Criterion Dungeons are great, but the entire system misses the mark.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

The new crafted gear in 6.3 will be for DoH/DoL. The next crafted DoW/DoM sets won't be until 6.4.


Alt jobs aren't intended to be geared in BiS, nor do they need to be. Don't forget that SE considers Alliance raids the main way to gear alt jobs (why we had that Need/Greed drama back in Stormblood). When Myths of the Realm returns in 6.3, the new gear will be ilvl 620.

If someone can clear Savage with their main job in 610 gear, they can clear as a healer in 610 gear as well. That's not hard to get between Normal Abyssos and crafted.

A lot of content creators have pointed out the real problem when it comes to healers in PF - party leaders are setting the ilvl requirements too high. Players don't need to be able to get gear faster. They need to use better sense when recruiting for their parties.

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Content creators can talk all day for all I care, but the reality of PF is that you have no idea what quality of player is joining your party. So of course you go for an ilvl requirement that is higher than the minimum to make it more likely to clear even with subpar players.

But the ilvl requirements in party finder are completely irrelevant in this case. Sure, you don't "NEED" better gear to clear savage but what am I really going to bring into a fight, my 630 BiS geared job (assuming I had BiS gear) or my job in 610 crafted gear that barely fulfills the minimum requirement? I think the answer is obvious and, as said so many times before, it goes against the whole "play everything on one character" mantra. I am committed to whichever job I managed to gear up if I don't want to make it unnecessarily harder on 7 other people.

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Originally Posted by LittleImp

I keep hearing about these supposed people, but I've never seen or met any in-game in like 6 years of playing the game and teaching people how to raid. It must be an unbelievably niche group of people. People who are interested in a challenge will seek it out, whether its 8 man or 4 man.

I do however know a ton of casual players who were hoping for some midcore content that would prime them for Savage; Most of them couldn't get past the first boss of criterion and quit out of frustration.

We can argue all day whether it fulfilled the developers vision or not, but clearly that vision wasn't in line with what many people seemed to hope for.

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This is my experience this week as well. I was hoping for something along the lines of slightly more challenging dungeons where maybe you couldn't pull wall to wall and healers had to actually heal etc.

I feel like this misses the mark for MANY people, including myself.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

If someone can clear Savage with their main job in 610 gear, they can clear as a healer in 610 gear as well. That's not hard to get between Normal Abyssos and crafted.

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Honestly I don't care if I can clear it in 610 on an alt. If my main was 630 and I've already cleared the content multiple times, it just feels bad downgrading 20ilv to play an alt job. It's reclears, I don't like the feeling I'm the wet noodle of the group while the rest are churning out dps in BiS.

If I wanted the challenge, I'd go min ilv. Sometimes we do in our static. Good times. But for picking up an alt for a change on reclears I just like to be geared. Purely preference, there's no "I should find it just as fun to go in with bad gear". Fun is subjective so that's my opinion.

Party leaders setting high requirements is fine. They just want to clear. They set the requirements to the average gear a player would have on a dedicated main. They don't want extra hard Savage mode. The reason there aren't many low ilv requirement challenge groups or min ilv groups is simply because it's not popular. The average player doesn't enjoy it. Savage is challenging enough and it's fun to earn nice gear and be rewarded with a slightly easier time against bosses.

Looking through this thread after I left it, and I have seen many different opinions on this. I felt like I need to address some of the points that should be brought up.

1) Even though I think that the content is too hard, I do agree that if they made some of the harder mechanics a little simpler or more visible the fight will be a lot more accessible to the players going towards Extreme. Some of the mechs are perfectly fine, it is just the outliers that skew the content straight into Savage.

2) I do think that the first iteration of Criterion is effectively a test to see how we feel about the content. It is okay to air out that it is not rewarding.

3) A few posts here highlight the crux of the problem: too difficult for casuals to try, too unrewarding for the hardcore's to return and help newer players or even reclear for self bragging rights.

4) I think many of you havent experienced this, but try to PF on a fresh alt character with fresh 610 gear on week 8. Almost no one will take you past P5S unless they know who you are. This is the gearing problem I think the game has, which stems from the "main only mentality" that PF would naturally have due to lack of access to gear. Having a hard but additional way to get additional resources and gear is huge.

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Originally Posted by TheSankaku

4) I think many of you havent experienced this, but try to PF on a fresh alt character with fresh 610 gear on week 8. Almost no one will take you past P5S unless they know who you are. This is the gearing problem I think the game has, which stems from the "main only mentality" that PF would naturally have due to lack of access to gear. Having a hard but additional way to get additional resources and gear is huge.

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Many NA PF recruiters are not very competent at setting them up so a lot of parties either set the default for it (605) or no item level at all. The smart ones set a higher item level so they are almost guaranteed high DPS, enough to withstand multiple deaths and mistakes.

Personally, I just set 610 for the first two floors of any savage tier, because I don't care too much if it's someone's second week and they are in crafted gear. But they should at least be in crafted gear. 600 and 605 is lazy.

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Originally Posted by TheSankaku

3) A few posts here highlight the crux of the problem: too difficult for casuals to try, too unrewarding for the hardcore's to return and help newer players or even reclear for self bragging rights.

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I agree, it's disappointing that Criterion Savage ended up just being "Criterion but no deaths allowed".

Having three difficulty levels of the dungeon was a great opportunity to have the middle level be comparable to EX fights, something you could realistically learn with random people. Instead we got 1 very casual mode, and 2 savage+ modes.