the normal content is too easy

[Knot_D]

I call bs. The game is balanced to the skill level of someone who doesn't know how to play. You can literally clear anything with very little effort or practice.

Are you sure about that, because until now I still see sprouts running away with stack marker

[Soge01]

The fact that there's an easy and very easy mode for instances tells one everything about the average level the playerbase is.

While I don't touch savage or extreme content most of the time due to the huge leap in difficulty (my fear of screwing things up, even after watching a guide), normal content should be NORMAL CONTENT!!! Not easy content. Not very easy content. But average level content that actually keeps you mentally active in the game and can prepare you for that leap into harder content!

This is why when I play any single player game, I always play on Hard Mode because I know normal mode is actually just easy mode pretending to be normal mode, while the real normal mode is actually Hard Mode.

Challenge the playerbase and it will improve. Keep handicapping them, and all you'll get are below average vanilla players. I hope Yoshi-P figures this out eventually.

[Ronduwil]

While I don't touch savage or extreme content most of the time due to the huge leap in difficulty (my fear of screwing things up, even after watching a guide), normal content should be NORMAL CONTENT!!! Not easy content.

"Easy" is subjective. After years of algebra, trigonometry, and calculus, arithmetic is easy for me. What sense would it make for me to complain that teaching arithmetic to first graders is a waste of time because they should have figured that easy content out in kindergarten? Different people find different activities easy. Many high school kids never go beyond rudimentary algebra, but they still go on to lead productive lives. We don't demand that they take basic calculus before finding gainful employment. Why would you want to hold players in a pay-to-play video game to higher standards than real life activities do?

Challenge the playerbase and it will improve. Keep handicapping them, and all you'll get are below average vanilla players. I hope Yoshi-P figures this out eventually.

I don't think you understand how averages work. You'll never get "all below average vanilla players." The average will always be average. Tomorrow's average player may be better than the average player of today, or they may be worse. The fact will remain, however, that they're average. I'm confused by what players hope to achieve by raising everyone else's standards for what constitutes average. It's like they won't be happy until everyone else considers them a bad player, which is the logical conclusion to this design strategy. Look at what WoW has become by adopting this philosophy. It's now a toxic cesspool of elitism with a player rating system that's literally built into the game. It's no longer even fun to play because every single run is packed with elitists who rage and drop group for every little mistake. In this game, on the other hand, players can screw up in the biggest way, and as long as they acknowledge and apologize for their mistakes, everyone's supportive. This is the type of game I prefer to play. I'm glad that Yoshi-P understands that.

[AziraSyuren]

The narrative value of fight difficulty is a better argument than anything else, and one I wholly agree with. Zodiark is pretty difficult for a normal and it makes the experience better- so were Shinryu (which was by far the hardest story trial since I started playing), Susano, and Nidhogg. Hades, Hyedalyn, and Endsinger were far too easy given the gravity of their fights and it made them less cool outside of pure cinematic flair. I don't think EVERY fight should challenge you that much, but it should where it's appropriate. The dungeons this time around are much harder than the trials and I really don't think that's appropriate.

[Kyrj]

The narrative value of fight difficulty is a better argument than anything else, and one I wholly agree with. Zodiark is pretty difficult for a normal and it makes the experience better- so were Shinryu (which was by far the hardest story trial since I started playing), Susano, and Nidhogg. Hades, Hyedalyn, and Endsinger were far too easy given the gravity of their fights and it made them less cool outside of pure cinematic flair. I don't think EVERY fight should challenge you that much, but it should where it's appropriate. The dungeons this time around are much harder than the trials and I really don't think that's appropriate.

Zodiark is one of the easiest fights both normal and EX we've ever had. All it requires is two people to know where to go and the rest to follow their assigned shape.

[AziraSyuren]

Zodiark is one of the easiest fights both normal and EX we've ever had. All it requires is two people to know where to go and the rest to follow their assigned shape.

Yeah but that first blind run on release was really fun and that's what matters the most to me and what I'm judging it based on.

[Jeeqbit]

Zodiark is one of the easiest fights both normal and EX we've ever had. All it requires is two people to know where to go and the rest to follow their assigned shape.

I had to do it on an alt I was taking through EW. They wiped. They had no idea where to go or what to do and got hit by everything. So I shrugged and put a dorito on myself and they cleared. That doesn't mean it's easy. It's just easy if someone who has farmed it a lot carries you. For the person with the dorito, they have to actually do the maths of calculating where mechanics will land and sometimes they get it wrong.

[Kyrj]

I had to do it on an alt I was taking through EW. They wiped. They had no idea where to go or what to do and got hit by everything. So I shrugged and put a dorito on myself and they cleared. That doesn't mean it's easy. It's just easy if someone who has farmed it a lot carries you. For the person with the dorito, they have to actually do the maths of calculating where mechanics will land and sometimes they get it wrong.

You follow someone who knows what they're doing and learn that way, next time you're in there you can lead. There's no "math" or w/e involved. It's a rotating floor, not rocket science.

[Jeeqbit]

When people hear this, they jump to 'EXTREME/SAVAGE/ULTIMATE' and "DARKSOULS" way too quickly. What about midcore content

Players on here deal only in extremes. When players ask for something more engaging then faceroll, the first answer is "do savage", why cant there be anything between faceroll and savage/extremes.

We are getting Criterion dungeons through this expansion.

You follow someone who knows what they're doing and learn that way, next time you're in there you can lead. There's no "math" or w/e involved. It's a rotating floor, not rocket science.

For the normal version, yes. For extreme it's different because it combines two of them at once forcing you to work out the safe spot with no telegraphs. For extreme, it seemed evident that the people I talked to in parties did not learn to lead after only one clear, but after enough clears where they actually tried to identify the safe spots themselves.

[Lauront]

The narrative value of fight difficulty is a better argument than anything else, and one I wholly agree with. Zodiark is pretty difficult for a normal and it makes the experience better- so were Shinryu (which was by far the hardest story trial since I started playing), Susano, and Nidhogg. Hades, Hyedalyn, and Endsinger were far too easy given the gravity of their fights and it made them less cool outside of pure cinematic flair. I don't think EVERY fight should challenge you that much, but it should where it's appropriate. The dungeons this time around are much harder than the trials and I really don't think that's appropriate.

This is pretty much a big problem I have with it, i.e. that it just fails to convey the scale of the threats involved (mixed feelings on Zodiark after first clear, it could be better; 4.3 and 5.3 were closer to what I'd consider a decent level for normal trials, but there should be leeway above that), especially since they don't want them to ultimately be dealt with in raids or non-MSQ trials (an approach some other games take.) Over and above that, I think it's also a problem that you can end up creating too huge a gap between normal content and the next level up. Dungeons during SHB became laughably easy. I would be sympathetic to the need (even if not ideal) to keep it that way (although not like the SHB post-MSQ dungeons) if they weren't expanding the trust level to all dungeons and trials in time. Now? Not so much. If people truly want the social experience, that includes communicating in party chat about mechanics to some minimally demanding degree. It won't kill them.

Expert dungeons are probably the stand out example of simply poor design. We've reached a point where healers literally aren't required. Naturally, this is partly because tank sustain is enormous this expansion but it's still ridiculous that dungeons are such a joke an entire role can be omitted without a second thought.

When people ask for the game to be harder, they aren't wanting Savage or even Extreme difficulty. They're wanting to feel engaged. Going into a dungeon or trial you know you'll utterly obliterate isn't all that fun for a lot of people. It also leads to poor habits being formed. Why dodge an AoE and lose uptime as a melee DPS when you know it'll do next to nothing damage wise? We see all these arguments about YPYT without discussing the actual reason people do it. They can. A healer isn't threatened by three mobs with the ferocity of a six month old kitten.

All in all, making the game easy and approachable is perfectly fine. There is, however, a middle ground between easy mode and "so incredibly safe a toddler could clear."

Well put.