is the difference. If a cast is very long it makes sense to one hit, if the cast is fast then you'd want to give people leeway to fail once or twice. But the cooldown for a fast cast with a forgiving impact (allows healer to take care of it) shouldn't be long. (as in is cast one after another) Otherwise it will be as if it never happened as you mentioned.

It's actually really strange that there aren't clear visual queues for each skill a boss casts. (there are some but not always)
You shouldn't need to look at a cast bar to know what's going on.