Difficulty of normal content.

[drjustright]

Dungeons have not been too hard at all. Imo most of them could still be harder. I pray that the hopefully small but loud minority about the difficulty doesnt make SE change it

[NightHour]

These raids are fine difficulty wise.

God forbid you have to learn to complete mid tier content.

[Darkedone02]

The only difficulty I had is the expert dungeon number 2 (deadwalk), and I hate the first boss, HATE IT HATE IT HATE IT!

MY first time going in with a friend, and our healer just don't want to heal at all, he never cast bubble, assize, or medica 2, and we wiped on the first boss SOO MANY TIMES.

[YuiSakuma]

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?

Have you ever thought that maybe the problem is just you? Like, the playerbase is collectively getting better year after year as is normal, if you're the one that's left behind wouldn't just be a skill issue on your part?

[Deslyxic]

You already have been prove wrong in EW when most of the criticism was that the content for casual and midcore was boring and non existing, the lack of engaging fights is what was killing EW and ppl actually stopped doing content already cuz of that so don't worry they already know if they design braindead content ppl will stop playing and Yoshi P knows it very well

Was I? EW held the biggest player count of any expansion, if such criticism reflected the majority of the player base you wouldn't see that. You are literally describing what a vocal minority is.

[Kiurt]

Was I? EW held the biggest player count of any expansion, if such criticism reflected the majority of the player base you wouldn't see that. You are literally describing what a vocal minority is.

6.0 did hold the biggest player count (Thanks WoW Devs for Shadowlands tho). From 6.1 to 6.5, players (both casuals and midcore/hardcore) started to leave because of the lack of ENGAGING content, even asking for Eureka back.

[NightHour]

Have you ever thought that maybe the problem is just you? Like, the playerbase is collectively getting better year after year as is normal, if you're the one that's left behind wouldn't just be a skill issue on your part?

It's 100% a skill issue.



Now I'm no superstar raider or anything, I died a LOT in these normals and you know what?


I had way more fun than doing Pandaemonium Normals, these fights have an element of challenge to them and that's a good thing.

[Masqurin]

I am actually glad the devs decided to give the content a little bit of a push. We have seen the same mechanics for years and factually, we still play the exact same mechanics now, the main difference is the way these mechanics are telegraphed.
By adding a little bit of awareness and trying to teach players to look at .. shiny things at bosses or the sides, the devs are in a sense make also create 'better' players and more people who think themselves now .. less afraid to jump into ex trials or savage content.

The main 'difficulty' comes simply from having never to watch out for anything in the past and now suddenly .. we are asked to use what we have learned in the past.
Do we have new telegraphs? Yes
Do we potentially fail to identify these telegraphs at first? Yes
Does running the content gets players used to the new telegraphs? Yes

So all difficulty will practically vanish over time. When gear also gets a bit elevated, failing mechanics can easily be tanked/healed through as it always used to be.
I feel like most statements regarding to the difficulty is just coming from first impressions, rather than actually engaging or playing the content.
Having to pay a little bit of attention in a dungeon can only be a good thing, as it raises player awareness, but this is an effect that needs a little bit of time to shine. We are coming from an age of brain dead/ignore it all.

I would be very sad, if based on the vocal minority, the next bit of content again gets designed to be braindead, as all content eventually will turn into that anyway, with a bit of time and getting used to it. Having it feel interesting in its early stages of its lifetime can only be a good thing.

In the end, it is okay to fail while learning. A run gets severely handicapped when you have deaths in the attempt, which can derail the whole attempt. But that is fine.
We humans usually mostly learn through failure, not through success.

Also this is final fantasy XIV, no patterns are random or not telegraphed with enough time to comprehend and interpret it.
But there are simply unspoked rules in the content that people are usually figuring out during their journey and are expected to be used, such as:
you can move as early as the cast bar for an enemy attack is finished, because the attach, despite of what you see, is at that point locked in place. So dodge windows become a lot larger keeping that in mind.

So TL;DR
I feel the content is decently paced and I love that change.
People should learn a bit of patience and it is okay to take some time to learn.
It is okay to not rock everything at the 1st time.
It is okay to not rush simply everything.
Please do not design content into super easy braindead again, as it will turn out this way with the passage of time anyway.

[Masekase_Hurricane]

Was I? EW held the biggest player count of any expansion, if such criticism reflected the majority of the player base you wouldn't see that. You are literally describing what a vocal minority is.

6.0 did hold the biggest player count (Thanks WoW Devs for Shadowlands tho). From 6.1 to 6.5, players (both casuals and midcore/hardcore) started to leave because of the lack of ENGAGING content, even asking for Eureka back.

To a degree yes, but the numbers were inflated due to certain streamers giving it a boost on their channels. Once that novelty wore off and their expansion was dropped a large amount left

As for people leaving my FC died in Endwalker loads left/quit/took long breaks. Gear was largely irrelevant in casual content, as the fights were so easy compared to previous dungeons, raids and trials.

So whats the point getting better gear if it's not punishing you in min ilvl gear?

It's true that there were a lot of people that would have preferred a Bozja type content instead of a deep dungeon, and there was a lot of people that wished there was a relic grind like the past. Can you tell how the difficulty of content enter in this equation? In fact I can tell that the reason not many people vibe with deep dungeons is because they get very hard after the early floors.

It really wasnt hard at all. I think your confusing hard with punishing if you don't learn the fight.

[Deslyxic]

6.0 did hold the biggest player count (Thanks WoW Devs for Shadowlands tho). From 6.1 to 6.5, players (both casuals and midcore/hardcore) started to leave because of the lack of ENGAGING content, even asking for Eureka back.

It's true that there were a lot of people that would have preferred a Bozja type content instead of a deep dungeon, and there was a lot of people that wished there was a relic grind like the past. Can you tell how the difficulty of content enter in this equation? In fact I can tell that the reason not many people vibe with deep dungeons is because they get very hard after the early floors.