Keeping content relevant

[Alhanelem]

I don't consider artificially limiting myself to beat old content a test of skill, because that test is meaningless against the game as a whole. I've done ENMs before (which are the same now as they were ages ago) and I wouldn't describe it as "white knuckle excitement." They're decent fights for sure, but not any easier or harder than max level content is at max level.

I personally know no one deliberately limiting themselves to a certain level. I know I'd never do it, because I don't see how that affects the fun factor. Doing 75 content at 75 vs doing max level content at max level, I don't see the difference.

I mean, if you enjoy it, power to you, but I can't see SE investing time in something that such a minority would care about. They never fixed ballista or pankration, never finished monstrosity, all niche contents that only a fairly small group cared about, so I wouldn't have much expectaiton about this. THe most likely outcome is taking more 75 content and scaling it up to i119. If the experience is the same, what does it matter what the number next to the letters 'lv' says?

[Stompa]

I don't consider artificially limiting myself to beat old content a test of skill, because that test is meaningless against the game as a whole. I've done ENMs before (which are the same now as they were ages ago) and I wouldn't describe it as "white knuckle excitement." They're decent fights for sure, but not any easier or harder than max level content is at max level.

I personally know no one deliberately limiting themselves to a certain level. I know I'd never do it, because I don't see how that affects the fun factor. Doing 75 content at 75 vs doing max level content at max level, I don't see the difference.

I mean, if you enjoy it, power to you, but I can't see SE investing time in something that such a minority would care about. They never fixed ballista or pankration, never finished monstrosity, all niche contents that only a fairly small group cared about, so I wouldn't have much expectaiton about this. THe most likely outcome is taking more 75 content and scaling it up to i119. If the experience is the same, what does it matter what the number next to the letters 'lv' says?

On the difference between 119 play and 75 play ; they are like two different games.

119 Mages have statbomb gear and loads of DT gear, they can nuke like crazy, take hate and even tank mobs. On 75 you would need Rdm/nin and skills and strategies to survive taking hate as a mage.

Lvl 75 content you can't just throw HQ GEOs and SCHs at everything. The level 75 gear and abilities don't support this.

So level 75 content is intrinsically based around a mix of jobs, and heavily reliant on strategy. At 75 I have to gear swap a lot, for the STR+6 bonus or whatever, because my gear is not statbombed with attributes everywhere. There is a lot less room for error at 75, because of the more basic gear and abilities, you have to play a tight game or you get KO on your first error. I found the 119 game was a lot more forgiving of errors (in most cases).

Reasons to want to play 75 content. Some people prefer the old areas, lottery-pop NMs, WOTG Campaigns, etc. And those areas are dead to you if you are on 119, the mobs are TW/EP and the bosses get oneshotted. On 75 it is a fun and challenging adventure again.

So again, I wasn't suggesting SE add more 75 stuff, because we know that is not going to happen. I was just pointing out that there already is a whole world out there which provides adventures for level 75 players, and it is now possible to build a mule char to 75 really quickly, if a person wanted to occasionally go play in the 75 old areas/content. I do know about eight people who do this, including myself.

[Alhanelem]

Lvl 75 content you can't just throw HQ GEOs and SCHs at everything. The level 75 gear and abilities don't support this.

No, instead you threw SAMs and BRDs at everything.

they are like two different games.

The difference is mostly in the existence of new jobs since the core of the 75 era. Yeah, some new mechanics came along, but the gameplay and combat itself is not different.

So level 75 content is intrinsically based around a mix of jobs,

No it's not. If you think we used a greater mix of jobs at 75, then you didn't really play much in that era... I maxed at least one job per expansion and spent literally all day waiting for parties sometimes. PUP wasn't wanted in the slightest until audolin, SMN was sometimes wanted for content but never for EXP, SCH and DNC were not very popular either; GEO was the first new job I leveled that ended up being wanted.

Some people prefer the old areas

Why? What's wrong with the new areas? they are all designed pretty well to me (barring the usual cryptic crap and one way paths th at are in many original areas...)

lottery-pop NMs,

Lottery pops were always, always, always a bad system, at any level. The smug satisfaction of winning a claim was completely outweighed by the hours of waiting and praying that you could overcome the bots the other parties were (allegedly) using. The only people (IMO) who liked them were the ones that exploited to win them more often. Personally, I want to fight things. Not wait for and then watch other people fight things. The fun should be in the fight itself.

And those areas are dead to you if you are on 119, the mobs are TW/EP and the bosses get oneshotted.

That's totally fine by me, because there are plenty of challenges and not TW/EP mobs in newer areas. It's just part of the evolution of an MMO. Even pre audolin, a new expansion meant existing content fell in popularity (although perhaps not to the same degree, the point remains). Stat creep still existed, it was just slower. the original 75 content got easier with every expansion- because there was "I just hit 75" lv75 content, and "i've beaten all the content" lv75- if 119 and not 119 are like seperate games, so too then were early 75 and late 75.

Scaled versions of content are available all over, not just in new areas, and I think they should keep doing that. I don't like level sync or other artificial feeling means of making something harder than it is.

[Ketaru]

So level 75 content is intrinsically based around a mix of jobs, and heavily reliant on strategy. At 75 I have to gear swap a lot, for the STR+6 bonus or whatever, because my gear is not statbombed with attributes everywhere. There is a lot less room for error at 75, because of the more basic gear and abilities, you have to play a tight game or you get KO on your first error. I found the 119 game was a lot more forgiving of errors (in most cases).

That's kind of an overexaggeration. On RDM, when I'm soloing stuff, if I switch to magic-oriented gear to cast enfeebles or something, my accuracy very noticably goes down. If you're not experiencing this, it's because you're fighting mobs well below your capacity.

Lottery pops were always, always, always a bad system, at any level. The smug satisfaction of winning a claim was completely outweighed by the hours of waiting and praying that you could overcome the bots the other parties were (allegedly) using. The only people (IMO) who liked them were the ones that exploited to win them more often. Personally, I want to fight things. Not wait for and then watch other people fight things. The fun should be in the fight itself.

It's as though somebody has finally seen reason. I've criticized this about the old NMs time and time again, yet people clung to the legitimacy of this system like battered wives with Stockholm Syndrome.

Scaled versions of content are available all over, not just in new areas, and I think they should keep doing that. I don't like level sync or other artificial feeling means of making something harder than it is.

At this point, they should probably keep on doing that (especially when there are still content from WotG that could use iLevel equivalents). We should even be glad they provide the content to be experienced at a range of levels. If you're playing a job that is weaker at soloing, you can enter higher tier battlefields at a lower level. If you want a challenge with other players, you can opt for the Very Difficult setting. Content designed like that ensures there is accessibility for everybody.

[OmnysValefor]

IF they did introduce 75-cap content, they'd probably reorient what level GEO and RUN attain some abilities and they'd throw an array of handbell/geomancy+ gear to make GEO valid.

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Guys, level 75 gear frequently sucked. A lot of melee, who cared to build PDT sets, were wearing things like "Darksteel Subligar +1" (DEF:29 Light/Dark +3, PDT-3%) or the NQ. Arhat's, a beautiful mnk/sam/nin PDT set was also only about PDT and Enmity+ and Arhat's Gi +1 was probably the best among the terrible selection. Haste, you remember haste? Haste cap wasn't even a concern for most players in their gear sets, whereas my paladin can now simultaneously pdt cap, haste cap and have fair accuracy (with food) in 119 content (So Zitah t1s/t2s~).

The much better approach to reliving the old content is how they're doing it, making bigger versions of the old fights. The only reason this sits so poorly with so many people is that everything is nuked. This just means they need to rebalance content.

[Alhanelem]

Different people like different things.

Well, on that, I totally agree. I'm just trying to come to some kind of understanding about why some people like particular things. Don't take my comments to mean "STOP LIKING WHAT I DONT LIKE!" - Even if I don't agree with something, I like to understand why it is others feel the way they do.

Like the lottery pop system. I can't imagine why anyone likes this. Without a guide (wiki) or someone to tell you how it works, the average player will probably have no idea what's actually happening. not know that a specific mob spawn is a placeholder for a special enemy, and even if they do know, you could kill that PH for hours an d never see anything. I'm just really struggling to understand what's fun about this. It doesn't make any kind of logical or even fantasy sense that one particular ordinary monster out of a crowd of ordinary monsters is acting as a stand in for some overlord.

But really, the job variety point is indisputable. While the jobs we're using the most now are different from the jobs we used the most back then, the problem has ALWAYS existed, and in fact it's only natural that the playerbase will gravitate over time to a handful of jobs deemed the most efficient.

[Alhanelem]

I don't see all this mercing you speak of. There's easily obtainable 117+ gear, that helps you get early 119 gear, that helps you get later 119 gear... seems like there's a slope to me.

[machini]

I don't see all this mercing you speak of. There's easily obtainable 117+ gear, that helps you get early 119 gear, that helps you get later 119 gear... seems like there's a slope to me.

An awful lot of people won't take people in 117 gear for anything. I've seen a lot of a specific problem which is "we will not take you for content X unless you have gear from contentX+1 or equivalent." Like the time I got told off for suggesting we take a 119 mythic MNK on a tojil run over a MNK with oatixur because "oatixur is the best you noob". It's like people who refuse to take you into alluvion skirmish unless you're already in alluvion skirmish armor.

You cannot pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.