the normal content is too easy

[WildTamarind]

@eraden

Think the new trust system helps you? My wish for the game is that people who want easy can have two options. One is that you can advertise people to carry you which comes with uts own challenges but still possible and two being able to solo msq and dungeons with trusts where even if with trusts its challenging at least the solo playstyle lets you complete it at your own pace. And to make non trusts harder by allowing bosses to actually live past 5 minutes.

[Eraden]

@eraden

Think the new trust system helps you? My wish for the game is that people who want easy can have two options. One is that you can advertise people to carry you which comes with uts own challenges but still possible and two being able to solo msq and dungeons with trusts where even if with trusts its challenging at least the solo playstyle lets you complete it at your own pace. And to make non trusts harder by allowing bosses to actually live past 5 minutes.

The trusts definitely help. However not all trials can be done with trusts. Some are solo and the Venat fight was so packed with mechanics that it took me several days and countless attempts to try and get it done. I had to wait for a time when my condition was at it's least in order to even have a chance. That was done on the easiest mode as well. I realize I am something of an outlier here, but so far, the game has been playable for me with the options at hand. To make all of the content more difficult would almost guarantee that I would no longer be able to play, as access to new zones is locked behind the MSQs (my preferred playstyle in this game is gathering).

[WildTamarind]

@eraden well I dont want to it to come to that where you cant play. But I do want it to be harder. I feel trusts should be current difficulty and non trusts should be difficulty when the content was new or maybe a little harder.

[Colt47]

It's an MMO. Not Darksouls Elden Ring. Play Savage if you're bored, or do something else. MMO's have to be accessible for the casual crowd if they want money.

Going and playing something else is always an option, but it's not really answering or solving the issue and neither is savage. Final Fantasy XIV has had a difficulty problem for a long time due to the patch cycle and how gear progression works. It's just a known weakness that once someone starts gearing above the baseline that was utilized when balancing content they are going to overpower things faster than intended. This especially becomes problematic once the mid expansion patch hits, since at that point there's only a small subset of content that is built for the gear level being tossed around on players.

Now Savage is on a completely different ballpark than "normal content". If anything savage has a community problem born from the way loot and lockouts are handled combined with a lack of reward for providing aid to those who have not cleared. There's a lot of positive reinforcement systems that can make progression rewarding, yet for some reason the game designers of this style of MMO just feel it's far too "risky", or perhaps they just don't have any idea how to implement them. This combined with the extreme leap in difficulty makes savage content sort of unsuitable for the vast majority of players. Imagine how much better savage would be if people who have cleared can go back at the end of the week and get points towards an extra book for helping new players, without locking them out of an extra chest.

[Kaurhz]

@eraden well I dont want to it to come to that where you cant play. But I do want it to be harder. I feel trusts should be current difficulty and non trusts should be difficulty when the content was new or maybe a little harder.

Or, hear me out on this wild idea. They could just create an entirely separate system at the end-game that caters between normal and extreme, without relying on methods that result in creating difficulty at the expense of taking away from the multiplayer experience for individuals that aren't as adequate, yet still, seek a multiplayer experience.

It should be a case of. If you wish to do harder content that sits at a tier between normal and extreme, as a way of preparing you for said content then you should be able to do so simply by developing another difficulty. It should not be a case of: Well if you can't do the content, or if you want to play easier then you should be relegated to a single-player experience.

I sympathize, really. But relegating people who want to play easier or have a more relaxed experience shouldn't be relegated to a single-player experience. It's not really a good methodology or approach to adopt. Why not simply reincorporate what they did with ARR(?) Optional hard-mode dungeons/trials, albeit scaled a little higher aren't tied to the story at all.

[Jin-]

If a new game came out and the reviews stated "Easiest game ever, requires no effort, you can clear this without knowing what you're doing at all!", that would probably be a rather low review and most people would avoid that game since it sounds boring.

Yet in MMOs people defend that to the death. I get the feeling the players who love extremely easy content are the type of players who run through things with cheat codes. That's what FF14 is, a single player rpg with cheat codes enabled most of the way.
We're also stuck in this strange cycle where easy gameplay has resulted in the game becoming dull roulette chores every day, but now we fear difficulty because it might make those chores take more time and we hate them. We've ended up so far from just running dungeons for the challenge and fun of running dungeons.

I remember good old times when me and my bro would just spam Ultima Ballad roulette because it was fun and had challenge. Now i don't play any of the content since it's dull and boring after you have done it for the first time. Like you said, quick daily and hope it ends quick.

[ForteNightshade]

He's decided that we all want untelegraphed and unpredictable mechanics. You can move goalposts around and claim that this is casual play, but many casual players feel otherwise. That's what this entire thread is about.

... did you intentionally read what you wanted to here? Because that isn't even close to what nick said. Even taking this at face value, you're simply arguing the opposite extreme. Regardless, they weren't asking for everything to untelegraphed and unpredictable but for more variety in mechanic execution and difficulty. How often do the devs reuse stuff like Clock spots and Stack/Spread? In fact, nearly every Savage fight last tier had some version of those two mechanics.

Nevertheless, putting all that aside. Nothing that nick said would be classified as "hardcore". Once again, this is simply arguing in extremes. Hence my example regarding healers. Asking for higher outgoing damage or more DPS buttons isn't makes neither the game nor role "hardcore". It's simply asking for it to be relevant. When current dungeon design is so woefully undertuned, three of the four tanks don't even need a healer to survive. Asking for more engaging gameplay isn't demanding the game suddenly become "hardcore".

[WildTamarind]

@kaurhz

Yea no. The foundation of my arguments are that the extremely low difficulties of leveling in this game were never intentional. They were a side effect of end game dps adjustments. The goal for me is to make sure i dont have friends who are new players quit on me becaise Ifrit died like a punk in 3 minutes.

[IdowhatIwant]

Sounds like you should just go play something else. Ya'll complain about content all the time, but have no idea just how good this game has it with always getting content on a consistent schedule. It may not cater to what YOU want, but content is content and pretty much none of the MMO's out there release consistent content updates every 3-4 months. Hell, even WoW goes for over a year before any real updates occur.

Why do you losers always tell people to quit over criticism. You are assuming I want a specific type of content being raid content. But I never said that I just want content with longevity and not forced longevity like weekly lock out gates. When you throw out that people are asking for content to cater to them when no one has mentioned that and tell them to quit, that's just straight gaslighting.
I have played since ARR and seen this game drop much better content than it has been in the past couple expansions.

The game bring so many people just for the story and they just dont want to learn the game so everything is made for them to be able to do it.

This is the ultimate issue, and the player count reflects this immensely. This right here in actuality is no different than catering towards a hard core player type. When you have an MMO and focus on any one aspect you alienate other players. This game has two peaks for the player base, new expansion launches, and the final expansion patches. A large majority of players get the expansion, go through the MSQ, and quit until the last patch to do all the new MSQ stuff in one go. If you don't see that as a problem for an online video game than I don't know what to tell you, but it shows me there's a lack of engaging / interesting content that players would bother to resub for outside of this MSQ.

[SieyaM]

Except nobody is asking for FFXIV to be "hardcore" focused. This is a constant strawman people love to bring up whenever someone remotely suggests the game is simply too easy. There's such a thing as a middle ground between easier content and baby's first MMO. FFXIV falls into the latter category where the game is almost impossible to fail until level 70. And even then, remains incredibly easy. Healers asking for more engaging gameplay, be it in the form of additional DPS abilities or higher outgoing damage, aren't asking for the game to become hardcore. They want something to do besides spam one button.

People keep asking for these two things but I don't think it will have the effect people think it will. More damage abilities will still leave you feeling like you're not doing anything but running the same 2 or 3 button rotation ad nauseum and increasing the outgoing damage will just turn you into a GCD heal spamming bot instead. Right now most healers already use their oGCD abilities on a schedule so adding more damage will make them dip into GCD heals more often, but will that really be the engagement they want? For healers what they need is a redesign of either the kit or the encounter, their kit needs to have some kind of interaction instead of all these independent abilities or an encounter that is not scripted and timed so strictly.