the normal content is too easy

[SilverObi]

Normal mode fights could use enrage timers. Not just DPS checks, an actual "you took too long, here's an ultimate, better luck next time" fight-enders. A handful of fights have some kind of timer (whether a simple time limit or a "soft" enrage, like Shinryu breaking the platform), but in most fights you can just tickle the boss to death forever.

I endorse soft enrages in more content (PTSD of math-bot ensues)

You can literally clear anything with very little effort or practice.

True, you can clear anything with practice and effort. How little or how much depends on the individual and circumstances like getting carried by more skilled group members.

[Jeeqbit]

Zodiark is one of the easiest fights both normal and EX we've ever had. All it requires is two people to know where to go and the rest to follow their assigned shape.

I had to do it on an alt I was taking through EW. They wiped. They had no idea where to go or what to do and got hit by everything. So I shrugged and put a dorito on myself and they cleared. That doesn't mean it's easy. It's just easy if someone who has farmed it a lot carries you. For the person with the dorito, they have to actually do the maths of calculating where mechanics will land and sometimes they get it wrong.

[Kyrj]

But I understand the general sentiment people should use their resources.

Then why bother saying anything?

[Kyrj]

I had to do it on an alt I was taking through EW. They wiped. They had no idea where to go or what to do and got hit by everything. So I shrugged and put a dorito on myself and they cleared. That doesn't mean it's easy. It's just easy if someone who has farmed it a lot carries you. For the person with the dorito, they have to actually do the maths of calculating where mechanics will land and sometimes they get it wrong.

You follow someone who knows what they're doing and learn that way, next time you're in there you can lead. There's no "math" or w/e involved. It's a rotating floor, not rocket science.

[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.

[Gemina]

Yep. I'm pretty sure I can do every mechanic wrong in norm Thordan and not die.

If you eat the purple marker by yourself in WoD from the 2nd boss, you die instantly. So what exactly is your point, other than cherry picking instances you likely over gear by around double the minimum requirement to clear?

Anywho, difficulty is subjective, and can even be relative to the players that are grouped together. My first clear of P2N took multiple attempts and ate up about half the clock. It was really fun though. No one raged quit, and those who knew the fight were patient. Second time I cleared it, it went smooth as silk, and no one said a word.... yay?..

[ThaCa]

I'm bit torn on the difficulty of Normal content, while I personally would love to see it being bit harder, I can see a lot of other players already struggling with some of it. For example: last boss of 81 dungeon, EW trials, 90 dungeon and most of the Pandemonium Raid - I've seen decent amount of people dying over and over, though they often end up getting dragged through them unless too many of them got to same group by chance. There's already quite a lot of internal dissonance with the difficulty in how the 81 last boss is tougher than basically any of the later dungeon bosses (aside from like two from 90 dungeon), where too many of them have like 3 abilities that repeat over and over. It would benefit them to have more clear progress in difficulty, though they do build up well based on earlier seen mechanics.
Then again you sometimes get level 80+ player who runs away from people with Stack marker. Maybe some advanced or updated version of Hall of Novice would be in place?

At least with the addition of difficulty selection for solo duties they have bit more freedom to make them tougher.

I think some of the main problems currently comes from the newer skill adjustments (massive potency creep over the years) and lenience of the ilvl sync. This leads to most of the older content becoming completely unchallenging and often uninteresting as people can ignore and skip mechanics and are barely punished at all for failing, along with having very few skills to use which are very back loaded on some Jobs and doesn't really teach much about playing it. How can people learn to play or keep their interest up if everything is a breeze? You miss some fancy attacks and the base level challenge as things are now.
Most of the stuff wasn't impossible hurdle to players back in day, so could they at least make the optional Trials, Alliance and Normal raids closer to what they were during their launch? Even better if the mandatory ones would be too so experiencing those fights would be exciting instead of just pretty much ignoring everything.
If rebalancing or tightening the ilvl seems too time consuming, then just give us options to run roulettes and stuff on minimum ilvl and give greater rewards or ensure some of the rarer drops.

Then again a lot of people would probably be upset if their fast and easy roulettes were slower and slightly challenging.

Overall I'm fine with the current level as long as there's enough of Ex and up stuff to play through, but would like to see the older content given some love.

[StriderShinryu]

I'm bit torn on the difficulty of Normal content, while I personally would love to see it being bit harder, I can see a lot of other players already struggling with some of it.

This is a major point that needs to be considered. We literally had a thread complaining about how bad DF is that it got closed for running so long it was lagging the forums. We have posts all the time about how players have no idea what they're doing and how better players are forced to carry the whole team.
While I still maintain that the vast majority of that complaining is based on overdramatized rare experiences and not the actual frequent occurrences that some people claim, what is the logical result of making the basic story mode content harder? Yep, the better players being asked to and/or outright expected to carry even harder.

I wouldn't really have any issue with the story mode content being harder you're dreaming if you think that just making the game harder will all of a sudden make the average (and worse than average) players better. And it's also not really that easy to just "make the game harder" while still keeping it fun and enjoyable.

[Bad_Luck]

This is an MMO not Elden Ring.

[linayar]

IMO the issue has been long running.. ever since ARR. when something has been seen as difficult it's usually not been that it's actually difficult its usually just been a case of the game does a terrible job of explaining what you're supposed to do at the time..

Many of these are explained via NPC chats. I'm not sure what else you want them to do other than pausing the game every time to pop up those active help windows.

There's been hundreds of examples.. but the common connection between them is that rarther that fixing the quests by providing better clarity on what players are expected to do they just nerfed it to the point you didnt need to do any of it and could just zerg everything... and if that didnt work then they added a very easy mode on top...

Yeah, that's unfortunate, but when people in multiplayer contents would rather leave at the start of a duty rather than take the time to explain to their fellow players, it kind of shows the solo mentality of the community, so I can see why easier content is better for most people.

Even endwalker. the level 90 tank quest for example just tells you to interupt an ability. so i and apparantly quite a few other players were getting frustrated because stuns are interupts and they weren't working.... and the solution to the quest was use a role skill thats basically been obselete since second coil. (minus maybe a handfull of very rare situationally niche uses) and as a result is a skill that 99% (exagerated) of tanks never even have on there hotbars...

That was the first role quest I did and I don't remember having difficulty with an "obsolete" role action. What was it?

I have literally tried to die on normal-mode Thordan and couldn't pull it off. Even standing in every AoE, running face first into every mechanic, and telling the healers to not touch me for the sake of the experiment, I still couldn't manage it.

I mean, not counting running as BLU and just killing myself, but that's cheating.

Out of curiosity, did you do it at the ilvl that was available when Thordan was first released or just rely on the sync that probably will put you at max level 60 ilvl?