Difficulty of normal content.

[W0rldsastag3]

Not everyone wants a constant challenge. You ex players and raiders get your own modes and challenges, some people just want to veg out and enjoy a non challenging game, which the game has been for ten years, to it's success. Stop trying to make other people play your way.

PF is getting worse with third party tool parses being demanded, and friends I do have whonhave gotten clears in savage ar getting kicked off teams constantly for the tiniest mistakes.

Giving the 'crushing difficilty' people an inch has caused the game to get less friendly, forgiving, and fun.

[jdtuggey]

Not everyone wants a constant challenge. You ex players and raiders get your own modes and challenges, some people just want to veg out and enjoy a non challenging game, which the game has been for ten years, to it's success. Stop trying to make other people play your way.

PF is getting worse with third party tool parses being demanded, and friends I do have whonhave gotten clears in savage ar getting kicked off teams constantly for the tiniest mistakes.

Giving the 'crushing difficilty' people an inch has caused the game to get less friendly, forgiving, and fun.

Like, I thought we had debunked the "Ultimate raiders demanding they make casual content harder" conspiracy theory like... 100 pages ago.
I took baby steps in ultimate, same with like, current savages, not more, yet am pretty vocal about loving dawntrail. Lots, lots of other people like me in this thread. :P
I'd wager it's the people like me that like Dawntrail the most. We can't/don't want to commit to savages/ultimates, but we still want challenge in the casual content we can do, and square enix took a (tiny) step in that direction, and it feels to me like the response is overwhelmingly positive. Qualifying Dawntrail's difficulty as "crushing" is also a gross mischaracterization or a really subjective statement that is not representative ? It's not what I would want either.
To me, it don't feel harder, it feels more dynamic and engaging, especially now that I've gotten used to the new pace.

Like, it would be really easy to turn this argument on you and say
"Giving the turbo casuals an inch has caused them to demand more and more, and now Yoshi P's lifework was making him sleepy and I didn't feel this game was for me anymore up to dawntrail, despite having played since ARR"
And again, like, yeah, am decent at the game, I think, but I'm not a raider and I don't want to be lol.

Like, the dawntrail changes to pacing aren't targeted at savage raiders at all, they deal with much, much, much worst lol.

[Alice_Rivers]

PF is getting worse with third party tool parses being demanded, and friends I do have whonhave gotten clears in savage ar getting kicked off teams constantly for the tiniest mistakes.

Giving the 'crushing difficilty' people an inch has caused the game to get less friendly, forgiving, and fun.

That is a completely different and unacceptable problem, which happens to be reportable.

[Caitamm]

Not everyone wants a constant challenge. You ex players and raiders get your own modes and challenges, some people just want to veg out and enjoy a non challenging game, which the game has been for ten years, to it's success. Stop trying to make other people play your way.

Have we been playing the same game? If you want to bring up the patterns built in the past 10 years, EW would be the dip in normal difficulty and what we are experiencing now is actually rebound towards difficulty we've had before.

[royox]

Not everyone wants a constant challenge. You ex players and raiders get your own modes and challenges, some people just want to veg out and enjoy a non challenging game, which the game has been for ten years, to it's success.

This is an absolute LIE. The game was challenging since the ARR release. Dungeons on MSQ had challenging stuff since day 1. Sastasha, the very first dungeon of the game, was a wipe horror if the tank didn't pull carefully, if the party didn't kill the clamps fast before being overruned by fireballs, if the DPS didn't know they had to block the spawn of enemies on the last boss by standing on the water holes.

Brayflox's Longstop was a guaranteed wipe if somebody pulled any extra enemy during the dungeon because they hit the tanks like trucks, and in the final boss if the tank didn't know he had to move the dragon out of the poisons. And let's talk about the literal horror movie that was Aurum Valley.

At MSQ dungeon level there were wipes, there was challenge. There was "final sting" that would oneshot tanks at 100% if the Melee didn't stun the wasp, there was "doom" that had to be cleansed by Esuna, standing on a white spot in the dungeon or being healed. There was that one with the underground worm that required one party member to venture himself to the "danger" area to trow some meat to make the worm come out...but if he catches you, bye bye. Freaking Pharos Sirus was a wipe fest on every boss and I can keep tryng to remember stuff and it keeps coming. The game had random telegraphs for the same mechanics in diferent dungeons...or didn't have telegraphs at all (hello Cyclops from Aurum Valley).

And the raids? If we don't consider Bahamut Coils as they were NOT intended for casual players. Alexander was a wipe fest on every floor, with tank swaps, wierd shenanigans, healers having to soak lasers, while healing, while DPS gets kidnaped to 1 vs 1 an enemy while the rest are dealing with aoes, laser turrets, the boss and missiles coming from all sides.

Alliance raids? OH BOY. Nobody remembers anymore how we all needed to have a macro for Behemoth to remind people to hide behind a rock? Or that before entering cerberus we all had the A: Adds, B: Boss/Belly C: Chains converstation? That the zombie dragon of Crystal Tower was an absolute drama because people had to add slow debufs to the skeletons to be able to kill them in time or they would wipe the party. Shall we speak about the WIPE CITY of MNACH and Ozma? Who had people crying on forums and reddit for "being too hard?" because people was asked to remember 3 diferent patterns of the 3 shapes it can get? Oh boy and let's talk about Ivalice, the 1st boss saying "hi!!" with falling towers that oneshots everybody, the MATHS boss, the electric grandpa with 3 swords that had people crying from week 1.

long etc.

The game was ALWAYS challenging.

[NightHour]

Not everyone wants a constant challenge. You ex players and raiders get your own modes and challenges, some people just want to veg out and enjoy a non challenging game, which the game has been for ten years, to it's success. Stop trying to make other people play your way.

PF is getting worse with third party tool parses being demanded, and friends I do have whonhave gotten clears in savage ar getting kicked off teams constantly for the tiniest mistakes.

Giving the 'crushing difficilty' people an inch has caused the game to get less friendly, forgiving, and fun.

The games success didnt come from "vegging out" content at all, it came from WoW being a shit game at the time Endwalker released.



This is an MMO, MMO's are meant to have a progression path.

That path is Dungeons > Alliance Raids > Normal Trials > Normal Raid > Extreme > Savage > Ultimate

Criterion is side content.


Normal is technically "mid tier" content, endwalker difficulty did not reflect that.

The current difficulty of Dawntrail Normals is what I'd expect mid-tier content to be tuned towards.

Not too hard but also not so easy that you can put 1 hand behind your back and still clear.

and friends I do have who have gotten clears in savage ar getting kicked off teams constantly for the tiniest mistakes.

I doubt that.

There's probably more to it, no static worth a damn kicks someone for the tiniest mistake, they'd never clear anything if they did.

PF is getting worse with third party tool parses being demanded

That's plain wrong.

In the ~ 3 years I've been playing, I have not seen a PF group put up a parse requirement to join.

Unless it was a group designed for logging, which the average PF Joe has no business joining anyway. Those groups are designed for Best in Slot players to optimize their play, not to get loot or for people to clear.



There's 3 kinds of groups in PF


Practice - People learning the fight or progressing past a pre-defined part.

Clear Group - You can hit enrage or see every mechanic consistently and are ready to clear (No, watching a guide fully does not make you clear ready)

Logging - These groups are designed for Best in Slot players and are controlled environments with specific comps and strats to optimize play on fights - These are NOT designed for 99.9% of PF users.

[Jeeqbit]

Since this is being covered so much, here's my thoughts. Firstly, the normal content that is more "difficult" is optional and you will be able to unsync it in the future. Moreover, it will become easier due to item level increases making mechanics hurt less/ignorable/skipped entirely. Like how we skip Devour in P5 normal now.

Use and abuse of non standard telegraphs.

Not an issue because you will observe the telegraphs and gradually learn them. Which is how this game has always worked btw. It's not even new to the normal raids. Many mechanics in raids such as Alexander, Omega and Eden were new as well.

Nasty mechanic overlaps, stuff you would see on extreme and harder fights.

It's been this way for years. That very thing happened in Eden, Omega and Alexander. The normal raids may be easy, but they have always been rough on the first day at least.

I remember a group of sprouts wiping to A1. How about Ultra Flash in A6 and A8? There were wipes for months to A11, and for the first week or so to A12.

How about O11 with all the mechanics going on that wipe people to this day, or O12 which was rough for tanks and healers. You'd often get, say, tanks left trying to solo the end of it and they didn't always manage that either.

How about E2 which has a new concept of mechanic. E4 that can still leave loads of people dead. E5 and E7 which sometimes still leaves full wipes and E6 and E8 used to sometimes. How about E10 wiping people with all the Shadow mechanics, which are a combination exactly like you claimed hasn't happened before? Or E12 which adds mechanics together as standard. Despite all these being easy, they all combine mechanics at various points and wipe casual players sometimes.

Mechs resolving too quickly for the mental capacity they demand to process.

I had no trouble with this personally. Now I accept some people might. But if there isn't a disability involved then most likely you will develop the ability to either process or predict it, with sufficent time and practice.

One too many "catch this!" mech (mechs that have you running around like headless chicken evading seemingly random patterns).

Usually things in this game aren't as random as you're suggesting. If you do it enough times you start to observe it's either like x, y or z pattern and get used to the ways it normally catches you out.

we don't do this content alone, you know?

The great thing about this game is that if you feel this way, you will be able to unsync solo it as a tank in the next expansion. For example, I solo'd E12 as a PLD upon EW release in minimum EW gear.

I think it was the 4th time I was doing Valigarmanda when I finally managed to finish without dying myself, but that's a moot point when half the party was dead half of the time, even knowing the fight doesn't make it any less of a disheartening experience.

So it's disheartening that people died? I would say that is what makes the content able to be defined as challenging. If nobody dies, it's boring. When you learn how to do it without dying yourself, you feel accomplished. You even proved my point by successfully learning the fight with a little practice.

Can casual players have something easy-ish to play? Please?

Being casual doesn't mean the content has to be easy. Just easy enough to clear in a few pulls or learn within a few pulls, or struggle through with a healer/tank/dps LB3 or some really good player pulling everyone back up with their tank/healer wizardry.

It's like how many alliance raids have wiped players constantly and had people die everywhere, but it's alright due to the amount of red mages and healers and summoners to resurrect people. The wipes make it fun, but it's not so hard that it won't be cleared in a few pulls.

[Sida]

The old story comes to mind. A radio broadcasts a warning that there's one car driving to opposite direction on the highway. One driver hears it and harrumphs "What do they mean one car, *everyone else* is driving to the opposite direction." If you see toxic everywhere around you, are you quite sure you're not the source yourself?

[Conando]

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.

There is nothing in DT that is harder than Heavensward or Stormblood. Endwalker was an outlier and even Yoshida acknowledged it by saying it was making him fall asleep.