Difficulty of normal content.

[Agnar-rakhsha]

Think the difficulty is just right this time. Fights seem more engaging than just standing in one place and press buttons.

[Josuke4]

I appreciate that you aren’t enjoying the difficulty of this expansion. But honestly, as a casual player, the difficulty has been a welcome addition.

There has always been a mismatch between what’s happening in the story and the difficulty of the content. The content up until this point has barely required anything of us as players, with victories essentially handed to you with minimal effort.

If anything, I think more needs to be done to ensure that players are engaged. The telegraphs at least in the MSQ have been really fun to learn and overcome, but don’t require any kind of insane DPS or rotation memorisation. I don’t want whole game to be “run from point a to point b, hit a couple of things, repeat”.

I don’t think I’m in the minority of players here.

[Alice_Rivers]

You'll be just fine, so long as you're willing to learn from mistakes, the game really isn't as hard as the OP makes out. Yes there are a few nasty mechanics here and there but they're still doable with practice. If you're really as concerned as you appear about being dead weight then I advise doing your first run of each duty with a physical ranged job you really can't go wrong there. As for the community being unfriendly? Game fora always attract the worst elements of the community, peeps in game are equally as they appear (even if contractually obliged by ToS), if you ask for help I'd suggest at least 80% will happily walk you through stuff.

[Linnaete]

1. I'm eventually going to hit a wall in normal content because the hardcore crowd needs *everything* to be a ball-buster even though they already have their own exclusive modes.

Nothing in normal content is a genuine "ball-buster". Of course if you're unfamiliar with a fight then new mechanics will catch you off-guard, but that's remedied with practice (and gear). These are content designed for any randomers in Duty Finder; they're nothing comparable to Extremes and above because players don't need to coordinate strategy just to clear. Some people really need to stop seeing any degree of additional friction intended by game designers as insurmountable content made just to punish casual players.

2. The playerbase is not in fact as "friendly and welcoming" as they claim when a significantly large portion of if it so willfully, and happily even, tells people to "GTFO then" when some players run into difficulty.

Oh, for crying out loud. You're on the FFXIV forums. This place is not representative of the game's wider community and playerbase, much less the minority of posters here hurling the most vitriol.

By and large the wider FFXIV community is accepting of mistakes and/or when a player is new to content. Unless you've done something to actually warrant it (like griefing a party on purpose), other players will generally not kick you from the group or hurl barrages of insults at you simply for making mistakes. Even veterans with more than a decade of FFXIV play will make mistakes here and there. No one is going to have photographic memories of every instanced duty in the game, and some mechanics can be genuinely annoying to handle.

What matters is that you at least make an honest attempt to pick yourself up, learn from mistakes and strive to improve for next time. What people will not have time for are people who are at the lowest possible skill floor because either they're deliberately playing poorly for kicks, or they simply refuse to improve in any way, shape or form. As the majority of this long thread attests, how about the game designers not cater to this latter group?

As someone who only recently touched down in Stormblood, this is the first time I've had to stop and think about how I'm going to do the blue quests because doing so would be adding things to the duty finder where I'll just end up dead weight it seems

How do you know you will? You haven't set foot into any of these later expansion content yet, so how have you already resigned to the belief that you will never be able to contribute? If you do make mistakes, so long as you have the capacity to learn and improve in general, I'm sure you have the capacity to apply this to the game. A solo run with Duty Support can be an excellent way to gain initial familiarity with the mechanics, then once you've accrued enough confidence you can take the next step and try it via Duty Finder.

[jdtuggey]

Um... wow. What I've learned from this discussion is that:

1. I'm eventually going to hit a wall in normal content because the hardcore crowd needs *everything* to be a ball-buster even though they already have their own exclusive modes.
2. The playerbase is not in fact as "friendly and welcoming" as they claim when a significantly large portion of if it so willfully, and happily even, tells people to "GTFO then" when some players run into difficulty.

As someone who only recently touched down in Stormblood, this is the first time I've had to stop and think about how I'm going to do the blue quests because doing so would be adding things to the duty finder where I'll just end up dead weight it seems, or I'll be forced to 100% rely on Trusts for the MSQ the whole way because I would be better off avoiding the majority of the playerbase who clearly doesn't want me in their runs anyway. Is this really what I was subbing for this whole time? To go pure solo because I have neither the confidence to do the upcoming harder content, and because the community wasn't anything like I had been lead to believe?

This has definitely been an eye-opener compared to when I first started playing during Endwalker, and I probably should start treating it more like a single player game to prevent future issues.

You should probably take a deep breath, get there, and experience the content with no pre-made expectations built on an argument on the internet.
You don't know at this point if you're gonna hit a wall. You might not even feel it. Who knows ? I haven't really noticed until I got to the later Dawntrail dungeons myself.
Players are actually quite welcoming and kind. Veterans don't feel welcomed by struggling players that demand they nerf the content they love as is, you know ? It kinda goes both ways.
They also want to defend their interests here. You're more than welcome to struggle in an encounter and ask for help, and we will help, at least I know I would, all that's expressed here is
"we don't want square enix to nerf the content after they've made it so interesting after years of lull".

ᵏᶦⁿᵈᵒᶠ ᵒᵛᵉʳʳᵉᵃᶜᵗᶦⁿᵍ ᵃ ᵇᶦᵗ ʰᵉʳᵉ, ⁿᵒ ?

[Jaxtaro]

Um... wow. What I've learned from this discussion is that:

1. I'm eventually going to hit a wall in normal content because the hardcore crowd needs *everything* to be a ball-buster even though they already have their own exclusive modes.
2. The playerbase is not in fact as "friendly and welcoming" as they claim when a significantly large portion of if it so willfully, and happily even, tells people to "GTFO then" when some players run into difficulty.

As someone who only recently touched down in Stormblood, this is the first time I've had to stop and think about how I'm going to do the blue quests because doing so would be adding things to the duty finder where I'll just end up dead weight it seems, or I'll be forced to 100% rely on Trusts for the MSQ the whole way because I would be better off avoiding the majority of the playerbase who clearly doesn't want me in their runs anyway. Is this really what I was subbing for this whole time? To go pure solo because I have neither the confidence to do the upcoming harder content, and because the community wasn't anything like I had been lead to believe?

This has definitely been an eye-opener compared to when I first started playing during Endwalker, and I probably should start treating it more like a single player game to prevent future issues.

I've got some good news for you. There isn't much that you'll experience at the point you're at in the game that will represent the toxicity you're seeing here. It exists at the leading edge, but don't let what you see here obscure your sense of wonder and optimism at your level of play. Almost no one is toxic at someone struggling in older content at all.

[Oku-1]

Um... wow. What I've learned from this discussion is that:

1. I'm eventually going to hit a wall in normal content because the hardcore crowd needs *everything* to be a ball-buster even though they already have their own exclusive modes.
2. The playerbase is not in fact as "friendly and welcoming" as they claim when a significantly large portion of if it so willfully, and happily even, tells people to "GTFO then" when some players run into difficulty.

As someone who only recently touched down in Stormblood, this is the first time I've had to stop and think about how I'm going to do the blue quests because doing so would be adding things to the duty finder where I'll just end up dead weight it seems, or I'll be forced to 100% rely on Trusts for the MSQ the whole way because I would be better off avoiding the majority of the playerbase who clearly doesn't want me in their runs anyway. Is this really what I was subbing for this whole time? To go pure solo because I have neither the confidence to do the upcoming harder content, and because the community wasn't anything like I had been lead to believe?

This has definitely been an eye-opener compared to when I first started playing during Endwalker, and I probably should start treating it more like a single player game to prevent future issues.

Literally nothing in normal content is hard. All that's happened is the game expects you to understand how to do basic highly-forgiving mechanics after 90+ levels of showing you the exact same mechanics and so it's giving you slightly more complex versions of those mechanics. In all of Dawntrail I died exactly once and it was because I didn't expect an ability to do a knock back and it threw me off the platform, and then I immediately went "oh I see!" and cleared the boss without a single vuln stack after that. If you go in to harder difficulty optional content, which Raids are, then that's your choice.

The playerbase is great if you aren't a condescending weirdo, which is why it's all the more ridiculous to complain about the difficulty of normal content: literally all you have to say is "hey I'm struggling a bit with this expansion's content sorry in advance if I screw up" and everybody will be understanding and will probably /cheer at you and give you the entire party's commendations when you eventually clear, or you can just say nothing if you clip a mechanic and die because people don't actually care.

In over 4000 hours in this game I can count on one hand the number of times I've encountered a toxic player in a duty. The community is great. A lot of y'all just come in to heated discussions outside the game and then throw your hands up and harumph at everybody, which of course is going to invite a little snark.

[VioletCatastrophe]

Um... wow. What I've learned from this discussion is that:

1. I'm eventually going to hit a wall in normal content because the hardcore crowd needs *everything* to be a ball-buster even though they already have their own exclusive modes.
2. The playerbase is not in fact as "friendly and welcoming" as they claim when a significantly large portion of if it so willfully, and happily even, tells people to "GTFO then" when some players run into difficulty.

snip

Anyone who doesn't want you in their group is not worth paying attention to, and more likely to be this post's OP than any actual hardcore player.
Splitting the playerbase into a strict 'casual player who doesnt want anything to have any difficulty ever no matter the circumstance' and 'hardcore player who wants ball busting content' is so disingenuous. The vast majority of players in this game want to have a fair and reasonable challenge, and that is what these normal raids are. For the hardcore players, they are just engaging enough to make reclears not put you to sleep.
People aren't telling people to GTFO when they run into difficulty. They are telling people who refuse to learn or improve or grow as a player in a game they have spent 100 levels and hundreds of hours in to GTFO. If you struggle, the community is happy to help you. If you refuse to improve or seek help, and demand everyone else's experience be made worse, then yes, people will be upset.

None of this content is hard. It's non-trivial, yes. It won't be beatable by the average group on the first clear. But that's okay. Failure, learning, improving, and overcoming are part of life, and part of this game. It's okay to be the weakest person in any given group - one person always will be. Sometimes that's me, and I'm by most standards a pretty good player, and it certainly was when I was newer to the game. If you are struggling, that's okay. It's an MMO: ask for help, and you will get it. Just don't act shocked that demanding the entire game be changed is met with less than enthusiastic responses.

I genuinely believe that every player of this game can, if they genuinely want to, be good enough to clear extremes. This normal mode content is so far below that. So if that seems impossible to you, if that actually feels like an unreasonable evaluation of the potential of the playerbase, then spend a bit of time asking for help and learning more about how to be better. I promise you, it won't take that long, it won't be hard or complicated, and the combat content in the game will feel so much better and less frustrating to you afterwards.