@Casuals , do you think the message has gotten through?

[IdleBlood]

Jesus, Mary and Joseph! You and Volgia just arguing in bad faith, cherry picking and straw manning talking points most haven't even made, ad hominem attacks.

Completely hijacked this thread and what it was about.

Always the same players with the same posts, if you join the forum one time per day atleast, you will be able to see this.

The same history everyday, ouuuuf.

[Asari5]

Imagine trying to deduce the number of players that find content too hard/not hard enough by counting likes on a forum post.

Now I've seen it all. At least until the next, even more stupid discussion comes up

BTW: I find normal trials and raids too hard. I did Cruiserweight M4 Normal 14 times (because I wanted two of the weapons), and even on my very last run died to some of the mechanics I cannot solve in real time. And guess what? That's ok. I'm now officially a carry, a burden to the friendly people that play the roulette. So when you see me next time, kissing the floor again to a mechanic you deem Hall-of-novice level easy - please know that I'm doing the best I can. Obviously it's not enough, but it's all I got. Sorry.

thats alright. its not hall of the novice level. dieing is allowed. and there are no 8-man body checks in normal. so not like it matters in most cases

[Volgia]

To be frank, I think casuals are babied so much by yoshi-p that they never gain a skill level beyond what you'd expect of someone in sastasha. It's actually pathetic when I see people die 3-4 times on an expert dungeon boss which is still very casual. People have no idea what their abilities do, don't know how to read cast bars, and expect people to carry them though the game. "normal mode" is absolutely the equivalent of story mode in other games, a mode designed to push players through the story with very little resistance. Yet people with 1000+ hours into the game still can't dodge a floor AOE or keep more than 50% ABC.

Play as you want! But never forget there's a strict meta and rotation you must perfectly memorize if you want to clear anything harder than a normal raid.

More evidence that the game needs skill sliders or a dual-track.

You don't want to play with the babies. They do not want to play with you.

To me the problem is not that I think casuals are dumb babies, is that the game just doesn't teach you how to play, there's no resistance from the MSQ content and that's how someone can be here since ARR and have no idea how to manage their abilities. When I got to the endgame in Stormblood I was a DPS deadweight cuz I didn't know what a rotation was and I had to learn it from other players/eventual guides.

[Gwenkatsu]

thats alright. its not hall of the novice level. dieing is allowed. and there are no 8-man body checks in normal. so not like it matters in most cases

Which is the exact reason why I never will set my foot into anything above MSQ level. Not because of anxiety, or some evil addon-using discord leet players gatekeeping me... it's just that I'm not good in solving FF14's boss emote puzzles in real time. But the more this stuff bleeds into normal content, the more frustrating it gets for people like me. And when the game evolves to a point where I cannot even finish a normal dungeon any longer, I will simply be gone. Seeing how well catering to hardcore players only worked for Wildstar, I have my doubts whether FF14's current direction regarding combat difficulty is such a clever idea...

[0blivion]

I'mma be real, the people unironically struggling with normal raids won't learn unless we stop dumbing content down. You've seen what Pandemonium did to people. Hitboxes the size of a meteor, five thousand ways to recover from mechanical failure.

Like, look at M7N. When I last did it in week 6 or something, people were still dying on the first platform. That's fine, but we can't keep catering to the smallest common denominator.

It's like in education where if you keep lowering the requirements to suit those who don't keep up, everyone else eventually decays from boredom.

e/: Like when Seat of Sacrifice (Normal) came out, we had to kick a WHM because they kept failing the ATE. For a player like that, any content is too hard.

[Erzaa]

Lord Almighty! Just stop!

The discussion is about the game only providing content to high-end raiders, not about difficulty.

The original poster has cleared EX. They're not struggling with normal dungeons or raids.

Casual players are a large group, with varied interests. Some just enjoy the MSQ and are here for the story, some also enjoy the normal Trials and Raids and nothing else, others dip their toes into EX, others such as myself enjoy the deep dungeon challenges.

The problem we all agree on, is that, for the last year, they've released nothing except raids. So, if you don't enjoy raiding, you've got nothing to do. We might as well not exist. Nobody's looking to take away your precious raids, we just want other options and stuff to do for ourselves.

Normal raids and dungeon difficulty has increased, yup, and some players don't like it, some do, some couldn't care less. Again though, they only increased the difficulty artificially, by just increasing the speed at which mechanics happen, while vomiting twice as many effects into your face. They've done nothing to make them interesting or fun. It's still the same, die until you memorise, press buttons, stand in the tiny safe spot, rinse, repeat.

And I see no reason why players who just want to enjoy the story, can't have difficulty options, without having a bunch of high-end raiders jumping down their throats. They're not asking to enter your statics or PFs. And nobody, except you, cares if you believe that they're dumbing it down, or if you don't like seeing players die to mechanics you consider simple.

Increasing the difficulty in a game, doesn't force players to improve. It just pushes them away. Players who don't enjoy a certain type of content, won't do a type of content, no matter how much you might want them to.

But again, the main point is that the game is releasing only raid focused content, leaving nothing for the rest of us, not the difficulty of said content.

They could've made normal Forked Tower, they could've released twice as many treasure dungeons, they could've made a CLL or Dalriada equivalent, they could've made the CE and FATE and mob grind not be a miserable slog with no payoff. They could've made the Cosmic FATEs interesting, they could've made the tool be more that just click windows and craft useless items for "research", they could've released Variant already, they could've added Deep Dungeons to the atma grind.

There's a million damn things they could've done, to give everyone and anyone options to decide what part of the game they want to interact with, and they didn't do any of it.

[Asari5]

i dont disagree with the lack of alternativ combat content.

i mean there is creszentia, but that is pretty much fates which we had all along.
tribal quests, but i dont really consider these any content lol.
then we have treasure maps.
is there anything else?

next thing would be the deep dungeon. thats neither savage nor raid content.

but tbh i cant really imagine alternativ combat content. how would it even look like? xD

[Volgia]

The problem we all agree on, is that, for the last year, they've released nothing except raids. So, if you don't enjoy raiding, you've got nothing to do. We might as well not exist. Nobody's looking to take away your precious raids, we just want other options and stuff to do for ourselves.

But they haven't released "Nothing but raids", the only new raid thing they released was Chaotic. Everything else has been the same content patch release since Stormblood.

The problem isn't the lack of varied new content, the problem is the normal content has become dull and boring, they decimated most of the complex systems pre-Shadowbringers and now we're just on that late stage version of the game where no one is happy.

The game has also fostered a strong divide between casual/hardcore content. So if anything in normal mode gives you a bit of friction (STrayborough, M2N) people come here in tears asking why they don't toss that onto the hardcore pile, or wonder why no one is catering towards them specifically.

You accused me of arguing in bad faith and nitpicking so IDK if responding to you is productive, but this is my stance on the matter.

[Erzaa]

alternativ combat content. how would it even look like? xD

Hmmm...

How about, something like...

1. Patch includes a new treasure dungeon, or reuse the existing one. The further in you get, the higher the chance of Atma drops.
2. Include the deep dungeons into the grind, the higher the floor, the higher the chance. Keep the FATEs and CEs as well.
3. Mobs are stronger, still drop gold, but have a chance to drop silver. More Knowledge XP from them. Pulling big packs is risky, but still doable.
4. CEs can have stars. 1 star difficulty for players who want to have easy mechanics, less rewards per CE, 2 star, 3 star etc. Players can pick and choose or do all of them. Multiple CEs with different star ratings run simultaneously. Same for FATEs. Let players decide what they want to interact with.
5. Chests could spawn at random intervals, some unknown point on the map, guarded by a particularly strong mob. Any Phantom Job has a small chance of dropping from them.
6. If two versions of Forked Tower is too much, how about just have two entrances? Forked Tower: Blood for the 24-48 raiders, they're going in through the front door, actually committing to a full on assault, they kill the bosses, avoid the traps etc, get their rewards. The easier way might be 4 or 8 man pickup group, sneaks in through a hidden entrance that was "discovered", "avoid raising the alarms per se", by knocking out said bosses (easier mechanics), they get less loot, but still can work over time toward the same end goal?
7. As far as players who really want a difficulty lower, I still don't see any problem with that. Have a Story mode difficulty (Trusts only, or with friends, no DF), mechanics are slower, more time to react or notice things (maybe also don't one or two shot every time). Normal difficulty is what we have now, Trials and Raids still get their EX and Savage as normal.

Just a few thoughts, I'm open to adding more options and stuff.

[Merrigan]

Which is the exact reason why I never will set my foot into anything above MSQ level. Not because of anxiety, or some evil addon-using discord leet players gatekeeping me... it's just that I'm not good in solving FF14's boss emote puzzles in real time. But the more this stuff bleeds into normal content, the more frustrating it gets for people like me. And when the game evolves to a point where I cannot even finish a normal dungeon any longer, I will simply be gone. Seeing how well catering to hardcore players only worked for Wildstar, I have my doubts whether FF14's current direction regarding combat difficulty is such a clever idea...

There are currently no hardcore mechanics in the dungeons. We're a long way from that, in fact.

You have to stop exaggerating at some point. To say that you're struggling with normal content? That's fine. It's a game, no problem. But you have to keep a certain amount of lucidity and not make false statements. Here, the fact that you're struggling to complete this type of content doesn't necessarily equate to a design error in the encounters.

In any case, the majority of players can complete this content: all you have to do is play with people who will pick you up when you make a mistake - which is possible, because there's no general wipe in normal content when an individual mistake is made.