Lack of End Game Content

[Zabuza]

Casuals didn't change the game, this game has been pretty much running the same cycle with while trying something new here and there since ARR, has it been made easier? Yes, in some aspects Coil was basically at savage difficulty with no normal mode, and some instances here and there have been nerffed as time went on, however lets not pretend you've had a larger slice of this pie, in fact raiders have gained some more content like Ultimate and BA as time has gone on.
You also avoided the point of my question, you're whole argument which you said again is Casuals have more, raiders have less, give us some of your stuff, it won't hurt you as much as it would benefit us. That is the exact situation I gave you, PVP'ers have less, you have more, given staff with the right talents are sighted by Yoshi as a reason they can't do everything, only the person who dose raids could give to the PVP'er, so won't you benefit them more than you'll be hurt? You'll still have more than them, they'll just get a little more to enjoy.

I did not avoid your question. I answered it directly by saying if I had 95% of the pie as you did, I would give up 5% to PvPers or casuals, gladly. In the current situation where raiders are already struggling for content? No, I would not. The difference is, as I stated, that casuals would still have more than enough to do if 5% was taken. And yes, they did change the game. Dungeons used to be more difficult. Normal level raids did not used to exist. MSQ fights used to be more difficult. Tanks used to have to actually worry about threat management, and certain DPS had to actually worry about managing their TP. Please tell me more about how casuals didn't change this game and gradually take away the challenging factors.

[Lunavi]

I did not avoid your question. I answered it directly by saying if I had 95% of the pie as you did, I would give up 5% to PvPers or casuals, gladly. In the current situation where raiders are already struggling for content? No, I would not. The difference is, as I stated, that casuals would still have more than enough to do if 5% was taken. And yes, they did change the game. Dungeons used to be more difficult. Normal level raids did not used to exist. MSQ fights used to be more difficult. Tanks used to have to actually worry about threat management, and certain DPS had to actually worry about managing their TP. Please tell me more about how casuals didn't change this game and gradually take away the challenging factors.

The problem if having high-end raiding as a main focus for content and having it have a lot of content is that it by its very nature is excluding. Everyone can participate in a round of triple triad or get a nice apartment and start furnishing it, but only the top players can engage in high end content, and this is a problem if a lot of the game focused on it as it would literally exclude people from a lion's share of the content. The goal for a sub based MMO is to have as many active subscriptions as possible, this is not done by closing the doors at 98% of the potential customers. I know, I also hate the TP change, but I can understand where they are coming from in having very little focus on high end content.

[LadyKairi]

The problem if having high-end raiding as a main focus for content and having it have a lot of content is that it by its very nature is excluding. Everyone can participate in a round of triple triad or get a nice apartment and start furnishing it, but only the top players can engage in high end content, and this is a problem if a lot of the game focused on it as it would literally exclude people from a lion's share of the content. The goal for a sub based MMO is to have as many active subscriptions as possible, this is not done by closing the doors at 98% of the potential customers. I know, I also hate the TP change, but I can understand where they are coming from in having very little focus on high end content.

The request is not to make the main focus on high end content, though.

[BlitzAceRush]

I did not avoid your question. I answered it directly by saying if I had 95% of the pie as you did, I would give up 5% to PvPers or casuals, gladly. In the current situation where raiders are already struggling for content? No, I would not. The difference is, as I stated, that casuals would still have more than enough to do if 5% was taken. And yes, they did change the game. Dungeons used to be more difficult. Normal level raids did not used to exist. MSQ fights used to be more difficult. Tanks used to have to actually worry about threat management, and certain DPS had to actually worry about managing their TP. Please tell me more about how casuals didn't change this game and gradually take away the challenging factors.

I already admitted the game has been made easier but that's again as I pointed out because SE wants a large amount of players to enjoy their game, locking them out of several parts of it doesn't help that goal, however the content spread has always been the same, in fact raiders have more now then the "glory days" of ARR, also your argument was lacking of end game content now that's not finding purchase its now about the difficulty overall.
This games goal is to get as many people in and enjoying content as they can so they get as many people paying as they can, they are doing a good job at this, you've given no reason other than "I want" that would convince them to change.
The game isn't dying, it's growing, the game isn't stale for the majority, the games practicability is a strength for the majority and Yoshi and the team are still open to trying new challenging content when they can, but not at the cost of everyone else.

If you want to change your argument to the game getting easier which has nothing to do with endgame content, that's fine but it kind of shows the weakness of the former argument if its so easily abandoned, but my argument would be they've simply made a greater divide between casuals and hardcore, locking story away was a poor move they admitted and so normal mode was added, raiders lost nothing from that it was simply an addition. However during Stoomrblood we were told the reason a dungeon was lost was so they could add new content so lets examine that.

Both parties lost a dungeon, raiders gained Ultimate, a piece of content next to no casuals will ever experience outside of twitch/youtube while the Casuals (this is debatable given its nature but for the sake of argument we'll say they gained it) gained Eukrea.
However, the raiders would have no issue going into Eukrea for their relic or because they enjoyed it, then there's BA another thing more geared towards raiders add to that the fact from this topic most raiders don't consider running ex dungeons as good content and during Stormblood raiders lost arguably nothing of value and gained 2 and a half things of value VS casuals who lost one thing of value and gained half a thing of value depending on where you stand some would feel nothing of value.

So all last expansion the raiders actually made out better than the casuals on the new content front in addition to all the usual content this is why to a lot of them it just feels like you're trying to change the game into something its not, you can argue the games skill level has been lowered but it's amount of high end game content has grown not shrunk. You use ARR coil not having a normal mode but you also didn't have ultimate back then or BA and as for losing savage exclusive bosses that wasn't what Yoshi said or why he said it, it was actually raiders who didn't like having to get past a "door boss" to get to the actual boss, just like it was raiders who didn't like running through trash to get to the challenging boss, the casuals aren't taking your savage boss, the devs are trying to answer a criticisms raiders levelled at them.

This however is all an aside to the fact your content amount has gone up, not down in a game that never offered much endgame content to begin with, that is something the casuals didn't change because it's always been that way, which loops back to my previous point.
You can't come into a place that's 90% one way, and expect the people who are there for the 90% who enjoy the game and love that 90% and tell them you don't like that 90% and they should give you some of their 90% because you only care about that 10% they don't and expect them to be OK with that. Especially when there are games that they avoid because they are like that and you could play those, if you want to stay with them they don't care, they only care because you're trying to change what they enjoy and no moving of the goal posts onto difficulty will change the fact that raiders have more now than they did during ARR, not less.
So casuals haven't changed the game and you're trying to change it back, you're just trying to change the game.

[Driavna]

This however is all an aside to the fact your content amount has gone up, not down in a game that never offered much endgame content to begin with, that is something the casuals didn't change because it's always been that way, which loops back to my previous point.

This is false. Casuals manage to remove the extra boss from savage that was added in SB. And then we can argue about Eureka and how we are going back to HW relic.

Yes, Eureka was not perfect for sure and not everyone liked it but by the time Pyros arrive was at least more interesting than farming the same roulettes and dungeons for poetics.

Also, for some reason, people ignore the fact that since SB expert and savage is more accessible than ever. You don't need to be a top raider for it, in fact, everything can be clear by average players with PUGS and the help of extra gear from the hardest turns. In short, that content is there for everyone.

[BlitzAceRush]

This is false. Casuals manage to remove the extra boss from savage that was added in SB. And then we can argue about Eureka and how we are going back to HW relic.

Yes, Eureka was not perfect for sure and not everyone liked it but by the time Pyros arrive was at least more interesting than farming the same roulettes and dungeons for poetics.

Casuals didn't get it removed, it was complained about by the people doing the content that door bosses were bad, they said they'd try something different this time, that's not removing it, that's changing it.
If the people doing the content are considered casuals who exactly are the raiders?

[Driavna]

Casuals didn't get it removed, it was complained about by the people doing the content that door bosses were bad, they said they'd try something different this time, that's not removing it, that's changing it.
If the people doing the content are considered casuals who exactly are the raiders?

Yoshida stated that was removed because made normal felt incomplete, exactly the complains people had during SB.

[Vahlnir]

Yoshida stated that was removed because made normal felt incomplete, exactly the complains people had during SB.

In all fairness a lot of Stormblood felt incomplete, at least to me.

[Hawklaser]

Eh, this is more subjective I don't feel something needs to be hard to feel like an epic adventure I've found Shadowbringers and the post dungeons very epic and there no more difficult than any that came before, the story and setting are what make that for me. As for floundering, you can argue it's lacking in difficulty but it's not hurt for it. Most people just enjoy moving through the story, seeing the sights and taking in the atmosphere.
As for why they won't make another Castrum Meridium and Praetoreum, its because they were a design mess, MMO's expect you to run their content over and over and those were perfect for a single player game, terrible for an MMO and I disagree with the challenge part, people cheeses and breezed through them even back then it took more work and the mobs didn't melt instantly like they do today but it was no more challenging then than now just longer, they've always been cut scenes masquerading as dungeons save for the trials at the end of Praetoreum and the first phase of Castrum Meridium, those did give some people some trouble.

I understand that the correct difficulty to epicness ratio will be subjective and vary from person to person. Using Superman as a reference, he typically deals with city/world ending level of threats, much like the WoL does, with varying degrees of difficulty depending on the villain of the week, sometimes he might have to assist Batman with a more low level villain, other times he may have to team up with others to stop a galactic/reality level event. It varies for the sake of keeping things interesting. If Superman doesn't struggle to varying degrees across all those different events, some people start to see a disconnect. IE deals with Darkseid, but then has issues with a common bank robber, it just feels horrible and out of place. Now you make a game for Superman, narrative flows right with the scale and challenges, but the game play doesn't line up. Same issue. And in FFXIV, the story is going to the galactic/reality level, but the game play is staying more around equivalence of the street/city level with the very rare step up towards world. And while I am eagerly looking forward to our rematch with a certain someone in the future(I assume we will have one) I also dread it for this very reason. As he screams that he should be up around the Galactic/Reality Level of threat from his actions and the story telling, and I want the fight to have a difficulty that appropriately reflects that. But yet we just got done with a story boss that should have been up there on that kind of level for challenge feel... and there was not much there. Every now and then it can be brushed off, but when it repeadedly happens it starts to break immersion and ruin the overall feel, and for those looking for more endgame challenging content. Its likely at that point, or very close to it.

You might not feel its not hurt for not having the difficulty, but we feel it could benefit from having a little more difficulty dotted about here and there. You might remember these dungeons, Halatali, Sunken Temple of Qarn, Cutter's Cry, Dzemael Darkhold and Aurum Vale? Do you also remember that they were also optional and slightly harder than the other leveling dungeons? They stand out to me a bit more than some of the other ARR dungeons, because they had that slightly higher difficulty to them. Every other dungeon in the game is either MSQ or Tomestone related. When was the last time we had a non-Story leveling dungeon? Did having those dungeons hurt the game any?

And just some fun things to note. ARR 2.0 had 16 dungeons on release(5 not tied to the main story or tomestones) + the first 5 pieces of Coil, and the 3 hard Primals, the 3 story primals plus a couple other trials. Now we get 5 story leveling dungeons, story final dungeon, 2 tomestone dungeons, the new raid, 2 ex trials, plus the story trials.(there might be a couple I'm missing) Do we really need every expansion to have a Story dungeon every 2 levels? Does every expansion need to release with only two Tomestone dungeons and 2 ex trials? Leaving us to a perpetual 5/2/2 content production? Is there any legitimate reason that a couple of those story leveling dungeons be could not be decoupled from the story and used as for a more challenging tomestone dungeon to help set the stage for an 8 or 24 man piece that will be dropping later in the content cycle? Or use the time and resources spent on a filler leveling dungeon to develop an extra trial that might be more satisfying? These are the kind of questions that don't get answered if you just blindly follow what worked in the past.

But you know why people find methods to cheese and breeze anything in MMOs? Its all about how to get the shiny loots the fastest. Nothing more, nothing less. A way could be found to have the nice single player story content that is needed for immersion, as well as the grind MMO's think is always necessary. The grind is pretty much there only to help address the problem of content being consumed faster than it is produced.

That's very noble that you would and honestly I wouldn't be against raiders getting more myself, my point is over the 6 years they have been given more, Ultimate and BA wouldn't be here otherwise and Yoshi has been clear like in the mythic+ question with the staff he can get his hands on, with the resources he has and trying to keep to the scheduled they work on he has to prioritises and he's going to do it based on numbers, so few were clearing the raids they lowered their difficulty but then came Ultimate to composite for those who really wanna push it. BA was a success and sits somewhere in the middle and they'd like to do something with that. Challenging content dose get made as dose content with PVP but it's made to reflect the numbers.

In the end, it really comes down to how much time and money they have to spend. But the thing is does it have to stay 5 leveling Story Dungeons, Final story dungeon, 2 Tomestone dungeon, and 2 ex trials + the raid, or could 3 Story, Final story, 2 Tomestone, 2 ex trials, mini raid, main raid work? Or even 3 Story, Final Story, 3 Tomestone, 3 ex Trial, raid. Why the insistance of it always being 5 level, 1 final, 2 tomestone, 2 ex trials, raid? This is where the whole could some of the budget be shifted around comes into play. As there is a little bit more freedom to play with the difficulty when have the classes full toolkit vs having to change it up every 2 levels just for the sake of leveling. Would shifting where the dungeons fall really hurt so much? Especially if there could be a slightly wider spread to the dificultly and a lil more room for the devs to experiment on what does and doesn't work on that front instead of having to play it safe due to the leveling curve?

[Tint]

[...] if I had 95% of the pie as you did, I would give up 5% to PvPers or casuals, gladly. In the current situation where raiders are already struggling for content? No, I would not. The difference is, as I stated, that casuals would still have more than enough to do if 5% was taken.

lol casuals have 95% of the content? We are still talking about "Endgame PvE content", right?

Casuals have normal mode raid, 24 man raid, expert roulette, deep dungeon and the relic quest.
Hardcores have savage raid, ultimate raid and extreme trials. I would say they have the deep dungeon too, actually the bigger part of heavon on high, but there is no gear progression so it doesn't count when I understood this discussion correct.

Yeah, casuals have more content. But they don't have 95% of it.

But I get it. You say you raiders have 5% of the content and all the other people have 95%. But these other people are not only PvE casuals, they are also crafters and gatherers, I would count fishing extra, people who like the gold saucer, people who like housing, people who like PvP...
Wich of these groups do you want to tell: "Sorry, we raiders are already getting content in every major patch, but since we want more of the pie you will not get anything this expansion"?