Difficulty of normal content.

[Oku-1]

I think in average the last 3 expansions were pretty fair in terms of difficulty outside of some outliers like the Mist Dragon, Amauroth, Tower of Zot or Final Day that were on the harder side for dungeons. Orbornne Monastery was obviously overtuned to the point the had to nerf it and the butter dragon in Lighthouse had a lot of HP too ("Your suffering is not yet over!", "no sheet, MF! we being fighting for 3 hour and you are still at 40%").
E5N was the sprout killer, in fact the missery I felt from Valigarmarda reminded me of that fight. P2N I remember with certain disdain too. Obviously O11 with the lardboard/starboard bullshit. As for trials Golbez I found particularly difficult.
But the thing is those are outliers in terms of difficulty, dungeons and trials you do them once and when you have bad luck in roulettes. DT is consistently harder all across the board, there is no escape.

Valigarmanda is done pretty much entirely for you by your trusts, though. Like I'm not being hyperbolic here, you can just ignore the entire fight and just do your damage rotation while standing wherever they stand and the trial is trivial, probably one of the easiest trials the MSQ has had in several expansions.

If THAT is too hard for you then I'm sorry but I think the issue isn't difficulty, the issue is that you Just Don't Like Final Fantasy 14 Anymore and instead of admitting that and canceling your sub and saving yourself 15 bucks a month you're trying to blame the difficulty for some reason.

[FlorineC]

Can we cut it out with "the game maybe isn't for you anymore". I think we grew too accustomed to tell that to new players that criticize the game without finishing ARR, but you don't understand how awful is to say that to a person that sunk god only knows how many hours into the game, that the game they love is kicking them into the curb for no fault of their own, and you don't understand how disheartening it is because it's not being said to you.

Buddy, you need to wake up to the reality that the world does not revolve around you. It's a live service game, and the nature of the genre is that things change, and not always in ways every single player likes. I mained SMN from ARR beta through 6.55 and hated the changes they made to the class in SB, and then hated the EW changes too, and you know what I did? I adapted to the changes, I played other jobs more, and I played other games more, because the HW and ShB versions of the job I loved no longer existed. Playing since SB and loving the game doesn't make your opinion any more valid than anyone else's, and certainly not more than players like me who have played longer (~18k hours on one character) and love the game just as much if not more. You need to accept the reality of the situation that this is where the game is, and this is where the game is going. If you're not having fun with it, your options are either to adapt to the content and learn to find enjoyment from it, do other content in game that you enjoy more, or play a different game. It will not and should not cater to your specific fringe tastes.

[FlorineC]

I think in average the last 3 expansions were pretty fair in terms of difficulty outside of some outliers like the Mist Dragon, Amauroth, Tower of Zot or Final Day that were on the harder side for dungeons. Orbornne Monastery was obviously overtuned to the point the had to nerf it and the butter dragon in Lighthouse had a lot of HP too ("Your suffering is not yet over!", "no sheet, MF! we being fighting for 3 hour and you are still at 40%").
E5N was the sprout killer, in fact the missery I felt from Valigarmarda reminded me of that fight. P2N I remember with certain disdain too. Obviously O11 with the lardboard/starboard bullshit. As for trials Golbez I found particularly difficult.
But the thing is those are outliers in terms of difficulty, dungeons and trials you do them once and when you have bad luck in roulettes. DT is consistently harder all across the board, there is no escape.

It really, really sounds like you're just fundamentally against any normal content that requires paying the slightest bit of attention and that isn't completely effortless to complete blind. If learning that "larboard" means left and "starboard" means right was bullshit for you, genuinely you need to find a different game to play or just accept that the combat-focused part of this game isn't for you, and stick to crafting, island sanctuary, rp, whatever it is about the game that you actually do like.

[Deslyxic]

This just comes off as you intentionally rage-baiting for attention, which dramatically harms your position in the OP.

Well I'm sorry if people is thinking that, but I knew my position was weak even before I started this thread. I did it anyway, sometimes you need to stand for what you believe.

[VioletCatastrophe]

DT is consistently harder all across the board, there is no escape.

The game getting harder over time isn't a bad thing. It's easy enough. Most people aren't complaining about it. Even the non-raiding casuals are outnumbering you. Also there is an escape, it's called improving over time. You have no examples in your original post. I can't even comprehend what it is that is bothering you/the hypothetical person that is absolutely not you because you aren't struggling at all clearly. The examples you gave are nothing special.

The mist dragon punished you for failing its mechanics. Just don't hit it when it is mist.
Amaurot was 'don't stand on the cracked platform'. Otherwise yes, it punished you for failing its mechanics.
Tower of Zot is a little over the top, but the damage on the trio is pretty low so even if you get hit by a bunch of random stuff as long as you dodge most of it you'll be fine.
The final days wasn't that hard, though yes, it did have a boss that punished you for failing its mechanics.
Yiazmat is a boring damage sponge. Your complaint isn't about difficulty, its about alliance raids being objectively the worst content in FFXIV.
E5N was... don't stand in the danger zones or you die? It was pretty self explanatory for the most part. I don't remember anyone having issues with that, it was mostly E7N that tripped people up.
P2N also was a non-issue. The only boss I remember people struggling with on that tier was 3/4, and one of those was just because of the awful color scheme.
O11N might be a little weird, but there are also visual tells. The issue here isn't the mechanic, it's whoever the hell chose starbord and larbord (itself an extremely antiquated term compared to port), IIRC the original JP just had it as left/right.
Golbez I don't remember having much either. Just another trial like any other. Barbariccia was probably more prone to killing people. Even Golbez EX had more or less a single mechanic that actually walled people and the rest of the fight was largely rote. You can check contemporaneous guides to see what the attitudes of the time are for the EX if you think I'm exaggerating.

Of everything you mentioned there, the only one I'd say was probably a bit too mean is the final boss of Zot, and even then I wouldn't say it was beyond the pale. It seems like you've been struggling with content this entire time since stormblood and rather than work on improving you have blamed the content itself and done nothing about it. You are seeing the consequences of that here. If you don't work on improving as a player over the hundreds of hours that one plays over 3 expansions, you will only have yourself to blame if you get left behind. It's that simple. I'm not being mean, or an elitist. I'm giving you a reality check.

[SaltyDoggo]

I'm thankful for the OPs post. The sheer amount of push back this post has gained from multiple sides of the community surely will tell the devs all they need to know about what direction they should be taking concerning fight design.

Thank you OP for this gift to the community, it will highlight exactly what we dont want and only allow us to maybe actually not sleep during fights anymore.

[holydiver1286]

I think in average the last 3 expansions were pretty fair in terms of difficulty outside of some outliers like the Mist Dragon, Amauroth, Tower of Zot or Final Day that were on the harder side for dungeons. Orbornne Monastery was obviously overtuned to the point the had to nerf it and the butter dragon in Lighthouse had a lot of HP too ("Your suffering is not yet over!", "no sheet, MF! we being fighting for 3 hour and you are still at 40%").
E5N was the sprout killer, in fact the missery I felt from Valigarmarda reminded me of that fight. P2N I remember with certain disdain too. Obviously O11 with the lardboard/starboard bullshit. As for trials Golbez I found particularly difficult.
But the thing is those are outliers in terms of difficulty, dungeons and trials you do them once and when you have bad luck in roulettes. DT is consistently harder all across the board, there is no escape.

Please tell me this isn't a serious answer. P2N? That fight was essentially a sleep simulator. You barely had to do anything. And not barely anything from a raider POV. Barely anything as in if you can use a single attack on your keyboard/controller once in awhile and didn't refuse to move out of the orange, you would clear. E5N is not any different if you didn't move a little in one direction you would die to devour, but if you move literally a little one direction out of the aoe for about 2 seconds at that point you're absolutely fine. Mist dragon? Don't hit the ice and don't get frozen. Butter dragon? I'm assuming you mean Yiazmat at the end. He only has that much hp at the beginning cause of his buff till his weak point gets destroyed a little ways in. You're just making it more and more clear that you never learned how to play. This is all very very basic stuff. Amaurot? Do you mean the first boss where you stay behind a meteor and stay out of orange? Do you mea the second boss where you just kill a bunch of adds? Or do you mean the final boss that's essentially a striking dummy and just stand on the extremely obvious not glowing sides when he's shooting his laser? I can almost give you O11N because of starboard larboard but if you have even halfway decent observation skills you would know exactly which side he is attacking anytime he does. These cannot actually be your real answers. Not being able to get past these fights goes beyond the level of casual. These go to yet again, either refusing to learn how to play since you feel like a win should just be handed to you or such a severe lack of motor skills or hand eye coordination that you should not be entering any kind of combat with other people as you are instantly a liability.

[Deslyxic]

It really, really sounds like you're just fundamentally against any normal content that requires paying the slightest bit of attention and that isn't completely effortless to complete blind. If learning that "larboard" means left and "starboard" means right was bullshit for you, genuinely you need to find a different game to play or just accept that the combat-focused part of this game isn't for you, and stick to crafting, island sanctuary, rp, whatever it is about the game that you actually do like.

Nah, nah, nah! everybody knows that mech was stupid and anyone saying otherwise is bullsheeting. Koji-Fox was even confronted in a fan fest for it! You not only need to know the directions the word meant but the follow up was inverted which screwed with your brain, also when it was current and the fight when for longer there was a point it followed a stack marker with the lar/starboard, meaning the tank was in the stack and Omega started the mech looking at the raid which inverted the directions and then inverted the inverted directions, that broke my mind.

[caffe_macchiato]

Or maybe the majority of the general playerbase is happy that the normal content is more interesting and engaging

Yes, the majority of Final Fantasy players wanted this change and are happy for it.

Agreed, the new content itself is good. It's not as hard as you want to think that it is. I don't understand why everyone else is acting like it's such a big change, but you are. You and your acolytes are using these tiny raid changes as an excuse to lash out against one single person who has a criticism to make. There are over 900 posts in this thread now. Most of which are spewing vitriol against just one person. FFXIV is so unlike its players. I wish the players could respect what the devs were trying to do, but you don't. You want it to be "your time". You all saw the smidgen of changes happening in raids and used them as a shield to do things that are very against TOS. You all have swarmed every corner of the forums, Reddit, in-game chat, and elsewhere, just within the past week. It's incredible how quick everyone's programming changed.

That doesn't make them toxic elitists either.

Telling someone to uninstall the game is a bit too far.

I'm thankful for the OPs post. The sheer amount of push back this post has gained from multiple sides of the community surely will tell the devs all they need to know about what direction they should be taking concerning fight design.

Actually, the devs mostly read the Japanese forums, and they are complaining a lot more than we are, mainly about hitboxes and clipping. Their community is less of a hivemind and their national economy doesn't rely on YouTubers and Twitch streamers dictating what they're allowed to think.

[holydiver1286]

Nah, nah, nah! everybody knows that mech was stupid and anyone saying otherwise is bullsheeting. Koji-Fox was even confronted in a fan fest for it! You not only need to know the directions the word meant but the follow up it's inverted, also when it was current and the fight when for longer there was a point it followed a stack marker with the lar/starboard, meaning the tank was in the stack and Omega started the mech looking at the raid which inverted the directions and then inverted the inverted directions, that broke my mind.

Extremely easy mechanic to figure after you've seen it a couple times at most