the normal content is too easy

[Ronduwil]

The point was, responding to the person pretending like normal content is only easy because we've run it countless times, that for one, its designed to be run countless times, and two its moot because they're super easy even the first time.

My point is that it's not designed to be run countless times. It's designed to be run one time. They provide overinflated incentives to get you to do them repeatedly despite the fact they they were only designed to be challenging the first time around. The content itself is designed to be compelling for new players. The rewards are designed to be compelling for the older players. Asking SE to make normal content more difficult is effectively asking for the content to suck for new players. SE understands that old players wouldn't normally want to run this stuff, so they offer high end rewards for it.

Blizzard takes the opposite approach. Their content is designed to be overly challenging for everyone, so they effectively stripped all rewards from their normal modes and locked them exclusively behind their hard modes. The reward system is designed to make the content compelling to people who normally wouldn't be bothered to do it. In my case, it worked for a time. In Cataclysm I went from being a dungeoneer who occasionally dabbled in raids to being a crucial member of a Heroic raiding guild who got the first Heroic Deathwing clear for the Alliance on my server. At the end of that, though, I was burned out and tired of feeling conflicted every time I had to choose between letting my raid down and letting one of my kids down when their extracurricular activities conflicted with raid nights. To be clear, even though my kids always won out, I still felt bad for the rest of my guild. That's why I'm now playing this game and not WoW. I would rather be rewarded for helping out newer players than rewarded for gatekeeping and try-harding.

Even now that my kids are grown, I have no desire whatsoever to pore over raid logs and practice on target dummies for hours on end. In fact, I'm glad SE bans DPS meters because it's all the more reason for me to not even install them. You can call me lazy if you want, and that's fine by me. I'm playing a video game here, not curing cancer. If I wanted to be productive in my downtime, I wouldn't be playing FFXIV.

[Gember]

Normal content is catered to those playing for the story, not those seeking challenge. The new trust dungeons, the YouTube beginner's series.. all are catering to the brand spanking new. There is already statistics that people are STAYING after attempting ARR because of the trust dungeons. The anxiety performance is a real thing that can gate players from actually going all the way through. Even I was scared of my first dungeon when I was a clueless sprout years ago. I am not saying that content should get easier; but there should be space for players to jump in the puddle and have fun without random pugs yelling at them to "git gud". After such phases; then they might stay and start learning to be better. I believe that is what SE is aiming for. How a new player approaches harder content is completely on their own, and its up to the community to help them out.

[SieyaM]

I would agree if the endgame content actually posed a challenge the way it used to. Instead, it is getting progressively easier.

The 24-mans aren’t nearly as difficult as the likes of Weeping City, Dun Scaith, and Orbonne on release. Extremes are so easy they can be done with one or no healers at release, which the latter was a completely new phenomenon. They’re definitely not the same difficulty as the HW ones. Or even some of the SB Extremes. And Savage itself is not as difficult as it used to be. And I don’t mean the overtuned mess that was Gordias, but Midas. Or even some of the Creator fights (Cruise Chaser). There are a handful of redeeming fights after HW (O3S, O4S door boss, O11S, E8S, E12S door boss), and some still that are fun enough to excuse their easier difficulty. But doing this tier Week 1 and feeling utterly not challenged by anything that wasn’t the terrible P3S arena (I have bad vision and photosensitivity) was a disappointment. Yoshida claims the second tier is harder, but he’s also said that about many other things (like the disappointment that was Endsinger EX). So I take it with a grain of salt. I’ve retired from raiding due to rapidly changing life circumstances, so I guess my friends will have to give me their opinions on it.

People who want a real challenge basically have to wait for Ultimate. And we’re lucky to get two of those an expansion. I don’t expect the Criterion dungeons to be nearly as difficult as some keep saying they will be. Not when everything else has become so watered down. I hope I’ll be proven wrong, but we shall see. The only thing I’m looking forward to in 6.2 (aside from seeing where they go with the MSQ) is Sephirot Unreal. Because so loved his EX in HW, and I can only hope the Unreal is as challenging as the original.

And yet unless it's part of an event Orbonne is universally avoided still for being too difficult and too long. Content that is part of a roulette has to be incredibly easy because as the past has taught us if it is not, players will avoid it at all costs. Our own behavior has dictated the difficulty of the content given to us.

[HyoMinPark]

And yet unless it's part of an event Orbonne is universally avoided still for being too difficult and too long. Content that is part of a roulette has to be incredibly easy because as the past has taught us if it is not, players will avoid it at all costs. Our own behavior has dictated the difficulty of the content given to us.

Orbonne was not back-breakingly difficult. It was challenging, actually punished you for trying to ignore the mechanics, and you couldn’t just slam your face on the keyboard or completely AFK and win. And if I’ve learned anything, there’s a lot of people in this game that throws their hands in the air if something caused them the slightest bit of difficulty increase.

Personally, I’d rather do Orbonne than any of the CT raids. And I’ve met other players that feel similarly now that Orbonne is popping the Alliance Roulette. Orbonne would have likely been avoided less if LotA or ST wasn’t half the time for the same EXP. Scaling EXP with the level of the raids would have been a better way to go instead of completely destroying one of the best 24-mans this game has ever seen. Now I don’t even bother with Alliance Roulette because I am sick of CT/Void Ark.

[Avatre]

Orbonne was not back-breakingly difficult. It was challenging, actually punished you for trying to ignore the mechanics, and you couldn’t just slam your face on the keyboard or completely AFK and win. And if I’ve learned anything, there’s a lot of people in this game that throws their hands in the air if something caused them the slightest bit of difficulty increase.

Personally, I’d rather do Orbonne than any of the CT raids. And I’ve met other players that feel similarly now that Orbonne is popping the Alliance Roulette. Orbonne would have likely been avoided less if LotA or ST wasn’t half the time for the same EXP. Scaling EXP with the level of the raids would have been a better way to go instead of completely destroying one of the best 24-mans this game has ever seen. Now I don’t even bother with Alliance Roulette because I am sick of CT/Void Ark.

Wish they would bring back Orbonne from release week....that was fun times. Dropping the echo from the raid is the very least they NEED to do.

[HyoMinPark]

Wish they would bring back Orbonne from release week....that was fun times. Dropping the echo from the raid is the very least they NEED to do.

I completely and wholeheartedly agree. I used to run Orbonne in SB all the time just for fun because I enjoyed how it wasn’t faceroll. Same with Weeping City and Dun Scaith during their relative patches.

[SieyaM]

Orbonne was not back-breakingly difficult. It was challenging, actually punished you for trying to ignore the mechanics, and you couldn’t just slam your face on the keyboard or completely AFK and win. And if I’ve learned anything, there’s a lot of people in this game that throws their hands in the air if something caused them the slightest bit of difficulty increase.

Personally, I’d rather do Orbonne than any of the CT raids. And I’ve met other players that feel similarly now that Orbonne is popping the Alliance Roulette. Orbonne would have likely been avoided less if LotA or ST wasn’t half the time for the same EXP. Scaling EXP with the level of the raids would have been a better way to go instead of completely destroying one of the best 24-mans this game has ever seen. Now I don’t even bother with Alliance Roulette because I am sick of CT/Void Ark.

Orbonne is still my favorite piece of content to run, so I am very happy to be doing it for the moogle tomes, but I also know tying to to something like a relic grind will bring a fiery inferno the boards. Both from people that think it's still to hard, and from people that feel it's a waste of time because it isn't as easy as other 24 person content. When something like Orbonne comes along both ends of the spectrum complain.

[Supersnow845]

Orbonne is still my favorite piece of content to run, so I am very happy to be doing it for the moogle tomes, but I also know tying to to something like a relic grind will bring a fiery inferno the boards. Both from people that think it's still to hard, and from people that feel it's a waste of time because it isn't as easy as other 24 person content. When something like Orbonne comes along both ends of the spectrum complain.

The only people that ever complain about orbonne are the “I use the fact that crystal tower has 24 people in it to hide the fact that I semi afk hakaze spam my way through it daily”

[ForteNightshade]

The only people that ever complain about orbonne are the “I use the fact that crystal tower has 24 people in it to hide the fact that I semi afk hakaze spam my way through it daily”

This right here. Orbonne wasn't nerfed due to difficulty but the fact you weren't compensated for the time investment relevant to the AFK-fest that is Crystal Tower. We're seeing the exact same problem unfold with the Nier raids. None of them are remotely challenging nor were they on release. So why are people avoiding them? Because the bosses all have bloated HP pools which means a Tower run will take upwards of 30+ minutes for the exact same EXP as a ten minute LotA—the latter of which you can AFK in. In a what if scenario where OG Orbonne gave significantly higher rewards to compensate for your time, nobody would have said a peep about it. Alas, the devs overcorrect as per usual and now Orbonne is arguably the easiest 24 man we have that isn't LotA and Syrcus Tower. It can't even keep up with Ridorana or barely matches Rabanastre, two raids that not only released before it but have suffered huge power creep due to the poor ilvl scaling we have. It's an absolutely shell of itself now.

Imagine if every 24 man after Aglaia are noticeably easier. People would complain even at the casual level because it'd be boring. Welcome to what happened with Orbonne.

[TofuPenguin]

I was trying to convince my SO to come back and play but he said the game is too easy and it's boring. We ended up lamenting our old gaming days when dungeons required CC, situational awareness, threat management, etc. We consider those things fun as they keep you on your toes.
The game doesn't have to be savage level difficulty, as others have said. The normal content could be more dynamic, however, like how it once was. As much as I love this game, it's lost a lot of flavor over the years with job and dungeon redesigns. I would love to see things go back to how they once were but at this point it just feels like a pipe dream.