Please Allow/Encourage Players to Opt Into Harder Content

[Empyr]

Extreme Roulette would be fun.

[DRKoftheAzure]

Getting people into harder content is not only a gearing problem with how ilvl works, but also a design problem that is intentionally never going to be fixed so long as enrage timers, instant kill mechanics, and uncleanseable debuffs that make it harder to beat the enrage timer to begin with exist in said harder content due to how Final Fantasy XIV is a live service like World of Warcraft.

[Sigma5]

Once again going back to expanding the hall of novice to add like a training roulette, where mentors could join for a better reward to actually help people. would be cool.

[StriderShinryu]

I definitely do feel that a Roulette for the new difficulty tier is pretty much a necessity for it to see any use at all.

That said, I think it's important to keep in mind that there are a lot of players who just don't want to do harder content regardless. It can be for a variety of reasons but it doesn't necessarily matter how many on ramps you put in, how many tutorials you put in, how good the rewards are, etc. because beating challenging content (as in challenging for them) is just not something they're going to be interested in. Some players are just legitimately happy going through the story and hanging out RPing all day, or fishing, or crafting, or decorating a house, or whatever.

[Sigma5]

The ramps should be in there if people wanna use them, and there should be lots of em. Excluding them outright over rpers is wack.

[PeekayTom]

They could make an Extreme roulette, so that it's not just Mentor Roulette supplying them. That would be ideal. In any case, it will be a long time before the Free Trial reaches level 110 and it is a free trial that is meant to have restrictions.

I think an Extreme Roulette would be wonderful. It's Opt-in, and then I could just queue in once a day and see "Ah, what's the experience of the day", and use it to help keep the extreme level rust off. I feel like it'd start out with a lot of ARR trials and then normalize out over time, so those who opt-in would very much be able to acclimate to a DF experience rather than a PF experience.

Agreed but the bigger potential is for them to add Faux Hollows to a random old Extreme trial for doing it Minimum Item Level / Silence Echo, to help people catch up on the sheer amount of rewards there are for it now. It genuinely would take years to get all the Faux Hollows rewards without gil, especially when they are added to over time.

Faux Hollows or Wondrous Tails (or a new third thing!) would be interesting. My thought for WT would be like, "Here's the normal book, and then here's the Advanced Book". Same rewards, but the Advanced has better odds and higher risk. Essentially more opt-in challenges in general.

I'm reading a lot of the responses and I appreciate both the support as well as the meaningful criticism (I'm not sure how opt-in content would affect people who don't want to opt-in!), and I want to share a couple experiences recently I've had for Mentor Roulette. The other day I specifically ran 5 in a row and got Titan EX, Bismarck EX, and Garuda EX. These were not first pull clears; however, upon the wipes, we'd talk, place markers, and make sure we understood before pulling again. No run took longer than 25 minutes. The only friction I genuinely felt in these EX's was another mentor's behavior which amounted to "who cares just do it" when asking how a mechanic worked. That's not very mentor-like, let alone productive or co-operative. I think that new players are willing to learn and capable of learning if we help lift them up, and I think if we treat each other with that same patience and co-operation any of us could clear content easily, if we want to run that content.

Beyond the ideas of Extreme based stuff, it's just also wanting something that can be part of my daily or weekly routine that is as easy as running roulettes but isn't the same 10+ year old dungeon methodology that currently about half of the roulettes will place you into, while two other roulettes will place you into normal difficulty content that gets pushed through easily now. A large number of things could be implemented to address this and that makes me really excited for Evercold, hearing about some of the planned changes. I hope the changes are good and that we all feel more engaged and we all work together a lot more going forward.

Once again going back to expanding the hall of novice to add like a training roulette, where mentors could join for a better reward to actually help people. would be cool.

I actually have been bouncing the idea in my head of a new ARR level dungeon that's Hall of the Novice but with a matched party. It could feature bosses similar to the Executioners from 7.3 or the second boss from Bardam's Mettle, while allowing players to learn these lessons in a group environment. Maybe treat it like Castrum or Prae and put it in MSQ roulette instead of other roulettes. The roulette would reward veteran players and the dungeon could maybe drop non-earring or Second ring type accessories that have EXP or Stat boosts, like the Brand-New Ring does for normal HotN. It could be an interesting addition!

[MayuAmakura]

You want extreme roulette? Go and do mentor daily roulette, that's your extreme right there.

In all seriousness, nobody would like this because we all know that this roulette would prolong for hours before completing it and would frustrate players even more. Mentor roulette was just meant to be as a "fill this gap for people that queue random things", nothing else. All its purpose is to get you into ARR or HW extreme trials (because people queue for this) and then you need to spend miserable hours before the group finally gives up and you realize you have done nothing.

Extremes sadly cannot work that well as normals. They require some knowledge and majority of people queue them blind because they except mentors or someone else to carry them while they sleep on the floor. In my opinion extremes beyond ARR are just not doable that much due to how much knowledge you must gather for safe spots, certain mechanics, before actually managing to do it + clock spots. Pair this with laziness of people and you get a very nice waste of time feature.

[Araxes]

The only thing discouraging people trying hard content is other people.

[Voidmage]

It's simply disinterest.
People don't just ignore hard content because the game doesn't give a reason but because they simply don't want to. That should be respected.
Everyone who wants to do harder content can just do it, there doesn't need to be a roulette for it and tbh, no one would truly use it anyway because Ex fights are enough of a pain already with special PF's for them. You get into, f.e. Golbez Ex after years and good luck with anyone remembering were to stand or how to partner up.
Given the mentality of PF even now with the paranoia of "dead weight", you would only see premade parties queueing up.

We also already have special rewards like unique mounts, glamour and titles behind harder content. If that is not enough to get people to do them, then nothing will.
People have to accept at some point that the majority of players in this game are more casual driven, even in japan.

Here is a hot take:
Before we introduce more reasons to do harder content, the community itself should actually start with being better in PF instead of what we have now and stop delegating everything that needs coordination into Discord.
Then more people might actually show interest.

[Ankhira]

Here is a hot take:
Before we introduce more reasons to do harder content, the community itself should actually start with being better in PF instead of what we have now and stop delegating everything that needs coordination into Discord.
Then more people might actually show interest.

Absolutely. I don't want to join discords to do content I should be able to do without it. On your point of PF, what we'd also need is, in my opinion, people to be more patient, like, ever since EW people's patience has completely dropped off a cliff and everyone is at each others throat for the smallest mistake