We Really Need To Talk About The State And Path Of FFXIV

[HyoMinPark]

There's a problem with this sort of thing. Raiders get greedy. They conquer the raid content, then are bored in group or solo content. So they ask for group and solo content to be made more challenging. They never recognize the idea that the gear they are wearing is not designed for the content. So of course it is going to be easy.

You’d have a point... if said level cap content wasn’t also faceroll easy without raid gear. It’s made even easier with BiS, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t easy to begin with (see: Swallow’s Compass). Expert dungeons and 24-mans are not super challenging content to do at the minimum item level, and they become even more trivial once you outgear them. The only content that may pose a challenge at minimum item level required are some of the Extremes (not all) and Savage.

Asking for more content to have teeth to it isn’t greed on the raiders’ part; for example, people complain about Royal Menagerie because of its sudden spike in difficulty compared to everything else, but it wasn’t designed on account of the raiders, nor with raiders in mind (the only content designed with raiders in mind anymore is Ultiamte—Savage has become increasingly midcore). I think content at cap should be more challenging to promote players actually learning things like proper rotations, etc., and it will also help with the transition from something like dungeons or Expert Roulette or a 24-man into Extremes and, eventually, Savage. As it stands now, the jump in difficulty is too high; I personally find it detrimental—because players will get to cap and they decide to tackle something like Savage only to discover that they were woefully unprepared for it, and subsequently cry for nerfs to the content. (Well, not even Savage really—look at Royal Menagerie, Castrum Fluminis NM... and before that, Weeping City, Dun Scaith, and Final Steps of Faith.)

There needs to be a gradual increase in difficult through leveling to prepare for end-game, and then gradual levels of difficulty at end-game as well. Not sudden spikes like we saw with most of 4.0’s content leading up to Royal Menagerie (which isn’t even hard, but it demands far more of players than anything else up to that point).