Difficulty of normal content.

[ChadMaris]

I'm only going to post this once and go back to enjoying the game. Like OP, I have an alternative and different view as someone whose cleared nearly every extreme and savage in the game and every ultimate across the span of many characters. If you don't like my view, it doesn't matter to me. I been playing since 2.5. I read through every elses here and respected them never forcing my own. I'll leave my input. My video just visually shows my frustrations that I am describing with not only this game, but a bit of the community aswell. I wish to see the community be more respectful and chill in the future, but sadly it doesn't change for better which is why a vet like me doesn't come here ever to say anything.

Guildhests - Not touched since release. Was supposed to be used by new players to learn, but its hardly ever qued and its rewards lackluster. A reward boost would definitely help new players get comfortable. This should honestly be changed to be unlocked immediately and not behind a side quest.

Normal Dungeons(ARR-EW) - Please stop nerfing these past dungeons as I said. Removing fun mechanics that made players think. Crazy dungeon layouts. I miss being able to go into the caves below in Dzemael Darkhold after 6.1 nerfs. The idea of exploration is now dead as a result with no reward. Getting achievements for discovering all parts of a dungeon just feels pointless now. The difficulty is also fine, it needs no changes in that field.

Normal Raids(All) - Just fine. I didn't have a problem with this current raid tier or any past ones since I started playing ages ago.

Alliance Raids - Ever since STB and SHB's Ally raids, I respected their slight difficulty. Especially Nier's boss fights. However, Endwalkers felt lackluster in difficulty. People still die to Red Girl often when I get it in roulette which puts a smile on my face for difficulty. Endwalker, I didn't feel that at all. None of the mechanics really felt memorable. I know people were upset with ilvl power skipping Nald'thal in Aglaia never seeing all the mechanics. I felt they were definitely too easy after that started being a thing. I hope Dawntrails will be harder.

Savage Raids(All) - I personally like the fact that we get BiS and Mounts from doing these, but I don't like the fact that the dyed versions of the glamour are locked behind doing them. I know their a flex. Just wearing it dyed shows you did it. I just wish they did titles for clearing instead and allowed anyone to dye the gear. The ultimate raids and BLU are the only ones that get their own titles which to be fair are deserved, but why not savage?

Trials - I don't think their too difficult for the average player to do. I think their fine.

[Katachthon]

the streamer ***...other big content creators

Don't mind them.

"Content creators"...

What content do they create?

Poetry? Music? Dance? Art?

Or 4chan-level literature?

[jdtuggey]

whatever they make, it sure is more interesting than people roleplaying as culture icons on ffxiv forums.

[ChidoriYumitori]

Hiya, I'd like to ask a few questions to clarify here. I don't do much Savage content - I'd probably be called a casual, but it seems we had different experiences so I'd like to understand how you see it.

The problem with the difficulty on normal fights as I see it is:
-Use and abuse of non standard telegraphs.

What would you call non-standard here that also isn't intuitive? Can you provide examples?

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

I'm not sure how this is the case; we already had significant overlapping mechanics as early as Heavensward in normal content, and 'wait in last move in first' AoE patterns in Stormblood.

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

Could you provide examples again? There's a couple that I think might apply but I want to know if we're on the same page.

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

The only one I can remember here is the one from M2, which does admittedly catch me up pretty bad, but it's also the only one I can actually recall feeling random; others (like the seemingly random AoEs from the final boss or M3 are player-targeted and thus psuedo-random.)

Again, I'm not trying to attack, I'm trying to understand where the issues are - not just in general but specifics so it's easier to reference and address.

[Deslyxic]

Hiya, I'd like to ask a few questions to clarify here. I don't do much Savage content - I'd probably be called a casual, but it seems we had different experiences so I'd like to understand how you see it.

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.

[Deslyxic]

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.

Another thing about non standard telegraph is that it becomes mentally tiresome when they use them in quick succession like the second boss of Tender Valley, that by all right should be piss easy but because you need to be almost all the time be looking for the dunking bomb to see which lane will trigger on top of having to mentally visualize the approximate area of the others explosions, all this happening multiple times in quick succession. It gets pretty draining.
And then there are fights that I think are genuinely badly telegraphed like Valigarmarda that has two attack that hit more than 50% of the arena and are only telegraphed by the boss changing posture, then again, on it's own should be easy once you see them once but when it start to do them overlapped with other stuff, to the point it becomes hard to notice the thing even moved. I play with other players effects on low and it's still hard to notice.

[Deslyxic]

It's a issue of the speed at which stuff happens. I'm sure sure that many people would respond with "that's not an issue" or "it's not that bad" or "I don't find it that hard", but it's very difficult to convey to a person that does something easily that you find it hard, it's like explaining color to a blind person.
Also that's the reason I didn't accepted any of the help offered, because for the most part this isn't something that you can get helped with (other than just getting carried). I know the mechanics and know what needs to be done, but knowing the thing and doing the thing are two different thingses. And repetition might help a little but there is a limit to what one can do and I'm pretty close to that limit.

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 ranked in the top 60-65 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.

(that's all of it, feel free to go to town with the responses)

[bunnymansv]

Players can help themselves by actually playing and learning the mechanics.

I have died several times on these new dungeons and over time I have gotten better and haven't been K.O.ed Failure is not a bad thing. Get up and try again.

[LunaCelestiaXIV]

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.

Not only that you parse better than those people below your DPS logs in... checks notes... NORMAL Raids ...(which is not even an indication of skill) but you also parse higher in the whining category! Probably 90th percentile too lmao.

[Coldisthevoid]

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.

(that's all of it, feel free to go to town with the responses)

I don't think a single person below a 97 has really tried in norms you just kind of do your rotation and get oranges in normal / ally raids . I don't get why you're A. bragging about normal logs and B. not saying who your main is

*edit* just checked my uptime on an normal 88 it was 92% that's kind of terrible but its still high purple