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

[KeshLives]

All I'm saying is there's a limit to what your average "casual" player will do.

And it isn't always about skill. I was a raider for years. I just won't put that time into it anymore. Not what I enjoy *anymore*. I play for the story, and I'm completely happy to learn what is needed to play 'normal' level content, and I'll do raid roulettes, too. I choose not to go into higher difficulties, because I have no patience for the kind of people that tend to cluster in those raids. Not that all are like that, but, enough.

As far as 'difficulty'...if 'some difficulty' is ok, why isn't Bahamut in the roulettes anymore? Hmm? (Yes, I 2-manned it with my son to see the story, as I came to XIV too late for it to be 'current content')

Anyway, I have no problem with the newer dungeons, and I very much enjoyed the flame dude trial, can't think of his name atm.

[Gemina]

As far as 'difficulty'...if 'some difficulty' is ok, why isn't Bahamut in the roulettes anymore? Hmm? (Yes, I 2-manned it with my son to see the story, as I came to XIV too late for it to be 'current content')

BCoB was prior to the dev's decision to release NM raids so players could experience the story. Alexander was the first to do this. Putting Coils in the raid roulette would sync all participants down to 50, and they will have to do it under a difficulty not intended for casual players.

[Raven2014]

As far as 'difficulty'...if 'some difficulty' is ok, why isn't Bahamut in the roulettes anymore? Hmm? (Yes, I 2-manned it with my son to see the story, as I came to XIV too late for it to be 'current content')

"Any more" implied it had at one point in the past part of the roulette. So the easy answer here is because it never was. There is no "easy" version of Coil for it to be in roulette. You will essentially put people in a savage level fight. And while the fights in general requires less precision and reflex, they're no thing to be scoff at in term of mechanic and require probably more coordination then current raid, even in the early fight. For example:

- The very first boss requires a party split and DPS coordination.
- The snake 2 mechanic you see P8S that PF still wipe to "ALL THE TIME" is a watered down version of the shriek mechanic first seen in the 2nd boss of second coil.
- And Phoenix is ... yeah. If anyone think P3S is bad, that because they didn't do or remember Coil Phoenix in all its glory.

If Coil roullette is a thing, it'll make Ivalice raid looks like picnic.

[VelKallor]

And it isn't always about skill. I was a raider for years. I just won't put that time into it anymore. Not what I enjoy *anymore*. I play for the story, and I'm completely happy to learn what is needed to play 'normal' level content, and I'll do raid roulettes, too. I choose not to go into higher difficulties, because I have no patience for the kind of people that tend to cluster in those raids. Not that all are like that, but, enough.

This is where I and others stand, tbh, been there done that, I am certain a Mage of our acquaintance will say "You dont do it because you are bad, graylet" or some such nonsense.

The harder difficulties are there for people to do, sure, but that doesnt mean it APPEALS to as many as it used to.

A day or so ago, one of our more "enthusiastic" players decided to set up a PF for....Nidhogg Extreme, min ilevel no echo...later commented on his intense disappointment when no one wanted to do it.

No two guesses as to why.

Normal content is MEANT to be easily completed, it is STORY oriented, not meant to be a hard slog or a brick wall, Ill be blunt and say that what I believe I am seeing here is "make it harder so only the WORTHY get to see the content, "you should want to do savage you should want to do extreme"...this is the WOW mindset and quite frankly has no place here

I should do whatever suits ME, not you or your agenda for what you want the game to be.

t's all about "I have a life outside video games, and I refuse to schedule that life around a game, even if I do play it a lot." For me, it's that simple. I play games as my leisure time a lot, but, if family/spouse/etc want to do something out of the blue, I'm not going to tell them "Oh, sorry, can't spend time with you, I'm in a raid." YMMV.

Yup. Exactly. My schedule is varied, I play FF 14 for one reason mainly..I can log off and go do whatever whenever the hell I feel like it, I am beholden to no one's timelines or schedules, I do what I want when I want as it suits me. Forty years of dancing to others tunes, nights, weekends, holidays, mornings, afternoons, fifteen hour shifts, split shifts, broken or no sleep...been there done that.

Not anymore.

"But you can do it in PF if you want to"..again no thanks. FF 14 is marketed and RUN as casual, fun based, come and go as you please. "Make the content harder" isnt going to help anything. This is a STORY DRIVEN MMO, so making the story harder to get through isnt going to do anything but anger people and have them walk away.

I suspect we have more than few people who want this game to be more like WOW.....HARD PASS.

[Nihility]

Personally I think they just need to shift resources around a bit, they seem to only make stuff for hardcore or super casual with the only middle ground content being savage.

Perhaps the middle is only me but only getting content that I definitely don't have time for, is easy to the point of boring, or fun but only lasts a week or two every 6 months or so. Kind of increasingly feel like the game isn't really offering me much for my subscription.

Dunno, maybe this super intricate clockwork dance rut the games encounters have all fallen into can only actually accommodate super easy and super hard. They seem to have already gone to great lengths to make every job just the same cake with different decorations so they can all be perfect little cogs in the encounters rather than make encounters that can work with different approaches

[Ardeth]

Sorry it was having a stroke with this much text-Ardeth

I didn't mean it like if you don't like it, leave. I meant it is like if you want seriously challenging content and FFXIV isn't giving you that, then there's probably other games to fill that need. And maybe they won't, and you come back to FFXIV. The point is people shouldn't force a game to be something it's not. When I envision a more hardcore mmo environment, I think of Wow. Having played Wow since its beta, it's a style of hard content or quit that comes to mind. As a casual, once I beat the expansion leveling experience, I quit. I don't want to do pvp, mythic+ is too hard and gatekeepy, and raids aren't for me. I don't like pet battles, etc. So, to me, Wow is a dud of a game. Sure, I can get to make level, but once I get there, the game is dead. At least with this one, there's a ton of "casual" stuff for me to do. If they removed it all, I would quit. If they forced me into harder content, I would quit. There's a reason I play this. And if what people want is something more akin to Wow, well, there it is.

[Mistress_Irika]

I couldn't even get through a third of the thread. So I'm going to say what I need to say, the only couple of sentences being the only ones that needs to be read

TLR - No. Do not raise the difficulty. It will make everyone's lives worse.

This will be the 3rd expansion that I'm playing. As I'm currently watching from the Wolves Den I see things getting a whole lot easier from kits being more easier to use to trials being less punishing like the change that was made to Titan. The one thing that has stayed the same going through the expansion is that on a casual level people will play to the bare minimum, and it will continue to be accepted as so as long as they're able to get what they need done for the day. You can go to a different game, and you will not be able to escape that fact when it comes to all pve content regardless of what game is being played. Going against the grain is only making things harder overall.
Clear example doing multi pulls and expecting to heal them. I'll agree with some and say and that everyone should be able to do just that. However, that doesnt make it acceptable. If one's not ready everyone is wiping from the pulls. I got sick of dealing with wiping for no reason that I ended up carrying actual potions for the old content in order to attempt to carry the group should the tank and healer die from that pull. I did not feel like dying over a failed pull anymore. There's no way that I should be playing frontlines in a pve dungeon (That's how i look at it, because I used to play blue dps in pvp last expansion) over a mistake that could be avoided. Safe to say that I dont have to deal with it anymore, because i refuse to do roulettes for the sole purpose of failed mulit pulls.
Point of the matter: Don't tell people how to play. If you have to up your dps in order to speed things quicker so be it. I would like for people to get better. However, if that's not the goal for some people then they're not going to do it. There's nothing you can do about it, especially if you're running things solo queue. Just get through it and be done with it.

[Semirhage]

Is there any thread where you won't seethe about raiding while insisting it's not because you're *jealous* or anything? This angry fixation would suggest otherwise.

[Payadopa]

There is a lot of conflation going on here. Making something more difficult doesn't mean savage. At the moment everything bar current I guess is making me sleepy, personally. You can literally press 1 to 3 buttons and win. You can stand in most AoEs and don't even require healing.

I agree, the MSQ should stay accessable (whatever that means), but give us options. Playing HW now is mandatory. It's not hard, playing the Alex raids is not hard, there is no incentive to min ilvl and people barely do it anyway. The entire game is like that and it gets 'worse' with every expansion as new players get to wade through even more now. I've had a couple of new players in my FC ask why the game is so easy. A few left around mid ARR. I'm assuming SE gets more players that way and my experience is anecdotal at best anyway. Who knows.

Even if you are 'just' into the story it's just sad you don't even see all mechanics of a fight and the big bad dies within 30 seconds that the MSQ hyped up for 20 hours. That's pretty ridiculous if you ask me.

My solution would be more optional stuff like a min ilvl roulette or a dungeon Unreal or whatever. Put a token at the end for a shiny and people will do it. Or reuse old bosses, give them the Bozja treatment and put them in the open world. Anything, really. I think the important thing is to keep it out of the MSQ so people can trust their way through it unimpeded. Everything beyond that should be fair game to an extent.

[VelKallor]

Do you know what the word "some" means in this context?

Yes, i do.

Do you know what the words "the game and all encounters were designed AND TESTED to be cleared without addons" mean?