Difficulty of normal content.

[Jaxtaro]

So I am an aging (over 55), disabled dude who couldn't even play this game on console until I learned you could resize dialog text. I also firmly believe that a certain percentage of normal dungeon content is overtuned, that there should be a normal tier of daily and MSQ content which is less stressful and accessible by all, and that extreme shouldn't be just the top normal dungeons, but should be a little rougher than the current default.

Having said that, in the last couple of days, I've done 3 of the first 4 Arcadion raids, and despite wiping multiple times because of the nature of it being a pickup raid in the current expansion that isn't well known, was a ton of fun. Are there some mechanics that are rough to deal with? Yes, Lariat on the 3rd boss can be pretty brutal, the venom pots on Honey B can be a little quick, but they aren't unfair.

Now, because I'm not too bright, I didn't realize you could turn others' spell effects off (settings>character configuration>control settings>character tab in case someone doesn't know), and nothing could have made a bigger difference in the ease of the fights than being able to see your target's spell effects without looking through 8 peoples' spell effects.

Anyhow, my pickup raid wiped about 6 times on the bomber before calling it, a couple hours later joined another group and we beat it the first time.

The big difference at this point is that since I started playing just after the Endwalker launch, every other raid up to this point was "be the one guy who dies a lot while people who have done the raid a hundred times carry me" and this one...totally different. I feel valuable, able to learn, and frankly these fights sre super fun and interesting.

25 years ago, I played Everquest, which had and basically introduced complex boss mechanics in MMO's, but there was no Youtube, no guides, each group that tried a new encounter had to learn by failure. The culture was no one shares strats of any kind...and it was amazing, especially the elation after a big victory.

I have felt better about beating these fights than any raid in FFXIV so far (ok, I did one Eden raid that wasn't a carryfest), and I think the heart racing pants on fire feeling leading to the "thrill of victory" that only accompanies encounters where you have a chance of failure can't be beat, and I'd hate that raids not have that.

I suspect that as time goes on that will go away and it'll be "7 people who know the fights well carrying one person who dies a lot" will return...heck, If I want that, I haven't finished Omega or Pandemonium yet, and eventually Khloe will make me go there, but there's plenty of that in the game already, I like "thing you can fail" much better.

Edit: Wicked Thunder is dead too

[VioletCatastrophe]

champion behavior

I'm glad you had a lot of fun. The player effects thing is really something the game should talk about more. The community often mentions it but some people get the memo late. I would advise setting party members effects to limited and not off however - this hides all the flashy spam but keeps the ground effects that you want to know about. For non-party members, off is fine, as you aren't affected by those abilities anyway. However, if party member effects on limited is too much then have it on off for sure. Another tip for playing with/as summoner, is the ability to change the size of their summons. The command is "/petsize all small" - you can also use the size of medium or large instead, with medium being the default. This can also be very helpful for visibility.

Keep it up, and build up the experience. I know you were having some issues before, so I'd glad to see you got to overcome it and have a great experience. Plus, the more mechanics you see the more you can see the patterns and predict things ahead of time - for myself, it's pretty easy to sightread those fights due to that. So if anything, your clear is a far bigger accomplishment than mine. I hope the rest of DT and the backlog of content you haven't done yet is just as enjoyable for you.