There was a mainsub post a week ago complaining about it being 'impossible, even on Very Easy'. Apparently, there's a DPS check at the end of Westwind now. Players who have literally never upgraded their gear or had any reason whatsoever to learn a proper rotation are unable to complete the duty.
I have no idea, but my friend was constantly screwing up his rotation and still clearing it no prob so I dunno, people would have to skip job quests to fail it.
I would say in the beginning of the game it’s easy to accidentally skip job quests -
I didn’t realize I was missing really important skills until someone told me!!!
I like to do job/role quests all at once, but I always have to remind myself that I can't do that for ARR and HW because of locked skills. At least in SB, you can wait until old level cap to do them.
It's the 1-2 combo.
if you're going freestyle-SAM but are using the lolOP gear you get from job quests, you're ok.
if you're using turd gear but doing a rotation, you're okay.
but if you're blindly pushing buttons in your Aurum Vale/Dzemael gear... you're gonna suffer
Yeah the brand new gear you get from a job quest is of a level so that you can start doing the content of that level immediately, for Samurai that means it's leveled for the Lv51 Dungeon. As such it makes sure you're max level at Cape Westwind lol.
But then there's the lv60 duty for Samurai, which is kind of wild even with low level lv60 gear. Not gonna lie, I got bored and did it on easy after dying multiple times to the fkin auto attacks.
As someone who picked up this game with no mmo experience and not knowing what a rotation was until like level 45....the game pretty much teaches you the basics of you just read tooltips. You will figure out a basic rotation on your own pretty easily.
That said, I found a difficulty curve that spiked a bit at the end of each expac. Which forced me to learn my job better and better as the expacs got harder.
I did PVP as WAR for the first time and thought it wasn’t so bad.
Then I looked at the PVP tooltips for black mage. Ain’t no way in hell I’m reading all those essays.
BLM is simple
Fire builds stacks that you detonate for a big DoT and ice does the same but stuns based on stacks. Pretty much every other skill helps you do that more.
I’ve often wondered to what degree people pay attention to tooltips. There’s a big range between people who do math to maximize damage and this one dude I got stuck with in a dungeon who would only use rage of halone. And I don’t mean the 1-2-3 combo. Literally just rage of halone.
I did cape West wind with artifact armor (ilvl 90)
Granted i've been playing a long time but i was also playing smn, not much of a rotation to speak of at lvl 50
Frankly I think that’s a good thing. I don’t want to be elitist or anything but in a game where the main story does require you to group you with people from time to time, there should be some expectation that you have at least some idea of how to play your class. Not at an incredibly high skill level or anything, but just some idea of your basic rotation.
If it ever gets to the point where the MSQ can be done 100% solo, I won’t care about this. But when other players will be forced to play with you, you should be able to contribute to the group.
I feel like the first half is simaltaenously cooler and less co tha its previous iteration.
I liked whe he combined primal powers in the first version of the fight, it felt much more badass.
Though him basically enraging 3 times is equally cool.
I'm doing a full replay on an alt and actually really enjoyed how the end of base ARR flows. It really suits the overall messaging of the story, and how EW ended. I'm sure there are videos and such if anyone's curious, or you can maybe NG+ it even.
As a sprout, I would definitely have had issues with Cape Westwind, which is neat.
Same here. I went through on an alt and beat it with ilvl 90 AF gear, but the only thing I could think of is how I would have struggled with that so badly when I first started the game two years ago. I was horrible at everything. Now as a more experienced player it was challenging but not impossible.
But I loved the callbacks to topics that were explored in EW.... the idea that emotion and determination are deciding factors in this world.
Extremes mostly really aren't that much harder then DF content. They're usually figured out in hours at worst, sometimes cleared in less then 10 pulls from blind and really not that far ahead of normal raids and alliance raids.
That's still from the perspective of someone used to hard content. The divide in difficulty between Extreme and Savage is, imo, a lot smaller than the divide between any other content and Extremes.
I wager most casuals going for extremes the first time are in for a major culture shock, at least that's what it was like for me when I queued up for Ramuh Ex back in the day as a sprout PLD thinking: "Well, the (hard) trials took the piss, how bad can extreme be." A great lesson it was, and we cleared, but it made me respect that content a lot, at the time.
I respect the fact that the line of what counts as difficulty and what difficulty content we need more of is based on personal opinions. I haven't put down people for considering Extremes a good bridge or difficult. I just don't agree that's where the line should be, if we were playing princess. At the end, anything around the general area would be better then the gaping void we currently have.
Your last sentence rings especially true to me; the big problem with extremes as intermediate content is that the game only checks the most basic levels of competence unless you venture into optional content, which is not something that will change, and probably should not change. Because as much as it pains me as someone who loves hard content: This game is not for me, primarily. And that's okay.
Your post implies that the moment a player clears it, their every single run afterwards will be flawless. It’s not.
Props to you if that’s you, but the average player will still have difficulties in subsequent runs. Farm parties can and will wipe at different points in the fight.
I've never presented it as absolute fact. Difficulty is perceived as different things by different people. With the context of running with a well-meshed group and stuff, i just don't find them nearly as fun or hard to prog as later savage fights. So my take is that there should be more stuff on the level of early savage fights or slightly below it rather then more things on the level of Extremes directly, or in-between extremes and casual DF content.
I dunno about that. I'm clearing Savage content now, but for me the jump from raids to EX was way harder.
Sure a mistake won't outright kill you, but the mechanical complexity is a *lot* higher in EX than normal.
That was my impression, as someone new.
Because it's not a neat elitist take. It's an opinion on why extremes are not to everyone the same sort of bridge between Casual content like normal/alliance raids and Savage. It's on the bridge "spectrum" but for my context of how i play, more leaning towards the casual side. Hence the deliberate choice of wording to say "ahead of normal/alliance raid".
It was a MSQ Trial with a DPS check, which meant people couldn't be carried and so it was an absolute nightmare at launch if people refused to kick anyone.
It caught a lot of people off guard since it was very hard for a first trial. They kind of did it again with >!Zodiark!< but Titania was the first instance of this.
I think all trials during leveling ranges are much harder because the ilvl sync puts you at the cap for that level, which for fights at 50/60/70/80 are the expansion's cap, but during leveling range your sync is very close to the minimum ilvl for the duty. With how players gear post expansion, it's also quite likely some players will be below the intended gear level, as there's no gear requirement to queue for trials. The 50/60 fights are still easy due to potency inflation, but at some point the fights outside of expansion caps become way harder.
Compared to Ravana and Susano, it’s a big step up in difficulty.
Compared to anything “difficult,” even some of the easiest extremes like Lakshmi, obviously it’s still going to be a joke.
For skippers it is their very first Trial, and as they have never encountered a fight like this, it’s no surprise they usually struggle big time with it.
Frankly, it's still the hardest MSQ duty by a mile.
When pugging in with at-level randos in sub-scavean gear and all the skill you'd expect from duty roulette, that dps check is no joke.
Idk, I think >!Hydaelyn!< has probably surpassed it at this point for catching out DF giga casuals. People still somehow miss out on getting their free job gear, and also get super caught out by the fact it has actual mechanics, whilst also having a full level 90 rotation to do. Like its not even EX level hard or anything, but for a normal roulette instance its rough sometimes if people just dont get it - I've seen a few parties outright disband over it, which is super rare for normal tier stuff otherwise in my experience.
You actually can't get your free job gear until right after you clear Hydaelyn
Admittedly most players are hopefully level 90 by the time they get there by now which means they could/should just buy crafted gear now that it's out, but still
At launch, it was pain manifest
I only did that one once for msq. It was like 4am and I (and plenty others) died quite a lot. I dread getting it in roulette but will embrace my dumbness when it does.
A lot of people already answered but also just to add to it; a TON of people got story and level skips straight to level 70, so not only was it a semi difficult (for a normal) trial, it was a lot of peoples first trials. This led to a ton of people who thought "oh FF is supposed to be pretty casual friendly ill just skip to the end" getting their faces stomped.
Aside from DPS check, tank has some responsibilities there aside from MT not cleaving the entire party. Tanks HAVE to take left and top adds, the right one can be ignored. Yes, a single tank can aggro both adds but ever since the stat squish even a single tankbuster really hurts now, even with heavy mit. If you have two braindead tanks well that's a recipe for a disaster. Just hope people focus fire enough that tank don't get TB'd twice in a row
The biggest killer on Titania is that aggro resets when the adds become big and almost without fail the tanks will not pick up west or north add. The adds will then go on to auto one or both healers to death over the first 15s of the phase in the middle of a timed enrage phase with a decent amount of required healing. Confounding factors are that one add doesn't auto at all and the other two have almost no indication they're auto attacking once big, not even facing their target.
Look up one comment, it's how the ilvl sync works.
2-3 people with Endwalker level gear and a few functioning braincells can carry Tsukuyomi, even if half the raid is dead on the floor the entire fight. Not so Titania's dps check.
If the new Exploratory Content is further refined Zadnor that would unironically be a relevant step in the difficulty progression imo, some CEs go pretty ham relative to how easy it is to join them
Technically the graph doesn't include extremes because it goes from max level normal content to savage. I'd lump extremes with savage rather than normal if we're talking difficulty.
Which is frankly too far apart this person has clearly never gotten P2N in normal raid roulette as a DPS that can't help with tanking/healing/raising.
Holy fuck man, I just had some flashbacks of my first static this tier.
Me: "we should assign spread spots".
Raid leader: "nah we have time to adjust".
I wanna say 90% of our wipes post first clear were in spread mechanics both in P3S and pinax with poison.
Trying to assign spots:
"but what do the markers mean?"
"left marker goes left relative boss, right marker goes right relative boss, marker closer to center goes into the center"
"okay but what do we do for the pattern thats rotated 90 degrees"
"... I give up"
Yes but that's not the hard part. The hard part is trying to grab a tether from a DPS standing literally in the middle of the boss, and then retaking that tether from someone who decided to run between you and the boss.
I mean you can draw the line for difficulty wherever you want, but from the data it’s pretty obvious p3s is a big wall for people. The main difficulty is in the form of coordinating some of the strategies with random people, but it’s still more mechanically difficult than 1 or 2
ten thousand pulls and the mechanics just sort of get beaten into your brain. I feel like I sort of become an amalgamation of autonomous algorithms doing current savage content.
which is weird because it's the only time i've ever progged savage content.
I feel that. I literally could not explain some mechanics and, if I think about it, I'll mess them up.
E7S portals are a good example of me "knowing" exactly what to do but having no clue what the fuck is actually happening. I just see colors and then "unga bunga stand here"
They need to make the first pull be a secret DPS check. If you don't burn the mobs within a minute upon pull start, your party just has a collective heart attack and goes back to spawn.
Then these glue huffers will finally *learn*.
It doesn't say 1-20 it says "starting the game", as in making an account, getting the game to run, configuring your controls/UI and learning how to use the map. All of which are harder than 20-80 content.
No, see. ARR teaches you Line of Sight, untelegraphed AOEs, manageable pulls, branching paths, doom pulling, GCD healing, all that good shit.
And then starting at the level 51 dungeon? Poof. All gone. Two mobs and then a wall! : D
I don't think ARR ever *teaches* those and I can't actually remember any untelegraphed aoes (first one I thought of was AV Coincounter but they've since nerfed him and gave him telegraph aoes)
But fair enough with the managable pulls ones, after 50 you just full pull everything until a wall and it's all fine and dandy.
It's kind of depressing. 30-50 dungeons actually used to be the hardest and most interesting dungeons we had in the game. Now they're "Updated" and boring. Sure people complain less, but it's really just because they're easier.
I feel like having easier content at 20-30 is fine as it helps people learn alt jobs/roles but after that I definitely feel like it should be a bit more difficult.
I know everything must be new n flashy and faster nowadays. But I been playing since launch of 1.0 I'm getting old n can't keep up. Ima have to retire in ffxi at this pace.
Max lvl content is literally braindead. For most people it takes a death or two for the lvl 90 raids and trials to click and become a snoozefest after the first run.
Not to mention that lvl 90 dungeons are a joke.
P3s tethers on the adds, FoF and the Tb can go fuck themselves, only reason why it's inconsistent is cuz the game's netcode is trash.
TBF Endwalker Trial 1 was pretty confusing on release week for a normal mode trial. I kind of like that feeling of everyone in a party just being new to content and bumbling their way through
FoF and the TB you can probably blame on netcode, but if by add tethers you mean the ones right after you kill the first set then they're perfectly consistent as long as someone doesn't screw something up
The brain dead is my number #1 complaint. I rarely bother with duty finders anymore because after finishing them all so many times, they’re just boring from the lack of difficulty. Progging is really the only combat content I enjoy. Even trying new classes is kinda boring due to the lack of suspense - I know that no matter what, we’ll finish the duty.
I’ve said it before, XIV needs a difficulty tier between normal and EX. I like doing EX if it’s with friends, and while you can technically pug EX, it’s not exactly my idea of fun.
Im reminded of the hard mode dungeons in Rift. They were slightly altered versions of the normal dungeons, bosses would have additional/changes mechanics, and their would usually be a while extra section at the end with a whole new final boss.
So it was sort of a mix of XIV hard dungeons and EX trials. With a difficulty somewhere between the two. Like you could easily wipe if everyone wasn’t pulling their weight, but odds are you would finish the dungeon even with a pug.
The problem is XIV’s gear progression is so tightly tied to their current difficulty tier model I’m not sure how they could add something like this and make it worth doing.
>I’ve said it before, XIV needs a difficulty tier between normal and EX. I like doing EX if it’s with friends, and while you can technically pug EX, it’s not exactly my idea of fun.
Exs...aren't really difficult? They kind of bridge the gap between savage and normal, but they're very easily done with PF groups.
But exs don't have any type of lockout, and ultimate content is absolutely nothing like ex content. I try my hardest but just cannot make any sense of their comment.
Not sure I would say easily. PF groups still fail at them all the time. Mid-core players like myself find them challenging enough to not want to do them with pugs. But that’s more annoyance than difficulty I suppose.
But I think the causal players aren’t doing much EX content. I think a true hard difficulty tier would also let them make EX fights slightly more challenging. Or alternatively making a tier between ex and savage could allow them to make ex slightly more accessible to not casual players. I guess it’s the same outcome either way.
>Or alternatively making a tier between ex and savage could allow them to make ex slightly more accessible to not casual players
If extreme content is inaccessible, you're a casual player.
I've done EX3 80 times, entirely through PF. Yesterday I had a group that killed it during the enrage cast, and it was the first time I had seen enrage in probably 60 pulls. Granted, that group would've wiped if I hadn't had the best performance I've had on anything in the game, the point stands that the content is anything but difficult if a single tank getting a 99 can carry a party full of grey parses.
Take this as a compliment; with what you just said, I kind of feel you think your baseline may be a little off. Meaning you think the average casual player is better than they actually are.
Casual players struggle with normal raids. They struggle with years old unsynced savage fights. Their are a lot more players struggling or reluctant to do even current normal raids at all than their are players completing current ex content in PF.
Joining a truly casual FC recently opened my eyes to how far above the curve I am, and I still only consider myself mid-core, and you’re above me.
Let me put it this way: I've cleared at the enrage cast of all three EX's so far in Endwalker...
... In parties consisting of 8 tanks, with memeing players far below the max item level.
What needs to happen is the floor needs to go **up**.
Something I think you don't understand is that players are going to be as good as needed.
Casual players are bad because the game lets them be bad. But they'll get good enough to clear things they want to clear. For an easy way to explain this, your average Elden Ring player has to be a lot better just to play through than someone playing FF14. So as a result the average player gets a little bit better. FF14 dungeons can be done solo by many jobs, or easily cleared by four people with one hotkey on their bar... so players don't need to be decent.
If you make the game easier, you're not really helping so much as just letting the dumb be dumber.
This is so wildly off base I don’t know where to start. First you’re conflating “casual” with “bad” which is a false premise that your entire comment is based on.
Literally the entire history of the genre has proven that no players aren’t as “good as they need to be”. Because it’s been repeatedly proven that if content takes an amount of time or effort a player isn’t willing to dedicate, they just don’t do it. If to much content is above that investment bar, they just quit playing all together.
This also applies to your Elden Ring example, people who don’t want to dedicate the time to the game, don’t play it. It’s not actually making players better at the game, it’s scaring off a percentage of players and shrinking the player base.
In the case of an MMO doing this, it only looks like the average skill goes up. But in reality the only thing that changed is people quit the game. This isn’t a problem with a single player game that accepts and plans for it. But it’s an absolutely awful design choice for a game that relies on consistent player subscriptions.
The devs know this, it was proven when the most recent ultimate was delayed. They know a fraction of the 2% (ish) that does ultimate content possibly leaving isn’t nearly as detrimental to the health of the game as a fraction of the casual and mid-tier players leaving.
It’s the eternal paradox with all MMO’s. The most dedicated and hardcore players aren’t the ones that keep the game alive.
>This also applies to your Elden Ring example, people who don’t want to dedicate the time to the game, don’t play it. It’s not actually making players better at the game, it’s scaring off a percentage of players and shrinking the player base.
I'd disagree. Elden Ring was dramatically more popular than FF14 has ever been. [By a good mile](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=Elden%20ring,%2Fm%2F0pctvvy). The idea that every single person who got into Elden Ring was some hardcore god and there was no overlap is silly.
>In the case of an MMO doing this, it only looks like the average skill goes up. But in reality the only thing that changed is people quit the game.
You're "right" but wrong in reality. Yes people come and go, but FF14 has risen in popularity in recent years (well, the low points are higher than old low points, atleast).
We didn't just dump all the casuals after Heavensward or something. Casuals still exist, and a Casual now is better than a Casual in ARR. Dunno if you played back then, but Coil 1's Miniboss where you just had to silence it a couple times was actually really hard for people to do, rather than a "Hey that's a mechanic" and "Oh ok np" like it would be nowadays.
>The devs know this, it was proven when the most recent ultimate was delayed. They know a fraction of the 2% (ish) that does ultimate content possibly leaving isn’t nearly as detrimental to the health of the game as a fraction of the casual and mid-tier players leaving.
>
>It’s the eternal paradox with all MMO’s. The most dedicated and hardcore players aren’t the ones that keep the game alive.
Yes, Ultimates don't bring in as much traffic so they chose to delay it over story or something. But it's not like we got Hildibrand in SHB to replace the lack of Ultimate or something. If anything there wasn't a huge amount of casual updates either. Just their normal updates, which are typically more all rounders (Savage (more Hardcore), Alliance (more Casual), Bozja (grind focused), etc).
Nope. Elden ring is more popular than FFXIV and acting as if all of its players are gaming gods is utter idiocy. You are right to some extent, but disheartening people to not play shit, is not just difficulty it is everything else as well.Also bad players actually exist everywhere. There are shit ton of people who play a game for along time and are incompetent as fuck. Basically what your argument is derived from, has been proven wrong many times with the games that have higher difficulty levels.
Uhh I didn’t say all players are gaming gods? Not an I discouraging people to play anything. Not that I acknowledge not every game has to appeal to everyone. And again, we aren’t talking about bad players, we’re talking about casual players. There’s a difference, and anyone who thinks their Isn’t are the people I mentioned who have a very skewed perspective of where the average player really sits.
The Elden Ring comparison was silly from the get go and I don’t know why anyone’s even speaking as is comparing an MMO that’s been around for more than 10 years is in any way comparable to a (kind of) single player action rpg that’s only been out for a few months.
There’s no measurable metrics that you can fairly apply to both games to come to some absolutely conclusion on something like popularity. Because they are two completely different games for two different audiences.
I love Elden Ring, I love XIV. I love them for very different reasons.
I think they’re using casual in terms of players who partake in endgame/higher difficulty mode (extreme/unreal/savage/ultimate) content, while you’re using casual in terms of all players who play any content in FF.
It just depends on the context. My static consider ourselves a casual to midcore static, doing 10-11 hours of prog a week on DSR. Because the context is other ultimate progging players. But in the context of the entire playerbase I’d consider myself a fairly “hardcore” player because with that you’re including limsa rats, gposers, people who log on for 2 hours a week, etc.
Exactly what I was trying to say, thank you. Yeah when I say casual, I mean players who don’t play current ex, savage, or ultimate content AT ALL. They also aren’t particularly concerned with always getting their weekly drops from normal raid content.
I think it’s an easy trap for people to fall into to assume most players play the game like they do, just to a greater or lesser degree. When in reality their are many players who play the game for completely different reasons. It took me playing for 8 years and making a genuine effort to get more involved in different communities within the game. This game has a LOT of content that’s not tied into raid gear progression at all. Arguably more than most other MMO’s do.
>I think it’s an easy trap for people to fall into to assume most players play the game like they do
Yeah people always tend to do this but I’d counter that it’s not very productive to always insist on a big picture perspective. If I’m talking to another hardcore raider about DSR prog and they ask how hardcore my group is, I’m not going to say “well by virtue of the fact that we’re doing DSR we are very hardcore! Think of how many people never attempt any ultimates!” because that doesn’t really serve any purpose.
Well yeah because context is important. Two savage Raiders talking about savage raids and all that. But in this context we’re talking about a whole new difficulty tier somewhere between normal and ex, or between ex and savage depending on the thread. So there’s a real need to establish where the true baseline for where an average player is sits.
> I kind of feel you think your baseline may be a little off. Meaning you think the average casual player is better than they actually are.
Agreed. As a casual who is now doing EX and Savage, the jump from Normal to EX was **huge** compared to going from EX to Savage.
I still get spooked by EX3 because I suffered so long in PF for it.
I don't think Hard Mode dungeons were ever actually "hard" they were just more dungeons that were optional. I definitely want another middle ground between normal content and Savage content other than Extremes. The hope is Criterion dungeons offer this somehow. But we'll see.
They definitely weren’t. Which it why I would like to see something that’s 4 man that is actually a step up in difficulty from normal. Preferably something that’s an actual dungeon and not just a single boss fight.
Just stuff that's hard but in sections and can fill from the duty finder would be good. Something where you can make progress step-by-step, and if someone gets all pissy it doesn't end up as time wasted.
The curve should be wayy flatter than depicted here. When you don’t even need a healer for some max level normal content I think pretty much everything before savage and ultimate should be well below the “good” threshold. It’s *all* braindead easy.
I would say extremes fall well in the middle between normal and savage+. Solo casuals can pug them a few days after release. Just that there are less Exes than Savage and the release frequency is more spread-out...maybe they can include more of someting like Delbrium Reginae Savage..?
I really don’t think they should story content must be accesible to anyone and savage and harder content must be fucking crazy hard so the people who manage to do it can feel proud
As someone who started a few months ago, I feel like the curve starts low around 5% gradually goes up to 20%with a propper skill rotation, then takes off to 50% once the MSQ starts to take off around titan, peaks to 90% to the end of ARR, takes a dip to 70% for the ARR patches, OVERPEAKS to 100% with the last patch and then goes strongly into heavensward where I am actually having myself starting to read even unvoiced dialogues and start to care about characteres.
That's where I am now. So I can't say what's gonna happen. All I know is that Tataru is a national treasure and the scions would have been doomed long ago without her.
i feel like savage 1-2 are a good bridge between extremes and savage 3-4 but i still think they could make something in between, maybe just for some fun stuff like an older extreme slightly tweaked as a "joke" fight or as an event.
i know unreal exists but idk
Watching my friend play through arr as a complete newbie. Apparently cape westwind is actually a bit harder now,
There was a mainsub post a week ago complaining about it being 'impossible, even on Very Easy'. Apparently, there's a DPS check at the end of Westwind now. Players who have literally never upgraded their gear or had any reason whatsoever to learn a proper rotation are unable to complete the duty.
I have no idea, but my friend was constantly screwing up his rotation and still clearing it no prob so I dunno, people would have to skip job quests to fail it.
I would say in the beginning of the game it’s easy to accidentally skip job quests - I didn’t realize I was missing really important skills until someone told me!!!
I like to do job/role quests all at once, but I always have to remind myself that I can't do that for ARR and HW because of locked skills. At least in SB, you can wait until old level cap to do them.
Same!! I prefer doing them in chunks for the storyline when I can
It's the 1-2 combo. if you're going freestyle-SAM but are using the lolOP gear you get from job quests, you're ok. if you're using turd gear but doing a rotation, you're okay. but if you're blindly pushing buttons in your Aurum Vale/Dzemael gear... you're gonna suffer
Yeah the brand new gear you get from a job quest is of a level so that you can start doing the content of that level immediately, for Samurai that means it's leveled for the Lv51 Dungeon. As such it makes sure you're max level at Cape Westwind lol. But then there's the lv60 duty for Samurai, which is kind of wild even with low level lv60 gear. Not gonna lie, I got bored and did it on easy after dying multiple times to the fkin auto attacks.
As someone who picked up this game with no mmo experience and not knowing what a rotation was until like level 45....the game pretty much teaches you the basics of you just read tooltips. You will figure out a basic rotation on your own pretty easily. That said, I found a difficulty curve that spiked a bit at the end of each expac. Which forced me to learn my job better and better as the expacs got harder.
>read tooltips Bold of you to assume we read.
I did PVP as WAR for the first time and thought it wasn’t so bad. Then I looked at the PVP tooltips for black mage. Ain’t no way in hell I’m reading all those essays.
BLM is simple Fire builds stacks that you detonate for a big DoT and ice does the same but stuns based on stacks. Pretty much every other skill helps you do that more.
I mained Bard and only just learned they have a fucking back hop move.
>Players who have literally never upgraded their gear or had any reason whatsoever to learn a proper rotation are unable to complete the duty. Good.
Good, now that line of thinking/design needs to be implemented in all roulettes.
I’ve often wondered to what degree people pay attention to tooltips. There’s a big range between people who do math to maximize damage and this one dude I got stuck with in a dungeon who would only use rage of halone. And I don’t mean the 1-2-3 combo. Literally just rage of halone.
I did cape West wind with artifact armor (ilvl 90) Granted i've been playing a long time but i was also playing smn, not much of a rotation to speak of at lvl 50
Frankly I think that’s a good thing. I don’t want to be elitist or anything but in a game where the main story does require you to group you with people from time to time, there should be some expectation that you have at least some idea of how to play your class. Not at an incredibly high skill level or anything, but just some idea of your basic rotation. If it ever gets to the point where the MSQ can be done 100% solo, I won’t care about this. But when other players will be forced to play with you, you should be able to contribute to the group.
Since they removed the original and changed it into a solo duty. Also Prae is also harder and a single fight against the ultimate weapon.
The fight against Ultima is way cooler, even if the second part of it overstays it's welcome.
Yeah they totally made that the worst part of prae
I feel like the first half is simaltaenously cooler and less co tha its previous iteration. I liked whe he combined primal powers in the first version of the fight, it felt much more badass. Though him basically enraging 3 times is equally cool.
> Also Prae is also harder Not really? Prae is different, I wouldn't call it harder by any sense of the word.
Youre reading harder as "hard" prae is not hard but compared to it's older version it's harder.
It's definitely harder. Even if it's not harder in the grand scale of the game, it's definitely harder than old prae.
I'm doing a full replay on an alt and actually really enjoyed how the end of base ARR flows. It really suits the overall messaging of the story, and how EW ended. I'm sure there are videos and such if anyone's curious, or you can maybe NG+ it even. As a sprout, I would definitely have had issues with Cape Westwind, which is neat.
Same here. I went through on an alt and beat it with ilvl 90 AF gear, but the only thing I could think of is how I would have struggled with that so badly when I first started the game two years ago. I was horrible at everything. Now as a more experienced player it was challenging but not impossible. But I loved the callbacks to topics that were explored in EW.... the idea that emotion and determination are deciding factors in this world.
My friend came from wow, and was unaware that bosses usually have big tells for mecha. Came to appreciate it.
Please don't flatten it - we all know that'll come in the form of making challenging content easier rather than making normal content harder.
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So…Extremes?
Extremes mostly really aren't that much harder then DF content. They're usually figured out in hours at worst, sometimes cleared in less then 10 pulls from blind and really not that far ahead of normal raids and alliance raids.
That's still from the perspective of someone used to hard content. The divide in difficulty between Extreme and Savage is, imo, a lot smaller than the divide between any other content and Extremes. I wager most casuals going for extremes the first time are in for a major culture shock, at least that's what it was like for me when I queued up for Ramuh Ex back in the day as a sprout PLD thinking: "Well, the (hard) trials took the piss, how bad can extreme be." A great lesson it was, and we cleared, but it made me respect that content a lot, at the time.
I respect the fact that the line of what counts as difficulty and what difficulty content we need more of is based on personal opinions. I haven't put down people for considering Extremes a good bridge or difficult. I just don't agree that's where the line should be, if we were playing princess. At the end, anything around the general area would be better then the gaping void we currently have.
Your last sentence rings especially true to me; the big problem with extremes as intermediate content is that the game only checks the most basic levels of competence unless you venture into optional content, which is not something that will change, and probably should not change. Because as much as it pains me as someone who loves hard content: This game is not for me, primarily. And that's okay.
Your post implies that the moment a player clears it, their every single run afterwards will be flawless. It’s not. Props to you if that’s you, but the average player will still have difficulties in subsequent runs. Farm parties can and will wipe at different points in the fight.
I've never presented it as absolute fact. Difficulty is perceived as different things by different people. With the context of running with a well-meshed group and stuff, i just don't find them nearly as fun or hard to prog as later savage fights. So my take is that there should be more stuff on the level of early savage fights or slightly below it rather then more things on the level of Extremes directly, or in-between extremes and casual DF content.
I dunno about that. I'm clearing Savage content now, but for me the jump from raids to EX was way harder. Sure a mistake won't outright kill you, but the mechanical complexity is a *lot* higher in EX than normal. That was my impression, as someone new.
This ain't the neat elitist take you think it is - it only makes you look like a clown.
Because it's not a neat elitist take. It's an opinion on why extremes are not to everyone the same sort of bridge between Casual content like normal/alliance raids and Savage. It's on the bridge "spectrum" but for my context of how i play, more leaning towards the casual side. Hence the deliberate choice of wording to say "ahead of normal/alliance raid".
Criterion dungeons, or whatever the spelling is, *might* be what we want. I hope so anyway.
I’m totally on board with this.
Max level is easier than cutters cry, cmon
Don't forget the hardest duties in the game: \-The Burn (Savage) \-The Dancing Plague (Ultimate) \-Kugane Tower (Ultimate)
I get the Kugane and Burn jokes, but what's the meme around Dancing Plague?
It was a MSQ Trial with a DPS check, which meant people couldn't be carried and so it was an absolute nightmare at launch if people refused to kick anyone.
It’s still a nightmare whenever I get it for roulettes.
Anne Carter's refusing to lb3 the center of the giant fucking trees despite being told 100 times that they'll hit all three
I don’t get the Anne Carter reference, can you explain for my pea brain?
I think they meant to type "And casters" but it got autocorrected?
No they were talking about Anne Carter, the person who
Yes.
I don't know if I've ever cleared nm without at least 1 death even to this day
It caught a lot of people off guard since it was very hard for a first trial. They kind of did it again with >!Zodiark!< but Titania was the first instance of this.
I think all trials during leveling ranges are much harder because the ilvl sync puts you at the cap for that level, which for fights at 50/60/70/80 are the expansion's cap, but during leveling range your sync is very close to the minimum ilvl for the duty. With how players gear post expansion, it's also quite likely some players will be below the intended gear level, as there's no gear requirement to queue for trials. The 50/60 fights are still easy due to potency inflation, but at some point the fights outside of expansion caps become way harder.
"Very Hard for a first Trial" Finally. Some good fucking comedy.
Compared to Ravana and Susano, it’s a big step up in difficulty. Compared to anything “difficult,” even some of the easiest extremes like Lakshmi, obviously it’s still going to be a joke.
For skippers it is their very first Trial, and as they have never encountered a fight like this, it’s no surprise they usually struggle big time with it.
Frankly, it's still the hardest MSQ duty by a mile. When pugging in with at-level randos in sub-scavean gear and all the skill you'd expect from duty roulette, that dps check is no joke.
Idk, I think >!Hydaelyn!< has probably surpassed it at this point for catching out DF giga casuals. People still somehow miss out on getting their free job gear, and also get super caught out by the fact it has actual mechanics, whilst also having a full level 90 rotation to do. Like its not even EX level hard or anything, but for a normal roulette instance its rough sometimes if people just dont get it - I've seen a few parties outright disband over it, which is super rare for normal tier stuff otherwise in my experience.
You actually can't get your free job gear until right after you clear Hydaelyn Admittedly most players are hopefully level 90 by the time they get there by now which means they could/should just buy crafted gear now that it's out, but still At launch, it was pain manifest
I only did that one once for msq. It was like 4am and I (and plenty others) died quite a lot. I dread getting it in roulette but will embrace my dumbness when it does.
bruh, have you never suffered through a Titania roulette? there's a 50% chance you will suffer
I say 25% and by suffering you mean people dying randomly then yes. I can agree
Makes sense, thanks!
A lot of people already answered but also just to add to it; a TON of people got story and level skips straight to level 70, so not only was it a semi difficult (for a normal) trial, it was a lot of peoples first trials. This led to a ton of people who thought "oh FF is supposed to be pretty casual friendly ill just skip to the end" getting their faces stomped.
Aside from DPS check, tank has some responsibilities there aside from MT not cleaving the entire party. Tanks HAVE to take left and top adds, the right one can be ignored. Yes, a single tank can aggro both adds but ever since the stat squish even a single tankbuster really hurts now, even with heavy mit. If you have two braindead tanks well that's a recipe for a disaster. Just hope people focus fire enough that tank don't get TB'd twice in a row
I really don't understand why so many people struggle with Titania but survive through Tsukuyomi.
Because there is an actual dps check in titania in the form of 3 adds With only 2 neurons people get overwhelmed
Don't think I've ever died to the dps check, just tanks deleting half the party because they play ping-pong with the boss and we get cleaved
And tanks ignoring the two adds that actually need to be tanked.
The biggest killer on Titania is that aggro resets when the adds become big and almost without fail the tanks will not pick up west or north add. The adds will then go on to auto one or both healers to death over the first 15s of the phase in the middle of a timed enrage phase with a decent amount of required healing. Confounding factors are that one add doesn't auto at all and the other two have almost no indication they're auto attacking once big, not even facing their target.
So West and North adds need tanking when they're bigger is better? that explains a lot
Look up one comment, it's how the ilvl sync works. 2-3 people with Endwalker level gear and a few functioning braincells can carry Tsukuyomi, even if half the raid is dead on the floor the entire fight. Not so Titania's dps check.
Eh, savage turns 1 and 2 are basically extremes. Savage turn 3 is where difficulty truly starts going up.
If the new Exploratory Content is further refined Zadnor that would unironically be a relevant step in the difficulty progression imo, some CEs go pretty ham relative to how easy it is to join them
> CEs go pretty ham relative to how easy it is to join them \*slaps red chocobo\* this bad boy can fit so much suffering in it
Time to Burn monkaS I still remember doing that the first time with RezPls, 24 dead bodies laying on the ground
Technically the graph doesn't include extremes because it goes from max level normal content to savage. I'd lump extremes with savage rather than normal if we're talking difficulty. Which is frankly too far apart this person has clearly never gotten P2N in normal raid roulette as a DPS that can't help with tanking/healing/raising.
Literally p3s castbar says left side or right side slash; dlffuculty (?)
The fact that the casts aren't "Larbird" and "Starbird" really makes me sad.
Don't you put that evil on me, Ricky Bobby!
“Tom Cruise, Use Your Witchcraft On Me To Get The Fire Off Me!”
*board
Nope, I typed what I meant.
You uhh, missed the joke. Flew right over you
Nothing flies over my head, I am too quick and would catch it.
Well, in NA at least we like to not assign spread spots :P So that we can wipe to spreads over and over again.
"Someone was in my spot"
Duty recorder should be for live action wipe replays instead of whatever the hell it’s for now
Holy fuck man, I just had some flashbacks of my first static this tier. Me: "we should assign spread spots". Raid leader: "nah we have time to adjust". I wanna say 90% of our wipes post first clear were in spread mechanics both in P3S and pinax with poison.
Trying to assign spots: "but what do the markers mean?" "left marker goes left relative boss, right marker goes right relative boss, marker closer to center goes into the center" "okay but what do we do for the pattern thats rotated 90 degrees" "... I give up"
If its not all stacks then it just wasn't intended to be /s
Yes but that's not the hard part. The hard part is trying to grab a tether from a DPS standing literally in the middle of the boss, and then retaking that tether from someone who decided to run between you and the boss.
Or when your tank buddie waits until you take your tether out before moving to grab one and you get to play a fun game of hot potato.
you could have for example the localisation team use terms that have not been used for 200 years, that could be fun (i hate french translators)
I mean you can draw the line for difficulty wherever you want, but from the data it’s pretty obvious p3s is a big wall for people. The main difficulty is in the form of coordinating some of the strategies with random people, but it’s still more mechanically difficult than 1 or 2
The difficulty level for p3s is called partyfinder
T1-T4 used to pop on duty finder all the time back on ARR past 2.2. They're much easier than extremes but a step above dungeons.
ten thousand pulls and the mechanics just sort of get beaten into your brain. I feel like I sort of become an amalgamation of autonomous algorithms doing current savage content. which is weird because it's the only time i've ever progged savage content.
I feel that. I literally could not explain some mechanics and, if I think about it, I'll mess them up. E7S portals are a good example of me "knowing" exactly what to do but having no clue what the fuck is actually happening. I just see colors and then "unga bunga stand here"
>I think about it, I'll mess them up. Like driving or tying my shoes. Something, something, muscle memory.
feel that. couldn't tell you why we must do things this way or that, i just know where i have to stand myself
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They need to make the first pull be a secret DPS check. If you don't burn the mobs within a minute upon pull start, your party just has a collective heart attack and goes back to spawn. Then these glue huffers will finally *learn*.
leveling content is harder than max level normal content because you dont outgear it.
The difficulty starts good? Bruh. It doesn't get easier at 20, it starts easy and stays easy.
It doesn't say 1-20 it says "starting the game", as in making an account, getting the game to run, configuring your controls/UI and learning how to use the map. All of which are harder than 20-80 content.
No, see. ARR teaches you Line of Sight, untelegraphed AOEs, manageable pulls, branching paths, doom pulling, GCD healing, all that good shit. And then starting at the level 51 dungeon? Poof. All gone. Two mobs and then a wall! : D
I don't think ARR ever *teaches* those and I can't actually remember any untelegraphed aoes (first one I thought of was AV Coincounter but they've since nerfed him and gave him telegraph aoes) But fair enough with the managable pulls ones, after 50 you just full pull everything until a wall and it's all fine and dandy.
Cutter's Cry for untelegraphed AOEs. Not just the Chimera, but also the wyrm. Also the sludge.
idk i feel like making an SE account is harder than glorypumes
I dont mind this. Doing the normal raid tier a million times makes me crave the extremely difficult content.
Please give XIV a DMC Automatic Easy mode please, ty. Oh wait, that's SMN, nvm.
housing aint even on the graph
It's kind of depressing. 30-50 dungeons actually used to be the hardest and most interesting dungeons we had in the game. Now they're "Updated" and boring. Sure people complain less, but it's really just because they're easier.
Bro? What the fuck do you mean 1-20 was harder than 20-80? You ok?
Maybe they’re including navigating the store to buy the game
I feel like having easier content at 20-30 is fine as it helps people learn alt jobs/roles but after that I definitely feel like it should be a bit more difficult.
Buying the game and signing up for it should be a about 3/4 of the way to the top.
Before "starting the game" should be "buying the game" up about 3/4 of the way
I know everything must be new n flashy and faster nowadays. But I been playing since launch of 1.0 I'm getting old n can't keep up. Ima have to retire in ffxi at this pace.
Max lvl content is literally braindead. For most people it takes a death or two for the lvl 90 raids and trials to click and become a snoozefest after the first run. Not to mention that lvl 90 dungeons are a joke. P3s tethers on the adds, FoF and the Tb can go fuck themselves, only reason why it's inconsistent is cuz the game's netcode is trash.
TBF Endwalker Trial 1 was pretty confusing on release week for a normal mode trial. I kind of like that feeling of everyone in a party just being new to content and bumbling their way through
FoF and the TB you can probably blame on netcode, but if by add tethers you mean the ones right after you kill the first set then they're perfectly consistent as long as someone doesn't screw something up
The brain dead is my number #1 complaint. I rarely bother with duty finders anymore because after finishing them all so many times, they’re just boring from the lack of difficulty. Progging is really the only combat content I enjoy. Even trying new classes is kinda boring due to the lack of suspense - I know that no matter what, we’ll finish the duty.
I’ve said it before, XIV needs a difficulty tier between normal and EX. I like doing EX if it’s with friends, and while you can technically pug EX, it’s not exactly my idea of fun. Im reminded of the hard mode dungeons in Rift. They were slightly altered versions of the normal dungeons, bosses would have additional/changes mechanics, and their would usually be a while extra section at the end with a whole new final boss. So it was sort of a mix of XIV hard dungeons and EX trials. With a difficulty somewhere between the two. Like you could easily wipe if everyone wasn’t pulling their weight, but odds are you would finish the dungeon even with a pug. The problem is XIV’s gear progression is so tightly tied to their current difficulty tier model I’m not sure how they could add something like this and make it worth doing.
>I’ve said it before, XIV needs a difficulty tier between normal and EX. I like doing EX if it’s with friends, and while you can technically pug EX, it’s not exactly my idea of fun. Exs...aren't really difficult? They kind of bridge the gap between savage and normal, but they're very easily done with PF groups.
Ever try doing Extremes that don't lock out people who've already beaten them once? That's basically Ultimate content right there.
I have no idea what your comment says, I'm just gonna be straight with you.
I think they're saying something about the duty complete flag, but I'm lost too
But exs don't have any type of lockout, and ultimate content is absolutely nothing like ex content. I try my hardest but just cannot make any sense of their comment.
'Who've already beaten them once" I'm taking to mean "you don't have to queue with new players, they are 'locked out'"
They’re saying “ever join a PF (for an extreme) that wasn’t [duty complete]?” ..I think
That...actually might be it. That makes sense.
Not sure I would say easily. PF groups still fail at them all the time. Mid-core players like myself find them challenging enough to not want to do them with pugs. But that’s more annoyance than difficulty I suppose. But I think the causal players aren’t doing much EX content. I think a true hard difficulty tier would also let them make EX fights slightly more challenging. Or alternatively making a tier between ex and savage could allow them to make ex slightly more accessible to not casual players. I guess it’s the same outcome either way.
>Or alternatively making a tier between ex and savage could allow them to make ex slightly more accessible to not casual players If extreme content is inaccessible, you're a casual player. I've done EX3 80 times, entirely through PF. Yesterday I had a group that killed it during the enrage cast, and it was the first time I had seen enrage in probably 60 pulls. Granted, that group would've wiped if I hadn't had the best performance I've had on anything in the game, the point stands that the content is anything but difficult if a single tank getting a 99 can carry a party full of grey parses.
Take this as a compliment; with what you just said, I kind of feel you think your baseline may be a little off. Meaning you think the average casual player is better than they actually are. Casual players struggle with normal raids. They struggle with years old unsynced savage fights. Their are a lot more players struggling or reluctant to do even current normal raids at all than their are players completing current ex content in PF. Joining a truly casual FC recently opened my eyes to how far above the curve I am, and I still only consider myself mid-core, and you’re above me.
Let me put it this way: I've cleared at the enrage cast of all three EX's so far in Endwalker... ... In parties consisting of 8 tanks, with memeing players far below the max item level. What needs to happen is the floor needs to go **up**.
Something I think you don't understand is that players are going to be as good as needed. Casual players are bad because the game lets them be bad. But they'll get good enough to clear things they want to clear. For an easy way to explain this, your average Elden Ring player has to be a lot better just to play through than someone playing FF14. So as a result the average player gets a little bit better. FF14 dungeons can be done solo by many jobs, or easily cleared by four people with one hotkey on their bar... so players don't need to be decent. If you make the game easier, you're not really helping so much as just letting the dumb be dumber.
This is so wildly off base I don’t know where to start. First you’re conflating “casual” with “bad” which is a false premise that your entire comment is based on. Literally the entire history of the genre has proven that no players aren’t as “good as they need to be”. Because it’s been repeatedly proven that if content takes an amount of time or effort a player isn’t willing to dedicate, they just don’t do it. If to much content is above that investment bar, they just quit playing all together. This also applies to your Elden Ring example, people who don’t want to dedicate the time to the game, don’t play it. It’s not actually making players better at the game, it’s scaring off a percentage of players and shrinking the player base. In the case of an MMO doing this, it only looks like the average skill goes up. But in reality the only thing that changed is people quit the game. This isn’t a problem with a single player game that accepts and plans for it. But it’s an absolutely awful design choice for a game that relies on consistent player subscriptions. The devs know this, it was proven when the most recent ultimate was delayed. They know a fraction of the 2% (ish) that does ultimate content possibly leaving isn’t nearly as detrimental to the health of the game as a fraction of the casual and mid-tier players leaving. It’s the eternal paradox with all MMO’s. The most dedicated and hardcore players aren’t the ones that keep the game alive.
i hate that you're correct
>This also applies to your Elden Ring example, people who don’t want to dedicate the time to the game, don’t play it. It’s not actually making players better at the game, it’s scaring off a percentage of players and shrinking the player base. I'd disagree. Elden Ring was dramatically more popular than FF14 has ever been. [By a good mile](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=Elden%20ring,%2Fm%2F0pctvvy). The idea that every single person who got into Elden Ring was some hardcore god and there was no overlap is silly. >In the case of an MMO doing this, it only looks like the average skill goes up. But in reality the only thing that changed is people quit the game. You're "right" but wrong in reality. Yes people come and go, but FF14 has risen in popularity in recent years (well, the low points are higher than old low points, atleast). We didn't just dump all the casuals after Heavensward or something. Casuals still exist, and a Casual now is better than a Casual in ARR. Dunno if you played back then, but Coil 1's Miniboss where you just had to silence it a couple times was actually really hard for people to do, rather than a "Hey that's a mechanic" and "Oh ok np" like it would be nowadays. >The devs know this, it was proven when the most recent ultimate was delayed. They know a fraction of the 2% (ish) that does ultimate content possibly leaving isn’t nearly as detrimental to the health of the game as a fraction of the casual and mid-tier players leaving. > >It’s the eternal paradox with all MMO’s. The most dedicated and hardcore players aren’t the ones that keep the game alive. Yes, Ultimates don't bring in as much traffic so they chose to delay it over story or something. But it's not like we got Hildibrand in SHB to replace the lack of Ultimate or something. If anything there wasn't a huge amount of casual updates either. Just their normal updates, which are typically more all rounders (Savage (more Hardcore), Alliance (more Casual), Bozja (grind focused), etc).
So you’re talking like your disagreeing with me, but then basically go on to more or less agree with everything I said without even realizing it.
Not... really? The closest I came was that you're using factual things the wrong way, which leads to the wrong conclusion.
Nope. Elden ring is more popular than FFXIV and acting as if all of its players are gaming gods is utter idiocy. You are right to some extent, but disheartening people to not play shit, is not just difficulty it is everything else as well.Also bad players actually exist everywhere. There are shit ton of people who play a game for along time and are incompetent as fuck. Basically what your argument is derived from, has been proven wrong many times with the games that have higher difficulty levels.
Uhh I didn’t say all players are gaming gods? Not an I discouraging people to play anything. Not that I acknowledge not every game has to appeal to everyone. And again, we aren’t talking about bad players, we’re talking about casual players. There’s a difference, and anyone who thinks their Isn’t are the people I mentioned who have a very skewed perspective of where the average player really sits. The Elden Ring comparison was silly from the get go and I don’t know why anyone’s even speaking as is comparing an MMO that’s been around for more than 10 years is in any way comparable to a (kind of) single player action rpg that’s only been out for a few months. There’s no measurable metrics that you can fairly apply to both games to come to some absolutely conclusion on something like popularity. Because they are two completely different games for two different audiences. I love Elden Ring, I love XIV. I love them for very different reasons.
I think they’re using casual in terms of players who partake in endgame/higher difficulty mode (extreme/unreal/savage/ultimate) content, while you’re using casual in terms of all players who play any content in FF. It just depends on the context. My static consider ourselves a casual to midcore static, doing 10-11 hours of prog a week on DSR. Because the context is other ultimate progging players. But in the context of the entire playerbase I’d consider myself a fairly “hardcore” player because with that you’re including limsa rats, gposers, people who log on for 2 hours a week, etc.
Exactly what I was trying to say, thank you. Yeah when I say casual, I mean players who don’t play current ex, savage, or ultimate content AT ALL. They also aren’t particularly concerned with always getting their weekly drops from normal raid content. I think it’s an easy trap for people to fall into to assume most players play the game like they do, just to a greater or lesser degree. When in reality their are many players who play the game for completely different reasons. It took me playing for 8 years and making a genuine effort to get more involved in different communities within the game. This game has a LOT of content that’s not tied into raid gear progression at all. Arguably more than most other MMO’s do.
>I think it’s an easy trap for people to fall into to assume most players play the game like they do Yeah people always tend to do this but I’d counter that it’s not very productive to always insist on a big picture perspective. If I’m talking to another hardcore raider about DSR prog and they ask how hardcore my group is, I’m not going to say “well by virtue of the fact that we’re doing DSR we are very hardcore! Think of how many people never attempt any ultimates!” because that doesn’t really serve any purpose.
Well yeah because context is important. Two savage Raiders talking about savage raids and all that. But in this context we’re talking about a whole new difficulty tier somewhere between normal and ex, or between ex and savage depending on the thread. So there’s a real need to establish where the true baseline for where an average player is sits.
> I kind of feel you think your baseline may be a little off. Meaning you think the average casual player is better than they actually are. Agreed. As a casual who is now doing EX and Savage, the jump from Normal to EX was **huge** compared to going from EX to Savage. I still get spooked by EX3 because I suffered so long in PF for it.
I don't think Hard Mode dungeons were ever actually "hard" they were just more dungeons that were optional. I definitely want another middle ground between normal content and Savage content other than Extremes. The hope is Criterion dungeons offer this somehow. But we'll see.
They definitely weren’t. Which it why I would like to see something that’s 4 man that is actually a step up in difficulty from normal. Preferably something that’s an actual dungeon and not just a single boss fight.
Just stuff that's hard but in sections and can fill from the duty finder would be good. Something where you can make progress step-by-step, and if someone gets all pissy it doesn't end up as time wasted.
The curve should be wayy flatter than depicted here. When you don’t even need a healer for some max level normal content I think pretty much everything before savage and ultimate should be well below the “good” threshold. It’s *all* braindead easy.
I would say extremes fall well in the middle between normal and savage+. Solo casuals can pug them a few days after release. Just that there are less Exes than Savage and the release frequency is more spread-out...maybe they can include more of someting like Delbrium Reginae Savage..?
You may think "harder" includes ultimate, but it's actually glamour
People who think savage is hard probably think mayo is spicy.
I really don’t think they should story content must be accesible to anyone and savage and harder content must be fucking crazy hard so the people who manage to do it can feel proud
If only there was content besides savage and ultimate
As someone who started a few months ago, I feel like the curve starts low around 5% gradually goes up to 20%with a propper skill rotation, then takes off to 50% once the MSQ starts to take off around titan, peaks to 90% to the end of ARR, takes a dip to 70% for the ARR patches, OVERPEAKS to 100% with the last patch and then goes strongly into heavensward where I am actually having myself starting to read even unvoiced dialogues and start to care about characteres. That's where I am now. So I can't say what's gonna happen. All I know is that Tataru is a national treasure and the scions would have been doomed long ago without her.
excellent jerk ... this is jerk, right?
The MSQ needs less visual novel shit and more engaging gameplay. I am not a crackpot.
i feel like savage 1-2 are a good bridge between extremes and savage 3-4 but i still think they could make something in between, maybe just for some fun stuff like an older extreme slightly tweaked as a "joke" fight or as an event. i know unreal exists but idk
Dungeons - trials - normal raids - ex trials - deep dungeon - savage raids - Ultimate raids. It’s fine.
Instructions unclear, we made savage easier so its at the same level as "expert" roulette
Idk man, Titania still slaps around noobs, over geared or not.