Difficulty of normal content.

[NightHour]

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?

You've had 100 levels to become competent at the game.


Normal raids are meant to be moderately challenging but less punishing than Extreme or Savage.

[Emeline]

It's reassuring to see a lot of people happy to have content that cannot be completed while being sleeping ������

This is my favorite first tier and, for sure, my favorite raid serie already, because it actually needs me being focused on the game. Dawntrail is a banger, thanks Square <3

[NightHour]

It's reassuring to see a lot of people happy to have content that cannot be completed while being sleeping ������

This is my favorite first tier and, for sure, my favorite raid serie already, because it actually needs me being focused on the game. Dawntrail is a banger, thanks Square <3

Indeed.

Normal raid is mid tier content along with Extreme, it should present a moderate challenge.

[Straticus]

It's okay to not be good at something first try. Just keep trying and improve. And if you don't want to do that then just play the MSQ (with the solo duties set to very easy ofc) and ignore trials/raids/alliance raids.

[Weix]

Heaven forbid there's more than a spread and a stack marker in a fight

[MementoKoishi]

Nearly ten years and five expansions later, and here we are, crying out about the "extreme" difficulty of level 100 content. Imagine having resources, guides, forum posts, videos and people explaining everything, and you still can't be bothered to improve and learn the fight. No, it's much easier to whine and complain, demanding the devs dumb everything down. You had almost a decade to get better, but you'd rather the game be reduced to a braindead walk in the park. Let’s erase the sense of achievement and thrill of victory entirely. Everyone gets a trophy, because effort is overrated. The developers design challenging content for a reason. It’s meant to test players, to provide a sense of progression. But why bother with their vision? Let’s pressure them into making everything easier. Let’s make it monotonous and uninspired. Repetitive gameplay is what everyone really wants, right? Let’s ensure the game evolves to cater to the lowest common denominator. That’s the real goal, isn’t it?

[AvoSturmfaust]

If the Content is too hard for you just dont do it?

I can understand and im the Opinion MSQ Dungeons and MSQ Story should be piss easy while optional Content should be harder, sorry to say it but you cant complain about everything because its not perfect suited for your own "Skilllevel" you need to accept there is Content you cant do and you have to accept there is Content which is for a other kind of Playerbase, instead of complaining and hoping Square makes everything piss easy, the Game isnt 100% Casual, there are Player even amongst Casuals who likes atleast a bit of a Challenge, if you none of them just dont do the Content.

[Ryaaka]

Day one of the new raid tier and people already complaining about artificial difficulty.

To my best knowledge Endwalker was designed around the solo player and it was so clear in anything considered casual content being the most boring content I have done when it comes to the normal modes.

Now they have slightly upped the stakes and it's just right, when doing msq and first run of a dungeon and being surprised by a mechanic instead of it being the over used standard stuff brought so much thrill. And every instance in Dawntrail feels amazing. A small bump up of difficulty that atleast on EU, now it's been a few weeks is having zero issues with.

Now back to my original point. This is day 1 normal raids. People will mess up until they have a good feeling. The 2nd fight has a unique mechanic not used in casual content before (in this kinda style anyway) and is probably the outlier I imagine people are feeling like trash over.

It's time FF players stop having their hand held, and accept wiping once or twice in casual content. It's a MMO... we are supposed to play with others and learn and grow from mistakes.

Please reconsider your stance on the content in the expansion. The battle content has been the best it has ever been.

[AndieEldritch]

Personally I really enjoyed the Normal mode content so far, it's not overly punishing, most failed mechanics still only result in a vuln stack or two.
Having to learn a fight by doing it more than once isn't difficult, once you've run a piece of content a couple of times it becomes easy, as for 'non standard telegraphs' the game definitely needed to mix it up a bit, 'don't stand in orange' only has so many mechanics it can result in.

The toss mechanic in M1 was very fun, Honey B is manic but enjoyable, M3 is fair pattern recognition and M4 was very enjoyable all around. For a 1st tier it was good in my opinion. Even with a team of 5 randoms we cleared each one with only a single wipe on Honey B, I feel you may have just had poor luck with DF, that happens, especially on day 1.

Languishing in the same few mechanics is boring, it made old Expert Roulette dungeons a chore, but TV and TSD are the best optional dungeons I've played in years and the experimentation done in the levelling dungeons really spiced up what was a very dialogue heavy MSQ.

I am very happy with the content provided. I suppose this is the struggle of balancing a game for so many people though, others might not gel well with it. But in terms of pure difficulty this is a small step up once you take the time to take in the mechanics. Having a small amount of learning for normal content is not a bad thing at all for me.

[GoatOfWar]

I've been getting my ass kicked and i love it.
I have a reason to rivisit the content.