For those who struggle with group content

[Eloriel]

I'm autistic and all group content is getting more and more sensory overload for me. Probably suck pretty bad because of it, but since I'm forced to run some things with other people (not as many nowadays, luckily enough), I'll keep on powering through even though I hate every second of it. Love the rest of the game, though.
I only run group related things when the MSQ forces me. Because of my autism, I just can't handle the tougher stuff. Not because it's actually hard or anything - but so many things are happening on the screen that I always get sensory overload.

[Carin-Eri]

Because according to the tos, the ones giving feedback of any kind can be reported.
That's why

Fair enough.

Personally, though, I'd rather take a hit to my (admittedly already low) confidence than find myself standing in the spot I was in before the instance started looking at text in the chat boxes saying I was dismissed, with absolutely no idea why the rest of the team thought that voting me off was the answer to whatever the hell I was doing wrong.

[Raoabolic]

Fair enough.

Personally, though, I'd rather take a hit to my (admittedly already low) confidence than find myself standing in the spot I was in before the instance started looking at text in the chat boxes saying I was dismissed, with absolutely no idea why the rest of the team thought that voting me off was the answer to whatever the hell I was doing wrong.

That's a good mentality to have but for every person that has that mentality there are 10 more that think that any sort of tip is "harassment". The vote dismiss and silent abandonment is just the evolution of MMOs now. Why would you risk your account because someone had a bad day and your tip of "Hey, don't stand in the AoEs m8." turned you into a target? It's not that hard to see how this mess happened, vocal minority and all that, lol.

[SpiritedMare]

For the most part I'm content to just run with Duty Support. I *suck* at keeping track of what's coming from where when there are three different mechanics going off at the same time, but I've found I *am* really good at sticking like glue to an NPC who's programmed to go to the correct spot, and I slap a big ol' mark on them to make them easier to see (ProTip: In my experience, G'raha Tia and Estinien are the best ranged and melee respectively at interrupting their casts/combos and consistently actually getting the heck outta the poop, heh).

When there's an instance that I have to do to progress the story that DOESN'T have a Duty Support option, I'll grit my teeth and go, though I'm a basket of nerves. However, I explain my issue at the start, and pretty much every time there's at least one person who will say "Oh, I can do these mechanics flawlessly and I don't mind if you mark and follow me!", and more often than not there's at least one other person who says "Oh thank you so much for asking, I have the same issue and the marked person will REALLY help me too but I was too afraid to ask!".

So it works out. I gotta say, though social anxiety isn't something you can really "fix", this game's community has been wonderfully supportive in mitigating and combatting it, absolutely leagues beyond any other MMO out there!

[Amarande]

For me, the wind got kicked out of my sails heavily because of a couple of major things:

* The culture shift when it comes to high end content in recent years is vast (it seems like it is less of a shock for people that played pre-WoW MMOs, but for those who didn't - e.g., in my case, my online RPG career started with Diablo II, moving on to Guild Wars 1 and WoW a few years later. I couldn't get into EverQuest because I didn't have broadband till the mid 00s and on dialup the lag was hilariously nonfunctional and avoided UO because I learned that with FFA PvP, it would basically be "Britain Online" for any new player at that point, so I missed the hyper-hardcore early era).

My earlier years of MMOs felt like endgame players were a lot more patient and a lot less picky. Dungeons were just a matter of having Eureka invite reflexes to answer LFM calls. Sure, for raids it took a while to find an Icecrown guild that didn't abuse GearScore, but other than that, Northrend was as chill as it was chilly. Even as late as Legion, it wasn't hard for me to find a Heroic guild, although I had better work scheduling at the time ... then I had to pick up a retail job with evening shifts that forced me to PUG most of the time.

And then I was introduced to the loveliness of modern hyper-hardcore PUG culture where unless you treat the game like a job and accept forced logging and box scoring and canards like "don't you understand, it's just like a resume" and "bad and don't wanna improve" if you reject the mindset, not to mention the expectation that you death march content right when it drops, you barely ever get into existing groups and ones you start either take all night to fill, or fill with the folks that have two left feet (which is a death sentence with XIV's content design especially) or both.

Heaven forfend that fun still be part of endgame unless you're super fortunate with your RL situation (I thought "build your RL around the video game" mentality was supposed to mainly have died out with the hyper-hardcore EQ era? Now it is back to the norm. Ugh!).

* There's a distinct lack of "mid end" content anymore, you get a choice of stuff that anyone who's got any decent MMO, or RPG, or even video game skills at all is going to squash like a bug, or stuff that requires near-perfect play to even hope to clear. What's someone who's pretty handy with games but has less time and energy to practice and is getting older (I'm in my 40s, I'm not a Monster-fueled teenager anymore. Heck, caffeine seems to barely do me any good anymore either!) to do?

This doesn't even seem to just be a XIV issue either (few games still have a smooth endgame progression instead of this cliff, and the ones that do, like WoW, the middle content tends to suffer from reward-tiering issues).

[Kalania]

* There's a distinct lack of "mid end" content anymore, you get a choice of stuff that anyone who's got any decent MMO, or RPG, or even video game skills at all is going to squash like a bug, or stuff that requires near-perfect play to even hope to clear. What's someone who's pretty handy with games but has less time and energy to practice and is getting older (I'm in my 40s, I'm not a Monster-fueled teenager anymore. Heck, caffeine seems to barely do me any good anymore either!) to do?

This doesn't even seem to just be a XIV issue either (few games still have a smooth endgame progression instead of this cliff, and the ones that do, like WoW, the middle content tends to suffer from reward-tiering issues).

This is most definitely an issue I'm worried about as well. I certainly can't spend hours a night raiding. (However did I manage to clear MC in early WoW? wtf was I thinking) I'm 38 (hey, I've got 8 more days) and I don't have the time or energy to put that time in.
Since I'm still a sprout and just finished heavensward though; its possible my timing might be that I am always one expansion behind.

(caffeine has never affected me; so I can't do the stay up with coffee thing and never have been able to)

[JamieRose]

I have horrible social anxiety issues and a bad history with savage raiding, ergo I don't do most group only content. I have been trying to do the latest ex raid, but it takes it toll on my psyche.

I really enjoy the lore and I always look forward to new story content. I also tend to find myself drawn to activities a bit off the beaten path, like mahjong or triple triad. My favorite thing though is decorating my house and of course making new glamours. I really get to indulge myself in dressing up which is something I don't get to do IRL. As for how it relates to my character, she too is very shy but breaks out when she's showing off her creativity with fashion or housing design.

[AnnRam]

There are many reasons people may struggle with group content, from limited play time to practice to issues with pattern recognition and prediction to social anxiety or whatever it may be.

If this is sounds like you, it's good to have things like duty support and the trust system for things like MSQ dungeons, but that leaves out most group content. Do you avoid such content, grit your teeth and plow through, or something else?

And does it affect how you see your character, the story, etc.? Not necessarily in a negative way, just without such an emphasis on such content?

What do you look forward to doing most in the game? What really draws you in and keeps you playing? There are so many cool things you can do solo or mostly solo. Which are your favorites?

Group content isn't good enough in terms of rewards to even bother and it gets outdated very quickly.
FFXIV is mostly 80% a solo player experience because its build entirely around MSQ, long cutscenes, too much unnecessary text nor descriptions, everything got extremely simplified (jobs,crafting etc) , the difficulty turned down on each expansion to the point that regular content can be done without even looking at the screen (most people can do Ivalice/Nieir raids while watching a netflix show on their second monitor for example).

I stopped interacting with other players in game years ago, the only thing that keeps me interesting are PVP or working on my character, brute forcing extreme trials in PF its always fun tho.
Certainly I don't know or can understand how some people have anxiety while playing FFXIV, devs made this game even more casual friendly than Genshin Impact and that's something huge to say about.

[Renalt]

Group content isn't good enough in terms of rewards to even bother and it gets outdated very quickly.
FFXIV is mostly 80% a solo player experience because its build entirely around MSQ, long cutscenes, too much unnecessary text nor descriptions, everything got extremely simplified (jobs,crafting etc) , the difficulty turned down on each expansion to the point that regular content can be done without even looking at the screen (most people can do Ivalice/Nieir raids while watching a netflix show on their second monitor for example).

I stopped interacting with other players in game years ago, the only thing that keeps me interesting are PVP or working on my character, brute forcing extreme trials in PF its always fun tho.
Certainly I don't know or can understand how some people have anxiety while playing FFXIV, devs made this game even more casual friendly than Genshin Impact and that's something huge to say about.

Not sure if you would WANT to interact with people but since on the same server if you would like to make some new friends I could introduce you to quite a number of them.

[Ceridwenae]

Yeah, I have issues with group stuff. I've got some social/performance anxiety, and am in my 40s with the reaction times of a snail some days. What's worse, is the more the content must be re-run, the worse I get over time. I've lucked out a time and again with good groups, but the feeling of being carried is never a good one. I tend to ignore even normal trials unless they're MSQ, and I have a stomach full of butterflies every time these horrid trials come up (so, yeah, the last couple of patches have not filled me with joy).

There's also the content I believe I have to avoid because of graphical issues and epilepsy. Would pretty much hate to have an extremely bad day just because of the game's inability to tone lighting and mad effects down. It's not too much stuff, thankfully, but I couldn't do the Nier alliance raids series because of the graphics (my husband ended up sitting in my chair and punting my cat through for me). There's some glamour stuff from there I'd really like but will never have, and I wish I had a Smaller Stubby! Eden looked to have potential issues, and there was some really nice potential glamour stuff there, too. It sucks to have to miss out, but I generally like being alive, so it's not hard to go with that.

However, I've been doing this some time, and I know I'm better than those paragraphs might suggest.

So now I've got the last two auspice trials and the omega stuff to be getting through as some more recent content requires them, and I've put those off for years because of (scream it) Other People and Side Content. I've started to look at the Hells' Kier story mode solo unsynced (white mage, will change if I feel I have to), and am figuring out the whatnot in it as I go along. I like unsynced as yeah, it's easier, but I like having all the buttons available. And I know if I just put up a party finder announcing this, people would probably come and pitch in either for themselves or just because. But as it's just the normal version, not extreme, it feels a cheeky ask. Also, when I have to deal with people I don't know, my brain cells fuse together then melt in a puddle somewhere and I may end up saying/typing some really weird stuff because of nerves. I've been umming and ahhing for quite some time now about doing some sort static just to pootle through these things, but the anxiety gets in the way and it's like ever-decreasing circles. I kinda wish they hadn't made more content reliant on having done the trials, because now I have to do the trials to do the newer content!

If I can get 7 people who don't mind a nervous odd person, and are relatively flexible with FFXIV jobs, to punt a few hours on one night every so often to go through anything and everything, no experience necessary, I'd think I'd be happy (but still horribly nervy), but just getting that going feels almost too much. Maybe one day.