We are missing Content between Normal and Extreme. Wrong Audience for Chaotic

[Supersnow845]

The bridge to EX is already there. If someone won't make that leap now then a new slightly different mode isn't going to change that.



All of that is normal mode content. I'm not saying it shouldn't exist, I've done and enjoyed all of that content, but it's no different than the usual normal mode raid.

Now obviously everyone's perception of difficulty is different and on an individual basis someone could find some of those harder than others but that's going to be the case with anything. You have people on this forum complaining that the normal and expert dungeons are too hard and basically savage fights. That's a lot of why this whole hypothetical doesn't lead anywhere, there's never going to be a consensus. The devs can't make a separate difficulty for every person that plays the game, they have to draw the line somewhere. I think where it currently lies is more than reasonable for anyone genuinely interested in progressing.

This is basically my point and what I think is wrong with your argument

Midcore content may be a nebulous term that few people agree on the exact difficulty of but everyone can point to the largest deficit in current difficulty, which is the “harder than juneo easier than extremes” range for people who want content that isn’t a pushover but also doesn’t need PF. It’s functionally irrelevant to the argument that you consider that normal content, it still is a deficit in difficulty that the devs don’t seem to want to touch which is a problem people have.

This doesn’t have to be a unique mode or be a stepping stone to extremes, it just has to be content people want to do and offer some measure of rewards

[SkankyRoe]

In your post you mention BA/Bozja which are normal difficulty content.

Bozja sure, but BA is most certainly not "normal difficulty content". You have the Demi-Ozma mount so you should be familiar with everything that raid entails.

[Jeeqbit]

You can mess up at least 3 towers at any given time, if you pump heavy shields for them (not a tank LB). Factoring Tank LB massively reduces the difficulty as well but alot of people don't always use it for whatever reason. That's already enough room for error.

I really don't know why people are complaining then, because the rest of the fight other than that seemed like it could be managed because I got through to tile phase, sometimes pretty smoothly in the first few hours of release... before guides, before anything.

The community is the problem. The moment they face any smidge of challenge they cry, especially if a glam is behind it.

Unfortunately true.

[Mawlzy]

I really don't know why people are complaining then, because the rest of the fight other than that seemed like it could be managed because I got through to tile phase, sometimes pretty smoothly in the first few hours of release... before guides, before anything.
Unfortunately true.

Blaming players for finding the game lacking is the last stage before MMOs sunset.

[CidHeiral]

Midcore content may be a nebulous term that few people agree on the exact difficulty of but everyone can point to the largest deficit in current difficulty, which is the “harder than juneo easier than extremes” range for people who want content that isn’t a pushover but also doesn’t need PF. It’s functionally irrelevant to the argument that you consider that normal content, it still is a deficit in difficulty that the devs don’t seem to want to touch which is a problem people have.

I think we just have a fundamental disagreement on how big the gap between current normal raids and extremes is. I don't find it to be big enough to warrant special attention but I understand that you do. I can see that we're just going to argue in circles about this so let's just agree to disagree.

Bozja sure, but BA is most certainly not "normal difficulty content". You have the Demi-Ozma mount so you should be familiar with everything that raid entails.

Depends on how you look at it. Going off of pure difficulty I would absolutely put it on par with normal raids, it was incredibly easy. You could argue its numerous unique gimmicks disqualifies it, but there are other normal raids with unique gimmicks as well, are they disqualified too? I can see where you're coming from though.

[DiaDeem]

The game as of late has only two modes:

- Walk in the park content
- Requires guide and/or static content

There's no in-between.

Go run ARR HM Dungeons with min iLv and no Echo. That's the type of content I miss.

[Jeeqbit]

Blaming players for finding the game lacking is the last stage before MMOs sunset.

I wasn't blaming players for finding the game lacking, but rather for wanting all content to be unreasonably easy. If people spend the same amount of effort trying to clear the fight as they do complaining about it, they might clear it.

And yes, I understand that some people can't do certain content in the game due to limitations. And maybe the content isn't for them if that's the case. I'm talking about people who don't have such limits but just immediately come to the forums and say it's clique content without really giving it a good try.

It happened with Eureka where, just because it took NMs a little bit of time to spawn, they wanted them to spawn instantly resulting in Bozja's Skirmishes which spawn instantly one after the other. People just have no patience for things taking time and want everything instantly (then subsequently complain there's no content and they are bored). Can't have it both ways.

I think we just have a fundamental disagreement on how big the gap between current normal raids and extremes is.

I don't think Extreme difficulty is the issue. I think the issue is the culture of using Party Finder for it instead of a direct queue makes it feel more difficult than it is, which has only been a problem in western regions, because they queue in the JP region.

When I get Extremes in Mentor Roulette for example - and this is with loads of sprouts - I usually teach the fight and we clear it. 99% of Extremes I've got in Mentor Roulette have been a clear, including Tsukuyomi, Thordan, Ultima's Bane, Ramuh, and countless Great Hunt Ex. Granted this is with gear growth and occasionally Echo stacks, but the same thing can happen with current extremes (gear growth) and it's not that long before they add Echo stacks anyway.

Like everything, Chaotic will probably feel a lot easier as time goes on.

Going off of pure difficulty I would absolutely put it on par with normal raids, it was incredibly easy.

BA was ridiculously easy when I did it. All the fights before Ozma felt easier than Sastasha. And Ozma's mechanics are mostly wholesale taken from the version in Weeping City which was also never that hard but sometimes took a few pulls. Except of course it's more punishing (more likely to kill, harder to get a rez and can eject you from the instance).

But the rez and eject gimmicks, and "get enough people" gimmicks, make it useful to have a discord for it. But the bigger reason discords had to pick it up was deciding portals. Ironically, coordinating portal entry is the main "coordination" needed.

[Mawlzy]

And yes, I understand that some people can't do certain content in the game due to limitations. And maybe the content isn't for them if that's the case. I'm talking about people who don't have such limits but just immediately come to the forums and say it's clique content without really giving it a good try.

I don't even think it's a question of can't do certain content, although that doubtless comes into play. The issue is that there are many different ways to play FF14, and basically only one niche way involving significant time planning and commitment, which most people simply choose not to do, is being addressed by the bulk of material released in 7.x.

I'm starting to get the feeling SQEX would happily jettison 80% of their players, scale back the cost of producing 14, and turn it into a raiding game. Like the DT story doesn't exactly suggest commitment to a "story-driven MMO," we know VAs and animation are expensive, and the content release makes it pretty clear which portion of the customer base is valued.

Their decision. Maybe it makes financial sense.

[Voidmage]

I think we just have a fundamental disagreement on how big the gap between current normal raids and extremes is. I don't find it to be big enough to warrant special attention but I understand that you do. I can see that we're just going to argue in circles about this so let's just agree to disagree.

Tbh that probably isn’t helped with Extremes having just such a large scale in difficulty themself.
Zodiark and Valigarmanda for example are barely above normal content difficulty while Endsinger was straight up cancer.

I think with Midcore content Snow and others (me included) mean content you can jump in without a guide and still clear.
Yes there will be mistakes, there will be wipes but it is easy enough to understand and recover from mistakes.
For me the perfect midcore content was all the raids in Bozja be it CLL, DR or Dalriada.
In the first and last it was the core players that neeed to know what to do while the rest was fine enough with just reacting. It was also what I want raids to be. REAL raids like storming something and not glorified boss fights.
DR was straight up individual responsibility but still challenging enough.
They were also the perfect example of easy enough mechanics made chaotic by the sheer number of players.

None of those got any criticism outside from the way to get into them so I have no idea why they just straight up abandoned that content.

I wasn't blaming players for finding the game lacking, but rather for wanting all content to be unreasonably easy. If people spend the same amount of effort trying to clear the fight as they do complaining about it, they might clear it.

No one wants chaotic to be easy but to be fair for 24 players.
Right now it isn’t with how few can wipe the whole thing.
Just think about how often you screw up something even if you know what to do.
Once in 15 runs maybe? Multiply that by 24 and the chance of someone NOT screwing up gets lower and lower.
If it was just a LITTLE bit more forgiving in phase 2 we probably wouldn’t see all the complaints or just broken people in PF right know.
I like harder content but if people just straight up have no fun in PF (even less than normal) then I think the design of that content is just plain wrong.

[Jeeqbit]

Zodiark and Valigarmanda for example are barely above normal content difficulty while Endsinger was straight up cancer.

I was able to tank through half of the fight completely solo after everyone died. That was possible because Endsinger was extremely forgiving and recoverable and you could get through it with lots of rez. The hardest mechanic, in my opinion, was trivialized by simply following someone that understood where to go, such as the healer and if you got hit, it was just some little vulns on the wrist. There were also ways to mitigate tower mistakes such as tank mit.

I think with Midcore content Snow and others (me included) mean content you can jump in without a guide and still clear.

I didn't look at a guide for Endsinger. But it can be hard to understand what is going on in some fights without recording the footage and playing it back slowly to see what happened while you're not busy doing a rotation.

For me the perfect midcore content was all the raids in Bozja be it CLL, DR or Dalriada.

I agree that was about the right difficulty for midcore stuff. I think it's alright to have a smaller fight that 8 of the better players in the raid need to handle. Delubrum Reginae was actually pretty good. It got tedious without people using their damage buffs, but feeling grossly overscaled prevented it being grossly underscaled like most content in the game.

No one wants chaotic to be easy but to be fair for 24 players.
Right now it isn’t with how few can wipe the whole thing.

In my experience, a few people can make mistakes at any given moment. For example, 3 people could get Doom and healers would probably be able to Esuna it. Then 3 people could get a bleed and get shields/regens on them. Then 3 people could die and they will probably get a rez. I'm told a few people can even miss towers and it's alright, especially with a tank LB. I've seen the interrupt missed by one of the tanks without issue before. 1 person could get a damage down at any given moment and, by many accounts, still beat enrage.

It's just a problem if too many mistakes happen at the exact same time because then it has a domino effect on the entire raid. Maybe they should increase the threshold for mistakes a bit more, but I am encouraged by the fact mistakes seem part of the design in this way - that seems to be why the cast time of Esuna was reduced to 0.

I do think it all remains to be seen though, because it may get easier when we can sync down to 735. Because then everyone will be max item level no matter what and that means more HP, more defenses, more damage and more leeway.