"Casual" content thoughts

[RiyahArp]

I'm not a hardcore player, and I thought Royal Menagerie was easy, assuming you actually get paired with people who didn't play like it was their first 5 minutes on the game.

It's a dramatically harder fight than any story trial before it. if you did it at launch, at around i300, it was a lot tougher than if you did it weeks or months later once people were gearing past it. Go do it, then Go do Nidhogg hard, and watch the timing of the abilities. It's no contest in terms of tells or time to activate.

If you’ve actually seen hardcore raiders say that they want challenging content but in actuality demand a faceroll, please give me examples. Because I have never seen such a thing. The more hardcore raiders have been asking for content that provides them with a challenge they want, hence why Ultimate was so positively received by hardcore groups: they asked and the developers actually delivered.

Ultimate was received by people who aren't even doing it. It didn't even attract attention to raiding in the game; after the world firsts, any mention of it died off a cliff, and even the PFs for raiders it inspired are gone. It was great to watch other people do it, but in the end that's all it was good for.

[HoodRat]

It's a dramatically harder fight than any story trial before it. if you did it at launch, at around i300, it was a lot tougher than if you did it weeks or months later once people were gearing past it. Go do it, then Go do Nidhogg hard, and watch the timing of the abilities. It's no contest in terms of tells or time to activate.

I did it with the free 290 gear from job quest and 270 slaying accessories. I'm no mathematician, but I believe that's lower than 300.

[RiyahArp]

I did it with the free 290 gear from job quest and 270 slaying accessories. I'm no mathematician, but I believe that's lower than 300.

Did you tank it? Because tanking it literally requires the least skill of any job in it. You're just a big DPS that can survive all the hits that kill, don't have to do anything but run to your tethered partner and gather adds three times, and more. DRK even had an "ignore damage button" with Blackest Night that made it braindead. It was a lot harder for the DPS and heals that did it, in the same way the second boss of Rabanastre is for tanks.

Did you do it with a premade? Because that's easier too. I used to pug it, and no, it wasn't particularly easy for people used to the mechanics of the game. Hyomin talks the old line about "seeing mechanic before," but at the time shiva's diamond dust was a joke unless you did EX, and people had stopped doing coil long ago, even for WT.

[HyoMinPark]

Did you do it with a premade? Because that's easier too. I used to pug it, and no, it wasn't particularly easy for people used to the mechanics of the game. Hyomin talks the old line about "seeing mechanic before," but at the time shiva's diamond dust was a joke unless you did EX, and people had stopped doing coil long ago, even for WT.

I pugged it with one friend and 6 randoms; I’ve never done Royal Menagerie normal as in a pre-made group. Only one person in the fight had actually cleared; they were a healer. I did it again with another friend not too long after that, and one of the tanks (a DRK) had not done their level 70 job quest, so they didn’t have Blackest Night, and were wearing level 68 and below gear. We still cleared.

The mechanics in Royal Menagerie were equally “a joke”. They were not that difficult to execute; they only required the person to be paying attention. If people were having issues, others that knew would explain if they were given the opportunity to.

[HyoMinPark]

It's a dramatically harder fight than any story trial before it. if you did it at launch, at around i300, it was a lot tougher than if you did it weeks or months later once people were gearing past it. Go do it, then Go do Nidhogg hard, and watch the timing of the abilities. It's no contest in terms of tells or time to activate.

Overgearing content is automatically going to make the content easier; this is always a given.

That being said, the group I was with during Early Access cleared it in a couple pulls. Most of us were in i290 Antiquated gear with level 67~69 accessories. The fight was not a difficult fight—every attack it used was recycled from previous primal fights, and a couple from Coil. It just required people to pay attention. That shouldn’t be hard to do, but I guess it is.

[Akor]

It's a dramatically harder fight than any story trial before it. if you did it at launch, at around i300, it was a lot tougher than if you did it weeks or months later once people were gearing past it.

I dont know but i did royal menagerie on 3rd day of the early-accese of SB with ilvl 280-290 w/o my last 2 job quest on my whm. It took me 1 hour of wipe to cleare it on first try. o.o
Was it rly that hard or that group was just too good? lol