the normal content is too easy

[EnigmaticDodo]

Like I said in your other thread, they now have every opportunity to relegate their super easy mode stuff to an option for the trust modes, and leave the general DF content - trials in particular - at more decent levels of difficulty, and I hope they take advantage of this. It's all well and good having harder modes of content but that shouldn't become an excuse to dumb down stuff in normal mode to an extreme.

Damn, nice idea! Everyone would get what they want. It'd take SQ a bit to do the AI for everything, but it'd be worth it! or just let everything function like Squadrons (where you can control the NPCS Movement/who they attack) and do it that way!

[ForteNightshade]

I think this is core to the problem. Whatever changes may have been made in job or encounter design, this has always been a theme park MMO. It's never been something that was developed in a manner to be someone's only game or something where the game gives you hard reasons to need to log in and accomplish things every single day. There's always been a bit of our needing to find our own reasons by partaking in content available. And I think a lot of arguments come from this expectation of being kept busy every minute in whatever someone's given content is. But your suggestion is the sort of thing the devs advocate. They want us to enjoy what we like about XIV and then if we're away a bit, it's still here for us to enjoy when we get back.

The issue with this design philosophy is they simply don't make enough content to sustain it. Look at the upcoming 6.1. Here we have a patch intended to last us four months and unless you're attempting Dragonsong, none of that content will take more than a week. Even if you casually farmed Endsinger, it would still only take a few weeks. Everything else is one and done story content. Which is far from a bad thing. In fact, I welcome it. However, once you've completed each quest, there's nothing else. So we're taking breaks for 2-3 months at a time. I don't necessarily want FFXIV to demand my attention every waking second like some MMOs do but I'd like to more than a week's worth of content. It continues to baffle me why they delay the relic for so damn long when it's the ideal grind content to keep people occupied. Granted, longevity as a whole has been something FFXIV struggles with badly.

[OM3GA-Z3RO]

If I was a developer I'd think that a final boss in a dungeon should have at least 1 mechanic that if failed then it's a wipe, the EW bosses are so easy you can simply ignore mechanics and just DPS through it.

Hermes True Bravery does not get interrupted because why would you interrupt it? You can ignore it because you won't die from it, Interrupt is such a forgotten concept that over 75% of tanks and RDPS don't even know what Interject and Headgraze does and why is that? because you don't need to follow mechanics.

The main problem with FF14 is that they make content that is too easy or too difficult, they don't know how to make a middle ground and they don't make enough content to keep people occupied for at least a 1 months worth of subscription time but yeah it is expected that since every expansion has been declining on content.

[Tehmon]

I feel like trials (except maybe the really early ones) and raids have a pretty decent difficulty, but I think they just need to speed up the momentum of dungeon boss fights especially.

The mechanics need to start overlapping sooner, and not every mechanic needs to channel for 5+ seconds.

At the point when the mechanics start overlapping and the fight actually gets a bit interesting, you've already downed 3/4 of the boss' health.

[WildTamarind]

@Talera

Sorry but I dont entertain slipperyslopes. Even if it were possible the scenerio youve listed then we would complain about the game being too hard. But just because there might exist a future problem doesnt mean we can ignore the current one.

[LeonKeyh]

@Talera

Sorry but I dont entertain slipperyslopes. Even if it were possible the scenerio youve listed then we would complain about the game being too hard. But just because there might exist a future problem doesnt mean we can ignore the current one.

Not only that, but they would likely be smart enough to slow/stop whenever they see it affecting subs; It's a dial like any other. Tweak the dial a little bit, see how many "top players" you keep and how many "bottom of the barrel" players stick around. Do it again until the people leaving is the same as or more than the people you hold onto and there's the sweet spot.

It's surely what they're doing now with lowering the difficulty. They're seeing complaints from people about it being "too easy" but on the flip side seeing people stick around.

[ThaCa]

I feel like trials (except maybe the really early ones) and raids have a pretty decent difficulty, but I think they just need to speed up the momentum of dungeon boss fights especially.

The mechanics need to start overlapping sooner, and not every mechanic needs to channel for 5+ seconds.

At the point when the mechanics start overlapping and the fight actually gets a bit interesting, you've already downed 3/4 of the boss' health.

A lot of old content that was "Normal" level difficulty and fine as they were is currently "Very Easy" because the ilvl sync is way too lenient with modern Job skills. This leads to people ignoring the mechanics and even skipping quite a lot of them. If they tried to bring the content back to Normal difficulty it would make leveling and story progressing feel more meaningful while not being overtly difficult. How can you expect players to become familiar with mechanics if they can be straight up ignored or never seen in first place?
To add to this, some ARR and early HW markers should be standardized with the later expansions as some of them make no sense with modern unified markers (like stack marker being purple split marker in WoD, Sohm Al having Red and Blue split markers where Red is actually stack etc.)

EW itself is bit odd case too since the 81 dungeon is probably the hardest of them along with 90 story one (which is due 2 of the bosses being actually fairly good), most others are really simple and straightforward.

They really should hold stuff like 81 final boss and 90 first and second boss as the standard for boss fights as those feel hectic and are fun to fight. Not stuff like the 83 final boss which was major dissapointment in abilities or even worse some other 3 easy mechanic bosses.

[LeonKeyh]

A lot of old content that was "Normal" level difficulty and fine as they were is currently "Very Easy" because the ilvl sync is way too lenient with modern Job skills. This leads to people ignoring the mechanics and even skipping quite a lot of them. If they tried to bring the content back to Normal difficulty it would make leveling and story progressing feel more meaningful while not being overtly difficult. How can you expect players to become familiar with mechanics if they can be straight up ignored or never seen in first place?
To add to this, some ARR and early HW markers should be standardized with the later expansions as some of them make no sense with modern unified markers (like stack marker being purple split marker in WoD, Sohm Al having Red and Blue split markers where Red is actually stack etc.)

EW itself is bit odd case too since the 81 dungeon is probably the hardest of them along with 90 story one (which is due 2 of the bosses being actually fairly good), most others are really simple and straightforward.

They really should hold stuff like 81 final boss and 90 first and second boss as the standard for boss fights as those feel hectic and are fun to fight. Not stuff like the 83 final boss which was major dissapointment in abilities or even worse some other 3 easy mechanic bosses.

Hard agree with all points.

I played at 2.0 launch and didn't come back until 5.2 and started over and watched MTQ guides for every dungeon as I came to them. I remembered how to stop the adds in Sastasha and ran around hitting the water and noticed nobody else was doing it. It took me until StB to realize that most of the mechanisms just don't matter anymore, and that's the big problem.

Some of the EW fights were great, and others were a little disappointing. Though, I feel like the last boss in the 85 dungeon was a little too easy, but saw someone in NN saying that they gave up on running it with a trust after 60 minutes and refused to run it with a trust anymore and instead wanted to be carried..errr....run it with other people.

[Misplaced_Marbles]

If I was a developer I'd think that a final boss in a dungeon should have at least 1 mechanic that if failed then it's a wipe, the EW bosses are so easy you can simply ignore mechanics and just DPS through it.

Yeah, but in a game like this, it's always: You died to the mechanic. Now you know what's going to happen, so you'll never die to it again. Also, getting one-shotted becuse of ignorance is the lamest thing in gaming.

The most "challenge" you can get is min-maxing the heck out of you stats. That's it.

The way people beg for punishment in every game disguising it as a "challenge" makes me thing they are trying to manifest the Grievous Miracle in real life. Stop before you succeed!

[Doc_Seraph]

I would leave the normals as they are due to the fact I would hypothesis the majority of the players (the money) are okay with doing these at the difficultly they are currently.

However, maybe opt in some added reward for an increased difficulty setting. That could be implemented in infinite ways (thus the problem 'resources') but I could see that perhaps happening eventually. Ex. Bosses or Final Boss has some mechanics sped up or added. Or simply just give all the mobs a boost *shrug* or a puzzle etc..

They did this already with hard mode dungeons I gather but extending this train of thought would be welcomed.

I would not mind a hard/tough Stigma kupo that dungeon in my opinion (obviously lol) is much easier than The Dead Ends. Perhaps it was done on purpose?

<3 kupo