The difficulty of Normal Content in this game needs to increase.

[VelKallor]

Y'know, to hark back to what I said earlier...if any of you that do savage or extremes are criticising normal content as "too easy" , yet have third party programs..lets see you do it with a normal UI..because I suspect that the moment those addons are taken away, it will be a very different story.

"Normal content is too easy"...in the same breath "I cant do savage or extreme content without addons , callouts and a dps meter".

So.....which is it?

I get annoyed by it when people say crap like 'I cant do savage because I have a life'

I get annoyed when someone tells me to schedule my life around a video game.

This is 2023 not 1980.

The age disparity between then and now is huge, the average gamer is now in their mid to late 30's or older,

The average age of a video game in Australia has remained at 34 years old and nearly half of all players are female.

Older Australians also getting in on the act with 42 per cent of those aged 65 and over identifying as gamers...the perception that gaming is a young person’s domain has also been shattered with news that less than a quarter of videogame players are under 18.

So yes, people do have lives, they have kids and jobs that take more than enough of their time, by end of the day they are ALREADY worn out and dont want to have to deal with yet more stress and hassle and schedules. This..surprises you?

No one works 9-5 anymore, an INCREASING number of people work from home ( and for anyone who dislikes this trend, allow me to illustrate )....what happens when you scream "get back to the office or be fired" to your staff, add in a "manager" who apparently has been living under a rock for the last three years ...orders a staffmember to come in sick..what was the end result?

200 cases of COVID

( It didnt happen you say? Ohhhh yes it did....that particular company is now in a 300 foot fwe heap. )

Offices are Petri dishes..lemme clue you in in something btw, when I worked fulltime in an office I lost COUNT of the days I got sick, coughs, colds, flu, you name it.....what happened after I stopped working and was at home? I didnt get sick AT ALL and have had maybe one bout of flu in five years. Work from home has zero to do with "skill in a video game", with the current trends being what they are, I predict that in ten years offices will be a thing of the past, a few scattered here and there maybe, but thats all.

WFH will be the norm across a swathe of industries.

As ages increase, as the gaming population ages, normal content will become the go to area for ALL MMO's, things like savage etc will become a niche area, far more than they are now. A person in FF 14 at age 65 will have far less interest in extremes, Ultimates etc, and a lot more into story and casual content that can be cleared with a modicum of effort.

Ive said this before but it bears repeating: Demographics drive game design.

Times change, attitudes change, there is little to nothing wrong with normal content as it is now. You have hard mode for solo scenarios, you have Criterion Variant, Extreme, Savage, Ultimate...so I dont see an issue here.

[Rhael]

there is little to nothing wrong with normal content as it is now.

lol
lmao even

[Kazhar]

Y'know, to hark back to what I said earlier...if any of you that do savage or extremes are criticising normal content as "too easy" , yet have third party programs..lets see you do it with a normal UI..because I suspect that the moment those addons are taken away, it will be a very different story.

"Normal content is too easy"...in the same breath "I cant do savage or extreme content without addons , callouts and a dps meter".

So.....which is it?

Even if we indulge in your vision that everyone who complains about the game being too easy is a dirty cheater in EX/savage, this argument makes no logical sense.
There is a well-known gap in intensity between those two types of content, so finding EX/savage too hard has absolutely no relation to normal content being too easy. Both could potentially be true. If people cheated in normal mode, you'd maybe have a point, but instead a lot of people complain about a lack of content between normal and EX. If anything your strawman proves that such content is needed.

[VelKallor]

Even if we indulge in your vision that everyone who complains about the game being too easy is a dirty cheater in EX/savage, this argument makes no logical sense.

Makes perfect sense. Dont complain normal content needs to be harder when you cant beat harder content like ex or savage without 3rd party addons to play the game for you. If you have to cheat to win, then you dont get to tell others what they do needs to be harder.

When you can win without addons..Ill listen.

There is a well-known gap in intensity between those two types of content, so finding EX/savage too hard has absolutely no relation to normal content being too easy. Both could potentially be true. If people cheated in normal mode, you'd maybe have a point, but instead a lot of people complain about a lack of content between normal and EX. If anything your strawman proves that such content is needed.

Hard mode for scenarios

Criterion \ Criterion Variant

Expert dungeons

Savage

Extreme

Ultimate

MINE ( min ilevel no echo)

Ultimate Weapon Ultimate

POTD / HoH solo / Necromancer title.

You have all the content you need at any difficulty you need.

[Kazhar]

Makes perfect sense. Dont complain normal content needs to be harder when you cant beat harder content like ex or savage without 3rd party addons to play the game for you. If you have to cheat to win, then you dont get to tell others what they do needs to be harder.

When you can win without addons..Ill listen.

The fact that you're making sweeping generalizations about the entire raiding community doesn't tell me that you're willing to listen to anything.
You also didn't even adress anything I said in my post, which of the content you listed is between MSQ and EX difficulty?

I think their point is people can't complain about things being to easy if they use cheats to beat what's difficult

Which is nonsense because the idea that anyone who complains about difficulty also cheats is a complete strawman they made up in the first place.

[Midareyukki]

I have only cleared a pair of savage fights before, when I feel up for it. I otherwise have more investment in the casual content. And yet I fully agree: most normal content, especially nowadays, is incredibly easy.

I rather enjoyed Shinryu's level of difficulty when it came out, because I hadn't seen anything mandatory demand so much attention. It was honestly refreshing for me... but other people certainly disagreed at the time, with many people asking the fight to be toned down.
I absolutely loved Orbonne because of the more demanding fight style with mechanics that required group coordination, know-how and realizing there were more details than just "lol stand on the place".
That's why I liked POTD back then, because doing deep dives with my friends was so fun. We had to coordinate, we had to be careful, we had to know mechanics, we had to figure ourselves out whenever stuff went wrong...
It's why I loved stuff like Dun Scaith or Ozma's fight.
And that's also why I like CLL, Dalriada and Delubrum Reginae. Because they were casual content, yes, but they didn't hold your hand all the time either like the majority of the dungeons do.

Sure, you can argue "well, everything in the game eventually gets easier through repetition". But I'm talking to things that, at least for me, posed a bit more of a challenge at base than the rest. Certainly nothing to the point of a Savage, but also requiring a bit more coordination than most other fights.

To me, the Crystal Tower raids are absolutely boring.
Euphrosyne is really, really bland apart from Halone that at least tries to be challenging.

I like to tryhard. But I know several people don't, and that happens to be the demographic SE pays attention to. Because those people are the ones that are subbed into the game, take their time with content and just want to chill and explore.

So... yeah. I'm not a raider under any stretch, I'm as casuul as it can get. And even then I think we're getting stuff that's honestly pretty easy.

[Atelier-Bagur]

I have only cleared a pair of savage fights before, when I feel up for it. I otherwise have more investment in the casual content. And yet I fully agree: most normal content, especially nowadays, is incredibly easy.

I rather enjoyed Shinryu's level of difficulty when it came out, because I hadn't seen anything mandatory demand so much attention. It was honestly refreshing for me... but other people certainly disagreed at the time, with many people asking the fight to be toned down.
I absolutely loved Orbonne because of the more demanding fight style with mechanics that required group coordination, know-how and realizing there were more details than just "lol stand on the place".
That's why I liked POTD back then, because doing deep dives with my friends was so fun. We had to coordinate, we had to be careful, we had to know mechanics, we had to figure ourselves out whenever stuff went wrong...
It's why I loved stuff like Dun Scaith or Ozma's fight.
And that's also why I like CLL, Dalriada and Delubrum Reginae. Because they were casual content, yes, but they didn't hold your hand all the time either like the majority of the dungeons do.

Sure, you can argue "well, everything in the game eventually gets easier through repetition". But I'm talking to things that, at least for me, posed a bit more of a challenge at base than the rest. Certainly nothing to the point of a Savage, but also requiring a bit more coordination than most other fights.

To me, the Crystal Tower raids are absolutely boring.
Euphrosyne is really, really bland apart from Halone that at least tries to be challenging.

I like to tryhard. But I know several people don't, and that happens to be the demographic SE pays attention to. Because those people are the ones that are subbed into the game, take their time with content and just want to chill and explore.

So... yeah. I'm not a raider under any stretch, I'm as casuul as it can get. And even then I think we're getting stuff that's honestly pretty easy.

Counter argument here as another filthy casual who has dabbled into EW's EXs and Savages. I think the normal difficulty for dungeons and trials is mostly fine honestly. Its subjective between people but since a lot of this content gets shuffled into roulettes, you dont necessarily want you and the party spend extra time struggling to clear fights when these get queued on a basis for daily rewards. Its supposed to be just to get your fill and get out. I dont think the content needs to be difficult to be enjoyable, just the encounter design itself to be enjoyable enough. This is why we have EXs and Savages and WHY we dont have something as an EX roulette or Savage roulette (although now that I say that, that could be an interesting idea. Too bad the most likely scenario is that this'll just backfire) for those striving for tougher challenges. Leave normal content as how it is now.

[Midareyukki]

Counter argument here as another filthy casual who has dabbled into EW's EXs and Savages. I think the normal difficulty for dungeons and trials is mostly fine honestly. Its subjective between people but since a lot of this content gets shuffled into roulettes, you dont necessarily want you and the party spend extra time struggling to clear fights when these get queued on a basis for daily rewards. Its supposed to be just to get your fill and get out. I dont think the content needs to be difficult to be enjoyable, just the encounter design itself to be enjoyable enough. This is why we have EXs and Savages and WHY we dont have something as an EX roulette or Savage roulette (although now that I say that, that could be an interesting idea. Too bad the most likely scenario is that this'll just backfire) for those striving for tougher challenges. Leave normal content as how it is now.

Well...
1 - That's not an argument. That's an opinion I'm not advocating for anything. To you, the game doesn't need to have difficulty to be enjoyable. Well, I don't like Savage but I'm comfortable with the examples I listed. Does it mean that just because I want something a bit more complex, I need to start getting into Savage and EXes? Advocating for something extra doesn't imply the deletion of whatever there is right now. If anything, I'd say I want there to be more of such content, rather than it being so one-sided on either end. There is no spectrum half the time. I often need to wait and be surprised that complex content exists rather than knowing it's coming.

2 - I'd like the game to have more content like the one I described, but I understand why they don't do it. Amarande says it best: MMOs don't respect working adults, who already have to spend their energy daily and don't want to come home to a tryhardy game. Just because I'm fine with that doesn't mean that it's the best approach. And the approach they have does seem to work, since it's one of the reasons the game is so popular.

3 - Savage and EX's aren't the same as CLL or Orbonne Monastery. Like, at all.

Edit: Also, just to clarify. I mostly wrote that in response to VelKallor's post which was directed at raiders.
It's kind of why I prefaced it with "I don't raid, I'm in the casual crowd, but I prefer the harder content". Because it's not just a matter of raiders disliking casual content, it's that there are casual players who do prefer the harder type of content. But they are not the only ones, and I daresay I'm probably in a minority. People who prefer the easier type of content likely vastly outnumber me. And I have no problem with that.

[Liam_Harper]

Y'know, to hark back to what I said earlier...if any of you that do savage or extremes are criticising normal content as "too easy" , yet have third party programs..lets see you do it with a normal UI..because I suspect that the moment those addons are taken away, it will be a very different story.

"Normal content is too easy"...in the same breath "I cant do savage or extreme content without addons , callouts and a dps meter".

As much as I'm pro-addon and meters, I've cleared multiple tiers without any at all, while being the one doing the callouts, on an old laptop with an office mouse and found I even parsed well. And yes, Normal mode content, particularly 8 mans and Experts are a complete utter joke. Mechanically they're fine, but they hit like wet noodles and have no dps requirement. So try again.

These posts just come across as pure salt. If you're behind all the raiders, it's not because they're cheating. If we had no addons, we'd actually be completely fine. The source is you. Endgame content is accessible to almost anyone who wants to try it.

[RitsukoSonoda]

The issue is any time normal content is made that requires pressing more than 1 button you get the same group of 4 ppl and their alts on here claiming they have every disability in the world on top of having no arms and legs demanding it be nerfed.