Why do casuals act as if it's the end of the world when suggesting?

[geekgirl101]

God forbid when you suggest they should make content just a little bit more difficult, you get people that flip out.

Every casual that sees this behave as if their whole world is crumbling and they take that statement and exaggerate it reading it like: "All content needs to be Extreme/Savage Difficulty! Screw all the Casuals! Cater to the small minority! HOO-RAH!"

I mean, just chill. There is just no in between with these people, they just think there is only braindead easy and elite hardcore difficult, nothing in the middle. Dungeons are braindead easy you can clear it with just using your 1-2-3 buttons and a healbot, sure it will take longer but it is still possible.

"Nawt Mah Final Fantasy: Second Life Gaem!"

Personally I found the end bosses of the very first dungeon in EW a little bit challenging and was worried a lot of people might cry it's too difficult. The first trial is also pretty intense too for anyone not able to visualize in 4 dimensions. P3S is far too harsh imo, I haven't to this day found a PF that is able to get beyond the first set of adds and everyone else demands practice from FoF onwards, like how am I supposed to do that when nobody else can get to that stage? The rest of the content though is fairly decent, I think a little of it is braindead and that may be for casual players who just want to chill and don't want to think too hard what to do. Let's not forget this is an MMO that has content of varying degrees of difficulty to cater for different types of players, not the Blade of Souls types who have to muscle memory everything and pre-emptively time each mechanic to the millisecond. If FFXIV went so difficult that every fight was an extreme test of will and reflexes I'd quit it, I don't want a game to stress me out like that.

[Kazelus]

This is completely consistent with the point I was making. Mechanics in those dungeons were completely novel to everyone at that point because everyone was new. I don't agree that most players today would be unable to clear Satasha. They might struggle with it their first few times, but after running it a couple of times a week through the roulette, they would adapt, learn and maybe eventually go on to flex on the forums and complain that Satasha is too easy for anyone with half a braincell because 3/4 of the party knows all the mechanics like the back of their hand.

I still see people dying in the leveling roulette all the time. It's not because they're trash, stupid, or lazy players. It's because they don't have enough experience with the mechanics that are killing them. Once you've experienced a given mechanic enough, you don't even think about it anymore. You see the tell and instinctively move. At that point it seems easy, and you eventually forget the times you died to it when you were starting out.

It wasn't a mechanics difficulty, it was more a number difficulty, you had to actually DPS to beat them that what we are asking for, right now, we have people that don't understand that they need to AOE on packs, if they had struggled on Sastasha and Copperbell because they were swarmed by sahuagin and spriggans perhaps they would understand what the points of AoEing. Healer who would have seen what a tank taking damage means wouldn't be so pressed to spam cure a tank that is not taking damage at all.
And later, they would learn that mechanics are important but they would allready knows the importance of doing their jobs correctly. And we could now have more complex mechanics in dungeon. What was the point of Tank buster telegraph in EW dungeon when they weren't telegraphed before ? EW dungeons are a pain in easyness because the devs thought people would jump right there without doing the previous content ? Cool, now vets are annoyed.

[EriShvakh]

I assume you would be surprised if the devs would make ARR dungeon back to their originals difficulty. Most players today would be unable to clear Sastasha if it was still the same as the release... And Copperbell mine's was even harder back in the day. You weren't waiting for spriggans to spawn cause you one shotted them in the first boss(the one before 6.1.), they needed 10gcds to die, eachs one of them.

This is some "vanilla wow was hard" tier of nostalgia. Nothing in sastasha or copperbell was ever hard. It felt hard because game was new and players were bad. All ARR dungeons up to Cutter's Cry are boring tank and spank fests.

And before you go "b-but the game is easier now", just compare the difficulty between Shiva normal and Zodiark normal. And dare to tell me that shiva is harder or more complex.

[Midareyukki]

Personally I found the end bosses of the very first dungeon in EW a little bit challenging and was worried a lot of people might cry it's too difficult. The first trial is also pretty intense too for anyone not able to visualize in 4 dimensions. P3S is far too harsh imo, I haven't to this day found a PF that is able to get beyond the first set of adds and everyone else demands practice from FoF onwards, like how am I supposed to do that when nobody else can get to that stage? The rest of the content though is fairly decent, I think a little of it is braindead and that may be for casual players who just want to chill and don't want to think too hard what to do.

I'm really bad at visualizing the Zodiark rotational flip, but just like a lot of things in this game, my friends and I found a workaround to help.
It's why even as a casual player I love doing FF14's content. Because even if stuff is challenging and interferes with how you yourself process things, there are ways to figure out a fight.

It was the same with E10S's shadows, it was the same with Zodiark's flippy. I can't tell right from left but I find ways to figure out how to deal with mechanics like that (even if it's just constantly preparing myself by telling to myself which way is which during the fight). And I even managed to help someone clear TEA because their brain doesn't process certain kinds of information while stressed, and she couldn't process numbering of any kind. Something I didn't even conceive. She herself couldn't even do Ridorana's math bit, not because she sucks at math, her brain literally stops seeing "math" as a possibility. Yet she can process shapes. So I made her a diagram to help her process Limit Cut.

It's just these tiny things that sound laughable when you hear it, but actually make all the difference for someone when applied.

...but Endsinger's meteors are just false difficulty relying on either reflexes, timing or the bull**** perception of where an AoE will land because many a times have I thought I was safe only to be literally 1cm off. Or hell, a combination of all three.

You just can't "diagram" your way through that, you can't come up with workarounds. Either you do or you don't. That's not hard. Other fights are hard, but they're doable. That's just disheartening.

[Laphicet]

This is some "vanilla wow was hard" tier of nostalgia. Nothing in sastasha or copperbell was ever hard. It felt hard because game was new and players were bad. All ARR dungeons up to Cutter's Cry are boring tank and spank fests.

And before you go "b-but the game is easier now", just compare the difficulty between Shiva normal and Zodiark normal. And dare to tell me that shiva is harder or more complex.

With Shiva you actually have to do your individual mechanics to a degree, albeit a small one, and shiva has the reverse tankbuster thing too. This is not true for Zodiark normal as you can just follow one person with a marker over their head and clear the fight just fine. Do not forget that iLVL bloat is also a factor in things, too.

[Illmaeran]

The "Normal" level content doesn't need to be made more challenging; it's challenging enough for new players or those of us who've been playing a long time but aren't "Highly Skilled Gamers". As Ronduwil said earlier, the game actually does ramp up in difficulty from ARR to EW, it's just that most long time players don't realize it. I'll be frank, I suck at this game compared to upper-intermediate through advanced players. I don't do anything more difficult than non-EX DR content, for frame of reference. However; after playing through ShB and EW after an extended break then going back to ARR-SB content I had previously been highly challenged at, I found it to be a lot easier than before. Mechanics that had in the past caused me significant pain were a great deal easier to handle. Why? Because I'd been forced to improve by going through the more intricate and challenging fights in ShB and EW.

I started playing in 2.3 and remember how difficult a lot of the ARR stuff was for the time. HW ramped that up even more; at first release I think it was probably the highest level of difficulty the game's ever had overall. That didn't go over well with the general player base so it got ratcheted down and the dungeons got streamlined over time to the point we're at today. The state of the game is a direct result of the response of the wider player base. They're not going to suddenly increase the difficulty of Normal content. That's what EX and Savage, this game's "midcore", and Ultimate this game's "hardcore" are for.

Why do the Casuals respond the way they do to posts saying the game's Braindead Sleepwalk Easy and to ratchet the difficulty of all content up?

1- The ease of normal level content is a significant draw for many players; especially given the multiple levels of increasingly difficult content the game offers.

2- We've seen how WoW has changed over the decades as it focused more and more on high-end/very challenging content. It's ruined the general appeal of the game and, let's be candid, encouraged a toxic cesspool of anger and elitism among the people who stuck it out. We left that behind and We. Do. Not. Want. XIV. To. Become. That. It's unfortunate that a large percent of posts like the OP's that could be constructive, start out with aggressive language that's clearly intended to put "Those Filthy Toxic Casuals" down. It's no wonder people get defensive. I'm willing to bet that you would too if approached with a similar attitude.

XIV is so successful in large part because it's accessible and has content that appeals to a wide array of players, from your Normals (me) to the Ultimate raiders.


The overall game's not going to get more difficult going forward; accept that and move on. If it doesn't fill all your needs in a game, I suggest you enjoy XIV for what it is and find a different game to enjoy the more hardcore content you clearly want.

[Saraide]

I really struggle with a lot of the "easy" mechanics some of the group content has to offer. Its quite frustrating. Ive been gaming sucesfully for decades, finished all the souls games except Elden Ring (yet) so it's not like Im an idiot, or lazy or slow but I dont seem to get a lot of the mechanics that other players do in higher level content. I am fast, and if I see something coming I can dodge it all day long. But by the time I figure out the tell for a mechanic, it seems I dont get that particular dungeon again for ages, and by then Ive forgotten whats even happening and have to start all over again.

So yes, anything outside of Ex, Savage, or Ultimate being too difficult, can certainly feel like the end of the world and unnecessary. When Yoshi P says that if you want harder content, go play Ultimate, I agree with him.

Souls games are literally the worst standard on how good of a gamer you are. The games do not have balancing at all. Your build can be as broken as you want it to be.

[EriShvakh]

With Shiva you actually have to do your individual mechanics to a degree, albeit a small one, and shiva has the reverse tankbuster thing too. This is not true for Zodiark normal as you can just follow one person with a marker over their head and clear the fight just fine. Do not forget that iLVL bloat is also a factor in things, too.

I am talking about both fights on release. There is no point in talking about current shiva.
There is no individual responsibility outside of walking away if you have aoe marker. Rest is just tank and spank, and her circles can be dodged by following marked player just the same. Zodiark has much more patterns and mechanics, and gives you way less time to react to them compared to anything Shiva does, besides her cone tankbuster.

[kpxmanifesto]

FFXIV is often described as a "theme park mmo" where you can do what you want.

Not to be that guy, but an MMO where you can do what you want would actually be a sandbox MMO. A theme park MMO, like WoW, FFXIV, GW2 is an MMO with pre-built "rides" such as quests, dungeons, raids, and other events designed by the devs for players to experience in a guided manner. In a sandbox MMO, like EVE Online, I can choose to be a bounty hunter and kill players/npcs that are criminals anywhere, anytime without being prompted by a quest or a special event.

[BRVV]

Not to be that guy, but an MMO where you can do what you want would actually be a sandbox MMO. A theme park MMO, like WoW, FFXIV, GW2 is an MMO with pre-built "rides" such as quests, dungeons, raids, and other events designed by the devs for players to experience in a guided manner. In a sandbox MMO, like EVE Online, I can choose to be a bounty hunter and kill players/npcs that are criminals anywhere, anytime without being prompted by a quest or a special event.

Thanks. Learned something new. I knew the term "sandbox game" from single player games but heard the phrase "theme park mmo" as description for FFXIV, followed by statements about the different things you can do and how you don't have to do it all. I kinda got those terms mixed up. So thanks for the heads up.