Don't do chaotic raid again

[Kaurhz]

It's kinda the corner they backed themselves into though.

They started to scale back the difficulty in DF tier content with ShB and EW. Slower folks finally got to enjoy something more than just MSQ.
Now Masaki Nakagawa wants to bring stuff back to HW/StB tier for story mode and us slower folk are going "Uhhh, now what?". He and YoshiP are locked on this pattern so /shrug.

Right now I'm keeping myself occupied levelling the rest of my DoW/DoM and crafters but once that's done? It's unsub time

Honestly speaking in terms of casual content, I don't actually think the current difficulty is far off what we saw in HW/SB. Much of HW was lent to having some terrible design decisions embedded, in combination with sheer lack of QoL. Stormblood I actually found is a little easier than current. Some may agree and some may disagree with this statement, but I think current casuals are better than what casuals back then were, both naturally and because of various QoL.

Now what they need to do is find what difficulty they want to aim for and then stick to that difficulty as when they constantly yoyo around on difficulties, that is when you get issues.

Difficulty isn't as much the problem, but giving casual players very little to actively do is. I see value in raiding, don't get me wrong, so I don't want to divert this into an us vs them, but if all they release is extreme+ content after extreme+ content then this is what will put a lot of players in the position of this game not being for them, not the innate difficulty of casual content. Raids are healthy but they don't have the same sustain and replay value as what relics/ exploratory does.

[Voidmage]

Honestly speaking in terms of casual content, I don't actually think the current difficulty is far off what we saw in HW/SB. Much of HW was lent to having some terrible design decisions embedded, in combination with sheer lack of QoL. Stormblood I actually found is a little easier than current. Some may agree and some may disagree with this statement, but I think current casuals are better than what casuals back then were, both naturally and because of various QoL.

Now what they need to do is find what difficulty they want to aim for and then stick to that difficulty as when they constantly yoyo around on difficulties, that is when you get issues.

They should also be more transparent with what they aim for.
Criterion was a huge shock in how the difficulty jumped and they never implied anything like that.

Also they should be more consistent in their work.
This here is the what? Second time they went "oops, a bit more difficult than planed. Have Savage instead of Ex."

[Menriq]

They should also be more transparent with what they aim for.
Criterion was a huge shock in how the difficulty jumped and they never implied anything like that.

Also they should be more consistent in their work.
This here is the what? Second time they went "oops, a bit more difficult than planed. Have Savage instead of Ex."

Not sure what you are referencing, but they said in the LL that it would be equivalent of an early savage floor, so sounds like it is exactly as they intended.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/511393

[Voidmage]

Not sure what you are referencing, but they said in the LL that it would be equivalent of an early savage floor, so sounds like it is exactly as they intended.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/511393

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukSE3nsx3x4
There at about 11:50 onwards.
It was also in the translation discord. He himself admits that it resulted in more savage than extreme.

In that vein, I have yet to do more than one lockout of Chaotic, but it seems like at least in P1 you don't exactly need to organize yourself with other party members. A lot of personal responsibility there however, and its very punishing if you make a mistake. We'll see how that develops in the future.

It's in phase 2 when all hell starts to break loose and you are back to "know your position, where to stand or you wipe everyone and their grandma.

[FuturePastNow]

Honestly speaking in terms of casual content, I don't actually think the current difficulty is far off what we saw in HW/SB. Much of HW was lent to having some terrible design decisions embedded, in combination with sheer lack of QoL. Stormblood I actually found is a little easier than current. Some may agree and some may disagree with this statement, but I think current casuals are better than what casuals back then were, both naturally and because of various QoL.

Now what they need to do is find what difficulty they want to aim for and then stick to that difficulty as when they constantly yoyo around on difficulties, that is when you get issues.

Difficulty isn't as much the problem, but giving casual players very little to actively do is. I see value in raiding, don't get me wrong, so I don't want to divert this into an us vs them, but if all they release is extreme+ content after extreme+ content then this is what will put a lot of players in the position of this game not being for them, not the innate difficulty of casual content. Raids are healthy but they don't have the same sustain and replay value as what relics/ exploratory does.

Yeah. Just comparing casual content, I don't think there's truly been a significant difficulty increase. The two optional 7.0 dungeons are the only thing I can point to and say are harder than the equivalent content of prior expansions, but they're harder in ways a player who has completed 100 levels of this game ought to be prepared for. Jueno is harder then the level 90 alliance raids but it's not harder then the 70 or 80 ones. Arcadion M1-M4 aren't a difficulty increase no matter how bad some people (guilty) may be at dodging hearts.

But I don't do Savage because I'm not interested in spending weeks learning fights, I simply do not find it fun to fail at something over and over for hours a night while scheduling my other activities around that. And I'm just, like, not a hardcore player. I've done the first two DT extremes and the unreal but I haven't been able to clear ex3, so I think that's my difficulty limit. Maybe in 6 months I'll get a day 180 clear of the Chaotic, or maybe not.

I have no problem with them adding high end content, not everything is for me, but it is a bit disheartening to have basically nothing to look forward to for... 3 more months? Four?