Difficulty of normal content.

[jdtuggey]

You and your ilk have spent over 100 pages and 1,000 posts obsessing over OP for posting an opinion. Not only that, but you lash out with ad hominems against anyone who defends OP. This doesn’t look good for Final Fantasy XIV. At this point, I don’t think the community can be saved. Let’s hope World of Warcraft’s new expansion is good and Blizzard can nurture a better community than this one. It’s sad that a multibillion-dollar corporation gets people to attack each other because it can’t fix the net code or the hitboxes in M2.

The community is fine, I love it, I love that we're all able to come together and say loudly that we are happy with the direction they've taken with dawntrail content and we don't want to see this reversed. What an amazing community.
You've spent the better part of this thread obsessing over the image you made in your mind about us. Why the different standards for us ?

Werent you a parody account trying to make fun of people defending the game?

Are they really ? That would explain a lot. :P

[Larkeicus767]

You and your ilk have spent over 100 pages and 1,000 posts obsessing over OP for posting an opinion. Not only that, but you lash out with ad hominems against anyone who defends OP. This doesn’t look good for Final Fantasy XIV. At this point, I don’t think the community can be saved. Let’s hope World of Warcraft’s new expansion is good and Blizzard can nurture a better community than this one. It’s sad that a multibillion-dollar corporation gets people to attack each other because it can’t fix the net code or the hitboxes in M2.

No, you know what's actually sad? That we can have Karens in the community, people that legitimately think that they know what the devs intended better than the devs themselves and people who can be so full of themselves that they somehow don't see their own hypocrisy in their words and the way that they are toxic to everyone who doesn't think like them by calling them "your ilk".

I don't think your kind can be saved either, unable to grow and unable to actually learn from their mistakes, instead you people like to double down and be the first to throw ad hominems at people and then cry when said people respond in kind but the one thing that makes me happy is seeing the community at large shun you and your people, united together to tell you how wrong you are. We don't need saving, we need less Karens in the gaming world.

[Banggugyangu]

There's a factor I want to add to that: Many of the standards in our gameplay are introduced by the community, the game would teach you that a healer's primary duty is to heal, the community would disagree with that, it's a lot more nuanced. Looks more like "push max dps, use your ogcd's to heal, keep your party alive (not necessarily healthy~)". Things like snapshotting, slidecasting, uptime and other similar mechanics and concepts are also like, community driven standards. I think these things are better learned through osmosis. Pulling wall to wall is another example of this that is almost expected nowadays. Like, even weaving without clipping your gcd, the game wouldn't teach you that because it's an optimization thing, and the game doesn't want to push you to do max dps, the importance of that is never really emphasized, and for other reasons than "they forgor :skull:" or "they neglect teaching new players".
(Edit: Just want to emphasize that I agree with you, and add that there's these additional layers that the game couldn't teach)

I agree completely, but for the context of this thread, none of that extra stuff is necessary for normal content. Those are aspects for optimization and/or clearing content with rage mechanics, and normal content has none.

[Banggugyangu]

You and your ilk have spent over 100 pages and 1,000 posts obsessing over OP for posting an opinion. Not only that, but you lash out with ad hominems against anyone who defends OP. This doesn’t look good for Final Fantasy XIV. At this point, I don’t think the community can be saved. Let’s hope World of Warcraft’s new expansion is good and Blizzard can nurture a better community than this one. It’s sad that a multibillion-dollar corporation gets people to attack each other because it can’t fix the net code or the hitboxes in M2.

Have you read the same thread as I have? The majority of responders in this thread sympathize with the OP despite not agreeing with his/her points. In my own posts, I don't agree with the OP, but I offered sympathetic advice on steps to take. With this response, I'm confident that you're attempting to troll the thread and nothing more, and to that, I would say move on. If you think it's "funny", it's not. There are trolls who are actually witty and funny, but none of what I've seen from you in this thread has been such. This thread is comprised of the following: ~5% people who are what some would call "elitist" attacking the OP and kin for their lack of skill, ~85% players fully capable of completing the content in a reasonable amount of time that are quite happy with the slight upscale in difficulty that this expansion brought, ~5% in the same boat as the OP, and ~5% like you, apparently trying to get internet clout by trolling and/or derailing the thread.

That large majority of us who are happy with the difficulty are so present and vocal in this thread because we DO NOT WANT IT TO REVERT. We like this shift up in difficulty. We think that after 100 levels of game, it's a welcome adjustment that has scaled with how our skill level should have grown over that time. We also feel that this difficulty IS NOT HARD... just more difficult than previous. Again, I'll point out that Seat of Sacrifice Normal is harder than practically every fight in this expansion. Seat of Sacrifice normal is in league with Zodiark Extreme. None of the Normal Difficulty fights in Dawntrail, so far, have even come remotely close to ANY extreme fight's difficulty. Yet despite this, several are claiming that Shadowbringers was so much easier. Yeah.... Innocence was easy.... the rest were pretty much on par with all of this. Also... with the "non-standard markers" point, it seems we all forgot about E4? Titan consisted of almost all non-standard markers despite standard mechanics. All of this was present in previous expansions.

[VioletCatastrophe]

With this response, I'm confident that you're attempting to troll the thread and nothing more, and to that, I would say move on.

This is a person who made an entire thread to criticize the netcode of the game. My wife did ultimate prog with me while having transatlantic ping, and the netcode was just fine to consistently prog the hardest fight in the game (at the time: TEA, on release) without lag or the ability to weave ever being an issue. Not a single plugin or other tool of dubious ToS-compliance required. They are a person who has been consistently blaming the game for being imbalanced, the game for having bad netcode, other players for being apparently toxic despite most posts being very diplomatic in their disagreement and offering actionable advice to those who are struggling.

If they aren't a troll, then they are simply just a person who cannot take responsibility for their own shortcomings and subsequently insist that the problem lies with every other person. It's pretty sad, really. In personal affairs, and in game, I have been doing my best to be the best I can be. So I can't help but be at least a little put off, if not outright offended by their attitude. I think it's best in general to just ignore them and move on, which sure kind of ironic in this post but I'm going to do the same too.

In any case, the content is great I'm glad only a very small minority are actually taking issue with it.

[Zakuyia]

People who say it's too hard are understandable. FFXIV has terrible difficulty curve, it doesn't teach you how to be better at the game as you play it. There are subcommunities of rpers, socializers, and plotwatchers who really only use the game as a social media platform. They aren't interested in the gameplay beyond clearing mandatory content one time ever.
The fault is on Squex/CB3, not on them for not getting good, because the game doesn't teach them how to get good.

In line with wanting glamors and such from content they can't clear, they seem to have forgotten that they are playing a video game, not a 3d avatar chatroom.

The game lacks reactive gameplay, the healer problem is the perfect example of that. The difficulty is in perfection of execution, memorization of puzzle mechanics with no rng. It's more like studying for and taking a test, like savage raids, and normal content is just the lite version

I feel like if I can do savage then others can as well. Savage is hard but sometimes the best things are locked behind hard work and effort. What you said is true ppl push RP / Glam to forefront and literally forgot you need to work for that glam. Also any of you saying M2 in arcadia is hard....there is literally something wrong with you. That fight is easy ended up doing it as a tank dps and healer there a trick and method to the fight. If you remember the Nier raid its like that. Those hit boxes are not mega huge I squeezed through it just as easily....DT really took the route git gud or go home in its raid XD. Overall...if your still struggling at this game. Go pratice run some trust learn your class through video and written guides.

[Volfe]

You and your ilk have spent over 100 pages and 1,000 posts obsessing over OP for posting an opinion. Not only that, but you lash out with ad hominems against anyone who defends OP. This doesn’t look good for Final Fantasy XIV. At this point, I don’t think the community can be saved. Let’s hope World of Warcraft’s new expansion is good and Blizzard can nurture a better community than this one. It’s sad that a multibillion-dollar corporation gets people to attack each other because it can’t fix the net code or the hitboxes in M2.

You're single-handledly keeping this thread going with arguments in bad faith

[MoonmoonMoonmoon]

If you're level 100 and you can't handle a little mid-game content, then I have news for you: just do it in 10 levels next expansion. That's what my friend does with the EX trials and Savage raids when he wants glam or mount or whatever, he just wait until he has at least 10 levels over the content and has out-geared it so it's trivial.

Either that or properly learn how to play the game. Doing something incorrectly for x number of years doesn't make it correct.

[Furrysparks]

You and your ilk have spent over 100 pages and 1,000 posts obsessing over OP for posting an opinion. Not only that, but you lash out with ad hominems against anyone who defends OP. This doesn’t look good for Final Fantasy XIV. At this point, I don’t think the community can be saved. Let’s hope World of Warcraft’s new expansion is good and Blizzard can nurture a better community than this one. It’s sad that a multibillion-dollar corporation gets people to attack each other because it can’t fix the net code or the hitboxes in M2.

People have spent 100 pages disagreeing with their premise yes. There were absolutely people being toxic and awful but that happens no matter what on the Internet and doesn't detract from the point.

Also yeah I'll agree the netcode sucks but you can work around it.

[Slab_Rockjaw]

You expect me to believe that you and others here bullying someone for thinking normal is hard have no plans progressing past normal difficulty? Ya'll are transparent and it's embarrassing that you think you're fooling anyone.

I only do Ex when there are 7 other people online I know which is rarely ever the case, hence why Sophia Ex is the last clear we have outside of some EW outliers.

I have 0 savage clears that are synced.

I do not want the game to get easier, DT is a great step forward and I enjoy the difficulty increase as it makes the content fun.