Why is FFXIV considered to be so hard/hardcore?

[Eclipsed]

Just a question I have been struggling to understand since launch...

So many people consider Coil to be impossible to get a group for and incredibly difficult. People struggle on extreme primals for months... Etc.. Etc..

Personally I have never understood it, nor have I seen an MMO community with this kind of fear of the content.

I have played virtually ever major MMO, and most minors of note. I have seen a lot of communities and a lot of different kinds of content/dungeons/raiding. But never until this game have I seen the difficulty of the raids being discussed so often in guild or on the forums. People I came here from Rift with, people who beat pre-nerf Akilyos and Hamerknell (which were on a magnitude of difficulty a thousand times harder than anything in FFXIV. Think 10 times the mechanics and fail conditions, you even had to do platforming jumps and dodging without telegraphs in the fight!) tremble in fear of FFXIV.

Personally I don't understand... I look at this in comparison to that, and this content is a cakewalk. Even WoW LFR raids have content that I would consider more difficult than FFXIV. So what is it? What makes these raids so much more intimidating and hard than any other MMO that has been on the market? Why are so many people here unable to clear content, when they have always done so in the past?

[Sygmaelle]

I honestly never found WoW to be any hard on the raiding content, on the other hand I find this game to be more challenging on a pure timing point of view. Its still nowhere close to the game I beloved when content wasn't nerfed, aka Age of Conan (had the hardest PvE I've personnally experienced, very subjective statement here, don't throw rocks tyvm ;D ) that had incredibly complex mechanics in raid on top of an already pretty deep combat / game system.

But still i'm slightly off topic : this game is really exigeant on a pure "timing" point of view and even if you dont have a lot of actions, its executin it all within limited timeframes (before the next pattern come up) that is pretty interesting and definitely enjoyable in FF XIV.

I'd say that people are simply not beein "taught" in the good way. If you look at it, all these video guides and whatnot can be pretty intimidating for anyone that would want to give a shot to the endgame experience, because even if its recommandable enough to have guides, its still not the good way to teach people and make them confident enough in order to simply go for it.

[Moheeheeko]

Its not difficult, this is just a massive case of the "first MMO syndrome"

I laugh at every thread talking about how unforgiving crafting is when I still have nightmares about crafting in other MMO's

[Raminax]

I laugh at every thread talking about how unforgiving crafting is when I still have nightmares about crafting in other MMO's

This line reminds me of the Hot Heart of Magic/Shining Statue of Siel in Aion. *sniff* Oh, the pain.

And well, I suppose it's a combination of the average skill level of players and that personal failures usually lead to dangerous amounts of collateral damage in the tougher encounters. Unless you're in a static or befriend skilled people that caught your interest while PUGing, it's more than likely that your progress is essentially reset every single time you join a new group. At this point, I'd imagine apathy/fear sets in and people just stop caring/trying, because they believe they'll never get anywhere. :P Kind of apparent with the amount of groups that want experienced players (experienced in eating Landslides, maybe), I guess!

[Clicked]

Meh. FF games have never been particularly difficult if you grind enough.

[Moheeheeko]

This line reminds me of the Hot Heart of Magic/Shining Statue of Siel in Aion. *sniff* Oh, the pain.

Exactly. Oh whats that? you failed a bunch of materia melds? cost you a few million? Hot Heart Of Magic cost the equivalent of a LARGE house in this game, and lots of people failed 10+ times.

[Kazama]

This line reminds me of the Hot Heart of Magic/Shining Statue of Siel in Aion. *sniff* Oh, the pain.

Oh god, and even that was a cakewalk in comparison to Balic crafts. I finally made myself a 55 Eternal Balic Staff and by then my Legendary was already +10 so I sold it for 900m Kinah. FFXIV you can level any craft to 50 in a day and then craft anything in the game the same day, granted to reliably HQ it you need all of the jobs but 2 per week is pretty damn quick. Again, everything in XIV is designed for casual players and newcomers to the genre.

[Amberyl]

This line reminds me of the Hot Heart of Magic/Shining Statue of Siel in Aion. *sniff* Oh, the pain.

This.

(10 chars)

[TheRogueX]

Its not difficult, this is just a massive case of the "first MMO syndrome"

I laugh at every thread talking about how unforgiving crafting is when I still have nightmares about crafting in other MMO's

Lineage II: My D-grade Tarbar required me to hunt down 128 pieces of Steel, 128 Cokes, 64 pieces of High Grade Suede, 430 Crystal: D Grade (obtained only by destroying other D grade items), and 139 Gemstone D (expensive vendor goods). Oh, and did I mention that I also had to have 7 Tarbar heads (wtf was the rest of the crap for???)?

The drop rates on these items, btw, were like 1/120, 1/240, 1/350 or worse. Only one race could craft. Higher level items had to have two copies of the recipe, as one was used up in the crafting process.

You want to see hard with tons of one shots :

Akilyios (Rift): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=662OoYUvgwE

There is nothing in FFXIV that even comes close to the difficulty of that fight. But yet we pugged it hundreds of times.

Haha, that video would have been fun to watch, but man... too much clutter on the screen and giant numbers popping up on top of the action. I really hate raiders who think they need all that crap in the way.

[Edli]

Lineage II: My D-grade Tarbar required me to hunt down 128 pieces of Steel, 128 Cokes, 64 pieces of High Grade Suede, 430 Crystal: D Grade (obtained only by destroying other D grade items), and 139 Gemstone D (expensive vendor goods). Oh, and did I mention that I also had to have 7 Tarbar heads (wtf was the rest of the crap for???)?

The drop rates on these items, btw, were like 1/120, 1/240, 1/350 or worse. Only one race could craft.

That's just time consuming. I have played L2 and it was difficult the way Facebook games are difficult if you don't pay for coins. What I remember from the game was sitting in one spot and killing the same mobs all day over and over again. The process itself wasn't challenging, just time consuming. If you lost your weapon by enchanting it be ready to go back and kill those same mobs for one more month. It challenged my sanity that's for sure.