Dawntrail Battle Content is amazing!

[Vivahoja]

This new direction is fantastic and I wanted to express my joy over it.

I don't believe the high-end content needs much change, raiders have always had content to do throughout the expansion and with notorious raids such as P8S or Dragonsong and Omega Ultimate, there was plenty of challenge at that level already. However, genuine casual gameplay was mind-numbingly boring. Dungeons had zero danger, raids allowed infinite mistakes, even relics asked you to do nothing but buy items at the vendor. You either had to be a hardcore raider or use this game as a chatroom to find any enjoyment, now you can actually play the game casually and have a sense of progression/success. A bunch of my casual friends are elated at not falling asleep anymore in Expert dungeons and even hardcore players get caught out by some mechanics. MSQ is still easy enough while providing some refreshing mechanics and novel experiences, and the few hard parts can be overcome by cooperation and helping each other through the content. I can't even remember the last time anything went wrong in Endwalker, but in Dawntrail I've seen wipes in a couple dungeons and normal raids and we all laughed at being caught out and went and tried again, and if someone struggled, the rest of the group just explained it or helped as necessary.

I've not felt the need to be social in a long time and it is wonderful. It really feels like an MMO again, and more importantly, like a game again. With a mostly accessible story, and optional content that provides some challenge, such as the normal raids and the Expert duties, this is a perfect balance.

Whatever you're doing right now, development team, you're making an exceptionally good game right now and I hope you know that people who like to actually play games are grateful.

[Kesmar]

This. Battle content this time around is the most fun it's been on an expansion launch in a long time.

[noelregnard]

Agree. This is the expansion with the best battle content yet. And I think it's exceedingly important to give positive feedback for this so that SE won't just see the negative whining and reverse their course to making snoozefest content.

[Locke_Rockwell]

With Endwalker I thought my enjoyment of the game has just gone down after playing it for so long, but after Dawntrail's content design I realize it was the fault of Endwalker normal content being boring and unengaging. Dawntrail has been a fresh of breath air and I really hope they keep the standard that we've seen so far.

[HemlockEvergreen]

They're hitting it out of the park with the encounter design. I'm so hyped for Savage!

[Mondschnee]

As a non-raider, I'm enjoying this very much. This is the perfect difficulty for me, especially the one in the normal raids.
I hope they continue this type of fight design for Alliance Raids as well.

[Laerune]

As a healer, I am still pressing only 1 dps skil.

[yoshinoharu]

More than the difficulty being on point, I feel like the PROGRESSION just feels like it makes sense. Dawntrail gets harder as it goes, which is kind of a fundamental thing of game design that has been ignored for two entire expansions. You can no longer just kind of coast through and the game demands that you at least pay attention to it and do some active learning. Personally, though I may still find it easy all the way through, I can actually see that the content is more engaging and actually challenges players to, well, play the game.

[LilithKha]

I've been posting in some of the other, more positive threads on this in the last few days but I especially wanted to echo your sentiment about feeling the social element coming back to the game. I'm admittedly a somewhat hardcore player - I don't have the time to commit to 16 hour days on new content release, but I have cleared a handful of ultimates including DSR and my static does between 9-12 hour weeks consistently as, despite what some people on here like to assume, many raiders are busy, working adults and university students.

As such, I didn't have much complaints about the content in Endwalker that was designed for me. DSR and TOP are both banger fights and the savages were pretty good. However, it really felt that the second raid was over, there was nothing else to do. And that was a real bummer for me. I started playing in Shadowbringers with a group of more casual friends, and nearly all of them quit the game entirely during Endwalker's first six months because they didn't raid and there was nothing for them to do after they finished MSQ. It was also frustrating because many other friends of mine are interested in MMOs and we play other games together, but I could never recommend XIV to the more gameplay oriented ones because the endgame "regular" content was so lacking. And unfortunately, I find that the "hardcore" content in this game really needs to be completed with players of a somewhat even skill level, otherwise it becomes a frustrating experience for everyone. No one likes waiting around for one or two people to learn a mechanic so you can progress for 2 hours, and likewise it's a really awful feeling being that player who is holding everyone else back. That essentially left only extremes as engaging, pick up and play content that could be social.

I am really, really happy that Dawntrail is bringing back engaging normal mode content. Note that I didn't say challenging, because I truly believe this is at most, a small increase in difficulty over Endwalker in terms of the mechanics used themselves. There are some creative telegraphs and room for interesting uptime strategies in a lot of the fights, and the damage is tuned up a little bit to give healers more to do. Great! Keep it up! My old friends haven't all come back yet but I've met more new people in the last 2 weeks doing this content then I've met in the last two and a half years during endwalker. The fights encourage collaboration and teamwork and it's just a blast. And I can finally recommend this game to friends of mine who are just regular ol' gamers, not only the visual novel fans.