I’ve met many players from all over the world and have been hearing requests ...

[KarstenS]

I’ve met many players from all over the world and have been hearing requests for even harder content.

Maybe I did understood it wrong. But as far I remember, these requests were not for making the onliest raid tier harder.

It were more about the baby easy content beside this one single raid tier in the game. In early days (2.0) Amdapor Keep was my favorite dungeon. Also the first crystal tower was fun in my eyes. But every content after that got more and more easy. That is one point the people are complaining about. Its not about the raid. Its about the other content.

People wanted more challanging content. Not make the onliest challanging content even harder.

Other thing:

With Final Coil the people did complain "Are DPS checks all what they got to make Final Coil difficult?"

Its clearly stated: The people didn't wanted harder DPS checks. They requestet to make it more difficult in other ways than DPS checks.

What did we got with Alexander Savage? Hardest DPS checks the game has seen till now. If the DPS checks were around the DPS checks of Coil, I'm pretty shure, the clearrates would be similar to Coil. So the onliest way you did make it harder was to increase the overall DPS performance requirement and nothing else.

Dear Dev Team. Dear Procucer.

Flat listening is not the same as deep listening to the community.

What the community wanted and what you finally did, these two things are far away from each other.

Its the same like with the FATEs. We do not want to grind FATEs and what do we get? More FATE grinding at all.

Please start to listen more carefull to understand, what the community really want.

[Alberel]

Indeed, the vast majority of the playerbase fall into the mid-core grouping of players. For these players most of the content is mind-numbingly easy whilst Savage is simply too difficult. What the game desperately needs is some mid-tier difficulty content that poses a challenge without being frustratingly tough. Yoshi only seems to see in black and white though: there are only good players and bad players, apparently no one in between.

[Canadane]

Did you not take in the context of that line from the letter?
It's like being offered free coffee for life plus ...but you took the deal before they could tell you what else you were getting. Your lawyer wouldn't like you after that!

[Zetsumei_Tsunarashi]

I feel I am a pretty average player. At its core the difficulty level I would enjoy is a level that not everyone can clear easily but doesn't require a static to be able to learn and clear. So far the only content that achieves this balance is the extreme primal fights.

I want more content besides just trials that is on this level.

What I think would be nice is a "extreme" tier of dungeons with more difficulty than current expert roulette that offers a higher tome reward so it's faster to cap your tomes if you're good enough to do this content well.

I remember seeing comments from yoshi-p about the arboretum dungeon having to be toned down in difficulty during development because he thought it was too challenging for everyone to do easily.

Personally it disappoints me to hear that content is being watered down for the masses. At least give us the option to do the real Content, and not only watered down version.

And to the OP's point, yes I agree I think when the community says they want more difficult content, they are really saying they want more (variety) difficult content, not more (increasing) difficulty content.

[ProfBlake]

You know that there are levels of skill in between "mouth breather" and "clearing A4S," right? I realize almost nothing in FFXIV points to the existence of these levels, but I assure you they exist.

I feel like i have to leave this here, this specific post deserves a perfect 10.

[Risvertasashi]

I feel like i have to leave this here, this specific post deserves a perfect 10.

Not only this, but... the people at those fan festivals are likely to be the hardest of the hardcore.

[Ranzan]

Not only this, but... the people are those fan festivals are likely to be the hardest of the hardcore.

yes I was there. Let's just say I felt out of place with all those elites in 1 hall... -_-

[FeliAiko]

What SE wont openly admit, for obvious reasons, is their purpose for Savage being to prevent another week-long clear of content designed to keep people occupied for up to 6 months. So instead we get an angle of "we got feedback saying to make a harder raid (technically true, albeit from a select few; also certainly not one centered around gear and DPS checks) so that's what we did".

[Airget]

Maybe I did understood it wrong. But as far I remember, these requests were not for making the onliest raid tier harder.

It were more about the baby easy content beside this one single raid tier in the game. In early days (2.0) Amdapor Keep was my favorite dungeon. Also the first crystal tower was fun in my eyes. But every content after that got more and more easy. That is one point the people are complaining about. Its not about the raid. Its about the other content.

Content didn't get easier, our IL became to high. First time you entered AK in 2.0 you have maybe IL 45-50 gear, yet by doing AK you would slowly get i60 and i70 gear. Then on top of it weekly you would slowly obtain i90 gear.

Compare the difficulty of content when you do it at i45, or i50, or i60 or i70 or i80 etc etc and it's easy to see how an extra 10 in gear does indeed make content that much easier to manage.

[Tint]

Content didn't get easier, our IL became to high. First time you entered AK in 2.0 you have maybe IL 45-50 gear, yet by doing AK you would slowly get i60 and i70 gear. Then on top of it weekly you would slowly obtain i90 gear.

Compare the difficulty of content when you do it at i45, or i50, or i60 or i70 or i80 etc etc and it's easy to see how an extra 10 in gear does indeed make content that much easier to manage.

exactly this is the problem. and it is a core-problem of the game. all the content wich is not the top-tier raid or probably ex-primals is designed for an ilvl you can reach without any weekly lockouts. so for 3.0 the max ilvl you could reach without weekly lockouts was 180 (with 3.1 it is 190 now. or 210, but i don't think diadem counts xD) and they designed the 3.1 content for that ilvl 180. that means: you can do all the content with your second, third, forth.... class. but it also means you are waaaay overgeared with your mainclass before the content is even released.

i finished both "expert" dungeons from 3.1 in minimum ilvl. and with ilvl 170 they are just perfect. not too hard, not brain-afk-steamroll.

so we have a problem here. if they release this content for ilvl 200 we have the perfect-balanced dungeons we want. but we can't enter them with our 2nd classes. and it seems the people like to play all the classes at the same time...