the normal content is too easy

[Supersnow845]

Normal fights are fine difficulty wise, not everyone is as good as the combat as we might be so just let them get through the story and be on your way.

My only gripe with the difficulty however is the item level sync on the last bosses of each expansion. These should be heavily restricted in order to give the true experience of the fight. A lot of new people don't have the luxury of playing with 8 premade and ilvl sync on and it's always a shame as when as a mentor I'm going into these fights that were so good when I done them back in the day just to see them melt and ruin the entire buildup of the story.

The last boss of HW and SB are especially bad as they were both huge spectacles that just come off as boring when you beat them in less than 2mins.

Most people beating the last boss of HW are capped at 270ilvl when storywise you would only be 150 after main scenario. That's 120ilvl extra per player. Far too much.

Do thordran at MINE, he is still a complete joke

[Gullis]

Normal fights are fine difficulty wise, not everyone is as good as the combat as we might be so just let them get through the story and be on your way.

My only gripe with the difficulty however is the item level sync on the last bosses of each expansion. These should be heavily restricted in order to give the true experience of the fight. A lot of new people don't have the luxury of playing with 8 premade and ilvl sync on and it's always a shame as when as a mentor I'm going into these fights that were so good when I done them back in the day just to see them melt and ruin the entire buildup of the story.

The last boss of HW and SB are especially bad as they were both huge spectacles that just come off as boring when you beat them in less than 2mins.

Most people beating the last boss of HW are capped at 270ilvl when storywise you would only be 150 after main scenario. That's 120ilvl extra per player. Far too much.

agree with this

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

Cruise Chaser (A11S) and Omega (O11S) were most certainly harder than Daddy Thancred (E11S). Daddy’s Thancred’s most complicated phase is the last one and a decent party skipped 2/3 of his cycles at the end.

I'll give you O11s since that fight had an actual dps check, but considering how ridiculously hard you could skip entire phases of it, A11s was an absolute joke compared to E11s. Non-existent dps check even on week 1 (Even Angered's W1st clear had like, 5-7 deaths, something that would never fly in week 1 E11s), and the hardest part of the fight was the spread out hawk blaster & limit cut right at the end, with everything else being a complete snoozefest. My week 1 static of the time absolutely demolished A11s due to how unpunishing half the mechanics in that fight are, whereas at least in E11s, almost every mistake is punished harshly with instant death, with a much more balanced dps check that made those deaths actually relevant. I'd legitimately put A10s as harder than A11s, but that's my opinion from my own world prog experience.

Even besides all that, whether newer content is harder or not literally just comes down to who's in charge of the fight design. E8s, due to its incredibly high dps check and mechanics that were extremely punishing for any failure with harsh dps downs or instant kills, blew every single capstone boss out of the water since Midas in terms of difficulty, and still remains as the hardest savage fight since Midas for its notoriety.

Honestly though, I never understand people pointing to Midas & Gordias and saying how current day savage needs to be more like them difficulty wise. Even with my own experience as week 2(pre-tome weapons)/world 6th A3s & World 4th A8s, those tier's fight designs were more tedious than difficult where everything was so needlessly punishing (Oh someone died in an intermission? Permanent 20% damage up meaning you might as well wall it due to zero chance for recovery). A3s was pretty much the only fight from either tier I'd want current savage to be anything like, since it was extremely well done mechanic wise. Even the devs admitted they were massive mistakes. Keep that level of tediousness to the occasional ultimate fight and make things more like Eden's Verse; a fair challenge without tediousness.

As crappy as Bismarck EX was, you weren’t seeing it done with NO HEALERS during its relevant patch.

To be fair, that has nothing to do with the difficulty of the encounter and all about the massive difference of power in toolkits available at each point in time, coupled with the fight design of the actual fight. Bismark, even back at launch, was 100,000% easier than either of the EX's in EW, mechanic wise. The literal hardest mechanic in bismark is 'stand middle during wind weather/spread out during lightning'. The only reason Zodiark can be no-healed is due to fight design being composited of mostly avoidable damage, combined with insane amounts of self healing tools dps & tanks have these days.

Back then, WAR was pretty much the only non-healer job that could do any decent amount of self healing. Clemency costed 2121/5211 MP (~40% of MP gauge), making it extremely slow to use when PLD's MP generation was ultra slow. Compared to EW where Clemency now costs only 2000MP and can be chucked left and right like candy. If Bismark was released today as the exact same fight, I have no doubts it would be no heal'd relatively easily on patch, on the primary notion that the fight is 90% tank damage, and Equil/Bloodwhetting/Clemency laugh at such fight design.

[Supersnow845]

I'll give you O11s since that fight had an actual dps check, but considering how ridiculously hard you could skip entire phases of it, A11s was an absolute joke compared to E11s. Non-existent dps check even on week 1 (Even Angered's W1st clear had like, 5-7 deaths, something that would never fly in week 1 E11s), and the hardest part of the fight was the spread out hawk blaster & limit cut right at the end, with everything else being a complete snoozefest. My week 1 static of the time absolutely demolished A11s due to how unpunishing half the mechanics in that fight are, whereas at least in E11s, almost every mistake is punished harshly with instant death, with a much more balanced dps check that made those deaths actually relevant. I'd legitimately put A10s as harder than A11s, but that's my opinion from my own world prog experience.

Even besides all that, whether newer content is harder or not literally just comes down to who's in charge of the fight design. E8s, due to its incredibly high dps check and mechanics that were extremely punishing for any failure with harsh dps downs or instant kills, blew every single capstone boss out of the water since Midas in terms of difficulty, and still remains as the hardest savage fight since Midas for its notoriety.

Honestly though, I never understand people pointing to Midas & Gordias and saying how current day savage needs to be more like them difficulty wise. Even with my own experience as week 2/world 6th A3s & World 4th A8s, those tier's fight designs were more tedious than difficult where everything was so needlessly punishing (Oh someone died in an intermission? Permanent 20% damage up meaning you might as well wall it). Even the devs admitted they were massive mistakes. Keep that level of tediousness to the occasional ultimate fight and make things more like Eden's Verse; a fair challenge without tediousness..

To be fair edens verse was only good because of shiva, ramuh was kinda tolerable though a fight that had literally zero healing and a lot of his mechanics were solvable using dumb strats (not that that is necessarily the designers fault but like fury’s 14 should not have been able to be solved by just running in a circle till it was over) , E6 was E6, E7 was an easy extreme masquerading as a third floor savage and even shiva barely had any healing she just punished you really really hard for mistakes

The best tier we have had since Midas is probably edens promise and even that has 10 and 11 as more lower points and still doesn’t challenge healers (except doorboss)

[SieyaM]

One of the reasons older content was more challenging, especially for healers, is that we also had far fewer abilities than the ones we had needed to be used well. With healers having so many incredibly strong tools at their disposal it's hard to feel any kind of danger in most content unless you're really eating avoidable damage, and most of the time they turn that into just an instant death anyway. It has also increased the amount of DPS healers can offer to groups since most of their tools are now oGCD, where in the past they had to dip into the GCD heals more often. So I feel it's not just a case of content not being designed to be as challenging, but also the tools we have are too strong for what we are doing.

[TaleraRistain]

Although, having played MMOs for years, it wouldn't take long before you'd have players screaming that even the middle difficulty was too easy.

I think this is a key part that many people ignore or overlook. Right now people above the current bar are calling for the bar to be raised. Okay, say SE does that. Now people who were okay at the previous bar will not be able to clear and will quit the game. And players will be happy for a bit. But eventually, that will become the current bar and those above that bar will call for the bar to be raised. So SE raises it again, more people get frustrated and quit the game and those who can clear the current bar are happy. Then the next set above that bar...etc. It would never end. SE is doing the right thing by sticking to their guns that the main story that everyone is required to progress through is easy and appeals to a wide player base.

Some of the conflict comes because those above the bar players who do the harder optional content are in conflict with SE on this idea because they think the MSQ needs to prepare others for that harder optional content. But there are many players like Tizane up there (if you don't mind me using you as an example) who are interested in only the story. That's all the MSQ really needs to do, just tell a story. There can be arguments for more in-between content as that preparatory step to optional content and those are fair. But SE doesn't intend for the MSQ to prepare anyone for harder content. The MSQ is its own experience. I think they've been cementing this point more by making the MSQ soloable. Before with required group instances the lines blurred a bit. Now it's much solidly "This is the base JRPG story that everyone can play. And these are the optional MMO trimmings players can choose to do that may require more from the player."

Now, they have been making some optional content more accessible. I think the jury's still out on that one. I get that they want people to do that content, but I think they're trying to entice players who just don't aren't interested and it's been at the expense of those who do. But it's possible they have some data that says its a worthwhile endeavor. I think we'll have to wait and see and give feedback where we can. Both from those who enjoy that optional content and want it to be a challenge, but also from those who don't telling SE it's just not their type of content so don't try to design it to their standards.

[TaleraRistain]

Why is there only normal, easy and very easy for solo instances for example? Why not trusts but you can min ilvl? It's either pathetically easy or find a 8 people. As someone who works shifts and loves an actual challenge XIV doesn't really appeal atm.

I could definitely see an argument for this and I wonder if they're test-driving more variable difficulty options with the Variant and Criterion dungeons. It felt a lot to me like they were test driving Duty Support with the Squadron. So they may be trying it in optional content first before seeing if they can integrate it into MSQ. And to gauge reception. Optional difficulty sliders for solo in the MSQ is a great idea. They would need to consider if it could work with random matching, if the slider was automatically set or such. Since having it go on each person's personal difficulty slider might make it difficult to fill the queue.

[Asako]

Do thordran at MINE, he is still a complete joke

Aye even at Ilvl150 he's still easy. However the difference is for less skilled or new players the boss doesn't melt instantly. Takes the sting out of the story when the big bad they have been building up is a complete faceroll.

[Supersnow845]

Aye even at Ilvl150 he's still easy. However the difference is for less skilled or new players the boss doesn't melt instantly. Takes the sting out of the story when the big bad they have been building up is a complete faceroll.

No even at ilvl150 you can stand in every AOE he has an you will suffer no repercussions for it, the fight is just too easy it’s got nothing to do with ilvl scaling

[TaleraRistain]

Aye even at Ilvl150 he's still easy. However the difference is for less skilled or new players the boss doesn't melt instantly. Takes the sting out of the story when the big bad they have been building up is a complete faceroll.

Well keep in mind, they're not up to revamping that part of the MSQ yet. If they stick with current trends, it will go to a solo instance or 4-man duty. They gave the end of ARR back some of its teeth with recent changes.