Feedback: Dawntrail MSQ dungeon difficulty

[KilkaKarsh]

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.

I actually come from Fiesta (only real ones remembers this game) so nice try.

Anyways:

...you're level 100 in a game where you have fought literally gods. You had 100 levels and 12 years of content to get a basic understanding of how FFXIV mechanics works. How much longer do you expect them to keep the training wheels on?

Adapt, play with NPC or play with like-minded individuals.

[Borascythe]

Because sacrificing artistic integrity to be all-inclusive is something literally everybody in the industry is doing and it is not a good thing to see regardless of what form that takes?

So you're saying it's fine if this individual's gaming experience is worsened for...some reason? Elaborate.

I do not care how others play the game. If they want to play with Trusts and never interact with another human being, I do not care. Likewise, I do not care if someone chooses to gather a giant group of friends and play with them for thousands of hours. It does not affect my life. If they just want to craft thousands of hours and never do anything else, all the more power to them. If they just want to download the game to RP, go for it.

It's a valid concern to say you want content to be more challenging to you if you want it to be that way. As an example, normal vs savage raids. It's selfish to dismiss another player's wish to simply play with Trusts to enjoy the content a few times and then move on to activities they find more enjoyable. It does not affect you.

I don't like Trusts and I haven't leveled them in years. They are so agonizingly slow that I have to distract myself with something else to keep sane when I tried to level them. Still, I am not going to tell someone they can't use them to plow through story content that they don't want to struggle in.

[BobaSaur]

DT difficulty is where it should have been for Endwalker period. You've just never put in effort to actually learn how to play combat in FFXIV.

Nothing is new.(you've seen these mechanics before EVERY. SINGLE. EXPANSION)
Nothing is random(even the "random" aoes in some of the dungeons)
Nothing requires high reactions speed(The cues are VERY obvious and you have upwards of over 10seconds to solve the more layered mechanics which BTW are still things you've seen before)

If you're genuinely walled by a boss(wiping 10+ times with no progress) Ask for help because chances are you're missing something and solving things in a very inefficient way. If you're rejecting help just because "you know how to play. you've been playing since XXX expansion" I think the problem is obvious...
If you can react to a traffic light turning green before the old guy behind you honks, you can play this game just FINE.

The MSQ dungeons is something that EVERYONE interacts with for the WHOLE expansion, its not just a isolated event. You can't put in a "story mode" without having HUGE impacts on the whole state of the game e.g If trust become too strong exp would become unbalanced e.g2 If you have a story mode how would you do roulettes? two different queues? diluting a player base for no reason?.

The only way a "story mode" would work would be to remove all rewards and progression from that track and at that point... go watch a youtube video of the MSQ. Don't waste the devs time.

Stop calling yourself "casuals". Casual players can still beat ultimates, EXs and savages just at an extended time period. Trying to change the game because it doesn't meet your standards while calling out everyone for enjoying a more engaging piece of content is hypocritical.

To the people who have genuine reasons which impact their ability to play the game, I sympathize with you, no one genuinely flames people for not being able to perform during roulettes and most will carry you through it. Also there a multiple ways to make your setup more efficient and tailored to your situation but you also have to understand that this game can't be tailormade for every single individual.

[Zolvolt]

I'm just confused how you don't clear the fight with trusts. Litterally stand on them and you win.

[Kaizel]

Honestly I think the dungeons being harder at this point is perfectly fine, no this is not elden ring, it does not come even close.

And let's be real guys, we have msq + 4 expansions under our belts by now how much time is that only on msq? Maybe 40hrs each? 200hrs?

That assuming you only played msq and nothing else, no fate grinding, no reliqs..No gold saucer/seasonal events, probably no raids, not even the alliance raids (which are often the easy ones, you can rely on 23 people to win).
My point being that we had way too much time to practice.

If you're playing on trust, fine don't do ABC but dodge! Dodge dodge, if you go solo and die it's a wipe so priority #1 is to live, that's priority on every game even on Mario, it doesn't matter how many times you bonk the enemy's head if you die.

Honestly I think it's easier to play in multiplayer, picture this:

You're a dps, maybe a Bard, so you don't have to worry about distance and positionals and...You die! For whatever reason.
Maybe you got surprised
Maybe you read the ingame chat.
It's not the end of the fight,there's no reset yet: Your healer lifts you up, you get a second chance...
Maybe a third one..
Or a tenth one.
As long as healer lives you're golden..Maybe the healer dies too?
Behold you could have a Red mage or a Summoner to lift both of you up now you have a second life insurance.

As a tank if you keep receiving damage, you have one player solely to heal you and help you stand up again if you fall...It's more punishing as a healer if there's no rdm/smn, but that's to be expected for the healing role in almost every game.

There's also something that's very nice of players in this game, after a wipe typing something like "X thing happend and I died, what happened?" most parties will help or explain their commarades, it's in their best interest to win and often they'll give a commendation to the player who asked, because of having a good learning attitude is something to admire.

I rarely play trusts unless I want to follow the story...But I die a lot more and it's more frustrating having to reset so many times and run back to the boss than having a teammate who has your back if you slip.
And really if we go to expert dungeons, they are not relaxing content and they shouldn't be, why are they called expert in that case?
Are experts people who deal with easy stuff? Or people with tons of experience?

Thank you SE for these Expert dungeons, I really hope they continue to do such a good job as they did this time, so the final boss, the climax of the story is not a pushover.
It really takes me out of inmersion having this super powerful being story wise being extremely weak.

[Jinglypockets]

If you can react to a traffic light turning green before the old guy behind you honks, you can play this game just FINE..

I just need you to know this made me lol.

I'd say most people's problem is less reaction speed and more information filtering. Filtering through all the visual noise and focusing on the right things is a learned skill. We all struggle with it to an extent, especially when we're playing difficult (for us) content and start to feel overwhelmed.

The Spread/donut wall on Ex2 is a great example of this for me. It took me a lot of tries on that fight before I could solve that one consistently because I had a hard time filtering out all the visual noise to pay attention to which AOEs were coming while moving to the right spot for the boss AOE. It helped when I realized you get like 10 seconds before the boss AOE actually goes out, which is a good lesson for almost every fight I've ever done in this game:

If you keep making a mistake on a mechanic because you feel like you don't have time, the solution is almost always to calm down, read your cues, and take it slow.

[Jinglypockets]

Honestly I think it's easier to play in multiplayer

Agree 100%.

If any of the people complaining about the difficulty had been in one of my groups, we would have gotten them through it, encouraged and helped them with the parts they were struggling with, and had a great time doing it.

I understand the anxiety of going into multiplayer and worrying about being a drag on the group. I feel it too when I go into harder content even when I know I'm capable.

That said, I can count on one hand the number of unkind words I've seen said to anyone in this game over the years, even in Extreme and Savage Party Finder groups with people who are struggling hard. Overwhelmingly, people in DF and even PF are welcoming, helpful and encouraging. Especially if you tell them it's your first time or you have a hard time with certain mechanics or whatever else.

[HemlockEvergreen]

Not sure why the so called regular and leets are so scared of allowing a player base that has problems get through JUST THE MSQ with an xtra choice option like: the ability to use TRUST with an added rez skill from the healer and an easy mode for all the dungeon types during the xpac if people choose to go that route. It won't affect other players at all

I do the forced content during the MSQ then never touch those dungeons again. I do not need the gear, I run a bazillion HUNTS and high level S ranks for tomes and then enjoy my other time in game doing fates, crafting, gathering, submarines, etc. Seems a simple fix Square could implement that would only affect the choices of a certain section of the player base. To me, your balkng at this is just a story about "toxic control".

You want to be rezzed by your Trust.

You want to have a condition in which you fail the single-player mode of the game, but you don't have any consequences because the game itself carries you.

Just go read a book bro. You don't want to play a game, you just want a story.

[VioletCatastrophe]

Literally what was too difficult? Is it really that difficult to imagine that the content is getting harder because they are assuming you have the experience of everything that came before it (because you well... you do...)? Every boss literally has a mechanic where you can fail it and still live, to show you what that mechanic does. And then puts it on top of something else too later in the fight and then if you mess that one up enough to get hit by both you die. Look at the boss's cast bar and animations. You have like 10 seconds to react. The game deliberately pulls its punches to show you the mechanics in a tutorialized way.

Unless you are literally operating with no working memory and never consider how prior mechanics both in that fight and general patterns from previous fights will come up later, there's nothing bad in there. I don't know how to say this in a gentle manner. Just... pay attention? And stop blaming the game for not playing itself. This is probably the easiest MMO in the entire market, nothing is being turned into dark souls. Not even ultimates are dark souls lmao. This game has always been about pattern recognition, and staying calm under pressure. These are useful and important life skills. I promise you, if you just calm down, look around, and think about the way mechanics could be overlapped after a new one is introduced, you'll be fine. Worst case scenario it is a dungeon, just make sure you only get hit by one aoe instead of two at the same time and it'll work out.

[Besame]

I have a right to speak here about changes I would like w/o giving you my medical information and not get bullied for it. I am saying a change that would help me without whining that every dungeon/trial are too difficult. They are not imo. That is exactly what some of you are doing to others voicing their concerns, BULLYING, chastising, making fun overall presenting a very toxic environment for seniors and the handicapped on a public forum. This is why even though I love the game, I mainly play alone BUT take your Gil on the MB if you are too busy leeting it up or low IQ to make stuff yourself *chuckle*. Anyway, I'm done with those that mock, Bes out.