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

[RobynDaBank]

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.

The issue with expressing anything is too difficult for oneself is that you get the same group of elite "Ultimate raiders but only in their mind" people on here claiming that anyone who can't play on their level is stupid and/or faking disability.

[Kaurhz]

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.

You have a knack for telling fictional stories. Considered turning that into a career endeavour?

[Amarande]

I'm curious, do people actually have a problem with not finding enough people playing with you in high level content, or people just simply pissed at other being bad for no reason?

Much has to do with RL here, I expect. People that are unemployed, collegiate, or are fortunate to work a 9-5 office job and thus can regularly play with the peak herd find it easy.

People that work, say, retail? Not so much. Second shift where I work has you getting home after 10 PM, first shift would mean being at work at 5 (or is it 4?) AM. The former you miss the rush and the latter you have to go to bed as it picks up. Also if you are not Eastern Time things get pushed around too because you have to consider the ET folks' bedtimes.

Add in the extreme (much more than WoW) antipathy XIV raiders have at losing even one scheduled static night and things like Comcast (and SE) maintenance habits and night owls have a bit of an issue. Something in early Stormblood seems to have caused a shift as well because I remember the night life on Aether being very abuzz in 4.0-4.1, then around 4.2 or so people started going to bed early, and if you couldn't shift your schedule you mostly just got to watch your temporally privileged friends one by one happily join statics while you were stuck with late-tier PF.

I'm not asking for Dark Souls level of crazyness, but definitely something needs to be done before it gets even worse.

Funnily I've wondered if Dark Souls was actually a catalyst for this decline.

It was just that popular, and not only forced that many people to get unusually good at action RPG gameplay compared to the past, but also presumably attracted a lot of people who weren't into "traditional" RPGs but had hitherto mainly played things like Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry.

These people then came to dominate the genre, meanwhile most of us that feel the pinch of modern MMO culture seem to be the ones that arrived here from a gaming career of mainly traditional RPGs. We're dinosaurs, I guess, though, since we barely get anything anymore besides remasters, other than a bunch of cheap RPG Maker stuff and "adult" RPGs on Steam ...

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.

In solo duties some phases can get pretty frantic (think 4.1, or the Level 86 EW story duty last phases). I can imagine a motor disability making them really hard (especially when the benefit from Easy or Very Easy is minimal, such as in these cases), and really frustrating because there's no (TOS-acceptable, anyway) way to get a leg up (another casualty of modern gaming, back in those days you used to hand your friend the keyboard and have them do it for you, now you'll possibly get banned for the equivalent online) so what can you do? Just shelve the game and wait for the paid story boost to be available past that point? That's pretty disheartening.

There's also the unexpected gameplay shifts that can be fun sometimes but also easily frustrating, especially if you're in a RPG mindset instead of the "Gaming Decathlon" mindset MMOs seem to ask for now - or if, as sometimes (hi azure haired boy) it requires developing a play skill to a degree that you will use just the once and then is of little or no use thereafter.

In group content, the fear is presumably getting stuck because you're good enough but mechanics mean you can't carry and you get paired with people that can't hack it you get stuck as well (thus fueling even more of a "rush it at release" mindset - do we really want 7.0 to be a repeat of Queue Savage?).

If you wanna go back to ShB, maybe they could have done a bit more with the dungeon wardens, like thrice-come ruin to make them feel more like a active threat.

The trouble is this makes the healer situation even more stark. Healers feel like green DPS enough as it is, if you push individual responsibility any further you essentially might as well just phase out the Healer role altogether, as some of the newer Korean MMOs have done ...

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,

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?

WFH will be the norm across a swathe of industries.

Yep. And if there's one group that I see ROUTINELY get the short end of the stick in MMO communities, it's the working adult. Especially the working adult who does not have the privilege of working at home.

Instead of being the backbone of the customer base, we're apparently just a bunch of inexperienced gamers dragging everyone down with our lack of time and energy that's treated as laziness by the "terminally online" crowd who dominate the community watering holes.

And barely anyone seems to be interested in fixing this. You mostly see people wanting to push content to entertain the folks who have put aside everything else in life to perfect themselves at the game, and anyone else should ... apparently just be there to boost their Twitch views, I guess?

The issue with expressing anything is too difficult for oneself is that you get the same group of elite "Ultimate raiders but only in their mind" people on here claiming that anyone who can't play on their level is stupid and/or faking disability.

Yep. "Savage is easy, you're just bad." I can't count how many times I've caught that canard from elite players.

I partly blame it on the Discord ecosystem, but due to the extreme popularity and the terms of service of Discord, I'm not entirely sure what the way back from this brink is ...

[Raraka]

I suppose will chime in some other ideas I had while catching up on the thread

Trial 1 and Trial 2 from Endwalker were amazing on the release month. People wiped, chatted on how the mechanic could be solved, asked and gave advice, and generally that ended in a clear after a few attempts

Now, what I wanna make important about this is that both of those trials were very important bosses in the narrative, so making them as hard as they are (specially trial 2), in my opinion, makes the victory and first clear so much more fullfilling

(And if you really struggled with it, you could either follow *that* NPC in trust, or get help from other players, wich kinda makes sense in a MMO)

If you wanna go back to ShB, maybe they could have done a bit more with the dungeon wardens, like thrice-come ruin to make them feel more like a active threat. Going as back as to ARR, you have the leveling trials with very decent difficulty spikes to emphasise how the primals are strong enemies

To wrap the idea what im trying to say is, they could, and have used difficulty to make the MSQ presentation of a foe, feel more accurate. If something is presented as a big enemy, it should feel like a big enemy in the combat.

I personally think the Four lord series, Titania, EW trial 2 and even the Sky pirate series are great examples of difficulty used well in a narrative game, and even as someone that does Savage nowdays, I still find great enjoyment in any of these instances as they are a straight foward, but enjoyable challenge, packed into fun fights

I feel like Dixie is more sick of the "Square peg, into the square hole, circle peg... into the square hole" design that a lot of normal mode suffers from, than the difficulty itself being "easy"

[IkaraGreydancer]

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.

Wtf? Man these exaggerations are insane at this point. Per the stupid logic that this is you'd ALWAYS see people asking for nerfs. I've not seen that since In From The Cold dropped with 6.0. We've had plenty of content since then and I've not once seen any call for a nerf or any claim of disability. So who is this supposed 4 man group with alts making these claims? Who are these agents banding together to do this?

Your logic reeks of the toxic "uber elite" that no one in the community really likes or resonates with and that's not a good thing. It's dangerous

[Marxam]

honestly all they need to do is just bring back TP for melees. A system where there is a direct consequence for your actions speaks louder than any difficulty curve. Spamming your aoes on just one or two mobs? Too bad now you have no TP. Spamming just your ranged attack? Too bad now you have no TP. Caster's get penalized for dying but not melees? The fact that you can go through the entire MSQ from ARR to EW, only spamming your aoes as a tank should worry the FFXIV devs. Though it would make for an awkward video compilation. "Can you clear FFXIV with only Overpower"?

However, they also need to introduce an incentive system with the TP. For example, let's say you do your 123 rotation, each costing 100 TP respectively. First action will cost the full amount (100 TP), the second will be 50% (50 TP), and the last will be free (0 TP). Players can actually visualize and see that if I do my combo rotation correctly I don't lose a lot of TP for playing correctly. It would also instinctively teach them to always complete your combo rotation.

[IkaraGreydancer]

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.

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

[VelKallor]

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

Exactly correct.

[VelKallor]

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.

Not making any at all, its a simple fact. If you cant win without cheating, you arent as skilled as you claim to be, therefore not in a position to lecture anyone else.

You also didn't even adress anything I said in my post, which of the content you listed is between MSQ and EX difficulty

You have a range to deal with, which isnt the topic here either.

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

If they are a better player..why do they have to cheat to win?

[Saraide]

Not making any at all, its a simple fact. If you cant win without cheating, you arent as skilled as you claim to be, therefore not in a position to lecture anyone else.



You have a range to deal with, which isnt the topic here either.



If they are a better player..why do they have to cheat to win?

Funny thing to say when it's all the casuals who use the ERP mods. If you liked RP so much, why cant you do it without mods?