the normal content is too easy

[KizuyaKatogami]

That is you. Can every player do it? No.

A lot of players can't manage to figure out how to avoid mechanics to the point I spend a significant amount of time during hunt trains rezzing the same players over and over (even when there's only 20-30 present so someone can't use the "I couldn't see anything because too many players are here" excuse). It's always not a lag issue - I can tell whether they're lagging based on how long they stay faded in my party frames after accepting a rez.

Not everyone comes equipped the same skill level, and years of experience do make a difference. You might have entered into Endwalker with 8 years of experience under your belt but others were entering with only 8 days.

What do you mean people entering for endwalker with only 8 days? You still have to play through 3 other expansions before you get there. That’s more than enough time for you to learn your job and the basics of your role. Unless they use a level and story skip in which case any struggling or difficulty is entirely on them and other players shouldn’t have to pay for that.

[Jojoya]

What do you mean people entering for endwalker with only 8 days? You still have to play through 3 other expansions before you get there. That’s more than enough time for you to learn your job and the basics of your role. Unless they use a level and story skip in which case any struggling or difficulty is entirely on them and other players shouldn’t have to pay for that.

It doesn't change that some new players are buying the skip potions and so we must deal with them.

Also, going through 3 expansions worth of content does not mean someone has developed superior skill. Many players have a skill cap they cannot exceed due to physical limitations. Whether you like it or not, SE wants those players to be able to enjoy all of the MSQ and not just the portions you've decided they should be allowed to see.

If you feel that you are "suffering" when in a group with players less skilled than you are, use Party Finder so you can pick and choose who will be in a duty with you.

[TaleraRistain]

Ok had to comment on this one lol. I've done 2/3 ultimates and do savage raids frequently but even I had a lot of trouble with this quest. Id agree with those that say this quest was a little too difficult.

This is actually a really good example of a point that many try to make on these forums: people have different ability and experience levels.

I do not do Ultimate or Savage but I breezed through that quest because my favorite genre is stealth and I've immersed myself in the techniques and tactics that make someone successful at that sort of game. I would definitely not be in the camp who says this quest is too difficult if I just used my own experience.

However, I can empathize with those who had issues because I know not everyone else has the same experience or abilities. Same with any content in this game. People say it's easy and there's nothing wrong with someone saying something is easy for them and offering feedback on what would appeal to them more. I have a few suggestions for that particular quest to integrate stealth ideas better. But then these same people cast judgment on others who have difficulty and claim they're just not trying hard enough or they don't care enough or they don't deserve to play this game because they don't meet some random person's arbitrary standard for what is acceptable in their presence. They cry to the heavens that this is a team based game, but don't actually want to cooperate and work together like a real team does. It's just rude, gatekeepy, and isn't a mentality (not saying your post is, it was just a good example) that we should be encouraging. And frankly threads like this one do exactly that.

[Serious-Cat]

This is actually a really good example of a point that many try to make on these forums: people have different ability and experience levels.

I do not do Ultimate or Savage but I breezed through that quest because my favorite genre is stealth and I've immersed myself in the techniques and tactics that make someone successful at that sort of game. I would definitely not be in the camp who says this quest is too difficult if I just used my own experience.

However, I can empathize with those who had issues because I know not everyone else has the same experience or abilities. Same with any content in this game. People say it's easy and there's nothing wrong with someone saying something is easy for them and offering feedback on what would appeal to them more. I have a few suggestions for that particular quest to integrate stealth ideas better. But then these same people cast judgment on others who have difficulty and claim they're just not trying hard enough or they don't care enough or they don't deserve to play this game because they don't meet some random person's arbitrary standard for what is acceptable in their presence. They cry to the heavens that this is a team based game, but don't actually want to cooperate and work together like a real team does. It's just rude, gatekeepy, and isn't a mentality (not saying your post is, it was just a good example) that we should be encouraging. And frankly threads like this one do exactly that.

Amen to that! Expecting wide sweeping changes when there are so many factors to consider won't work. I wasn't even playing ff14 last December when my bro rage screaming stuck in that "Garlemald quest" but I clear it on 1st try before the nerf for him. He already clear ALL the ultimate and savage fights up to Shadowbringers btw xD

[Viridiana]

I haven't had a wipe in Orbonne in months, despite it coming up several times.

Meanwhile, I've had multiple wipes in World of Darkness, including a group that vote abandoned on the first boss.

Anecdotes are fun.

Funny you mention that. Know why LotA and ST come up way more than WoD in Alliance Roulette? Because people cheese below the ilvl for WoD, too. Know why? Because people can't understand simple things like "Don't stand in front of the giant eye when it shoots a great big laser out of its face."

[DixieBellOCE]

I'm very happy with how Tower of Zot turned out in terms of mechanics.

Its about the baseline level of mechanics I'd expect from the 4th expansion of a game, in regular dungeons.

Its a pity the level 90 dungeons didn't follow suit, since they are so easy in comparison.

Harder casual content keeps people engaged.

[Hanaya]

If Elden Ring has proven anything is that you don’t need snooze fest difficulty levels to be a successful and popular game. People enjoy and will rise up to challenge.

For the people that dodge or cheese to get easier dungeons what is needed is more aggressive consequences to their actions not the dumbing down of content for everyone.

I personally would like the game to be a little harder (or more complex) in regards to normal content, but I think this is kind of a weird comparison. The entire premise of fromsoft games is that they're really difficult. For most people who enjoy them, the enjoyable part of the game is dying over and over again to a boss while slowly getting better at fighting it until you finally beat it. As in, they're playing the game specifically because they want to play something that's challenging and requires a lot of effort to succeed at.

FFXIV is very different from that. While there's a small number of players who play the game because they want to experience difficult content (savage/ultimate raiders), the vast majority of players enjoy the game because of the story, or life skills/casual activities, or glams, or so on. I encounter far more players in the game that just want to play casually and have a relaxing experience then I do people who want to wipe to the same boss over and over again. like, if they suddenly made normal/story content in ffxiv way harder, I'm pretty sure a large number of people would just stop playing. High difficulty games are very popular and have a huge audience of people who love playing them, but the target market for fromsoft games and ffxiv is completely different.

Like I said, I would personally enjoy the game more if content was more difficult. Although my main gripe is with lower level content, because ilvl sync is busted and you can basically faceroll a ton of dungeons/trials without actually taking that much damage (which honestly just makes me avoid roulettes a lot, because I hate getting pre-stormblood content), I also find endwalker story content kind of boring because of how faceroll it feels. But the vast majority of the people I know who play this game refuse to go into savage content, or even extreme trials in most cases, because they think it's too difficult.

Admittedly though, I play on crystal, so maybe I'm super out of touch with other datacenters. The raiding community here is very very small compared to the number of more casual players. But I've levelled alts on aether/primal and honestly, the average level of gameplay I see in df there is very similar (as in, very low in most cases).

[Hanaya]

also sorry double post bc i ran out of space, but as a side note, I genuinely think one of the largest contributing factors to the average skill level of the playerbase is the complete lack of info or direction new players get. There's hall of the novice, but it's pretty easy to miss and also doesn't do a particularly good job at actually teaching people how to play. I see a large number of players in max level content who don't understand really basic things about combat in the game (like people using single target in dungeon pulls, healers who only gcd heal and ignore half of their kit, people who don't know what a stack marker is, and so on). When I started playing, I didn't really understand anything at all, and the only reason why I was able to improve was because I had friends who directed me to resources like guides on youtube and the balance. I'm pretty sure if I didn't know about those (out of the game) resources, I would end up spamming cure 1 in dungeons for the freecure proc too.

I'm not saying that they should put an entire number-crunched super uptime 100% optimized rotation guide in the game, but it would be nice if they explained the basics somehow. Even stuff that might seem intuitive isn't very obvious to people who haven't played mmos or similar games before, which is honestly a large amount of ffxiv players.

more ex/savage/ult level content would be nice, though. what with the long time between patches, it kind of feels like you burn through content really fast and then just mindlessly farm it until the next patch drops. ultimates are better for this, but they're also a big time investment and a lot more mentally draining than savage. I'd love to see more stuff like unreal trials and delubrum savage.

[ThivraK]

And this right here is the logical failure point of everyone arguing against making the game challenging. They tend to take it to extremes and radicalize and distort the intentions of the OP every time this gets brought up. Noone is arguing this should be the case. In fact, I think you enjoy making up imaginary people making this argument so you can make it sound valid. No one is asking this, so you are answering to people who don't exist.

just look at their post history, lol, should tell you enough

I haven't had a wipe in Orbonne in months, despite it coming up several times.

Meanwhile, I've had multiple wipes in World of Darkness, including a group that vote abandoned on the first boss.

Anecdotes are fun.

seconding this, I've had multiple +1h runs of WoD in the span of 1 week last year, where I saw the danger noodles during cloud of darkness multiple times, while even during slow orbonne's, it was never ever +1h with multiple wipes bad, even if the players themselves weren't good

[Carin-Eri]

Looking at ffcollect, the desire for difficult/high end content isn't really that high. Even "easy" high end content like Alexander (Savage) right now only have 52% completion and lesser the closer it is to current expansion.

https://ffxivcollect.com/achievements/types/1

I think most ff14 players play for the story. 85% completed endwalker vs 11% completion of current raid tier

https://ffxivcollect.com/titles?q%5B...=shadowbringer
https://ffxivcollect.com/titles?q%5B...t%5D=endwalker

Doubt there will be any real impact on game population health if MSQ/Normal level content difficulty is ramped up or not but the stats show that most ff14 players aren't that about playing a game because its difficult or easy but treating it as another rpg in the ff series.

For now I guess anyone can manipulate the difficulty setting and find like minded people via pf to enjoy the game this way tho

Count me as one of those players who played for the story above all else. And yeah, I found it hard. And that's difficult to admit in a thread full of forumites implying that bad players shouldn't be bad and don't deserve to play the game.
Partly due to my lacking performance at least, I have no intention of going anywhere near anything above 'Normal' level content.

This is actually a really good example of a point that many try to make on these forums: people have different ability and experience levels.

I do not do Ultimate or Savage but I breezed through that quest because my favorite genre is stealth and I've immersed myself in the techniques and tactics that make someone successful at that sort of game. I would definitely not be in the camp who says this quest is too difficult if I just used my own experience.

However, I can empathize with those who had issues because I know not everyone else has the same experience or abilities. Same with any content in this game. People say it's easy and there's nothing wrong with someone saying something is easy for them and offering feedback on what would appeal to them more. I have a few suggestions for that particular quest to integrate stealth ideas better. But then these same people cast judgment on others who have difficulty and claim they're just not trying hard enough or they don't care enough or they don't deserve to play this game because they don't meet some random person's arbitrary standard for what is acceptable in their presence. They cry to the heavens that this is a team based game, but don't actually want to cooperate and work together like a real team does. It's just rude, gatekeepy, and isn't a mentality (not saying your post is, it was just a good example) that we should be encouraging. And frankly threads like this one do exactly that.

QFT.