A common painpoint of FFXIV is the difficulty of casual content. But is it fixable at all?
Videos to watch next:
Worqor Zormor soloed on stream: https://youtube.com/live/kO9YWaea_Hg
Is Tenacity STILL bad: https://youtu.be/_UZwJphHnMQ
Is it STILL always Crystal Tower: https://youtu.be/dcvSvvnGCCw
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Music Used:
FFXIV Dawntrail – Starless Skyline
#ffxiv #dawntrail
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:47 Warriors and Soloing Duties
02:05 Tanks Soloing for a Captive Audience
03:26 Is Casual Content Difficulty Wrong? Or are some Jobs tuned Wrong?
10:56 How about Making it harder to Solo content?
15:16 Outro
15:57 Fun Fact
source
Things aren’t really any harder than Endwalker, I don’t think. There’s two fights with poorly-understood, slightly griefy mechanics that interact poorly with ping. That’s… Kinda it?
Why not just have players auto-revive after 2 minutes if no one else can get them up?
To be honest, I feel like the only reason the game feels easy to me is because:
1. I have XIV brainrot and slowly remember content as I do it
2. Item level sync is not the best.
Remember Cape Westwind? The duty people remembered for lasting all of 10 seconds if people screwed around? That fight was originally designed for i60 because that was about where most people were with their old relic armor. We were synced to 120 for that, and that gear is so much better (Unaugmented Ironworks) that people never experienced a lot of mechanics in that fight. My whole issue with item level sync is that it isnt done well for powercrept content. For the most part, we hit so hard and have such high numbers compared to when content was current, that you stomp older content by virtue of potency increases not seeming to scale down with your gear. Fights that would teach mechanics just die because we still hit like trains even sync'd in comparison to when the content was current (pretty sure there are people who remember Xenoglossy getting over a 200 potency increase in Endwalker).
The only way I can think of to make dungeons even remotely challenging without being super overbearing is to reduce potencies for content to match what it was in that content while it was current while also making gear scale in the same way. For people that think the content is too hard, now…that's more complicated. We would need to know if they are struggling due to a lack of knowledge, a bad PC (like mine when I started back in '13) or something else. I feel like it also hurts the situation by learning many mentors have just played a lot, but they arent very good. They can't really teach because they unsynced a lot of content and never saw a 5th of an EX and they might not remember older dungeons (which, many people don't. I only remember things because of brainrot :D). I feel like we need something we can access on the fly that gives a short video demonstration of how a basic version of a mechanic works, like in, I think it was DFO, where you see a short video clip that shows what a skill does in combat before you decide to invest in it (I hope that was DFO, it was something I've played)…that way people don't need to remember fights they did over 5+ years ago. You could even make it so that if, after a single wipe or multiple hits of the same mechanic, something pops up that you can click on and a small video plays showing how that mechanic works. Honestly, I really don't think we can fix dungeon difficulty without brand new solutions that XIV might not be capable of.
I am literally the laziest gamer and I can say, dawntrail dungeons are easy. You can stand there, do nothing, avoid aoe, let npc's do all the work. You can rp walk in dungeons and avoid most aoe that way. I have two alts that aren't in dawntrail yet, one rp walks everywhere and the other is a gladiator. I'm currently going through msq to see how truly easy/hard dungeons and trials are. So far it's been literally too easy.
anyone that finds these new dungeons too hard, either needs to look up some videos and practice or play dps and be carried, these dungeons are not remotely difficult enough for people to be leaving them if they get them
Ok middle ground. Crank the level cap dungeons difficulty through the roof and add a hard dungeon roulette for them and have the X.0 and previous dungeon stay in leveling roulette
Also make normal trials a bit harder. Just hard enough for there be a risk of wiping if the dps eat aoes constantly
Yeah ngl, when I get A4 I think it is, the one where the boss fight is just fighting a bunch of adds. I will leave as soon as I load it. I'd rather take the 30 minute penalty than deal with the tedium that is that fight.
As for DT content. I honestly like that they made the fights a little bit more challenging. "Casual" or not, you shouldn't be able to just face roll the entire thing. Some attention should be paid. Though the 1st boss in Dreamborough is BS with the grabs.
Also, there is no solution that is going to make everyone happy.
The problem is being able to solo a boss when the rest of the group wipes is one of the few times tanks get to feel like they got an epic moment. So taking that away from tanks is just going to make tanking feel a little worse overall. Also not everyone has an issue with it. I've gotten people praise me for soloing a boss from 70% as a tank. I've also gotten people annoyed at it. Not to mention that PLD and WAR can both heal other party members pretty efficiently if they know how. So a good tank may end up just healing 1 dps through a fight rather than wiping and resetting.
ffxiv has a thing that i say a lot about but many people seem to not pay attention to at all. the game focuses a lot on learned ease rather than actual difficult stuff (outside of savage and ultimates) doing a duty for the first time might catch you off guard here and there or contain a mechanic that once you learn how to handle it becomes trivially easy, it's only easy because you learned how to deal with it, if you've ever met one of those people who after a grueling and difficult fight in any video game just turns around and goes "easy peasy didn't even break a sweat" (unironically) that's what you're doing if you call ffxiv easy.
this phenomenon is most clear and easy to spot on fromsoft players who die a million times to a boss, and after they learn all the patterns and know the fight inside and out they say the game is easy.
There people who think dawntrial dungeons are too hard?, like actual people who play the game?
The make everyone happy solution: roll job design back to stormblood and then IMPROVE upon it instead of lobotomising it.
This is a direct consequence of the ShB design they're IMO quadrupling down on: with 0 depth in the jobs themselves, all of the depth and complexity has to come from the encounters instead.
Without people self-selecting a comfortable level of complexity between content and their preferred job, you get the current situation where they are both overwhelmed (lol) and bored out of their minds.
Honestly i don't really care if the game is too hard or too easy. As long as i'm having fun and i can play in whatever way i want to then i'm good.
Doesn't sound like a problem to me, if your tanking the ground while the tank solos the boss, it's amessage to the dead party to get gud.
But if the complaining continues maybe give tanks a revival ability, I'd like to see paladin get rudimentary conquer spells back, give em raise.
Rather see the opposite happen in roulette dungeons. Instead of the boss enraging to kill the tank, the solo tank would recieve an echo effect after 90 secs of being the only remaining player alive to increase their dps. Lately people dont want a reset when asked. The party would rather the tank just finish the fight even if it takes 5-10 min so why not speed it up.
What is even the prevalence of the last section situation?
You know thinking about this there is a really easy solution. The problem is not that tanks are too strong, not that healers are too weak, it's that healers have no safety net to catch them in case of failure. There is plenty of places where you just don't need a healer, good use of personal defensives, mitigations and whatever party heals jobs happen to have is enough to kill most dungeon bosses with healer on the floor and all the dps surviving till the end.
The solution to that problem is so simple, give tanks an rezz action that can be used only in normal content and only targeting healers so in case healer falls, a tank can bring them back into the play, kind of like duty action in Criterion. It'd not ruin integrity of the game as harder content would have the action disabled and it's not like casuals would be mad that instead of wiping or watching from the beyond they could jump back in to the fight.
I really enjoyed soloing M1N, it'd make me sad to see them give a bunch of bosses enrages or damage increases specifically to prevent soloing.
Personally I'd prefer they add a comeback mechanic where if you're dead for over two minutes but the fight is still going on, you auto resurrect.
This delayed auto-rez should only be in dungeons I think. It solves the problem of people being bored watching a tank solo the boss for 10+ minutes. It doesn't punish the surviving players who can now effectively save others. You have to sit out for 2 minutes so it does give you time to reflect on your mistake or possibly notice how the surviving players handle mechanics correctly.
I don't think it would honestly make dungeons much easier. And it would take some pressure off of healers whose deaths sometimes signal the end of a fight.
I had a situation with Zodiark where everyone but one tank wiped due to half of us getting swept off the arena including both healers, and the tank just won the fight like a giga-chad. I feel like I don't deserve to even know who Wuk Lamat is because Zodiark was killed by someone other than my Lalafell. XD
There is no way to please everyone the jobs are way too overturned and so is gear. Mechanics are actually okay they’re just not punishing enough. Healers aren’t required to heal and tanking hasn’t been a “job” since they removed threat were just dps who use shield cooldowns change any of that and the game isn’t for casuals anymore there’s more casual gamers than hardcore so they are doing what’s best for the majority of the audience they want/have
I am going to be honest. I don't get significantly more reward from the trial roulette for doing these hard dt trials. It is just not worth it. So l save it as the last thing l do before l get off, And If l get dt trial, l just leave right away thus effective nullify the leaver penalty.
Im not typically smart enough to come up with a solution to these sorts of problems; typically if I "fail" content in ffxiv, I always assume its a "me issue" and that I can improve somewhere. Unless its blatantly obvious someone else is dragging down the team, Im more than willing to engage with more difficult content for the sole purpose of bettering myself
I'm a pretty new player (started playing around December of 2023) and there were absolutely many times where the party ignored or skipped mechanics because our gear or even the players in the party were too good. When I reached Endwalker (when it was still current, albeit very late in the patch cycle) it was a bit of a wake-up call, as the gear syncing was much less forgiving. I will say that I do enjoy the added challenge of the Dawntrail dungeons and trials though. Tender Valley is my favorite.
The tank bit seems like a complicated issue, as my understanding is that they balance classes around current Savage content. It seems like there will always be some classes that are overtuned in casual content, even if they perform reasonably in Savage. (Pictomancer seems like one non-tank example; that dungeon DPS is insane with all the downtime you get.) I agree that the "vote reset" is probably the best option, and they should limit it to one vote every several minutes and/or limit it to just a couple uses per instance.
I think many people are too used to bring carried at the lower levels, they level up too quickly and don't learn the mechanics. Then you have boosted accounts. Had a scholar for Atheiascope who ran away with the stack marker on the first boss and didn't shield us, claimed it was the first time they had seen that mechanic…
I have been thinking that they should bring back Hard dungeons. The ones in ARR to seperate those who are looking for a casual vs. engaging experience.
I feel like rather than a button to vote for a wipe, do the opposite – add in a button that allows you to vote to empower the last remaining character.
That way if it's a skill problem and you get stuck, and one of the players is willing and able to "hero" it solo, you can buff them to just get it done faster. It feels like that way you can maintain the difficulty, but then give options for people who struggle/want a break/are chilling to just have a "get me out of this dungeon faster" button without leaving.
People could end up relying on it, but I feel like theyd also be the ones relying on strong healers/tanks/dps anyway
The game put itself in its own jail.
Dungeons and normal mode trials are designed in such a way that your mistakes don't let you learn from it.
Boss casts a raidwide and there is no mitigation? No problem, it just does 70% and one Earthly Star heals everyone to full.
Tank buster? Why mitigate, it doesnt even kill you.
People not syncing raidbuffs and doing a decent rotation? No problem, there is no enrage.
Two people hugging each other with a spread mechanic? No problem, doesnt kill you.
The game literally teaches people to be bad.
Another issue us that it is impossible to learn the game without using external resources like FFlogs or class guides on the Balance Discord. There is no ingame Death Recap and the combat log is utterly useless. So a lot if the time, you cant even determine why your group died…
How will the average player know "What is the optimal way to play my class" without any way to figure out which gear to wear or how to sequence your abilities? Even 90% of the Ultimate Raiders literally have no idea and copy what the Balance or Icy Veins tells them to do. That's just crazy.
For example I am a BRD main. There is a 0.0% Chance I would have EVER figured out the optimal opener myself. Even if I did SSS for 30 days in a row. FFXIV does not have an equivalent to simcraft, no DPS Meter, not even a way to tell how valuable your raidbuffs are. We're all in the spreadsheet and logs jail together. Both casuals and high end raiders. It is a general game design problem. The game offers you a challenge, but not the tools to aquire the knowledge to beat it. So what do you do? Fflogs or bust. Copy a spreadsheet opener or bust.
Honestly, I'm in the too hard camp. Or perhaps the right term would be too complicated? Too overwhelming?
I have studied the classes I main. I know exactly what they can do. I have cleared, afaik, every dungeon, every normal raid(except Arcadion), and every alliance raid. So I don't want it said that I don't engage with the content.
Anyroad, I think the difficulty with DT dungeons is that there is simply too much going on, and not enough time to parse it all, let alone avoid it, and the punishment for failing to do so is very harsh. In some instances there is so much to pay attention to that I simply have to stop attacking to focus on the mechanic.
I know that the design concept is to have a boss do mechanic A, then mechanic B, then mechanic C, and then go on to do A+B, or A+C, or B+C, but in Dawntrail it feels more like A, B, C, D, and E. And every single one of them hit like a truck, or in some cases just straight up insta kill you in some fashion. And it doesn't help that some of those mechanics are behind you, or off in Narnia, or obscured by the flood of effects going on at the same time, and I don't just mean player effects, because I know you can turn those off.
I think sensory overload is at the core of this for some people. Myself included. I don't think some of these mechanics would be quite so hard if the general fight environment wasn't so busy. If there weren't so many effects going off at once. In focusing on doing my opener, rotation, and reopener, while also focusing on the mechanics, while also focusing on my party(since I do play classes that focus on the party as well), I can be very, very quickly overwhelmed.
I play FF14 to get away from the increasingly worse hell IRL. I don't do EX trials. I don't do savage raids. I don't do ultimates. I don't do any of that simply because I get enough challenge just making it through the day. Now I can't even do that. And when I do end up floor tanking, I don't get support or encouragement, I get people calling me bad. I get people wondering how someone could have trouble with FF14 because it's such an easy game. I'm so tired of hearing how easy FF14 is, when for people like me it's very clearly *not*!
Another issue about tanks soloing a boss that might get ignored is the effect it would have on the people doing the dungeon for the first time depending on the MSQ point of the dungeon, the last thing people would want while being hyped up for the final boss is to lay dead for 5 minutes doing nothing on the duty before it.
How about a "story mode" for MSQ dungeons and trials? Enemies have lower health, you can't go below 1 HP, there are no wipe mechanics, and you get the same rewards as doing it unsynced. Make it a toggle that doesn't get reset when you log off so hyper-casuals can turn it on once and never worry about it again. Story mode and normal mode would have separate queues and optional content would not be available in story mode. Squeenix can then continue their current Dawntrail design and no one gets locked out of story because there will be no fail state.
Guild Wars 2 kind of does this. NPCs will always revive you if you're downed/dead and if your DPS is low, they will carry you through most story instances. As a result, even the worst players are able to finish the story and "participate" in end-game content.
something that truly frustrated me was levelling roulette as a melee DPS. i found myself in Skydeep Cenote, level 95. the run went absolutely fine until the final boss, Maulskull. the few hits we took on the first two bosses were fine, we could just heal it off. suddenly the healer is launched clean off the platform, and we cant heal it off anymore. the tank was not good enough to keep himself up, and the two DPS couldnt finish the job.
and theres nothing we can do about it. we told the healer how to dodge the fists, but they couldnt dodge all of them. we told the healer to use surecast to stop the big blue circle knockback, but that wont save them if they stand in it and take a million damage. even if that worked once, it happens too often, they cant stop all of them, they need to know how to angle themselves to survive it! which we can explain that as well, but they couldnt do it, and away they went.
the only options left after the 4th or 5th wipe were to votekick the healer, which failed, and vote abandon, which also failed. so i chose to leave.
is it too hard? i dont think so. i enjoy savage and ultimate raids. i think DT dungeons are fantastic! is it too easy? i also dont think so! i genuinely think theyve nailed it. i dont know how they could make dungeons easier so literally anybody can clear them while also keeping them engaging enough that people enjoy doing them.
i guess they could make less unavoidable damage attacks like tankbusters and stacks, remove them entirely, and make more dungeons use knockbacks, death-walls, and Twice Come Ruin debuffs. even a DPS could solo a dungeon if they simply had to avoid all of the damage. they could make more bosses like the Magus Sisters in Tower of Zot, with orange AOEs in various shapes and sizes all over the everywhere! …but you can just dodge it. all of it. and if the healer goes down… who cares? just dodge it.
I think for me how hard is duty depends of tank, with good tank it's super easy, with someone who doesn't use mitigation I wish healers had ability to throw them back to ARR
One issue I have with 4 man content specifically is that it feels like the healer isn't allowed to make mistakes. A dps goes down? They get rezzed and the fight takes a little longer. The tank eats a mechanic? They just laugh it off and add another vuln stack to their collection. But if the healer messes up and dies you'd better hope you brought a caster with raise or they're going to be out the rest of the fight. And that often means either the tank soloing or the party wiping.
If there were more ways to come back from a healer mistake then you could have dungeons that are mechanically challenging and engaging while still being somewhat accessible. I think something like a "Phoenix Down" duty action to revive a player would go a long way here. It would just need to have some penalty that prevents it from being abused like a long recast timer shared by the whole party, a limit gauge cost, limiting it to one use per fight, or similar.
They're not difficult in my opinion.
i think the content is easy. i have someone in my fc who can't even complete dungeons with npcs and thinks the msq isn't casual at all. i think the skill base of the community includes just way too many people tbh.
just from my worlds nn alone there are like 20 people who refuse to do low level content sync'd and constantly ask to have a mentor do it for them. one person at level SIXTY admitted he didnt know how to use duty finder because of that. i think for regular content at least you should have to do it once normally so that way people have to learn mechs instead of watching a friend do it and being lost when they get onto level.
Unrelated to this video, but if you do another myth buster video, you should look into chocobo healing! I've seen people say to not take the Medica skill from the choco tree since it can hinder its healing with a weaker heal.