Summary
Before the release of theDawntrailexpansion,Final Fantasy 14director Naoki Yoshida (better known as Yoshi-P) made an interesting claim about howhe regrets turning it into “a game that you can play without stress”.Ever since the release of Stormblood, there have been many vocal Final Fantasy 14 fans upset with how the game has gradually gotten easier over the years, particularly when it comes to dungeons and raids.
Yoshi-P’s comments had some hoping that Dawntrail would raise the difficulty a little more, and it turns out their hopes were answered. Dawntrail has some pretty brutal dungeons along the MSQ, ending in boss fights that are definitely a step-up in difficulty from the likes of Shadowbringers and Endwalker. There’s a lot to keep an eye on, you need to react to multiple mechanics at once, and they hit like a truck.
For the most part, this step-up in difficulty has been seen as a positive thing, but now that more casual players are making their way to the end of Dawntrail and hitting the more challenging dungeons, we’re starting to see a fair few people claiming that Dawntrail may actually be too hard. One of the most infamous examples is a player called Bearskjold, who explainedon the Final Fantasy 14 forumsthat they’re fed up with “having to struggle through increasingly difficult dungeons” when they just want to relax and that they now “dread seeing a dungeon pop up in the MSQ.”
Final Fantasy 14 Players Are Defending Dawntrail’s Increased Dungeon Difficulty
You can find quite a lot of people agreeing with Bearskjold’s comments, which have since made their way into the wider Final Fantasy 14 community. Of course, you won’t be surprised to learn that drama has ensued, as many are fighting back against the claims that Dawntrail is too difficult to get through. For example, Twitter user Starrdiver thinks that the whole difficulty discourse is because people are now “facing mechanics that expect them to learn from their INEVITABLE mistakes.”
Theirs isone of several tweetsexploding in support, asother people rush to defend Dawntrail’s difficulty, as it appears the community is quite split on the matter. On one hand, those that hate Dawntrail’s difficulty have to admit that it was far to eas to cruise trough Shadowbringers and Endwalker, despite us coming up against evil, all-powerful beings.
On the other hand, there is an argument to be made about whether Square Enix should consider difficulty options in NPC dungeon runs like Bearskjold suggests - like it does with instances - as less skilled players and people with disabilities shouldn’t be locked out of experiencing the story. Even Yoshi-P has stated in the past that it’s the most important part of the game, and being stopped in your tracks because you physically can’t get past a boss must suck pretty badly.
