Difficulty of normal content.

[VanillaWafer]

Thank you for this post. I feel the unforgiving nature of the mechanics is getting a bit annoying. One mistake, and you get a vulnerability stack; two mistakes, and you're KO. Why the need for so many insta-kill mechanics? Overlapping AoE attacks and the reaction time required seem more strict than ever. This raid tier feels more extreme than usual. The telegraphs are chaotic and hard to read, almost as if I have to die to learn them. This whole expansion doesn't feel casual-friendly. Yes, I have the ability to learn and memorize the mechanics, but it's getting close to crossing the line into extreme content, and that type of challenge doesn't interest me.

I'm sorry, but have you ever been through an Extreme fight? It's always been a tight dance since ARR.

[CastDeath]

Thank you for this post. I feel the unforgiving nature of the mechanics is getting a bit annoying. One mistake, and you get a vulnerability stack; two mistakes, and you're KO. Why the need for so many insta-kill mechanics? Overlapping AoE attacks and the reaction time required seem more strict than ever. This raid tier feels more extreme than usual. The telegraphs are chaotic and hard to read, almost as if I have to die to learn them. This whole expansion doesn't feel casual-friendly. Yes, I have the ability to learn and memorize the mechanics, but it's getting close to crossing the line into extreme content, and that type of challenge doesn't interest me.

No it isn't, have you even done extremes lately? These fights can be cleared blind on first try. Its a raid get comfortable with dying and failing for a while before winning. That is literally how its supposed to go. if its too much for you then go do fates or the hunt and let us enjoy actually engaging fights that feel rewarding to beat.

[Elkanah]

Thank you for this post. I feel the unforgiving nature of the mechanics is getting a bit annoying. One mistake, and you get a vulnerability stack; two mistakes, and you're KO. Why the need for so many insta-kill mechanics? Overlapping AoE attacks and the reaction time required seem more strict than ever. This raid tier feels more extreme than usual. The telegraphs are chaotic and hard to read, almost as if I have to die to learn them. This whole expansion doesn't feel casual-friendly. Yes, I have the ability to learn and memorize the mechanics, but it's getting close to crossing the line into extreme content, and that type of challenge doesn't interest me.

lmao bro tell me you've never played an ex fight without telling me you never played an ex (or even savage fight). What a joke.

[JadeCurtiss]

But if you feel that I represent such a small minority of the player base wouldn't it be healthier to just ignore me and move on?

You're right! Good advice.

[DKMR]

Arguments are stressful but the thing is there is not much of an argument to be had here. It's just pages and pages of "skill issue", "git gud", "you can't be this bad after 100 levels", all the passive agresive "it's ok to be bad/die/wipe", the "it's not harder", the "it's harder but it's ok because I like it", all the "but such and such duty was hard too", "it's level 100 so it must be harder". Once you filter all that you end with less than a page of posts.
If I made this thread is because I like the game a lot, and I firmly believe this increase in difficulty for the easiest duties is going to be bad for the game in the long run. I stand for what I wrote in my past posts.

And yet you ignore the people who are actually trying to help and give you advice on how to learn or read the mechanics.

I suggest you try doing the normal raid contents from past expansions with min IL on (there's a option you can choose with the gear on top of the DF in case you don't know how) AND with 7 other people who are first timers without helping them with callouts, then tell me if the raid is hard or not.

Do Omega, do Eden on sync min IL and silence echo.

If you can still do that with 7 other first time people without any problem, then yes maybe we can talk about how hard the normal raids are in 7.0. If you find it really hard to do, then it's not the raid's problem.
I won't say it's your problem either since getting better gear after each tier is released makes the raids easier to do, maybe you didn't do the patches when it just released, so it's seems easier because the majority already knows the mech by then, and if that's the case, just wait until the next tier releases and you will find M1-M4 easy.

[Narroo]

I honestly don't really understand the viewpoint of the content in DT being hard, sure its 'harder' than EW, but let us be honest here and realize the truth that EVERYTHING is 'harder' than EW content. EW was the last expansion in a 10 yr long story with a HUGE influx of people to the game from ShB, which led to a lot of hand holding in EW. People complained that the Garlemald quest where you become a Garlean soldier was too hard so they added an easy mode if you died.

Unfortunately, Normal raids 'is' easy mode for raids. Nothing is hard to figure out, its not impossible to kill with 20+ deaths, the only way to insta wipe is if you fall from the floor breaking, but after seeing that one time that should literally never happen again because its telegraphed so you know its coming. As people have already said if you find it too hard, its optional you never need to do it. If you want to do it, learn your job. It says you are a Red Mage and I'm willing you wager you are just standing in place casting or running around not casting neither of these things is ideal. You need to get use to movement and slide casting so you don't get hit by everything a fight throws at you. Take the time to practice on a training dummy or in a dungeon, but don't sit here trying to be a keyboard warrior of light and complain when you don't put in any effort.

[AmiableApkallu]

Yes, I have the ability to learn and memorize the mechanics, but it's getting close to crossing the line into extreme content, and that type of challenge doesn't interest me.

It's nowhere close to "extreme content." An extreme looks like:

Narrator: The party queues into the instance.

DPS #4: So, does anyone have markers?

Healer #2: Yeah, hold on... wait, no, those are for the wrong fight... crap, these ones are kinda janky... fml... where are they... ah, here!

Tank #2: Finally. Clock spots and light parties?

Narrator: The party danced around a "1" and a "2" for ten minutes. It wasn't even a good dance.

Tank #1: Uh... I forget... was this party going with MRRMBBQ G1N G2SXSW or Victor's N64 Mario Kart with braindead orbs? I kinda prefer Alice's enum's, tbh.

DPS #3: *leaves the instance and party*

...

Actual Dawntrail:

Random party member: LEEEEEEEROY JENKINSSSSS!!!

Narrator: The party cleared, one wipe and twenty minutes later. The chat appeared to be stuck on the "gg" key.

[Jinglypockets]

Thank you for this post. I feel the unforgiving nature of the mechanics is getting a bit annoying. One mistake, and you get a vulnerability stack; two mistakes, and you're KO. Why the need for so many insta-kill mechanics? Overlapping AoE attacks and the reaction time required seem more strict than ever. This raid tier feels more extreme than usual. The telegraphs are chaotic and hard to read, almost as if I have to die to learn them. This whole expansion doesn't feel casual-friendly. Yes, I have the ability to learn and memorize the mechanics, but it's getting close to crossing the line into extreme content, and that type of challenge doesn't interest me.

"Casual" is a matter of time investment -- it doesn't mean unskilled or wilting in the face of minimal adversity. Every single casual player I know -- which includes hundreds of people -- enjoys being challenged and overcoming those challenges. Some of them are very skilled, many are not, but I think they'd all be offended by the idea that casual players can't handle failing a few times while learning new things.

"Casual" is not the word you're looking for.

[PinkGummyWorm]

click the buttons.

[caffe_macchiato]

So a lot of the people love the content as-is, and that's great. It's designed well, so it should work well, right?

But Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd. decided to make a game engine that cannot deal with fast or overlapping mechanics. What they gave us instead is "snapshotting". So even if you successfully dodge an attack, the servers (aka a thousand forum posters in a trench coat) will say that you didn't, and give you a vuln stack anyway. It's one of the iconic hallmarks of Square Enix design, and because of that, it gets a ton of praise online. And you like it too, because you just need to "get gud" and "you've been playing for 100 levels anyway". What Square Enix did to "increase the difficulty" in Dawntrail content was simply add more mechanics. Think like WoW but more cool and hip. If the game was more responsive, people wouldn't complain as much about the game being hard. But that's not a good thing, it needs to be harder for the sake of it. And Square Enix found out a very smart way to do it!

See, the unique thing about "video" games is that the video is supposed to be important. So when you press a button, it shows up on the screen. But the "new" style of video games (pioneered by Dark Souls, mastered by FFXIV) is where your actions do not correspond with the video. And the key to beating the game is to do exactly what you shouldn't do. So in these new raids, you move in the "bad" zone when it's still bad but a second before not being bad. And if you can't do it? Get gud! 100 levels! The old masters of video games (1970s-2010s) couldn't handle the sheer power of "shapshotting". Only a company as rich and prestigious--excuse me, a small indie company--can come up with this ingenious system.