Difficulty of normal content.

[Kaurhz]

I am sorry but this is still casual difficulty, you just need to learn to tolerate a little failure, either on your part or on the part of other people for that matter.

This is a healthy difficulty. There's a smidge of resistance there, and all you need to do is pay a smidge of attention to the boss - Learn and then execute. It isn't surmountable for absolutely any player in this game, and nor is it asking for unrealistic expectations.

[HemlockEvergreen]

I think this is a very good issue to bring up, because it brings us to the logical conclusion of requiring FFXIV be played from 1 to 100 sequentially. The only people who can play Dawntrail endgame are those who have beaten the entire 400-hour MSQ and "got gud", or those who "cheated" by buying a boost. It's a great thing for us to showcase, because we're finally becoming like World of Warcraft, a game that you all claim to hate. Meanwhile, World of Warcraft is actually more friendly to newer players because you can start at the second-newest expansion and reach endgame content within only around 20 hours of playtime. A lot of you HATED the "elitist" nature of your former game, and you came to Final Fantasy XIV because it was "the friendly MMO". But now you all are more hostile to new players than the game you want to replace. Your attitude resulted in the world's former top MMO losing its spot to FFXIV. And what happens when your attitude takes over this game too?

What are you smoking, bro.

WoW lost players to FFXIV because:

1 - The game was going to shit. The story was pure garbage, and the gameplay was a grindfest made out of boring chores. You couldn't just show up and raid (the fun part), you had to grind your anima whatevers, your reputations, do mandatory PVP and M+ to open a chest that gave you a chance of getting a piece of gear that maybe would be good for your class. It was a repetitive, mind-numbing, FOMO based experience. In contrast, FFXIV lets me just log in and raid, I can stop for a month or two without completely falling behind, and there's even Ultimates, which are not tied to a gearing system at all and exist purely for fun and cosmetics. And for gearing, even if I'm the most unlucky person ever and I never win a roll, I know I'm getting BiS in 16 weeks. There's no FOMO or being dependent on RNG. It's a better raiding experience overall.

2 - People left WoW because there was a huge sexual harrassment scandal on Blizzard, including great hits like "raiding the office and groping the interns", "stealing employees breast milk from the fridge", and "driving a woman to suicide on a business trip". For a lot of people who were already frustrated with WoW's mechanics, this was the last drop.

No one left WoW for XIV because they wanted a "less elitist" MMO. They left WoW for XIV because they wanted fun raiding without a bunch of grindy bullshit, hopefully made by a company where sexual assault is not part of the corporate culture.

[EXOMAGE]

Wait wait wait you’re saying these things are too hard? I don’t do savage and don’t even really do extreme trials anymore and nothing about Dawn Trails dungeons trials or new raid is hard enough to complain about. You can watch a 2 min guide if you need to for each encounter and clear it first try. Going in blind to new content yea you should have some wipes or it’s way too easy if you don’t. I highly disagree with your post.

Endwalker normal content was way too easy. You cannot expect to go in and one shot everything and not have to learn a fight.

[One_Sock]

I'm sorry, but no. There was nothing hard about these fights. I went into it completely blind and figured out the telegraphs 1st try. All of the telegraphs were communicated easily.

[sk3ll]

Agreed completely. When I saw the first boss do a left side cleave then a right side cleave I knew this would be too difficult for me. I didn't even bother trying again after my whole party fell to their death after some stupid knock up mechanic, how are we supposed to know when a platform is going to break???? One second I'm in the air, next second everyone is dead. Ridiculous.

[scatteringmyashes]

I had a great time with the raids. They are harder than past raids, and I think that's okay. The first time is always the hardest and I would encourage anyone who struggles the first time to take a breather, remind yourself that it's okay to fail, and go back in next week with an open mindset.

That being said, there simply were no mechanics on the same level as Extremes or Savage. The mechanics were faster and a few asked you for memorization, but once I figured out the key/solution it was very easy. If you don't find enjoyment in solving the puzzle, as it were, then I think there's no shame in asking friends or other people in raid or even looking online.

Tldr: I really liked the raid tier, I liked the difficulty, and I'd hate for things to be simplified again.

[Urielparadox]

Complaints I have seen are simply that people just don't under stand certain basics, and don't want to learn.

1) first thing to do when entering a raid is look at the floor. The floors will actually show u the safe spots for various, not all, mechanics so look at how boss mechanics interreact with floor designs.

2) read the cast bar. So many complaints i've seen are simply just read the cast bar. I offered ff14 fights 101 class in my FC, and plan on doing it again. I make sure to explain to people its not just raids it works for all content. how to adjust your hud, how to make macros that instantly change your graphic settings, hud layout/size of things ect. So that you can push a macro and swap between battle huds, and overworld huds. All graphics, low graphics, no graphics. how to read the floors of fights ect. The biggest problem I always have with people who will not make 1 small adjust their hud to make castbars and status more visible. You are making the game harder on yourself.
Put enemy cast bars in an easy to see spot and make them big, mine appear right to the side of my toon and large so that I dont miss them. You will only see these during mechanics with cast bars, and all atk names tell you something about what they do, so it doesn't interfere with any sort of gameplay

3)The 3rd fight in this tier is by far the easiest. You know its 2 punches and not 1 because the atk is called combo. Dodge the fist of the combo just past the halfway point. stop running to the walls when there is no need to, that is why you find it hard. This is how casters have to dodge and move for everything to keep uptime. He gives u just enough time for the combo even if u do dodge to the wall to make it to the other side. but the overlapping circles that occur on the floor slight past the middle mark the line of that aoe atk so you know how far to dodge. If you think its fast you just aren't looking at the boss. run back to the center after the first one so u have time to move left or right to adjust if u still struggle. make use of your hotkeys that look backwards, or autochange your camera direction.

4) everything is a pattern, don't over complicate it. Boss 4 turn the camera to the side and just say to yourself l, r, r, l or 1,2,2,1 whatever works for you, and again only dodge as far as u need to, its like 1 step. if you need to stop dps, and type it out while its happening do that. The lost dps from you stopping to type is better than dyeing. The tiles are the same on the first boss count them as they come out, and pay attention to the square your on and the one next to it. count each one round of telegraphs. u should only have to move one to two times, once the mechanics starts. So just figure out which of the 2 squares is only getting hit once, and count when its not safe, and make sure you aren't on it for that hit. You don't need to memorize or look at the entire arena as it does not matter, Put emphasis on the danger #(s). In my head I just say those numbers louder, and then you only need to know those one or two numbers.

[Gortys]

Agreed completely. When I saw the first boss do a left side cleave then a right side cleave I knew this would be too difficult for me. I didn't even bother trying again after my whole party fell to their death after some stupid knock up mechanic, how are we supposed to know when a platform is going to break???? One second I'm in the air, next second everyone is dead. Ridiculous.

I'm not sure if you are being serious, but cells turned red. Red bad. I stayed away from red cells?
For the one where you get knocked in the air I wasn't sure what that was about and stood in the wrong place. I landed on a fractured cell which then broke so I fell and died. This taught me what this mechanic was all about.

It is day 1. People that don't like to do it blind and learn on their own can chill until the guides come out. The rest of us will have fun dying while laughing at ourselves and others for goofing up mechanics. The problem is if you are in the second group and want a guide? At some point the player base loses patience. Week 1 is when the player base is the most patient and understanding I find. But honestly, the ones who want to wait for a guide are sometimes the most toxic with this.

[dragonflie]

I had a place in this game and now I don't feel like I do anymore.

A lot of us been playing since ARR and felt we lost ours when the normal/alli/casual content got too easy.

[caffe_macchiato]

The story was pure garbage, and the gameplay was a grindfest made out of boring chores.

That sounds familiar!

You couldn't just show up and raid (the fun part), you had to grind your anima whatevers, your reputations, do mandatory PVP and M+ to open a chest that gave you a chance of getting a piece of gear that maybe would be good for your class. It was a repetitive, mind-numbing, FOMO based experience. In contrast, FFXIV lets me just log in and raid

And how many hours do you have to play FFXIV before you get to that point? Because most of the posts in this thread celebrate walling off current content and requiring hundreds of hours and ten years of experience before playing. "You're level 100, everything should be easy!" The issue at this point isn't Square Enix, it's the Final Fantasy XIV community which wants something far more restrictive than any other MMO. We have approached the "final boss" territory of FFXIV. And that's FINE! That's great news! Because it means that Final Fantasy XIV is finally approaching its end of life and the company can finally move on to a new MMO.

The raids aren't even difficult, but this thread wants them to be because it filters out the plebs and you're level 100 anyway so just "get gud". Hopefully this is the end!