the normal content is too easy

[ACE135]

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.

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 they would scale the gear and everything so that the raids feel nearly like they were on release, all raids would need some amount of effort to get through.

[Chopstix]

u know, not so long ago i had a mentor roulette pop for normal hydealyn trial

after 3 wipes i gave up, there was just no hope... i explained the colour mechanics, everything else everyone would have seen countless times (stack marker, spread), but no dice...

granted this is a rare scenario, if there r not enough decent enough folks to carry the group, u r doomed to fail

id just like to see a lil smidge of a difficulty increase in general, there r only a few bits of content that feel good at the casual lvl, mechanics should be punishing enough to get ppl learning (okay i really cant do that any more)

the incoming dmg is 99% of the time nonexistent, stack marker taken by 8 ppl? it basically heals u (on savage/ultimate it is mandatory to SURVIVE and u likely need extra mits too), i bet a dps with some defensives could live through it alone most of the time

vuln up? lmao that thing does nothing, u can stand in stuff for uptime and it will make zero difference, dmg down in savage at least heavily discourages u, vuln up equivalent needs to be more consequential to have a similar effect

[KizuyaKatogami]

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.

It’s not unexpectedly though. There’s a huge windup. It promotes communication and learning. You learn for the next time what each move does as opposed to it flat out telling you. Later mechanics are like this, aurum vale was good because it prepared you for later mechs. Now it’s not there so people are even more confused later on when the game is littered with mechanics like that.

I do agree with some of the people here though and you with the whole memory thing. I wish the game varied in mechanics that wasn’t simply just bash your head against the wall until you get it, but unfortunately i don’t see anything like that happening, so we have to work with what we have.

[KizuyaKatogami]

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.

It was one example of many, and well, whether i agree with it or not, almost every future expansion has those mechanics littered all over the place, so it should be taught early on so people learn to understand tells like that otherwise they’re just going to be in for a rude awakening later on. Because of that encounter i’ve eventually gotten so memorized with things like that i can tell even in blind content how untelegraphed abilities are going to work. I especially noticed this improvement when i did hades normal blind and was able to immediately recognize his arm swipe mechanic and the shadow stream.

I’m glad we can at least degree that there is major poor game designing going on though, considering that again, a lot of content is riddled with mechanics like that now.

[ThaCa]

Game could benefit a lot of going back and standardizing the markers for ARR and early HW to teach them properly to people. There's some really wonky stuff like WoD markers, Sohm Al markers etc. that are different and at worst the opposite of what they are later. Having to second guess stuff because the game didn't properly teach them early on can be frustrating to newer players and even older ones that revisit the content.

Having the Hall of Novice updated or having secondary one later for common mechanics would be beneficial.

And as others have also pointed out, tightening the difficulty close to what past content was on release would be nice as people don't really get the same feel for it with all the skipping and ignoring mechanics.

Base level of difficulty for normal content doesn't really need that much change as long as the past content gets the respect it deserves, additional midcore and maybe even some hardcore content would be nice as long as it doesn't cut out too much from other stuff.

[Ronduwil]

Having the Hall of Novice updated or having secondary one later for common mechanics would be beneficial.

Honestly, this would be great. I wish they would expand Hall of the Novice every expansion to include training in all of the raid mechanics you're going to see at least in normal mode. The weird number puzzles, ladder puzzles, and random flashing lights with hidden meanings that you encounter in some of the later raids are really off-putting the first few times through.

[MiaShino]

Threads like this one are ultimately pointless because Square and the FF14 developers are treading the same water as the competition, in race to the bottom. Happens with every major game/franchise now. Offensive to all offensive to none.

Every thread devolves into two groups flinging poo at one another until it becomes buried.

With a side of boomer vidya games er fer the chillens and are toys nonsense I thought experienced demise more then one decade ago with rise of e-sports. Gotta go out there and get a real job and do big girl things, get off the Nintendo you know? Hate this take..

Perhaps I have become the jaded but this is simply how everything is designed now. From interactive entertainment medium designed to test reflexes - problem solving - etc to interactive movie that everyone and their one legged blind handicap pet Gorilla can experience. Next logical evolution for video games is movie that you occasionally press X to play next scene.

[Ronduwil]

Threads like this one are ultimately pointless because Square and the FF14 developers are treading the same water as the competition, in race to the bottom. Happens with every major game/franchise now. Offensive to all offensive to none.

I agree that they're pointless, but you're seeing this as a race or competition to breed champion gamers. SE is running a different race: make as much cash as possible. How do they do that? By attracting the most players. How do they do that? By providing content with mass appeal. By their measure, they're not "racing to the bottom." They're actually gaining ground quite rapidly by making a game that appeals to everyone, not just hardcore players.

[MisterNublet]

I agree that they're pointless, but you're seeing this as a race or competition to breed champion gamers. SE is running a different race: make as much cash as possible. How do they do that? By attracting the most players. How do they do that? By providing content with mass appeal. By their measure, they're not "racing to the bottom." They're actually gaining ground quite rapidly by making a game that appeals to everyone, not just hardcore players.

What content with mass appeal? They hardly even appealed to the mid-core community, let alone the hardcore players. Them turning the game into a visual novel with baby's first MMO gameplay isn't going to keep people around for long.

Rapidly gaining ground? We're already back to pre-WoW failure/Twitch streamer induced player numbers. Vast majority of the streamers and the players they've brought have already moved on from FFXIV because of the lack of interesting, fun content.

[Ronduwil]

What content with mass appeal? They hardly even appealed to the mid-core community, let alone the hardcore players. Them turning the game into a visual novel with baby's first MMO gameplay isn't going to keep people around for long.

Yeah, it's so unappealing that they're regularly having to suspend sales of the game to avoid overlodading their hardware. You don't seem to understand what mid-core actually is. Average is average. An average player is worse than the top 49% of the playerbase and better than the bottom 49%. An average player is barely better than a bad player. From the descriptions in this thread, what you're likely referring to as mid-core is better than 75% of the player base. That's still a high end player. Also, where do you get the idea that numbers are down? People are logging in less frequently because they've finished the MSQ, and as I've said time and again, there's no mass appeal in the repetitive end game content that you want the rest of the game to emulate. Just because I don't log in every single day anymore doesn't mean that I dropped my sub. As soon as the patch drops, you'll see the insane queues again.