what would you consider hard content?

[Martin_Arcainess]

Hi all \o I've just been thinking about the future of content *Mainly end game stuff and how T13 was cleared in about a week only or something? So this got me thinking what do you consider or should be taking into thought about what gose into making content hard with a challenge but not to the point of just being unfair?

I think the major thing we should all think of is how accessible is this content to people? I know people still on T5 that can't clear it but also people like a good challenge!

[Sadana]

randomness rather than "team jump rope". Skill and job knowledge > ping/killer latency
stuff like that.

[Jodou]

T13 feels more like a roadblock in terms of "we need to keep raiders busy for a few months until the expansion" than a quality, balanced raid such as one found in WoW. I haven't cleared it myself, we're only on divebombs/adds but the level of stress I feel it puts on our healers/tanks is unnecessary. I would much prefer larger raids with more than four bosses for six months.

Also, allow us to challenge ourselves on older content by soloing it. One of the ways I used to kill time in WoW was seeing if I could solo old dungeons to farm for transmog or rare items. I hope to see this in the expansion. . .

[Renik]

Anything that can't be learned, with more strategy than just pro dancing.

[Martin_Arcainess]

Yeah I wouldn't mind abit of a mix up in some fights, nothing too out of the blue wooo that's just bad RNG there! but something that's abit more open then thus follow this script. It's like when I was farming Shiva EX, she just follows a path, would be nice if say when she gets her Staff out she could cast 2 Hailsorms, just 1 or even 3, randomness like that would be good to add.

[Reokudo]

Like some mentioned, randomness in the fight. Hard is subjective and everyone has their own learning curve. I'd like bosses that you have to actually examine and study their movement to determine what ability they're going to do. Imagine they have a certain ability they use, but their body will have to make a certain movement/spasm/noise etc that alerts you if you paid attention. Didn't pay attention? Well, now you're dead. Yeeeaaah!

[Krr]

Hard content challenges you to play your role well and adapt to disadvantageous or unusual situations while doing so. The amount of rote 'team jump rope or die' memorization in the game lends poorly to this and often gives roles disproportionate burdens to carry.

This gets egregiously exposed when you backtrack to content that's now outscaled by gear. T5 isn't a test of any actual job play ability other than experience in playing Divebomb Divebomb Revolution and T9 is rapidly getting there. This is the source of most 'content walls' in the game - outdated fights that aren't challenging to those who've done them before but still kick pugs in the nads over, and over, and over again for being new.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - it doesn't help that most side-utility skills given to most jobs, especially defensive debuffs for DPS jobs, don't do a damn thing. Even Virus is neutered to hell and back.

[EdwinLi]

Random attacks rather than a attack pattern people memorize.

There was a time when Endgame boss didn't bother to attack in a pattern but attacked using random skill. No matter if you're new or Vet, the random attacks always kept people on guard for anything unpredictable from happening

[Codek]

Elements that they could probably push more for creating difficulty:
- Twitch Reaction (controversial as the higher the difficulty, the more latency is an issue)
- Anticipation
- Awareness
- Execution (They kind of do this enough)
- Resource Management

[Purrfectstorm]

When I think of hard content, I think of content that is hard for an individual to execute perfectly. Content that when you make a mistake it puts a strain on the rest of the group to recover (with the strain getting bigger as the mistakes cascade into an avalanche) but NOT being an insta-wipe. Too many fights in this game require an entire group to play close to perfectly and it's really frustrating when one person is way overgeared AND has utterly mastered a fight that they're still held back by other players.

I think it should be fairly common to wipe on hard content, but that the content should be reasonably beatable within the hour time limit of most duties given a decent level of gear and player skill. I think SE should lean far less on "mechanics" (by this I mean simply, you need to follow a script exactly) and one shot attacks (especially ones that remove a player from a fight, like landslide for example).

If you want a good example of what I consider to be the right degree of difficulty: Ramuh EX. The mechanics are clever (orbs, chaotic strike, etc) and there is room to recover if someone gets KO'ed. There are still one shot mechanics but they don't feel as heavy handed as Titan EX for example. I think most of the EX primals are okay. I enjoy Titan EX with a good group (a rarity) but it's miserable with people who die to weight of the land/landslide (i.e. before the hard part lol).

I used to enjoy first Coil T1-4 but I've gradually given up on Coil and I often do EX primals when they're no longer really relevant, just because the frustration level/toxicity of other players drives me away. For this reason, I would much rather content be gated behind grinds than by difficulty. What I like about offline RPGs is that if you can't beat a boss you can just level up more and/or get better gear. Echo/better gear is not making some of the fights in this game as easy as I'd like.

Easing mechanics or allowing alternate strategies (T2 enrage or Ramuh EX Titan-egi tanking) only serves to make the game more interesting. Mechanics don't have to be boring (I don't think Ramuh EX is boring) and fights don't have to be instantly beatable, but if you go into a fight like Garuda EX with almost double the minimum gear level (i120-i130 vs. i65) AND have echo, then you should win within the hour timer (and thankfully most groups probably can win). However, the same can't be said for a number of other fights where no amount of gear or echo will make a difference.

Now the players who really like a challenge can clear the content when it's fresh (there will always be fresh challenging content) but players unable to clear Titan EX or T5 a year and a half later? I think that's a bit much. Maybe I'm asking for an easier game, sure, why not, that's what I enjoy. I don't think it's fun to beat my head into a wall for hours and not get anywhere. With 8 person content where everyone has to play perfectly, there is too much room to lose because of one person.

TL;DR: Right degree of difficulty: Coil T1-4, EX primals except for Titan. Wrong degree of difficulty: T5, Titan (Note: I've beaten both but still think they're too much even at this point in time).