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

[Xaruko_Nexume]

Not reading 37 pages but...

A few years ago another MMORPG tried to increase the difficulty level of the base line content and people left in droves. A developer even tweeted about how they raised the bar hoping players would rise to the challenge but they "found the opposite to be true."

This games target audience is not the same as a game like Call of Duty or League of Legends or Fortnite would target. MMO players in general tend to be more casual, older, and often more interested in the social "vr chat" style of the game than any challenging content.

So, yeah not that it is a democracy but just want to get my voice out there too, a no to making MSQ any harder at all.

[KeshLives]

I agree that not everything needs to be subject to absolute efficiency, but the majority of people queueing for roulettes aren't there because we find the encounters fun. Most of us just want it over with. My own solution was to just always queue for them as WAR (unless a friendly healer is queueing with me, in which case I'll run DRK or GNB for the higher overall DPS), thereby removing the need for a healer almost entirely. This frees the healer up to spam their 1 key with maximum efficiency while I keep myself and all of the DPS alive. WAR's damage is a wee bit gimped, but its kit is uniquely well suited to compensating for other people's screw-ups in casual content.

You can, of course, play the way you wish, but, for me, if there's a pet peeve with the MMO genre, it is the drive for efficiency in all things, *that gets pushed by people who like it, onto people who want nothing to do with it*. I HATE the whole push for speed speed speed at all times *IN NORMAL CONTENT*.

Sure, if you're doing Savage/Extreme/Ultimate content, whether raid or trial, by all means, optimise as much as needed to get the job done. I understand that completely, been there, done that, if not necessarily in FFXIV. If you're fighting a timer, ala M+, sure. But normal content has nothing of the sort.

But, the whole drive to shave 120 seconds from Sastasha or Cutter's Cry, or Holminster's Switch, or <pick some normal dungeon or trial> drives me bonkers. In the name of saving two minutes, they'll pull too much, kill the tank three times, and of course, completely lose the time they were supposedly trying to save in the first place. Makes no logical sense to me at all.

[Amarande]

I agree that not everything needs to be subject to absolute efficiency, but the majority of people queueing for roulettes aren't there because we find the encounters fun. Most of us just want it over with.

Yeah, this is the real elephant in the room with roulettes (for dungeons, anyway. For trials and raids, it is the fact that there are over 40 different encounters each, and trials in particular often have tricksy bits that can easily go south if people forgot what to do. Which they will, mind you, if nothing else because of roulettes' natural bias towards the lowest end most braindead content simply because the natural progression of things means they get queued for more often, so you really don't get to stay in practice on things like say Diamond).

In a nutshell, people insist on queuing for stuff that they don't enjoy, then project on the people for whom it is greener and still fun.

The trouble is you need those tomestones, I suppose. Hunt trains help, but that brings in another form of grumpery, as it necessitates that culture of "hunts belong to the Discord, don't touch unless you're told it's ok" and the loss of the ability to just go and pick off a hunt (A ranks were nominally made for 8, right?) with your FC/buddies without catching mass contumely and salt.

But otherwise, what could you do? I guess you can spam PotD at 90 but the weekly time investment in that (it's what, 45 runs to cap? Not counting uncapped needs for crafting etc.) would actually be pretty painful.

But, the whole drive to shave 120 seconds from Sastasha or Cutter's Cry, or Holminster's Switch, or <pick some normal dungeon or trial> drives me bonkers. In the name of saving two minutes, they'll pull too much, kill the tank three times, and of course, completely lose the time they were supposedly trying to save in the first place.

Omg this. It happens on all levels of content too. Savage as well, when I did Sigmascape back in the day basically every O5S group would insist on attempting the ghost cheese, even though almost no PUGs got it right and even one mess up meant losing more time than you stood to save (to be fair, as a healer main, I also can appreciate why the cheese was wanted more and more later in the tier, as there was a mechanical as well as time aspect).

As for the bifurcation of seriousness and loss of the middle, btw, here is the Y Combinator comment I referred to earlier:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34714698

I actually wonder if this is a driver for the ugly shift in MMOs - between working adults feeling pushed out by the time and scheduling issues (therefore, weakening the presence of the older generations) and the younger generations who may have just never really known the "kinda serious, but not like a job" tier culture because team events growing up are now an eerily similar kind of all or nothing?

[Absimiliard]

But, the whole drive to shave 120 seconds from Sastasha or Cutter's Cry, or Holminster's Switch, or <pick some normal dungeon or trial> drives me bonkers. In the name of saving two minutes, they'll pull too much, kill the tank three times, and of course, completely lose the time they were supposedly trying to save in the first place. Makes no logical sense to me at all.

Dungeons and trials low enough in level that tanks lack their self-sustain tools, I can agree on. It's important to gauge what your group is capable of handling and proceed appropriately. In higher level content, however, there is really no excuse for a non-DRK tank to die. I say this less as a shot at healers and more at the tanks themselves, as three of them have kits that allow them to be almost, if not entirely, capable of self-sustaining in most content below savages. Even should the healers and DPS falter, those tanks should be more than capable of handling wall to wall pulls in a way that prevents issue.

[LevKresnik]

What are all these roulette woes? Sure, I've seen a tank or three that had to be kicked after several minutes without a tank stance in sight, but what is all this? If the stress is so prevalent, would it not be wiser to set party finders for roulettes beforehand? At least then, anyone who joins you is doing so knowing you'd like a more relaxed experience, if that's a detail you choose to include.

[Absimiliard]

But otherwise, what could you do? I guess you can spam PotD at 90 but the weekly time investment in that (it's what, 45 runs to cap? Not counting uncapped needs for crafting etc.) would actually be pretty painful.

You might have just stumbled upon the only actual use for variant/criterion dungeons.

[IkaraGreydancer]

You might have just stumbled upon the only actual use for variant/criterion dungeons.

I find them fun to do, and the lore is quite nice

[YokaiYoshiya]

late to the party, but you know why there's a lack of hard? Because Endwalker dungeons made (hard) would just be one solid mechanic that wiped you over and over until you quit. They're already hard.

[Eyrilona]

Right... an account with 3 posts to their name bumps a 2-year-old thread with a title that just happens to be perfect ragebait in the current forum climate.

[Gurgeh]

*looks at every MSQ trial since HW's start*

You sure about that? Because while the dungeons are pretty bad outside of some of the bosses, the trials are consistently pushing you harder and harder.

You make an excellent point, but then I still have to say, Yes, because they are the ONLY, thing that pushes you at all, you do a trial once, get carried. Then in 18 months the trial pops up in a roul again, and your wearing blue augmented end expansion gear and nothing matters.
They could go in sync everything down and fix this.
STOP GIVING AWAY AUGMENTED GEAR AT END EXPANSION. Put all the coins back in and make people earn it again. That way few will, they will have some 'force feedback' in the game to let them know a mechanic even just happened, and they will get better. Heck they will even have a reason to run those old alliances or rouls.
All old content ships be synced back down to max +10 or even +5, because by thex time it's old expansion content 'everyone' is wearing augmented and the boss melts, the healing/mitigration is huge. Lots of people know the fight now so you get a lot more mitigation.

This game as an amazing feature that I'm not sure other games have. Sync. It's an 'amazing' feature.
Start use it to patch some of this up.

Create a new roul, like mentor, you could get any content, track or dungeon, but it syncs your character down to minIlvl, BUT.. it will queue into any of the normal rouls. You'll give players that want an extra challenge.
And youll start to give players back done if that 'as it was meant to be played' experience.

I mean ECHO is worthless. It hardly ever gets used.
ECHO. Don't increase it with every wipe. Increase it with every other wipe.
Do they use echo on dungeons? If not use it and make dungeons harder. If they do? Stop increasing echo with every fight.
All these amazing powerful systems, that they could deploy yesterday to help (that most other games wouldn't have ready to go.) use them!

Hurt me momma Hydaelyn!
Step on me Yotsuyu!