Quote Originally Posted by AnimaAnimus View Post
FFXIV at this point cannot be saved, it would crash and burn of they took away all the easy rewards or didn't change the old stuff to be easier. 5.x took a major slide backwards on difficulty of everything, just look at Copied Factory, Eden, every single dungeon, Primals… so old things like crafting being cheapened with an easy button is to be expected.
Copied factory is one of the hardest, if not the hardest alliance raid so far mechanics-wise. I feel Eden is comparable to Omega as well, though I haven't tried savage yet. I don't know how the balancing was back in ARR and HW, but at least since StB the Lv50 alliance raids have been a total joke. The Lv60 raids are kind of getting there, but things only got really interesting at Lv70. Part of it may be overgearing but fact is that the older content was mostly beating things with only an occasional mechanic, whereas later raids really require awareness to not get stomped on.

Dungeons have never been particularly hard, at least in the time I've played. Here, too, the later ones have more interesting mechanics and the current batch of expert dungeons have a few pulls where I really have to concentrate on healing.

As for the crafting changes, I'm pretty indifferent. I mostly craft for myself and my friends anyway. In my current circle I'm still the only one who has bothered to level up crafters.