Difficulty of normal content.

[HemlockEvergreen]

I think this is a very good issue to bring up, because it brings us to the logical conclusion of requiring FFXIV be played from 1 to 100 sequentially. The only people who can play Dawntrail endgame are those who have beaten the entire 400-hour MSQ and "got gud", or those who "cheated" by buying a boost. It's a great thing for us to showcase, because we're finally becoming like World of Warcraft, a game that you all claim to hate. Meanwhile, World of Warcraft is actually more friendly to newer players because you can start at the second-newest expansion and reach endgame content within only around 20 hours of playtime. A lot of you HATED the "elitist" nature of your former game, and you came to Final Fantasy XIV because it was "the friendly MMO". But now you all are more hostile to new players than the game you want to replace. Your attitude resulted in the world's former top MMO losing its spot to FFXIV. And what happens when your attitude takes over this game too?

What are you smoking, bro.

WoW lost players to FFXIV because:

1 - The game was going to shit. The story was pure garbage, and the gameplay was a grindfest made out of boring chores. You couldn't just show up and raid (the fun part), you had to grind your anima whatevers, your reputations, do mandatory PVP and M+ to open a chest that gave you a chance of getting a piece of gear that maybe would be good for your class. It was a repetitive, mind-numbing, FOMO based experience. In contrast, FFXIV lets me just log in and raid, I can stop for a month or two without completely falling behind, and there's even Ultimates, which are not tied to a gearing system at all and exist purely for fun and cosmetics. And for gearing, even if I'm the most unlucky person ever and I never win a roll, I know I'm getting BiS in 16 weeks. There's no FOMO or being dependent on RNG. It's a better raiding experience overall.

2 - People left WoW because there was a huge sexual harrassment scandal on Blizzard, including great hits like "raiding the office and groping the interns", "stealing employees breast milk from the fridge", and "driving a woman to suicide on a business trip". For a lot of people who were already frustrated with WoW's mechanics, this was the last drop.

No one left WoW for XIV because they wanted a "less elitist" MMO. They left WoW for XIV because they wanted fun raiding without a bunch of grindy bullshit, hopefully made by a company where sexual assault is not part of the corporate culture.

[caffe_macchiato]

The story was pure garbage, and the gameplay was a grindfest made out of boring chores.

That sounds familiar!

You couldn't just show up and raid (the fun part), you had to grind your anima whatevers, your reputations, do mandatory PVP and M+ to open a chest that gave you a chance of getting a piece of gear that maybe would be good for your class. It was a repetitive, mind-numbing, FOMO based experience. In contrast, FFXIV lets me just log in and raid

And how many hours do you have to play FFXIV before you get to that point? Because most of the posts in this thread celebrate walling off current content and requiring hundreds of hours and ten years of experience before playing. "You're level 100, everything should be easy!" The issue at this point isn't Square Enix, it's the Final Fantasy XIV community which wants something far more restrictive than any other MMO. We have approached the "final boss" territory of FFXIV. And that's FINE! That's great news! Because it means that Final Fantasy XIV is finally approaching its end of life and the company can finally move on to a new MMO.

The raids aren't even difficult, but this thread wants them to be because it filters out the plebs and you're level 100 anyway so just "get gud". Hopefully this is the end!

[Kissune]

That sounds familiar!



And how many hours do you have to play FFXIV before you get to that point? Because most of the posts in this thread celebrate walling off current content and requiring hundreds of hours and ten years of experience before playing. "You're level 100, everything should be easy!" The issue at this point isn't Square Enix, it's the Final Fantasy XIV community which wants something far more restrictive than any other MMO. We have approached the "final boss" territory of FFXIV. And that's FINE! That's great news! Because it means that Final Fantasy XIV is finally approaching its end of life and the company can finally move on to a new MMO.

The raids aren't even difficult, but this thread wants them to be because it filters out the plebs and you're level 100 anyway so just "get gud". Hopefully this is the end!

With all due respect what the hell are you talking about

[Volgia]

That sounds familiar!



And how many hours do you have to play FFXIV before you get to that point? Because most of the posts in this thread celebrate walling off current content and requiring hundreds of hours and ten years of experience before playing. "You're level 100, everything should be easy!" The issue at this point isn't Square Enix, it's the Final Fantasy XIV community which wants something far more restrictive than any other MMO. We have approached the "final boss" territory of FFXIV. And that's FINE! That's great news! Because it means that Final Fantasy XIV is finally approaching its end of life and the company can finally move on to a new MMO.

The raids aren't even difficult, but this thread wants them to be because it filters out the plebs and you're level 100 anyway so just "get gud". Hopefully this is the end!

Damn, you got me on the edge of my seat. What else can you predict?

[HemlockEvergreen]

And how many hours do you have to play FFXIV before you get to that point? Because most of the posts in this thread celebrate walling off current content and requiring hundreds of hours and ten years of experience before playing. "You're level 100, everything should be easy!" The issue at this point isn't Square Enix, it's the Final Fantasy XIV community which wants something far more restrictive than any other MMO. We have approached the "final boss" territory of FFXIV. And that's FINE! That's great news! Because it means that Final Fantasy XIV is finally approaching its end of life and the company can finally move on to a new MMO.

Nah dude, no comparison. You have no idea of what you're talking about. WoW story was so bad that it made you feel bad for caring about it. The way XIV approaches it at least doesn't completely retcon everything every expansion. Shadowlands was so bad that they managed to retroactively ruin Warcraft III.

And the grind is different as well. You don't understand how good it is over here. Universal tokens for all the gear? Bad luck protection books? Catch-up gear that's easy to get if you miss a tier? WoW had none of that. Not to mention the abomination that was the weekly vault.

Let me explain how it worked: You had a vault that you could open once a week, that contained up to 9 pieces of loot. To unlock all of those 9 pieces of loot, you had to complete certain goals on raiding, PVP, and mythic plus dungeon runs. So you had homework to do every week. These were not things that you could do quickly in one day either, they were time consuming.

The vault pieces were random pieces that your class could wear. There was no guarantee that they'd be good for your spec. There was no guarantee that they would be something you don't have already. You could very well get the same pair of boots that are shit for your spec three weeks in a row and there was no fallback system for that. And your BiS depended on the vault. You could not acquire certain optimal pieces without them being from the vault, because some of them were higher item level than what you could get from other sources. So you had no way to plan to get BiS, you depended solely on luck.

All that I mentioned too is max level, endgame content. It's not comparable to the leveling process, which is what you mentioned. But even in that we can mention that if you wanna play another job in XIV, you don't have to level another character from scratch. You can just level and gear the job. If you want to play another class in WoW, you need a different character, in which not only you gonna need to level up through story quests again, but if you wanted to mantain both of your classes geared, you needed to do the loot vault weekly grind twice. The amount of time wasting is not comparable at all.

[Zaniel]

I think this is a very good issue to bring up, because it brings us to the logical conclusion of requiring FFXIV be played from 1 to 100 sequentially. The only people who can play Dawntrail endgame are those who have beaten the entire 400-hour MSQ and "got gud", or those who "cheated" by buying a boost. It's a great thing for us to showcase, because we're finally becoming like World of Warcraft, a game that you all claim to hate. Meanwhile, World of Warcraft is actually more friendly to newer players because you can start at the second-newest expansion and reach endgame content within only around 20 hours of playtime. A lot of you HATED the "elitist" nature of your former game, and you came to Final Fantasy XIV because it was "the friendly MMO". But now you all are more hostile to new players than the game you want to replace. Your attitude resulted in the world's former top MMO losing its spot to FFXIV. And what happens when your attitude takes over this game too?

See the difference is in WoW if you fail someone will yell at you in game, whereas here in FF14 no one is going criticise you for failing in the game. If you die 5 times in a fight they will just pick you up and either carry you or even help you. However, having chronic "learned helplessness" is not something any rational human community in any field, not just gaming, is tolerant of.

[SeriousPan]

Snip.

You should main Pictomancer with how you handle that broad brush!

[sdr26]

I am physically disabled and can only play with one finger. I have died a lot in the new raid but I had fun and I learned. This is making me become a better player. I am fine with the difficulty and this is how you master these fights by doing better each week. Now I might not do the raids on a healer because I might become more of a hindrance.

[gorgomanteia]

some of y'all need to accept that you suck at the game and that isn't reasonable justification for everyone else losing what has been actually engaging and enjoyable on release battle content for the first launch in a long time

[fatvalentine]

Tbh if you're having trouble doing story dungeons or trials, it's possible that it would be easier to play with other players instead of doing trusts. Most of the time, trusts make you reset an encounter if you die, whereas other players can keep resurrecting you or shielding you to survive/recuperate from more mechanics.

As for the level of difficulty itself, I think it's fine, but also at the limit of what I would like for normal. Compared to EW, my wish was not necessarily for fights to be harder, but "to have more things happen more often" which is what DT does, although it can somewhat translate to a higher difficulty depending on the mechanics.