People don’t realize how easy it is to get into raiding in this game

[IshAle]

While I largely agree that much of the solution lie within the ability to just kick a party off and keep attempting, a lot of the content especially for Savage are ones that can have varying expectations:

* Is your group one that is expecting to learn the whole fight mostly just through practice? Accept it may take longer than additionally studying known strategies that work.

* How willing is your group to keep someone in who just isn’t getting it?

Having already been on the ‘competitive content’ side in other MMOs I limit myself to extremes at most in FFXIV because it’s still relatively easy to get down and I’m mostly here for fun. My tolerance for ‘needing to study’ and make parties to best something in this game is very low because I want to just get-in and get going.

[Router]

A quick reminder: this is a game. If the content frustrates you... It's OK not to do it. HL content has never been for everyone, in the sense that you have to like the challenge and have the time.

Another thing: this is a forum. And if there's one thing that's true of all MMORPGs, even the ones we're bent on comparing when they're radically different from each other... It's that the forums are always full of people who seem to be pros. Some of them are actually good; a lot of them exaggerate a bit, in my experience, because between what they say and the moment you start checking out what's going on behind the scenes there's... A gap.

In my experience a majority of people on this forum with opinions on raid content have literally not even done the raid content, which is really weird. Case in point, that guy was replying to a literal level 2 alt.

[Doomed_Raven]

I don't mind hard challenges and overcoming them (from any Sega game back in the day to Kena Bridge of Spirits on master spirit difficulty - that one makes any Souls game look like a walk in the park!) it can be a nice feeling. I also don't have an issue crafting current level gear and using materias. But with raids it's hard to learn the mechanics and complete them with randoms. You need people who can calmly work together/communicate, but random raids will always have some moany and unpleasant A holes unfortunately. As these portion of people become more moany as the raid fails, their bandwidth for being able to solve the problem at hand (the raid's mechanics) will diminish greatly hindering everyone. I think hard raids/trials especially, work best if it's not with randoms but friends or those in a decent group that communicate calmly and amicably, as well as practice.

Most though might just not be interested, you might get one player who just wants to go fishing, and another who just wants to decorate houses/players. You've mistaken deaf ears for disinterested ears.

[CCheshire]

I don't mind hard challenges and overcoming them (from any Sega game back in the day to Kena Bridge of Spirits on master spirit difficulty - that one makes any Souls game look like a walk in the park!) it can be a nice feeling. I also don't have an issue crafting current level gear and using materias. But with raids it's hard to learn the mechanics and complete them with randoms. You need people who can calmly work together/communicate, but random raids will always have some moany and unpleasant A holes unfortunately. As these portion of people become more moany as the raid fails, their bandwidth for being able to solve the problem at hand (the raid's mechanics) will diminish greatly hindering everyone. I think hard raids/trials especially, work best if it's not with randoms but friends or those in a decent group that communicate calmly and amicably, as well as practice.

Most though might just not be interested, you might get one player who just wants to go fishing, and another who just wants to decorate houses/players. You've mistaken deaf ears for disinterested ears.

It's hard enough to get ppl to do meetups IRL vs just the idea of scheduling folks online to log in at a set time consistently, even if everyone wanted to raid too. I mean, how do you decide if someone is holding the group back, then, too? After all, you're friends, right?

[Doomed_Raven]

It's hard enough to get ppl to do meetups IRL vs just the idea of scheduling folks online to log in at a set time consistently, even if everyone wanted to raid too. I mean, how do you decide if someone is holding the group back, then, too? After all, you're friends, right?

With holding a group back, if it were a group of friends they should be able to see which is struggling and offer help.

FC's normally always have people online. But if everyone is on the same server, it wouldn't be hard to arrange time after work/school etc (unless the people no longer want to play the game).

[Merrigan]

In my experience a majority of people on this forum with opinions on raid content have literally not even done the raid content, which is really weird. Case in point, that guy was replying to a literal level 2 alt.

I can understand the alt - this character is an old one, for example, mainly to avoid being stalled as soon as I pass here. So I'm not going to say anything about it, that would be hypocritical.

On the other hand, yes, there are often people who claim to make content or - perhaps even more frequently - are (a little, a lot, passionately) less good than they claim to be. If you frequent the forum, you get the impression that the IG population is made up of excellent players, and you have very few posts admitting to having trouble with the game's content - whereas when you play... Well, you come across these “bad” players. Typically (and this is nothing against the player in question, if he reads this post), someone said on the previous page that the last extreme groups formed with sprouts went off without a hitch.

Really? Maybe he was lucky, I don't know. Personally, the last few have been hell.

[Commander_Justitia]

If you were trying to blind prog then yea I can see how hello world style mechanics are tough but with guide it's literally just following a set path based on what debuff you start with. There isnt even a need to understand the mechanic, just follow the path and let the mechanic resolve around you.

If I need a guide to understand the mechanic, then it is too difficult for my spare time. I don't want to read a mechanic book or watch how someone else played it.
The difficulty I like would be Baldesion Arsenal, Delubrum savage or ex trials to some degree - but without the punishment of instant death for every mechanic.
Bosses just hitting harder again instead of doing 1 hit wipe mechanics would be more enjoyable, also force healer to heal.

I think most normal content is too easy nowadays, it used to be harder and thus more fun.

[TheInsomniac13]

If I need a guide to understand the mechanic, then it is too difficult for my spare time. I don't want to read a mechanic book or watch how someone else played it.
The difficulty I like would be Baldesion Arsenal, Delubrum savage or ex trials to some degree - but without the punishment of instant death for every mechanic.
Bosses just hitting harder again instead of doing 1 hit wipe mechanics would be more enjoyable, also force healer to heal.

I think most normal content is too easy nowadays, it used to be harder and thus more fun.

In an Old thread I adressed some Ideas I would have hoped to see one day in this game but Devs decidet to go the oposide route.
What I imagin is getting rid of most if not all one hit attacks and playing around withe more enrage timers and multiple parts of the Boss that can be targeted.
With every mechanic that is not properly dodged the Boss buffs himself so the fight get´s harder giving you motivation to do the mechanic next time right, while I would if you dodge mechanics right long enough I would even build in the boss stressing out and starting to fumble giving more windows of oportunetie for attacks.

Meanwhile multiple taregable bodyparts could deliver motivation to attack a part which my cause less damage to the boss but would be needet to take out a dangerous if not even undavoidable attack. Enrage timer which if not beeten do not end the fight but change the stage in a way which again makes the fight harder but not unbeatable.

But I know things like this will never happen becasue they would take actual effort on parts of the developers.

[Kohashi]

If I need a guide to understand the mechanic, then it is too difficult for my spare time. I don't want to read a mechanic book or watch how someone else played it.
The difficulty I like would be Baldesion Arsenal, Delubrum savage or ex trials to some degree - but without the punishment of instant death for every mechanic.
Bosses just hitting harder again instead of doing 1 hit wipe mechanics would be more enjoyable, also force healer to heal.

I think most normal content is too easy nowadays, it used to be harder and thus more fun.

Guides are not necessary to do any content. It might take you much longer to understand and clear the fight. Guides allow you to speed run the content, which to me it's the most efficient way of doing that.

There are plenty of mechanics this tier that hit insanely hard, especially in starter gear.

[Amarande]

I’ve noticed a lot of discourse about add-ons and whatever else; having to spend money on gear to join raids. When I see these complaints, I feel like these people haven’t played any other MMO’s.

Community pacing issue. Unless you luck into finding a helpful off-the-main-path community or get (palpably increasingly as time goes by) lucky with groups, you feel the pressure to get things done Week One (or even Day One for extremes sometimes). Crafted gear prices drop, it's easy to take your time and DO the crafting yourself. But as said, the problem here is a distinct rushed feeling that you don't have the time. Wait and next thing the PFs you want to be in won't take you, and the ones you can cobble together through the visible public resources are likely to be misses no matter how gud you git.

Lord of the rings online is a really old game and nobody is pugging tier 2+ raids (where the good gear drops.)

LOTRO raiding died hard a long time ago because of design mistakes made mostly during the first expansion, and capped off by how disappointing the first raid in the third expansion was (it was supposed to be Saruman, ffs! And instead we got a basic-B DPS race designed to sell the P2W weapon DPS enhancement crystals that came out about that time, womp womp).

I’m honestly quite tired of these forums. first the forums want harder, normal content and then you have people quitting because it’s too hard

I expect the harder normals idea gets kneecapped when it nexuses with the realities of Duty Finder.

A lot of people do want more of a challenge in their games, if they didn't, Dark Souls and Elden Ring wouldn't be such hits to the point that almost every other ARPG maker seems to be tryna follow in their footsteps. What's less cool is when you realize how little difference your individual contribution usually makes versus whether you got lucky spinning the matchmaking wheel (Especially lately with things like the super spicy stack markers so if you even have one or two folks that just don't get it your whole run is in serious danger due to a lack of party eHP to pass the stacks).

So Endgame Raiding is the part of this game I enjoy the least amount but as it stands the Devs seem to want to funnel all players into it delieberetly cutting down any and all jobs so there is no distraction for there hardcore DDR sequences.

It's likely this is the case to some extent. Most likely because A, DDR sequences seems to be what the FFXIV engine is geared for, and B, non instanced content can only get so popular before server limitations become painfully apparent (consider how much things creak with congestion and load times even in eg Hunt Trains and the fact is that Hunts are still fairly niche content!). Lobbies are a lot easier to scale and I expect it's a big reason why instanced lobby style content has basically become The Thing for multiplayer games overall (not even just FFXIV, or even MMOs).

I agree that they don't realize it. But I actually think the primary reason, for most people, is anxiety. That anxiety can stem from:
- Being afraid of toxicity, not understanding the difference between different types of parties ie. [Practice] vs [Duty Complete], or not understanding all the raid terminology such as DPS in | Relative | BD | TN | Tank LB3, colors, etc.
- Thinking that they are not good at the game. Sometimes these feelings are incorrect (they are good enough), and other times it's an accurate assessment to say they are not very good yet, but they probably just don't understand a lot of basic things yet.

This is part on the community and part on SE

The community is indeed rather too quick to hide behind the safe fort of Duty Complete the moment that they get their first clear (a common NA issue is thinking "you've cleared it once = you can farm" too). There are also a lot of fights where the PF description is a long strat string that the uninitiated player will have a hard time parsing (and oftentimes you need to be in the right Discords to know what some of the things even mean because stuff isn't posted as publicly as it ought be in the 2025 internet).

The community has also become incredibly judgy lately. Third party logging sites, third party logging ANALYSIS aggregators (Tomestone), etc etc. It's to the point where when you're aware these things exist and will routinely be used to judge you, you start to cringe the moment you take a vuln stack, let alone a damage down, and Twelve forbid you have a death on your record ... sorry buddy, any practice you got past that doesn't count, go back 10 mechanics, go on, GIT! lol.

Attempts to criticize this will get shot down with "BUT PROG LIARS" and similar.

It's partly on SE because, primarily, the PF descriptor space is too small (leading to the above opaque shorthand) & because the nature of fights in FFXIV severely limits the ability to "catch people up" in an organic fashion as one might be accustomed to in other MMOs, instead you more or less have to formally drop to the behind person's prog point or more commonly you just cut them loose altogether. Makes creating regular groups for working adults a nightmare ...