Overtuned MSQ 4-mans and subpar story ends 12-year journey

[AlienDiplomat]

I have enjoyed my time here since pre-ARR, and every expac up to ShB and EW have been excellent. I loved the depth, character progression, music, crafting, housing, glamor, battle, and other content. But more than anything the story has always stood out among MMOs as the strongest draw for this game.

I avoid extremes and progression raiding in all games I play as I neither have the time nor interest to devote hours of my life to a 2nd job (or what feels like one to me anyway), but I am perfectly happy for the people who do enjoy it. Up until now that play style has been totally OPTIONAL and didn't negatively impact the game I enjoy.

However, this begain to change with Dawn Trail.

The story is not even in the same time zone as past expansions. I am truly sorry for those that can't see the difference between nuanced characters like Emet-Selch and the oftentimes outright silly tropes we get in DT, never mind the emotionally tone-deaf main character. It definitely has its moments but it doesn't really seem to be setting up much of anything anything new (until maybe post 7.1 which I haven't gone through yet, reasons below). It has just been a total sleeper expac coming after ShB and EW by any metric of symbolism, eloquence, emotional impact or general intelligence.

But nail for me has been some of the new dungeon decisions.

The problem isn't "too hard vs. too easy," it is that EDIT: SE is sticking with one difficulty tier for MSQ group content and seem to be stuck between appeasing the raiding/savage/extreme crowd who want EVERYTHING to be more challenging (even random roulette stuff that new players need to progress MSQ), and the casual crowd who may prefer a more "normal" difficulty level the first time through content, or just don't want to deal with more stressful mechanics when queueing for a quick roulette.

EDIT: SE do seem to be cognizant of this and have invested in creating Duty Support options for most content which is a great step. However the mechanics in duty support are generally the same as when run with people with the added challenge of NPCs not using Phoenix Down or resurrection spells, so the player dying means an instant reset of the current fight. So while they are nice for faster queues for DPS in particular just looking to level up through dungeon XP, it doesn't really address the difficulty problem.

It definitely seems there is a push in Dawntrail to increase the general difficulty of group content, with more mechanics relying on memorization or puzzle type mechanics, or telegraphs that use boss gestures instead of the traditional ground indicators.

The main problem with this strategy moving forward is that there are SO many dungeons in the roulette now, that it is unreasonable to expect every casual random dungeon to require all these progression style memorization mechanics. People might enjoy figuring things out through attrition or looking up guides once in a while but if it gets to the point where it is basically EVERY time you just want to queue for some random dungeons after work/school, this will lead to people just avoiding yet another system.

Yuweyawata Field Station is a perfect example.

In the past dungeons like The Dead Ends were story-rich, and had mechanics you had to learn but which were visually interesting and intuitive.

EDIT: I sincerely apologize for this post being full of bitterness before.

I tried to tone it down. I've been dealing with a lot lately, losing my dad and little brother in rapid succession and being generally not in a very happy place mentally. But that is no reason to be rude or disrespectful. I love FFXIV and everyone involved and it deserves better.

One thing I thought that might help the situation...

Add difficulty filters to the duty finder.

Let people manually de-select hard modes when queueing for random dungeons. Also, the ability to exclude specific dungeons would be helpful. That way, people could still get the daily roulette bonus but not have to worry about doing more difficult content when they don't have time/energy. This would also free up SE to add more of these type of mechanics for people that want them.

Additionally, icons could be added to the "looking for x" bonus on roulettes indicating that to get those bonuses, you would need to allow certain filters. Or, remove them if the current groups looking for members do not match your own filters (so the bonus is greyed out unless you de-select the necessary filters).