The Stormblood Capstone fight pretty much killed my enthusiasm with the game.

[Fyrebrand]

I just got Thordan in trial roulette today, and we had a first-timer in the group. All I can think was "Oh no, this is going to be just like the forum guy said, isn't it. I hope the boss doesn't melt in two seconds and the newbie can enjoy the fight."

Well, of course Thordan melted faster than a snowball up Ifrit's backside. I actually tried to go a little easy on ol' Thordy, maybe wait a moment between Stone casts... maybe do a bit more healing to top people up... but there really wasn't much to do, and the newbie was also a healer, so... yeah.

At least we had that middle phase where all the Heavens Ward comes in and does their thing. That is somewhat scripted and cool, even if you kill the adds and meteor circles really fast.

By the time Thordan was back for his final phase, I think he lasted three seconds. He swung a sword once or twice, and was gone.

You need to fix this, CBU3. This is the supposed to be the climax of the story.

[CaptainLagbeard]

Thordan never was really hard even at launch, there's just the 1 DPS check with the guy who does damage based on how much HP he has left... But overall because of how fast he melts down, people nowadays won't even get to see his final "phase" after his big attack... Which is probably better for his image as a boss...

But setting an ilvl sync for the trail bosses at the end of the story to maybe like the first sets of Tomestone gear of each expansion, 170-180 for HW (the doman gear started at 170 but could be brought up to 180), 310 for SB (Ala Mhigan gear), 440 for ShB (Ronkan gear) and finally 570 for EW (Moonward gear)

[Aldath]

I just got Thordan in trial roulette today, and we had a first-timer in the group. All I can think was "Oh no, this is going to be just like the forum guy said, isn't it. I hope the boss doesn't melt in two seconds and the newbie can enjoy the fight."

Well, of course Thordan melted faster than a snowball up Ifrit's backside. I actually tried to go a little easy on ol' Thordy, maybe wait a moment between Stone casts... maybe do a bit more healing to top people up... but there really wasn't much to do, and the newbie was also a healer, so... yeah.

At least we had that middle phase where all the Heavens Ward comes in and does their thing. That is somewhat scripted and cool, even if you kill the adds and meteor circles really fast.

By the time Thordan was back for his final phase, I think he lasted three seconds. He swung a sword once or twice, and was gone.

You need to fix this, CBU3. This is the supposed to be the climax of the story.

It's one of the few battles I was able to form a minilvl sync group for after clearing, because people was also curious. We had two Mentors who had no idea he could do a tower mechanic (neither did I), and some people were laughing because they never got to see him flail around. That said the battle was still insultingly easy and fast but it got some people to actually care about the mechanics and experience a less pathetic Thordan, and it was fun because it felt more in line with what happens afterwards: an old fool being terrified by the presence of the WoL because despite his transformation, and the power of other 12, he still died to a mortal eorzean.

The battle was fun. Again, I don't think SE needs to necessarily up the difficulty, the mechanics are there to enhance the encounter and make it more memorable. If you get hit it still hurts, if you mess up you still die, but it won't outright cause the encounter to fail, and are usually clear enough that even inexperienced groups should get them after a wipe or two. There are post patch dungeon bosses with more punishing mechanics and decent HP pools and people still clear them all the time. All of this is lost because things outright melt, and it also makes it feel like we have less active content than what we really do. I mean, you queue for a raid/trial, barely get to engage with the boss and play your class, and then you're back to either playing delivery boy for the Scions or afking in a sanctuary while the next Roulette pops, or in the case of a healer enter another instance where you most likely follow some guys around while having the excitement of reviving once in a while, if ever.

[Claire_Pendragon]

But setting an ilvl sync for the trail bosses at the end of the story to maybe like the first sets of Tomestone gear of each expansion, 170-180 for HW

thats not low enough. I was in partial Lv58 gear, and still soloed him back at release. Tome gear wasnt available to me. Hes still too easy.

The battle was fun. Again, I don't think SE needs to necessarily up the difficulty, the mechanics are there to enhance the encounter and make it more memorable.

since it can be soloed easily (roughly on par with MSQ "easy/normal" setting) i disagree to this statement. (and it wasnt a hard solo, it was casual, go watch TV, and look at the screen every so often, level of easy)

[LilimoLimomo]

I'm not asking for a difficulty increase, I believe the boss mechanics are good enough as they are, I'm just baffled that CBU3 and SE, with all the damn resources they get from subs and cash shop, for some unknown reason, only decided to adjust ONE capstone fight. They haven't took the time to future proof the experience and ensure that newer players till be able to learn as they play and enjoy older content.

With respect, you are indirectly asking for a difficulty increase. And I understand why you are asking for it: you want your experience to be closer to the way content was when it was initially released. Your personal preference is not unreasonable.

The part that I'd hazard you are failing to recognize is that not everyone wants a challenge. Statistically, most players are pretty solidly on the casual side, and such players generally want a nearly frictionless experience. And for these players, iLevels increasing with each new expansion so that over time fights become easier is an important part of this game; I know numerous players who intentionally wait a few extra patches before doing MSQ content so that the trials won't be as hard. A design that locks in the difficulty of fights at a specific point forever leaves such players behind. And that's not only bad for those players, but bad for the game, because the financial lifeblood of any AAA game is its casual players.

Thankfully, you can still get that old-school experience, you just can't force that experience on others. Rather, find some like-minded players who want to opt into it with you. If you advertise during peak times on a weekend, I'd be surprised if you wouldn't be able to fill a group or at least generate a contact list full of players looking for a meatier experience like yourself. I see people doing PF's for Min iLevel content all the time, and you could probably even make friends with these people so you have a catalogue of comrades to do such content with.

I hope this helps to explain why the game is the way it is, and gets you closer to getting the kind of experiences you want. Best of luck, friend!

[SannaR]

Even if you get a group that has lower dps on Thordan to see the towers no one ever tries to go and stand in them. Cause screw wanting to do the mechanics and the paralyze that happens if you don't. As no one is going to esuna it even though it's one of the more persistent ones.

[SannaR]

With respect, you are indirectly asking for a difficulty increase. And I understand why you are asking for it: you want your experience to be closer to the way content was when it was initially released. Your personal preference is not unreasonable.

The part that I'd hazard you are failing to recognize is that not everyone wants a challenge. Statistically, most players are pretty solidly on the casual side, and such players generally want a nearly frictionless experience. And for these players, iLevels increasing with each new expansion so that over time fights become easier is an important part of this game; I know numerous players who intentionally wait a few extra patches before doing MSQ content so that the trials won't be as hard. A design that locks in the difficulty of fights at a specific point forever leaves such players behind. And that's not only bad for those players, but bad for the game, because the financial lifeblood of any AAA game is its casual players.

Thankfully, you can still get that old-school experience, you just can't force that experience on others. Rather, find some like-minded players who want to opt into it with you. If you advertise during peak times on a weekend, I'd be surprised if you wouldn't be able to fill a group or at least generate a contact list full of players looking for a meatier experience like yourself. I see people doing PF's for Min iLevel content all the time, and you could probably even make friends with these people so you have a catalogue of comrades to do such content with.

I hope this helps to explain why the game is the way it is, and gets you closer to getting the kind of experiences you want. Best of luck, friend!

This. I know it has been awhile since we have had a solo fight where we are playing as ourselves, but so many people complain about a lot of those instances being too hard. Some even do so when they set the fight to its easiest difficulty. Which makes me wonder how they completed any of their job's solo duties. Things get nerfed (sometimes into the ground) cause enough people loudly complain that what even many would probably call super easy is too hard.

[KitingGenbu]

Kinda funny that one expansion 'kills' a person's excitement for the rest of the game. Plenty of other 'difficult' content in later expansions as you get higher.

As for saying how the team is 'supposed' to utilize resources, that's kind of an ignorant statement simply because Yoshida has stated in the past several times over that its not an issue of money but manpower. Manpower is an issue particular to SE because all of their development is done inhouse, not outsourced, so unless you have some friends that dont mind living in Japan and working for them, it wont really matter how much money is given to them.

People need to learn how to compromise expectations. Previous content wont ever be how it originally was at launch even with lower numbers etc. They are more-than likely working on making the raid-style fights more trust friendly so people can have a 'more immersive' experience which will ultimately lead more fights to be altered in terms of mechanics as a result. There's definitely some 'features' you do not want that many older players had to detail with at launch, like the horrendous clear rate of Titan HARD simply because being knocked off took you out of the rest of the fight (funny seeing 'damn lag' comments all the time though).

Keep something else important in mind that with many of these changes (like the whole solo-fied story) takes development time and resources from something else.

[Tetsujin]

As AmiableApkallu said, plus there's also the fact that all of the culled abilities have lead devs to sprinkle their pontencies into combos, so for example, Dragoon's True Trust used to have a potency of 150. Now it's 230. And that's just the first attack of their combo. It's no wonder people smoke older content in a minute.

I know they've tried to make early game more fun (although IMO they lobotomized some early dungeons and made some fights... uh... different for no reason, lateral moves at best) by using trusts, but I genuinely don't think I would've stuck with FFXIV if I went through this new player experience. Especially with so few abilities, and if you play something like BLM? Good luck, they're awfully boring until the late 60s and become okay at 72 or so.

[TheGrimace]

Manpower is definitely an issue and the devs' hands have been busy for quite some time now with re-adjusting older dungeons to be able to be done with Duty Support NPCs. With the next update, they will have completed adding Duty Support for every major story dungeon in the game and it is my hope that they will be able to focus on adjusting other older content beyond.

As for "adjusting expectations" for how difficult content should be, I absolutely think it is possible to find a happy medium for duties. After all, we do have the Echo and True Echo, and their existance is there solely to make content easier- the Echo especially, for parties that are clearly having trouble completing the battle. As for EndWalker, that is literally current content. When even current content is having issues because mechanics are being broken by the game's calculations, there is a problem. Even if a capstone is easier, it's egregious that you can literally miss out on voiced dialogue because the fight ends too fast. I will not adjust expectations on this.