Player Drop Off and Accessibility/Diffculty

[AyumiCosplayGlam]

The amount of effort between eureka/bozja and PoTD floor 50 is... not comparable.

The logic is the same. PotD is a requirement because it apparently teaches the players how deep dungeons work.
Maybe the word completing them is a bit harsh, maybe i should have said reach mettle lvl 10 or reach elemental level 5 or whatever.

It still makes no sense that a content that has 0 connection between each other is requiring you to interact with it just because it uses the same progression structure. A 5 level tutorial quest would easily solve this issue if its needed at all.

[Mesarthim]

Spending your entire time leveling to max in a field operation, making a relic in the process, is not the same as spending up to a couple of hours in a deep dungeon.

While I don't defend the requirement people really need to stop complaining all of the time. If you do it once you never have to do it again on that character. It's easier than it has ever been to clear it. If people can't do potd floor 50 I find it hard to believe they suddenly only have interest in the new one now.]

You know full well how SE operates. They aren't going to change it. The PoTD buff is likely as good as it is going to be.

[JenSha]

Casual here, I've also noticed that the difficulty was ramped up in this expansion, instanced content is more stressful for me. SE also took away the option to turn off bloom (it was a part of glare) in 7.0 and all the shiny boss effects and lights give me a headache.

I used to sub every other month to keep my house but I gave up on it and only resub once a year to catch up on the (mediocre) MSQ. I like this game but I guess it's just not for me anymore.

[Underscore]

If a normal dungeon is too hard for some people, then what do they want? To stand still and do nothing?

We are not going back to Endwalker. I like having fun in my video games.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Put the ''difficulty'' back into jobs.

Pretty much (mostly).

Are people surprised though? When you take out the difficulties from playing the job then dumps them into solely encounter difficulty, what else can they make other than increasing the amount of "stand here or die idc" and its severity?

Maybe it's cheaper for devs to do this (not enough cost lmao) because they only need to design mechanics for main tank and non-tank instead of trying to design for diff subroles but look what that has done to the rest of the game lol.

[Atreus]

Homie really dropped this thread and never came back to elaborate.

Game doesn't need to be easier. We could use measures for people to make it through MSQ with trusts, for sure, but that's it.

[Ellona_Andrivari]

Every single bit of difficulty out of DTR has been "players are required to watch their screen not their hotbar" and people just cannot seem to handle that. That's it, that is the difficulty increase.

[RajNish]

The problem isn't even that; the problem is the scripted, lazily designed fights. The problem is the "survive damage" or "don't take damage" pattern instead of "cancel damage."

They could have created fights that were challenging and fun enough for any players to complete (turn a lever, move the boss to a specific position at a specific time so it takes damage from the outside, press a button, carry special item, kill the adds' to avoid a fatal debuff), but no. It's easier for them to speed up the pace of AoE attacks and bombard players with damage and flashes of light, rather than properly develop interactive elements in the fights.

There were fights like this in ARR and HW, but they reworked them so that now everyone is forced to just run away from AOE, or memorize their pattern, and if someone considers this an interesting challenge, I feel sorry for them, because it’s just boring to be a trained monkey, dependent on ping or reaction speed, and not on thinking with your brain and knowing the way in which the mechanics should be solved.

[Miradelle]

I think that it's not only the lack of content, diffuculty of content or whatever ... I think alot of older and/or disabled players that enjoyed the game and invested a lot of money through subs and/or online store purchases, have now decided it all too much and cancelled their subs.

It's not disabled/old people that can't do mechanics. It's people that are just bad at the game.

This game doesn't incentivize you to learn anything about the combat, and neither does the community, that's why you're left with some very astoundingly bad players at max level content.

However, considering I still see these players in expert roulette, it's safe to say even they can get through the MSQ by being carried as a dps. It's also very easy to ask people in novice network to help, or put up a PF asking for help (assuming you're not on a dead server, lmaeow)

WoW also doesn't have this issue that the game is too difficult for casuals, and it is far more reactive and fast-paced than FFXIV is when it comes to dungeons and LFR. The difference is that in that game, people don't give you a free pass for having 0 idea how to play--often even being toxic toward them for that.

However, for people with no friends and crippling social anxiety, I suppose they could add a feature like they do for solo instances, where the fight gets progressively easier with each wipe when doing trusts.

[Valence]

The problem isn't even that; the problem is the scripted, lazily designed fights. The problem is the "survive damage" or "don't take damage" pattern instead of "cancel damage."

They could have created fights that were challenging and fun enough for any players to complete (turn a lever, move the boss to a specific position at a specific time so it takes damage from the outside, press a button, carry special item, kill the adds' to avoid a fatal debuff), but no. It's easier for them to speed up the pace of AoE attacks and bombard players with damage and flashes of light, rather than properly develop interactive elements in the fights.

There were fights like this in ARR and HW, but they reworked them so that now everyone is forced to just run away from AOE, or memorize their pattern, and if someone considers this an interesting challenge, I feel sorry for them, because it’s just boring to be a trained monkey, dependent on ping or reaction speed, and not on thinking with your brain and knowing the way in which the mechanics should be solved.

In my opinion over this topic, we've been seeing a consistent crack in the community between the old design and the new and it's not going to get better over time. That's on them for changing the game's genre halfway through.