the normal content is too easy

[nick124]

My counterargument to the above is this: making the game infantile to play will lead to more people quitting than those who would quit due to inability to clear a slightly more difficult dungeon or trial. People should not be babied for fear of losing playerbase. SE should cater to the vast majority on the game who do believe it is too easy to clear most content, not to the loud minority who are afraid of a challenge beyond "dodge that giant telegraph thats in place for 10 seconds." The extreme and savage content is too small and far between (~15 or so fights per expansion) to justify making 95% of content a complete cakewalk. For people who game passionately and seek the thrill , who make up more of the population than SE would like to admit, the current normal content just ain't cutting it.

[Serious-Cat]

My counterargument to the above is this: making the game infantile to play will lead to more people quitting than those who would quit due to inability to clear a slightly more difficult dungeon or trial. People should not be babied for fear of losing playerbase. SE should cater to the vast majority on the game who do believe it is too easy to clear most content, not to the loud minority who are afraid of a challenge beyond "dodge that giant telegraph thats in place for 10 seconds." The extreme and savage content is too small and far between (~15 or so fights per expansion) to justify making 95% of content a complete cakewalk. For people who game passionately and seek the thrill , who make up more of the population than SE would like to admit, the current normal content just ain't cutting it.

I'm not really concern about people quitting or not because today, most people play multiple games within their possible play time. A person playing an hour of ff14 for some roulettes or an ultimate player progging/erping 12 hours a day is still a player in ff14. Since its impossible to determine easy or difficult to the total amount of players participating in a co op matchmaking system, its just impossible to impose a blanket setting or change.

However as most players will know how they are feeling, needs and wants etc, challenges can be setup for a good time such as -1 player count, lower ilvl gear, unoptimized gearset, playing with a pizza controller etc. Default settings should always be welcoming and inclusive. Nobody is expected to learn calculus on the 1st grade and the school wouldn't know if this one kid already done with calculus before the first grade unless specifically notified to which a jump in grade can occur, thus normalizing or even increasing the difficulty for the kid that don't need basic arithmetic like other 1st graders.

[Roflcopter]

My counterargument to the above is this: making the game infantile to play will lead to more people quitting than those who would quit due to inability to clear a slightly more difficult dungeon or trial. People should not be babied for fear of losing playerbase. SE should cater to the vast majority on the game who do believe it is too easy to clear most content, not to the loud minority who are afraid of a challenge beyond "dodge that giant telegraph thats in place for 10 seconds." The extreme and savage content is too small and far between (~15 or so fights per expansion) to justify making 95% of content a complete cakewalk. For people who game passionately and seek the thrill , who make up more of the population than SE would like to admit, the current normal content just ain't cutting it.

Most every mmo has some form of telegraph for everything including WoW. Only in that game you need to install an add on to do the exact same easy to see circles that FFXIV has by default. Every single serious raider uses DBM in WoW and it puts up the same exact telegraph markers. It has done that for ages. People in FFXIV and WoW fail all the time at avoiding the insanely obvious markers too. I’d also argue normal mode content is accessible and trivial in all MMOs. It is pretty much standard in the genre these days. Even so called heroic content in WoW was trivial from Wrath onward. Normal mode raids were accessible and trivial as well. They are designed as stepping stones for freshly leveled players to practice and gear for harder content.

Back in the days of EQ, the telegraphs weren’t necessarily obvious so you needed a raid lead to set timers and call stuff out. Trakanon for example. So many people don’t know how to get out even with someone shouting it in your ear and spamming chat in red letters.