Difficulty of normal content.

[Mihka]

I've yet to see anyone catch onto this when I queue in, it makes PCT uptime soooo nice

I caught onto it but my slidecasting game is peak so I didn't feel the need to squeeze uptime on the mech

There are two types of MMO players:

People who think the gameplay is fun and the rewards are an incentive to do the things they wanted to do anyway.
People who think getting rewards is fun and the gameplay is the cost of getting them.

I'm in group 1 on content I enjoy and group 2 on content I don't enjoy. But usually "group 2" for me is content that's so easy that I'm bored doing it.

[Mihka]

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.

[snip because char limit]

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.

So, I highly disagree with this.

The game doesn't really have any hard walls in normal content, especially in mandatory content. Some of the hardest non-extreme/savage content is in level 50 ARR dungeons (Pharos Sirius, for example), and Stormblood alliance raids (pre nerf, it's fairly tame now). This is because there are things in that content where players can wipe the party/alliance if they don't know what they're doing. Endwalker, and Shadowbringers to a lesser degree, significantly reduced the game's difficulty, and Dawntrail is a course correction which means some people who've spent the last few years only doing extremely easy content are now running into a difficulty bump.

Regarding the "friendly and welcoming" community - Firstly, if you're basing your opinion on just this thread, you need to take a step back and understand why there is backlash. We've just had two expansions of content getting easier and easier, and a lot of us are finally getting content developed in a direction we want to see, only for people to demand it be pulled back down again. The developers actually pay attention to the forums, so it's important for people who disagree to make sure their voices are heard.

Another important thing to keep in mind is that the in game community acts VERY differently to the community around the game. In game, if you so much as look at someone the wrong way, they can report you and get you put in GM Gaol, so people shut their mouths and carry on. This often leads to the other side of the coin, which is toxic positivity and toxic casuals - people who take being bad players to its toxic extreme, because there's nothing you can say or do about it besides leave their party, blacklist them, and pray you don't see them again.

With regards to choosing to unlock content or leave it locked, this is something I really disagree with. You're quitting before even trying, and robbing yourself of content you might enjoy out of fear of what might be, not what will be. If you never try, you'll never succeed.

[Dovaah]

I don't know why we're still going at this when people had a meltdown over the "In from the cold solo" duty in Endwalker to the point that SE created the whole difficulty system for all solo duties.
You can't reason with them and they won't listen, even if the content quite literally has 2 button to press and items to pick off the ground.

[VioletCatastrophe]

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.

snip

Anyone who doesn't want you in their group is not worth paying attention to, and more likely to be this post's OP than any actual hardcore player.
Splitting the playerbase into a strict 'casual player who doesnt want anything to have any difficulty ever no matter the circumstance' and 'hardcore player who wants ball busting content' is so disingenuous. The vast majority of players in this game want to have a fair and reasonable challenge, and that is what these normal raids are. For the hardcore players, they are just engaging enough to make reclears not put you to sleep.
People aren't telling people to GTFO when they run into difficulty. They are telling people who refuse to learn or improve or grow as a player in a game they have spent 100 levels and hundreds of hours in to GTFO. If you struggle, the community is happy to help you. If you refuse to improve or seek help, and demand everyone else's experience be made worse, then yes, people will be upset.

None of this content is hard. It's non-trivial, yes. It won't be beatable by the average group on the first clear. But that's okay. Failure, learning, improving, and overcoming are part of life, and part of this game. It's okay to be the weakest person in any given group - one person always will be. Sometimes that's me, and I'm by most standards a pretty good player, and it certainly was when I was newer to the game. If you are struggling, that's okay. It's an MMO: ask for help, and you will get it. Just don't act shocked that demanding the entire game be changed is met with less than enthusiastic responses.

I genuinely believe that every player of this game can, if they genuinely want to, be good enough to clear extremes. This normal mode content is so far below that. So if that seems impossible to you, if that actually feels like an unreasonable evaluation of the potential of the playerbase, then spend a bit of time asking for help and learning more about how to be better. I promise you, it won't take that long, it won't be hard or complicated, and the combat content in the game will feel so much better and less frustrating to you afterwards.

[Axxion]

i think this is a good video about the topic


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR83nNurgxo&t=3s

[royox]

But you agree that normal raids are casual, right? Because what I played today was not casual difficulty at all.

Unlocked them yesterday.

Cleared 1 on 1st try without dying.
Cleared 2 on 2nd try, wipe was at 15% because a change of mechanic caught us by surprise.
Cleared 3 on 1st try, died once because I didn't see some bombs have a longer wick than others. Noticed it, didn't die again after that.
Cleared 4 on 1st try without dying. I felt it was the easyest of the 3 encounters.


Last time I did "savage" content was on Stormblood and my last EX trial was Hydaelyn during EW launch. i'm hardly a "hardcore player" or "hardcore raider". I really REALLY don't see all those things you listed:

-Use and abuse of non standard telegraphs.

In every raid set almost every boss has it's own new non-standard telegraph that is easy as F to tell once you see it once. I really don't understand what you are talking about.

-Nasty mech overlaps, stuff you would see on extreme and harder fights.

Mechanic overlaps have been a thing in normal raids since Heavensward. Brute justice comes to mind (when all the parts separate and start doing all the mechanics at once, Alexander himself (time stop, 2 players marked with aoe damage, 1 player marked with stacking marker, black aoes scattered on the floor). Several in Omega, several in Eden and I'm kinda struggling to remember any in Endwalker...maybe you got TOO SPOILED with how easy the EW content was, that was not standard.

-Mechs resolving too quickly for the mental capacity they demand to process.

That says more about you than about the game if the rest of the players can process and react. Still, maybe the first time it catches you by surprise, "omg what is this what should I d-" dead. It's ok. Now you know it, next time you will react faster. It's a game, dying in a game doesn't matter.

-One too many "catch this!" mech (mechs that have you running around like headless chicken evading seemingly random patterns).

Again, stuff that happens since heavensward.


All I see is a person spoiled by the lack of difficulty that EW had and who is being a bit dramatic about STANDARD stuff that the game had since the first expansion.


Summary: git gud.

[Enjuden]

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.

Or you could not live in a world of hyperbole and caricature. People on forums are usually not happy with the game. If you want people who are happy about everything, don't look at a forum, especially an official forum.

Literally nobody is asking for normal content to be a ballbuster, they're asking for a difficulty harder than something the director fell asleep to because it is so mind numbingly boring. Just play the game and you'll realize that the 'difficulty increase' is greatly exaggerated, and your opinion on the 'hardcore' is ignorant at best. This isn't Albion.

[EponaTBHSMH]

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.

Careful not to judge the entire community based of a few vocal people, these forums themselves are already just a subset of the community, and within that subset there's a bunch that don't know anything about empathy

Please do queue for your stuff in Duty Finder without fear, you will encounter people like this 1 time out of 20 at worst

[jdtuggey]

Careful not to judge the entire community based of a few vocal people, these forums themselves are already just a subset of the community, and within that subset there's a bunch that don't know anything about empathy

She's right though, the community is nowhere near as "friendly and welcoming" as we pretend, and that is coming from a 10 years veteran on the game. I've had some of the nastiest drama ever on ffxiv.
The community is certainly a community. It's the same people as in other communities, the same kind of behavior, everytime there's a few people that are mindblown at how "mean" people are, but that's just how it goes in communities like this.
(insert steam forums PTSD story here, like being told I'm endangering RL lives for an opinion on DRM)
Better be upfront with her ? Also, there's always virtuous knights coming in telling people how nasty they are too, which inflames everything, and then they victimize themselves when they started it. :P
Square is just really tight on rules concerning language and confrontation, so people find other more subtle ways to air their grievances.

Concerning empathy, there isn't any in OP's statement, so that kinda invites the same kind of behavior.
I've tried to remain mature through it, some have less control. I wouldn't say this lady's post is in any way reasonable or empathetic to my perspective, for example. :P
Like, she's saying a significant portion of people are telling people to GTFO, this ain't reality at all, there's a few for sure, and I'm against that. :P
But there's also a legit argument like "if the game isn't for you anymore, maybe it's worth considering looking for things that are, for your sake and mine" ?
I feel this is as empathetic with everyone's perspective as it gets, but I don't feel Aido would perceive it like that. :P

[Banggugyangu]

Well, for example, I positively hate the four-/five-fold shot stuff we get in M4 (or the tetrapagos on Halone). I literally have to recite aloud to myself "left-right-right-left-left" (in French) because otherwise, there is about 0 chance that I'll remember them and get them correctly. That is annoying as heck
But the biggest pain is the change of phase, for example on M3, when you go from the rotating cone and black stuff back to Larian spam.

For the shots on M4, you don't even need to worry about which directions she's shooting. Just remember how many shots before you need to switch sides, and start on the correct side. If the pattern is North, South, South, North, South, then remember "1, 2, 1". You change sides after 1 shot, then 2 shots, then 1 shot. The actual movement is just 1-2 steps. It trivializes the mechanic. Start moving as the shot fires, before the animation ends.