Quote Originally Posted by Ronduwil View Post
It really irks me when players compare a video game with raising and/or educating children. The other popular comparison is a workplace. A video game is none of those things. The game has one and one purpose only: fun. If it's not fun for someone, then it has failed in its purpose. You could argue that it's fun for you, and I'll buy that. However, the argument that, "It's fun for me so it would have been fun for you if only you hadn't been treated like a baby all game long," just doesn't fly. If the player had fun all the way up to level 87, and suddenly they're faced with a mandatory roadblock that isn't fun for them, then the game has failed in its purpose. The beauty of this game is that instances like that are few and far between, which is why they're so jarring when you encounter them. 99% of the game is a faceroll to the hardcores who tend to post on these forums for a good reason: it's intended to be fun for the general public to play, and a faceroll is what most players prefer. I realize that's hard to believe if you only ever solicit feeback from your fellow forum dwellers, but it's the truth.
"The truth" - because you said so?
The problem isn't the difficulty itself because believe it or not, most players are not as dumb as you may think and can adjust naturally to a slightly, gradually increasing difficulty without even noticing. The problem is that the absolute majority of the MSQ content is designed to be extremely easy with an option to make it even easier and then SE suddenly adds something with a noticeably increased difficulty. Titania was notorious, still is to some degree, because besides some mechanics that required some attention and watching the battlefield, like the star markers, she also had a dps check that was easy enough to fail for the average MSQ player.
And not because it was so tight -- it wasn't. But the MSQ doesn't usually have those and people got used to not having to do anything. You could auto most bosses to death. It would take extremely long but it was entirely possible.
The 2nd trial itself isn't overtuned or unfair but if the game teaches you for 87 levels, with a few outliers, that you don't have to pay attention or push buttons, it's all fine anyway and then suddenly requires you to just that, it will come across as much more difficult than it is. People are able to adapt to a certain degree but it needs to be something consistent. I'm not saying every trial, starting from story Ifrit, should be on mommy level but the back-and-forth difficulty isn't doing the players any favours either.