Difficulty of normal content.

[Router]

Everyone forgets one key thing about early xpac end game normal content, it is always harder at first due to low ilvls, always. When an xpac begins you have the majority of the community utilizing gear closer to the min ilvl for a dungeon more so than any other point in the xpac's life cycle. This dramatic shift is so noticeable because when Endwalker finished most people had max ilvl attainable for those dungeons / raids and now that isn't true at all.

Why does this matter so much?

Snip

This reminds me of an annoying "feature" of how fights are currently paced.
Bad groups with bad DPS are punished with harder mechanics because the fight drags on, while good groups with good DPS are punished by not seeing some of the harder mechanics... Where does this make any sense? It should be the other way around. I doubt the bad players want to see the harder mechanics, and the good players probably want to skip all the tutorialization. I have no doubt that part of the complaints about difficulty arise from the fact that bad players have to "survive" for an extra couple of minutes in every fight.

EDIT: I should note this mostly applies to trials and raids, since dungeon bosses start looping mechanics very early on. Still, I think it's a frustrating consequence of current design.

[elshogoso]

Most of the times when I see someone complain that mechanics are resolving too quickly, they just missed cues that have been on the arena for like 10 seconds, so yeah, the whole point is not getting tunnel vision and using that camera to stay aware of the arena and keeping an eye on boss cast bars, not just waiting for a telegraph to appear on the ground. This isn't anything hardcore.

I personally find it refreshing that the casual content in the game, while remaining casual, is not shying away so much from presenting some obstacles to the player. That content is designed to lose, but that doesn't mean it's not gonna make you work a little bit to earn that victory. Don't worry, as soon as patches drop and you get overgeared it's gonna go back to being trivially easy.

[YvaiaAshaar]

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?

Not to sound mean but as an EU player since HW I don't appreciate being thrown into a pot with you. Wdym "we dont do this here"? Why do you feel the need to throw every NA and EU player together like we all see it the same way? xD
I for once really enjoyed the new content.
I loved everything about the expac besides the story (but thats not here nor there). Dungeons got better, solo duties got better and holy shit the raid was the best thing ever so far (tho I have to agree I also really hate M2 lol).

Oh and I say that as a complete casual. I don't raid, I don't to any savage and EX fights only after a year with experienced players lol.
I am as casual as they come, and I loved the fighting aspect of the new expansion.

Everyone can have their opinion be it good or bad but don't talk like every NA and EU Player agrees with you.
You don't talk for me.

[BigCheez]

22 likes and 960 replies. I think we can safely call "L + ratio" on this one.

[waiting_in_pf]

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.

How about you give me some examples of other games that you play, and if you ever have similar issues, or even some dungeons and mechanics from earlier content that you consider to be easier. Im sure this isn't just about expert dungeon boss 1 and M2. Itd be better to know what exactly is considered easy to difficult in your opinion in these fights. Like what was unclear in valigarmanda, what was unclear in the solo instances etc.

[Drop26]

I honestly cannot believe we are playing the same game, to me this sounds like a "you" problem.

Some telegraphs were not the usual ones like the one on the first fight but it gives you plenty of time to figure it out, and even if you don't it doesn't really matter, you'll figure it out the next time you have to do the mechanic.
There's a lot of mechanic overlaps in older dungeons, normal and alliance raids so I don't know why you expected the mechanics to be like a new ARR dungeon.
If you cannot resolve a mechanic quickly enough you can (almost) always follow someone else or try to figure out a way to survive the mechanic while you are dead. I'm guessing you're referring to the tile mechanic from the first fight.
I hate mechanics with random patterns like evading the hearts on the second encounter because my lowest ping is 129.99ms and I'll probably get hit by something that didn't hit me visually, but other than that it's just a dodge mechanic... You can always stop doing whatever you're doing and focus only on dodging, at least on normal raids.

I'm not a mega hardcore player but I play the game mainly for the savage/extreme, crafting and sometimes ultimate content. All I can say is that this normal raid tier is not difficult, it just makes you think a little bit more which is awesome for the people that actually like this content and the potential this tier has for savage mechanics is amazing.

To me it just feels like you're just bad at the game and you expect every single casual player to think like you and the devs to "fix" the game because you lack the skills to complete a normal raid tier so it must be their fault for making it "too difficult".

[Volfe]

Gonna assume just dense then.

And nearly every review states to the effect: the content is great and the difficulty increase was much needed, but we didn't like the story. So, you know, it would be reviewed far worse if OP got his way.

[Infindox]

Game's been out for less then a month, also isn't even fully "released". Remember how good Endwalker 's msq was and then how dull and boring a lot of the patch content was? (24 man story felt rushed and the raids were piss easy, the relic weapons were a joke, barely anything else to do, patch msq I liked the characters but it also felt like a rushed afterthought).
Also legitimately, who cares if it was, if people are still playing and enjoying it.
This wasn't even the topic of this post.

[Conando]

The reviews have nothing to do with the actual battle content anyway. Any negatives mentioned have to do with the MSQ which, at the time, was all there was except for 2 EX Trials.

[Mihka]

Dawntrail's content difficulty is the "Course Correction" after Endwalker.

This is the FIFTH EXPANSION. You are level 100. It's time you learned how to actually play the game.