Question: Do we have enough content for high-end and casual equally?

[LanceSummers]

The overwhelming majority of content in this game is casual. It may not all be content that appeals to you specifically, but to try to argue that everything is catering to hardcore players ridiculous.

I'm not trying to argue that everything is, but right now, it feels like casual players are not receiving good treatment.
Hardcore players got so many new styles of content this expansion it's insane. You got Quantum, Chaotic... Even the raids were so good from what people have said.
Look at casual/midcore. We got Merchant's Tale (Advanced), which was good, but the Occult Crescent sucks and Forked Tower Blood is hard difficulty only.
It just feels like what we do have isn't cutting it, while all the hardcore players are eating a feast.

[LanceSummers]

that's why i said the "when" varies. I'm gone 10 hours a day Mon-Fri... inversely, someone could be a "casual player" and be home all day (some of my friends for example.. be it working pt, college student etc etc). I'm in no position to presume they are incapable of doing x y z content just because the "community" has arbitrarily decided that said content is "too hard for them." Players have enough agency to decide what is and isn't for them, relative to the amount of time they want to put into it. This casual/hc binary is reductive and arbitrary.

Doing stuff and having fun isn't mutually exclusive to "get gud." Q40 is stuff and I had fun. FT is stuff and I had fun. That's kinda my point... There is no one size fits all to content and fun.

To me, there is no such thing as casual or hc content. Content merely exists.. and what you put into it could be casual (couple hours here and there) or hc (a lot of hours). There is not a single piece of a content a casual player is incapable of doing. Whether it interests them or not is besides the point. Like cosmic exploration. It's for everyone.... I just choose to not do it. That's on me, not SE.

If I want to prog anything, I have to set aside the whole day just to find a group to do it. As a college student, I often do not have the time or energy to set aside my day to prog something. I have fun when I do, but there's a time and a place for it, and I simply don't have the energy to prog all day, every day... Most of the time I just want to have fun and to run some easy content and chat with people. Combined with being someone who is terrible at studying and very much so a hands-on learner, I really don't want to do harder content all the time.

[HyperiusUltima]

The overwhelming majority of content in this game is casual. It may not all be content that appeals to you specifically, but to try to argue that everything is catering to hardcore players ridiculous.

Yet there runs the fine line. As much as we call the entire MSQ a Casual Progression, there comes a point where essentially people refuse to get better - because they have no incentive to. It's like how people don't want to do something that involves not only the party finder culture(which can be really bad sometimes) but also the overall difficulty of the content that you're trying to get them to try or nudge them into.

Pointing at Extremes doesn't mean that it's going to be helpful, as once they have that first experience, they'll more or less decide to not do it again because it's "too hard" or because of people. Sometimes it's actually having connections, which in FFXIV getting those connections is extremely hard for no reason other than the raiding scene. Some people want to craft; others want to do a specific piece of content. Hell, even Yoshida said it himself:

“If we continued to follow this [existing] policy… from [the casual player’s] perspective, even though [hardcore content] is implemented in the game, it’s almost the same as being non-existent to them. And on the flip side, from a hardcore player’s perspective, [the casual content] is also non-existent.

“But we say to them: ‘Hey, look! Look at how much content you’ve got to play!’ So, this policy we had went well, but I could say that it went too well, because now we’ve created so much new content that the players are telling us: ‘Oh ,well, this content has nothing to do with me. I don’t care.'”

“So, what I want to say is that, of course, for the top tier of players, we know that content tailored towards them is needed, and we will continue to produce that content. And on the other side of the spectrum, for the really casual players, we also understand that that content is also needed, and we will continue to produce that. So, we will continue to tailor content for both ends of the spectrum.

“What we’re trying to do now is to change the design so that we have content which can be enjoyed by everyone, so from [the hardcore player’s] perspective there would be five types of content, and for [the casual player’s] perspective there’s also five types.”

Link to the article here.

I think what their team needs to think about is how to present a moderately difficult piece of content that gets people to learn how their kit works while also keeping mechanics involved as they are in current expansion. Should it involve DPS Checks? Maybe. If anything, I think the one thing that has pushed people to try and overcome things is either bashing one's head against the wall or getting better at a job; the latter tending to be one of the core focuses here since the playerbase is less likely to jump into Extreme, Savage or Ultimate content. Of course, people are bound to be frustrated that DPS Checks are entering casual content; but let's be honest: when has any challenge been put forth when it comes to the base content? I actually can complete dungeons without pressing a single button on my bar in Duty Support, and the AI will handle the rest as it's designed to do.

The only time we even had something close to resemblance of content that was able to engage players into harder content was Bozja, both ends. That was the only time that was ever possible; after that? Never again has it shown up. Occult Crescent is in shambles and probably will be for the rest of the expansion unless North Horn actually hits it home properly and removes the treadmill because GOD is that treadmill bad in all the ways possible since it forces people to drop communication and we're lacking the system Bozja implemented for joining big encounters.

[SyferU]

Have you ever thought that it could be something as simple as maybe choosing better names for content? Like maybe not naming things EXTREME,SAVAGE,ULTIMATE.
Just change savage to normal and normal to easy mode.

I bet you it would work. If it was Hell on Rails (easy) and Hell on Rails (average) you would have a lot more people do extreme.

[Gwenkatsu]

Somewhere at the end of Endwalker I lost the ability to perform in normal trials and raids. Mechanics get more obscure and bizarre with every new tier, and their obsession with extreme whiteouts forces me to close me eyes longer and longer in every fight (never had this problem in any other game I played, ever). It's no surprise that this does not work good with the modern style of FF14 DDR encounters.

So I'm now officially a carry. When paired with 7 other players that somehow master the mystery to decipher FF14's confusing boss emotes in real time, I can finish normal MSQ content. Paired with 7 other players of my own skill level I could not get anywhere in this game. And I have my doubt that any amount of time I invest into those encounters will make me better at it. Not that I'm willing to invest said time, as this is a game, and Trial/Raid encounters are just zero fun to me.

So no matter how they label any content above normal difficulty, or how much incentive they add to play said content - I'm not gonna bother with it, as I simply cannot do it.

Since I choose to play the game anyway, I'm in no position to demand changes. And of course they can make the hard content as hard as they want, I don't care. But throwing a few breadcrumbs in my direction every now and then would be a nice gesture - instead of just another "oops we made it savage by accident - again, teheheeee" or "we couldn't afford to create another unique mount, so enjoy the eyeglasses we made instead... loser".

[Kaurhz]

I'm going to play neutral here and say that there's enough content... But the content just simply doesn't offer any meaningful replay value.

It would significantly help in normal mode 8-man raid rewarded item level equivalent to non-augmented tomestone, and if alliance raid awarded gear equivalent to the highest item level of that patch....

These two things alone would help greatly, IMO.

[Alicie]

There's literally only 3 savage tiers and 2 ultimates per expansion for high end content. Literally every single other thing is casual.

[Basteala]

I feel like this is the wrong question. I think the right question would be how to get casual players to engage more with difficult content.

That's the neat part...you don't.

Not everyone wants to hop into a Discord call, spend time looking up fights, and literal nights beating their heads against the wall at a set time (sometimes going later), every week, for an occasional shiny. Especially if you're beating your head against the wall because six or seven of you got the mechanics down but one person keeps dragging you down--it doesn't matter if that one person is you or one of your peers. They're both equal measures of frustrating.

I'm an ex prog raider from other MMOs. I grew tired of it. Shit's not fun after a while.

[Ninaran]

I'm an ex prog raider from other MMOs. I grew tired of it. Shit's not fun after a while.

I feel that. Back in the "olden" WoW days about 10 years ago I was going for server-firsts and stuff like that. But that was when I had the time and energy to invest into that kind of stuff. Either looking up tactics, practicing, grinding to prepare..
That's just not me anymore. Not saying it shouldn't still exist, because it absolutely should for people who like it, but there is no way at all for you to get me back into that kind of content. None at all.

Honestly, I'd rather take the risk and consider plugins if the only way to get a cosmetic I really wanted was from a hard raid. Or not get it at all.

[SyferU]

That's the neat part...you don't.

Not everyone wants to hop into a Discord call, spend time looking up fights, and literal nights beating their heads against the wall at a set time (sometimes going later), every week, for an occasional shiny. Especially if you're beating your head against the wall because six or seven of you got the mechanics down but one person keeps dragging you down--it doesn't matter if that one person is you or one of your peers. They're both equal measures of frustrating.

I'm an ex prog raider from other MMOs. I grew tired of it. Shit's not fun after a while.

You are talking about this like every Extreme fight needs the same prog as an Ultimate.
But one thing that is true is Casual players see any type of Inconvenience as a Life shattering event.
Take for example how upset many casuals get when they die in a Dungeon.
It confronts casual players with the reality that sometimes you actually have to try and learn.