The Players Endwalker Left Behind 

This is a followup to my previous video "Endwalker is the Worst FFXIV Expansion I have played" where I talked about my experience with patch cycle of EW ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-p3fwXgcZvjQ.html I'm hoping to make the next video a little more lighthearted xD

trying to find a savage or high end group in 14 is like trying to find a job IRL, everybody wants experience but nobody is willing to let you gain that experience

They could have put an open zone on the moon and i think players would have been fine with that, the moon i feel was an opportunity lost.

The best thing about Bozja was that it united hardcore, midcore and casual players in one content! As casual even if you horribly died in an engagement you could watch the more skilled players do the dance, get the occasinal raise and pull through.

I never did raiding in WoW, and for the same reasons I'll never do "hardcore" content in FFXIV being extremes, etc. It's all about time and investment for me. Especially as an adult now with a full time job. I just don't have the time, or energy to spare to find a static and consistently devote time off for certain content. I was always more or a casual/solo player anyway, but I love to be in the mmorpg landscape still.

For me the hardest part about doing hard content is finding a group to do hard content with

i personally like challenging content, but ffxiv's challenging content just end up enforcing you to watch guides and know the whole fight in advance because it doesn't excuse any missteps. I fell out of savage pretty fast. There's nothing fun for me of knowing the fight, i like to learn from my errors and not know what's gonna happen next. but the moment you do an error, everyone has to restart over, and nobody wants that. so ffxiv is either you snooze (easy content) or you lose (no thrill of challenging for fun hard content). There is no in between. As much as I like the boss fights, they get tireing fast because of the high standard people put onto you including you on yourself. it becomes a job more than fun. I end up going for solo games instead of ffxiv.

My biggest barrier to content is needing a guide. I like being able to figure stuff out as I do it. I'm happy to bang my head against the latest souls/elden ring boss until I win, because the reason I lost is obvious to me. I can see what attack killed me, and do better next try. I cant do that with 7 other people wanting their clear so they can move on, and with MMOs many times obscurity=difficulty. "Oh why did you kill that add it wipes us if it dies northeast of the cheese fountain, gotta take it to the fountain for cheese, then kill it in the southwest corner to feed the cheese demons" ok Susan and how was I supposed to know that? "Shoulda watched the 20 minute guide and memorized the cheese sign before queing". Then I'm not queing for that holy shit.

My favorite difficulty as a casual 1 to 2 hours max a day gamer was bozja 24 man's. Delubrum is my absolute favorite. Give us a bit more advanced mechanics that kill you if you mess up twice within a time frame. Lower than that is brain dead and higher needs more commitment.

Moreover, the 3rd division conducted a survey with players, but instead of asking the right questions like, "What do you think of the current state of the game? What do you like about FF14? Which job do you play and why? What would you like to see added or brought back to the game?" they opted for questions like "What is your favorite mount, your favorite minion, which Aetheryte is your teleport return set to,..." It was one of the most pointless surveys they could have conducted when it could have provided valuable insights to the developers.

As a midcore player, Bozja/Zadnor was some of the best midcore content I'd experienced in an MMO back in ShB. Was great to have the critical engagements that stop things from being zerged down like hunts or open world content in other games like GW2. Edit: Also, as a midcore the only thing I've been doing in endwalker is frontlines PvP lol.. because can't even group with friends in CC. T_T

As a casual player that did play Savage a long time ago and don't have time to play hardcore anymore, I find current Extremes (ShB to EW) to be very very difficult compared to the Stormblood and older ones. My casual group of friends cannot clear the new extremes within the first week, but they could years ago. I doubt that we all lost our touch like that, I think they are genuinely harder

I 100% agree with you Zep. I've been struggling to stay invested in 14 after I finished the endwalker story since I too am a midcore player.

Midcore player here that absolutely LOVED Eureka. The zones were beautiful (the only reason i disliked Bozja), the elemental alignment added some complexity, and it was nice having to be aware of my surroundings when wandering around an open map. You could jump in/out as needed, and there were always random groups you could join. And at the end of it all, a hard, but not *complicated*, challenge (BA) that could be progressed and completed by a group of strangers (NO STATIC REQUIRED!) Give us that again, YoshiP!

I've been saying this since Shadowbringers came out and I got to play the revised job system for the first time. I think the biggest issue that ties every single one of these problems that you mentioned together is... the job system. Hardcore players complained that AST cards are always "just Balance fishing", that things like tank stances are meaningless because they tanked in DPS stance only anyhow, and that every job is essentially just a DPS in this game anyhow and in order to appease it, SE made jobs ever more accessible so as to not alienate players who are *not* optimizing to the nth degree on every job. The end result? The fun has been optimized out of the job system, the very fundamentals of the combat system of this game that ties every piece of content, from dungeons to extremes to savage, together. We now have a combat system where, if you have a middling understanding of how to press cooldowns on time, you can hop onto every job and perform adequately - even for Savage, no matter how daunting it may seem. The biggest differentiator between players now is no longer skill. It is gear. It has made casual content easier to complete and more boring to play. It has led to Savage and Ultimate content having to make up the shortfall on skill expression in job gameplay by making fight mechanics more complex and difficult to execute for the average player. No Eureka and no Bozja slowly erasing Midcore is just a symptom of a much bigger problem - the fundamental philosophy of job design for FFXIV since Shadowbringers. The game is more accessible and optimized around the essentials than ever. And they forgot to implement the fun, or what some would call "clunk", while designing what we have today. It's why so many clamour for Kaiten to return. It's why so many clamour for HW jobs to come back, despite how shit combat was in HW. Jobs had an identity and they were varied in playstyle way more than they are today, and it took time to pick them up and learn them. That's been lost, and it is felt in every facet of play. And it has spilled into crafting and gathering too. The solution isn't to add more DD, or more exploratory zones, or more long-lasting grind content. None of that is going to make the game fun for Midcore players if the effort required to do said grinds on the buttons you press in moment-to-moment gameplay is non-existant. Jobs need a hard course correction in XIV, and they needed it 4 years ago. SB was considered the best post-expansion content we had for a reason, and I think it was exactly that reason.

We need more MID CORE CONTENT , I dont have time to sit in a raid for 10 hours a day 5 days+ a week

For me personally, I’ve just gotten bored with the class design. It seems like every Xpac they make the classes easier and easier to play. I remember when I first unlocked Dark Knight, that was some of the most fun I’ve ever had in an MMO. The incredibly engaging gameplay of managing your mana and your Dark Arts whilst siphoning life to keep yourself healed up to ease on your healer a little bit so they could DPS more was so damn fun. Nowadays it seems like most classes almost all play the same way, especially tanks who have very minor differences in how they play where they used to feel very distinct, with extremely simple rotations even for classes that used to be pretty difficult to master like Ninja and Dark Knight. I don’t know exactly why they feel the need to continuously simplify the classes and how they play, but it’s turned me off of the game a bit. There just isn’t that sense of skill expression in the game anymore and I truly miss it.

my biggest reason for quitting is that all the friends I had made and played with on a very consistent basis from ARR forward slowly quit overtime and now I'm the only one left that has any interest in the game at all and even though it's an mmo it feels extremely lonely sometimes making new friends feels next to impossible sometimes

I stopped playing after I finished endwalker because I felt like it was a good place to stop for a bit. I always wanted to try harder content but I know it's pretty difficult to find a group, specially when I have a graveyard shift and it's constantly changing since shift duration changes at times between working 8 hours to working 12. Also all of my friends have been taking a break to play other games so currently not much of a reason to go back, I will definitely play again when the next expansion arrives.

I'm a "casual" solo player and I liked Bozja because it made me feel like I was actually part of a community. This feeling has been lacking for me in EW and I've not felt compelled to log in unless there's an MSQ patch or new alliance/normal raids. I also really wish there was more challenging battle content that didn't require so much from a player as savage does. The issues isn't even that I think I'm bad (I know my rotations pretty well), but it just seems like a huge time commitment that I'm not willing to go through. That's why Bozja was perfect because of how easy it was to drop in and play on my own time and pace, and the content was actually fun (unlike all the dungeons in this game, variant included. Spamming aeo rotation on trash for 20 minutes is just mind numbing).

I will say, even tho my experience didn’t lead to me doing harder content, eureka and bozja were my favorite parts to discover in the game. Just as you said, I met a lot of different players and bonded with them. They taught me a lot about eureka/bozja and there was so many inside jokes between everyone that made it feel like an actual community. At one point we got the entire instance of pagos to join together/form a train and pop NMs, it was great 😭 I’m hoping we get something like this again - if we haven’t already (I haven’t looked Hildibrand so idk).

14:00 Yes, this is precisely how I felt when I first decided to try extreme. I had to rebind all my keys, redo my UI, actually read what things do, learn what FFlogs is, and basically every ex/savage boss made me go "holy shit wait, this is a completely different game isn't it". Nothing ramps you up towards that point, nothing actually teaches you how to play this game. It just abruptly slams you in the face and it's like... okay, well, sweat time.

midcore content is stuff that you can log in, queue in, and theres no prepping or planning beforehand. no studying like EX or savage, some people dont wanna do homework. no roster building like deep dungeon or criterion, or any kind of raid, if somebody isnt having fun on night 2, they wont come back for night 3, and now the whole roster has to give up. its gotta be solo-friendly, so that you can meet people who enjoy it, and thats why youll come back tomorrow. to see that friendly face you had a laugh with last time.

They used to have a middle ground that gave a nice step into harder fights without throwing you in the fire. HARD trials and dungeons. Used to be a nice chunk of side quests that gave you harder dungeons and trials to do with a great story to make it make sense. Just realized that hasn't happened since stormblood I believe.

I would count myself in this camp. I used to do savage raids but I didn't enjoy feeling forced to play on a schedule with a static and basically have that consume my entire evening twice every week (and I'm not fucking around with PF). Bozja was probably the most fun I've had in the game because I could do it on my own time and it was engaging enough to scratch the itch. Alliance raids are the other thing I've had the most fun with but of course that novelty does wear off. It seems a lot of the energy that would have been spent on Bozja-like content went into variant/criterion dungeons and quite frankly I think that fell flat.

The lack of exploration zone and overfocus on raiding is a really, really puzzling direction. Also the class homogenization is reaching new tiers. Every tank is basically same thing with different color buttons. The insistence on lack of pure heal makes healers way more homogenic in instanced content. They keep lowering the skill ceiling on everything along with the floor.

Very good points. Come to think of it, I actually learned to get better playing and get over my tanxiety in Eureka. It gave me a safe place to push my skills as far as I was comfortable while having more and more to reach for. It helped me socialize and get comfortable with my role in groups while being able to see how my role helps others. It's a perfect middle between casual and hardcore because it lets you stretch yourself as far as you'd like at your own pace, with ample rewards and content diversity to make it feel worthwhile.

I love extremes, I just never do them because when you're new, the learning process is incredibly stressful and you constantly feel like you're annoying everyone by not being good enough, and when you know the fight super well, you're constantly annoyed at everyone else for screwing up easy mechanics. There's like one night of middle ground, but other than that they just feel stressful and unpleasant and you really have to be in the mood to engage with the game to that degree.

I'd like to see another Eureka/Bozja in Dawntrail. Tie it to the relic weapons to encourage the midcore and hardcore players to join in, and give it an exciting story. As a casual/midcore player, I'd play the heck out of it.

I quit because I had no friends to play consistently with, which made me depend on random players gathering in a group who would mess up over and over and over on the same things. It got frustrating to the point I just hated playing with other people which pushed me further into the solo player mind set. Which was lonely.

MMO = Massively multiplayer online game. Outside alliance raids nothing is massively multiplayer in endwalker.

I play very causally, iv played xiv for the last like 8 years, and I mostly come back for patches, or if I'm really enjoying a patch il play more but I play other mmos, mostly play xiv on patches, I like it this way coz I don't burn out >.

I fall into the hardercore, but my spouse lands RIGHT in the midcore. Endwalker has been so difficult to find content for us to do together, and it has made it so he has stopped playing aside from logging on to peek at his house. I really, REALLY hope for more midcore content that the two of us can enjoy in Dawntrail. (Or sooner?) This is something we've been feeling, but couldn't put into words. I had to pause and share this video with him, and he was just nodding the whole time. Thank you for this video, Zepla.

youre completely right... i think another problem is how many of us dont realize how hardcore we are so we are blind to midcore content.

I think it took this video for me to finally put into words why I haven't been playing FFXIV as much as I would like to lately. I've gotten into so many arguments with people online about how there's literally nothing for players at end game to do right now. Because all you have is raiding or dungeons and it's boring. But most people think those are enough and that if you don't like it "go play another game that's what Yoshi P said". The thing Yoshi P said was actually: don't feel like you have to log in all the time to keep up to date. Take breaks when you want. When you want. I don't want. I want to play right now. But there's nothing for me to play. I did my time raiding back in Shadowbringers, none of the glams really suit my style so fashion hunting isn't worth it anymore, I did all the Critereon dungeons, I farmed the new deep dungeon, I've done everything and I want to do more! I don't want to take a break I'm not burnt on the game I'm just bored. It's kind of sad how I remember making friends, and doing Bozja with them because it was such a low barrier to entry but a high skill ceiling it made me feel like I was actually good at the game enough to try raiding. But since then I've grown rusty and don't wanna mess with it anymore. I fully agree with the idea of bridge content, we need that confidence boost in casual players and that connective tissue to make worthwhile friendships to allow for more people to enter the harder content. If my little group of friends can go into DR and do everything flawlessly why can't we learn the EX or the Savage? Why can't we start taking the game a little more seriously? I'm tired of logging in, changing races, playing with outfits, doing a dungeon, then leaving the game for weeks. I just want my game back man.

If content requires discord = I will never do that shit

Our opinions are exactly the same. I'm really relieved that someone with as much influence as you has spoken out about this. You are a blessing to the XIV community. I truly truly appreciate you and your content.

There's always been something special about bozja. For me it is and always has been Zadnor. I would log in just to play the Zadnor critical engagements, CCL, and Dalriada raids even after maxing out all of my mettle because they were extremally fun engagements and over all content for me. I still do jump in from time to time. I love it so much I recorded all of the critical engagement fights and uploaded them to my RU-vid channel. I hope the FF14 team learns from this type of content and adds something new for us in the next expansion.

I think there are great valid points in both this video and the last. As someone who used to raid but doesn't really have the time or energy for it at this point in my life, I find myself logging in but not really having anything to do - or more specifically, not anything I want to do. I've been around since ARR so I have done pretty much all of the content on release and obtained most the stuff from previous expansions that I want. Relic grinds are a big thing for me, I would grind quite a few relics I liked the look of each expansion and have a lot of fun with that - I felt like I had achieved some kind of milestone, but 1500 tomes ad nauseam just doesn't feel like an accomplishment for me. Eureka, Bozja - both of these were cool, communal and lively content to get stuck into, and as before, helped feed into the relics which is something I love doing. Whether an individual labels them as casual or midcore I don't really care - they were still enjoyable and had a fun, communal vibe. There has been some neat content this expac that I have enjoyed a lot - but it's all been short lived with no staying power. Island Sanctuary I enjoyed a lot, but within a week or two you've finished it for the cycle. Variant dungeon - same again - cool but short lived. I feel like SE really need to look into more long-lived content that gets frequent additions to game play and rewards- maybe that can continue through multiple expansions so they have longer to build on what they're making? This philosophy of not continuing existing content over multiple expansions can't be helping things I feel? Regardless though, I see less and less of my friends logging in, and that worries me for the longevity of the game, consistently declining counts of dedicated, long-time players can't be a good thing no matter how you spin in. There's lots of cool games right now and I am enjoying a lot of them myself, but I would still be playing FF alongside them if I had in-game goals. That's what it really boils down to for me, I will eat up just about any content because I love the game, my friends in it and the world of FFXIV, but there are no long term goals present as current content in the game. I don't think the game is dead, and I love it to bits - but I think if even if it's a case of "our beloved game might just be sinking a liiittle" bit, it's better to acknowledge that and identify & plug the holes instead of ignoring it and hoping it'll go away.

If my playstation an games had not gotten stolen; I would still be playing it. It is a amazing game.

This is definitely where I feel I am right now in the game. I look forward to patch days because I love the story and that's a reprieve from the boredom for a bit, but in between patches I feel like I have nothing I really want to do. (Technically I have plenty to do, but nothing I'm like, excited about.) I was really disappointed that there wasn't a Bozja/Eureka equivalant this expansion. At this point I am just waiting for Dawntrail.

Another important aspect of mid core content is in my opinon, is offering somewhat challenging mechanisc that DO NOT wipe other players, mechanics that offer some challenge but only for you individually. Not even Extremes fullfill that, if I go into barbariccia and I don't do the pair mechanics right I will kill other players, and in most cases it cascade into a wipe. Cuasuals players feel really bad, wiping other people, getting into sometimes heated discussions, etc etc, they don't want that, casual players do not want that friction. Bozja was perfect for that, because the fights offer mechanical challenge, that anyone can go and try. And if you fail, that's ok, there's still another 23 or 47 players there to do the fight. And thus midcore players are also happy with this content, because it offers some challenge, but they don't have to go through the hurdle of finding a static or dealing with PF when it comes to savage. I also think that previous alliance raids fullfil this role, but current ones are way too easy. Wiping mechanics have their place in MMO, and that's on cordinated groups. But there also should be content where I could just jump in and be challenged without caring what anyone else is doing.

Bozja was just so incredibly fun to me. Castrum, the Dalriada, duels, some of the harder CEs, and Delubram were super fun. Hard enough to keep you enganged, not so hard that you couldn't jump right in. Delubram Savage was a decent successor to BA, and cut out a lot of the tedium of getting into it. Getting the first clear on Crystal with CBT (Crystal Bozja Team) is one of my best memories. This expansion I've played with my static for savage/ult, a couple different groups for Criterion Savage, and the randoms in my roulettes. It's just lonely lol. Variant encourages you to go by yourself unless you do all 12 notes with the same people, and Island Sactuary is extremely lonely.

I think alliance raids have the potential to be mid-core content. They've more recently been easy and I see no fun value in rerunning them, but I think back to pre-nerf Ivalice raids for example where there was challenge to them. However Ivalice was punishing and would cause full on wipes, causing people to drop mid raid or leave at the start of raids, so there would have to be some tweeking of the formula. Having 24 people, rather than 8, disperses the responsibility so there isn't much pressure. In conjunction with this, put in semi-challenging (possibly bordering on extreme level challenge) mechanics that can and will punish and kill you and/or your alliance party (not raid, just party, so it is recoverable; no full raid wipe body checks). This provides a space to be challenged on a personal level, where you can work on your execution and feel a building level of mastery on subsequent runs, however not be a total liability to the group which I believe is also where a lot of the anxiety for people to even try harder content lies. This is very similar to how activities such as Eureka/Bozja fates and raids work, where there's a lot of people to help soften the impact of your own mistakes.

As a casual to mid player, I feel like I got left behind in ShB. No one wanted to run dungeons, extremes or trials with me anymore. And every time I loaded in with randos, I was expected to be a high level player... I know rotations but not mechanics; Im too busy trying to avoid dying to worry about mechanics. And I feel a bit betrayed by the community that was so helpful to me before I hit ShB cause they kinda left me out to dry because I dont want to raid; I just want to do normal content and I cant without help that no one will give me unless I join raid parties.

I always considered you a pretty hard core player. I'm one of those players who almost quit after Stormblood because the MSQ dungeons had become so hard. I only lasted through Shadowbringers and Endwalker because the Trust & Duty Support systems allow me to run though a dungeon 10-20 times until I can finish the dungeon. When we got to the trials I was able to bumble along and have the other players carry me. There is no way I'm going to try something harder. The only reason I might not be considered casual is because I'm an omni-crafter. I don't have a lot of time but so far I have 4 out of 8 classes not only fully penta-melded but with the most up-to-date Splendorous Tool as well. I'm hoping to have them all done before patch 6.55 drops. Which is why we have different views on Island Sanctuary. For me, my island is an important source of materia. I'm also a bit weird because I don't use spreadsheets to run my island.

This is so true. Even extreme trials to me feel too hard now. But I loved Eureka and Bozja. Challenging fights that people cleared even if you happened to die or made some mistake. I didnt clear DRS but I did BA. Also this is the only real MMO content in the game.

I'm a notch above the group you described. I'm not afraid to jump into extreme or savage, but I just don't have a schedule that is consistent enough for a static. Only option is PF. I can tolerate that to extent. The main problem I run into is the learning groups drop off significantly after the first month. If I were to put up fresh prog for P9s, I doubt it would fill. Anytime I see someone ask for advice on PF raiding, one of the answers I always see is clear as soon as you can after content is released, as it will be significantly harder after the first month. Because of this, my result is the same as what you described, there's nothing for me to do. My endwalker experience has been cap tomes until I get one tome set, do frontlines and log off.

All I want is the ability to control summons again 😭 That's it, that's all I need 😭

This is kind of where I sit. Ive been savage raiding through EW, but my static struggles to meet. Last tier PF burnt me out trying to get through P8s to the point where even going back into pf is exhausting and daunting, so i put it off for other content or other games. Blue mage and Boxja have been my saving graces in EW, and ive been trying for the solo deep dungeon, but I'd love for something i can sink my teeth into and relax. As for getting players to step up, time and time again weve seen true "casual" player would rather quit than learn. This isnt an XIV thing, this is a gaming in general thing. The rule of thumb is make hard content aspirational, so people rise to meet it, rather than walling your game behind challenge inherently. I think Baldesion Arsenal did something honestly really interesting in this regard, since you are rewarded for running it, but if you get the perfect you get the Demi Ozma. Similarly Duels in Bozja are a sign of gradual mastery that allows people to say "Im here anyway, I may as well shoot for that higher goal."

I don't understand why every MP game has this problem. once the "hardcore" (aka people with tons and tons of time for video games) playerbase starts growing slightly developer just forget about the overwhelming majority of rest of the playerbase who doesn't care about any of that, and the game becomes stagnant for everyone except the 10% of people doing hardcore. I want to hold every multiplayer game developer by the shoulders and scream "competitive/hardcore content shouldn't come at the expense of ALL the content"

preach zepla! you just explained so perfectly the reason why I haven’t resubbed since i finished endwalker msq. Eureka was the bridge for me that got me into trying out savage, not only because it made me more comfortable playing in groups but also because it gave me some gear that was decent enough to start with. Thanks for making these videos zepla! I hope they bring back eureka

I'd love a daily dungeon roulette with modifiers to add difficulty or unique strategy to make old dungeons fresh.

This take spoke to me so hard as someone whose first expansion was EW. The hardest content I've managed to do was when I coordinated a group of friends (a mix of both older and newer XIV players) to do unsynced extremes from ARR. Super fun and approachable, it was just the right amount of challenge I was looking for at my skill level. But it was truly clandestine: it was such a chore to organize and make it happen. I would love to do more unsynced, older content, but with the only incentive being "just for fun" it's hard to get a group to do it sometimes.

All valid criticisms again and I agree, Endwalker's patch content, or moreso lack OF it, has pushed away a significant chunk of their playerbase. Bozja is a fantastic example of that midcore content that brought a plethora of different kinds of players, with different styles, skill levels, and goals together. Ideally I'd like to see something like Bozja in the open world that encompasses what hunt trains offer. Like ARR FATE farms but with medium level challenge of Bozja's CE's. Also the mass class homogenisation doesn't help keep things interesting.

As a life long Final Fantasy fan Beaten 1, 4, 7, 8, 10, 13, 14 ( up to base Endwalker story ), 15 and am working on 16 and 2. I'm going to make a suggestion BUFF THE HOLY SHIT OUT OF RELICS!! Make them FEEL Like an Ultimate Weapon! Highest ATK on the market... why stop there! Relic exclusive Ability! Make Relics more than just glam with a expiration date.

Great follow-up! It'd be nice to see what other kind of player-corralling mid-tier content the folks at FFXIV can come up with other than Eureka and Bozja.

Looking back on it Bozja is what got me to take the leap from casual content to extreme to savage to ultimate. Bozja was so much fun while I was grinding the relics. It felt like everyday I was progressing and learning in the CEs and DR, that pushed me to seek more and finding a savage static in 5.5. Now here I am 2 years later a penta legend with a top clear in the first 5 weeks. It was all thanks to the Bozja experience.

I'm somewhat of a mid-core player. I started playing in 5.4, didn't do extremes. Bozja was a bit of a gateway drug into harder difficulty content. Ever since 6.0 I've been doing all Extremes. In this video Zepla describes perfectly how I feel about the game right now.

I found myself doing alot of PVP Frontline/Rival Wings this expansion because it's also low barrier of entry content that I can queue for with my friends... it's its own content that my friends can go into anytime and we can work together for a common goal.

🙌 Zepla video after work, hallelujah

The jump in actual duty difficulty for Savage raids isn't why 'casuals' dont feel comfortable doing them. It's not neccesarily that they think they cant do it; I'm sure most casuals would be thrilled to give it a go and improve- IF, and this is a BIG IF, IF the player experience wasn't an insane toxic mess. You've gotta do all this external research and learn all these terms just to pick a party only to get kicked, and all the other nonsense that goes with it; This, more than anything else, This absolutely HOSTILE party environment is the thing that keeps most people away. I'm positive I can do savage or ultimate content, I'm a long time now-retired WoW Heroic/Mythic raider and raid leader since vanilla and my skills are pretty on point. But just trying to find a party is so much worse than I ever experienced in WoW, so I skip out on 99% of Extreme, Savage, Etc content.. The last Extreme I did was Hydaelen, and it was because I loved t he fight- Not because I wanted to deal with all the PF and user problems. People want comfortable automatic party joining- Just like the duty finder allows. But nowadays noone uses the duty finder for anything difficult, so it just doesnt happen, leaving players to just not do the content at all instead.

Thoughts of a former midcore now hardcore due to content structure: I believe that SE has taken the difficulty curve and really skewed it to hardcore. I enjoy the challenges, but my experience in midcore statics has been filled with non-progress and burn out. Savage has gotten too precision-based and there are far too many body checks with no chance of recovery. I want to get into EW ultimates, but dread its spike in difficulty compared to UWU (it's still an ultimate!) and TEA. I feel like variant difficulty is fine, that's like super casual. Criterion should be toned down to "midcore", so maybe like an extreme level difficulty. And Crit Savage can be what Crit is today. That would also make it more enticing for people to play it and get the pitiful reward of 1 mount. Slightly unrelated, SE should revisit how they handle raid floors. If we're to get a door boss every 4th floor, make it 5 floors. Have the phase 1 drop a twine and a shine or something. It may help keep down the number of "trap parties" but I also think it would help overall in prog, in not burning out, and with bored veterans who want to help groups. And actually, now that I type it out, it goes back to the difficulty curve. P4/8/12S is basically a 15-20 minute fight, which is on par with an ultimate time wise. Sure there's a checkpoint, but they're really pushing the savage boundary.

There is that in-between difficulty, old extremes

Eureka and Bozja are popping off... meanwhile I get thrown into Delirium by myself.

I'd definitely put myself in the casual camp. I'm largely in the game for the story, and I think it's easy for a very experienced or even 'midcore' player to find content easy that actually isn't that easy if you're new to it. Like, right now I think the difficulty for dungeons and trials and even the baseline raids is about right. Hell, the Alliance raids are actually bordering on too difficult for me personally to always enjoy. But I think the big thing I enjoy about FFXIV is that... I don't feel like the game needs me to play it every day, or even every week. There's mechanics, and factors that basically say that if I've gotten what I want from the game, then it's cool if I log off and play other stuff for a while. And I think Zepla may be running into the problem where she should probably do that, but as a content creator can't. Like, I don't think the game NEEDS to funnel players to harder content if that's not something they want. Heck, I'd love to see the end of the Eureka story, but that content is so grindy and difficult for me that I gave up because it's not fun (and is basically impossible to progress if you don't have a consistent and large group to do it with). And I think it may be worth considering if what one is seeking from the game is different than the experience the game is trying to give. Like, are you playing it as an MMO primarily, or playing it to play Final Fantasy? EDIT: Reading some more comments: I think honestly the thing that's the most likely to put casual/story players off the game all together is gating story stuff behind harder content. As noted above, Eureka certainly now is not enjoyable and some elements of it I can't see being fun even when it was busier, and having it cover story stuff about a major character like Krile makes it disheartening for a story player. It's why the whole Savage/Extreme concept is so elegant I think. People who want hard content get it, but people who are there for the story can see it without being forced into that harder stuff.

Personally i never quite enjoyed Eureka/Bozja, i do enjoy casual content + savage raiding alike, but it was the exploratory content that never clicked with me. Bozja i only completed it because i was very engaged with it's plot, and once i was done with it i never returned to it, this was during Shadowbringers prime time. This also goes with relics, i found the process to get them incredibly repetitive and tedious, and the weapons are never good to use until the very end of an expansion, so i felt like there's no reason for me to ever get them, since i don't care for most of it's designs (and their final forms aren't always the best), so i never finished a single relic in my life and i've been playing since stormblood. If i do have a problem, is that outside of exploratory zones missing, Endwalker has felt a bit more of the same as Shadowbringers, it's all good but very predictable content. I do feel sad for people who do enjoy explorative content, but if you don't like that, there's really no difference for me in content in Endwalker. I still feel the game should try new things and not play hyper safe, and make something that can hit that mix of being fun to play and also give you a reason to keep playing it for most of the patch cycle (something that this game kinda struggles, because fun content usually has no rewards or reason to play it after a day of engaging with it, while the less entertaining content has a lot to do) Maybe they can find a way to make exploratory zones more engaging in a way i eventually find it fun, but the 2 we got so far weren't ideal for me. And i remember people saying they hated these exploratory zones when they were new, something i see less now that aren't current content.

The other day I spent hours finding the longest chocobo porter route between the 3 main cities. I think that says a lot.

It's insane, I feel like I'm hearing my own thoughts recited back to me. I fell in love with this game back in Stormblood, and I love the MSQ and am passionate about the combat and mastering the jobs I play, but always struggle to make that leap between destroying normal dungeons and trials and attempting high-end content, I absolutely feel like we need some kind of bridge for people who want to get into high-end raiding but want a way to skill-up to what the hard stuff demands of the player

As someone who became a hardcore player I can tell you that something that happened to me is that once I started parsing, doing savages, ultimates, etc, I fall asleep on any other content, I went from being able to spam dungeons all day to fall asleep on the chair on my third expert roulette.

I haven't had anyone I would consider "friend" in 14 in the past 4 years. I pvp (currently diamond 5) I find it mildly enjoyable, but I get sad and log after a while. It is uncanny to me to be able to have so many people running around me in Limsa Lominsa but feel more alone than I've felt in my life.

thank you for the content. i very much agree with the missing mid-content very much.

I have no idea what type of player I'd classify myself as when sharing my perspective lmao. I guess I've been playing 2 or more years now with some brief breaks. After completing story, for the majority all I've done is do roulettes to gradually level every combat job and do other daily/weekly shit like Wondrous Tails and Gold Saucer stuff, but I've very willingly joined buddies and random PFs for Ex & Savage content because I've learned to love challenging games as well (Fighting games, Soulsborne, etc). Even when doing regular dungeons or raids or whatever, I enjoy trying to be a great tank/healer or be the dps with the highest enmity, and just trying to have a great smooth run with the randos I'm playing with. I actually do view those quick little queues as fun little social trips. Sometimes it's just "o/" at the beginning and "gg ty" at the end which is chill, sometimes there's goofy ass convos in alliance chat, and you get plenty of little chaotic moments to have fun with if there's a somewhat tricky mech with very new people or people who forgot. I agree that there should be another Eureka/Bozja though, because those are definitely more engaging to play with others and for sure a mid-range in difficulty. I agree it'd be great if there was a new one to tackle to give a wider range of players something fresh to enjoy together. That being said, regardless if there's content enough content to bridge the gap between casual and difficult, I do get a bit frustrated with others who see things outside of their comfort zone as impossible. I'm no stranger to anxiety and self-limitations, but I've only grown by taking small steps to confront it, whether it be in my hobbies or any life situation, and on the other side you find increased self confidence and respect that carries across all other areas. If you're not interested in certain challenges, that's that, but letting your brain come up with excuses to protect you from being mediocre at first at something you might enjoy or feel great accomplishing, or imagining how others will judge you when in reality they've all been mediocre too and most are understanding (assholes are always the exception not the rule) - it's just a self-limitation and never the truth. When you've found a good balance of relaxing/recharging while also getting outside of your comfort zone in whatever you're doing, down the road you will be amazed how much is not "impossible" for you. Life opens up and you'll learn more about how complex, adaptive and how full of possibilities you are. This is just a video game, but if that "that's impossible for me" mindset is found in one area then it's definitely present just about everywhere else.

I stay away from harder content because I feel like coming in new wastes the time of those who aren't new while I get up to speed. Maybe if there were a step in between normal and the rest to sort of make the spike in difficulty a little smoother, add in a mechanic or two at a time until you get to the full hardmode stuff, that's fine. That's why I love WoW's way of doing it. You have raid finder, then normal, then heroic, then mythic. Each rank has it's own mechanics (although RF doesn't feel like it), but the next level up builds on that. Sure, Mythic is way harder than heroic most times, but at least you have about 2/3 of the mechanics down by the time you get there.

Honestly props to Zepla for having the lady balls to actually critique 14's shortcomings instead of pretending they don't exist or don't matter.

I feel your pain, but glad I could experience eureka and bozja in the lull of endwalker, as I would never have been able to if I had to do Euwalkzja

You also have no tools in game to use getting you up to that level you just have to practice rotation on a training dummy and that is far different than actually fighting a boss while performing mechanics. Would love it if they updated something like the hall of the novice that had some more advanced sections that had mock ups of the most common extreme/savage mechanics/principles that you could practice with bots or a group in a safe environment.

Thank you Zepla, you have given voice to how I've been feeling about the game.

It's the player base that messed up midcore content, not the devs. Extremes and the first part of savage content are midcore. With a patient group, you can get pretty far on your first lock out run . However, the players expect you to know all the madeup terminology, have the best in slots, have a profile in fflogs, watch a half hour guide, and make a 9-12 hour a week time commitment BEFORE you're allowed to make an ATTEMPT to play in a group. Alternatively, you can wait 45 minutes for a pug, wipe twice, then disband. Parsing and fflogs are a mistake. The expectations the player base has just to play the game is absurd. Party finder is an arcane mess that scares off players wanting to experiment and practice.

That's exactly what me and my friends are feeling. Just look at Savages PF, the veterans fot their gear sooner and now just the newcomers are there and everyone is having a hard time to advance in this tier.

looking back at it now i really miss Eureka, and doing NM Trains while watching Shows and talking to friends

Me personally, they did say they will return to something. As a casual player, I was there for story and glamour, not hard content too. Endwalker was to be the final story expansion to get us to more Original and fleshed out Content. I don't think we were left out, as I'm there for the story, but there's also the issue of making Large zoned Instances more approachable. There was a large selection of the fanbase that didn't want to do their Relic Upgrades through those instances, there was a large portion that didn't want to do it for just gear, due to the length of it. My biggest issue was in Bozja the Fate/CE trains would nuke the enemies too fast you won't get any exp/points towards your relics. You can't please everyone, but me personally I liked Endwalker enough to rate it based on story the 3rd best. Shadowbringers being my first, then Heavensward 2nd. Stormblood was great but I wouldn't say it stood out like the ones before and after it. I will say everyone will have an opinion, and I respect players regardless. I just hope something comes along to help that itch for everyone. FFXIV typically does everything well. I don't consider Endwalker to be the worst Expansion because there's nothing to do, there's still also crafting, gathering, the dungeon maps, minion collecting, mount collecting, the variant dungeons, glamour collecting, etc. Which of course aren't for everyone once again, but I also don't want Large Instanced Zones to die off because people want that large Multiplayer Zone to "explore" in when you can't do them solo enough. They HAVE to make them future proof for when the game does go offline. I'm really sorry Zelpa, I really tried to listen to your side to it, but I just can't see it. And these two videos I saw of this topic made me only feel like its a pure rant about wanting to do live/video content and not so much really why. Hopefully they do return to it, because I see nothing wrong with Endwalker not having a Large Instanced Zone for players to play in. It wasn't needed, and they did say they will return to Bozja to finish it in the future and find a way to future proof these locations for Offline play.

I've been playing mmo's since runescape and star wars galaxies (think early 2000s) and playing video games even before that. I have no doubt in my mind that I would be able to assimilate into current patch savage content and be able to clear in a good group. When it comes to mmo's and video games in general my years of experience and passion have driven me to try and be the best that i can be and push past my own limits, atleast inside the game haha. That being said, I have like 2-3 friends who I play video games with regularly and only one of them plays final fantasy 14 with me and I had to barter with him to try it out (he now unironically loves the game but we haven't been logged into it since starfield came out). on top of that I have severe social anxiety that has only gotten worse as I've gotten older and where I use to be able to talk to random strangers in mmos has turned into me playing solo in most online games or even going into the more single player video game route. With all of that I would say that I'm in the 1% of the casual group in the sense of how I play and what I am capable of. but at the same time I have no desire to move up and do harder content. The reason is very simple, and that is because competitive gaming and hardcore content (think pvp and top 1%) sends me over the hill and I start to lose it. I use to play that kind of stuff all the time when I was younger and I noticed that every time after playing a session I was walking away because I was too angry and frustrated or someone else in the group was. It took me years to remember that gaming is suppose to be fun and adventurous not yelling at a monitor. And that clarity came to me only after my doctors told me I need to "reduce stress or be at risk of high blood pressure before the age of 30". But what it all boils down to is this, there are times I wish I could go into that savage content during the current patch cuz the weapons or armor look really cool. and that part of me that seeks out those ever-mightier battles and having that thrill of pushing both my wits and soul to their limits yearns for me to try and do that harder content. but I always have to remind myself that by the middle or end of the next expansion I will be able to try and solo said savages and that usually is enough for me. So in the mean time I relax, take my time and enjoy the main story or side adventures and remember that games are suppose to be fun. So I'm always looking for that new adventure be it in final fantasy or another game.

i have casually spent about 3 years in ARR on the free trial, and i have been loving it, im just slowly starting to run out of things to do other than Palace which i havent touched much

As a casual, you know what the biggest problem for me is? I had to spend hours to figure out what Bozja is and where the god damn entrance can be found. It took me so much time that by the time I got inside, I lost all the will to actually do the content. And it's not just Bozja, it's ALL the content that's not directly in the Duty Finder. Can I tell you where the Bozja entrance is? Hell no! I don't remember and I have to google it again. Where's the private island entrance? I don't know, I just know it was some sort of pier, I have to google it. Beast tribe quests? Have no idea whether I've even found half of them. Even the ones I've found and started... I have no bloody idea where they are now... I feel lost whenever I come back to the game, and I think they can improve this so easily :(

I think you hit the nail on the head. I remember being in the casual "never going to attempt extremes/savage" playerbase for a while and it was hard to break through. But now that I have kinda broken through that barrier and have dabbled in some Savage, I feel like I can't play the game casually anymore. I like the harder content this game has to offer, but I'm not able to commit all that time to actually clearing tiers of savage. Maybe 2-3 fights each tier but even then it's a commitment. I can't just hop on blind and go pug some savage without a certain amount of prep beforehand, and since I'm someone who can't commit multiple timeslots each week to a static, I just go play other games that are more "pick up and play" friendly. If I want to "pick up and play" in FFXIV, I am either going to fall asleep in roulettes or go jump around a city state and get pretty much the same level of engagement. I think part of the issue comes from way too high of an ilvl sync in every single duty, but that's an entire other can of worms. I just want something multiplayer that I have the potential to fail without having to worry about prog points and such. I agree that Bozja and Eureka filled that slot and gave me a reason to keep logging in throughout the expansion

I feel you nailed the issue I have with EW currently. I had loads of fun with ShB with the Bozja and Zadnor content because it was just this chill thing to do between running extremes or pushing Savage progress. It was engaging and put you into active gameplay with other players and felt great as an MMO experience. When the only engaging thing is raiding, I feel relegated to raid logging, and that's more or less how I felt about WoD in terms of WoW. After completing the old content I was interested in, I've been mostly absent from the game. Hoping Dawntrail is different in the post-game.

I like to look at the details in the world! There are many rocks and flowers!

I dunno if this is weird but for me, the hurdle typically comes when i can queue vs when i have to actively join something. I'm definitely a little bit introverted etc so there's always gonna be that, but it's like the automatic assignment takes away some of the stigma. So the content i do is mainly roulette, groupwise. And CC.

i consider myself as a casual after being a rather hardcore player during my WoW days. There are a few reasons I don't do high end content in FFXIV, but I would say the biggest reason would be because I never saw a reason to. There aren't many boss fights that I found hard mechanically in most games I've played, you memorize a pattern and you are usually good to go, I feel like getting a group able to memorize patterns at the same pace is the real difficulty in most high end content, and frankly, I don't have the time or inclination to try and get that sort of group. IMO finding a good group is harder than figuring out or memorizing a YT guide to a boss and that is not what I want to spend my time on. MMOs for me are more about having massive battles against massive enemies with a lot of other players. That being said, I am not against having that hard content there for when you somehow do end up in a high end group which many people can find just by simply playing the game and getting good at it, good enough to be noticed and noticing other good players and talking to them. Going into a new environment like switching from WoW mythic raiding to playing FFXIV alone, I couldn't be bothered trying to get a proper group going, it's just not fun to wipe on a boss because someone else can't figure out their stuff, I doubt you can fix it, but this is a problem plaguing all MMOs' high end content. Bozja was decent, but I enjoyed Eureka a whole lot more, and mostly because I had a clear goal in mind with one of the best looking armors in the game, never got that feeling with Bozja. The relics in ShB weren't to my liking, the armor in Bozja was mid at best, it felt like a serious grind because I had no real reason to want to do it, even though Eureka is probably much more of a grind, but when you have a goal in mind, you rarely mind it as much. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk, I am here daily. lol

While I agree with the position of a lack of mid-tier content I wonder how many players have maxed out the game like you have. How valuable would expanding that tier of content be considering the number of people in that place? Would you tolerate a patch focused on the mid-tier at the expense of end game content? I appreciate the critique... but the tone sounds an awful lot like Asmond. That's not good. The game can still be good (and I think the developers are trying to keep it good) even if you've outgrown it.

I feel exactly the same, as someone who already did savage and ultimate content, I wanted to have medium, more forgiving content now that I have less time to spend in the game but since it hasn't I just maintain my sub every 40 days to keep my house and barely play anymore...

That's why I went back to my roots, my first MMO. Phantasy star online. 1- version 2

This is truly a stellar video. I felt after the previous video(s) there was a 'rose-colored glasses' / optics concern (not to repeat my comment on that first video). I agree that having that mid-core content is the bridge to hardcore content, especially in FFXIV. I just hope if (when?) they bring it back they don't gatekeep the relic content behind running it, if nothing else have options to acquire said weapon(s). While I have leveled all jobs to 90, BLU, Custom Deliveries, Tribes, etc. I absolutely fall into the casual bucket given my lack of desire to run learning curve content (mostly due to close to 2 decades of raiding). (Kell Rikun on Leviathan)

My old friend quit the game because they kept simplifying jobs to brainless levels. The other thing they took issue with was the moogle tomes. All the work they did and hours spent getting items and mounts felt like a waste of time since they were essentially given away free for only doing a few duties

that forum poster voiced how i feel. I really do feel stupid trying to do higher end content, even extremes I have a lot of trouble with and it's so discouraging especially hearing how others say extremes are so easy for them

Still want to do the glowing armor from Eureka... but that's somewhere after HW Astro relic weapon and that's at some point when I'll have time to actually play :D

My experience becoming a HC raider was through the bridge of bozja that zepla talks about. I went from solo story player, finished SHB, discovered bozja, and made friends largely via that. The duengon and trial story content does get slightly harder as time goes on from ARR to SHB.. so that made me better going into bozja. And bozja CE and Raids were also slightly more challenging than normal content.. So by the time i got around to extreme and savage, then eventually ultimate fights.. i was ready to learn just from playing the game normally. Not having a bozja/eureka type zone was a big mistake.

You hit the nail on the head! Except it’s not just casuals trying to get into harder content but the other way around. I used to be a raider but 10 years after 2.0 release I’m older, less patient and tired at night after work. Relic content was my middle ground and that included the light farming and books as well and I just feel cheated now that it’s become a tomb grind. :( I want my content back!

Wow left this part of the player base behind about a decade ago...