Difficulty of normal content.

[GuildDrama]

If you spent as much effort as you do crying and writing out paragraphs of complaints into using applied knowledge from previous content and adaptive understanding you would see that Dawntrail content is simply a babystep forward in terms of "Difficulty".

For example: everyone knows what a directional arena attack looks like. Don't stand in front of the directional arrow that says HEY IM GONNA BLAST HERE. Seen it plenty of times in previous content.

In Dawntrail: So you remember that directional arena attack? Ok so we're gonna freeze 2 of them so that it delays that one. It doesn't take rocket science to understand the non-frozen ones go 1st.

This is a classic case of "Git Gud". All of the mechanics get spoonfed to you on Youtube anyway if you don't wanna prog blind.

[Post]

Let's not disregard the lingering issue of nearly every dungeon/trial/raid/alliance raid prior to Shadowbringers being an undertuned and/or oversynced snoozefest. Guildhests too, which are somehow still in the game and were never expanded on and have a roulette that gives 10k EXP, fell victim to this and are utterly ignored mechanically. Most of the 8-man content could be cleared comfortably with one tank and healer.

Other posters alluded to this, but I think this point is incredibly important.

Old normal raids caused wipes and deaths, too. Even the normal dungeons content. Often, perspectives are skewed because we compare a current new fight THAT IS TUNED PROPERLY to an old fight that is horribly, horribly tuned.

A1n, the Fist of the Father, is a duty that players will complete in under 2 minutes today, where it used to be a fight that could conceivably hit an enrage timer. If you're a new player from 2019 or beyond, did you know that the twin Oppressors will launch into the air and land somewhere in the room? Let alone having to care about the core mechanic of shrinking the 3000 tonze missiles with the add corpses.

Basically, the result of this is that the difficulty curve is a flat line until you reach current expansion content for many players when it really wasn't back in the day and really shouldn't be today. But, effects of things like boosting job potencies while making rotations simpler at low levels every expansion and no ilvls syncs for 'max level' content results in players not having any hint they aren't learning their job or understanding a boss' telegraphs until suddenly they're faced with a properly tuned boss and they die.

I haven't done the new raids yet, but I'm sure that they're on par with the rest of DT. They may have some new ideas, as they should, as the population of the game that enjoys battle content deserves to be surprised. They may throw mechanics at you more often, as they should, ShB and EW were often far too slow to tutorialize and left many bosses feeling like HP sponge slogs with a lot of dead time. But, most importantly, I hope that the new normal raids are harder than the MSQ dungeons, because a curve, or ramp, of difficulty should exist for the 'non organized' players, too. How else do you expect people to get better?

Super Mario doesn't go from 1-1 to 8-1, and neither should FFXIV duties.

[TheTreblesomeBard]

A lot of people wouldn't have survived 2.x. LMAO.

[Huskie]

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.

[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.

[Jinglypockets]

We need another tier of difficulty between Normal and Extreme/Savage that's aimed at midcore players and people who enjoy being challenged but don't have the time and/or skill for Extreme/Savage.

When I did the new raids yesterday, I was disappointed by how easy they were. Savage raids, meanwhile, are *extremely* difficult, and they require a massive time/energy investment just to *start* working on them. Going from Normal to Extreme/Savage feels like jumping straight from LFR to Mythic.

You're either casual and get trivial content, or you're hardcore and get insanely difficult content. Nothing in between.

Meanwhile, I think this game has set a standard for a very long time of Normal content being extremely accessible. I feel for the people who've spent years playing this game at one difficulty level just to have it suddenly cranked up beyond what they can handle. By making Normal content dramatically more difficult, SE is altering the deal for those players. If they suddenly cranked the difficulty of Normal dungeons up to Dark Souls levels, I'd be in the same boat they're in now. Difficulty is relative and we need to all take a step back and recognize that people who are less skilled than us have a valid claim on enjoying this game too.

A more granular range of content difficulty (and investment) would go a really long way in solving everybody's problems.

[Amenara]

The raids are extremely fun and have a bit of difficulty involved, I hope they keep up this creativity with mechanics and encourage everyone to learn and get better at playing their classes and the slightly harder fights with experts and normal raids. I also hope this design continues into the alliance raid series.

[Deslyxic]

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.

[Kissune]

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.

'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.

[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.