I think SE needs to focus on making players feel important again.

[Tehmon]

^Good Post.

The bit about sprouts failing miserably due to not hitting their buttons is a good point to bring up. This isn't actually a FF14 specific issue. It's a very common problem in the multiplayer online genre. Not just in MMOs but even other games I've played. Off the top of my head Warframe, LoL, and GW2 all have this problem too. Arguably far worse than 14 does.

The problem stems from games not adequately teaching players the ropes. There's a lot SE could do to help with this.

The big one is giving new players their buttons core buttons much sooner. Your basic 1-2-3 combo shouldn't take 26 levels to unlock. Your basic AoE should really be available by the 1st dungeon. Skills like Holy that stun can offer players a weaker version so they can start to play around with these buttons sooner and start getting acquainted with them. By level 50 you should have all the important bits of your end game rotation fully unlocked.

The game should also do a much better job of communicating how and when to use role actions, buffs, and situational utility.

Here's one example. in the Dancer job quest, the game can direct the player to select a dance partner, then it can ask them to heal an ally. The game will ask them to try to position themselves so that the heal from themselves and their dance partner land on their target. Then it can ask them to do it again but with more stakes attached. Little things like this sprinkled throughout your game go a long way.

SE could also consider a job-specific hall of the novice.

There's a lot that SE can do to help ease these frustrations. A lot of them come from players not knowing what the game expects them to do. It's not an quick and easy problem to solve, but it is solvable.

Even if the community is largely opposed to raising the game's difficulty curve. I think there's a lot of value in revamping the way 14 teaches new and intermediate players. If nothing else, everyone's daily roulettes might go a bit smoother.

While I'm generally of the belief that the game should teach you how to play the game, and you shouldn't need people on youtube and wiki sites to tell you how to play the game correctly, the issue here is that nobody really wants to learn video games. They want to pick it up and gradually become better. If you're bombarded with tutorials, you are going to get annoyed and frustrated pretty quickly, and it takes you out of immersing yourself into the video game world which is definitely detrimental for an RPG. So to figure out a method on how to teach the game effectively while keeping it fun and immersive is difficult by itself.

[Tehmon]

The current ceiling for skillset and threat level is so low, game actually rewards mediocrity. I fear more for my life doing open world events in GW2 than dungeons in FFXIV. There's no sense of "punishment" or failure of any sorts in normal content, except savage and ultimates. People are right to criticize Myths raids, I think it's worse than CT. Game is becoming easier each patch because SE wants to invite the newer and younger generation in, but they forget the ones that keep the game moving are actually adults.

Depends. If you're an XIV veteran, you have already spent an enormous amount of money on the game and it's harder and harder each passing year to keep you happy. Meanwhile you got new blood who will go through the long long MSQ process and all the other content you have already done years ago, and this new blood will hopefully become veterans themselves. There's probably a lot more money to be made in enticing newer players than keeping the so-called adults who are 100x more picky and critical. But this is just a theory.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

I'm having a hard time accepting that the recent dungeon changes were made for the trust ai. The castrum abania boss with the elemental weakness&immunity was changed even though stripped to the studs the mechanic is indistinguishable from any other donut aoe. Something the trust npcs can already handle in other dungeons.

Precisely. Henceforth their 'rework' never made sense to me and/or feels very rushed no matter how hard I try to perceive how they operate.

Ever tried to tank Grynewaht at Doma Castle 'the old way'? Grynewaht be like: "Nah, can't do that mate. Lemme just reset to the middle to start casting anything at all. Tankbuster, saws, proximity bombs, everything! We go together!!!"

... Well I suppose taking away so called player responsibility off their plate so they can never 'be at fault' is what, or at least partly what they tried to do:
"My brother in Hydaelyn, stop moving the boss!!! I can't hit the boss!!!"
> "Nah, ain't my fault mate. Blame the boss AI."

Hard to feel bad if it's not your fault, I guess.

[Aravell]

Precisely. Henceforth their 'rework' never made sense to me and/or feels very rushed no matter how hard I try to perceive how they operate.

Ever tried to tank Grynewaht at Doma Castle 'the old way'? Grynewaht be like: "Nah, can't do that mate. Lemme just reset to the middle to start casting anything at all. Tankbuster, saws, proximity bombs, everything! We go together!!!"

... Well I suppose taking away so called player responsibility off their plate so they can never 'be at fault' is what, or at least partly what they tried to do:
"My brother in Hydaelyn, stop moving the boss!!! I can't hit the boss!!!"
> "Nah, ain't my fault mate. Blame the boss AI."

Hard to feel bad if it's not your fault, I guess.

To be fair, some people do get unreasonably mad when you do something out of the ordinary even if it doesn't affect them in any way. Ever tried spinning the P2N boss? He doesn't cleave, doesn't have positionals, doesn't move out of middle, but if you start spinning him, someone will get mad and scream at you to stop spinning the boss.

[Rehayem]

Depends. If you're an XIV veteran, you have already spent an enormous amount of money on the game and it's harder and harder each passing year to keep you happy. Meanwhile you got new blood who will go through the long long MSQ process and all the other content you have already done years ago, and this new blood will hopefully become veterans themselves. There's probably a lot more money to be made in enticing newer players than keeping the so-called adults who are 100x more picky and critical. But this is just a theory.

I don't necessarily agree with this. What drives a MMORPG is not only content, but combat system as well. Homogenization of the jobs and skills is what makes a person bored in the long run. SE is worried about players min-maxing everything, but this is unavoidable in the long run. You don't have to be an XIV veteran of any sorts, just play any other MMORPG and you will see each one has a different niche, combat and flavor to it. FFXIV is becoming stale because EW failed to provide proper content and butchered uniqueness of the jobs. DT is coming with 2 new jobs, and 2 of them will be reworked (DRG and AST).

[Jeeqbit]

Precisely. Henceforth their 'rework' never made sense to me and/or feels very rushed no matter how hard I try to perceive how they operate.

The reworks were mostly not for the AI. It's just obvious. They changed the exact fights that sprouts didn't understand or struggled with. That can't be a coincidence.

Maybe they wouldn't have handled Copper Bell mines blob boss because it involved clicking things, but from level 50 onwards the changes seemed more about making the mechanics easier to understand for new players. For example, there was functionally not much different about Fenrir, they just telegraphed the ice to hide behind so that it's far more obvious. They reworked Aetherochemical Research Facility, but if you think NPCs standing in black holes was not possible, they do it in Vanaspati when hiding in bubbles, which destroys the argument it was for that reason. They could no doubt handle the elemental boss as it was, because they stand in buff areas in Tower of Babil and towers in duties like Doma Castle.

Ever tried to tank Grynewaht at Doma Castle 'the old way'? Grynewaht be like: [I]"Nah, can't do that mate. Lemme just reset to the middle to start casting anything at all.

This one bothers me a lot. I used to drag it to the North West corner. This allowed you to dodge every single mechanic with minimal movement (and no boss movement, just rotated it a bit), except the person with the proximity marker who needed to run away.

[TBerry]

The entrirety of MSQ and most most quests catering to the player as the one basically. Though of course quality of content is still a valid topic.
In my opinion, ARR and half of HW should be left out of rising difficulty.
That said, I suspect ego.

[GoatOfWar]

If anything the difficulty curve goes down especially on the support classes when they are flooded with tools they don’t need when they hit level 90

You can’t tell me you use seraph every time she comes off CD and also don’t overcap your fey gauge and also have to use every aetherflow on CD, like why do I have even half those heals let alone the fact I can keep the tank alive spamming adlo if I really want

Don't worry mister healer, i will just press Equilibrium and Blood whetting so you don't have to heal me. And i will use shake it off so you don't have to heal the rest of the group. Not like there's any downsides to my medic tank to counterbalance the ridiculous sustain that i bring because that would be unfair.

[Rithy255]

I feel like the dungeon example is partly because, likely people are overgeared even in your example the healer wasn't but you must have at least been pretty high up with the gear you had, so it made doing the duty possible without a tank. I think the Issue is that the item level synch makes tanks feel absurdly defensive where nothing matters, not even getting healed, It makes your DPS/Healer able to basically tank high amounts of damage, even taking like AOE stacks at the same time.

Theirs certainly also power creep with jobs such as tanks & healers through each expansion they usually just get better and better cooldowns, EW in particular Tanks got amazing mitigation tools which is fine, but the issue is you don't really need to even use them much in the first place (in fact you could likely use no defensives or OCGD's on healers and still be fine if you single pulled), Healers have so much OGCD healing that the Idea that you should have a balancing act of doing damage and doing healing is lost because you can do both at the same time. It's also funny that the game restricts you on pulls, when the pulls it allows you to do are incredibly easy and unfun. Bosses don't even do meaningful auto damage that pulls become the more fun part about tanking/healing but in EW that's fully lost on me now that it just doesn't pose any danger anymore. This also might be a hot take but I think tanks should take more damage from failing mechs, as bad tanks can just get away with not knowing anything about the fight which teaches bad habits.

With Dps the difficulty usually is rotational difficulty, obviously mechs play a part but dungeon mechs aren't meant to be hard, a lot of the time your job is to just make the duty or pulls go faster (which isn't a bad thing mind you), I do think Dps would benefit gameplay wise with the reduction of insane level synch as they would get punished (like other roles).

Casual content shouldn't be hard but it should also have some challenge to the player, some fights on release genuinely bring some difficulty, the issue is once one person knows the very basics it's not really going to be that challenging, but at least theirs a little bit of difficulty in learning the fight, but when gear gets better everyone can easily face roll through the fight without a clue in the world, It's clear that this game isn't design around that better gear. I think also giving more agency to the Tanks/healers in fight is needed, they need to actually lean more into their purpose, as "boring dps" isn't fun to play, even if that means turning them into more fun DPS or making their mechs more interesting, upping the damage? anything as theirs so much room for fun designs, when a casual fight is going wrong as a tank/healer but you make constant plays or saves to stabilize the fight, it feels amazing but 99% of the time ur just going to be mashing your 1 button or ur 1, 2, 3 tank combo throwing out the odd ogcd ability.

[Zsavooz]

actually they need to rethink everything. This rinse, wash, repeat every patch cycle is boring as hell.