Thank you for increased difficulty

[Jojoya]

Which I can agree and understand with towards some degree, but what do you do when you've had to explain to the same person five times in a row not to stand somewhere....and they end up standing there every time. At some point, something has to give because no one is having fun when the same person or more is being detrimental towards the rest of the players because of the gap in skill levels.

I can't tell you how many Tsukuyomi EX runs I've been in that we're to start off as fun for me and everyone, but ended up painful because people who claimed to be good couldn't even do basic things.

I want to relax and have fun too and not have my effort go to waste either, :<

I'm not talking about EX since EX isn't part of the MSQ. They can make EX and Savage as difficult as they want to satisfy the players who want that challenge, and I encourage them to keep doing it. There needs to be something that encourages the players who like to push their limits to keep doing so.

I'm talking about the content that's part of the MSQ. The MSQ gates all new content to the game if only by not allowing you access to the new zones where the new content is located without advancing far enough in the MSQ. You can't cut off a significant portion of the player base by creating mandatory content outside of the difficulty they can handle and retain their interest in the game.

WoW learned that in Cataclysm when the player base hit level cap at the start of the expansion then there was nothing for the average player to do because outside of a handful of dailies, they had turned up the difficulty dial on end game content from 5 to 10 and the majority of their player base had no interest in it. Within a few weeks of launch, they scrambled to seriously nerf Heroic dungeons and a few months later followed suit with Normal T11 raids (I think they had also made some adjustments to Heroic T11 at the same time though not nearly as drastic).

Wildstar learned that by also restricting end game content to hardcore players who wanted extreme difficulty from the start. If they thought their player base would rise to the challenge and learn to get better, they were sadly mistaken. People just quit and never looked back.

I don't want to see that happen to FFXIV. They either need to stop gating access to new zones and the more casual content located there via the MSQ or they need to reconsider how difficult they make the MSQ content. Leave the difficult content outside of the MSQ. A lot of players simply want the chance to experience the story and they'll continue to pay to support the game given that opportunity at level reasonable to the difficulty they can/are wiling to handle. Those players then end up funding the more difficult content that you find relaxing even if they aren't doing it themselves because at least they're getting access to other new content that does appeal to them.