One of the problems with how content difficulty is classed, and grouping psychology

[radar]

Almost every mmorpg classifies content as Normal > Normal + > Normal ++ > Hard or difficult > Heroic or Ultimate.

Effectively, every mmorpg goes to great lengths not to deride players doing content, however you want to think of it that is what it does when content difficulty is classed as "very easy" or "easy" (especially since it's not actually very easy or easy often and is actually difficult content most of the time, unless you have mass progression and gear). Ambuscade V1, Lillith, Odin etc

The reason this wording is bad, is you're effectively telling players they are terrible for doing it on a lower tiers and shaming them with the how the content is named. This means they are far less likely to shout for form groups on "very easy" or "easy" and so the only groups that get formed in world chat are ones that are not humiliating. Normal, Difficult and most often VD.

This means these players who need to be grouping on these tiers in order to build up confidence and skills are never doing that, and so never progress higher at all.

In-fact the only time players often do group on lower tier content, is when they can explain away why they are doing it to save face. Which is often for silver vouchers or other, it's the excuse to be allowed to be doing "very easy" content in a group in yell.

Either the game needs more reasons to group, that can used as an excuse like this or the content needs to be better classified, not even ff14 uses such derogatory difficulty naming and much of its content is very simple to the point it's open to all.

FFXI effectively creates a social stigma by designating content difficulty how it does, not only are they embarrassed to publicly state they are doing it on lower tiers but they feel no sense of achievement when they do beat it on those tiers due to how you called it. Added to that, if you classify content as very easy or easy and a new player tries it and wipes over and over you're effectively destroying their confidence and making them potentially quit on the spot, if they can't even beat very easy lillith or odin in sparks gear why even try anymore? It's very easy afterall.

This is one of the biggest problems with XI, I know it probably will never be changed but it really should be.

How it is:

Very easy, Easy, Normal, Difficult, Very difficult.

How it should be

Normal / Standard > Advanced > expert > master > apex / ultimate or some other.

[Dragoy]

I don't remember having seen it being a problem, though yes, I have said myself "very easy", huh... when it really isn't, and then sometimes "normal" really is very easy, like the meeble Ambuscade this month.

I feel like I have a memory of Fujito saying, and even showing it (maybe forgot "god-mode" on at first too), how he balances them as a samurai in artifact 119+3 equipment (with alter egos?), but it was some ages past, and I might remember bad.

The balance certainly varies all over the place in Ambuscade, but I suppose they do like to mess with the jobs too, loike no bard, corsair, geomancer allowed etc. and so on.

In more general, I think they've been trying to use the content level more of an indicator, though of course that's pretty static too, going hand-in-hand with the naming of them.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is, I never really thought much of the difficulty choices aside from maybe 'very easy' really is very easy for this battle, or maybe it will kick me right back to the home-point. It seems pretty random heh.

I don't think I ever felt particularly bad about it though, nor do I remember knowing anyone else state they did.

Mostly it's been Ambuscade, with intense very easy and comments like "very easy, really?".

That written, I don't think I ever really shout/yell-ed for content at all, aside from maybe Vana'bout times when mainly doing it to help people out who might not want to shout for help for it or something like that.

In fact I have shout and yell /off/ permanently otherwise nowadays due to the spam-of-sorts.

But yeah, I don't see this naming a problem, but I can't deny it isn't for others.

Starting with Normal / Standard though might make sense in any case though, but maybe it is the content level that messes it up in a way.

For Ambuscade Regular the Normal level is supposedly Content Level 119, perhaps intended to be like your first 119 battle at item level 119. Might be interesting to try it on a new character with the lowest tier 119 equipment attainable and how it compares.

[Alhanelem]

I'm mostly just confused with how certain things work in this game lol. Alter Ego Points add all of the stat bonuses that the player gets from grinding to master level 50, and the upcoming equipment system should theoretically close most of the rest of the gap in their attributes compared to ours. But while I definitely did see modest performance improvements in my go-to trust party, one of the strangest things is their ability (or lack thereof) to resist magic damage. I did the single ark angel fight where Mijin Gakure is used. It did almost no damage to me but nearly oneshotted all my trusts (with consistent damage across all of them). This apparent issue makes the difficulty of content played solo potentially even less predictable depending on the nature of the damage dealt by enemies in the fight.

[Dragoy]

Yeah, they are still pretty weak.

I do believe I managed to beat Ark Angels 1 (hume with Mijin Gakure) alone on Very Difficult, solo/duo, but maybe it did not get the chance to actually do the Gakure. I forget...

Similarly, they are kind of not useful in fights like Leshonn in Sortie, because they stand too close to the enemy for the cheat-area-attacks to take them down, but now I digress...