We need more casual PvE content.

[CCheshire]

No, we don't need more casual content when like 95% of content is already for casual players.

What we really need is true middle ground content when we haven't got no middle ground content since patch 4.5 when The Orbonne Monastery alliance raid got added to the game (which was by far the best allaince raid ever made but sadly it got ruined by massive nerf that made it so easy that all fun disappeared completely from it) and all normal raids and normal allaince raids after 4.5 have being simply way too easy.

NOTE: There is point saying "just do extreme trials, savage raids, ultame raids and chaotic allaince raid" to me when i simply refuse to do them because i'm unable to do everything 100% perfectly (Job rotation, mechanics and etc.) and i got extremely bad experience back in 2.0 when i tried to do The Coils of Bahamut that i started to fear doing any of extreme trials, savage raids, ultame raids and chaotic allaince raid content.

I don't care about field operations when they requires being in party to do, which is impossible for me when no one wants me in their party and Occult Crescent is impossible to do anyway when FATE bosses dies so fast that like 99.99% of time when i get in the FATE area the boss is already dead and i don't get any rewards and Knowledge exp from it.
And only way i can increase my knowledge level in Occult Crescent currently is spend massive amount of time killing normal enemies, so my best option is simply skip Occult Crescent completely, just like i did with Eureka and Bozja.

If you're a tank or good DPS player, you can just join CE solo and get exp along with silver coins all the way to KL 20 in a week or so, which will happen since you want to farm demiatma, usually req 100 min for all of them. Honestly, there's no real reason to farm mobs since you need to chain a lot of them, which requires a gold farm party for more gold coins at once. I never did many FATEs, and I just waited by the camp for each new CE announcement. Additionally, everyone will rush to rez you since there's an achievement for it, and everyone will still have a cheap raise from the Chemist in CE.

[Alahard]

Well what you are describing is the carrot (rewards) to the stick (content). I don't disagree we should have more incentive to do it, but this game doesn't lack for "casual content".

Cuz TBH, we had Criterion Dungeons and the same issue happened. Great content, no reason to do it.

The issue is the dev team has no idea how to do the carrot in any form of content.

Overworld fate farming -> how many fates do you need to farm for the end rewards? Over 2 k per. Nah, the rewards don't justify the effort. Here's an idea -> make a map equivalent as a 10% drop rate that drops the fate currency instead of gil. Now you get a fun gambling minigame dungeon for doing fates. How about a super fate in every zone, that players can actively spawn instead of waiting around on a long timer for them?

Variant dungeons -> clear all routes for a mount sounds good in concept, until you realize its each boss 4 times, and nothing to do after ( unless you want the glam ... which requires like 3 times the clears?) Why should any casual player go back? Why not make the routes vary in difficulty building up to criterion (harder routes give more currency). And allow the currency to buy other fun things, like bs powers within, or maps, or convert them into the criterion coins at an inflated rate?

And its also bad in harder content.

Criterion -> how many clears for the mount? thats it? No gear bonus for the tier, no special glam, no reason to go back unless you want to gil farm ( why? gil is beyond useless after week 1, and you get it back passively already anyways).

Even when they give "good" rewards, the timing is absolute garbage.

COD -> here, lets drop a raid on Christmas, with raid gear that is usable for 2 months?????

[UNDEAD10000]

If you're a tank or good DPS player, you can just join CE solo and get exp along with silver coins all the way to KL 20 in a week or so, which will happen since you want to farm demiatma, usually req 100 min for all of them. Honestly, there's no real reason to farm mobs since you need to chain a lot of them, which requires a gold farm party for more gold coins at once. I never did many FATEs, and I just waited by the camp for each new CE announcement. Additionally, everyone will rush to rez you since there's an achievement for it, and everyone will still have a cheap raise from the Chemist in CE.

I'm decent as tank and DPS at best (I stopped playing as healer over 1 year ago and i will never play as healer again) but i'm really bad doing everything 100% perfectly which is required in field operations to not cause other players losing exp and levels.

The biggest problem with critical encounters is that i don't know any of boss mechanics and losing knowledge exp and level on death simply prevents me learing the boss fights when risk of dying is so too high that it's not worth to lose multiple hours of grind on single death and no one simply don't care resurrecting me, just like what happenned when i tried to do critical encounter first time and i died on first few boss AoE attacks, no one didn't resurrect me and i had to respawn to starting area.

Yes, i know i can watch critical encounter guides on Youtube but problem is that they don't help me learing the boss fight at all and only way i can learn the boss fight is to doing the actual boss fight.

[MetaBoi]

The issue is the dev team has no idea how to do the carrot in any form of content.

...

COD -> here, lets drop a raid on Christmas, with raid gear that is usable for 2 months?????

Highly agree, one thing they can do is just... let us upgrade non raid related gear so we have more of it. COD +1 gear, 760 ilvl, same substat spread. As the expansion goes on your ability to choose between different sets (be it casual or raider) doesn't increase. Just by allowing us to upgrade the previous gear would lead some people to run older content so that they can get slightly better BiS for their reclears or something. Or that players who don't raid get to choose between two or three sets at the end of the expansion (all 3 tomestone gear).

[RedLolly]

The issue is literally everyone who cares enough to use the official forum falls into the "hardcore" category, in spite of many of us not being high end raiders.

Honestly, I agree that the game seems to favor the players that want killer grinds or difficult content. We used to get a lot more side story stuff in the patches, not just Hildibrand. I wonder if maybe the time that went into minigames and side-quests is what is now put into the limited jobs.

Also, I feel the devs are forgetting that hardcore players usually do casual content, but the reverse isn't true.

[Bryson]

The issue is literally everyone who cares enough to use the official forum falls into the "hardcore" category, in spite of many of us not being high end raiders.

Honestly, I agree that the game seems to favor the players that want killer grinds or difficult content. We used to get a lot more side story stuff in the patches, not just Hildibrand. I wonder if maybe the time that went into minigames and side-quests is what is now put into the limited jobs.

Also, I feel the devs are forgetting that hardcore players usually do casual content, but the reverse isn't true.

Calling everything a "casual" player refuses to do "hardcore" is reductive. It's a race to the bottom mentality.

[RedLolly]

Calling everything a "casual" player refuses to do "hardcore" is reductive. It's a race to the bottom mentality.

You're right. I'm coming the argument on the perceived lack of midcore content, since it FEELS like there isn't much combat content that helps a player transition from story dungeons to proper raiding. It's either easy casual or hard core difficult, amd right now there feels like too little "easy" stuff.

IMO, anyone that can make their way through DT's story dungeons and trials is pretty primed since the devs kinda went off on those fights. It was great! But we all saw how it blindsided some people, even with NPCs to fall back on. In which case it's a labelling problem.

[savarna]

I feel like this patch season has just not enough causal combat content. So far we got just normal versions of raids and trials (plus one alliance raid so far).

Occult crescent was supposed to be this casual combat content. But after Bozja which had some really good casual content like Castrum, Delubrum (which is still my favourite raid in the game) and Dalariada. This time for some reason we got savage only Forked Tower which provides no casual content, leaving the casuals in occult crescent only with encounters, fates and grinding regular mobs, so much less than in case of Bozja.

It’s getting kinda annoying that it seems like the part of the dev team responsible for combat content cares only about savage part of the player base.

I hope you’re joking, because a lot of players actually feel pretty divided and see things quite differently from what you posted. No offense, but the way the game is right now mostly caters to casual players, and that’s become a problem for many of us. Personally, what bothers me more is the repetitive, almost drunk like predictability of the content cycles with very small innovation other than aesthetics.

[Brandr]

We need more content, period. More involvement in the world that makes the world meaningful. FF14 has the deadest world of any MMO i've played. They are focused entirely too much on the story now. We have spent way too much time in cutscenes this expansion instead of in the world doing things.

Most rational take ever. Thank you!

[ShadowyZero]

i think we just need to stop with the whole "us vs them" argument an just agree that generally there is no appealing content that caters to both sides to sustain us longterm an the stuff we do get is the same spilt just with different colors of paint not very exciting when you know how everything works or functions all the time is it?
as for rewards on this point i think that rewards have heavily favored more too those on the high difficulty spectrum where as the more light-hearted less difficult stuff leaves casuals grinding for what seems hours on end for little returns to justify even going for it in the first place.
as for rewards being meaningful in some way you're kinda cutting corners here they already give us weapons to build up every expansion which sometimes includes relic/artifact gear as well, you get tokens from savage for upgraded raid gear which is also dyeable btw why they remove the dye from casuals version is beyond me an also kinda ruins the reason for casuals to even want to run the raid to begin with that coupled with the savage including a mount for the last fight but yet casuals get a stuffed toy and music sheet whoopie!! lmao when in reality the mount should be earned from a weekly token as well but yet when they do 24 man raids their is no bias at all for rewards everyone gets the same things hypocritical much dontcha think? lol
but point being they give us what people ask for for rewards but in different types of content i'd argue its the rate of which they are obtained which is the major problem an that needs to change it should not in any capacity or form take an entire month(s) just to get one drop of something that's ludicrous an insane an no it doesnt add to replay value it diminishes it an demotivates not saying at all something should be for "free" but it should not take nearly as long as it does to obtain something. an thats what i believe is the part of the arguement is that those who want challenge want alternatives to gear up their alternate jobs and casuals just want the same kind of rewards that those difficult encounters reward without feeling like they are being forced to funnel into savage, ultimate, unreal, chaotic etc.