The state of Thordan normal mode

[sharknado]

They have to understand that it's not a minor problem, It's actually one of the main problems with this game. How many times i see a friend of mine just quitting the game even before reach stormblood, just because the game doensn't have any challenge, because biggest moments actually frustrates the player, or because nowadays MMOs have voice acting in every quest. Why do you think that huge amount of new players are not even playing the game anymore? Square enix is actually losing money right now.

For one you have very old content while all new games like Lost Ark, Elder Ring do not have legacy content so players get straight into current new content. Both cases aren't always good or bad. New World is fresh yet it failed to retain players. WoW lost large amount of playerbase yet alongside with FF14 and other long lasting MMOs is still here and in constant development. Old content will always degrade to some extent. WoW just gives a level boost with each expansion and ignores anything prior to current patch exists. FF wants the story to not be skipped and to be continuous. If someone doesn't want to play a game that focuses on telling story then FF14 will never please them realistically and the game should not try to cater to them in some weird way.

If someone wants challenge early on then there are EX ARR trials or Aurum Vale with random sprouts. If that's not enough then nothing in this game will be enough and they just should play more competitive game vs more story/RPG type game.

[TaleraRistain]

Content designed for 8 or 24 players gets synced to the maximum item level of the expansion, so the content released closer to the beginning or middle of the expansion ends up in this state where you skip all of the mechanics, nothing hurts and it's hard for veterans to see content that used to be fun no longer requiring you to be alert. The stat squish has helped this in some fights, such as a lot of the alexander fights, but it's still a problem in some of them.

This. Thordan notoriously wasn't hard when it first came out. It just got easier as the ilevel got higher. It never had that complicated of mechanics, not like A5 or A9 which can still wipe groups today due to their mechanics.

They are working on things. I believe they said they would have MSQ non-8 man content up to 5.0 Trustable by 7.0 but it didn't sound like they were stopping there. 8-man is just something that requires more adjustments so they're hitting the lower hanging fruit of 4-man content first.

[CodeAvellus]

For one you have very old content while all new games like Lost Ark, Elder Ring do not have legacy content so players get straight into current new content. Both cases aren't always good or bad. New World is fresh yet it failed to retain players. WoW lost large amount of playerbase yet alongside with FF14 and other long lasting MMOs is still here and in constant development. Old content will always degrade to some extent. WoW just gives a level boost with each expansion and ignores anything prior to current patch exists. FF wants the story to not be skipped and to be continuous. If someone doesn't want to play a game that focuses on telling story then FF14 will never please them realistically and the game should not try to cater to them in some weird way.

If someone wants challenge early on then there are EX ARR trials or Aurum Vale with random sprouts. If that's not enough then nothing in this game will be enough and they just should play more competitive game vs more story/RPG type game.

Challenge should not be something to endgame players, that doesn't make sense, specially because we have the Level Sync feature that was created to balance the game, including the old contents. They could just ajust the level sync for trials like Ifrit, Garuda, Thordan, Shiva. Oh, do you remember when was the last time you heard the full soundtrack of Shiva? Right now, new players have to listen to the music on Youtube, because her second phase ends in less than 1 minute.

[Shibi]

Square enix is actually losing money right now.

Latest financials show that SE are earning record profits.

Making the game more casual/solo friendly is earning them hundreds of millions of USD, so expect it to keep happening.

Challenge should not be something to endgame players, that doesn't make sense, specially because we have the Level Sync feature that was created to balance the game, including the old contents.

I'd actually enjoy an echo slider... the party leader can choose how much echo to apply before entering any non-current content. 0% to 1200% or more.

[sharknado]

Challenge should not be something to endgame players,

You have ARR trials or Coils at level 50.

They could just ajust the level sync for trials like Ifrit, Garuda, Thordan, Shiva.

They don't even make job stones or job quests required to progress with MSQ or get into instances. ilvl requirement in MSQ is very low... and as such don't expect any change in required content. Now go to Thordan EX with randoms

Oh, do you remember when was the last time you heard the full soundtrack of Shiva? Right now, new players have to listen to the music on Youtube, because her second phase ends in less than 1 minute.

I did few ARR EX trails via Duty Finder and it wasn't that "easy". We had quite a few wipes on Ramuh... Also don't expect Savage or Ultimate should be the norm, especially for content that was made long ago and by now all the jobs are different. Like Ramuh EX isn't cheese-tanked by Summoner Egi any more... and there is no point in doing them as well. The gear is obsolete and there is no mount or glamour that drops only when synced.

And Asmon forced min-ilvl no-echo on himself and even with good players it wasn't "that easy" as well.

[ForteNightshade]

Content designed for 8 or 24 players gets synced to the maximum item level of the expansion, so the content released closer to the beginning or middle of the expansion ends up in this state where you skip all of the mechanics, nothing hurts and it's hard for veterans to see content that used to be fun no longer requiring you to be alert. The stat squish has helped this in some fights, such as a lot of the alexander fights, but it's still a problem in some of them.

Even on release, Thordan Normal was completely laughable. It's actually the fight that brought down my enjoyment of Heavensward, albeit it only mildly, even as a new player. All that build up and I'm greeted with a fight where nobody paid the slightest bit of attention to mechanics because it didn't matter. I even stood in some when I realized how pathetic they were. Why dodge something that won't remotely harm me? This was less than ten months into Heavensward, by the way.

They've since gotten better with fights like Shinryu and Hades but Thordan really deserves a revisit. He was a joke before but nowadays if it weren't for the forced phase transition, you'd kill him before he does anything. That's downright embarrassing for the supposedly epic last boss of an expansion.

[Lunalepsy]

There are lot of sad moments right now.

[CodeAvellus]

Latest financials show that SE are earning record profits.

Making the game more casual/solo friendly is earning them hundreds of millions of USD, so expect it to keep happening.

Like I said before, when I say SE is losing money, i mean they could earn even more with some minor changes.

This is not about casual/solo players and hardcore players. I'm a casual/solo player and I started playing this game when the ARR was released and what held me until now is the story, i'm not worried about the hardcore contents, although i understand that it is important.

A casual game doesn't mean a game with no difficult at all. Any nintendo casual family game has more challenge than Shiva or Thordan trials. Right now the level sync is not working for old contents and it is ruining the game experience of new players.

[Shibi]

Like I said before, when I say SE is losing money, i mean they could earn even more with some minor changes.

Without access to the metrics the producers have, it's not possible for you to say this with any authority. You can only guess, based on your experiences.

[sharknado]

Like I said before, when I say SE is losing money,

They are not. There is no one game that will be good for everyone. "Minor changes" won't help either. When you change the character of the game some will come but but some will also leave.

Any nintendo casual family game has more challenge than Shiva or Thordan trials. Right now the level sync is not working for old contents and it is ruining the game experience of new players.

Do you have an extensive survey on this, or just this anecdote?

If someone can't play the game because a MSQ trial from few years ago isn't up to modern EX standards and competitive then sorry, but this game isn't for him/her. It's rather clear what content the game has and what direction (solo Trust play, catering to solo-only FF-franchise players) the game is going. If you wanted WoW-eSports like "PvP-movin-forward-meme" type of FF14, then sorry but it isn't the case.