Is FFXIV too Hard in Dawntrail? A Discussion 

As a pure casual who don't even do extreme trials, this level of difficulty is really appreciated. It's fun to continue playing these content over and over, and it's also fun to see people fail initially then overcome them eventually by themselves.

One of my best dungeon experiences was Halatali(Hard) when 4 sprout first timers (including me) had to figure out what was going on with that boss where you had to pull a lever to create a temporary damage reduction field, otherwise all but the tank would get 1-shot, maybe 2-shot. So we just started talking, figuring stuff and timings out and we were able to continue after like 3-4 wipes. That was one of the first experiences that made me realize I'll like this whole MMO thing. So overcoming difficoulties as a team can be a greatly rewarding experience, as long as we respect and help each other along the way.

My qualm with the original post that started this is that it sounds like OP expects to not die in normal mode content. They don't mention wiping, just dying multiple times leading to them not wanting to do the normal mode raids. The normal mode content still comes across as being able to be zombied through any fight (as in you could wall yourself and the party will clear just fine without you). This might reflect a difference in expectations where most raiders will judge difficulty by "how hard it is to clear as a group" where as someone casual like this is only used to difficulty being a scale of "how hard is it to not die to mechanics".

It’s not. Casuals have to get better. Simple 😴

The only, ONLY part of Dawntrail that I have considered "too hard" is that first Strayborough boss, not because the mechanic is too difficult but because the hitboxes on the enemies and the obnoxious ping of this game make it difficult not to get stunlocked without avoiding uptime by a large margin.

I feel like the OP doesn’t see how ironic it is to complain about how in the second normal fight they died constantly and didn’t want to be raised then say you cleared trial 1 after a while but it doesn’t really count because some players died a lot

Honestly the thing about wiping when you die once in Trusts is a HUGE issue. Some people exclusively or near-exclusively play using Trusts, and a lot of people like that do so because they think they're bad at the game and see Trusts as "easier" or at least less stressful than playing with real people. The fact that those people, who are already stressed out about being bad at the game, are punished so severely for making entirely normal first-time mistakes is a huge misstep in terms of design. Not only is dying to mechanics the first time you see them pretty normal, it can also make learning the mechanic easier. Once you're dead you can start watching mechanics go off without needing to worry about your rotation or position, so you get a more "bird's eye" view of them and can start to understand them. You also sometimes need a few seconds at least to look around and process what exactly killed you, which is hard to do if you're immediately sent to a black screen and respawned. It's also just really annoying - you have a healer NPC right there, why can't they rez you?

I genuinely believe people do not read what the boss is casting or really look physically at the boss. They are looking at their rotation constantly even after 100s of hours. You can blow up the boss cast bar and put it above your rotation but people need to look at the boss. Look at them and the floor. Stop your rotation and observe what is happening if you can't do your rotation without your eyes glued to it. In dawntrail I have seen exactly one mechanic I think is bad and I'm pretty sure its a latency issues and its the dolls jumping on you.

I thought this current normal raid tier was AMAZING. It was engaging and fun, and not too hard imho. I remember Edenverse Titan, dying to that 11 times my first go around, but I only died like once or twice within the DT normal raids. It was due to the actual genuine desire to learn and improve and it showed! Also, I thought the Visual Tells are amazing and it never felt unfair.

Every player should already know this: failure is the greatest teacher. None of us want to fail, but if we can't accept failure, how can we ever learn?

As a filthy casual, the mechanics are not difficult. The telegraphs are simply new. We just have to get used to them, thats all.

Very well said. I think it's worth pointing out that part of the nasty negative reaction to this post is because the majority of players that wanted this from DT finally got it, only to see a handful of people complain that it's too much, and they're terrified that the devs will then react to that and not keep going this way. I don't think that will happen, but I think that's partly why people have reacted so strongly right now.

I said this in another video but there's two way to answer this. "calm down. The expansion is not even a month old" (the nice way) "adapt or wait for catch up gear" (the acceptance mean way)

It’s sad to see people unwilling to learn from their mistakes and enjoy progressing through the myriad of enjoyable mechanics.

I had a forty minute trial roulette as I got sucked into the Lv. 99 trial and there was no escape from it (thank goodness I went as SMN for the raise). Is it harder? It *feels* harder, but I think people need to understand that everyone's gear is suboptimal and so damage is just higher. You can survive one mechanic, but being double-tapped is usually a death. And that's fine! People are used to popping into roulettes and clearing clean, which is why you see some people auto-leave Orbonne or the Nier raids because they view them as spicy and just take their business elsewhere. I think more than anything else I think this has just exposed the chronic lack of confidence in the playerbase to make mistakes. I don't think people want the game to be easier for its own sake, they want the game to be easier so they don't die in front of people, waste people's time, etc. It's why people don't queue as healer; if a BRD dies, who even notices, but a loss of a healer is big especially with the current damage output. That's not a healthy attitude to have, and it's sad in a way. Don't know what the solution is as well, I think the game difficulty is fine. First clears are always spicy, then you learn and hopefully get better.

The teacup is incredibly simple the moment you realize how it works. There is never a need to follow both, they will always appear in the same way in regards to each other, so Just look where they are, then decide to follow one. If you know where that one is, you know where the other one is based on the one you follow. The first boss is pure chaos though, absolutely hate that one lol. Edit: The first boss zombies running around have actually been shown to be unfair at multiple instances, as their hitbox is either deceptively big, or not at the same spot as the actual model of the enemy. Is it still managable? 100%, is it really annoying at time? 100% xD

In the words of a wise Omnic from Overwatch: Failure is acceptable, giving up is not.

my friend and i were doing the 3rd dungeon and the healer and other dps was struggling with the last boss we wiped like 6-7 times b4 they wanted to just leave the dungeon because they felt bad but we told them its ok the game was about learning and we were fine keeping them we started explaining mechanics to them and i stoped using abilities like anti knockbacks so they could just follow me we ended up killing the boss after 2 more attempts they were so happy we dident abandon them and they learned the fight!

This person really didn't make themselves look good on the complaints either. If you're struggling, that's fine. Expac's new and this is a bit of a step up from EW content. However, a comment they put in after some people were talking boils down to "I've been playing the game a while, I know what I'm doing." It just seemed very contradictory to what they were complaining about because as to what they described was happening doesn't seem like they truly know what they were doing.

I've seen tanks not use their mitigation, dps not using the tools that can help them survive and overall sloppy play (I'm a healer main so I watch those health bars). These bad habits have settled in because there hasn't been any reason to USE them effectively.

I had a group in M4 of this raid tier wipe several times while we were running it. I had done it once before and was helping a friend through it. The bit about making sure to help people are struggling is so true, I offered what support I could, used my tank sustain to help keep the party alive if the healers were struggling, and even donned the dorito to lead the party through some of the mechanics that were tripping them up. And after a bit, we did actually manage to clear! That win felt so much more rewarding than my original clear, because of the collective effort we put in to get there. I’m having a ton of fun with DT so far and I can’t wait to see where it goes

I found it funny when a friend was like "the game is the easiest its been since ARR" and im like ???? Did we play the same Dawntrail?? I havent been this satisfyingly challenged in normal content before, ever.

I enjoyed watching this and I think you have achieved a good and balanced take. I think your closing comments are most important and definitely resonate with me the most - more experienced players need to be helpful and kind, and less experienced players need to be open to that help and be patient too. I hope they continue with this direction of battle content, and that the people struggling can overcome it in their own time to see just how fulfilling it is to beat a challenge that isn't just a walk in the park.

The only issue I have with difficulty is the unclear hitboxes on the moppets on the first boss in Strayborough. Everything else is fine. They could fix the main issue by making the hitboxes on those moppets perhaps a bit behind their hands instead of seeming to reach ahead, as it can feel like you'd dodged only to have them turn around and hop at you from yalms away.

Hi there, I'm one of the people who posted one of the threads venting about dungeon difficulty you showed on screen (mine was the one about healer-specific struggles with learning the content) While a lot of people did take things too far and make fun of me in that thread and i felt bad about even venting my frustration, especially in the comments of a now-deleted unlisted video i posted in said thread to show me struggling with the fight. I even got past the boss i was struggling with, and i made an effort to apoligize. I was only venting, because, as a healer, I feel sometimes that certain toxic parts of the community treats mistakes as if it's NOT okay. The whole reason i vented aboutt he dungeon difficulty was because of toxicity from party members regaurding wipes caused from me as a healer simply not being quick enough or too focused in trying to improve my uptime whichi've been struggling with improving since Endwalker when i was trying and failing to break into harder content, and the vitrolic angry responses to my venting made me feel that my failures weren't okay, that it's all my fault, and that i feel like because i can't hack it or improve enough, i felt like giving up, because people were judging my performance so hard, going as far as to looking up my endwalker raid logs, mocking how many wipes i had to "easy" raid bossess, mocking my struggling with using my abilities quickly and watching the party list while also paying attention to boss telegraphs (the boss in question was the arm telegraphs of the first boss of origenics) I started just doing it with trusts because i was scared of being yelled at again, being told i'm wasting people's time, and another vote abandon. And the response from the thread and that now deleted video was i wasn't earnestly struggling, I was "trolling". But, the truth of the matter is, I do regret some of the things i did say because i was defensive, and for venting in the first place and posting a video that made me an easy target to pick on. I WANT to improve, I want to take part in the social activity in raiding, i was upset for being stuck on a dungeon for several days because... i want to get through the msq so i can have another chance to suceed in endgame groups where i so throughly failed in endwalker. But I was venting in frustration because i felt like I didn't know HOW to improve, until some people chimed in not to make fun of me, but offer more fair and honest advice, not couched in a bunch of "skill issue, you better quit because i don't want you griefing groups with how bad you are" takes. And for what it's worth i eventually did make it through with trusts, when i was able to calm myself down, ignore the more toxic people and listen to the people who were trying to explain what i needed to work on in a ay that was less...intense, i suppose. Some people did say i shouldn't have just wiped with trusts for so long, that a party of actual people would've been able to help me even if i was on the floor, but that experience of being yelled at over wipes was why I was just sticking with trusts, because i was scared of failing with other players around, especially because especially in dungeons, healers are judged more harshly for struggling than most. Especially given most of my mistakes seemed to be centered around tunnel vision on my buttons and stressing over having good uptime and healing/shielding "enough" and less on watching for telegraphs and moving in time. Especially because i desperately wanted to improve my uptime and amountof casts from how bad it was, especially when i i panic and feel like i can't press buttons during mechanics i need to move for, because i struggle with being able to always be casting AND avoiding everything. It might be that i'm STILL struggling with finding good hotkeys for myself that would allow me to press buttons faster without having to look at my hotbar or the party list more than i'm looking at what the boss is doing or situational awareness. I vented aboutt he difficulty, i thought it was just different and alienating compared to past expansions msq content, but the reason i vented.... is because me struggling was causing people to be angry with me... and i was just scared everyone would just hate me forever for never being able to measure up the the standards the game itself has for me, let alone players who are better than me. I hope this has been an informative read of my side of this, not all the people who vented just want the devs to nerf everything...

Before they make an intermediate hall they need to revamp the novice hall. 2 things that I don’t remember being covered are the indicator that a boss can be interrupted and just how to use esuna in general (both what it does and how to recognize to use it). Those are essential elements of tank and healer gameplay that can easily be misunderstood or just never learned. There are some core gameplay elements such as those that I think need to be actually taught before an intermediate hap.

This has legitimately been the most fun I've had mechanically (in terms of PvE) with an FFXIV since Stormblood, as someone who doesn't consider myself very good at the game and who has never had enough time or dedication to do anything resembling progging.

I'm a dedicated raider in xiv, and going into Dawntrail, I was expecting this to be the expansion where I quit the game. In Endwalker I wasn't having fun with any content besides ultimate, and with the graphics update being very unkind to my WoL's face, I expected to lose what little attachment I had left to the game. Dawntrail surprised me with its content, and I couldn't be happier with it, but it's not just because I can no longer sleep through normal mode encounters. It's because, now more than ever, I get to encounter players who are struggling and act as a guide and mentor, explaining mechanics, providing encouragement, and bonding over success. On my first run of M3, my DF group wiped 5 times in the last 10-20% of the boss, and between each pull everyone was cheering on the healers who were struggling to stay alive until they finally made it through. Moments like that are why I play xiv, and they just didn't exist in the era where max level dungeons were easier than the ones in ARR. Even with my extremely mixed feelings on DT as a whole, its those moments of community bonding that are going to get me through. I hope the devs don't overreact to the criticism, because they've hit something truly special with the content this time around.

DT isn't hard, people are just too use to the easiness of EW.

One of the posters you covered touched on an important point that I think may be at the crux of this: the game _never_ teaches you about the difference between the telegraph and the attack VFX, and where the snapshot is, or that snapshotting AoEs is even a thing. No where in the entire new player experience, nor anywhere explicit in the game, is that mentioned or pointed out, to my knowledge. In fact, that Active Help system doesn't even _reference_ the concept of telegraphs. It has 4 separate sections for your chocobro, but not a single one on telegraphs, much less snapshotting. Honestly, the game doesn't even make it super clear through _gameplay_ that snapshots are a thing, especially when you have mechanics that have atypical snapshotting, and especially when those occur early on (good example is the floating eyeball boss in The World of Darkness. His gaze attack snapshots when the animation goes up, about a second _after_ the cast bar finishes). Unless actually _told_, or they are good at noticing _other players_ walk into the VFX after the telegraph disappears (and don't chalk that up to latency, and actually notice those players didn't get hit), players aren't going to know, organically through playing the game, that the end of the telegraph is the keyframe for determining if you get hit. And a lot of the new dungeon and raid mechanics are actually quite easy, and still rather forgiving, _unless_ you're waiting for the VFX to finish resolving before ending the area, in which case there are a number that are incredibly punishing. So that strikes me as a pretty significant flat in all of this. Not the difficulty, but that the game is expecting you to have knowledge that nearly all _veteran_ players have, but that new players don't exactly have a lot of ways they would have learned, unless told by someone else or they read it in external guides or something. Hell, I only learned about it because of a slew of "tips and tricks for new players" videos I watched when I started back in Shadowbringers.

I really, really enjoy your videos! I've just recently discovered them and every one I've seen has been a true joy to watch/listen to. You have such a clear way of expanding on thoughts and ideas, that following along with you is so easy. I fully agree with you on every point. Especially about just being nice to people in duty roulettes. Yes, these trials and raids are a huge step-up from the content we got in SHB and EW, so I can imagine it really did come as a shock to many people who felt like they cruised through that content with ease. Hopefully people will be nicer to others, which will in turn encourage them and give them the confidence to enjoy the step up in content.

People likening these harder instances to extreme and savage content actually has me excited to finally try extremes and savages. Cause I've really enjoyed the harder content this expansion

Okay, but the first boss at deadwalk is honestly so incredibly annoying i wish it was hard, but its not, its just purely annoying

I did most Endwalker savage raids, so "difficulty" in itself isn't what bugs me. What bugs me here is the kind of difficulty we have to deal with: for a bunch of players that I happen to be in, too much randomness and long chains of memorization are not fun and I don't get any "sense of accomplishment" from beating it, because it feels like not getting hit once is more due to luck than skill. To me the good amount for these were in most variant dungeons bosses, as some were already pushing it too far, like the one with the dozens of random lines on the ground.

Oh No I cAnT fAcErOlL ConTeNt fucking get over it. this is one of the few times ff14 players need to be a bit meaner to people who refuse to learn

The final boss in the MSQ made me actually want to learn raiding because of how crazy it was. And I always try to ask people in the party/raid for callouts or advice on the gimmicks. On my clear of the final boss I had a very helpful player do this and we cleared it first try despite several deaths overall. I had a great time with it I would say

While I do completely understand people getting turned off by things being too difficult, especially since there is absolutely more to FF14 than its battles and dungeons, I really do feel the most important think to keep in mind that if you're at Dawntrail, you are hundreds if not THOUSANDS of hours into this game. Unless you bought your way through expansions, which is... a different can of worms, but I doubt that has any correlation to whats going on now. Even on a complete surface level, if you're this deep in, you should genuinely have a fundamental understanding of things that a 14 battle is going to throw at you. I can understand being thrown off balance a bit at having to definitely pay more attention to what's going on, this is completely fair given how casual content before this has worked, but Endwalker was the literal end of an era. This far in, I feel it's completely fair to expect a tiny bit more out of the player. It's a new world, and that means new challenges, literally and figuratively. But yes, for the love of God, be nice to people who might be struggling. I can assure you it won't ruin your day to have to run content after a few wipes to help them figure out what might be going on. Stuff like this doesn't always magically click with people, that doesn't mean they deserve the experience any less as long as they aren't being entitled about it.

Brother I've seen someone compare Dawntrail content to Elden Ring. I never thought I'd reach the point in my FFXIV lifetime when I would see casuals get stressed enough to compare it to a Soulslike and it's WILD

I've been thinking for a while that class quests (as in, the ORIGINAL class quests, the ones for starting classes up to level 30 before the job stone) SHOULD be the original starting point of learning. The class quests should be directly teaching you about the new things that are being put on your hotbar. They need to be revamped from the typical MMO boar-killing quests to actually give you useful info. For example - why is it that the level 1 Thaumaturge quest is "go kill 6 pests" and not "here's a cutscene where the 5 lala brothers tell you about how to channel Fire and then give you a target dummy in the same building to press Fire on"? It would give players an IMMEDIATE connection to the lore of the Thaumaturge's magic, the characters the quest chain wants you to care about, AND the mechanical goings-on of the class. The single downside I can see is the fact that if they rework Thaumaturge's heavily in the low levels they'd need to change the class quests to fit... but is that too much effort to ask when we want new player onboarding to be smoother? I also agree that players just need to be more understanding in general. We talk all this shop about the community being nice but I'd put MONEY on the overlap between "players telling other to git gud for Dawntrail" and "people who throw a temper tantrum when they wipe once in leveling roulette" being not insignificant. Helping new players learn is a two-way street. They need to be willing to fail and listen and learn, and YOU need to be willing to spend a little extra time with them so the lessons can stick, and to not berate them. You signed up for the roulette - you KNEW you can be paired with new players. Suck it up if you wipe - after all, if dying is supposed to be acceptable, then why should you be upset when someone dies even in easy content? Don't be a dick to the level 15 Gladiator just because they won't wall-to-wall Sastasha when they barely know what mitigation even is. Don't scream at the poor little robed conjurer just because they accidentally let you drop once. They're learning the game just like you're learning the new raid.

......... "I've only done this once, and really need a few more runs to tell if this is HARD or just more challenging to learn" is what I'd say.... not the most exciting answer....... but that's the best that I've got

When I was a kid, the early pokemon games were IMPOSSIBLE to beat for me. What I didn't realize until I got a bit older was that you can't blow through the game with just an over leveled Charizard 😂 You have to interact with the mechanics, learn about the type match-ups etc. I think my personal example may have some similarities to what some ffxiv players are facing right now. They've become too used to brute-forcing through dungeons from Stormblood all the way to Endwalker. So much so that even the smallest of added friction to their experience feels unacceptable to some. I think the players who do find these new challenges frustrating should be encouraged to take these experiences as fun and engaging moments to improve and learn more the game and how it plays ❤ There's a lot of joy in overcoming difficult things, savage and ultimate raiders know that joy to the fullest extent. If we can help casual players share in a bit of joy then we should all come together on this ❤

i noticed the bump in difficulty going through dawntrail in the msq, and i loved it! i've never gotten that far, but i have been wanting to do savage/ultimate level content for a while, but due to my region it's uncommon to find groups that are willing or able to accept new players, and the ones that do find little to no time to organize for this content. this bump in the normal level of difficulty has really scratched an itch for me, the kind of player who wants to be challenged but doesn't have the methods or means to do the harder level content. big thumbs up from me in regards to this change, and i hope the people who are struggling begin to find their footing and grasp some new skills to help them tackle this level of difficulty

People just failed ThE TeSt of ThEir RefleXeS!!!!!!!

I was a pretty casual player before Dawntrail. I've been playing since around the end of ARR, when HW was being announced, but I didn't start doing Normal and Alliance raids until ShB. I mainly played by myself and didn't really interact much with other players. But something about DT kicked a switch in me. It may be because of the more difficult dungeon and trial bosses that I thought, "If I can do this, why wouldn't I be able to do an EX trial? Or maybe a savage raid?" I joined a more active FC, I used PF for the first time, I did my first EX. I joined a practice party, and we wiped pretty early on the first run, but everyone was saying just how fun it was, me included. And when I cleared it for the first time, it felt so much better than any of the content I had done before. If it weren't for DT upping the difficulty, I might not have tried. I'll be forever grateful for CB3 realizing normal content was a bit too simple.

For me personally as someone who doesn't really have the time to commit to savage raid tiers just the higher difficulty for normal content is more than welcome. I've been playing since end of Heavensward and I used to run Savages since Stormblood and Shadowbringers. Sadly don't have the time for it anymore but I miss content that actually requires to pay attention to what I'm doing and we're finally getting that with the new normal raid tier and I couldn't be happier

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1308">21:48</a> I saw someone make fun of people for dying in fucking World of Darkness of all things and being a prick about it, they said "I'm giving advice in an unfriendly manner", bear in mind their advice was basically "don't die dumbass" so I rightfully said to them "how about be friendly for a change you (c word)" and they completely shut their mouth for the rest of the WoD run. A lot of the miserable people that think it's okay to belittle people for their mistakes in this game can dish it out but can't take it and its pathetic just be nice to people is all and its not hard at all

I'm glad you were able to see both perspectives of this. It really means a lot.

The extremes are easier than the ones in EW... the Golbez EX in EW had what is called a body check. Meaning if someone was dead during a specific mechanic it was a group wipe. There were a few things a skilled tank could do to stop a group wipe but it would kill a lot of people regardless. There is no body checks in the current extremes where one bad player can kill the whole group by just being dead. This sort of thing is generally found in savage but its rare in extreme and not found in the current tier. The current tier of dungeons and normal raids are fine but people need to check the telegraphs. A ton of people only look at the ground for the telegraphed safe spot when your eyes should be on the boss and the cast bar. The only reason there is a telegraphed aoe on the ground is to let you know where you messed up.

oh shit castrum the memories of doing that last boss by using range attack and then /sit for the rest of the fight

I think people are forgetting how hard normal raids were in previous expansions. Some of the normal raids in SB in particular were really difficult with mechanics i don't think i've seen used anywhere else. Part of the problem is that ShB and EW normal raids and dungeons were overly easy, people either weren't here for the content before ShB, or have forgotten how hard it used to be. AAR normal raid was considered so difficult it's not allowed to be an option when doing normal raid duty roulette. There are trash packs in certain SB dungeons that will easily wipe a party if you aren't careful and just wall to wall pull everything like most other dungeons. For context, i consider myself casual, but have dabbled on occasion with extreme trials, and have cleared 2 current high end savage raids previously in EW, but have never been in a static, and have never done anything harder than a savage raid with PF. Usually the hardest content i do is extreme trials.

I would definitely consider myself to be a more casual player. Highest I've ever done is extremes... and even then, it was without level sync. Do I find the content in Dawntrail more difficult? Yes. But, I also really enjoy it. While it feels tough, it doesn't feel impossible. While I might not get a fight down perfectly the first, second, or even third time... I do feel confident that after enough goes at it, I'll be able to figure it out well enough.

the fact that JP players, who are often stereotyped as being a cut above the rest of the world, are complaining about the wuk lamat instanced fight being way too hard even on easy mode, despite being one of the easiest instanced fights in the game is incredible. geniunely, its a skill issue, DT is not hard lol

I think one fundamental issue with trust that doesn't get talked about enough is how fast the screen fades to black when you die. I remember them making changes to the fade out timing on Instanced battle content during EW or maybe even late ShB with the reasoning that you couldn't tell what wiped you in EX or Savage sometimes. However, whenever I use the trust system and die for whatever reason, it seems like that change never was applied. How are you supposed to learn, when you don't even see what killed you because it goes black immediately? I appreciate the raised difficulty in DT and think they almost nailed it. Any suggestions to the actual battles I could give are really minor.

The content is perfect at the moment. I do not want to see nerfs, then things get boring.

Easiest ways to get good at FFXIV: Pay attention to mechs even if that means foregoing damage for a few seconds. The faster you learn the battle the better at it you'll be. Stay calm when something doesn't go your way. The easiest thing you can do sometimes is to do nothing and access the situation. Death is going to happen. I know people love to get hung up on a death, but its truly nothing. You don't need to be embarrassed or sorry, it happens to everyone even the best of players.

Im going to drop a hard disagree with the opinion expressed herein, for reasons you acknowledge herein. There is a small minority of the casual playerbase that will not improve out of stubbornness. They are uninterested in overcoming an obstacle. This is the core of what gaming is. This much, we agree on. What I don't agree on is putting myself in their shoes. I have no obligation to support a small portion of the playerbase that is unnecessary to ensure the continued production of FFXIV. While this sounds harsh, I don't think I am being unreasonable. I'm extremely willing to help anyone who is willing to be helped. If you drop comments like, "I've been playing for 6 years, I know how to play", I give up. Get out. See ya. For everyone who is willing to try? Let's do this. I'll spend an hour in a dungeon working through it with you. I'll play out of my damn mind minmaxing any way I think will help us succeed. The attitude in the difficulty post is outside of my overton window for FFXIV. I refuse to consider it as an acceptable position to debate from.

I’m a beta casual and DT is refreshingly amazing .. please devs don’t change it

You nailed this video Rinon. As a casual who has never even done extremes I'm really enjoying the new difficulty. The only thing I dislike is that it seems really common for people to drop after one failed pull. That can be a little demoralizing

I remember when I first played against Suzano in Stormblood. It was the biggest challenge that I'd seen yet. And when I main tanked it for the first time, seeing the fact you had to ATM to keep your party alive in Phase 2 was really cool! Stormblood to this date has such memorable battles because of how dramatically it switched the formula up, and I haven't relived that high until Dawntrail.

The "It's ok to fail" section accompanied with the music was so inspirational.

What the people who are complaining about difficulty need to do is show us how they play, because personally as a semi casual player Dawntrail encounters were very good and had a bit of difficulty that makes runs more interesting. But sometimes we need to be frank with people and have to tell them that maybe a game isn't for them. For example someone in that thread posted something about their severe case of social anxiety that they can't even go through content with players and leave off trials for months, that to me screams why in the world would you play an mmo if you can't play the mmo then? Another one stated that the final msq dungeon they can't complete even with duty support. This just baffles me since duty suppory npcs stand in the correct spots to dodge mechanics.

Yeah, when I finally go through with Vilgarmanda Extreme, my mind will mostly go through a "did I get the wings? I did!? Finally, I never get to go through this hell ever again.

Idk when i was growing up playing games if I couldnt beat a boss I would just keep trying. Then you get that amazing feeling when you down it the first try after taking a break haha. Its a game. I dont understand why people think getting to sleep through content is fun. Why even do it?

Players are 90+ levels and at least several weeks into this game by the time they get to DT. Even assuming they have touched literally nothing outside of the MSQ content, it is not unreasonable to expect people to "get" the mechanics and concepts by this point. You might get caught once or twice by novel tricks like "random bullshit go" or late-telegraphed attacks with unusually wide range (e.g. barreltender cleaves), but it is very reasonable to expect that outside of that, you'll get the message and stop feasting on feces. Honestly, I think a gatekeeper duty should be mandatory (somewhere in Shadowbringers for lore purposes), just to prove you know how mechanics work on your own, as a sort of "hall of the novice" for intermediate play.

I still remember Tower of Zott being surprisingly hard for a 1st dungeon in End Walker only to be disappointed that every dungeon after it was completely brain off. Dawntrail definitely did a good job in terms of making me feel like I don't get to go into stuff blind and walk out with 0 vuln stacks or deaths which I welcomed with open arms.

I think Duty Support can sometimes be a bit of a trap. I love it myself, for story purposes, for the lack of queue, and because I have to beat every fight without dying, which is a fun challenge. That last part, however, is notable. Ironically a lot of the players stuck on dungeons who are doing them with NPCs would get through just fine with a real team, where a single death doesn't end a boss attempt. Of course, many of those players are anxious about queuing up, or being flamed by their team for failing, even though in reality most people are friendly and supportive, especially if they know you're struggling. There's not really an easy solution there. Perhaps Duty Support should give you one chance to be resurrected by the NPCs if you die - if nothing else, it'd give you more time to realise how you messed up that fatal mechanic before the screen goes black.

The higher difficulty even if its not even that difficult is curretnly what saved me from switching the MMO entirely. Inever had so much fun in the Game since Stormblood, its insane. I really hope they don't backpaddle, because if they do i will probably leave the Game after playing since HW ( with bigger breaks in ShB and EW for uh obvious reasons)

This is just a huge case of growing pains that the lower brackets of players are refusing to accept because theyre so used to games adjusting to the loud minority

I'm actually pretty happy with the difficulty of normal/expert content so far. We're level 100 now, it's time to act like it.

I really enjoy doing the msq duties with the npcs the first time through because I think it gets a lot of things really well balanced in terms of a casual difficulty. There's nobody else creating social pressure to do well and the npcs are there to demonstrate how the fight works if you're clueless, but you also won't clear most of the fights by remaining clueless because you're likely to take the 2-3 consecutive hits that kill you and send you back to the start of that fight (as far as I could tell, only the trials give you the one free raise, probably because in 8 person parties you always have at least a co healer as a raise safety net). If you were just following the trusts, you'd find it much more difficult this time around because the npcs do make more mistakes, and by the time mechanics are repeating in a fight spread markers will start making you find your own safe spot. But the npcs do always start moving to correct positions to resolve mechanics before a player would have died by following them. Fast travel points in the new dungeons getting placed before the boss so there's no walk of shame is the other big change that to me made it very clear failure and improvement is an expectation in dawntrail duties, and overall I've been loving getting a little more resistance going through the story.

The Dawntrail story (which I completed yesterday) is my second favourite expansion now, right behind Shadowbringers. I haven't yet done any of the expert dungeons, but all the other 91+ dungeons and trials so far have been immensely enjoyable. Not super hard, but nicely challenging. I'm really looking forward to the rest of the content next weekend when I have some time.

I think the devs did a lot of clever tricks to make things seem harder than they are. Like using kind of familiar looking telegraphs, that if solved "perfectly" based on previous fight knowledge get you hit. Things like boss line aoe being slightly bigger than hitbox, where previously it has been exactly size of hitbox. This makes it so even experienced players get hit once, and wont just solve the mechanics immediately, making a blind run fairly challenging. This changes once a critical mass of players have done the fights, and in fact most runs I did later on were already quite clean. Pile on top of that increasing item level, and the fights feel challenging on launch but quickly fall back to being pretty easy. This is definitely no steps of faith, they carefully crafted the difficulty of these fights to be *just* right.

Maybe a 'Very Easy' mode like we have for solo instances can be implemented for Trusts/Duty Support dungeons or whatever. That's as much as I'm willing to bargain.

Personally I am completely fine with the current expansion being hard, but I am of the opinion that when a new expansion launchers, the previous one should get all its leveling dungeons, leveling only, nerfed to make it quite a bit easier. I am in the middle of leveling all my characters in the 80 to 90 tranche, and let me tell you, Tower of Zot & Tower of Babil are ridiculously needlessly difficult for the first 2 leveling dungeons of an expansion.Leveling dungeons should be teaching you new & revamped mechanics in order to prepare you for the actually hard content once you hit max level, and should give you enough clues to see the mechanics coming even if you've never fought those bosses before. Unfortunetaly this is more times than not, not the case.

Tbh I have one foot in either camp so to speak. Is the content harder? Yes, it is a step up and at first it caught me by surprise. Mechanics resolving quicker. Getting one shotted, BUT with knowledge and better gear I’m better at it but I still worry someone will say something less than pleasant. Is it too hard? NO, practise makes perfect. Though f&@k you teacups!!! 😂 I’ll admit at first I thought of quitting Dawntrail but that was an emotional response though I’ll stick to my guns when I say the last dungeon and trial where yet another step up, I was dead more often than alive (lol) and I’ve yet to return to those though I found the extra dungeons easier. Overall I have some empathy for that poster but I think the issue is their fear of not helping the team and have probably faced some toxicity which doesn’t help. Saying ‘Git Gud’ has never helped anyone in any game ever, quite the opposite I’d say. Overall I’ve enjoyed the content (minus What the f… I’m mean Wuk Lamat) and I will endeavour to continue to do so. I’ve not completed the raids yet but I will and follow a life lesson of giving 1 less fu.. a day and that will be not to care what others think and just enjoy the experience. I will also say that I think some players who’ve done it have the issue of underestimating how good they are and over estimating how good everyone else is. That’s all from from an old crappy player who only asks we all have a little patience with each other and just enjoy the ride 😀 (Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge - Carl Jung))

As a Savage raider myself, I'm definitely one to appreciate the need to pay attention in normal content. The one thing that does bother me in Dawntrail normal content though is that when levelling trusts, those trusts are an extra mechanic you have to dodge when there are targetted AOEs. The trusts will decide where they are going to stand regardless of where you are already standing, while often not going to the same place twice, so if they knock you out of a spot where you can't get to a new one in time (msq Dungeon 2, second boss, for example), you will die and need to start over. I had at least 2 very low wipes while levelling all of my trusts on that boss in particular as a melee dps because Y'Shtola, a ranged character, chose to stand in the melee safe spot and by the time I realized she was coming in, it was already too late to move somewhere else.

Its so weird hearing the first argument because I really don't know what their point is? The fight is too hard, then explain how, give an example. Dying a bunch is annoying yes, but that's what learning the fight amounts to, you keep your eyes peeled anything that might be a cue and react, if you can't spot anything right away, that's annoying yes, but you can always ask help from other players, or even look it up, as for complaining about the party dying well, there are other new players besides yourself experiencing and learning the fight. If you survived and they didn't maybe you should offer them advice on what that fight is all about, rather than saying the fight was too hard and needs to be nerfed.

Some people got too comfortable treating this as second life. This is the result of that.

one thing that irks me is how entitled many of the detractors of Dawntrail's difficulty level feel. "I am having problems so instead of taking up the challenge and looking for solutions, learning from my mistakes and progress and grow as a player, I want the challenge removed in the first place [and be handed every success on a silver platter with little to no resistance]". And it's not like there's a difficulty curve in the game or something, and optional content on lvl 100 in a 10 year old game is allowed to be challenging and engaging instead of being the same in-out-spread-stack and nothing else that ARR offers. I understand struggling with a game and just not being good at that skillset or being held back by mental blockades and issues. But there are so many solutions and resources out there to remedy that, from watching or reading guides to finding some nice and chill people/friends to run the content with you where you can be sure they won't get mad at you if you perform badly. So why make that everyone else's problem by demanding that the game cater to them and their wants specifically instead of accepting the rules and ideas of the game and adapting to what it asks of you?

difficulty level aside, the community always seems to react so strongly and negatively to worldbuilding focused expansions and i dont get it. ARR, Stormblood, and as i see it Dawntrail are all worldbuilding first and i love them for what they are.

I see your pointz Rinon. But I feel the backlash to the casuals is warranted when they think this content is difficult after 100 levels of similar content. When someone says stupid and entitled things they deserve to be called stupid and entitled.

I actually like how you covered this, trying to explain that the room of failure just became smaller and imo it makes sense - this is level 100 content and at this point, most players wil have 400+h of content under their belt this doesn't mean they're not allowed to make mistakes, but they should look and see why those mistakes happen I saw someone clicking on their abilities - this obviously took away from their reaction time and they thought that they somehow can't beat the content anymore a solution to this could be to simply adjust your HUD...maybe try the q, w, r, t keys coupled with alt or shift - it's the little things sometimes

It's not difficult, the players complaining just don't want to learn the game they've been playing for (potentially) years and supposedly love. I already said it on Arthars' video, but if these players spent half the time actually learning basic mechanics compared to the time they spend complaining about the game, they'd not be having so many issues. We are in the 5th expansion at this point, there is no excuse. Edit: I'm glad this sentiment is in some of the shared posts

I did this Raid today as SGE with a friend who haven´t healed in DT at all and went blindly in. No more than 2 wipes on Boss 3 and 4 and still people left after just one wipe , being pissy about the raid and truth be told without sitting with her in a call calming her down that it´ll going to be okay she might have left at any point because of that. It´s not the mechanics , it´s not the encounter , it´s the entitled playerbase thinking just spamming one button let them win. And truth be told no mechanic is not explaining itself after seeing it once. But you´ll see at some point they´ll introduce NPC raiding because of such attitute towards playing the game. It´s such a shame , I do believe SE outdone themselves with this raid and I´m so looking forward to how Savage will play out.

A random sidenote but I love that the first raid of the Arcadion series soundtrack is so similar to the arms theme which is already catchy by itself

I do feel for people who just want sit down, switch their brains off, and have some mindless fun. There have been many games, or activities within games, that I've played purely because of that, and I think that anyone sneering at/belittling people who want that needs to take a step back and understand that people play games for vastly different reasons and get vastly different things out of them. However, I also think it's long-term death for any mmo's core day-to-day group content to be so brain off. There's gotta be a level of engagement, a level of interest, or the people who are engaged and interested in the game stop being engaged and interested - and that (admittedly broad & loosely defined) group has a much bigger impact on the long term health of the game, because they tend to have a much bigger impact on the game's community, which is vital to an mmo's continued existence.

I'll be honest, except the first boss of a certain 100 dungeon, everything felt quite similar to me. But I forgot how ridiculously easy dungeons during the end of Shadowbringers were, ironically that was before Warrior became a crazy healer with Bloodwhetting. People need to understand the game, it doesn't help you to understand what a rotation is but many games have no tutorial and do just fine. I remember struggling on freaking Bismark and Titan back in HW but today tackling ultimate content. It's time they have their reality check too.

something else to note is that many players are likely either new or returning, and either story skipping or rusty on how the difficulty increase has been flowing so far. I only really started carving through the game in April, and having access to the highest IL tomestone gear from each expansion before I'd even beaten the final trial for it definitely made things easier. but now that option isn't available. a few weeks prior to DT releasing in early access, I was working thru post-EW, struggling on the "casual content" dungeons like Troia and Lunar Subteranne, because I didn't have a reservoir of tomestones for the highest IL equipment. I had to work for it. Also, you mentioned that this content is new, which is also why it's difficult; random queueing will 90% of the time end up with at least one player who is just seeing the dungeon/trial for the first time, and everyone else is still pretty fresh on it. There's not a swath of mentors and veterans that have rolled roulettes on this content every day for half a year, and therefore can show the mechanics on the fly. Everyone in a random queue is essentially blind or very very fresh to it. Dawntrail *is* challenging, but it's a natural progression of challenge, with added difficulty of it being the first month and the new content not being documented on wikis and guides just yet. That all being said, Leonogg can die in a fucking pit of acid I hate that fucking stupid little shit boss I will NOT BE NOGGIN AGA-

Strayborough is actually my favourite dungeon in the game to be honest, will love getting it in expert it's just very fun with how hectic it is. It's not too punishing either, you'd need at least 2 people getting hit by everything to have a chance of wiping really.

Yoshida said he thought they made Endwalker too easy, and to a degree I agree with him. A lot of content was easy to clear going in blind. This expansion was the first time since Heavensward where I've been in parties that have wiped in dungeons. I think it's good to present the players more of a challenge. Maybe by level 100 you shouldn't be able to just rest on your laurels.... at least that's my thought. Though yeah.... eff that first boss in Strayborough. Eff him right in the ear.

The "just git gud scrub" mentality is exactly why I don't like playing with pugs. My immediate friend group is much more forgiving and even do what they can to help me improve but I've had pugs just yell at me in chat for making mistakes or dying because my ping is terrible and it's my first time running something. I'm trying to be better about my own issues with perfectionism on those first runs. That "git gud" mentality also feels the exact opposite of what Yoshi-p is going for. On another note, when we ran the Honey B flight even my savage running friends were like "wtf are even these damn mechanics?!" with all the random dodging things flying in from the outside. We wiped so many times on that and the third flight, but we did what we could to learn from it. I have reservations about high end content and I know I need to improve, especially if I aim to do Dragonsong ultimate, but being a jerk about it is exactly the opposite of helping. We were voted as one of the best gaming communities, let's live up to that.

They should put every content on ultimate difficulty so only 1% of players can progress the story. Best way to bring new players in and keep the game alive

what happened to that Healer strike because Dungeons were too easy. lol I'm having a blast with this expansion.

I stopped playing because I got tired of mechanics and "Dance Dance Final Fantasy." I prefer games where the enemies try to kill players, reacting to the players and following logical things like "kill the healer first" or "kill the high-threat target." I don't want to memorize an enemy's script or open a spreadsheet that maps my actions in a fight. I prefer randomness and enemies you have to outsmart tactically than outdance mechanically. When I played FF14, I played healers and had more fun with wall-to-wall dungeon mob pulls than boss fights.

At level 90 or more I think Players are expected to know the indicators without needing to be said out loud Black Cat pull out a claw should be and indicator where "Don't stand there", Honey B Heart Rampant is a way to tell that don't hit 3 heart or something bad happened a circle should mean Donut AoE, a plus mean cardinal direction

No, it's not. Goodnight everybody!

How I see the story is Dawntrail is supposed to be a new beginning in the story. So I was expecting the story to be "Ok" at best. Plus, we have more story in future patches. As for difficulty, they did say they would bring up the difficult way before release. So you months in advance to get ready.

Hello! at <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="29">0:29</a> seconds you included my forum post ("difficulty" of new content) tho i appreciate getting noticed the fact that it's there tells me you didn't actually read the post because the post is about how the new content isn't hard. I feel like i don't belong with the other posts in the beginning.

I was running a mentor roulette with a sprout white mage in Mt Gulg who was absolutely elated they were finally challenged to use their full kit to keep me up with the relatively difficult trash pulls there if you go wall to wall. They also asked for tips on mechanics for every boss which I happily provided. These are the type of people I love to play with. They may not be the best. They may not stay alive all the time. They may not do the most damage. But they are willing to be challenged and learn. This is a normal mode msq dungeon. Normal mode doesn't have enrage timers as far as I'm aware. If you're that averse to even remotely trying then go in with trusts, follow them around and just wait for the fight to be over. The rest of us will be enjoying finally being engaged in combat.

The last trial, i have done twice, once for msq and once for a friend. The first time we did it was day 3 or 4, and we wiped once. 2nd time was a day or two later. And even with a man dc'd, no lb3, and several new folks, we cleared without a wipe. Folks just need to get out of braindead mode and actually pay attention.