Here we go again

[Jeeqbit]

Firing quickly is highly subjective and may be actually too quick for some players to "read the mechanic in advance" and then process it.

It's not subjective in this case though. Objectively, the mechanic tells you a very, very, very long time in advance what it's doing. The only way OP could think it's fast is if they did not notice the environmental clue that was there for an extremely long time and allows pre-positioning in advance.

I think what frustrates me the most is that I am indeed playing other games that just do everything Final Fantasy 14 tries to do better.

I don't know what it is, but I think it's a combination of things. Many of their developers worked on FF11, so I think part of it is they just water down every single idea into the most boring implementation of it "because casual players". I think another part of it is they want to respect the "uniqueness" of this game, proven by the fact that they implemented FF15 and FF16 mechanics in this game during crossovers but then never used them again. Another part of it seems to be technical competence where a clearly simple tasks is extremely complex from their perspective, even when anyone with coding knowledge knows it's not that difficult regardless of code complexity. Finally, I think their organizational structure does not grant their programmers the authority to freely improve the game in response to feedback and they can only do what Yoshi-P specifically asks, and he only asks them to work on the next patch.

Same - although I am trying to stop worrying about what others think of me/my performance.

It's best to, because even long-time players that are good at lots of content and jobs often play unfamiliar jobs to shake things up, or they have a bad day or a bad pull. And despite that they may have cleared Ultimates, people will judge them for a single mistake because they decided to play a more challenging job. So it's not just you that people are going to form opinions like that about, it's really everyone because everyone can have a bad day or a bad pull. That said, you should also report anyone that says something rude.

I had someone whom I thought was a friend say this to me once

With friends like that, who needs enemies? But really, that isn't the sort of logic that I'm using. Mine is moreso that:

1. Every game should have an easy mode and a hard mode.
2. Regardless, being that it's an MMORPG, someone can just help you.
3. You can switch to a tank to eat vulns.
4. You can outgear it and clear it in the future.
5. But it's also an option to try and find ways to read the mechanics enough to survive.

I quite recently cleared 'Recollection Extreme'

Congrats. It's honestly not the easiest Extreme trial. Once you're used to it, it can feel easy, but it takes a lot of time to get used to it. I was farming it for quite a long time before I was completely flawless at every single mechanic (and I think this was the case with everyone I met farming it in PF). They were clearing with lots and lots of mistakes, and only scraped through because they were all good players that could recover from pretty catastrophic mistakes.

An example is you can clear while still getting vulns from some of the RBs and the sword cleaves. Can just take some time to not get caught out by those. However callouts can help with this for sure - I started calling out swaps and jumping to remind people where to gather for certain RBs, in case some of my parties were forgetful or distracted by other mechs.

As I said, it's not the trial I'd most recommend to a player looking to get comfortable with their first high-end duty. I'd actually have suggested Valigarmanda, Zoraal Ja, Byakko (when it was an unreal). So congrats.

are people who struggle with this specific design choice going to bother jumping through such hoops?

It's really going to depend on the person. I think the normal thing to do in a video game when you die is to try again. How many times people will try varies, but I think most people would agree that if the design intent is to die more than 3 times then it's probably going to annoy a player just trying to get through the story.

I don't think people have necessarily, universally said that dungeons should be harder, but rather that there should be options such as an "easy mode" with NPCs, a "hard mode" version of the dungeon with increased HP/damage output or a setting to disable telegraphs to make it a little harder for the players that disable it.

To be honest, I never saw anyone say that what they meant by hard was "faster". This is just SE's interpretation of it. I can see why it is, since it is an obvious thing that comes to mind, but I don't think that's what people actually wanted. I think they actually wanted it to have more randomness to keep it fresh, and historically and from other games I know that the holy trinity and players influencing eachother helps keep it a different experience each time. That said, I am rising to the challenge of this speed game for the time being and I'm finding that muscle memory over time solves it eventually.

[Valence]

It's not subjective in this case though. Objectively, the mechanic tells you a very, very, very long time in advance what it's doing. The only way OP could think it's fast is if they did not notice the environmental clue that was there for an extremely long time and allows pre-positioning in advance.

For that mechanic perhaps. But you're also failing to consider the whole encounter as a whole. It's one thing to dissect it mechanic by mechanic and seeing that one mechanic has visual cues coming up long before its resolution. It's another thing when you take into account the level of overwhelm a player is undergoing at any time during the fight. The more failure happens, the more anybody will get behind in the timeline by losing time trying to process what happened, and then move on and stabilize. There is a big amount of variables and factors leading to someone freezing, left between processing and what's coming next. While some are trying to get back on track, they'll potentially miss the next cue, even if it comes way ahead of time. Then they'll get into a false sense of security because they think the worst is over, but in fact they missed the cue and get splattered by a flashing AoE that seemingly came out of nowhere without a warning.

But they just missed the cue. Too bad, gotcha haha

And that's why I think the decision to move away from buffs and debuffs was a wrong move. I understand why they did it, but the solution that was adopted is not a better one for that reason alone, and even I as a player that generally has no problem with going through casual pve at all, I miss some of those cues and it pisses me off to not end because I have no buff or debuff that I can fall back to. If you miss the cue, you miss it and that's it. You're left scrambling left and right and crossing your fingers you're anticipating whatever stupid DDR move is going to happen. And the problem is that, visual cues are missed by a crapton of players either, so where is the gain over buffs and debuffs exactly? All of they have done is literally fix the problem of buffs/debuffs for some players, while screwing over the players that can't deal with short visual hints to catch instead. How many players get punted off the platform in Skydeep because they can't seem to be able to focus on the raised arms of the boss, left and right? This was a savage mechanic back in E4S on Titan Maximum by the way. Not hard mind you, but it's ironic in a way.

The problem is that the devs are doubling down on it to increase the difficulty of actually following and noticing those visual cues because they're completely tunneling on their wretched DDR design that makes zero sense. They even try to obfuscate those cues under visual vomit everywhere, it's their new fad in DT, especially 7.3 (just look at how many threads are about visual clarity and vfx saturation, and this without even mentioning eye strain threads). I'm not sure that purposefully chipping at visual clarity and usability for the sake of mechanical difficulty is a right move, personally. Or am I crazy for thinking so? What in the actual fuck was that first boss of the new dungeon in regard to that?? They can't design anything interesting enough so they crap over the arena enough until you just want to turn your screen off? What the heck is wrong with those people?

If anything I'm starting to feel that the ergonomist job in video games is totally alien to them. Wouldn't surprise me considering how medieval their UI is and how they're just unable to comprehend why people get so frustrated with it.

[Caitamm]

How many players get punted off the platform in Skydeep because they can't seem to be able to focus on the raised arms of the boss, left and right? This was a savage mechanic back in E4S on Titan Maximum by the way. Not hard mind you, but it's ironic in a way.

Big raised arms of boss is NOT a savage mechanic, btw. Before it showed up in E4S titan it was an attack used by the TRASH mob before final boss of Mt. Gulg. It was a NORMAL mechanic that was brough INTO savage.

If a player is missing that kind of tell, they're simply not paying attention. This is accounting for getting flustered as well, because when flustered you really aren't paying attention. But the thing is, with XIV every encounter is scripted with minimal variation (e.g. it'll hit left instead of right this time, but same mechanic with same type of tell at the same timing). Just go again with the intention of improving rather that brute force flinging oneself into a wall.