The Masked Carnivale is Some of the Worst Content in FFXIV

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Another thread bashing the Masked Carnivale? Wasn't your last one enough?

It doesn't matter how many times you create a new thread complaining about how much you hate how difficult or punishing the Masked Carnivale is, hardly anyone shares your sentiments.

Everything wrong with Masked Carnivale

Difficulty is set far too high without ability to adjust it.
A constant stream of OHKOs.
Very little time to react. + mechanics that are ridiculously hard to read.
Drags on WAY TOO LONG.
One mistake and you go back to start. + NO CHECKPOINTS BETWEEN ACTS!!!

1.) The difficulty curve IS going through MC Stage 1 up to Stage 32 to get used to BLU. Each stage can be broken and solved with a variety of BLU spells, so if you need help consider getting new spells that can help.

2.) Constant stream of OHKOs is a BS lie. It has OHKOs, many times easy to avoid or simply checking for specific actions like Diamond Back but not a constant stream of it.

3.) Everything is reasonably telegraphed or has buffs / debuffs. If you think you got no time to react, that is your reaction time or awareness being off.

4.) It only drags for long if you don't do sufficient damage for what is intended. As free form as it is, BLU has rotations, cycles and the abilty to abuse physical and magical weaknesses to use from. Get more/better spells.

5.) The stopgap between acts is there to let your HP, MP and cooldowns recover and prep buffs if killtime is irrelevant. It is not there to hold your hand cheesing one Act with one set of 24 spells and do another with something different. The whole point is you going through a series of trial and error or simply intuition to create a diverse spell set to deal with the challenge of all acts combined.

If you dislike your skill, game sense and/or capability being challenged, why are you doing content that is designed to challenge exactly that only to come back here everytime to complain how much you hate it? Ultimate and Savage raiders invest weeks and months learning their content and honing their craft and you spit at the idea that content is hard enough that specifically you can't do it on first try - sorry, I got no sympathy.

At least spin your thread in such a way that you find it difficult and ask for advice and tips.

[Eorzean_username]

If you dislike your skill, game sense and/or capability being challenged, why are you doing content that is designed to challenge exactly that only to come back here everytime to complain how much you hate it? Ultimate and Savage raiders invest weeks and months learning their content and honing their craft and you spit at the idea that content is hard enough that specifically you can't do it on first try - sorry, I got no sympathy.

One key difference that can be observed here is that portions of a Job Storyline are not gated behind UCOB or P10S completion.

XIV's devs have bent over backwards to condition the playerbase that all "Story" content is basically a "free pass" — even if there's a Trial / Dungeon / Raid in your way, you needn't worry: Trusts and/or 3-7 other people will solve it for you.

Blue Mage literally hard-gating the progression of its mediocre story behind the solo-only Carnivale bosses pretty much defies every convention that SE has otherwise established by this point regarding Story content vs. "Challenge" content, so it's probably not surprising to see it causing friction for players who basically want to do Story/Quests and avoid all forms of demanding combat, because Blue Mage's story progression sells itself as a super-relaxing solo non-activity... until it suddenly isn't.

[Jeeqbit]

What makes you think I haven't done all that? When it's taking me over 100 attempts to finish something due ENTIRELY to a razor thin margin of error, the problem is the content.

Because if you had watched video guides, you would surely have beaten it by now. They are going to explain and show you exactly what to do, and all you have to do, is do it.

There are a lot of Blue Mage spells by level 80 that you can use to cheese the old ones that you couldn't before as well.

[kaynide]

Personally Blue carnival was some of the most enjoyable stuff I have done because it was difficult and the only way for me to clear it was to grit my teeth and deal with it, or get better gear/skills.

Specifically GoGo was one of my favorites because I couldn’t just derp through it.

I often have talked about getting BCNMs from FF11 in this game, and Blue carnival is the closest we have to that.

I also don’t think Blue was ever advertised as being something easy, but rather something you can do solo and that it is purposely different from other core game content.

[Elissar]

Why you are so lazy?
I see many weird complaints here that actually may have some sense and often they are worth to analyze closely
but...yours sounds like "i don't want to play or think, i just want MISSION COMPLETE without effort"

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

One key difference that can be observed here is that portions of a Job Storyline are not gated behind UCOB or P10S completion.

XIV's devs have bent over backwards to condition the playerbase that all "Story" content is basically a "free pass" — even if there's a Trial / Dungeon / Raid in your way, you needn't worry: Trusts and/or 3-7 other people will solve it for you.

Blue Mage literally hard-gating the progression of its mediocre story behind the solo-only Carnivale bosses pretty much defies every convention that SE has otherwise established by this point regarding Story content vs. "Challenge" content, so it's probably not surprising to see it causing friction for players who basically want to do Story/Quests and avoid all forms of demanding combat, because Blue Mage's story progression sells itself as a super-relaxing solo non-activity... until it suddenly isn't.

Ill give you that much, that is certain. I think this constant conditioning with zero challenges or milestones thrown in absolutely crippled what design choices they can pull off and anytime they do go back to their JRPG roots of "you want to see some side story, go kill an optional and perhaps difficult boss" certain individuals throw a fit and accuse CBU3 of any and all bad practices and choices.

BLU is said side content, as much as I want to vomit having to admit that (Im in the camp of non-limited BLU). And unlike other easy story content, BLU has a lot of broken or strong abilities at their disposal, so having a modicum of a challenge for the job that can break fights with certain spells should've been an expected outcome. Instead what they actually wanted was a BFG9000 ez mode annihilate-everything.

Western playerbase got soft and CBU3 isn't making it any better. For similar reason they see Criterion normal as a savage equivalent where in JP they probably just do it casually. Should really tell something about us...

[JamieRose]

Because if you had watched video guides, you would surely have beaten it by now. They are going to explain and show you exactly what to do, and all you have to do, is do it.

There are a lot of Blue Mage spells by level 80 that you can use to cheese the old ones that you couldn't before as well.

Yeah, because makes the RAZOR THIN MARGIN OF ERROR go away.

[Saraide]

Yeah, because makes the RAZOR THIN MARGIN OF ERROR go away.

This is simply not true, you can get hit by so much in the new stage.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Never liked the masked carnivale stuff tbh, I think it's too hard and just annoying, lots of 1 shot mechanics

Same. That's why for the most part, I'd rather wait until many guides arises then try to replicate those. That's what I did when I first tried to blast through the older carnivale stages and got stuck on one of the floors. Looked up a guide, prog once or twice then boom, clear!

The same will happen for this 6.45 carnivales as well.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Responses to this thread is exactly what is wrong within the FF14 Community!

...for starters, "what is wrong with the FF14 Community" for you. Just because you don't like the responses OP gets doesn't give you the right to generalize the entire FF14 Community about what is wrong with them.

I will respond to most of the post even if I wasn't addressed directly because there is a lot to talk about. I'll highlight key points, but generally address each paragraph as complete as possible.

[1]And so what if they are?

Most and yes I mean most players who are completing this form of content or completing Savage use proc addons to complete it. If your playerbase relies on these forms of third party tools to complete content, then it ends up being bad game design! Only a fragment of the playerbase does/likes this form of content, which is typically 20% or less of the players. Pandering to this fragment in my opinion tends to be really bad for game longevity based on my past exp. with other MMOs who only cared also for this small fragment of players instead of the majority that actually keeps the lights on!

Firstly, where is your "most" coming from? You throw a "how do you know that?" later down there in my face when I made an educated perception based on JamieRose's history of BLU complaint threads or any complaint about difficult content for that matter, yet you seem to be perfectly fine using "most" or "typically 20% or less of players" with your source being "trust me bro". Pick your poison, either it is ok for both of us to use it or stop being a hypocrite, be the better debater and post your sources and statistics.

The mere existence of 3rd party plugins does not imply "most" people complete difficult content with minor or significant help from them, only that it is possible and most likely that certain groups do. Speaking from experience as a long-term Savage + Ultimate raider + raid leader since Stormblood, reliance on 3rd party plugins to play has been generally met with negative opinions and has been ground for replacement, especially after the DSR World First race. If a playerbase relies on them, that isn't bad game design, that is a terrible community mentality - the entire game can be done with console-only players. It is a choice people make, not a requirement.

As for the pandering argument, I'm heavily assuming that World of Warcraft is a key contributor here. What WoW did was pandering most of their resources to raiding and combat design, which is where I sympathize with the playerbase of being disappointed. Comparing this to Final Fantasy XIV, which has evolved to have many different types of content available for a wide variety of core groups and minority groups, is equal to comparing apples to oranges. If FFXIV lacks anything, it is a reasonable difficulty curve rather than the vertical difficulty spikes we have now when going from Normal to EX to Savage.

Good for you. Yet you make up the minority of players on this game. SE learned a long time ago to have varied modes for content such as Savage VS Normal Raids. Yet for some magical reason, Blu story is locked behind the latter unlike any other content in the game.

BLU has a difficulty curve, it is called the Masked Carnivale. You pick up tricks and concepts from doing previous stages and rearrange what you learned for later stages. It doesn't have an easy mode because the stage progression IS the easy mode until you are good enough for the final stages. It can be broken with a wide variety of spells abusing debuffs, elemental weaknesses, physical weaknesses, conditional effects and more. It is clear that they don't intend to give you the final bits of BLU story for free just like how a JRPG has you go through the motions of beating progressively harder bosses to progress the story.

Welcome to MMOs in 2023! Where corporations in a capitalist system will create a game to appease the majority i.e. the 80-90% who give a F/all about savage/ultimate style content unlike those who think that the less than 20% keep games alive. Savage/ultimate players are the minority who don't create the most revenue for the game. WoW players learned this yet it seems FF14 players here haven't learned that lesson yet!

Massively disingenuous take that doesn't split up the "80-90% who don't care about savage" into its subsections, which would then lead down to a healthy pie chart actually indicating this is a theme park MMORPG with various minority content being done by varyingly sized groups of players.

PVE is more than just Normal, EX, Savage and Ultimate, there are raids of varying difficulty and sizes, dungeons, criterion dungeons, deep dungeons, exploration zones, hunting (well, before it became a 200+man zerg fest), Treasure Maps, Blue Mage. Besides PVE; PVP has had a solid surge with mixed reception, but more than a dry stain of a blood before 6.1. Various side activities and progression paths exist - housing (apartments and smalls count), island sanctuary, Gold Saucer GATEs, Triple Triad, Chocobo Racing, Mahjong, Crafting + Gathering to become self sufficient, get sufficient gear at ease and have a stable Gil source, hell the community finds its own way to make content for themselves like FC events, screenshot contests (discounting 3rd party plugin stuff)... your perception of "Savage/Ultimate content is for a minority" is skewed because there is a ton of content that likely addresses minorities.

Another FF14 player who seems to have powers of clairvoyance! Yet you claim many others don't share their sentiment? How the living heck do you know that? Because based on all facts and data, those who do this content are the extreme minority of this game with a vast number of them having to use addons with procs based on download statics posted on reddit of users.

Now for the one that addresses me - as I mentioned at the top, I don't have clairvoyance nor do I claim such. What I have is experience, both in the sense that I know that the game is infinitely less unfair, difficult and punishing than some claim it is which is why I explained each of their issues AND in the sense that from experience every time I saw Jamie post about Blue Mage it has been overwhelmingly negative, complaining about the "difficulty" a disproportionately large amount of times and making comments like "I would really think that person should be fired." or "I would not be the least bit sad if it was erased from the game.".

And similarly as mentioned above, claiming a "vast number of them (players who actually do BLU)" is relying on addons to clear BLU content based on some download statistics that may or may not be related to BLU raiding / MC is not only far-fetched, it is extremely difficult to prove. Does it include all regions or only NA/EU/West? What are the numbers based on? Do players who try a plugin once and then don't use it for BLU count?

Please, do me a favour, if you are going to talk about numbers and statistics throughout a post then actually give us the sources of your numbers - if you claim things, then the burden of proof is on you.

How are they lazy? Because like most of the playerbase who does not do or complete savage/ultimate one shot death content like the minority, that makes them lazy? I would put money that most of the players who make comments like this rely heavily on addons to make such comments!

So it is clear you have a hate boner for addons, I respect that. But making such a baseless accusation when many of the players making such comments could very well just be casual players but don't vibe with Jamie's take is insulting at best, slander at worst.