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( Meanwhile me in new content at the final Dungeon boss )
Q-Q-Quality Content we been asking for!! ( obviously )
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( Meanwhile me in new content at the final Dungeon boss )
Q-Q-Quality Content we been asking for!! ( obviously )
Yes extremes exist and they can be really fun but it's not content you do daily or for a long time. I don't think anyone really goes into extremes beyond getting their weapon and the mount maybe? The raiding content is really nice but afterwards people go back into hibernation.
I personally would wish for more midcore content that doesn't have a shelf life of some weeks. You know maybe some hard versions of dungeons which give you more tomes, something people can do daily through roulette and don't fall asleep. I did hope criterion would fill out that role maybe but it didn't really hit the mark.
I feel this way too, especially in Endwalker. Normal modes have never been "hard" but I feel like they used to put up enough resistance to make clearing them satisfying. Now they are so easy that it feels like my input doesn't even matter, the group will clear whether I play well, average, badly, or just do nothing. That is very boring, and so I now tend to actively avoid doing normal content unless I really want something from it. It's even more true of lower level content, with ARR and Heavensward content now being so undertuned due to battle system changes over the years that failure is almost impossible.
Dungeons now seem completely standardized of 2 packs - wall - 2 packs - boss - repeat. There are no longer any sections where you can try to do a really big pull, and in fact you're often limited to single pulls. Bosses can't kill unless you fall off an edge, get doom, or fail multiple mechanics simultaneously (and if you're a tank that's not enough either).
Alliance Raids have suffered the most, I think. EW alliance raid bosses die before you see all their mechanics patterns even on-content. Like 30% of the time is just nothing happening while the boss casts. By the time the boss has gotten through the "tutorial" versions of its mechanics and is starting the harder versions, it's almost dead. Nald'thal is even killable before he does the scales mechanic, the signature set piece of the entire fight. Even if you don't care about challenge at all, you have to at least acknowledge that it's not great as a spectacle experience to skip everything the boss does and kill it before you even get through 1 loop of the music. Its such a far cry from legendary bosses like Ozma, Hashmal and TG Cid.
The 6.4 normal raid and trial at least feels a -little- stiffer than usual, I think owing to what seems to be larger boss HP pools. However that may just be because it's early in the patch and no one has any new gear yet.
I think people sometimes tend to forget how well trained they might be to see markers and react fast to them. On top of this, people have different capabilities, different reaction times. I have hardly seen many mechanics, since I avoid everything beyond normal story in current content, but still, I now recognise a good number that are recurring that I would not have known about before. People in this game will be on a rather wide spectrum of this knowledge, depending on what they have unlocked and when. The story at least has to accomodate all of these people.
For some of you, the sheer number of mechanics you will have mastered in the years you've tackled the more challenging content is immense. To come up with something completely unique has to get harder and harder for content designers, just because of the amount of things you have seen. On top of this, the kits to handle said mechanics get stronger (not wider or more variant, as I understand it), you just have more and more potent tools than in synched stuff. That power creep is there in the potencies and I'd expect in the gear for everything endgamey too.
That talk about the 'midcore' feels a little off for me, when it tries to shift the normal, main story relevant modes to be challenging for people who are clearly beyond it. If the game demands said content just to advance the story, it has to be manageable for people with a vast array of experience. You can be in the endgame without having unlocked any of the older raids and most of the alliance raids. And then, some of the mechanics some of you will easily recognise and master, will be new and more challenging because of the lack of experience/ability.
The story content can only consider what it, in itself, teaches, imo. And this is getting better, because markers get more generalised and dungeons pick up toned down versions of things others might have first encountered in raids.
For me, normal content isn't that much of a breeze, especially the trials. It is not that I do not understand what I am supposed to do (I usually watch guides beforehand), but that i have a hard time seeing and reacting to some of the tells fast enough, not because of the mechanic, but because of the pacing they have. I get one right and fail the next because I've missed one crucial tell. I do get better, when I've played those things a few times, but that brilliance some of you seeminigly have on first tries eludes me.
Yes, you can answer now, that people have to improve their gameplay. But to what degree just to see the story and nothing more than that? I personally think, you might be asking more for changes to things beyond normal story content, if you seek the challenge you got used to in extremes and savages or beyond that.
You only have things in your roulette you've unlocked. But people tend to run old content unsynched, where they will not see the actual mechanic if they do not go the extra length and look it up - and this unlocks them for roulettes too. So people end up in a roulette in things they do not know. Wiping in this doesn't necessarily mean it is harder, but that people do not know what to do. Half of the group might know essential mechanics, others might have forgotten and still others don't know them and then do not solve them. Then this very instance might not show up again for ages, so this will not change.
Veterans on the other hand, and especially those heavily invested, might have run that very instance so often, they still know everything by heart. Usually it really helps, if someone explains that one thing that kills everybody and then understands that there still is a gap between understanding and doing for people new to it.
Tbh i find it fair that the story content is kinda slow paced and easy, that is totally alright cause everyone no matter what skill level should be able to enjoy the games story without worrying to first play their job to perfection.
But there is a huge void of lacking content that is between the both extremes which is brainded msq content and raiding. As i said before raiding is something you usually spend a day with and it is timed content, you will get your rewards and that is it. You do the extreme and get the mount and weapons and beyond that you won't do it. That most people achieve like after a week or two? But what is with the rest of the 4months? You could say there is savage then, yes. Which you learn and then spend one day on reclears. Which leaves 6 days of the week open.
SE should maybe try to provide engaging content that will last, raiding is great and a good challenge for people but it slowly dies down and leaves a lot of time open. I honestly can't see how the argument of "Yes but once every 5 months you will be able to actually use all your healing actions for maybe a week or two" is a good argument. Healers overall are i think most hit by SE philosophy of having only hyper casual content or content in which you have maybe sometimes to heal when a raidwide comes in or a tankbuster goes off.
If we need an example, i kinda wish SE would adapt the mythic difficulty from WoW. Or in general the difficulty of dungeons from WoW. Ofc that system isn't perfect but it would be really nice if we had some sort of engaging content in the game that people could do daily which isn't just braindead roulettes. There is a reason why many raiders only sub for the raids and then leave again after they cleared and it is a huge loss for SE overall tbh. cause they seem to not be able to keep the midcore playerbase engaged.
the difficulty is trying to stay awake
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