Heaven on High: That's it?

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Originally Posted by Reinha

The barriers to complete HoH are 1) needing to do it with the same people from start to finish and 2) the total time it takes. If you have a constantly changing work schedule (can't have a regular HoH day) and you can't play more than 2 hours in one sitting (can't complete it in one go with strangers), you are in the same situation as with PotD. The inability to just pick up random people and continue where you left off makes this very inaccessible to casuals, which cannot even be said about savage anymore.

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I agree with this so much. I only have about a 4 hour window at specific times a day (not counting days off) that I would be able to do this with a group. Then there may be days where you or another member of the group simply can't log on or just doesn't WANT to log on that day. Which means the group cannot continue.I tried to get with a group for PotD higher floors. We went in ONCE and then everyone else just stopped logging in without a word. Other than that one time I've never been in the higher floors of PotD. I wish they would at least add the loot options to be purchased with shards. Even if it's 50 shards, that's better than never getting a chance at it.

Also it's still saying I can't post longer than 1000 characters. xD

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

I'm not saying anything about it being brain dead easy, if anything the opposite. I'm saying there's no reason for them to gut casual content because apparently he thinks people only enjoyed 180-200 being a challenge. There was no call to reduce the casual floors so much, and it suffers in every way, especially since up to 70 is a casual floor anyways! He just gated floors off that he could have kept, 1-50 casual, 51-100 challenge. 40 is just as casual as 21-30.

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I wouldn't say he gutted casual content and the difficulty doesn't suddenly jump in HoH. 1-40 is pretty casual, while the difficulty picks up a bit in 41-60 (again, can't comment on 61 because my group underestimated a flying tomato and didn't see the patrol add sneak up on our healer). It's kinda like... 1-40 = Easy. 41-60 = Medium. 61-80 probably = Hard and 80-99 = Nightmare. Naturally, your stats play an important role on how "easy" the lower floors are.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Even with those above-listed situations, is it really hard to find friends or FC mates to try and work something out with? I have a limited amount of in-game friends (and a very small number of them even like PotD and HoH), but I still managed to clear Floor 200 and Floor 100 with just friends. PotD 200 took longer because I was working full-time, as was another person in our group, so we would set aside time at night (around 10pm EST, when we knew we were off) to do a few floor sets, and then continue the next day; the run where I finally cleared was spread over 3 to 4 days back-to-back at a couple hours apiece. HoH Floor 100 only took 4-5 hours to clear, and that was with us breaking after every set to check our loot sacks (and complain about the crap prizes we got).

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To answer the question is it really hard, that depends on every player's circumstances. It is however harder to make time for than many other types of group content including savage, extremes, roulettes, maps, Eureka, hunts and normal raids. It's not uncommon to hear people say that the reason they haven't tried savage is because they can't commit to a static. Well, this is 4 man content which requires a static start to finish and the same reason applies.

I managed to finish PotD at last in Stormblood, but I can't say it was fun to have as many cancellations as we had successful play sessions and not be able to replace the missing people the way you can when raiding savage. It is a shame because the content is so fun and unpredictable but isn't accessible enough for many casual players.

@HyoMinPark: Hm I did say that the challenge startet with 71+, so yes these monsters on these floors finally did feel like a challenge. I said that anything under 70 did not feel that scary at all, at least not in a full group which is the intended way to do this. (Thus the challenge should also be there) And this was with complete strangers, no tanks and with big mistakes too.

The problem with the decrease of story floors is imo a way smaller and medicore story and a feeling that these floors already feel stale after a couple of days. And at the same time most of the bosses felt like a complete joke even from the start. Only the lvl 30 could hit you a bit bad if you did not know his mechanics and after that he is also a breeze.

They also could have made them all good by giving each floor a certain reward. Or maybe make it even so that you can get more potsherds after you did them all. If you put most of the rewards behind certain floors, make the bosses and the floors itself really easy, make it so that you get less aetherpools in lower floors and let people be able to run these floors right from the NPC, well then its no wonder that most will just do that, especially since it gives the most exp, thus people are through this quite fast.

This is kinda the same problem with Eureka. If people get the most out of a content (which they might even find a bit boring) through a certain way, they will do that.

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Originally Posted by Reinha

The barriers to complete HoH are 1) needing to do it with the same people from start to finish and 2) the total time it takes. If you have a constantly changing work schedule (can't have a regular HoH day) and you can't play more than 2 hours in one sitting (can't complete it in one go with strangers), you are in the same situation as with PotD. The inability to just pick up random people and continue where you left off makes this very inaccessible to casuals, which cannot even be said about savage anymore.

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I agree with that. (Which is also one reason why I tried PotD solo, next to the challenge..which cant be done anymore thanks to the massive DCs I suffer in there..)

Not everyone has a big friend list and not everyone on that friend list may be good enough for that. Then there is the time and there is the problem that you have to start all over again after one death. If that death was thanks to people DCing in a bad situation or just plain mistakes, this could further demotivate people and forces you do put another big patch of hours in this. (Or if you just have plain bad RNG) Also you are forced to continue this with the specific group while in savage you can at least exchange people if someone has no time. (It might set you back but you can still train and learn, while in PotD this sets you back completely and you would need to start again if the other person comes back)

Thankfully I have one person that also wants to do this soon (at least the old one) so we will try to beat this together.

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Originally Posted by Ryaz

Definitely better luck than me. Even platinum sacks have been giving rank 5 materia to me. :/

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Just keep at it Ryaz :) I might add that this was over several runs I wasn't going in and exiting and turning in my sacks for items to see what I got, this was after getting them built up and turning them in all at once.

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Originally Posted by Reinha

The barriers to complete HoH are 1) needing to do it with the same people from start to finish and 2) the total time it takes. If you have a constantly changing work schedule (can't have a regular HoH day) and you can't play more than 2 hours in one sitting (can't complete it in one go with strangers), you are in the same situation as with PotD. The inability to just pick up random people and continue where you left off makes this very inaccessible to casuals, which cannot even be said about savage anymore.

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You don't need 1hour and half to get to the fixed party only section, also compared to Potd crossworld tech exist and are plenty, there's really nothing stopping you from creating a party to get as far as you can in the tower.
I'm not saying that climbing to floor 100 doesn't take time, but guess what it was something intended for fixed group in potd and it is here, only now the pool of ppl is much larger thanks to crossworld PF, crosswolrd Deep dungeon, cross world friend list and cross world linkshells.
So let's stop pretending that there's this insormuntable barrier of entry because it's false.
And good lords if an MMO has the gall to actually make you seek other players by yourself

Also if some1 can tell me this amazing and long story that original potd had is welcomed to do because honestly it seems I've missed it.

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Originally Posted by Remedi

guess what it was something intended for fixed group

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And that's exactly what I'm criticizing. It's an arbitrary restriction which adds nothing to the content apart from needless frustration. I have no problem looking for people to party up with. I do have a problem with planning my time around a game only because its content enforces strict grouping rules. To some it's just a feature but to me it's a flaw.

Admittedly, I do think they should allow you to convert a save file into a three man party if someone unexpectedly bails. That way, all your progress isn't lost. Likewise, they probably could have put the checkpoint for the higher floors at 41-50, though I suspect they're trying to incentivize forming parties instead of just queuing with randoms.

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Originally Posted by Reinha

And that's exactly what I'm criticizing. It's an arbitrary restriction which adds nothing to the content apart from needless frustration. I have no problem looking for people to party up with. I do have a problem with planning my time around a game only because its content enforces strict grouping rules. To some it's just a feature but to me it's a flaw.

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But, then again that is your problem and while I can empatize with it, I don't believe that a content can be considered bad simply because it doesn't comfors to some1 timetable, it might simply mean that it's not a content for someone but that's pretty much it
Frankly this is beign blown out of proportions.

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Originally Posted by Remedi

But, then again that is your problem and while I can empatize with it, I don't believe that a content can be considered bad simply because it doesn't comfors to some1 timetable, it might simply mean that it's not a content for someone but that's pretty much it
Frankly this is beign blown out of proportions.

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Okay, let me ask you this. Is PotD/HoH something that needs to be done once and forget ? If it is, then you're right, go static all the time.
Reality check, it is not, replayability is an artificial value from how random rewards are given. If running from start to finish give me every
single reward possible then it no longer has replay value. A content that -requires- replay but forces identical setup? I'd say that's stupid design.