Is this game too easy?

[Stihllodeing]

Yes they can. Almost all old arcade games were scripted and hard as hell. Ninja gaiden was considered a hard game but every enemy position and attack was scripted. Dark souls, it all comes down to learning the attack pattern of the enemies.

A fight being hard or easy has little to do with it being scripted or not. A fight is hard when the vast majority of the playerbase has huge difficulties with it, that's all.

I agree with this in regards to "scripted fights"

[odintius]

Easy in an online game environment is subjective term, it all depends on the gamer skill, or type of playing style each gamer is different in certain ways people tend to find groups that best fit their personnel type of gaming anything outside that realm is usually scrutinize on either side on the spectrum imo.

[zar]

Being an oldschool MMORPG player, I don't find the game that difficult.
For someone completely new to the genre, it can be overwhelming when the hand holding on to you lets go at endgame. The game doesn't ever tell you how to play your class, what the accuracy cap for a boss is, etc. You have to find that out for yourself. You could be playing your class inefficiently and be completely oblivious to it, and knowing how to efficiently play your class is the first step you should take if you're doing endgame.

[Parz3val]

In certain places yes, in others no.

50-Dungeons are too easy (primarily due to being dead-on-arrival, outgeared on release).

CT/ST is arguably too easy (mostly due to being outgeared on release) though I propose Savage versions of them be released (in the future, preferably simultaneously).

I think Primals (minus Ifrit Extreme) & Binding Coil are tuned impeccably well for their purposes (except that some of the OHKO's could stand to be changed under this difficulty tier, save more of that for Savage Difficulty).

However...

They just need to start supporting 3 difficulties for everything.

Normal/Story > Hard > Extreme/Savage.

Normal/Story ~ leveling or story-progression purposes.

Hard ~ gear-progression or skill-improvement.

Extreme/Savage ~ gear-progression or challenge-mode.

Story Coil is on its way, which I think is a welcome change (I consider the current difficulty to be set to "Hard").

I think Extreme/Savage Tiers should have a strict ilvl sync applied for the sake of balancing around a holistic skill-play approach.

Retired HM Content should eventually have an ilvl sync applied, though incremental & not as strict (in 2.4 they're applying an ilvl 110 sync to virtually all past 50-content which I think is personally a bit too high for some of it though I appreciate it as a first-step).

I don't think the ilvl sync applied to 50-content should exceed 40 ilvl's beyond the minimum requirement.

E.g. Garuda HM is min. 52, cap it at 92 ilvl, etc.

[Whiteprincess]

It really depends on the ppl you play with. You may be one of the best players in the game, but the others players make things hard mode or not.... on easy, mid, hard content. So if its hard content you want.... play with ppl who wont silver spoon feed ya all the wins =P

[Sheele]

This is a rough estimate from my experience. Assuming a sample of 20 people:
1 to 3 will have cleared t9 and claim to easy.
4 to 6 will be between t6 and t9 and claim fair.
9 or so people will be at titan ex/t5 unable to clear, claim to hard.
Any one else is has not progressed far enough, or has payed for a clear, so omitted from estimate.

[Mugiawara]

Games difficult when there's people who can get it together after 5,000 wipes.
I mean, I learned after about 3,500 wipes sheeeessshhh.

[Hyrist]

Balmung has the advantage of a fairly dedicated and open community with lots of competent and patient people in it. Finding people within party Finder to Learn a fight in that server is not as trying an affair as on one of the less populated servers. Many people will give it multiple gos before getting it down and even when the party does not succeed, clear progress from all players does seem to be made. This is a credit to the server's community and not conducive to a classic example of what happens in the wider game.

Using Duty Finder directly is a shot in the dark and can lead to great frustration. Other servers are less populated and therefore do not always generate the appropriate learning parties to help catch people up.

The game's difficulty is as much dependent on its community than it is the fights themselves, which are very technical, but simple once memorized. The difficulty lies in reliable execution which is not universally achievable by every or even your average player.

A fight that must be practiced repetitively to get down, is not easy, and Coil and some Primals are strong examples of fights that require practice to get down.

Now, I am in support of some more randomized fights, but if so, there has to be a significant lowering of the Instant-Kill conditions within said fight. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed Stone Vigil Hard's last boss fight and would love to see more of that, with upped complexity and difficulty.

[dvoraen]

To answer the question in the topic: No...if you do the Second Coil.

What's my evidence? The number of party finder groups claiming Turn 7 (and/or 9) kills that can't make it to the final phase. I'm not kidding when I say in just this past week, I joined no less than five (5!) different Turn 7 "kill" groups and only one ever made it to Prosector's appearance out of all of their attempts. None of these groups were successful.

Paying attention to what's going on is too hard for some people.

[Nutz]

There are a lot of conflicting opinions, but I'd say the game can be difficult, but mostly at endgame. Some of the leveling dungeons are a bit more of a challenge than the level 50 ones due to overgearing (levelling dungeons have level sync with a maximum of +3 -- so a level 20 dungeon can be run at no higher than 23).

Most everything is tightly scripted, though some things are a bit looser. Those more loosely scripted items are what tend to kill people the most, though there is a mechanic in turn 2 that has no system side variables at all that most players just avoid entirely because a mistake on the part of any player will kill everyone.

Most of the people here saying that the game is too easy are of the opinion that something can't be considered hard if being good at it means you'll almost always win. It doesn't seem to matter that most people are not good at it, just that fact that there's a way to win 100% of the time means that it's easy.

As others have said, learning a fight to the point where you almost never make a mistake takes a fair amount of time, and of course there are 7 other people with you. Because most mechanics require the attention of several or even all players, 1 person messing up can end a run. Sometimes you'll find the same person screwing up every time and the fix is obvious. Other times you'll see that player 1 dies like once in 5 attempts, while player 2 dies once in 7, and player 3 dies 3 out of 8 attempts. All of these players are getting it right most of the time, but unless their successes are in sync with each other you're going nowhere.

Of course a player getting hit by an AoE or something isn't all that can go wrong. If you fail to meet DPS checks, for example, figuring out why can be a headache given the lack of in game parser and the fact that nobody's going to raise their hand and tell you that they were playing poorly.

TLDR; you can get very far on mostly easy content. Endgame is much harder due to stricter mechanics and the fact that there are 7 other people dancing with you.