Endgame should be challenging - that's the point (from a casual player)

[AvoSturmfaust]

The problem is not "casuals want easier content". It's "people want content that doesn't force them to play this game like its a second job".
All the content recently (becides the normal EX and Savage) is either laughably easy, or forces you to find people to run it with you on Discord.



Literally every other game I play that involves social interactions I don't have to go on Discord just to play parts of it. I love meeting people in game and partying up, and working together to meet a goal. Using Discord for its intended purpose (using it as a way to communicate for statics/harder content with random people) is fine, and it's also fine for trying to hunt down people to run older content. But when fresh new content comes out that you're immediately forced to use it just to find a way to get a party... Something wrong happened.

I said it in my previous post, it was a example, you can literally clear every content in this game without joining a static or discord, its about the "social interaction" because many people arent even able to write in the chat if you ask them a question be it it "do you understand the mech" or "any question" or something, there are so many people which literally want 0 social interaction not even the ingame chat

[Jeeqbit]

The issue is mainly anxiety. A section of the playerbase is afraid to join PF so they avoid even the easiest High-End duties such as Unreal and Extreme, despite that it's not actually that different to what the CEs are in Occult, and may even arguably be slower paced than CEs. Others just don't like how the entire party wipes when one thing goes wrong and don't want to engage with it due to that. And others just don't want to do raid content or have disabilities that affect it.

Whether MMOs have traditionally had non-raid content or not, there has always been an audience for non-raid content in them. Just because they were ignored in the past in other games doesn't necessarily mean they should be now. I think they just would get by due to the social nature of them, PvP, RP, grinds or their many engaging, sophisticated, open-world systems.

Speaking of other MMOs though, the casual content such as seasonal events was always better in every one I've played, often classes have been more customizable, and content in general was typically more like what Field Operations are so that even a simple quest was socially engaging in the sense of seeing other players in the area or potentially having to party like you do for Calamity Unbound. Oddly enough, it's like they create a traditional MMO in an isolated instance then don't for the rest of the game, which makes sense when Eureka was inspired by FF11.

[Gwenkatsu]

I cannot help but laugh, seeing people go at each others throat, based on some artificial term which everybody defines differently.
I identify as a semi-hardcore player with a casual interest in the more lo-core parts of the game, so please let me know what FF14 problem I am responsible for now?

[SamRF]

I cannot help but laugh, seeing people go at each others throat, based on some artificial term which everybody defines differently.
I identify as a semi-hardcore player with a casual interest in the more lo-core parts of the game, so please let me know what FF14 problem I am responsible for now?

If you don't complain, you are not responsible for any problem. Good principle of life. But maybe I'm a hypocrite in creating this thread.

[Kandraxx]

The problem is that no content in this game is challenging. It's all about perseverance, throwing ungodly amounts of time at it and the pain of forcibly interacting with 7 other people in a superficial way in what is a silent single player game with other players around. Hell, I'd argue not even the Necromancer title is hard because you can just keep going as a tank until you get that like 5-6 free rages from 181-199 IF you just throw the hundreds of hours at it that are required. The raids are artificial difficulty all the way, because it's so cheap and low effort to do for them and it essentially allows them to stretch even the most braindead garbage for weeks/months.

It's like...imagine Elden Ring, you play through the game all alone but now you're at Malenia and there's this glowing gate that tells you to now go online and group with 7 other players so you can fight her, her HP are x8 and if any of them fucks up you're also dead and going back and that's FFXIV in a nutshell.

The other question is, why are they even still doing 'high-end duties"? For the ~10% of the playerbase that participates in it? Should we now subtract all the plugin cheats and run buyers from that number and arrive at maybe ~3% fully legit players?

[angelar_]

The problem is that no content in this game is challenging.

Your definition of challenging is disingenuous.

It's funny that you mention the absurd difficulty spike in Elden Ring's end game. A huge amount of people couldn't solo Malenia after managing through the rest of the game. So comparing it to getting a group of 8 people 'high-end duties' on XIV and acting like it's different is pretty incoherent with everything else you're trying to say. If the point is just to say "you're REQUIRED to do that," then it's a meaningless distinction because it was so unfair on a level the vast majority of the rest of the game isn't that you effectively have to do so anyway.

"No content in this game is challenging. Only 3% of players are legitimately able to do the hardest content." Whatever.

[Raikai]

These teach you your job

Absolutely not.

The casual content in this game is so easy that it doesn't teach you how to play a proper dps-maximized rotation at all. The solo duties, quest enemies, all die too fast. Nowhere in the game teaches you what the recurring encounter markers mean, beyond the very basic ones.

There's a number of new players who hit all 4-5 oGCDs back to back because nothing in the game teaches them what weaving means. Do they know that an "ability" is not considered magic like a "spell" is, thus not affected by some modifiers? Tooltips aren't clear enough. Even though said abilities look like magic visually? Do players know the importance of cooldown alignment in the 2 minute marks? How you're supposed to learn all of this so you can even have a chance if you want to do High End content?

[SamRF]

Absolutely not.

The casual content in this game is so easy that it doesn't teach you how to play a proper dps-maximized rotation at all. The solo duties, quest enemies, all die too fast. Nowhere in the game teaches you what the recurring encounter markers mean, beyond the very basic ones.

There's a number of new players who hit all 4-5 oGCDs back to back because nothing in the game teaches them what weaving means. Do they know that an "ability" is not considered magic like a "spell" is, thus not affected by some modifiers? Tooltips aren't clear enough. Even though said abilities look like magic visually? Do players know the importance of cooldown alignment in the 2 minute marks? How you're supposed to learn all of this so you can even have a chance if you want to do High End content?

Okay but that's beside the point. But perhaps interesting topic nonethless. They do teach you in the way that you get more used to your rotation muscle memory, given that you do your research with sources outside of the game, or if you calculate yourelf or are good intuitively. With teaching I mean you basically teach yourself but gradually as you progress.

[Mawlzy]

Okay but that's beside the point. But perhaps interesting topic nonethless. They do teach you in the way that you get more used to your rotation muscle memory, given that you do your research with sources outside of the game, or if you calculate yourelf or are good intuitively. With teaching I mean you basically teach yourself but gradually as you progress.

Somewhat off topic, but I'd suggest a significant sub-population will never develop muscle memory for an optimized 2-minute rotation because there are simply too many damn buttons.

It really is a remarkable achievement from SE to manage to produce horrific button bloat while simultaneously smearing out job identity so that all jobs can handle their miserable fight design.

[Raraka]

3. People which refuses to join discords or statics or anything and complain then "ohhh that content needs again social interaction" bruhh you are playing a MMO if you dont wanna social interactions its YOUR problem, not SE´s problem or the Community´s Problem is one and only YOUR problem, dont play a MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER ONLINE Game if you dont wanna bother with social interactions

People dismissing this point would hate on Linkshells if they were functional "mimimimi, I don't wanna join a linkshell to do content", but sure, lets keep blaming discord untill the sun blows up