the normal content is too easy

[Ronduwil]

What ever happened to the final fantasy of old, where people had to actually practice and grind fights to clear them?

Think about that. What happened to the turn based strategy game where you could either:
1. Exploit your enemy's weaknesses and come up with overpowered combos to clear it at low level
2. Overwhelm it through brute force by grinding for levels first

I'll tell you what happened. That style of play became obsolete because in this day and age, the fights would be crowdsourced within hours, and the solutions to each boss would be widely available in a matter of days. Extreme and Savage content isn't mentally stimulating. It's a combination of rote memorization and practiced muscle memory. It's a matter of repeating the same actions over and over again until you can do them on autopilot. It's the exact opposite of mentally stimulating, and it doesn't have widespread appeal, which is why it's relegated to savage and extreme content. If SE wants to stop this game's unprecedented growth, they should follow your suggestion. Thankfully, I'm pretty sure they'll do the right thing and stay the current course.

There is a difference between being "casual friendly" and downright childs play. The game has become the latter.

It hasn't become that; it always was that. Video games in general are child's play. Rather than demanding that kiddie activities evolve into adult activities to suit your preferences, you're better off seeking out productive challenges at your school and/or workplace. When I read posts like these, I imagine someone standing on top of the jungle gym at the neighborhood playground protesting that it should be demolished to make way for a nightclub. If you don't like normal mode, then only do it on your way to unlocking savage. Please quit complaining that the rest of us are having our preferences met.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Think about that. What happened to the turn based strategy game where you could either:
1. Exploit your enemy's weaknesses and come up with overpowered combos to clear it at low level
2. Overwhelm it through brute force by grinding for levels first

I'll tell you what happened. That style of play became obsolete because in this day and age, the fights would be crowdsourced within hours, and the solutions to each boss would be widely available in a matter of days. Extreme and Savage content isn't mentally stimulating. It's a combination of rote memorization and practiced muscle memory. It's a matter of repeating the same actions over and over again until you can do them on autopilot. It's the exact opposite of mentally stimulating, and it doesn't have widespread appeal, which is why it's relegated to savage and extreme content. If SE wants to stop this game's unprecedented growth, they should follow your suggestion. Thankfully, I'm pretty sure they'll do the right thing and stay the current course.


It hasn't become that; it always was that. Video games in general are child's play. Rather than demanding that kiddie activities evolve into adult activities to suit your preferences, you're better off seeking out productive challenges at your school and/or workplace. When I read posts like these, I imagine someone standing on top of the jungle gym at the neighborhood playground protesting that it should be demolished to make way for a nightclub. If you don't like normal mode, then only do it on your way to unlocking savage. Please quit complaining that the rest of us are having our preferences met.

Oh come on, it wasn’t always that. Aurum Vale second boss didn’t used to have telegraphs, now it does. Dungeons in past expansions weren’t full of single pack only pulls, this expansion is. Jobs were never as simplified as they are now. Healers used to have multiple dots and things to actually upkeep, now they don’t. It was never always that. Your “preferences” come at the cost of other peoples enjoyment. What really should be happening is there being a middle ground for everyone so everyone can enjoy, but that isn’t happening. SE is only appeasing one side and not the other. Just look at the many people critiquing the devs for their recent job changes. Look at the over what is it? 300 pages of healer criticism because healer is objectively the least fun and engaging role in the game.

[Ronduwil]

Oh come on, it wasn’t always that. Aurum Vale second boss didn’t used to have telegraphs, now it does.

It was always that, but it was poorly designed. You're complaining that the game's design improved. There's a difference between intelligence and ignorance. Wiping with a party of new players because the boss unexpectedly unleashed massive damage with no warning is not enjoyable, IMO. It wasn't enjoyable for me as a kid, and it's not enjoyable for me as an adult. I don't feel like a genius when I know to stand either really close or really far away from the boss just 'cause. Instead, I feel like I've just spent way too much time playing this game.

[Misplaced_Marbles]

Oh come on, it wasn’t always that. Aurum Vale second boss didn’t used to have telegraphs, now it does.

It is truly sad that some people have the misconception that death = difficulty.

Coincounter was: you don't know what's going to happen since it works unlike any other enemy in the game with zero feedback on what is about to happen, so you die with 100% chance. You might avoid it by accident by playing a ranged class, but that's just dumb luck rather than anything else. After that, you never die, unless you have the attention span of a fly. That isn't a mechanic, just poor game designing.

[angienessyo]

I think it's important that people remember that difficulty is completely subjective. I'm a double legend and cleared the current savage tier really early, so is the normal content hard for me? Of course not. But I regularly see groups hardcore struggle in normal level content when I do mentor roulette. I've seen groups wipe 5 times in a row to some of the new story trials. (new story trial 2 especially) I still see groups wipe to P2+P3 normal A LOT in mentor roulette.

I think the current difficulty level in normal content is fine and should remain accessible to casual players. It's there for casual players and is punishing enough to where you can actually still wipe if everyone is new or less skilled. The harder content is there for players like me that are excited to die 8 million times in DSU. If you want to see how hard the content can actually be for a new or casual player, unlock mentor roulette and queue in as a job that doesn't have a rez.

Even when we do get normal content that's designed to be harder, people just avoid it anyways. Orbonne is my favorite 24 man this game has ever released and I never get to do it because everyone just ilevel cheeses alliance raids to get LOTA. And we're about to get to experience the glory and chaos of getting to do a new 24 man day 1, which is one of my favorite experiences to have in the game outside of savage/ultimate.

[Ronduwil]

I think it's important that people remember that difficulty is completely subjective. I'm a double legend and cleared the current savage tier really early, so is the normal content hard for me? Of course not. But I regularly see groups hardcore struggle in normal level content when I do mentor roulette. I've seen groups wipe 5 times in a row to some of the new story trials. (new story trial 2 especially) I still see groups wipe to P2+P3 normal A LOT in mentor roulette.

Thank you! I don't think this can be repeated enough. Players who only ever interact with their raiding FC, the Balance Discord, and/or the players on this forum really lack the perspective to judge what is and isn't difficult.

Even when we do get normal content that's designed to be harder, people just avoid it anyways. Orbonne is my favorite 24 man this game has ever released and I never get to do it because everyone just ilevel cheeses alliance raids to get LOTA. And we're about to get to experience the glory and chaos of getting to do a new 24 man day 1, which is one of my favorite experiences to have in the game outside of savage/ultimate.

Exactly. To me, this is the biggest supporting evidence of my hotly contested assertion that players prefer easy content, and that's why SE keeps the content simple. If everyone were really craving the level of challenge that so many on this forum claim should be the baseline for all players, no one who be cheesing the roulette in this manner.

[LittleImp]

Exactly. To me, this is the biggest supporting evidence of my hotly contested assertion that players prefer easy content, and that's why SE keeps the content simple. If everyone were really craving the level of challenge that so many on this forum claim should be the baseline for all players, no one who be cheesing the roulette in this manner.

Some people prefer CT series raids because it offers a more efficient reward/time ratio. It appears in roulettes constantly because it's 1. Required by the MSQ and 2. only takes 1 person to cheese their ilevel to force 23 people into it. if you actually ask most players what their favorite 24 man is, almost no one is going to actually answer with Crystal Tower. People constantly complain about this problem, and it's lead to many players simply no longer queuing for Alliance Raid Roulette.

[Dzian]

Exactly. To me, this is the biggest supporting evidence of my hotly contested assertion that players prefer easy content, and that's why SE keeps the content simple. If everyone were really craving the level of challenge that so many on this forum claim should be the baseline for all players, no one who be cheesing the roulette in this manner.

People cheese the roulette because they've ran the things a thousand times already and are bored af of them and ultimately just want to get in get tomes / exp and gtfo..

it'll be the exact same when 6.1 lands. new 24 man raid. be fun for a few days.. but by the time 6.2 or 6.3 lands players will be sick to death of it because they're ran it hundreds of times trying to get there weekly drops or whatever.

[Rhysati]

I've seen groups wipe 5 times in a row to some of the new story trials.

Well sure, but that's not because it's difficult. It's because they haven't memorized the mechanics yet. When you get a party with people who know the fights they usually got pretty swimmingly. Heck, I just did one for the second time since I first did it when the xpac launched. We wiped. But was it hard? No. We got unlucky, a healer stood in the wrong place and the other healer had already burned their instant-cast on something else. So we wiped. We picked ourselves up and breezed through it on the second go. And this was a pug.

But even still, I wouldn't consider a few trials that you never have to do again(hence why I never did it again after the first time and had completely forgotten it) as really pushing the limits of difficulty. I, for one, appreciated that it was at least not so easy as to be a snorefest.

But the dungeons? They are some of the most dull, boring experiences that literally reward groups to pull 3-4 groups of enemies all at once to speed along without even breaking a sweat. That shouldn't be how a dungeon works. Especially not current tier content. That doesn't mean it has to crush casual players or anything. It should just be a little bit of a challenge so it feels like effort you are being rewarded for. As it stands it is a boring chore to do so you can get tomes and that's just bad design.

Even when we do get normal content that's designed to be harder, people just avoid it anyways. Orbonne is my favorite 24 man this game has ever released and I never get to do it because everyone just ilevel cheeses alliance raids to get LOTA.

I think you are missing the actual issue. The issue isn't that it's hard so people don't want to do it. It's because there's no POINT to doing it. You aren't rewarded for the increased effort so why bother? If you have a choice between shopping in an empty store vs shopping during black friday but with the exact same deals available? You'd choose to go on the empty day. Why? Because it isn't worth the headache, effort, or your time to go fuss about with massive crowds for the exact same rewards. People go to black friday sales and put up with the difficulties because the rewards are worth their time investment. As a roleplayer, even the outfits from that tier of raids are low quality and nothing I'd ever use on any of my characters. I don't know a single other roleplayer who wants them either. And what do you get for your time and effort? The exact same thing you get on a much easier and less time-invasive raid. So why do it?

If the goal is to make the entire game feel completely unrewarding then they are doing a great job of it right now.

[Ronduwil]

Well sure, but that's not because it's difficult. It's because they haven't memorized the mechanics yet.

What are you proposing in terms of difficulty? The only difficulty in this game is in memorizing the mechanics and rotation. It's literally just memorization. If you're saying that memorization isn't difficult, then there's no difficulty in any MMO that I'm aware of. Half the time, when I see someone whining for more difficulty on MMO forums, they're complaining about other players getting to have fun and complete content without having to memorize all the extra crap that they did. The other half of the time is players complaining that eight button rotations just aren't challenging enough for them and that SE needs to throw another eight into the mix to make their job interesting again.

Sorry, but neither of these playstyles appeal to me. I memorized tons of useless garbage on the way to getting my college degrees, and I memorize tons of stuff for work already. At the end of the day, I don't want to memorize a bunch of meaningless garbage for a video game. I'm fine just learning a handful of mechanics and responding as they come on the fights. When I was younger I felt differently, but now I don't feel compelled to study all the fights as if my entire future were riding on them anymore. Some people like to do that, and that's fine by me. What's not fine is when they turn around and complain that because they studied the fun out of the game the developers should make the studies into baseline requirements for everyone so that they can feel challenged again. Like you just said, it's not difficult; it's just tedious, annoying, and unfun.

Same with the 16-button rotations. At what point is enough enough? My favorite aspect of Classic WoW was the simple one-button frost mage rotation. That freed me up to exploit the heck out of marginalized abilities like Blink and Polymorph. I'm not saying that we need to go back to one-button rotations, but I'm honestly fine with four-button single-target rotations and four-button AoE rotations. I don't find joy in juggling half a dozen ogcd weaves and timers.

If you want a difficult game, feel free to ramp up the difficulty for yourself. Take all the consolidated skills, and bind them to multiple buttons so that you can make your six button rotation into a nine button rotation again. Stick to Extremes and Savages that require you to maintain your focus through every fight and optimize every aspect of your gameplay. Just let the rest of us enjoy the chill game that we know and love. The game's not being dumbed down. You're just older and more experienced than you used to be.