Feedback: Dawntrail MSQ dungeon difficulty

[Besame]

There's clearly a lot of younger players who don't care about the older people trying to enjoy the game (just git gud!). I'm the same age as you, I've been playing FFXIV since 2013 (and other mmo's for years before that), and I did make it through the Dawntrail msq, but I can't say all the dungeons and last trial were exactly enjoyable... I fail to understand why a "story" mode difficulty option is such a bad thing...I know...just git gud, lol... It's not like a lot of us that have issues are going to be raiding or doing the more difficult content and thus dragging other people down. I'm just happy to finish the basic required dungeons and trials once and never do them again. I still find plenty to enjoy in the game without that, but you MUST finish the msq to unlock the different areas and vendors.

I finished the MSQ a few days ago but 2-3 parts were so hard for me physically this time. I want to have fun but not hurt myself or not enjoy gaming hehe. I used to be "GET GUD" but this xpac bout did me in. What took 3-4 days last time was many days and an actual struggle. If they had a very easy mode for MSQ or a way to opt out of certain trials and dungeons I would keep on keeping on but I am sure it won't happen. Handicap mode? hehe. Anyway, thanks for the response. Glad there are still like-minded older gamers wanting some of the old thrills.

[Mikitan]

One of the best things about FF14 was the kind and accepting playerbase... but i guess Warcraft's failure has brought in the dregs of the gaming populace that only see other players as a burden rather than fellow adventurers now. I liked the casual difficulty and kind people, but now that is gone and we are headed right to the same "E-SPORTS GET GUD KEKE KEK WHAT LOUZER!!!1!!" grave that Warcraft has found itself in.

I am absolutely trying my hardest to discern the boss' movements to figure out what is happening but I am also trying to keep my pictomancer (I am still learning the rotation at 100) doing damage and all this crap on screen, on the floor, in the air, off the sides of the boss platforms... its just too much... I feel embarrassed to even try to learn along side people who apparently have figured out telepathy to know what the hell is going on in these encounters. What was wrong with the dungeons in the story being for people that wanted to see the story? Not only do I end up resigning in shame 90% of the time (learning nothing as half the time, I am clueless what even killed me) but I am now behind a BRICK WALL that I cannot climb. Or I suppose it is better to say I am ashamed to feel like I am wasting everyone's time in a normal dungeon needing to be rezzed multiple times per fight because I have absolutely no idea what is going on now.

The cactus boss in tender valley, I just took the L on today... the evasion box is right there.. but then I am standing in DOUBLE AOE... and every single time I die. Laugh if you want, i feel ashamed already and don't even want to play anymore. I am so beaten down by cheap "YoU ThOugHt YoU We'Re SafE hUh?" deaths over these last three dungeons I just want to cry for real. What was so wrong with having a casual difficulty for people learning their class... Half the time I am not even able to cast as a pictomancer unless I have the instant cast up because YOU NEVER GET A CHANCE TO BREATHE EVER.

[Katachthon]

There's clearly a lot of younger players who don't care about the older people trying to enjoy the game (just git gud!). I'm the same age as you, I've been playing FFXIV since 2013 (and other mmo's for years before that), and I did make it through the Dawntrail msq, but I can't say all the dungeons and last trial were exactly enjoyable... I fail to understand why a "story" mode difficulty option is such a bad thing...I know...just git gud, lol... It's not like a lot of us that have issues are going to be raiding or doing the more difficult content and thus dragging other people down. I'm just happy to finish the basic required dungeons and trials once and never do them again. I still find plenty to enjoy in the game without that, but you MUST finish the msq to unlock the different areas and vendors.

These days empathy is scarce.

Sometimes, I think, in order to prevent gaming addiction among the youths, making games of lower difficulty but higher cultural values is key.

But corporations of the age value sheer profit, and resort to using addiction psychology to manipulate young people for it.

Maybe, just maybe, the same Yoshi-p has become the person he replaced years ago. Everything has an end.

[Besame]

One of the best things about FF14 was the kind and accepting playerbase... but i guess Warcraft's failure has brought in the dregs of the gaming populace that only see other players as a burden rather than fellow adventurers now. I liked the casual difficulty and kind people, but now that is gone and we are headed right to the same "E-SPORTS GET GUD KEKE KEK WHAT LOUZER!!!1!!" grave that Warcraft has found itself in.

I am absolutely trying my hardest to discern the boss' movements to figure out what is happening but I am also trying to keep my pictomancer (I am still learning the rotation at 100) doing damage and all this crap on screen, on the floor, in the air, off the sides of the boss platforms... its just too much... I feel embarrassed to even try to learn along side people who apparently have figured out telepathy to know what the hell is going on in these encounters. What was wrong with the dungeons in the story being for people that wanted to see the story? Not only do I end up resigning in shame 90% of the time (learning nothing as half the time, I am clueless what even killed me) but I am now behind a BRICK WALL that I cannot climb. Or I suppose it is better to say I am ashamed to feel like I am wasting everyone's time in a normal dungeon needing to be rezzed multiple times per fight because I have absolutely no idea what is going on now.

The cactus boss in tender valley, I just took the L on today... the evasion box is right there.. but then I am standing in DOUBLE AOE... and every single time I die. Laugh if you want, i feel ashamed already and don't even want to play anymore. I am so beaten down by cheap "YoU ThOugHt YoU We'Re SafE hUh?" deaths over these last three dungeons I just want to cry for real. What was so wrong with having a casual difficulty for people learning their class... Half the time I am not even able to cast as a pictomancer unless I have the instant cast up because YOU NEVER GET A CHANCE TO BREATHE EVER.

As an ex WW player from launch for 8+ yrs, I remember the playerbase well. Toxic is a mild way to describe many of that lot. Fortunately I was younger than and had no physical issues hehe. FF was much more friendly several years ago but now, I finish the MSQ and never touch another dungeon/trial unless forced to by the story line. I get by with Hunts, crafts and gathering, etc.

[ServerCollaps]

if you struggle with some mechs, then just stop attacking and focus on dodging. Its anything but too hard..

if you are really not able to do that, then you should read books, instead of "playing" video games or simply have a df group help you out.

[HighlanderClone]

One of the best things about FF14 was the kind and accepting playerbase... but i guess Warcraft's failure has brought in the dregs of the gaming populace that only see other players as a burden rather than fellow adventurers now. I liked the casual difficulty and kind people, but now that is gone and we are headed right to the same "E-SPORTS GET GUD KEKE KEK WHAT LOUZER!!!1!!" grave that Warcraft has found itself in.

I am absolutely trying my hardest to discern the boss' movements to figure out what is happening but I am also trying to keep my pictomancer (I am still learning the rotation at 100) doing damage and all this crap on screen, on the floor, in the air, off the sides of the boss platforms... its just too much... I feel embarrassed to even try to learn along side people who apparently have figured out telepathy to know what the hell is going on in these encounters. What was wrong with the dungeons in the story being for people that wanted to see the story? Not only do I end up resigning in shame 90% of the time (learning nothing as half the time, I am clueless what even killed me) but I am now behind a BRICK WALL that I cannot climb. Or I suppose it is better to say I am ashamed to feel like I am wasting everyone's time in a normal dungeon needing to be rezzed multiple times per fight because I have absolutely no idea what is going on now.

The cactus boss in tender valley, I just took the L on today... the evasion box is right there.. but then I am standing in DOUBLE AOE... and every single time I die. Laugh if you want, i feel ashamed already and don't even want to play anymore. I am so beaten down by cheap "YoU ThOugHt YoU We'Re SafE hUh?" deaths over these last three dungeons I just want to cry for real. What was so wrong with having a casual difficulty for people learning their class... Half the time I am not even able to cast as a pictomancer unless I have the instant cast up because YOU NEVER GET A CHANCE TO BREATHE EVER.

Learn your job on a striking dummy.

I will never understand why people feel entitled to being a burden on others by playing jobs they can barely process in relevant content.

[Mlem]

I basically really enjoyed the MSQ dungeons personally but I can see why they're a problem.

In my experience it boils down to three of the bosses; Maulskull, Vasoconstrictor (they're not actually called that but that's their one big move so that's their name now), and Alexandria Boss 1. They're all very punishing and I've been in tons of parties that wipe repeatedly on it. Personally, I am okay with wiping repeatedly to a boss to learn it and eventually beat it, but not while I'm following a story. In a way, this was all mitigated, ironically, by the fact Dawntrail's MSQ is kind of divisive to begin with and I didn't care so much but I was one of the people who hated the initial version of Out in the Cold because it was thoroughly frustrating and took me out of a really important part of the story. When the story is good, I actually do not want to do anything hard.

Wiping is great when I want to do hard things, but not when I'm following an FF story. I think people are forgetting that this is technically a main line Final Fantasy game. Even as a small child, I don't recall ever having difficulty while following the main story of a Final Fantasy game. Simply put, if the proximate plot point is "We must rescue my girlfriend from the edgy tower of darkness to stop her destroying the world", wiping 15 times to Sephiroth while learning his attack patterns is frustrating, even if it makes sense because Sephiroth is very cool and, in a vacuum, would be a very fun boss to fight. Contrast this to something like Elden Ring; the story exists and is there for you to piece together but it's never building so much momentum or magnetism up for itself that it gets in the way of you side tracking to spend five hours dying to some random guy in a cave.

So obviously, Alexandria Boss 1 is the standout among these. Great boss. Tons of fun. Way too hard for MSQ. You need to make five precise movements which need to secondarily respect an AoE that will go off sometimes before and sometimes after the tic-tac-toe telegraph depending on when the inhaling sequence starts, in close proximity to the boss and all the effects going on around it. It's then immediately followed up with a tank buster for the tank and a stack for everyone else. This is straight up harder to execute than most of the stuff the first Extreme throws at you. The tank's probably fine because the tank's always fine. If one person died and another got hit, the person who got hit is likely to die without intervention of some kind. I know how to throw a thing onto someone else as a tank but I struggle to execute that and hell if I've seen a tank do that for anybody during that sequence. If two people died and you're the healer, have your cooldowns up and know exactly what to do, you can survive the stack solo by topping off, throwing on a shield and mitigating, but that's also asking a lot. Someone is at minimum healing an extreme before that's being asked of them.

[Sacae]

So obviously, Alexandria Boss 1 is the standout among these. Great boss. Tons of fun. Way too hard for MSQ. You need to make five precise movements which need to secondarily respect an AoE that will go off sometimes before and sometimes after the tic-tac-toe telegraph depending on when the inhaling sequence starts, in close proximity to the boss and all the effects going on around it. It's then immediately followed up with a tank buster for the tank and a stack for everyone else. This is straight up harder to execute than most of the stuff the first Extreme throws at you. The tank's probably fine because the tank's always fine. If one person died and another got hit, the person who got hit is likely to die without intervention of some kind. I know how to throw a thing onto someone else as a tank but I struggle to execute that and hell if I've seen a tank do that for anybody during that sequence. If two people died and you're the healer, have your cooldowns up and know exactly what to do, you can survive the stack solo by topping off, throwing on a shield and mitigating, but that's also asking a lot. Someone is at minimum healing an extreme before that's being asked of them.

Except, the thing is, *you don't* have to keep all that stuff in mind for the Alexandria boss. You basically just have to focus on getting inside the donut aoes before they go off, and then immediately move out before the breath/tentacles hit. The plus aoes are basically just there to distract you.

99% of the problems I'm seeing from people in DT dungeons is that, by level 100, they still haven't grasped that for most mechanics, the animation and the circles on the ground aren't what matter in terms of timing. It's the cast bar. You can walk right into a tentacle slam or poison breath and take no damage because, once the game considers that the attack has gone off, as long as you weren't in the targeted area when the cast ended, you're good.

There are some exceptions, but for most mechanics in the game, all that matters is where you are at the end of the cast bar. The boss in Alexandria requires you to do that, and remember the order in which the mechanics come out. That's it. There is no split-second dodging, there's no unfair sneaky mechanics, it's just stand in one place for one mechanic, then move to a safe spot for the next one as soon as it resolves.

[Retropolitans]

Christ please do not nerf these or lower the difficulty going forward, we finally have a base level of difficulty worthy of being 500+ hours deep and 10 years into the game

If you don't know how to read visual tells on bosses, look at cast bars or intuit mechanics from context clues at this point in ffxiv's lifecycle, let alone resolve basic stack/spread/chariot/dynamo/polarity/acceleration bomb/etc marker mechanics that have been recycled to death in literally hundreds of encounters up to this point in the msq, and which the developers have gone far out of their way and literally postponed the addition of new features to standardise in older content for the purpose of establishing a learning curve, the problem is not the game or the baseline difficulty chosen for dt - it's you and your stubborn unwillingness to put in even the slightest bit of effort before giving up and crying foul

And to the people with physiological or neurological issues that restrict your ability to perform your rotation, negotiate mechanics, move throughout the game world and such, I respect your perseverance but what are you even doing here, and why do you feel that an action rpg with a heavy thematic emphasis on overcoming adversity should remove adversity from encounter design just for your personal gratification?

Please be better, and stop dragging everyone else's enjoyment down just because you feel like you're owed progression

[Conando]

The cactus boss in tender valley, I just took the L on today... the evasion box is right there.. but then I am standing in DOUBLE AOE... and every single time I die.

Yes, Buff Cactus is the King of Fake outs but I think if you keep falling for the same trick then it's a you problem.