the normal content is too easy

[SnowVix]

Stuns are interrupts. Can't think of any game I've played where a stun is not considered an interrupt.

Literally this game. Stuns and Interrupts are different game mechanics.

But when since early coil have I ever needed to Interupt anything??

Puppets' Bunker, giant crab add in Shisui, ghost add at the end of Ghost Barque (and if you don't interrupt that one you're actively screwing over everyone), scattered adds in other dungeons.

It's a skill that's absolutely useless in 99% of content.and in the small amount of content where an interrupt has been required shield bash or something usually does the job...

so you just ignore Interject because you've never had a WHM in a dungeon?

It's like how many healers don't even slot esuna on there bars these days. Because debunks either can't be cleansed at all. Or are cleansed a different way. Like a full heal cleanses dooms. Or they drop off in 4 seconds anyway.so by the time you finish your current glare / broil / whatever the debuff has dropped off anyway so pointless casting esuna.

tell me you've never played a healer without saying it.

[Dzian]

tell me you've never played a healer without saying it.

you've lost me here..

but most debuffs that ive seen recently either A: cant be cleansed. B require a full heal to remove, or C are either incredibly weak or just dont last long enough to waste a cast on an esuna.. a poison effect thats dropping less than 1% of your hp every 3 seconds is honestly just not worth a gcd.

I mean I honestly wish it was different but then that would make it "too hard" and the devs really dont wantt that..

The same goes with the interupts generally... dumbed down so much that it really doesnt matter... heaven forbid a player was punished for missing one.... which is kind of the point of the thread i think..

though i am retty sure most of thos e examples you did mention can be interupted with a shield bash or equivelant.. i forgett he name of warriors but apparantly it got removed anyway. havent played warrionr for a long time.

There's 64 dungeons, 14 guildhests, 77 trials 109 raids thats 264 pieces of content. plus a few i havent unlocked yet. oh and bozja.
How many of those need skills like interupts... it's a very small percentage... which means a large percentage of the time they're useless or incredibly "niche". and ultimately just bloat..

[Deveryn]

If you want the content to be more challenging, try running it at min ilvl. It's funny how people will complain about the ease of the game, yet they will always make sure they and everyone around them run the absolute best gear. Join the sprouts on their level for a bit and play around in sets of gear that don't let you go wall to wall.

Aside from that, the game is actually not "easy". If it truly were and people were able to play half asleep, we wouldn't have megathreads about PF and roulettes, going over all the silliness that happens.

[AnotherPerson]

If you want the content to be more challenging, try running it at min ilvl. It's funny how people will complain about the ease of the game, yet they will always make sure they and everyone around them run the absolute best gear. Join the sprouts on their level for a bit and play around in sets of gear that don't let you go wall to wall.

Aside from that, the game is actually not "easy". If it truly were and people were able to play half asleep, we wouldn't have megathreads about PF and roulettes, going over all the silliness that happens.

Ah yes, let me run Duty Finder content at Min ILVL for my daily roulettes.
What's this? I'm not allowed to queue for Duty Finder Roulette at Min ILVL? Blasphemy. "Let me just ask everyone to get worse gear just to make it more fun for me even if they're not bored." - Deveryn

As you can tell, that's naturally rude to ask someone to wear worse gear. You can't dictate nor ask people to do wear worse gear because that no longer respects people's time and fun for that level of content. The point of RPG is always progression, may it be for character gear or player skill - and in return, you get rewards for that content. Telling someone to not wear their best gear when they didn't sign up for min ILVL content simply for that reward doesn't work. It's also a self-imposed challenge, not a challenge that naturally exists like Extreme or Savage, so there's very little incentive in doing so outside of wanting the experience, as people are just doing more work for the same gain. Not only that, but even at min ILVL, normal mode content simply have repeat mechanics that players have all seen before. There's nothing difficult or new even if you are at min ILVL as long as you are aware of the mechanics. Auto attacks still barely chip the tank as they're not designed to be difficult for normal mode, even with bad gear.

There's no in-between for Normal and Extreme level content either for those who cannot afford the time to do Extreme or Savage and yet find Normal Mode to be too easy. That's the biggest issue for many players who want to feel more engaged too.

And Frankly, yes, I can literally play half asleep when I'm healing on normal content. If healers weren't able to play half asleep, we wouldn't have a 100+ page thread about lack of healing engagement because we'd be constantly pre-occupied with healing (but this goes for all modes of content, not just purely normal mode). I literally want people to go pull wall to wall or else I'll fall asleep from a lack of things to do other than pressing my single attack button over and over again until the instance is over, and I've said this even before I had better gear. This is what happens due to healers being so heavily focused on healing and everyone has some form of utility to help with damage mitigation, but the incoming damage is very sparse. No one needs healing in normal content beyond 1-2 buttons to fix their wounds for the next 30 seconds. The only ones who do are usually just the tank when it's a wall to wall pull, but even then -- if you have a WAR tank, you still don't need to GCD heal at all. That should tell you how lacking normal mode content is for healer engagement when you're still spending 90% of the fight pressing 1111111111 regardless of min ILVL or not.

[ForteNightshade]

snip

First and foremost, why in the world are you correlating the hardest Savage fight in the game's history, which was horribly imbalanced, with ilvl cheesing Alliance Roulette? Those two things are on different planets. We're not talking about going into old Savage fights with hilariously better gear and rolf-stomping them, we're talking about Alliance raids and you citing that people cheese the ilvl out of fear Dun Scaith or Orbonne are too difficult. That simply isn't the case. And I've explained why. There is zero incentive to do those raids when they give the same rewards if your only goal is EXP. All in takes is one person taking off their gear to trap 23 players. They aren't doing it because Tower or Copy Factory are hard, they're doing it because both those raids take 30 minutes while LotA takes 15. Bringing up A4S, Shinryu or anything else is just one massive Strawman that comically misses the point being made.

Moving on from that, the onus on how to balance this is on the dev team to make reward structures better to at least equalize participation. A good chunk of people dislike Bozja or simply like Ivalice or Nier. If the EXP or tome rewards are disproportionally one-sided, then they should be adjusted. The problem is, they never do this. Hence why older content ends up rotting.

My main question for you really, is you mention it not being blisteringly difficult, which I think is a given. But what is your difficulty?

While my personal preference would see the Normal mode raids a step down from current Extremes; with both Zodiark and Hydaelyn being higher considering both are so undertuned you don't even need a healer, I'd settle for a proper level sync where we're roughly equivalent to the ilvl we were when the content was relevant. For example sake, at the time of Weeping City's release, the highest ilvl obtainable was 240. Therefore, it should sync us to 240. Perhaps even 230 if they don't want to adjust job balance at this level range. Admittedly, I'd prefer if the devs actually cared about some job balance when synced but either scenario works.

My overall take is current expansion content should have some modicum of challenge. Take the tank swap debuff in E4N I mentioned. While this shouldn't kill the tank outright, it should deal enough damage they'll take quite a beating if they don't swap. In this way, it's actually teaching players a mechanic instead of it being utterly pointless.

If you want the content to be more challenging, try running it at min ilvl. It's funny how people will complain about the ease of the game, yet they will always make sure they and everyone around them run the absolute best gear. Join the sprouts on their level for a bit and play around in sets of gear that don't let you go wall to wall.

Aside from that, the game is actually not "easy". If it truly were and people were able to play half asleep, we wouldn't have megathreads about PF and roulettes, going over all the silliness that happens.

In just this expansion alone, I have done every dungeon, on every role, at min ilvl. I've solo'd Hermes in full i530 gear on both WAR and GNB. I've done all the Normal modes at min ilvl. In fact, I did them with a hodgepodge of 560 gear. Needless to say, they're all a complete joke. So yes, the game is incredibly easy. We have those threads because people are inexperienced or downright lazy not due to the game being hard. Having no idea how to play Black Mage doesn't suddenly make P1N any more of a faceroll that Warrior can solo. That's simply making excuses for people who didn't bother to learn how to play Black Mage.

[Jojoya]

In just this expansion alone, I have done every dungeon, on every role, at min ilvl. I've solo'd Hermes in full i530 gear on both WAR and GNB.

That is you. Can every player do it? No.

A lot of players can't manage to figure out how to avoid mechanics to the point I spend a significant amount of time during hunt trains rezzing the same players over and over (even when there's only 20-30 present so someone can't use the "I couldn't see anything because too many players are here" excuse). It's always not a lag issue - I can tell whether they're lagging based on how long they stay faded in my party frames after accepting a rez.

Not everyone comes equipped the same skill level, and years of experience do make a difference. You might have entered into Endwalker with 8 years of experience under your belt but others were entering with only 8 days.

[Eraden]

That is you. Can every player do it? No.

A lot of players can't manage to figure out how to avoid mechanics to the point I spend a significant amount of time during hunt trains rezzing the same players over and over (even when there's only 20-30 present so someone can't use the "I couldn't see anything because too many players are here" excuse). It's always not a lag issue - I can tell whether they're lagging based on how long they stay faded in my party frames after accepting a rez.

Not everyone comes equipped the same skill level, and years of experience do make a difference. You might have entered into Endwalker with 8 years of experience under your belt but others were entering with only 8 days.

Some of us also have physical disabilities (such as Parkinson's disease in my case) that prevent us from being able to master harder content. I do not know what specifically these proponents for "more challenging content" are calling for, but if it were to result in the level of difficulty being raised across the board, I might not be able to play this game anymore.

[Serious-Cat]

Looking at ffcollect, the desire for difficult/high end content isn't really that high. Even "easy" high end content like Alexander (Savage) right now only have 52% completion and lesser the closer it is to current expansion.

https://ffxivcollect.com/achievements/types/1

I think most ff14 players play for the story. 85% completed endwalker vs 11% completion of current raid tier

https://ffxivcollect.com/titles?q%5B...=shadowbringer
https://ffxivcollect.com/titles?q%5B...t%5D=endwalker

Doubt there will be any real impact on game population health if MSQ/Normal level content difficulty is ramped up or not but the stats show that most ff14 players aren't that about playing a game because its difficult or easy but treating it as another rpg in the ff series.

For now I guess anyone can manipulate the difficulty setting and find like minded people via pf to enjoy the game this way tho

[Fourbestintoner]

Unfortunately the game's community has only become worse over the years, a consequence of dumbing down everything and making sure no one ever learn anything, there is no turning back.

[Jin-]

People here actually report other people pointing out that they refuse to put any effort in to learning anything.

GCBTW