I do think that nowadays the difficulty of the MSQ has been significantly reduced due to a number of factors, but this hasn’t always been to the benefit of the player experience. Fundamentally, video games should provide logical and increasing challenges as time goes on in the main campaign. In single player titles these challenges can be reduced via difficulty options, which in FFXIV’s case would be the use of Duty Support/Trusts whose AI behavior provides clues about how to handle certain boss mechanics, or the difficulty options that appear after one fails an instanced battle.

Lately however it feels that main story content just isn’t really at the level where it used to be, and there are very little ways in which the player’s combat skill is checked and assessed in ways not reliant on team gameplay. This has the effect of widening the gap between players who are ready for more difficult content like EX or Savages and those who are not. At the end of the day I think it would be more beneficial to increase the difficulty of MSQ battle content (dungeons, trials, instanced battles) in order to provide an experience that leans less toward the easy side and more of a well-rounded approach. While some players may feel left behind by such a decision, I do think it would be in the interest of the majority to try and find a better balance than what we’ve been seeing nowadays.


If I had to provide specific examples, I think the difficulty and mechanics of the following fights are good examples of what we should see in the main story:

• Titania
• All 3 NieR raids
• All 3 Ivalice raids
• Delubrum Reginae


And these are ones whose difficulty I do not feel was appropriate for the level at which the encounters take place:

• Tower of Babil
• The level 87 and 89 dungeons
• The level 83 Trial
• The level 90 Trial