Both SIM/3rd party are not needed ?
Well im playing on console, my static is not using SIM and I find FRU very easy compared to DSR/TOP
What I really want is very hard encounter, and since I see a lot of people using SIM, it will be good if SE balance HL content around those using SIM, so yeah the """difficulty""" will be much harder for vanilla players, and it will be the same for SIM users
Does it though?
The people who manage to do mechanics correctly in the SIM can clear them in the actual game just as well, it would just take them longer.
Because all the tool really does is cut out the all the time wasting, sitting in PF for hours waiting for parties to fill or wiping to earlier mechanics that your party should've easily solved already because someone lied.
So yeah, I guess it technically does make the fight easier to prog, by simply cutting out factors that would otherwise waste your time for zero gain and that you have little control over.
And in the end you still need to get into the game, get your party together and clear the fight for real, you just didn't spend 20+ hours extra to get to that point.
Sim is a time saver, that is literally it.
It does not affect the difficulty of the fight in the slightest.
Please do not equate time spent progging as fight difficulty.
Interesting how people translate the "challenge" (lol) of waiting hours in PF to get a group disband because one person fails a mechanic to something super difficult and hard to achieve, but skipping the hours of waiting in PF and having the possibility of training on your own to be better for the group you're eventually going to join ? Oh no that's cheating and is going to break the balance of the game.
I promise you, being more useful the next time you join a group because you trained and optimized a bit is not cheating, and if you think so, I dont know what to tell you.
A lot of people in this community genuinely seem to simply hate people being good at the game, and anything and everything that could potentially make people better at the game is seen as cheating or as a threat, or both.
If it cannot be supported natively in the game for both PC users and console alike then it has no business being a factor in design process.