Difficulty of normal content.

[jdtuggey]

Um... wow. What I've learned from this discussion is that:

1. I'm eventually going to hit a wall in normal content because the hardcore crowd needs *everything* to be a ball-buster even though they already have their own exclusive modes.
2. The playerbase is not in fact as "friendly and welcoming" as they claim when a significantly large portion of if it so willfully, and happily even, tells people to "GTFO then" when some players run into difficulty.

As someone who only recently touched down in Stormblood, this is the first time I've had to stop and think about how I'm going to do the blue quests because doing so would be adding things to the duty finder where I'll just end up dead weight it seems, or I'll be forced to 100% rely on Trusts for the MSQ the whole way because I would be better off avoiding the majority of the playerbase who clearly doesn't want me in their runs anyway. Is this really what I was subbing for this whole time? To go pure solo because I have neither the confidence to do the upcoming harder content, and because the community wasn't anything like I had been lead to believe?

This has definitely been an eye-opener compared to when I first started playing during Endwalker, and I probably should start treating it more like a single player game to prevent future issues.

You should probably take a deep breath, get there, and experience the content with no pre-made expectations built on an argument on the internet.
You don't know at this point if you're gonna hit a wall. You might not even feel it. Who knows ? I haven't really noticed until I got to the later Dawntrail dungeons myself.
Players are actually quite welcoming and kind. Veterans don't feel welcomed by struggling players that demand they nerf the content they love as is, you know ? It kinda goes both ways.
They also want to defend their interests here. You're more than welcome to struggle in an encounter and ask for help, and we will help, at least I know I would, all that's expressed here is
"we don't want square enix to nerf the content after they've made it so interesting after years of lull".

ᵏᶦⁿᵈᵒᶠ ᵒᵛᵉʳʳᵉᵃᶜᵗᶦⁿᵍ ᵃ ᵇᶦᵗ ʰᵉʳᵉ, ⁿᵒ ?