XIV EW Job-Gameplay is Terrible... Why?

[Ardeth]

How can we ease players into that difficulty when we immediately backpedal at the slightest whisper of difficulty that actually pressures players to do mechanics? I was fine with most of Nier’s fights difficulty-wise, but I will never again use alliance roulette exclusively because myths of the realm are miserable to play with how boring they are.

That's the issue, how do you? In my 20+ years of playing mmos, I've never seen a company nail difficulty. I remember the Mage Tower in Wow. It was supposed to be a harder solo challenge, but it was a casual player meat grinder. Most casual players never completed one fight, let alone the fact that there were 36 of them. Or solo Varient dungeons being boring and the bosses being mechanic city HP sponges.

I don't see this being solved anytime soon. But people always over estimate what the average player can do. I think that's why I like a game like Elden Ring. It's honestly fairly easy. The difficulty comes in how cheap the fights are. It's not that x boss is too hard. It's that x boss is exploiting something, and you have to find a way around it. Granted, how do you do that for 24 people, let alone 4 people without one of them blowing their stack? That's the issue more than spiking the difficulty. You can just do that, but don't be surprised if nobody does it. It's why hardcore content has the lowest completion rate.