should 8.0 cut the harder content back in exchange for-

[Chasingstars]

Man, I was having a rough last week, but reading this thread with great jokes like "Savage and Extreme are midcore content" put a smile on my face. Maybe in a month or a year the new joke will be "Ultimates are midcore content".

[Jeeqbit]

Man, I was having a rough last week, but reading this thread with great jokes like "Savage and Extreme are midcore content" put a smile on my face. Maybe in a month or a year the new joke will be "Ultimates are midcore content".

Nobody's going to really say Ultimates are midcore. But Extremes, very literally, you can jump into them and not only clear, but farm them, the same day, in PF (in many cases you can have lots of deaths in them too). That's not necessarily the case for the others, especially Ultimates. To a lot of people Extreme is actually midcore content.

Often, full parties of sprouts just decimate Unreals (which are old extremes) pretty quick and I often help sprouts clear them in Mentor Roulette too (in fact, 99% of the extremes I get in mentor roulette are clears including the rarer ones like Thordan, Tsukuyomi, etc, Great Hunt ex is very common and that is usually a clear too).

The problem is that a certain portion of players are afraid to join PF because they fear being kicked for performance. So if they make content that is the same difficulty as Extremes but don't hinge on joining someone's party, then more people feel they can participate. Which is why Field Operations work so well. Nobody is actually the leader of the NM, CE or CE raid battles, so they just have to work with the people there, and it brings all types of players together as a result.

Field Operations are out of the question as well, took one look at the mechanics involved when I unlocked Eureka and walked right back out of there because I knew I wouldn't be able to do it.

That's fine. Not everyone can manage these sort of mechanics and a lot of people have disabilities. Usually, if someone with a disability is in an FC or the Novice Network and asks for help clearing MSQ content, people will help them unsync it so they don't have to do any mechanics.

it felt like every other Stormblood dungeon & trial was designed to wean me out of the content to the point I don't really want to touch Deltascape or Ivalice

So, you're right that they tried to increase difficulty in Stormblood. The MSQ solo duties in particular are rough in Stormblood and a few of them actually got me due to the way they work. However, if you fail it, you can choose "Very Easy" and eventually get an Echo buff to help you out. Effectively, the HP pools feel less, your damage gets significantly increased, easier to get through them etc.

However, you can ultimately just be carried through a dungeon by other players or unsync them. Same for trials. Deltascape barely hurts because its a first-tier raid and the maximum Stormblood gear overpowers it by about 100 item level (plus you can solo it at Level 100 anyway). Ivalice has 24 players and deaths are part of the concept of the raid, so it was always normal for there to be bodies everywhere - it's fine if you are one of them really. If you're tanking, the most important job is just grab aggro of one of the 3 adds and go to your spot (left, north, or right) depending on if your alliance is A, B or C.

beating Zenos felt like some kind of anime ass-pull because there was zero explanation for why I could suddenly fight him without getting one-shotted.

The explanation is meant to be that you pondered how to overcome this previously unseen power, and got better because of it. Like if someone beat you, you'd probably dwell on it, draw out what happened on some paper and figure out your comeback and practice it. In player terms, this "strategizing" occurs behind the purple line that you wait with your party prior to pulling, or after each wipe in the trial.

Another part of the explanation is that you fought various enemies between the Rhalgr's Reach fight and the rematch, and became even more experienced and a better fighter as a result (in game mechanic terms, you level from 60 to 70). This is explained in an MSQ duty later on in the MSQ, which reflects on your time in HW and SB and explains how your power increased in that time - and clearly shows you that they are referring to the level difference.

[AmiableApkallu]

So the idea of doing *any* of those same fights synced has made me avoid dungeon/trial/raid roulettes like the plague lately because I don't want to be a burden in any of them with the new content I've unlocked in all of them

Speaking for myself, I can count the number of players I've binned as "a burden" on one hand. In fact, it might actually be only one: A co-healer in the Alliance Roulette that came very close to literally not pushing any buttons at all (heals, damage, sprint, whatever) for the entire run.

(If you're willing to trust my friend in a shady alleyway, the second is a bona fide, literal zero-DPS healer... in a current Savage fight.)

My own standard is, usually, "Did you try?" Pretty much every player I've encountered passes that standard. And I'll be honest, if we're talking about Aetherochemical Research Facility, there's a good chance I'll be the reason the party wipes at least twice before we clear. (The re-worked final boss is... something.)

[Jeeqbit]

I already know that Tsukuyomi isn't soloable

Pretty sure I did this the other day at level 100. The main thing is simply moving side-to-side occasionally when the arena is split black/white, to reset stacks.

as if I wasn't already mired in doubt up to that point, because on a narrative and personal skill level I just kinda suck now (or always did and was just coasting until this point).

Maybe you're right (because I don't know your circumstances, platform or disabilities). So maybe a lot of games won't work for you if you struggle with fights. I'm sure there are much easier games than this that are even more story boards than this game is, to the point of not having solo duties/trials/dungeons, but I don't know which games those are.

But I will mention that it's common in this game to:

• Have anxiety and fear being a burden to others (in normal story content, where people don't care in practice).
• It's common that the unique game mechanics that underpin FFXIV are not well understood among new players causing them to think it's their fault when it's not (such as snapshotting happening on cast completion or red areas disappearing, common mechanics, optimal keybinds, settings and HUD Layouts).

So although I understand anxiety, it's worth considering that this is very common - to the point a whole bunch of people you get matched with are probably anxious as well, especially on your data Dynamis which is full of sprouts currently (I've been meeting and playing with lots of them lately).