We need expansion/duty bans and easier/harder modes of duties.

[VictorSpoils]

How can anyone look at the ARR trials, A1, Thordan, Hells' Lid, etc. and think "no, Dawntrail duties are too tough." It's the other way around. Thordan should be on par with the how the queen is right now.

[BigCheez]

Asking for trusts to be able to steamroll content for you and also to be able to use trusts for roulettes is crazy. I wouldn't mind if you could forfeit EXP and play through content on 0 difficulty mode, but to be able to do that for EXP is wild. You are gaining to no combat experience by bypassing the content, so why should your character?

Also, roulettes exist to fill queues for people who need to complete them for their MSQ progress. The game will never allow you to complete roulettes with AI. That would entirely defeat the purpose of the system.

There is absolutely no problem at all with the difficulty of content in Dt. It isn't hard, it just requires you to pay a little bit of attention. It's a massive improvement.

[Minali]

I like the idea of being able to opt out of certain duties in some roulettes, but just very few. Let's say you can opt out of 3 duties each in leveling, high level, trials, normal raid and alliance raid. That way you can avoid the content you REALLY don't like, but it will hardly have an impact on queue times for players who need to do it (and if it actually does have a significant impact, Square Enix will know that they REALLY need to change something about those duties)

Maybe this is a bit self serving, because i loathe the Nier raids and have been hesitant on using the alliance raid roulette out of fear of encountering them...

I kind of like this idea, opting out but giving it a very strict limit of 3 or so. Never having the need to set a foot into Aurum Vale and Cutter's Cry again sounds lovely.

[Davixxa]

Its about time we obtain the rights to be able to ban duties or complete expansion we no longer want to do in the game. We paid for it. We should be able to completely opt out of it.

Never having to do the snoozefest that is Crystal Tower again? Yes please. Jokes aside, as far as I'm concerned, that's an issue of content design, and the option to ban duties would likely impact queue times.

I understand, it feels like a majority of players say "Get Good" etc and have a horrible toxic mentality. And Casuals officially have nothing in the game to do unless its 8 hours of mindless crafting and gathering.

Not gonna lie; Welcome to being a midcore player in Endwalker.

Endwalker has shown me the ramps are already too much and too uncomfortable. And Dawntrail forced it to be even worse.

Endwalker was consistently a step down in difficulty though. The Alliance Raids were 0 maybe 1 wipe on release day. The dungeons were mostly like 1 vuln stack to figure out the mechanic first time through.

The only difficulty ramp there was in Endwalker was down, unless you were doing Savage/Ultimate.

Am I asking for "steamrolling"?

That's what Endwalker was. If you're saying Endwalker is too hard, then yes, as far as I'm concerned, you are asking for steamrolling. It's natural for there to be wipes on release day/week. Endwalker was the exception to this.

Not with players, no. What we need at the current time is NPC/Trusts to be literally 100% easier at all times to do any of the content in the game (along with trusts being able to do roulettes now.)

Trusts literally aren't even designed for what you're asking for. Even Trust NPCs will greed mechanics and get hit.

We also need a normal mode that is only 25% harder, that would be the msq and normal roulettes making things a 1-2 wipe at the max if not 0. People should be 100% able to get the MSQ. Its MSQ. Meaning EVERY SINGLE duty. Needs a BLUE QUEST.

And to be fair, a month into the expansion, normal roulettes are a 1-2 wipe at max if not 0. The content isn't mechanically difficult, it's just that we're so early on that people haven't learned the content yet.

[Davixxa]

Which also comes to the "Expansion Bans". We need them now. People don't want ARR anymore? Oh well its banned from their roulettes (except mentor) etc. IT IS time for this to already be in the game. So those that arent having fun anymore with things and wish to opt out.

I personally think this is a terrible idea. This is a matter of content design and not a matter of difficulty, barre a few edge cases (I'm looking at you, Crystal Tower especially). You'll learn these fights eventually. Wipes in this game are less a failure state and more like a death in Celeste. You get back up and you progress further.

Games becoming too difficult as a casual of casual. I dont want midcore in my MSQ this should be in blue quests and something YOU can opt into. Not the thing that your FORCED to do to play the expansion. I want fun. And replayability. Not frustration and every waking moment im thinking about pressing the "abandon duty" button.

Though seeing how... kind of toxic this forums become along with reddit. I'm sure I'll have the opposite opinion.

I too want fun and replayability. I'm not gonna get that from a snoozefest. I'm not asking for things to be Extreme trial level of difficulty. I'm asking for normal dungeons to maaybe reach NieR Alliance Raids level of difficulty at best.

And the dungeons that get even close to that level are behind blue quests - Deadwalk and Tender Valley being those two cases.

[Infindox]

I kind of like this idea, opting out but giving it a very strict limit of 3 or so. Never having the need to set a foot into Aurum Vale and Cutter's Cry again sounds lovely.

People always say Aurum is the worst, but I'd gladly take it over Dezmhel Darkhold and Stone Vigil HM, the true bad dungeons.

[Minali]

People always say Aurum is the worst, but I'd gladly take it over Dezmhel Darkhold and Stone Vigil HM, the true bad dungeons.

Ok correct it to "strict limit of 4". I knew I was forgetting something. I'm not so much about Stone Vigil hard for me though, but the normal version? There is nothing inbetween "smooth run" or "abyssmal run" with that one, and you never know which one you get...

[yoshinoharu]

A lot of this makes... zero sense.

We paid for it. We should be able to completely opt out of it.

You have the option to opt out of it, you're not required to pay for or engage with the content if you're not satisfied.

Currently outside of Worqor Zormor all the dungeons, and every single trial in this game is WAY too hard for the majority of the playerbase.

Your anecdotal experience does not necessarily constitute a majority. I will acknowledge that though my experience has been the opposite, largely successful with a few people struggling, that is ALSO anecdotal. You can't claim that a majority of people are struggling though without any hard numbers. We can only really compare our personal experiences, and what I have experienced is entirely different.

What we need at the current time is NPC/Trusts to be literally 100% easier at all times to do any of the content in the game (along with trusts being able to do roulettes now.)

What would the point of this being an MMORPG be then? At that point there would be no reason to play the game with other people at all. Trusts exist to offer a slower and easier experience already. You can actually pay attention to them and watch their movement to figure out how to do content, and since there are no enrages, even if you never press a single button, so long as you do not stand in AOEs the trusts can and will clear the content with or without your participation. How is that not already an easy mode?

Which also comes to the "Expansion Bans".

Roulettes are designed to allow players to interact with others and also potentially help them through content. They also exist so that a new player going through the game for the first time won't have a 3-day queue for something like Crystal Tower which, I remind you, is necessary content to complete for Shadowbringers. Thinking that they exist entirely for rewards is self-centered at best. If you aren't having fun, roulettes are, again, optional. This option defeats the entire purpose of roulettes.

Games becoming too difficult as a casual of casual. I dont want midcore in my MSQ this should be in blue quests and something YOU can opt into.

Okay, even from a narrative standpoint, the whole idea of combat content is that you get better at it as you continue to play and therefore there is a slight increase in difficulty. There is a slow ramp of difficulty progression through the MSQ, which reaches a head at level 100 where there is another jump, before a much bigger jump after the credits roll. Difficulty progression is like, the fundamentals of video games in general. The only thing that I can say at that point is consider that maybe games with difficulty progression just aren't for you? That's okay, by the way, not everything has to be made for everyone. If you aren't having fun, no one's asking you to play.

[franklinwi]

Most of all I can't get over OP calling the MSQ "midcore." It's like somebody calling gingerbread spicy.

[Ellona_Andrivari]

I agree with the OP posts point entirely, it is time to be able to black list Crystal Tower unless there is a newbie bonus, there is no reason people should live in the striking dummy capital of the world, we were just given an entire new expansion of amazingly entertaining content to do.