The Difficulty Has Not Increased In Casual Content.

[BillyKaplan]

Gear

Not everyone finished the last patch with 370. You're going to see people in there with older dungeon gear, not even tomestone gear. In part because getting the tomestone gear requires getting tomes and that requires time. You know, things casual players might not have enough of to invest in the gear. Putting a higher ilvl would just force people to play catch-up for longer before they can actually do the content.
Also how can you say difficulty hasn't increased when you're using gear as an excuse? The content is still more difficult. It hits harder and has more unique mechanics. And you can still die if you don't adhere to enough mechanics.

[RuleofThree]

My point is that casual players - i.e not raiding Savage - finished the last patch on an ilevel that completely trivializes the new content. It just feels like a bit of a let down tbh.

My other point is they shouldn't hand out this gear if they're just planning on tuning content 20 ilevels below it. Perhaps mid-core was the wrong word... more I think the baseline content should be so under-tuned. I think the game could benefit with some challenging 4 man content - that you can just use the DF for for that 'pick-up' group situation.

But moreover, the gear disparity - i.e letting people in the dungeons at an ilevel that puts them sub 35k hp is just a cheap way to provide challenge for returning players and offers the regular players nothing else.

FFXIV's gear system sucks ass no matter how you slice it. You are underequipped at the start of the patch, then it takes a bit over two months just to get tomestone gear cause of the stupidly low cap. Then, when you finally do geat the gear, casual content is braindead easy. However, in a few months time, new gear will come out, making what you have useless again. Thus the pointlessness in getting all the relics, other than for the sake of glamour or something. By time you get them, they are useless. Of course, you can buy crafted gear for millions per piece, to instantly have one of the best gear, but that's a crap ton of money.

If anything, I disagree with you on this notion. Most of the optional content (savage, extremes, etc) are sat at i370...ten above the i360 mendacity you came in with. So, in a way, this is like SE saying 'hey...wanna do the end game stuff? Hope you have 14 million gil to buy the crafted set...otherwise you will be gated behind tomestons for about 3 months. No need to thank us, just our way of saying we love your money.'

[Hamada]

"If battle content is for them."


Because you can do the entire MSQ, from which many things are gated behind, as a botanist :^)


Mist Dragon is hard due to:


1.) Never doing Neverreap and not knowing about the fog mechanic

2.) Healer not healing and leaving people at sub 50% health from attacks like Rim Wreath

3.) The amount of AoEs and DoTs that can be thrown at you at once. Most casuals who never have done harder content might never have encountered such a thing.



I'm fairly casual (I play every day but I don't do savages and all) and I honestly found Alphascape 4 easier then Mist Dragon...but hey. That's me.

That is because alphascape 4 is too easy. ( It took me a while to find out it was actually possible to wipe and need pass a vote abandon due to people not understanding run to the woman, run away from the man)
3- is only hard because of that BS word play
1- actually has a nice balance in showing people if they know how to react to non-verbal communication and do the tethers and muti stack thing right.
2 is easy once you learn the script.. with that being said:

3> 1> mist dragon > 2 > 4, for difficultly.

[Melichoir]

But moreover, the gear disparity - i.e letting people in the dungeons at an ilevel that puts them sub 35k hp is just a cheap way to provide challenge for returning players and offers the regular players nothing else.

The "Boss deals 'x' damage so if you dont got the HP, you dead" as a means for difficulty, IMO, isnt a thing in ffxiv. Atleast not intentional in this tier. What I mean is that if youre going into the two new dungeons at their bare minimum ilvl, youre gonna struggle staying alive to aoe mechanics. That is certain. But as you point out, most average players wont be entering with the bare minimum.

Then in that regards, the fact people are dying to "high damage AoEs" comes from teh fact most casuals arent using their skills correctly. Im a tank, so I get the idea of tank privilege (for those unaware, its the fact tanks have so much HP that some mechanics they can just eat that would kill a normal DPS or Healer, even if they shouldnt do that), but the fact is that in this set of content, you have to be using all your skills now. And Im not saying that its only on the DPS to survive (though a lot of DPS have some form of damage mitigators themselves), but that Healers and tanks need to also be using their damage mitigators to keep the party up. That means using Reprisal, or Cover/TBN/ or other skills in this content. The devs WANT you to use these skills, and are punishing groups who dont use them. As in the DPS and Heals who are doing nothing more than spamming their basic heals, or doing their DPS rotation and nothing else.

And in this case, it doesnt require extreme coordination, just awareness of what your group needs.

There is another point ot consider about all this: Back when I first started playing, I noticed that the dungeons seemed to be designed to teach a mechanic or two to play the game properly. Now with the way the game has evolved, that feeling has gone by the wayside. But if the Devs want to 'retrain' the player base to think and play a certain way, using dungeons, EX Modes, and Savage would be how itd get done. Considering my experience with SukuEX, and O9S (so far), that seems to be the clear intent going on here. They want to snap the players out of the older way things were being done by making us do things we typically dont do.

In this case, making us use skills and abilities and tanking methods to deal with mechanics far more actively, Rather than "Press 1 Cooldown. Move here. DPS a bit. Win loot"

For the new dungeons, its "Get used to using all your skills here. You can live through the damage, if youre decently geared and smart enough."

[Ilyrian]

For the new dungeons, its "Get used to using all your skills here. You can live through the damage, if you're decently geared and smart enough."

I think you're being slightly too kind to the new dungeons but I do see your point.

I think it's a shame that a really well deigned i.e aesthetically beautiful dungeon like The Burn is reduced to 3 trash pulls though. I think they really need to start putting in content that does require some sort of coordination and, as you say, use of abilities.
I think this game isn't really set-up for CCing mobs etc, which is a shame, but I can see that might be a bit difficult to implement now.

I just didn't feel the difference that people are claiming - apart from the raised HP pools of the mobs. But i concede that just comes down to the groups that you're placed in - both skill wise and gear wise.

[Eimian_Eda]

I was hyped up for the Mist Dragon and The Burn by both the forums and my in-game friends.
I wouldn't say I was.. disappointed.. but it didn't feel hard or new, nor did we wipe.
Aesthetically though, it's pretty nice :P

I do, however, feel the new Savage Tier has gone up a bit, if not necessarily harder, just better designed.

[Sylvina]

I am all for a well designed challenge but I do not enjoy things like being juggled by colors in suzaku ex while way off the exploding platform due to bad server ticks or having to know 200 year old sailors jargon to clear.

[van_arn]

We're at the point where any time mechanics are a thing, or there's ever a nonzero chance of failure, it's "unfair to people that just want the story."

Genuinely what the hell.

[MOZZYSTAR]

"The difficulty has not increased in casual content..."
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I donno, man, Shinryu (especially, this one was really brutal. Took 15 runs just to clear it for story, and 10-15 was the standard from what I gathered in DF until peple got used to Shinryu), Tsuki, Suzaku, Ridorana, even the new dungeons were a little hard for me and the teams I've been in at first. :| But the mechs were fun to figure out, fo'sho. (I've even failed some of the solo instanced duties on Stormblood, and I don't think I had ever died or failed in previous expansions.) I know, I know "git gud."

I'm a casual player, I'm not a lazy player but I don't want super-super hard things to play that feel extremely stressful or unattainable (to me). if I did, I'd be playing exes, savages, et cetera. Do I think they should make it easier? No. I do I think they should make it harder? Not really. It does get a little harder with new mechs to learn each expansion and I think that gradual increase is great, but I don't wan tto dive into ex/savage territory just to play the story.

[Thoosa]

Regarding the burn, it’s a bit strange because you can do massive pulls and the mobs don’t really seem to hit much harder than hells lid, I mean I can quite happily heal it. Also the first too bosses are easy with the second handing out a bit more damage to deal with.

Then you get to mist dragon and the most annoying thing currently is the dps can’t seem to dps the ads fast enough and we end up in the boulders, plus the line aoes need a quick reaction time to find safe space, so you end up wiping over and over and having a Red Mage in the party seems key to reducing the wipes. :P Therefore in the context of the dungeon itself, it does feel a bit over tuned, but it will probably become super easy as people get better stuff, idk.

The other dungeon is easy with mobs and bosses not really hitting much harder than hells lid.

Btw I always thought the bosses in swallows compass hit even less hard than hells lid.

If you count Alphascape as casual I do find they challenge healers much more than sigma and omega normal did, and would rate them with this difficulty (from normal to hard).

4, 1, 3 and 2 being the hardest (from a healing perspective)

So yes I think I think the content is a little bit harder (Alphascape savage is definitely harder than sigmascape), but for the normal stuff I think once people get better stuff and learn mechanics they will be complaining it’s too easy again.