Old content has become so easy that it is no longer fun

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Originally Posted by YukikoKurosawa

They've definitely nerfed some mechanics in older content. Mustadio's ability where he drops giant squares onto the raid used to one shot you prior to Endwalker, now it only takes out half your hp.

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One shot mechanics (without vuln debuffs) are bad design, change my mind.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

One shot mechanics (without vuln debuffs) are bad design, change my mind.

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Getting sniped by Mustadio is still one of the best thing in this game :(

The whole of the early and mid game experience needs adjusting.

Not only we STILL wanting a better more complete skill set for early game. Damage and HP pools need a bit of a touch up. New players won't suffer, in fact, increased difficulty in general for early game might even motivate more early gearing, more rewarding experience and a better and lasting impression instead of this "get to the good stuff" mentality that has been dominating.

If anything, i wish the next expansion was a complete overhaul of ARR and game balance in general.

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Originally Posted by ReynTime

This is part of why I quit playing.

"Something something repeated old content who cares something"

If this is your response then there is something seriously fundamentally wrong with the roulette system. And if you care so little for the supposedly central pve content of the game (party duties) that only the very last few matter... Why even play?
Why even have 7+ different dungeons per expansion if their design is fundamentally the same since 2015?
Why have trash pulls if they're meant to be weak punching bags to make you spam aoes?
Why have 100 jobs if their structure gets exponentially more homogenized each expansion?
Why pretend you're adding new monsters when 99% of them are direct recycled models with a different texture and down to the exact same animations?
Why boast about a long list of new tracks when half of them overuse the same 1 or 2 leitmotifs almost in their entirety?
Why say the game is a real Final Fantasy like all the rest when you refuse to commit to that design fully?
Why say the game is a MMORPG like any other when you refuse to commit to that design fully?

I was almost sure I'd end up quitting after Endwalker, but the way the stat squish affected the older content was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. You're telling me it isn't bad enough that the non high-end content since Shadowbringers is a tedious passive chore of a shallow experience, you're also going to destroy the little fun I had in older content designed back when you still cared about dungeon design?

No thanks Creative Business Division 3. I've had enough of your visions for XIV.

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I have to say I agree. I still find a lot of enjoyment in the game but I find the overall "boringness" that creeps into jobs, dungeons, old encounters concerning. I barely do my roulettes unless I can chat with FC mates over Discord, that's how bored I am by them. Kinda sad. :(

Wait. It wasn't always like this?

Huh.

I dunno, the Ivalice raids are bigger clown shows these days than on launch. Same for Nier raids.

PvE in this game is so-so. I believe that a lot of people came here (FFXIV) with dreams of glory and conquer in PvE, but just found their love in side content (like me Eureka, Deep Dungeon and glamour farm) after finding out that PvE tends to be really bland.

I know that people don’t like to hear it, but WoW’s PvE design and balance is still far superior to FFXIV. I can jump into deadmines on Classic WoW as a 15-year veteran and still have an exciting run that puts a smile on my face every so often. Compare this to FFXIV dungeons, what is that even? An interactive movie? As tank in sastasha I’m spamming 1 skill for 15 minutes, while the healer and dps does the same, how is that game design? Going back to WoW deadmines which is kind of the sastasha, the tank needs to know what he’s doing and use all of his kit, the healer needs to know mana management and the DPS needs to know positioning, CC and interrupts.

FFXIV is superior in side content, RP and general “idling” your free time away in a game, but WoW has the upper hand in the pure design reduced to its cogwheels.

I wasn't here for when things were more fair, but going through the game and seeing some people I have invited to play the game just crush bosses mercilessly by just doing their rotations really is depressing. Even as early as garuda, in the level 45 set you get from your job, and aurum vale chest plate you go in to fight what seems to be the most powerful primal in the story save for the big man himself Ultima, and you can literally duo garuda with your two party members who are in level 15 gear for some reason and it dies in one shot. This is just not fun. It has been that way since I started. Get excited for new boss, finally get into the fight, and it dies right away. The only one that was slightly challenging was Shinryu and Susano, but it was mostly because alot of the team was oopsying into mechanics or booking it with the stack markers. Now if you have a team full of 'little timmy licking windows' sure you can finally have a challenge, but if you have a team where everyone is at least pushing their buttons even if it isn't efficent it dies so fast you wonder why you didn't just go in undersized. I am by no means great at this game, but I went in ilevel synced to e2n with just me as paladin and partner on scholar, and we cleared. Sure it took a while, but I know if I go in there with a full party like I did with e1n it will be a roffle stomp. Why is this even a thing unless something has enrage you can clear many things with just a tank and healer. It adds some fun to be able to do this, but the fact you can do this is just strange.

There is also the groups in current content on fflogs where you see most underpreforming in the single digit percentile and one person at the 55 mark and you can still brute force clear it. I really do not think this should be a thing. Savage is suppose to be super team oriented and take time, and be challenging. Not that I am saying it isn't already, but why can people ram their head against a wall and still manage to clear. It is just strange, I don't know. I haven't gotten there myself yet, but I even still do not think a group should be able to clear ARR extremes by just bashing their head against the wall learning nothing because the echo carries the weight of a thousand 'timmys'

Edit: I am glad there is an option to undersize, disable echo, and ilevel sync to see how content could be good or at least challenging. Also hard does not mean one shot mechanics either. It is sad you can clear it, but at the same time happy there is the option to really test yourself. A thing that may fix many of these things is to increase the health of the bosses so you can at least see all of the phases/all of the mechanics.

I'd like them to possibly drop the item level scaling a little bit in old content, but also rearrange the skills so we get a more filled out kit earlier on.

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Originally Posted by PangTong

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Having done dungeon/raids before and after 6.0, such as Tam Tara Hard and Breath of the Creator normal, I can say nothing has fundamentally changed whatsoever, besides certain mechanics in certain instances no longer being one-shotters (while many of them still being so, even in 50 instances like Tam Tara hard). Managed to wipe on the first and last boss of Tam Tara Hard because we messed up the mechanics of both. Healed Breath of the Creator and his health pool was no different than before, perhaps higher, took a few minutes to take him down, and the damage being put out across the whole raid made it quite difficult for me even with another healer to keep everyone up.

You realize potencies have been NERFED for a lot of jobs' abilities, right? Unless we get look at the raw numbers before and after 6.0 for content, than it's hard to say anything's changed. But you're suggesting they've been upping potencies across the board each expansion which is just not even remotely true. I'm sure some things are different now, some content marginally easier, others marginally harder, but it's definitely not easier accross the board, let alone with each subsequent expansion. Except when they go back and deliberately nerf fights like Thordan. Part of the problem as another user mentioned is content not being designed for how jobs play now. Like how threat worked in ARR and how it works now. I don't really know what they could do about that though.

I tend to agree. I don't see how a new player experience can be very appealing, especially if they have played other mmos. It's dreadful when you think about trials, which usually are a history-climax... Thordan is basically a bunch of glorified animations, the fight barely exists anymore.

Also, it doesn't really help that they keep doing expert dungeons easier than leveling dungeons as well, so I don't think that even expert roulettes help in that regard.

This is never going to become a "hard" game like the hardcore's want. Plenty of other epeen based MMOs out there. Well...their would be if they all didn't fail since most people aren't interested in that kind of game...no matter how much they overrepresent themselves on the forums.

And that's a good thing.

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Originally Posted by Conundrum

This is never going to become a "hard" game like the hardcore's want. Plenty of other epeen based MMOs out there. Well...their would be if they all didn't fail since most people aren't interested in that kind of game...no matter how much they overrepresent themselves on the forums.

And that's a good thing.

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Have you even read the thread? This has nothing to do with asking the game to be hard. There's a huge space between hard and brainless because of a power creep. People aren't asking for things to be harder, they are asking for them to not be even easier.

Asking to not fall asleep while doing roulettes isn't being a hardcore. It's called wanting to play the game and feel engaged by it, I'm not sure why so many people are often surprised by this concept.

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Originally Posted by van_arn

Imagine a sprout's disappointment with the leadup to ARR leading to Praetorium or the leadup to Heavensward leading to Thordan. Yeah, the older stuff needs to be moved from "free" to "easy."

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The reason Thordan is "easy" is because of lazy people demanding to be carried with low effort.

If things right now are easy are due the playerbase, so it sounds like they have to lie in their bed now.

Thordan normal was always easy. Even when it was new.

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Originally Posted by Darthgummibear

I didn't even know that mechanic was supposed to be a thing until just now...case in point, I guess.

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You start to skip and avoid a lot of mechanics as your ILVL increases. The same thing happens in NieR raids of all places.


Hobbes, 9S, 2P and Red Girl take so long to kill that you see a lot of the mechanics that were only displayed when people were taking way too long.

So no, not case on point.

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Originally Posted by Caurcas

Thordan normal was always easy. Even when it was new.

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You're not wrong, and thats the actual crime. They should have NEVER ever have to nerf it. Now Thordan is an actual pinata.

Oh no! Anyway...

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Originally Posted by Jin-

It's shocking here since you are forced to do it all. Imagine new player experience when the first slight challenge they get from the story starts in ShB dungeons/trials and everything else melts quick.

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Wrong. The first challenge comes at Nabriales Trial. You should see all the misery that trial brings to people. Pair that with lazy healers and you have a recipe for disaster (specially attack LBs used before tear phase).

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Originally Posted by Mika_Zahard

Wrong. The first challenge comes at Nabriales Trial. You should see all the misery that trial brings to people. Pair that with lazy healers and you have a recipe for disaster (specially attack LBs used before tear phase).

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Speaking of which, I did that not that long ago. And yep, people are still wiping to it just like before. Only wiped once this time though, used to wipe 2+ times per Nabie run. Once the Great Nabie Filter is no more I will get concerned about content becoming too easy.

Noticed this the other day in Doma castle roulette. Despite healer being new we blitzed it. Second boss barely done any mechanics. It managed one set of the explode lines and a tower mechanic before being killed. And the final boss doesn’t even get to do half his mechanics any more which sadly means I didn’t get to even hear him scream “die die die” “ we go together” bad times.

This game has three difficulty settings:

• Sleepwalk
• Mild Interest (Normal Raid)
• Marching Band Practice (Savage)

I've been saying this for years.

FFXIV have the same difficulty than Candy Crush, absolutely none.

First pack(the 2 bats) in Sastasha will have tank busters and donut AOEs and hit like trucks. The clams are mini bosses and the flames they spawn have tank busters that ignores CDs. The crabs have dps busters where they slap a 20s slow effect on the dps that can't be Esuna'd. There is a "surprise boss fight" before Captain Madison and the last boss gets eaten by the Kraken from Sastasha Hard Mode and replaces it as the last boss. Ilvl sync to i15 so you can't over gear it. Please look forward to it.

Hint for who the surprise boss fight is: THE ARCANE IS MINE TO COMMAND!

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Originally Posted by YukikoKurosawa

Speaking of which, I did that not that long ago. And yep, people are still wiping to it just like before. Only wiped once this time though, used to wipe 2+ times per Nabie run. Once the Great Nabie Filter is no more I will get concerned about content becoming too easy.

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Yeah i've wiped 2 times there recently. One, the healers werent healing properly in both phases, and the second time, someone LB3 Nabriales right before tear phase, so we lost the dps check as the tanks and healers died left and right due the meteors.

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Originally Posted by Caurcas

I dunno, the Ivalice raids are bigger clown shows these days than on launch. Same for Nier raids.

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Correct. People here say: Hey we want difficulty, we want stuff as hard as current content. Then, they meet NieR and Ivalice raids, and die endlessly because they dont respect the mechanics (i've seen sooo many people drowning to the first boss of Rabanastre, and specially ignoring sand spheres in Rab causing massive wipes all over). Yesterday, in this same character, i had 2 people immediately leaving rabanastre as soon as we got it (maybe they wanted CT), then after 2 wipes to 2nd boss, they started abandon votes (which failed lol). And that raid was a full failure.

People only bother with old content if they have to or for tomes. Change my mind.

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Originally Posted by Melorie

It's dreadful when you think about trials, which usually are a history-climax... Thordan is basically a bunch of glorified animations, the fight barely exists anymore.

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At no point in this game's life did Thordan normal have any teeth lol

Agreed, old content is very dry and boring, it would be awesome if they could do something about that..

They have done multiple things to make there being a point to running old content, but they have done nothing to make it fun...

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Originally Posted by Thaigare

Agreed, old content is very dry and boring, it would be awesome if they could do something about that..

They have done multiple things to make there being a point to running old content, but they have done nothing to make it fun...

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Because the Devs are trying to TELL a story, not trying to make you replay ARR for the 123th time.

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Originally Posted by Darthgummibear

I didn't even know that mechanic was supposed to be a thing until just now...case in point, I guess.

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Glasya Labolas hasn't done his platform mechanic in years, and not just a few years but like 5+ so this was long before the stat squish. Job changes, new stats, the reduction to 1 tank per Alliance so 1 extra DPS per party, the majority of the group being synced to i130 vs around i70. A lot of factors have made mechanics skippable over the years.

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Originally Posted by Thaigare

Agreed, old content is very dry and boring, it would be awesome if they could do something about that..

They have done multiple things to make there being a point to running old content, but they have done nothing to make it fun...

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I disagree I think some of the older content has much more interesting mechanics, and dungeon design then most dungeons after 4.0.
The current content is very formulaic and repetitive as it caters to more casual players than the older content did. You only find the older content boring because the ilvl sync / level sync was never balanced well. When you are level 50 with all your stats capped for that level it removes any challenge the content has. So pretty much anytime you are ilvl synced, you are doing the content with the highest possible stats you can have for that ilvl, which in most cases is higher than the gear at that ilvl offered.

Gonna be honest, It’s always been easy during the msq. Laughably so in fact. Dungeons have been two pulls/boss and repeat for years. The “expert roulette” is poorly named, it requires zero expertise. Trials are a joke and to wipe takes real skill

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Originally Posted by FoxyAreku

I agree.

I always laugh when people praise this game for 'keeping its content relevant'. No, it actually hasn't, over half the game is completely trivialized to the point most of the mechanics don't even play out, especially bad in content that was already easy to begin with when it was current.

I saw a youtube video of someone comparing how things used to be to now, using Ultima Weapon as an example. That fight used to last 4 minutes in praetorium, now it lasts on average 55 seconds and you don't even get to the best part of the song.

It's embarrassing.

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What video is that?

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Originally Posted by Rokke

At no point in this game's life did Thordan normal have any teeth lol

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This isn't a discussion if something was hard or not though? The discussion is that things are becoming punching bags to a point that it's ridiculous with the power creep. It might be ridiculous back then, but now it is even more.

OP is weird, and doesn't realize MMO content has a shelf life no matter what happens.

Even ultimates get slightly easier over time with DPS checks even if they are sync'd+ilevel locked forever. Changes to older skill potencies, new jobs like GNB and DNC added synergy and power creep that did not exist at the time.

Lastly, it's not worth their time to update old normal content when they can barely keep up with releasing new content on-time.

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Originally Posted by Mika_Zahard

The reason Thordan is "easy" is because of lazy people demanding to be carried with low effort.

If things right now are easy are due the playerbase, so it sounds like they have to lie in their bed now.

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No it's not.

The same "bad" players who don't want to learn mechanics and want to be carried will always play that way. But they were never going to quit the game over this.

The stupidity of making pve more and more inconsequential is effectively only making the experience less enjoyable, because as the dev team keeps their ridiculous philosophy of trying to fix what will never be fixed dungeons and combat for older content and most of what's not in high end raids becomes as increasingly shallow as an endless runner game. People who hate learning to play combat moderately decently are not playing past the MSQ for the pve so they should never have been the main audience of the design.

Regardless. That ship has sailed. I don't expect things to improve.

I've been playing this game for over 9 years and honestly I enjoyed the experience of 1.09+ a lot more than what became of this since Stormblood. It's clear I'm not their target audience as the duties have been boring me, the overworld has been unimpressive, they keep gutting my favorite jobs into their dps tunnel vision and to top it all of Endwalker's MSQ was a writing mess.

I guess I still have a few days of forum posting, but I'm pretty much done with the game. I want to play some proper Japanese rpgs and XIV isn't one of them.

I may not have played the game prior to Stormblood, and I won't deny that old content is of course getting easier as jobs get more fleshed out and the stat squish certainly didn't seem to help. However, from my experience in WoW, where similar statements were being made regarding dungeons and raiding of old, it's mostly nostalgia and rose tinted goggles.

WoW classic proved and is still actively proving that there, old content isn't half as difficult as people remember it being and it was just them not being good at it. It's an educated guess to say the same applies to FF14.

OP must be new to MMO's.

FFXIV at least gives you the option to do the content at its original Ilevel (Unless i misunderstood the sync feature for that) and level.
So you can just select the appropriate settings and enjoy your harder content.

No sense gating the old content through difficulty when the options already there.

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Originally Posted by Michieltjuhh

WoW classic proved and is still actively proving that there, old content isn't half as difficult as people remember it being and it was just them not being good at it. It's an educated guess to say the same applies to FF14.

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Well, I don't believe this is a nostalgia or rose-tinted glasses thing applies to FFXIV. First because FFXIV always followed a more or less formulaic aspect, so although quite a lot of things in the combat changed, I wouldn't say that encounter design is that different (I can't speak for ARR, but at least talking about overall normal content). So there's not much to be nostalgic about, the game has not really changed. Unless you're talking about the combat of a few jobs, there's not whole lot difference between HW, SB, SHB and EW - you have the same quantity of dungeons and trials, and you'll see these expansions all speak somewhat the same language content-wise, and they all build upon each other, unlike a game such as WoW that changed a lot over the years, and it seems that every expac has a different audience. And, again, saying that things nowadays are easy to the point of being ridiculous doesn't really mean that back then it was something extremely hard. This isn't a hard vs easy debate.

Besides, a lot of content in FFXIV actually teaches mechanics that will be used in the future in other things, so having fights skipping things to the point that you see very little of it is even worse for new players. You erase the whole learning curve of the game when you do that, learning things in video games are usually an interesting aspect of them - I actually really like this particular thing in FFXIV, the game slowly teaches you things and brings them back with a different twist, and this makes the entire process of learning things about a specific fight more intuitive. You can compare fights and mechanics and use this in your favour to learn the game. This, however, will be lost if syncing is not treated with a better care.

Given that part of FFXIV content is re-doing old content, and given that a huge chunk of this content is presented in a history that builds up the climax for that specific content... To have it being simply being a faceroll fest to the point that you don't need to ever look at your screen or even consider that something is happening besides seeing things melt in your face isn't appealing. These things hurts storytelling which is a huge selling aspect of the game! Imagine playing heavensward and bracing yourself to do Nidhogg and meeting that underwhelming thing. Back when I did Nidhogg normal mode it wasn't hard, but it was engaging and, thus, at least a bit of fun. I had to keep my eyes on the screen. Things can be easy but still fun and make you pay attention to them.

Logging into the game and doing some roulettes should be something that at least is a tiny bit of interesting, it is a TREMENDOUS part of the game progression system, and it is a waste to see the biggest chunk of it (anything that's not from the current expansion, and even then, depending on the patch...) simply go to the faceroll bin. A MMO that wants to rely on old-content in the way FFXIV does have to pay a little more of attention to how syncing works and try to balance the power creep aspect of it. I don't feel like "oh that's just how MMO works" applies the same way here. In other MMOs I wasn't doing a lvl 60, 70 or whatever dungeon if I was playing casually every day, however into this one I am. If I decide to play like a casual, I barely touch Endwalker's content.

The fact that a good part of this content wasn't even hard to begin with is already a good reason to be more in touch with how your syncing works. It doesn't need to get even easier.

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Originally Posted by IdowhatIwant

I disagree I think some of the older content has much more interesting mechanics, and dungeon design then most dungeons after 4.0.
The current content is very formulaic and repetitive as it caters to more casual players than the older content did. You only find the older content boring because the ilvl sync / level sync was never balanced well. When you are level 50 with all your stats capped for that level it removes any challenge the content has. So pretty much anytime you are ilvl synced, you are doing the content with the highest possible stats you can have for that ilvl, which in most cases is higher than the gear at that ilvl offered.

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Erm sorry I guess I didnt do a good job on explaining what I meant, I agree with you, I just meant now that you can just blindly face roll it with 0 effort is the part that sucks(Like you mentioned with stats being capped), if they kept the content the same and scaled the difficulty a little to make things last longer then a blip I would love it.

As for the second part, I just meant they add reasons to run the old content (Relic stuff/Roulettes/Stones to upgrade gear) which would be great! except for.. the content itself doesnt shine like it used to because its become a faceroll

EW was the first expansion were I felt the dungeons had 0 challenge at launch. Most other expansions typically the dungeons had a bit of difficulty on release but End Walker had such a small gap in ilvl from 80-90, you can go through the entire expansion with the tomestone gear from SHB and never upgrade until you get the 89 set. End Walker was the first expansion where people started off the expansion with wall to wall pulls with 0 issues, as well. Every other expansion I have played that did not turn out well at launch. The actual bosses did not really do anything new or exciting from what I had seen. I don't know if the devs have lost inspiration but out side of savage, most of the EW content has been pretty bad IMO. I hope they can do better in the upcoming patches but after SHB I have doubts.