Here we go again

[Striker44]

Okay, but is this a video game or a visual novel? Final Fantasy games have always had enjoyable stories, but also difficult fights. Do people who agree with this poster think that FFIV was a failure as a story-driven game because Bahamut or Zeromus were hard fights?

The truly difficult fights in most FF games are optional ones, not part of the core story progression. In FFIV, Bahamut would be precisely one such example. It's the FFXIV equivalent of the MSQ itself being "easy" while providing a variety of other optional content that increases in difficulty. (And there's a bit of irony in mentioning Zeromus, given how Square intentionally and significantly nerfed things in making the "EasyType" version of FFIV that was sold in America...)

All content should be like this in MMOs. Ironically people are complaining about the genre of game they are playing.

This is a prime example of how constant calls for nerfing the game ruined it. People's first solution is to always complain and hope the developers lobotomize the game instead of socializing and working together.

It's one of those "things change over time" deals. MMO's are long past their "golden era". We are never going to see something like WoW having 12 million active subscribers again (heck, WoW needed to put out two "solid" expansions in a row just to reach ~2 million). The simple reality is that MMO's are no longer a "second life" for the majority of its playerbase. They're no longer new. They're no longer the most convenient space to interact with others through a device (Instagram, Snapchat, etc. all make those connections much easier today). And the playerbase itself on average is older, too. It's no longer primarily college kids and young adults able and eager to spend hours upon hours a day in an MMO. It's now mainly adults with families and full-time careers who pop on for maybe an hour a night and want to feel like they've accomplished something during that time.

I fondly remember playing WoW in 2005 and shouting in XR to get a group together for Wailing Caverns, walking over to the dungeon, and then spending potentially up to 2 hours completing it. I also can't even imagine wanting to do that today. The game isn't being "ruined" for the majority of its playerbase by making things easier. It's adapting to that playerbase, and leaving behind those who are, sadly, stuck in a past world that largely no longer exists.

[MaikoRaines]

Being an older gamer, been playing since ff14 came out, Meso Terminal is unplayable for me on the 4 bosses that chain to you encounter due to the dodge mechanics firing to quickly.It would be nice to have a easier mode choice when doing it with the npc's to "progress thru the story" as I feel it's better to npc it first so people aren't upset if i die as a healer. I am not asking for an easier mode for que'ing just for doing it with npc's heck i don't need any loot in an easy mode option either but i do feel that we all should have content we can get thru if its mandatory for the story.

That feeling you get behind your eyes when you read from other players that the content has gone stagnant, and yet, when new mechanics are introduced, you get people complaining about how hard it is.

I've done the fight with trusts and an active party and had no issues OTKOing my boss. Also, what does "being an older game" have to do with what you're describing?

It's new content - not everyone gets it the first time. Hope you eventually pass it, but one take is unrelated to the other.

No offense but this is purely an attitude problem, not an age problem. stop giving up. actually try to improve. pay attention to what happens around the screen.

I feel like this is the bare minimum these days. But people will find anything/everything to complain about. I'm surprised no one has mentioned or griped that there wasn't a single female boss on that fight.

Would you look at that? Basically what I'm hearing is that slightly more engaging content you were struggling with made you seek out the community and good adventurers bonded together to help you get through the game? Isn't that what MMOs are supposed to be about? Working together to solve through it.

All content should be like this in MMOs. Ironically people are complaining about the genre of game they are playing.

This is a prime example of how constant calls for nerfing the game ruined it. People's first solution is to always complain and hope the developers lobotomize the game instead of socializing and working together.

I agree with this 100% I could not have said it better myself.

[EusisLandale]

Honestly I haven’t done Meso Terminal yet
Also as an extra tip, if you’re a Scholar you can just Protraction / Adloquium yourself and you’ll be able to tank most hits (outside of having a bunch of vuln ups etc).

The second boss's bosses for healer and DPS hit like wet noodles, and even the tank one not too bad for a tank. The avoidable mechanics, on the other hand, generally hit hard enough to kill in 2, 3 if you're lucky, and stack vulns to make sure you're dead if you can't stop standing in the bad stuff. It's a fairly lenient pass/fail mechanic check, so shields and such are largely useless for the fight. The fight is almost entirely an awareness check.

[FuturePastNow]

The mechanics are no faster than any other boss fight. It's just Bardam's Mettle except you can hit the boss while doing it

[Fawkes]

The avoidable mechanics, on the other hand, generally hit hard enough to kill in 2, 3 if you're lucky,

They were all instakills for me.

[Catwho]

They were all instakills for me.

They were 2 hit kills for me on SCH, but I generally had on shields. I imagine it might be a bit tougher on AST or WHM.

[EusisLandale]

They were all instakills for me.

Near the minimum item level? I'm 737 on Sage and getting hit once will typically leave me at about 10-15%. Lesson learned from bad timing on a normal cast of Egeiro.

[sylphlands]

thank you for posting this thread, op. i'd just logged out after dying one too many times to the second boss and came here to see if anyone else shared my thoughts. i'm increasingly frustrated with the calls to "just get good at the game" when that fundamentally isn't the issue - some of us have visual and motor disabilities that make recent content extremely frustrating complete, and devs don't seem to care. this isn't a matter of a fight just being challenging - we're all playing a video game, of course we expect a challenge - it's a matter of "these mechanics are prohibitively difficult for story content aimed at all players, especially if you have any issues with reflexes, eye strain, colorblindness, etc."

i know some players enjoy the challenge of difficult content, but when you literally can't progress in the story without completing content that's very punishing if you're even a millisecond too slow...it's hard to find the fun in that. no one wants to be the guy dying over and over again when playing with other people (it's frankly embarrassing even when you have a nice group), and the trust system forces you back to the start of the fight every time you die.

we're in a very rough period in the game for anyone who primarily plays for story. with how weak the writing has been since the endwalker patches imo, and with how battle content requires motor skills and reflexes that many of us straight up don't have, it feels like there isn't really much here for us right now.

[RedLolly]

Okay, but is this a video game or a visual novel? Final Fantasy games have always had enjoyable stories, but also difficult fights. Do people who agree with this poster think that FFIV was a failure as a story-driven game because Bahamut or Zeromus were hard fights?

To be fair, you can just level grind in most other Final Fantasy titles. Boss too hard? I'll just come back with 5 more levels and the best armor I can buy and overpower it. That's the most basic strategy in turn-based RPGs.

I'm in some of the best armor, melded, and at level cap, but I'm still eating dirt because that's just how Dawntrail is. It's well beyond just expecting healers to adjust since they're burning up their stuff from the insane raid-wides.

But healers are actually using more than just their attacks right? Right?

[Supersnow845]

The healer argument around the power of raidwides in casual content is one of the few truly problematic problems with casual balance of the internal healer balance because these raidwides ars a complete joke on the shield healers but can be annoying on the regen healers because you simply can’t mitigate them as effectively as the shields can

People in this game are trained to think the shields are harder for some reason but they are just genuinly better for literally every piece of content if you want to run a healer