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

[Reap00]

Just a take on XIV's poor design when it comes to content.

The average skill level of people in this game is terribly low.

The Dungeons and Trials along the way do NOTHING to help people get better at the game. The difficulty of content never changes, so the average player has no reason to get better.

The game does not get harder the longer you play it.

The gap between normal and extreme content only exists because the normal content of the game is so stupidly easy and doesn't get any harder as the game progresses.

Push people out of their comfort zone, Slowly increase the difficulty of content as the expansions go on.

There have been posts precisely like this one for the last 10 years. Do you know what they have changed? Nothing. Do you know what they will change? Nothing. Yoshi and crew will keep doing what they do best. The sub #'s keep increasing over time. If you are unhappy with the state of the game take a break or play something else.

[LaylaTsarra]

There have been posts precisely like this one for the last 10 years. Do you know what they have changed? Nothing. Do you know what they will change? Nothing. Yoshi and crew will keep doing what they do best. The sub #'s keep increasing over time. If you are unhappy with the state of the game take a break or play something else.

Careful you'll be called a white knight if you don't agree with the make it harder brigade.

[Reap00]

Careful you'll be called a white knight if you don't agree with the make it harder brigade.

I am ok with that. I think XIV has plenty of hard as well as easy content. If anything it could use more content somewhere in the middle.

[Raraka]

Put thrice-come ruin on dungeon bosses with a 30s falloff, 3 strikes and you are out. Cant get healed out of doom.

The newest dungeon from MSQ kinda has that element with a straight up doom debuff, but I feel like 1 strike and out is a bit unfair (altough you can esuna it on the dungeon)

As for the rotation part, I assume adding minor DPS checks that reward the players could be a nice plus. Do great damage?, the boss says "I am impressed" as they die and drop an aditional chest with materia/more gear, or chance for another minion drop, or a buff that lasts untill the next boss, etc.

As long as you put a carrot on a stick, people will try to get it. And only the worst of the worst will go "i cant be bothered to try harder for the prize"

[Caitlinzulu]

Put thrice-come ruin on dungeon bosses with a 30s falloff, 3 strikes and you are out. Cant get healed out of doom.

The newest dungeon from MSQ kinda has that element with a straight up doom debuff, but I feel like 1 strike and out is a bit unfair (altough you can esuna it on the dungeon)

As for the rotation part, I assume adding minor DPS checks that reward the players could be a nice plus. Do great damage?, the boss says "I am impressed" as they die and drop an aditional chest with materia/more gear, or chance for another minion drop, or a buff that lasts untill the next boss, etc.

As long as you put a carrot on a stick, people will try to get it. And only the worst of the worst will go "i cant be bothered to try harder for the prize"

HELL NO. You'd see a sharp dropoff in people able to complete story and thus dropping the game.
Some story dungeons used to be harder and had to be nerfed a notch.
As for trials they where allways a lot harder, i'm guessing you werent here to the horror of the original crysalis or steps of faith. With steps it could be clear that you wouldnt be able to clear it before "enrage" yet there was no way to wipe or abort the run and start over.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Normal Content doest need to get harder.
More Difficult content needs to be Developed. We get this with Ultimates, Criterion, Extreme and Savage Trials, and even some content like DR or the Exploratory Content.

The Dungeons and Trials along the way arn't suppose to help people get better at the game, if anything its mostly there to teach you mechanics for the later content in the game.

The game does not get harder the longer you play it.
The gap between normal and extreme content only exists because the normal content of the game is so stupidly easy and doesn't get any harder as the game progresses

No-duh, there should be a Gap between Normal and Extreme...thats the POINT.
But of course everything is going to be easy when you know how / run with a Group that knows how the fight works. And it doesn't help if you are over-geared. They could just make the fights harder to level this...but then...what is the point of working for better gear? The point of High-Level gear is to make your life easier and make you more powerful.
So...whats the solution here? HOW do you suppose they make the game harder without doing stupid things that would just cause more people to complain, and even leave the game because of this apparent need to make "Normal Content" Harder?

[Kes13a]

I kinda agree, but then I kinda disagree too.

I think you start to lose a part of the player for sure. many people play BECAUSE its easy. but I think you also start to push people into dps because right now, the community practically forces you to sprint through everything. so you start adding difficulty, then you will have tanks not wanting the pressure, and healers not wanting it either. not saying -everyone- but I would guess a fair number of current players who now, play everything because its lower effort. would either run dps or quit.

so its a pretty fine line to walk. would I like more difficulty, sure. do I assume that everyone who plays FFxiv is like me, no, I do not, at all. raise the difficulty too much and suddenly people will be complaining about carrying people. so, its kind of a two edged sword

[KeshLives]

so its a pretty fine line to walk. would I like more difficulty, sure. do I assume that everyone who plays FFxiv is like me, no, I do not, at all. raise the difficulty too much and suddenly people will be complaining about carrying people. so, its kind of a two edged sword

It's already annoying enough when the tank isn't really ready to pull wall to wall, but the expectation is that they 'should', and the tank dies 5 times in a simple dungeon because people would rather kill the tank 5 times than take 3 minutes longer. Annoys the hell out of me. If you want tanks to be available for 'normal' runs, stop abusing the tanks. They WILL quit. I've seen it in too many other games.

[Amenara]

I do wish that at least on the dungeon side they made the leveling dungeons scale a bit in difficulty as you get higher level, especially with how it felt like the first dungeon was a punch to the face in difficulty compared to what came before when starting a new expansion then they get significantly easier and then the last dungeon is another punch to the face in difficulty, during initial launch at least. I think they could scale that difficulty curve better to make all the leveling dungeons a bit more engaging.

In trials, I am a bit spoiled as a tank since I think the "challenge" in normal content and some EX content is figuring out what I can survive if I just eat the mechanic to continue DPSing the boss. Trial 1 in EW is pretty bad in that you can pretty much eat every mechanic that forces you out of melee range as a tank and have no issues clearing it.

In the MSQ I wish there was an option to make the duties have a hard mode akin to how there is an easy and "you can clear this difficulty while asleep" mode. I think the Garlean duty in EW was good as the timer made me feel rushed to complete it and the ambiguous directions made me have to figure it out while still beating the timer. It made you think about how to navigate to minimize combat since it was so easy to die and there felt like there were actual stakes with its placement in the story. Unfortunately almost all other MSQ content is designed for the absolute lowest common denominator to complete with relative ease for most of it and because of that there is no way for it to get more difficult or pose a challenge to a large portion of the playerbase.

[Masekase_Hurricane]

This is why we need a slider for dungeons offering players a harder version while not making it mandatory. Same with trials create a version in-between that has some of the extreme mechanics in but also the normal mechanics. Hey could even call the trials Hard mode :P