Difficulty of normal content.

[Banggugyangu]

There has always been options for the elitists that think normal is too easy. They can go extremes or savages or ultimates. Raising the difficulty of the normal content and locking out players that for whatever reason have difficulty with it is not the answer.

I hope square enix listens with their wallets, cause I just cancelled my subscription.

Expecting a player to improve their gameplay over 100 levels is NOT elitism. If you truly think that is, then you have core issues that stem far beyond what an MMO is doing. No RPG in the history of JRPGs has EVER allowed a player to remain with the same skill level as they started. The same applies for MMOs. In all RPGs, you're expected to improve at game knowledge and gameplay as you progress. The amount of improvement necessary varies player to player, as the starting point is different player to player, but the expectation that Dawntrail has on its normal content is not unreasonable whatsoever. Heck... back in ARR, "Normal" raids were savage difficulty. I personally spent days progging Twintania. Simply put, Raids weren't meant for the casual player originally. This was changed in HW to allow the casuals to struggle through them, but raids have always been created specifically for the more skilled players. The same can even be said for alliance raids, with the exception of Myths of the Realm. (And don't get me wrong, I LOVE Myths of the Realm). Crystal Tower had FREQUENT wipes back in the day. Zombie Dragon would typically see 1-2 wipes per run. Phlegaton would see 2-4 on most. Scylla, Glassya Labolas, and Amon would often times wipe the same group in a run. Oh, btw, Glassya Labolas and Scylla used to have mechanics... not many know that, anymore. Xande wouldn't typically wipe a whole group, but I can't tell you how many times I would see 3/4 of the alliance die to Ancient Quaga. Angra Mainyuu was a total nightmare. Cerberus used to 1-tap with Hound out of Hell if you weren't a tank. The tail swipe would also 1-tap the light-armor melees and casters. Feint Particle Beam has single-handedly been the cause of total alliance wipes at least 20 times that I have personally witnessed. All of this on what most people, today, consider to be a braindead faceroll. We still often see wipes on Doomgaze and Scathach. Hollow Diabolos can easily end a run. TG Cid in Orbonne is still wiping alliances today. Nier.... just takes a long time.... And again... these are alliance raids, which most players consider to be uber casual anymore. The Seat of Sacrifice NORMAL is harder than Endwalker Extremes.... I legitimately cleared Zodiark EX in a single lockout with a fully blind PF group for my first clear before early access finished for EW, and I have actually timed out on a Seat of Sacrifice Normal run.... NOTHING in Dawntrail that isn't EX difficulty so far is as difficult as ANY of the previous Extreme fights.... period....

[Banggugyangu]

No problem, but this is going to be a long one (so long I gonna need to split it in multiple post, there is a 3000 character limit, lol).
First, I regret some of the wording I used, like separating these in bullet points. People have been trying to argue them individually but the problem for me is the sum of the parts.

The last point, about seemingly random patterns, is the one that stand most on it's own. There been fights in the past that had similarly random pattern attacks, like Barbariccia, but they are very rare and such attacks are not prominent in the fights. In this expansion the very first boss of the fist dungeon, the manatee looking mf, start to throw random stuff that generate different size and shapes of aoes. The second boss of Vanguard does a random assortment of line and circle AOEs (the lines I believe are targeted at players, but the direction is still random). The same boss also drops random circles while it's doing the spinning cones. The manta ray boss of Skydeep Cenote bubbles themselves aren't random, but when players start to shoot bubbles too it might as well be, since you don't control other players. And of course M2, I don't know if the hearts have random patterns but the circles in the floor happening simultaneously surely seem to be random.

Also people have taken issue with the word "random" while ignoring the word "seemingly", the point is they feel random and even if they aren't and somehow after many tries you start to see the code of The Matrix it's because right now you are running them often, but rest assured than in like 8 months you gonna get these duties in a roulette and is going to feel as random as the first day.

As for the other three points we would need to determine first what I would call a standard telegraph. Obvious orange circles are as standard as it get, and any other ground marker than just mean "don't stand here". Also I would consider standard any attack telegraphed by a cast bar with a name that gives away what the mechanic does, like Amon in Aitiascope when it does Left Firaga/Right Firaga, or any other somewhat clear indication like Ttekrrone that uses words like "fangward" or "tailward", it's pretty clear what they mean (at least to me). Any other stuff I would call non standard, stuff that does require extra mental time to determine how to solve it.

I'd be very curious to see a video of you playing with an eyetracker overlay going. I'm about 100.9% certain that you stare at your hotbars (or click your actions...). Practically everything you listed is EXTREMELY intuitive telegraphs and EXTREMELY easy to avoid if you're just paying attention to what's happening.

[Banggugyangu]

Here's the kicker, to the chagrin of many people here I'm not an actually a bad player, someone pointed me to logs on my character (my main one, not this one on my profile) which for whatever reason has a bunch of logs uploaded from EW normal raids, and I was in the top 70-90 percentile, depending of the fight. I am above average when it comes to DPS in normal raids. So you might call it skill issue all day long, I'm not saying it's not, but when you do consider that more than half the player base could be having an even bigger skill issue than mine.

Here's the kicker.... without giving said character's name and server, this statement is just a "My dad works at Nintendo" moment...

[Divine-Fist]

Okay so here's my take. For starters, I'm 45 and I was born with epilepsy (not photosensitive), but I have loved games since my mom brought home an Atari console when I was a kid. Fast forward and I have now had brain surgery and suffered a stroke, but I still love playing games. I have worked hard to not let my disability get in the way of my love for games and my love for FFXIV. However, the increase in difficulty for DT has made the side effects of my disability clear. I have maxed every job in every new content release for FFXIV and mastered their rotations but no matter how good I am at the jobs I play my ability to react to certain mechanics before taking a hit or remember the order in which certain boss skills will activate has been greatly diminished with DT. I've made mistakes and I've taking plenty of debuffs from not reacting fast enough in the past. I'm not a perfect player but it's disheartening that the difficulty increase in DT has pushed me to a level of difficulty I fear I may not be able to surpass. I know with every new expansion there comes new challenges and eventually you learn what you need to do, and it becomes to new norm. I really want to continue enjoying FFXIV but I feel like those of us with disabilities are not even a consideration when developing new content. I don't even participate in extremes, savages, or ultimates because I know my limits and that I will never be able to do anything beyond casual content. I worry now that even casual content will be beyond my ability to play and the thought of it makes me feel despair because FFXIV has helped me so much with my depression and now I feel like I'm falling back into that pit.

[EponaTBHSMH]

Now compare that to the first boss of Alexandria (the morbol looking thing), it does a cone attack that has two variants but they have the same name in the cast bar (Immune Response, I believe), in their own are no problem since you have the visual telegraph. But then it overlaps it with the circles/crosses mech and now you need to watch which cone it is, you need to resolve the current symbol in the ground, you also need to be watching for the next symbols because it goes pretty fast, and also you need to be watching the cast bar to see which thing will resolve first. That's because the version of the cone attack is 50/50 and the combination of O/+ changes too, so sometimes you need to wait for the cones to go out before you can jump into a circle, sometimes is the opposite, it's not something you can rely on muscle memory to do. And more importantly, all this is happening very very fast.

This speed argument still doesn't make sense for the first boss of Alexandria no matter how many times you describe it.

The VERY moment you see the first O or + appear on the screen is when you move to pre position, because after 2 or 3 times it happens, you know there is going to be a cone or an anti-cone AoE

After you are already in that pre position, some seconds pass while the other O and + appear in the arena.

And only after that sequence you finally see a cone or an anti-cone AoE, that happens not to be orange, but from that point you only gotta inch a little north or a little south to be in the correct position to not be hit by either, and its only at that moment that TWO mechanics overlap.

You already see what the other mechanics are after this because you can see the other O and +

There is even a video of someone doing it while RP walking somewhere in this thread so how is this still a matter of speed, and not you just not anticipating the mechanic properly? cuz maybe that's what you have an issue with and not reaction

[Banggugyangu]

Okay so here's my take. For starters, I'm 45 and I was born with epilepsy (not photosensitive), but I have loved games since my mom brought home an Atari console when I was a kid. Fast forward and I have now had brain surgery and suffered a stroke, but I still love playing games. I have worked hard to not let my disability get in the way of my love for games and my love for FFXIV. However, the increase in difficulty for DT has made the side effects of my disability clear. I have maxed every job in every new content release for FFXIV and mastered their rotations but no matter how good I am at the jobs I play my ability to react to certain mechanics before taking a hit or remember the order in which certain boss skills will activate has been greatly diminished with DT. I've made mistakes and I've taking plenty of debuffs from not reacting fast enough in the past. I'm not a perfect player but it's disheartening that the difficulty increase in DT has pushed me to a level of difficulty I fear I may not be able to surpass. I know with every new expansion there comes new challenges and eventually you learn what you need to do, and it becomes to new norm. I really want to continue enjoying FFXIV but I feel like those of us with disabilities are not even a consideration when developing new content. I don't even participate in extremes, savages, or ultimates because I know my limits and that I will never be able to do anything beyond casual content. I worry now that even casual content will be beyond my ability to play and the thought of it makes me feel despair because FFXIV has helped me so much with my depression and now I feel like I'm falling back into that pit.

First off, my condolences for your condition. One thing I've learned from watching many people with various disabilities is that they're true testaments to the human ability to adapt and overcome. None of the mechanics in the new content have a timeline of telegraph to action that is faster than previous expansions. I would argue that the biggest hang-up most people are seeing is that the new telegraphs require a much more focused observation of the boss and/or the arena to properly discern the mechanic. This is why I suggested in prior responses to stop worrying about rotations and dealing damage, and instead focus on the boss and arenas during certain mechanics. If you were able to overcome mechanics in previous expansions despite your disability, then you can still in these new fights. Yes, the difficulty is ramped up a bit, but it's not so much that it becomes impossible. Remember, all of these fights in normal have no enrage mechanics, and it's ok to stop doing damage and focus on learning/surviving. The fights are also not random. Learning the mechanics leads to easier pattern recognition, which leads to faster/more natural response to those patterns.

[Mooserocka33]

[QUOTE=Deslyxic;6557787]Let me give a counter example of a fight that does all this but it's still easy, the Big Cheese (last boss of Lunar Subterrane), it does the conveyor belt things which is an exotic telegraph, and it does overlap it with other mechanics. The overlapping mechanics are a) standard orange circles, b) mines, c) half room casted attack. Of those three the most non standard are the mines but even if you haven't seen them before they are still red circles in the ground, easy "don't stand in bad" thing. At the ende of the day, it is an unconventional telegraph overlapped with pretty much conventional mechanics, and more importantly all is resolved at a very leisure pace, you will see the arrows in the conveyors long before it executes it.
Now compare that to the first boss of Alexandria (the morbol looking thing), it does a cone attack that has two variants but they have the same name in the cast bar (Immune Response, I believe), in their own are no problem since you have the visual telegraph. But then it overlaps it with the circles/crosses mech and now you need to watch which cone it is, you need to resolve the current symbol in the ground, you also need to be watching for the next symbols because it goes pretty fast, and also you need to be watching the cast bar to see which thing will resolve first. That's because the version of the cone attack is 50/50 and the combination of O/+ changes too, so sometimes you need to wait for the cones to go out before you can jump into a circle, sometimes is the opposite, it's not something you can rely on muscle memory to do. And more importantly, all this is happening very very fast.


The first boss in alexandria is the easiest boss of the tier it only has 2 moves, it has the glowy things that light up just preposition yourself next to it if its a circle go in, if its a plus avoid? Dont even worry about the cone breath things just get hit by them if you have to they wont kill you.The other will prioritise, there is only 5 of these also. Does it come out fast yes but if you are right next to it just go in sprint if you have too. I feel you keep giving excuse after excuse and arguing with people just to keep this post going, now that everyone has more gear should be no problems anymore.

[Mooserocka33]

Okay so here's my take. For starters, I'm 45 and I was born with epilepsy (not photosensitive), but I have loved games since my mom brought home an Atari console when I was a kid. Fast forward and I have now had brain surgery and suffered a stroke, but I still love playing games. I have worked hard to not let my disability get in the way of my love for games and my love for FFXIV. However, the increase in difficulty for DT has made the side effects of my disability clear. I have maxed every job in every new content release for FFXIV and mastered their rotations but no matter how good I am at the jobs I play my ability to react to certain mechanics before taking a hit or remember the order in which certain boss skills will activate has been greatly diminished with DT. I've made mistakes and I've taking plenty of debuffs from not reacting fast enough in the past. I'm not a perfect player but it's disheartening that the difficulty increase in DT has pushed me to a level of difficulty I fear I may not be able to surpass. I know with every new expansion there comes new challenges and eventually you learn what you need to do, and it becomes to new norm. I really want to continue enjoying FFXIV but I feel like those of us with disabilities are not even a consideration when developing new content. I don't even participate in extremes, savages, or ultimates because I know my limits and that I will never be able to do anything beyond casual content. I worry now that even casual content will be beyond my ability to play and the thought of it makes me feel despair because FFXIV has helped me so much with my depression and now I feel like I'm falling back into that pit.

I am sorry about your disabilities but they do make content for people with disabilities, main story content, dungeons with trusts, some trials with trusts, Gardening , fishing , fates, I am not trying to be mean but why would they make things easier and have more access on the higher end of content? The percentage of people with disabilities that play the game are like .5 percent maybe . They should not cater to that little of a percentage. You have plenty of things in the game to enjoy , and the community is nice , i am sur if you tell them your situation people will be glad to go with you and basically carry you its no biggie. I would love to help if someone needed it. I just dont get the kinda selfishness of wanting stuff to be toned down for a .5 percentage of the playerbase while the majority will end up being bored with the game and doing other things.

[albeva]

Reading this thread is truly disheartening. So many commentators have completely forgotten that this is a game. I know it is hard to imagine, but there are people who just want to have a bit of fun. Enjoy the story, run a dungeon and then log off. People who ren't looking for stress or challenge.

From that perspective, I do believe normal mode dungeons, trials and raids should be a bit more forgiving and casual friendly.

[Alice_Rivers]

I don't think anyone here wants story content to be extreme, that's what we have extremes for, rather we want something that involves actual thought and maybe even a little skill expression.