Don't do chaotic raid again

[Lilapop]

Idk how old you are, finding a group and planning your IRL activities to let that day free is the very definition of high commitment for the average adult. It's an engagement to be there everytime it's planned.

Basic time management skills and planning is "high commitment" for the average adult?

[Kaurhz]

Grind itself can be fine, relying on grind to fix all the lack of content, people are going to be very disappointed as is the norm with the FF14 community. Half the people asking/demanding grind will complain when it's actually here. I feel like most of us would prefer content with actual substance other than a run of the mill grind-fest.

Most people that are advocating for more grindier content are obviously speaking to it being inclusive in content such as exploratory, it's not like people here are advocating for doing something like 10,000 levequests.

[BigCheez]

Idk how old you are, finding a group and planning your IRL activities to let that day free is the very definition of high commitment for the average adult. It's an engagement to be there everytime it's planned.

I've run a number of statics of varying levels of commitment and I can assure you that most adults seem to be capable of reserving at least one timebox of a few hours per week that they're able to keep free. PF also exists and can be useful for people who work shifts or have trouble keeping a fixed schedule for other reasons.

Even outside of games, it's pretty common for people to have hobbies that require them to schedule time for activities. You don't need to be a hardcore climber to attend a weekly class at your local bouldering gym or a hardcore bodybuilder to attend a weekly class at a gym. To suggest otherwise is insane.

[Lilapop]

Most people that are advocating for more grindier content are obviously speaking to it being inclusive in content such as exploratory, it's not like people here are advocating for doing something like 10,000 levequests.

That's a fair point, regardless, expecting grind to do anything but barely address the lack of content this expansion is laughable.

[CidHeiral]

As I mentioned, there isn’t really any content that offers a light challenge, allowing casual players to participate as well.

The vast majority of content in the game is casual content.

[BigCheez]

That's a fair point, regardless, expecting grind to do anything but barely address the lack of content this expansion is laughable.

I don't think anyone just wants a vapid grind. I think people want engaging content that provides them with long-term goals to work towards.

[Lilapop]

I don't think anyone just wants a vapid grind. I think people want engaging content that provides them with long-term goals to work towards.

I sure hope a fair amount of people actually want engaging content, the amount of comments among various threads simply demanding grind would be alarming otherwise.

[Jeeqbit]

It's incredible they made this mistake for the 2nd time... First by having regular Criterion be savage difficulty, now with a new what is essentially a 24-man trial

They don't realize there are more than turbo casuals and hardcore raiders desiring content to run.

I do agree the difficulty goes too wildly in either direction.

But there is a very good reason they decided to make this content. BA and DRS are still done to this day, and Bozja CEs and their raids were very popular as well. Given people have managed to continue doing BA and DRS to this day, it made sense to make more of this sort of content since they may appreciate more variety than those they have been doing since 2019 and 2021.

There's also argument to be made that, although it may be hard to setup the content, once a successful run is organized, a lot more players benefit from it than do 8-person and a person might feel a bit less of a burden in terms of perfection when they are just 1 out of 24 people, provided they are actually trying.

they said in the LL that it would be equivalent of an early savage floor

My understanding is they intended it to be extreme level but it ended up early savage level. So they underestimated how difficult it would end up but it's hard to change something so chaotic and it's hard to be sure how players will interpret it (we could, even now, eventually conclude it's easier than it has seemed on day 1 when we later sync down to max ilvl and have more efficient strats).

many that were struggling in phase 1 were people who's highest content was normal alliance raids

Didn't actually see people struggling an unreasonable amount in my party considering we were blind progging. We were able to get to phase 2 pretty quick and even as people got replaced due to sleeping, the people that joined were pretty good at phase 2. But phase 2 is rough, chaotic and also random so it's not unreasonable that it was killing them since it takes getting used to and building muscle memory.

There's a lot to juggle in phase 2 even when you're putting in a good effort. For example, as a tank you're getting stacks and need to swap, whilst also doing knockback immunity and watching the environment, whilst doing your rotation, and watching for your deathhand timer, and being ready to be at your position for stacks and floodrays. And much of that can happen in a random order.

If the people joining were MSQ players, they'd probably be stuck at phase 1 getting cleaved by the melee area AoE and dying to the very first 2 mechanics in phase 2, but what I saw was a good effort for what was new content, completely blind guessing mechanics, with no muscle memory.

[Kaurhz]

The vast majority of content in the game is casual content.

The vast majority of content that is also designed for casuals also has arguably some of the absolute lowest repeatability behind it, with the exception of Bozja/Eureka exploratory zones. This is the problem with their current design of casual content, in most instances they do the content once, then they are done with it indefinitely.

[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?