Maybe it's time for a casual "strike" if not complete departure.

[AllenThyl]

Allen, if people accept I am a "performative forum poster," they would likely conclude you are my agent. Your promotion of me is unparalleled, to the point of apparent obsession. The fact you manage to bring up a completely unrelated thread here to slam me shows true dedication.

Your statement perfectly demonstrates everything wrong with the attention economy. When "eNgAgEmEnT" becomes the only metric of measuring one's own life, and "line go up" the only quality criteria for that metric, even the thought of others being sincere disappears. The other thread isn't "unrelated", authenticity is a currency in discussions. Words have meaning, and you describing island sanctuary as "end game" for FF14, is an inane take. However, as the other thread showed, that's all you have, in every topic. Because you post for the sake of posting. For the "eNgAgEmEnT".

My position on FL has indeed evolved.

"evolved" ...
Flipflopping isn't "evolving". What didn't change is the underlying motivation for your positions, which is pure attention seeking. The whole "premades are the problem" didn't give you the attention you hoped for, but a lot of pushback. Now you switched to a more popular position, but the arguments you put forward are all the same.

The fact you state categorically why my position has changed - something you cannot possibly know - is symptomatic of your unshakeable (and misplaced) confidence that you are infallible.

100% pure, distilled projection. Your inability to understand that others can actually understand you is just that, your inability. "Understanding a position" and "having that position" aren't the same thing. You come into threads to unload your inane takes, then announce that you are out after getting called out for those inane takes, and then come back and pretending it's not justified to call you dishonest and attention seeking. Words have meaning, and just like Gurgeh, you struggle with the basics. Maybe the JHS debate organizers (that you are so fond of, as if junior high school level of debate is something an adult should be proud of, but that's what "peaking in high school" gets you I guess) can direct you to some beginner course or something.

Of course tiers are cleared, albeit not often, completely blind. They have to be for guides to even be made.

And if you know that, why are you arguing as if "follow the guide" is somehow draconically enforced onto everyone who engages in high end content in this community? Again, what exactly are you even arguing? Do you even understand your own position? Guides are nothing but a compendium of strategies to solve boss mechanics. When mechanics can be solved in different ways, the different strategies usually get names to make identifying them easier. Every group and individual is free to use whatever strategy they prefer when it comes to solving a given mechanic. The only behavior not acceptable, is being dishonest about it, i.e. joining a group which advertised a certain strategy and then not following it, or advertising one and expecting others to do something different.

Oh, is me repeating other people's experience offending you for some reason as far as my quoted phrases?

No, you being dishonest is offending me. You generalizing tens of thousands of people as some kind of intolerant monsters that spend all their day wishing nothing but harm on you is offending me. Because it's indicative of an incredibly selfish and self-centered mind. You are the Warrior of Light and center of the universe only within the story. In fact, it's not even you, but your avatar. Quite frankly, some people seem to self identify so hard with their character, the whole notion that they aren't the main character of everyone else seems to be lost.

So, because your experience isn't everyone else's experience, anyone who's had a different experience to you has "never stepped foot in any such groups, ever"?

Stop hiding behind other people's experience. Are you, or are you not engaging in high end combat duties? Are you, or are you not engaging with groups in duty finder? Because a) people in party finder will be very careful about what they say, because anything ingame can get one banned and b) participation in toxic and rude statics isn't mandatory. Again, this whole topic has very little to do with the game itself, and mainly reveals the inadequacies when it comes to basic social behavior in a lot of posters here. Maybe a little less time ingame and in these forums, and a little more time building some basic social skills in person.

Nor did I ever claim every single person who ever raids says things like that.

"But I didn't say it that way" ... yes yes, heard it before, will hear it again, always the same drivel. Words have meaning, you cannot not communicate. People understand dog whistles and metaphors and similes and all the other rhetorical devices that make up a language. If you can't comprehend all the information that your own posts convey, that is just your personal shortcoming. You write stuff like "It's not the content locking them out though. It's other members of the community.", but you are not "overgeneralizing", somehow.

If you're going to reply (days later, might I add), at least do so in good faith without looking for reasons to either be offended or refuse to acknowledge anything that doesn't line up with your own personal experience. Thankfully, not everyone is AllenThyl.

I already acknowledged that some groups are acceptable of very crude behavior. Did you even read that, or did you not understand what this phrase means? I said it before, this forum has too many ELI5 posters. But that doesn't really translate into party finder groups, because party chat is monitored by SE and writing such things get people banned (which is why more often than not people just leave groups without any comment). Further, and we come back to the whole "have none of you ever done any group activity in any way?", participation in toxic statics is also not mandatory. Find another group with good behavior or make your own. At some point, this whole "everyone is mean" is just weaponized incompetence. Self-soothing lies.

[Mawlzy]

bizarre ranting

Nobody cares what you think about me or anyone else. How about you take a day off from these attempted character assassinations?

[Buttobi]

Except, there is no way to bridge this gap, because at the end of the day, it comes down to the individual's willingness to improve in the first place. Take Red Choctober in Bozja. Not respecting the mechanics there will get one (very likely) killed. It only has 3 repeating mechanics, enrage is basically when the CE timer runs out. And yet this fight keeps wiping instances regularly. Because the community in general, instead of learning how to solve the mechanics, simply views "getting rezzed through the fight" as acceptable mode of operation. The EX fights putting a stop to such behavior by wiping raids is the only way to actually get people to get their act together, by providing this hard wall. "This far, no further, unless you actually start properly doing the mechanics and learn some basic rotation of your job".

I mean, funnily enough, the normal mode encounters are often very much the learning opportunity that can serve as preparation for the higher difficulty one. For example, Ramuh (Hard) uses all the same mechanics as extreme, they just don't hit as hard. Nidhogg in the dungeon iteration now uses "Hot Wings" and "Blazing Tail" as well as the eyes. Lots of mechanics are used in normal, which one could actually sit down and learn. But since these encounters can be "yolo'd", with no hard requirement to correctly solve them, that's what's being done. I've said it before, the game offers learning opportunities left and right, they are simply wasted either actively or passively.

There absolutely is a way to bridge this gap and that is by literally just introducing content that falls between normal and ex trial difficulty. The intent of this "hard wall" as you say is irrelevant to the actual things happening in game right now: a huge drop off in players. There is a very good reason most games do not do difficulty in this manner, players will not engage with the content if the spike in difficulty is too high. Blaming the community for not wanting to jump from super easy normal content to difficult ex trials is not the way to go about it.

[Ardeth]

To be fair, once I get my series reward, I was slacking on because it looks terrible, but it's Fomo. Yay, Fomo! I'm done for a while since there's literally nothing for me to do. Speak with your wallet folks.

[Mawlzy]

Probably worth noting that a lot of the job changes we've seen, both on the onset of the expansion and as recently as 7.1, might have been done precisely because Square-Enix thought those jobs would struggle with Chaotic otherwise by whatever measure they were using.

Which creates this situation where as fights get harder, Square-Enix thinks jobs have to get easier and/or homogenized otherwise certain jobs would be an issue to bring along. Conversely, if jobs started becoming more demanding, Square-Enix would likely start toning fights back down because they seem adamantly opposed to making fights *and* jobs difficult simultaneously.

I think this is a key point, although I'm not sure which is the chicken and which the egg.

With job simplification and homogenization, the challenge of a fight has to get pushed almost entirely to the mechanics of the fight. And in FF14 this has increasingly become a question of standing on the correct pixel. This is definitely challenging, and I admire the skill of those who can learn the dance steps. But to me it isn't remotely interesting.

We have six different aspects of aether. Positionals can be interesting (kinda). Striking/slashing/etc could be differentiated. Bosses could have (time varying) vuln ups/downs to the different types of damage. Add RNG to the mix, you have a reactive fight, not a scripted dance.

[Chasingstars]

To be the most casual player is just to go through the MSQ, get enough ilvl for the next patch's dungeon, then unsub until next big patch which is usually 4+ months away. Stuff like normal raids and alliance raids and the many optional trials and their difficulties are just that, optional.

Like Yuweyawata Field Station from 7.1 is just 690 ilvl minimun. You get most of that requirement done from the artifact armor and weapons which are each 690, leaving only the accessories. From there you just need some tomestones to get accessories, and maybe also getting a bit lucky on drops from 1 or more runs of Alexandria. And then with prep for 7.2, you just farm Field Station to get a full set of gear and have enough tomestones to buy a single tomestone ring of ilvl 705 or better. Going on and on ad nauseum with each patch. Repeating the prepping process of whatever the MSQ gives you for gear and some tomestones with 8.0 or 9.0 or other such expansions. Only sticking around to complete the X.55 patch if you did X.5 content.

Basically treating the game casually as more a movie with some gameplay attached to it.

EDIT: Plus such a casual way of playing the game works well if you want to boycott it for other reasons. Maybe the reason is something about vieras or hrothgars or relic weapons or healing or lack of eureka-esque content or something else.

[Capstone]

Difficulty in games needs to be gradual. Ex trials are just a huge spike in difficulty from the next hardest thing (raids, dungeons, trials). Now I am not saying make ex trials easier, but the devs have now spent too many years not filling this gap between these 2 types of content

What could the solve actually be, though?

What makes hard content hard is that you have to play correctly--you must execute the mechanics correctly, and perform your damage rotation and mitigations correctly. Easy content is easy because this is not generally true. It's uncommon to wipe in things like dungeons and trials, and if you do have deaths the content is so undertuned that tanks can solo this kind of content.

Ultimates are harder than savage which are harder than extreme trials only insofar as the mechanics on the harder end are more difficult to think about and do and the damage checks and mit checks are tighter, but that's largely it, the formula is really much the same.

As such, there's nessisarily got to be some point where little Timmy can't just stand in every mechanic and die. There will be content where tanking the floor doesn't matter, and there will be content where it does matter. (Perhaps it surprised people that the chaotic raid didn't really let you carry dead weight at all due to key body check moments, putting it on the "hard" side of the fence for example).

There are no half-measues. You can't half-die and half-wipe. There will always be some point where being totally lost starts to chain-wipe the group, prior to which death is irrelevant. This will always be seen as the big jump up in difficulty, no?

[TheGrimace]

Give me less duties that require Party Finder and I will be happier.

[Tyintheron]

Words have meaning, and just like Gurgeh, you struggle with the basics. Maybe the JHS debate organizers (that you are so fond of, as if junior high school level of debate is something an adult should be proud of, but that's what "peaking in high school" gets you I guess) can direct you to some beginner course or something.

Still ploughing on with that big "first holidays home since I started college" energy, I see.