Why does everyone complain about STORY based MMO's?

[Avoidy]

Not this again, indeed.

You can increase the difficulty of content without making it anywhere near Extreme or Savage levels. Insinuating otherwise is simply being disingenuous. Presently, the MSQ as a whole is essentially one massive participation reward that's almost impossible to fail. This does undercut the whole epic saga of the story when the supposed big bad can be facerolled. A prime example of this is Thordan. Even as a brand new player only ten months into FFXIV when I first cleared, I was disappointed by how much of a joke he was—to the point I stopped even dodging mechanics because not only was nobody else bothering. When I was hit myself, they did next to nothing. Did it ruin the conclusion of Heavensward? No. However, it certainly left a sour taste. Shinryu, conversely, was much better despite still being easy enough. Sadly, power creep as trivialized that fight but in his heyday, he was good.

Even ShB's final boss suffers from this; it's so sad. It burns down so fast.
Basically if you ever take a newbie to any cool old trials, you've gotta select the minimum item level/no echo settings and run in with a full party so they can get some semblance of a good experience. It shouldn't need to be this way. But every time people propose retooling it or tweaking it or making the mechanics have any consequence at all, some people stomp their feet because they think we want it to be Ultimate.

I believe this is just another element contributing to the story feeling sort of "meh" for a lot of people. Like, these bosses can take dozens of hours to arrive at, and then you stop and wait in a queue for ages depending on your job, and once you get in the thing just... melts. Retooling the ARR stuff was a good start, but the rest of the game desperately needs that treatment as well. Thordan is a joke like you mentioned, but most of the older trials are as well, and the dungeons are basically a 14 minute stroll.

[Larirawiel]

Even ShB's final boss suffers from this; it's so sad. It burns down so fast.

Almost every MMO has this problem. And i do not know how to solve it. And yes, it is a huge immersion breaker when a big bad and evil enemy burns down very fast. But if you set the difficulty higher then this enemy will become an impassable wall for many players. And FF14 would be literary over for them.



Cheers

[Supersnow845]

Almost every MMO has this problem. And i do not know how to solve it. And yes, it is a huge immersion breaker when a big bad and evil enemy burns down very fast. But if you set the difficulty higher then this enemy will become an impassable wall for many players. And FF14 would be literary over for them

We also have to consider the immersion for other people though, there is a non zero amount of people who would have quit the game after the disappointment and frankly immersion break that happens when you topple bosses like thordran or shinryu with almost no effort

What about their experience is that not equally as valid

[Larirawiel]

We also have to consider the immersion for other people though, there is a non zero amount of people who would have quit the game after the disappointment and frankly immersion break that happens when you topple bosses like thordran or shinryu with almost no effort

What about their experience is that not equally as valid

Yes, this is true. But i have not a good solution for this. Maybe the story writers could make the real dangerous enemies optional and not relevant for the MSQ. But then you could not fight Zodiark and Hydaelyn as a part of the MSQ etc. It is a difficult situation to make dangerous enemies really dangerous without excluding not so good players from progress.


Cheers