Difficulty of normal content.

[KDSilver]

Thank you for these interesting normal raid.

Too bad for those you see this as a wall, maybe it's time to improve and learn the game.

Peace.

[Jinglypockets]

I think a lot of people underestimate the potential impact of just ramping up the numbers on some of these fights. The first boss of Strayborough is very difficult mechanically, but the fight overall is ultimately trivial because the punishment for getting hit is more annoying than impactful. Yeah, it's a mess with everyone getting hit and sometimes dying, but I don't think I've ever actually wiped on it. Making it actually dangerous would fundamentally change people's approach to that fight.

I'd kill for something as simple as an *optional* version of these dungeons that let us crank up the numbers, offered us more tomestones or something for doing so. It would give us a way to have challenging dungeons without ruining the casual experience for people.

It's probably the most simplistic possible solution available, but in many ways that's what makes it appealing to me -- once the system is built, it's a lot less expensive to just maintain that than it is to constantly build entirely new tiers of content to satisfy everyone all the time.

[Sacae]

you didnt play stormblood, because there was a leap in difficulty (the burn says hi, eureka the side content also says whats up) that was prevalent when the game came out, the game started being easy in shb...and it was grossly worse in endwalker...people get better from experiences...and people need to get off this high horse that they are too good to fail...just get better at the game...i died multiple times in the lvl 100 dungeons...but? after the 5th time, it was same old stuff lol

Giving some context to your post.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/343618
We've been here before.

[Deslyxic]

'People are disagreeing with me, they MUST be trolls/tryhards'. Don't put everyone who disagrees with you in a box, its not healthy for critical thinking skills. For the record, I have never watched Arthars or any other ff14 streamer, bc I prefer to play the game instead of watching someone else do it. But go ahead, dismiss criticism of your bad takes by just stating that anyone who disagrees with you must be a troll.

You will have to excuse me if I disregard anything being said from an account created 3 months ago with almost 200 posts.

[Arnsgrim]

I wanted to wait to see the raid tier before I say anything. There are already post about dungeon and trial difficulty, and now normal raids should be thrown into the discussion too, and I might repeat points already said but I think we should really make a point of this, we (the people not ok with this difficulty) need for the devs to hear it to hopefully make a course correction.

The problem with the difficulty on normal fights as I see it is:
-Use and abuse of non standard telegraphs.
-Nasty mechanic overlaps, stuff you would see on extreme and harder fights.
-Mechs resolving too quickly for the mental capacity they demand to process.
-One too many "catch this!" mech (mechs that have you running around like headless chicken evading seemingly random patterns).

All this has been making fights in this expansion frustrating and exhausting.

The Honey B fight had me wishing for the healer to not raise me, I was there in the floor, dead for the Nth time, thinking that I don't really want to be on that duty.

And it's not an issue of learning the fight, because that I can do, but we don't do this content alone, you know? 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.

And yes, this concerns normal raids too even if they are optional content. In fact I gonna take the skip option for this raid tier, something I haven't done since I started playing in SB. And that's the point really, for the most part in the past 3 expansions difficulty for normal content was fair outside of some hiccup here and there.

I firmly believe that content meant to be done via the duty finder (where you don't choose who you playing with) shouldn't be this level of punishing. And I know that JP people do savage in the duty finder but we don't do that in NA or EU, for better or worse western players doesn't behave like JP players.

Finally I think that people that thrive with difficulty (the ones that demand harder content) already have extremes, savages, ultimate, criterion dungeons, and more (Yoshi-p is even touting of savage alliances), this people is eating really, really good. Do they need to take normal content too? Can casual players have something easy-ish to play? Please?

The player base has had it easy in normal/trial content and even alliance raids, for a long time now. Yoshida himself even said they've gone too far in the casual-fication of the game, and it's mechanics. Dawntrail is their attempt to not only walk back on the casual-fication of content, but also experiment with new ideas and mechanics. Not everyone is capable of learning things quickly, or doing blind runs, and that's okay, that's what youtube is for. But this raid tier requires you to actual pay attention, to look at boss cues, and memorize the patterns. Unlike last expac, or even ShB, you're not going to be able to unplug your brain, and still come out on top. This content requires some level of effort, which is what it should do. The only people I would understand the frustrations of, are those with disabilities, all others do not have an excuse.

[AurisNix]

It's true that hardcore content is gated. But not by raiders, it's gated by the design of the game. the jump from normal content to Extreme in ShB and EW was *insane.* You went from faceroll easy to "die a hundred times because nothing makes sense and everything kills you."

Dungeons and Normal Trials and Normal Raids and Alliance Raids are not just there for you to walk through and mutter about how pretty they are. they are supposed to be a linear progression that challenges you gradually and sets you up for endgame content. The devs WANT people to do extremes and raids, that's why they put so much time and effort into them.

This for me was very important in SHB I did bozja as a super casual and new player, and I cleared the Red Chocobo deathless a few times then I randomly saw someone in chat saying it was harder than some extremes and that actually pushed me into trying Extremes (I had a really bad raiding anxiety) also I was in a good FC at the time that use to run and teach Extremes was funny cuz I even found some Ivalice mechs harder than some extremes mechs, that eventually pushed me into Savages in EW (even tho that was also out of necessity cuz the content in EW was boring and didn't find much stuff to do). Right now DT is perfectly tunned to push players to actually play the game and learn mechs which is amazing cuz this isn't a walking simulator like EW alliances there should be some kind of improvement and push players to be better and try new stuff, if you ask me I would rather be casual in shb that learned and improved with the game than a EW raider that actually got bored with 90% of the content.

[Saraide]

Were the normals harder than usual lol? I didn't notice. The same slog we always get, one-shotted with no trouble. I'm not surprised someone is complaining about this, and frankly it's a personal problem. Be better.

I think as far as normal modes go this tier is actually pretty fun. Especially in Round 2 there's always something going on. This is the key aspect of making content that isnt hard still fun.

[Furrysparks]

I see what happened, Arthars or some other streamer watched this post live, he definitely twitted about it. That explain the sudden avalanche of tryhards and trolls.
I still stand by my original post and there is no reason for the jump in difficulty.

I have no idea who this person is or any other streamer, I just strongly disagree with the idea that these raids are too hard.

You will have to excuse me if I disregard anything being said from an account created 3 months ago with almost 200 posts.

Is made in 2012 good enough for your arbitrary restrictions or will you further move the goalposts?

[Kissune]

You will have to excuse me if I disregard anything being said from an account created 3 months ago with almost 200 posts.

I mean if we wanna play that game I can disregard the opinion of anyone who doesn't play savage, bc to me they dont know what 'difficult' really is. But here I am, trying to engage with you. And for the record, my forum account was created recently, bc i didn't feel a need to offer any feedback until the DT AST rework. But go off, keep putting me in your box, like a bratty teenager.

Because now I can tell you really are just bad at this game. You are level 100, you claim to be playing since stormblood, and yes, there is a step up in difficulty. But y'know why it exists? Because from heavensward to endwalker, each expansion has brought the difficulty level down. This is not a 'sudden increase in difficulty' it's a slight return to form. Like I'm sorry but if you think this is hard do you not remember, idk, eden ramuh? Giant circle aoe that had no obvious big circle to tell you it was about to straight up one shot you the size of the whole arena? The thing I see kill at least one person even now when I get it as my roulette?

You have an incredibly delusional view of how ff14 used to be, if you think this step up is a new level of difficulty for the game. Especially considering job design used to be more complex and difficult, this is the tradeoff. Easy jobs, difficult encounters. No one wants to play a visual novel. Git gud.

[DKMR]

Some people complaining the new normal raids are near savage difficulty while they've never even done savage before.

Savage is WAAAAYYY harder than what the new normal raids presented, why do you think most people who do savage take up to countless HOURS of practice to finish one level of savage?
You can finish these normal raids in 10-20 minutes depending on whether a wipe happened or not.

Mechs were already "hard" during the first few expansions, I still see a lot of people die in Omega normal raids, Eden normal raids even now.

It seems easier is just because most people already know how to do the mechs, and if the way you played is by mostly following where people go in those raids, and not thinking about WHY they go there, then of course you'll find the new NR, which only released like 2 DAYS, hard to do, because most people are only doing it for the first time or haven't learned the mechs yet, you won't be able to "follow" them.

There's really nothing new in the new NR other then the one that throws you into the air in M1. Every other mech you can basically tell what happens.
For M2 it's literally like Barbaricca.