Is the new Ultimate too hard?

[Zumi]

What I don't like about ultimates is that they require this 16 hour a day raid schedule. If you look at most people that are doing it the vast majority are doing 16 hours a day. The fight should not be so hard to the point it requires that much time. We have people spending 112 hour a week on this fight. I don't think that is a healthy amount of time to be playing any game.

[Kazhar]

What I don't like about ultimates is that they require this 16 hour a day raid schedule. If you look at most people that are doing it the vast majority are doing 16 hours a day. The fight should not be so hard to the point it requires that much time. We have people spending 112 hour a week on this fight. I don't think that is a healthy amount of time to be playing any game.

If you're not going for World First, no fight in the game requires you 16 hours a day. There's nothing preventing you from clearing any Ultimate with casual hours.

[Payadopa]

Nearly every raid team in the game is "cheating." Third-party tool usage has increased exponentially since ARR, although it wasn't unheard of back then. The majority of players do not raid for the challenge - it's for the clout. This rings true from EX, to savage, and all the way up to Ultimate.

If that's what people think then... I dunno. The rewards could be absolutely worthless (Criterion, anyone?) and yet I'd still do it because I love a good challenge (that isn't Ultimate). I find Rubicante's weapons absolutely disgusting and I don't need the ilvl that much but I do it because it's fun (and someone needs to teach that guy a lesson). Don't think that's such an alien viewpoint.

The main problem is the competitiveness and the resulting tryhards, that can't see the forest for the trees. But as long as the community makes such a song and dance about it that won't change (or make it official and monitor it).

[Payadopa]

What I don't like about ultimates is that they require this 16 hour a day raid schedule. If you look at most people that are doing it the vast majority are doing 16 hours a day. The fight should not be so hard to the point it requires that much time. We have people spending 112 hour a week on this fight. I don't think that is a healthy amount of time to be playing any game.

Friend of mine got his clear and they met 2 to 3 times a week for 2 hours. It just takes longer, but it's possible.

[ArcaviusGreyashe]

If you're not going for World First, no fight in the game requires you 16 hours a day. There's nothing preventing you from clearing any Ultimate with casual hours.

Yes, eventually, even TOP will be clearable with 4-6 hours a week, once guides are published... What's the hardest about WF is not executing the mechanics, but analyzing the 10 new seconds of fight you just discovered after 2 hours to get back to this point, since you don't know how to perfectly do mechs yet.

[Amarande]

Nearly every raid team in the game is "cheating." Third-party tool usage has increased exponentially since ARR, although it wasn't unheard of back then. The majority of players do not raid for the challenge - it's for the clout. This rings true from EX, to savage, and all the way up to Ultimate.

This is a definite feeling, and I'm not sure what happened to "for fun and challenge" either, it seems like it's been degenerating more in the last few years too, because I remember this "clout" mentality being far less pervasive in the olden days (especially in Diablo 2, Guild Wars 1, and Wrath of the Lich King where I played most in my formative online RPG years). Now it hangs over everything like the proverbial wormwood, and it hardly even matters what game you play anymore unless you find something extremely niche (or, perhaps, RNG-driven enough that even the best player can't prevail on a bad enough luck day, like card and dice based games).

Is it something within the game (like later in this post)?

Is it mainly a culture shift in the real world (which would explain why the community conflict is so persistent, as we've gone from the olden days of gaming which was almost completely dominated by Gen X and Xennials to a multi-generational era and frankly, speaking as a late 70s baby, Gen Z and us seem to routinely be practically polar opposites especially when it comes to hobby culture)?

Something else altogether?

Yes, eventually, even TOP will be clearable with 4-6 hours a week, once guides are published... What's the hardest about WF is not executing the mechanics, but analyzing the 10 new seconds of fight you just discovered after 2 hours to get back to this point, since you don't know how to perfectly do mechs yet.

... unless it's this part alone perhaps that is sufficient to set the culture, i.e., it really is SE like the raider Discords always insisted to me when I would verbally fence with them about it in the past. IOW, that XIV's mechanical design makes blind progging harder fights entirely too stressful and time consuming unless you actually are an e-sports level group (when you probably have the competitive clout mindset naturally), due to the obstacle course time trial paradigm of itself (which in turn trickles into PF culture and EX simply because it thus does not take a lot of imperfection here and there across a group to make runs miserable, especially if you practically speaking need to bam out a large number of clears to meet your goals)?

[ForteNightshade]

What I don't like about ultimates is that they require this 16 hour a day raid schedule. If you look at most people that are doing it the vast majority are doing 16 hours a day. The fight should not be so hard to the point it requires that much time. We have people spending 112 hour a week on this fight. I don't think that is a healthy amount of time to be playing any game.

Those are what World Prog groups do because they're racing. None of the Ultimates require anywhere near such a schedule. My second Dragonsong group ran 12-14 hour weeks and we still almost cleared within 6.1 (13% enrage) despite only coming together in July. My current TOP group is running 20 hours a week. My personal preference is to run a lot more but it isn't a requirement to clear any of these fights. Longer hours just means you clear faster relative to your skill level.

[Deveryn]

What I don't like about ultimates is that they require this 16 hour a day raid schedule. If you look at most people that are doing it the vast majority are doing 16 hours a day. The fight should not be so hard to the point it requires that much time. We have people spending 112 hour a week on this fight. I don't think that is a healthy amount of time to be playing any game.

They really don't and Yoshi-P even says as much when he comments at the end of his latest letter, noting that people should take care of themselves.

[Akamadoshi]

I believe the difficulty is as expected (of course, never same fights, as Mr. Happy said, some fights are hard to solve, easy once understood)
I think hardcore raiders may be tired now but the reason why I personally see decline of energy and exhaustion is because....
Not long ago there was DSR, I believe we speak of burn outs low key... (I am not Ultimate raider, if I am wrong, please correct me!)
This ultimate is an ultimate proof 2 ultimates should not be released in one expansion but one each. It is very great display.
Whatever the cause is, I feel this benefits to test the boundaries of players. Good science in a sense!

[KageTokage]

The last phase is probably the most unforgiving of any ultimate to date because dying means losing the dynamis buff which is basically required both to pass the final mechanic and to not get one-shot by literally every source of unavoidable damage.

The DPS check also looks really tight from the existing clears but there could still be optimization to be had.