Quote Originally Posted by KageTokage View Post
The problem is certain content like trials, raids, etc still force these differing groups of people together which is going to create friction when you start dealing with situations where individual performance matters.

IE, the Bozja raids are seemingly way above the level of stuff a lot of people are comfortable with judging from the number of times I've ended up with 60-70% of the raid on the floor and it eventually getting to a point where the competent healers just give up on rezzing people because their MP pools can't support it.

The game does not do enough to train people to handle the stuff they can't easy mode and trivial healing checks are just the tip of the iceberg.
I think this was EW content design problem in particular.
As many have said before, there's no "midcore" (or however you want to call it) content in EW. There's no large zone where players of different skill levels can gather and do something together. Bozja was great in that regard, some skirmishes, but especially CE used mechanics from the previous fights but made quite a few additions to them, so they are fresh and fun to do and do offer a higher difficulty. All 3 large scale raids i.e. CLL, DRN and Dalriada were very fun on content.
Usually Alliance Raids are harder than regular Dungeons and Trials content (YoshiP himself mentioned that they design Alliance Raid with harder and less noticeable mechanics so even if more casual players make mistakes, better players can still carry them), but the devs overcorrected after Nier complaints way too hard. Bosses have no health and spend way too much time tutorializing before they start mixing mechanics in a half-interesting way, by which point they are dead. Bosses spend way too much time telegraphing one attack. Thaleia is very guilty of this.
EW Extremes were somewhat on a weaker side with the exception of Barbs or Golby.