Difficulty of normal content.

[caffe_macchiato]

Is it new people who are saying it is too hard? I thought it was older players who've been playing for years that "can't keep up anymore?"

Could someone catch me up on what the narrative is now, I've lost track.

The current narrative is that the netcode should intentionally be bad so that players die when they shouldn't. That makes it more challenging and you have to master not just the mechanics, but the lag behind them.

Case in point: OP said the following, which are intentional design elements:

-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 of these require a game engine that can keep up to speed. FFXIV can't. Yoshida just admitted to this and people are lashing out against him because of how much they love the current game engine, even if they know it's bad. And they do this just to be superior to others. That's the new FFXIV. It's an extreme overcorrection. FFXIV will never improve when people are drooling over a dysfunctional game design. Devs will not ask executives for funding to fix netcode when they see thousands of people fawning over the current limitations and attacking those who disagree.