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

[Jeeqbit]

They have been making dungeons easier, especially with the Duty Support changes. It's all so telegraphed that you have to ignore the mechanics on purpose to get them wrong. They even went back to some Endwalker and Shadowbringers dungeons and added in telegraphs that weren't there, such as aoe tank busters. It looks like they are going in the opposite direction to this for normal content and I don't think they are going to listen to feedback like this.

They do seem willing to make the higher level dungeons harder, so maybe it is just that they want it to be a gradual difficulty increase. Just to give an example, the latest dungeon gives you Doom if you tunnel on a rotation and get the mechanic wrong and it requires you to pay a lot more attention than the Gaze mechanic in the dungeon before it that gave Doom.

They also seem more willing to make the leveling dungeons harder. Let's take Dohn Mheg, where all the pools burst one after the other and if you didn't watch trusts do it, you might not even have known how to avoid it, or the first boss of the last 5.0 and 6.0 dungeons, which both wiped people because of requiring them to pay attention to the environment and use their brain a little to avoid stuff.

But again I don't think they are gonna listen to this feedback much. They obviously aren't making these fights for the people who make posts like this. They are making it for new players who may have just come for the story.

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.

This is a good point. They seem more willing to make trials, raids and alliance raids kill you if you get it wrong.

In EW trials, you have to pay attention to the environment, such as symbols and comets in the first trial, color symbols in the second trial to indicate running in, out or to corners, planets in the third trial.

Whether trials like this age well when our item level goes up is another question, especially after they add the echo to it, but they are a lot better than how poorly lower level trials aged, where you go in as a healer and just spam your 1 attack because there isn't anything to heal. Thordan is the greatest example but there are a lot of low level trials like it, especially from ARR. Even The Dying Gasp hasn't aged that well. It can kill people but it is a 410 trial being fought mostly by people at 530.

[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

[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

[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.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

I’m all for it if they want to make stuffs harder in optional unlockables. Like those normal raids and non-CT raids.

People who only come for MSQ alone can choose to stay in their own comfort bubble.

[VelKallor]

The normal content you refer to is story content and is not , never has been designed to be a brick wall.

You DO NOT tune content to be that hard that you cant finish the story, as this is a story driven MMO..all you will do is have people say yeah this is nuts and walk away.

You have savage, you have extreme, you have criterion which is midcore, you have ultimate which has turned out to be little else than a cheat fest. ( You heard me, If you cant win without cheating you dont deserve to win at all )

The game is not and should not be designed so "only the worthy" get to see content THEY PAID FOR.

WOW did that, the results of that dogs breakfast speak for themselves.

[Seraphor]

Players already complain that some normal content is too hard (mainly the solo duties).
And you ultimately share the game with them, so they're your team mates. You don't want your team mates unable to clear content.

[Alrin]

As a someone who main healers in this game i have to say something:

Your post glared at me when I opened the forum. Don't you dare to ruin what is today. You have to dosis something better because you look like malefic person. (Pun intended)