[Personal Opinion] FFXIV is too casual friendly

[thegreatonemal]

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

Memorization is not hard which is what pretty much all mmos do is not what most people would call challenging.

[Colino]

Thing is, stuff that requires you to "use your noggin' " is fun and interesting the first 2, maybe 3 times. When it's something you have to run on a daily basis it will get BORING regardless.

[thegreatonemal]

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.

Its the only thing you with this type of game if it doesn't kill or you or almost kill you people don't bother to move because healing is so strong. Everything is a scripted dance in this game boss the same thing at the same time every single time you cant randomize it because then the entire fight becomes rng and you cant really prepare for anything and since this is a GCD style game it ruins any concept of a rotation. So the only thing that can be adjusted is the amount of damage things do which is already done in this game.

[Novaura]

The game was Normal difficulty... 2 years ago. Then when Heavensward came, they nerfed everything in Realm Reborn, including The Steps of Faith which was a true teamwork challenge, but once people cleared it, everyone got scared of it and refused to do it at all. But that doesn't mean that there are still not hard dungeons. To this day, if I get Aurum Vale in a roulette, people still leave it instantaneously. Because they know that it is a hard dungeon and also, they are completely cowardly.

So it is not a case of casual friendly, more or less it is experienced players having no spine and therefore forcing Square Enix to nerf the entire experience.

[Roth_Trailfinder]

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.

As others have stated, MMO's have always had difficult content. Hell, raiding started out as many-group affairs, things were just too hard for (era appropriate) characters to deal with them. I'll never forget having over 100 people trying to get in on a Rallos Zek the Warlord kill in Plane of Tactics, Everquest. (Sometimes I think that EQ is the only MMO with large scale raids remaining is the reason it is still around.)

As for the idea that this is some kind of "gateway MMO" ... no. Just, no, not more than any other MMO ever made. No MMO has been made with the idea that they would only cater to the experienced MMO crowd. They ALL want to attract people new to MMO's, unless they've gone over the hill and stopped advertising completely (the way EQ has) and simply hope to retain as many as possible without getting any new blood.

[Naunet]

Thing is, stuff that requires you to "use your noggin' " is fun and interesting the first 2, maybe 3 times. When it's something you have to run on a daily basis it will get BORING regardless.

Eh, I've done the veteran dungeons in WildStar at least a bazillion times (totally not an exaggeration!) and have yet to find them boring. xD It takes the right combination of challenging mechanics, engaging combat system, and game design that doesn't rely on endless grind.

[Kewitt]

The differently is about where I want it.

The issue is how easy content gets.
When 3.4 came out take A9 could be cleared with min ilevel or 1-2 levels over it. But wasn't easy at all, you could miss Rage timer or something could go wrong as people learned the fight.
Now all active players are Ilevel 259 Well over gear for all the content it's way to easy. But it wasn't. I still find a12 party that have issues getting weekly clears.

[Nightlistic]

Personally think SE did an epic job of providing content difficulty for all levels. However from my own personal experience when I was trying to learn a Tank class, and getting harassed, mocked, even booted once makes it hard to get the opportunity to improve your skills at least from a hands on perspective. You can always study guides but that only teaches so much. The one issue in this game, at least in post main story is to many people are in such a rush to get through roulette's, get their tomes, and get out. When Tanks are in such a hurry they get the healer locked out of a boss fight there is a problem.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Thing is, stuff that requires you to "use your noggin' " is fun and interesting the first 2, maybe 3 times. When it's something you have to run on a daily basis it will get BORING regardless.

While all things inevitably get boring if forced to complete constantly, I find I'll be far more engaged if I'm failing due to the game pushing back. Case in point, I spend some 40-50 hours (probably more) in A12S prog and enjoyed nearly every hour of it. Now I certainly don't expect something like dungeons to be that challenging, but Weeping City remains an example of reasonably challenging content. What I find boring is being capable of pulling the entire room day one. When Baelsar’s Wall releases, I'll pull the room just like every other dungeon and never even think about it. If I pull less, I literally have no reason to use cooldowns. In fact, the healer could /sit because I'll never come close to dying with a pack of three mobs. Frankly, I believe it's this brain dead level content that is hurting the game. It's no coincidence they put the latest Anima step in roulettes. People had stopped doing them.

[EponaTBHSMH]

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)

What I understand from what you're saying is that mechanics from endgame content that are not extremely punishing (ie. death/wipe/very low HP on messing up) would encourage players on improving more?

If that's what you mean I'm not really sure if that really changes anything on how demanding a fight would be for a player and how it wouldn't encourage DPS, for example to completely ignore certain mechanics and facetank them instead of causing a reaction for them as thegreatonemal mentioned.