[Personal Opinion] FFXIV is too casual friendly

[Frowny]

Snip

Until shown otherwise, I chalk that to "casuals" not being pushed a bit more. If you're given easy all your time, of course something that expects a bit more from you will be a shock. Some will step up. Others will cry for nerfs. The reason I resist it is because I've seen "casuals" in my own FC step up. It CAN be done and in a weird way I'm optimistic people can grow and improve.

Casual is also not equal to "bad". You can be a casual player and still have some braincells working. A11-12, contrary to what you seemingly suggest, are not hard (11 can be at times though, I'll admit that). The big moment in 11 is prey, easily solved with a regen and a Tetra/Essential. A12 is Gravitational and Sacrament, but Grav goes off first so you have a window to adjust (unless the game goes "nope"). What's often seen? In 11, healers not doing anything and letting the DPS die. In 12 people not knowing the simple pattern.

The common factor? Pattern recognition. They're scripted enough where even if you don't know the fights inside and out (I sure as heck don't), you can generally get a feeling of "hm... something big is next".

The other issue, which IS a toxic "casual" mindset, is when someone in say midcore goes "hey, do X at this point and you're good". Typically a very easy fix, but is often met with just being ignored, or something akin to "I'm a casual player, I can't do that".

[-Mira-]

I am actually glad that the main content works for casuals.
As for me I can't do much more than casual. On any game at all. I have a small handycap, it makes responding fast hard for me sometimes, it can trigger involuntary movements / twitches in my body. The fight with Nidhog was a terrible struggle for me. But want to progress non the less too.
Do have good days and bad days as in the good are where it doesn't get triggered as much & bad are the days where I'll avoid any dungeon that isn't a lower level or none at all and focus on gathering and crafting instead as I can do that on my own pace with a nice audiobook in the background to listen to, or discord sometimes too

So happy the fc peeps are nice, lovely peeps who can guide me through because it is easier to mention if my body malfunctions again midgame. <3

[CookieMonsta]

Filthy elitist logic needs to stay out of our mmo.

wao, its one thing to be casual but to pull others down? Elitist players wouldn't complain if people simply pulled their weight and mashed a few buttons.

As do braindead players. Sick of carrying them in A12 NORMAL. You know, the easier one which is challenging but pretty easy after 1-2 clears yet people still fail like it is day 1?

then don't queue with the plebs lol, go premade. 80% of the content in this game is literally designed around DF and how to make DF pop. This means that SE find all the possible ways to force the better players to carry bad players to ensure everyone is on the same page. Believe me, if there were a way to filter out so only competent players get to be with each other, the weaker players would never get anywhere (see Gordias Savage).

That is the price you pay for the convenience of Duty Finder. Think of it as a welfare system.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

It seems you're just resisting what's right in front of your eyes. As you must have observed, to many, A11N and A12N are more than a little outside of casual. They make people rage-quit. There's your calibration for you. Take it.

Complaining that the playerbase is bad -and I think the quoted is far more honest about it than any idea that the game is too friendly to casuals- is not productive and you may benefit from finding a different entertainment platform with a gaming cohort up to your expectations. Good luck with your search!

Neither are outside casual and can be facerolled if properly geared. And therein lies the crux of the issue. I see far too many people attempting content they scarcely meet the requirements for, then complaining about its difficulty. If you have mostly ivl 230, then yes, A11 and A12 will hurt. Shire or crafted gear? Both are complete pushovers. The problem is people have no incentive to upgrade. Why upgrade from your lore gear when ilvl 230 is enough to get in?

FFXIV is absolutely dreadful at encouraging self improvement for this precise reason. Even most single player games eventually reach a point where they get progressively harder-- to the point of being maddening -- if you don't upgrade. That is rarely an occurrence in XIV. Which, in my opinion, heavily contributes to the declining interest in certain bits of content. The devs shouldn't be using Relic quests to force us back into Roulettes. They should assess why people aren't doing them in the first place.

Another issue with the poor difficulty scaling. People don't have a proper understanding of their abilities. When dungeons are laughable to the point of absurdity, why is a inexperienced tank going to like "maybe I need to pop Vengeance for this attack"? Nothing has prepared them for those sudden spikes of damage. Your job quests are mostly useless at teaching you even a fraction of your abilities and very little content requires them. I'll reiterate once again, if I do not pull the entire room in either Xelphatol or Great Gubal, I may as well take all my tanking abilities off my hotbar. The only purpose they'll serve is to severely bore the healer.

then don't queue with the plebs lol, go premade. 80% of the content in this game is literally designed around DF and how to make DF pop. This means that SE find all the possible ways to force the better players to carry bad players to ensure everyone is on the same page. Believe me, if there were a way to filter out so only competent players get to be with each other, the weaker players would never get anywhere (see Gordias Savage).

That is the price you pay for the convenience of Duty Finder. Think of it as a welfare system.

And the argument people are making is this will inevitably lead to those same people leaving the game. Active characters have steadily declined thoroughly this entire past year with no patch cycle seeing an increase. The two most frequent complaints you hear regarding FFXIV is the MSQ gating and how little there is to do at endgame.

Gordias Savage is a terrible example. Even midcore players couldn't handle it because of how severely over tuned it was. Like Frowny said earlier. We're beating the dust of a horse's bones at this point. No one wants Savage level difficulty for dungeons or Trials. We want a step up from brain dead to "I actually need to use my abilities." To put simply...

As a tank, I should need to manage my cooldowns
As a healer, I should need to actually heal consistently
As a DPS, I should know how to do my rotation

Right now? None of that is required for most content. The only except being if the tank pulls the entire room, then they and the healer actually have to know their jobs to handle all the incoming damage.

[Moomba33]

Neither are outside casual and can be facerolled if properly geared. And therein lies the crux of the issue. I see far too many people attempting content they scarcely meet the requirements for, then complaining about its difficulty. If you have mostly ivl 230, then yes, A11 and A12 will hurt. Shire or crafted gear? Both are complete pushovers. The problem is people have no incentive to upgrade. Why upgrade from your lore gear when ilvl 230 is enough to get in?

Personally I would consider going into Alex Normal with a mix of i230-i240 to be normal and having Shire or crafted to be overgeared. It rewards tokens for i250 stuff afterall. Granted people on top of the gear curve will likely just be grabbing stuff for alt classes but I don't see any problem with doing the content in gear where the rewards are upgrades for you. (I regularly go on my healing classes that have a mix of Lore and Weeping City stuff honestly)

[PondHollow]

Neither are outside casual and can be facerolled if properly geared. And therein lies the crux of the issue. I see far too many people attempting content they scarcely meet the requirements for, then complaining about its difficulty. If you have mostly ivl 230, then yes, A11 and A12 will hurt. Shire or crafted gear? Both are complete pushovers. The problem is people have no incentive to upgrade. Why upgrade from your lore gear when ilvl 230 is enough to get in?

Okay, so, some of the context is making this a little hard to digest. The week before 3.4 was dropped, i230 gear took a good effort, and all i240 gear was gated and rationed. As one of the people who only just got into savage, I don't know about what else might have been dropping at the time, but if you were midcore, 230-240 was par in your main class with a long road between 230 and 237. When 3.4 did drop, prudence demanded players wait for two weeks each of tomes to get to 241+ via the shire body/leg pieces first (each being about +1.54 in total ilevel), with even smaller boosts from *completing* A9+. How could that be undergeared for A9+?

250 has been commonplace for about a month at most.