A little scared of the future

[Ifrinne]

I have been at final fantasy ever since 3.1 was just out and generally tend to take time on content, prefering more to replay older stuff than to charge right into new stuff. Sure because i have many characters and love HW. Anyhow! In SB, and sure in 4.4 dungeon difficulty seems to have shot up lots and i was in continuous panic mode to say in the burn final boss. If this trend continues, i feel people more and more may be discouraged from the game. (Im not talking about ones who: do raids, 24man content, savage or extreme) or become locked in only doing older content. The burn isnt the only one that seems harder than what one would expect of casual stuff but its a big spike.

[Sigma-Astra]

Will I admit that the DPS check on the Mist Dragon is tighter than usual? Yes.

Is it as huge of a difficulty spike as you're getting at? No.

Casual players need to stop relying on dungeons where they can lay dead on the floor for the entire fight so long as 2-3 people know what they're doing.

Relax. It's not that bad.

[MoroMurasaki]

If you made it through The Vault as a healer then the burn shouldn't really be something to concern yourself with. It's certainly a bit harder than the other dungeons we've seen lately but every expansion has a few dungeons that are a bit tougher. You'll be okay.

[Ifrinne]

Well. I did do it. And we did not wipe. But i was harshly surprised by the AoE output of that boss. Its not the mechanics thats the trick. But those AoE bursts. Try healing that when everyone is all over the field. You are usually chanceless to keep all alive.

[Valkorian]

I think it is personality to that end as well. some of us don't mind losing at first, it helps us learn it. with the two new dungeons, my buddies and i tried them without reading anything so we could learn it ourselves. if you want a tank to help and is friendly and won't rage hit me up, i'll help people cross world.

[Ifrinne]

It was at the limit of what i could take and not only me has said to be more stressful than fun for a dungeon. How will 4.5 be and further if this trend continues. 5.x with difficulties of 3.x savage content?

[MoroMurasaki]

I get that you don't do savage so you may not know as much about it but 3.x Savage is actually more difficult than 4.x Savage, just something to keep in mind.

Also people die sometimes in dungeons, it's okay. If the BRD is off in Narnia not catching any healing that's on them.

Just seems like you're overreacting. You didn't even wipe. I did that dungeon within a few minutes of the servers coming back up and we didn't know what to expect and wiped once on the dragon. It's okay to wipe. Get back up and think about what you learned.

[Vidu]

One thing you should consider here is that currently a lot of people arent outgearing The Burn, which adds to the difficulty of the dungeon - I'm seeing far to many people with ilvl300 weapons or outdated gear in there, because they either stopped playing for a while or rushed in there from the mainstory. Given time, more and more people will extremly outgear the content though, making mechanics and the like a joke again.

However, I'm not sure if I agree or disagree with you - because I'm not sure what the problem you're adressing is, since there are two options:

Option 1:
The problem is the sudden jump in difficulty, the big spike as you called it.
I would agree with that - the game needs to do a much better job at increasing the difficulty slowly and step by step and make it more of a smooth curve, leading from the first guildhest all the way up to Savage and Ultima, instead of having both big and small jumps in it like it does now - Shinryu NM and The Burn for "casual" content and then the actual bigger jump from a the NM of a primal into the extreme version.

Option 2:
The game is becoming to difficult. Period.
I dont agree with that - while (story) dungeons should obviously never reach the complexity of a Savage fight, they should also not always stay the same boring, faceroll-easy content. Personally I quite enjoyed The Burn, because while not a real challenge, it was at least not something I slept through.
I understand that content that easy for me might be a real challenge for someone else - but again, thats why I would agree with Option 1 and the idea that the game needs to do a better job at teaching people and slowly increasing the difficulty of content. Not doing that, keeping the content stale and boring, is just as hurtful for the game as the jumps in difficulty we're seeing now.

We need more content that challenges people at least a little bit - but we although need a better path to guide us towards this kind of content.
Shinryu and Mistdragon arent "roadblocks" because they're actually complicated fights, but because we're not used to having fights in which our performance actually matters in storycontent - and thats the issue here.
I'd rather wipe once or twice during a dungeon-boss than get passed it by everyone only hitting three buttons. But since thats enough right now, we cant go to having to press all 20 buttons you have - we need to start with 6, then 10 and so on...

So, yes, please - more difficult content, but better leads towards that!

[Ifrinne]

Option 1 there... the spike. And the fear this trend will continue. If theyd scale it. And made this like the end of 4.x like they did in 3.5 then i could see the difficulty. 4.3 had a trail already that i havent even done once again cause its just intense. (Beaten it with 2 chars) my ilvl wasnt bad. i352 with weapon at 350. So yea. My words to SE. Please get your foot off that difficulty accelerator. And dont take away content mainly aimed at the more casuals.

[MoroMurasaki]

*looks around at practically the entire game*

Yes, casuals sure do have to worry about SE not catering to them xD