Do encounteres (specifically Extremes) FEEL different now?

[Jeeqbit]

I don't think they are especially easier, I think we just got better. Like, Thordan was "hard", but not mechanically. It was more to do with gear and us still being terrible with HW jobs. Zurvan was regarded as one of the easiest EX fights ever. Sephirot wasn't even that difficult mechanically.

Most of the difficulty came from us, to be quite frank, sucking.

Really just this. Back in Heavensward, Sophia was harder because you couldn't just use Shake it Off as a Warrior and heal the party. If the healers sucked, then the party was dead. And healers had less heals, so there was a higher chance of needing to use the GCD and manage MP.

There wasn't even Reprisal then except on DRK if they got a proc. You also couldn't use Knockback Immunity except on certain jobs like Paladin. Tanks didn't have a trait giving 20% damage reduction, so if they did use their DPS stance, all the worse for them. And now Warriors can get a free Knockback Immunity every 60 seconds as well. Oh, we also didn't have Shirk.

As an added difficulty, we didn't have cross-world party finder, so I would direct queue and constantly meet tanks that didn't know what a tank swap was and left me to die.

[Ath192]

Really just this. Back in Heavensward, Sophia was harder because you couldn't just use Shake it Off as a Warrior and heal the party. If the healers sucked, then the party was dead. And healers had less heals, so there was a higher chance of needing to use the GCD and manage MP.

There wasn't even Reprisal then except on DRK if they got a proc. You also couldn't use Knockback Immunity except on certain jobs like Paladin. Tanks didn't have a trait giving 20% damage reduction, so if they did use their DPS stance, all the worse for them. And now Warriors can get a free Knockback Immunity every 60 seconds as well. Oh, we also didn't have Shirk.

As an added difficulty, we didn't have cross-world party finder, so I would direct queue and constantly meet tanks that didn't know what a tank swap was and left me to die.

Actually I forgot about this. Maybe the reason the fights are easier now is because there were a lot more technicalities and depth to job management, so players did in fact suck more, but I don't think that its because we've gotten better at clicking the same hotbar we've had (maybe some, but someone who takes raiding seriously can master their job rather quickly so it wouldn't take years). It's just that the jobs being easier and homogenized raised the skill floor so everyone is slight better performing than they would've been with the OG stance dancing, TP + MP management.

[Tsumdere]

I do not think fights got easier. The player base has gotten better. I think if they introduced fights like Barbariccia, E8S, and P3/P8S in HW/SB it would have decimated the community the same way Gordias almost did.

I think that "feel" you might have is just from the EW extremes being kinda standard? Outside of Barbariccia there hasn't been one with the WOW factor yet. We're missing our Thordan/Shinryu/Hades equivalent because they fxxked up Endsinger so bad. This leaves it feeling kind of empty, although the other three EXs aren't that much different than what we got in the past.

Also Byakko's intermission was absolutely terrible. Also, I hope to never see an unskippable cutscene/mini game in an EX ever again. Leave that crap in normal mode.

[Jeeqbit]

I think if they introduced fights like Barbariccia, E8S, and P3/P8S in HW/SB it would have decimated the community the same way Gordias almost did.

A11S was similar to P3S in many respects though and it was quite a wall for a lot of people. It was the birthplace of limit cut. It didn't decimate the community.

A12S had some simpler stuff mixed in such as donuts and adds but it was a lot harder because we didn't have things like gap closers or all the mitigations we have now (and a lot of mitigation didn't work against magic). It still managed to have its own sort of High Concept and people managed it.

It helps that for the creator tier we eventually got cross-world party finder and the game's population has grown as well. When trying it on a single world you were meeting the same people over and over in every party or felt you had to get into a raid FC, whereas the diversity now means you can find a party that makes less mistakes making them more approachable.

It's also worth bringing up the fact they got a lot of raid mechanics and eventually made them dungeon mechanics. One example I remember well was that in A10S there was a mechanic where you had to stop moving. In the next major patch, a dungeon released with that same mechanic and they have consistently brought mechanics down into dungeons, sometimers a bit simpler than they were in savage, slowly making these older mechanics nothing to people.

[Tsumdere]

A11S was similar to P3S in many respects though and it was quite a wall for a lot of people. It was the birthplace of limit cut. It didn't decimate the community.

A12S had some simpler stuff mixed in such as donuts and adds but it was a lot harder because we didn't have things like gap closers or all the mitigations we have now (and a lot of mitigation didn't work against magic). It still managed to have its own sort of High Concept and people managed it.

It helps that for the creator tier we eventually got cross-world party finder and the game's population has grown as well. When trying it on a single world you were meeting the same people over and over in every party or felt you had to get into a raid FC, whereas the diversity now means you can find a party that makes less mistakes making them more approachable.

It's also worth bringing up the fact they got a lot of raid mechanics and eventually made them dungeon mechanics. One example I remember well was that in A10S there was a mechanic where you had to stop moving. In the next major patch, a dungeon released with that same mechanic and they have consistently brought mechanics down into dungeons, sometimers a bit simpler than they were in savage, slowly making these older mechanics nothing to people.

(For the OP - I have cleared all Savage Tiers and all Ultimates.)

That is totally fair - although I never said there wasn't previous tier walls or fights that were difficult then. At least in regards to the newer raid tiers, I was considering the DPS as well. E8S and P8S were brutal. I don't remember working as hard to meet a DPS check in HW/SB as I did than in those two fights. E12S is also a good contender in this department as well. Taking Shiva and plopping her into Alexander exactly as she is would have been a disaster. I was also thinking of P8SP1! High Concept is pretty simple once you get a clear explanation.
P3S is just an exercise in misery. I can't imagine what would have happened if it was world only.

The whole community has gotten better. My HW self would have never cleared Barbariccia, much less TOP. I thought A9S was hard then lol. I was minILVLing stuff with my friends lately, and we were getting through majority of HW/SB extreme/savage fights way faster than we were ShB (shout out to Brute Justice and God Kefka -Forsaken Edition- for being our only HW/SB mini walls). Also currently doing UCoB again which I haven't done since late SB/early ShB, and many of the mechanics are incredibly simple and slow compared to Ultimates now.

[Leifei]

I've been doing Extremes and Savage since Stormblood. I think that the difficulty level for the Extremes has been roughly same from SB through EW. Extremes usually have 1 make or break mechanic while the rest is more smooth sailing. As for seeing less extreme fight listings in PF over time, maybe it's because more people are actively doing savage and ultimates? In the past, ultimates were almost exclusively done in statics, but their listing count has jumped. This is just my experience and observation though as I do not have any metrics to back up what I'm saying.

[DixieBellOCE]

So far Barbariccia and Hydaelyn are the only Endwalker Trials i would consider at the level of Extreme.

The others have just been a very basic dance, with 1, maybe 2 mechanics that actually matter, and once you hit that point, the fights just fall over without much effort.

Comparing that to Shadowbringers where the trials were a lot more punishing for messing up, it feels as if they have dumbed down extremes to try and get more people to try them.
(Which is not a bad thing, but it does make it incredibly boring for people that enjoyed the content previously.)

A lot of the new trials have mechanics that are:
A) Predictable and able to be cheesed.
B) Able to just be Dorito'd (Marker on 1 person, follow them).
C) Ignored because the mechanic doesn't punish you enough to actually think about doing it properly.

A lot of the issues just boils down to the trials being scaled back enough to the point where you over gear the content before it releases.
(Look at Rubicante, it released as a 610ilvl duty, when most players that do the content would have already had a majority of 630ilvl pieces of gear, or equivalent upgraded crafted gear at 620.)

[RyuDragnier]

So far Barbariccia and Hydaelyn are the only Endwalker Trials i would consider at the level of Extreme.

I would say Barbie is at Savage level, and that's only because it commits the cardinal sin of having no breather moments, you're ALWAYS moving. An EX should not be that level of high octane ever.

[Renathras]

[ Extremes only (HW-ShB), just a few Savage at level in EW (P1S, P2s, and P5S) but mostly Extreme still ]

One thing I'm seeing is how different people like content. I suppose I should have asked people in the OP (maybe I'll edit it...) to start their post with the highest tier of content they do/have done. E.g. "Ultimate. <post>" or "Extremes only <post>" and so on. As a person that doesn't do Savage much, hasn't before EW other than expansions later A9S Light farming for HW Relics, etc, but has long done Extremes, I feel very different about them than some people here who, I suspect, are more Savage or even Ultimate raiders.

I think the big thing is pacing. Contrast Bismark with ZodEx and it's clear the former is a hyper-chill fight by comparison with some stuff like the harpoon cannons. Susaku is likewise more chill than Emerald WEAPON was, or than Golbez is likely to be. Ruby and Byakko were WAY more chill than BarbEx, a fight which has no chill. Mechanics weren't pass/fail and there generally (exceptions, but generally) weren't body checks per se, and damage was smaller and people could survive a few hits. Mechanics also generally came slower and the fights were more methodical. As I say, whether this was better or worse depends on the person (I prefer that better, which is one reason I don't do Savage/Ultimates), but it's definitely...different.

I think you're overlooking a few instances where that exists in normal content. Garuda's rock pillars, Fenrir's icicles, Cruise Chaser's metal thingy and the crystal scorpion's pillars all come to mind, and there may be others that I haven't thought of.

Edit: the gryphon boss in Dusk Vigil is another one.

Can you point out another encounter that isn't a Savage where there are objects like that in the field (a) not placed by players (includes debuffs bosses place on players for them to drop), (b) that you must hide behind, but also (c) that will explode when hit by another mechanic occurring at the same time, and without any clear indication this is happening (that is, HydEx's crystals don't shatter or break apart to indicate they exploded in any way; players just take a massive burst of damage and have no visible indication of where it came from since that part of the fight is saturated with light effects everywhere)?

I would wager not.

Behemoth's rocks in the Crystal Tower series. Those who don't do the mechanic die. In Syrcus Tower that follows it, you hide behind the crystal to avoid Curtain Call or die as everyone stares at you being the only one to greed the boss. In a required Endwalker dungeon, there is a similar mechanic where you hide behind a crystal to avoid death. In the required Endwalker dungeon right before it, you have to hide behind something twice or you either die or get significant vulnerabilities and bleeds.

Same as the above. I think I may have pointed this out, but I might be thinking the other thread. In any case, doing so here.

I would say Barbie is at Savage level, and that's only because it commits the cardinal sin of having no breather moments, you're ALWAYS moving. An EX should not be that level of high octane ever.

This. It's why I think I need to ask people if they're Savage players or not. Most of the people I know (in game or on the forums) who are Savage raiders LOVED BarbEx and it's their favorite one. Me? The only one I like less is Endsinger. There's no real breathing room anywhere, you can't stand and cast to save your life making RDM, BLM, or Healers that actually try to use GCD heals suffer, and it just goes on and on doing this for most of the fight, including layering several mechanics (at one point, I think there are between 5 and 7 layered together on top of each other, depending on how you want to count it). It definitely is a case of a fight that "has no chill".

Which, I suspect, is why the Savage people love it so much, since it's an Extreme that's more like their preferred content. The problem is, we already have Savage fights, and Extremes are supposed to be for people who don't do those/are at a lower level. If they're just one-off Savage fights, there's no point in them existing.

[RyuDragnier]

This. It's why I think I need to ask people if they're Savage players or not. Most of the people I know (in game or on the forums) who are Savage raiders LOVED BarbEx and it's their favorite one. Me? The only one I like less is Endsinger. There's no real breathing room anywhere, you can't stand and cast to save your life making RDM, BLM, or Healers that actually try to use GCD heals suffer, and it just goes on and on doing this for most of the fight, including layering several mechanics (at one point, I think there are between 5 and 7 layered together on top of each other, depending on how you want to count it). It definitely is a case of a fight that "has no chill".

Which, I suspect, is why the Savage people love it so much, since it's an Extreme that's more like their preferred content. The problem is, we already have Savage fights, and Extremes are supposed to be for people who don't do those/are at a lower level. If they're just one-off Savage fights, there's no point in them existing.

In my static I think only 3 people like Barbie EX. I'm more of a fan of Endsinger and Rubicante, for being fairer fights overall. Endsinger is on the higher end of difficulty for EXs (like Sephirot and Shinryu), while Rubicante is on the lower end due to being pretty braindead outside of 1-2 mechanics (as long as 1 person knows the safe zone patterns for his puzzle moves).