How Do You Feel When Old Content Is Made Easier?

As a person that works a minimum of 12 hours each day I work and busy being a family man on my days off, I like when they nerf content for the sole reason I don't have to spend the 1 or if I am lucky 2 days I get a week to play learning/farming 1 fight.

On the other hand, as an long time MMO gamer I wish they would keep the content at the same level for longer than they currently do. I would love to be able to accomplish some fights when they are relevant for the sense of accomplishment. Sadly I just don't have the time I used to.

So I am torn with what they should actually do.

Should me a video of a solo job taken on a lv 6o extreme primal without any issue then you got somethinf. Until then, lower level primals are more or less for solo and duos fun. Took a week for me and another samurai to get our strategy down perfect to beast sophi. Anything done to these bottles are just not needed.

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

Riyah - you're making a positive claim here, saying that less people enjoy more difficult content. Back that up with evidence or for the love of god open your mind to the idea you might be wrong.

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There are more people in a single eureka instance than there are making pug pfs for all of savage. On primal Pug PFs for all savage tend to cap out at 4-5 instances per fight, with the majority of them being farm parties. This is per data center; seeing all of 20 pfs for savafge per data center is not a sign of a healthy game. The amount of people doing savage or ex learning parties drops tremendously after the first two weeks the content is live, often without a single learning party in pf at a random time. SE released minimum ilvl for people who wanted to do old content somewhat close to the original ilvl it was released at; it was barely used, even when they gave increased drop rates to the crafted coil gear they introduced. I had a linkshell mate who was obsessed with using min ilvl to do all the old content, it would take him weeks to find the people to finish one fight. The hard 4 man content in POTD is also barely used, the big way you can tell is that crafted coil gear of the two higher tiers drops there like candy, but never hits the auction board.

The playerbase can and will leave instances they find are too hard in significant amounts. Trials of Faith, Pharos, Shinryu, launch 24 mans, Tsuku, etc. They sometimes leave preemptively, or will leave after the first wipe. There's plenty of evidence to show that people aren't particularly keen on content actually being hard, in practice. Heck, even reddit now is mostly about fan art and fluff pieces, and less about git gud or complaining the game is too easy.

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Originally Posted by Singularity

I don't see why content has to be considered less important solely because of its age. If I go out and buy a ten-year-old single-player game and clear it, is the experience somehow lesser than an equally challenging game that was released last week?

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You don't need to convince seven other people to play that game with you. People generally do the roullettes because they aren't hard, and you get a bonus to help out. We have had discussions about mentor roullette and coming into synced ex primal trials which show the difficulties of hard older content staying relatively hard; many mentors dislike it because you can spend the lockout just wiping, removing the reward for them being there.

They end up nerfing through echo and sync so players aren't just facing that. Other MMOs generally don;t even have that; they just make old content trivial and you get your overleveled buddy to facetank an entire instance for you

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

Some people's "requires a pulse" is others "stomp your face in." remember, the endgame crowd thinks byakko ex is incredibly easy.

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I am by no stretch of the words an end game person (I've never touched a single savage other than coil unsynced at 70) and I was able to go into BEX and clear it easily at min ilvl. Byakko is basically do the mechanics (which are one at a time, and easy to recognize), don't die, and you'll clear.

I come at this from a healer's perspective. My whole job is to fix people's screw ups and there is a large majority of the player base who screw up. A lot.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

There are more people in a single eureka instance than there are making pug pfs for all of savage. On primal Pug PFs for all savage tend to cap out at 4-5 instances per fight, with the majority of them being farm parties.

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On Primal, there are no newbies that aren't alts or rmt bots it seems. It's so incredibly rare to actually get newbies. When I do roulettes, I almost never get anyone from my server, it's always Lamia and Exodus. (Note those are preferred worlds.) It feels like nobody on Excalibur does anything but the hardest content, and I don't blame em.

But that also means that "oh just start a PF" means you are in for a wait worse than death. s/

I was playing on an alt as scholar, and I left the fairy behind after first boss fight in an ARR dungeon, and I was still able to keep up with a tank that was pulling too much and dps sprouts. I specifically created a Scholar because I didn't want to waste an hour waiting in a DPS queue, and my main character is WHM anyway. Anyway, this was with all grey gear for the previous dungeon. With blue gear this would have been even easier. There really does need to be a ilevel sync on all old content to retain some level of challenge. It doesn't need to be 2.0 launch level of challenge, but the current level of difficulty literately in a lot of content is tuned to a level where the healer doesn't even need to be present.

Encountering actual new players, let alone a group of them, is just not something you will run into often enough to care about about the difficulty of the old content. But I feel that the other players that are overgeared for content setup the expectation to newer/returning players that the content is always supposed to be a push-over, and thus when they get to the end-game content, suddenly the difficulty spikes up, because relative to all the content they played up to that point, it was all a push over.

POTD on the other hand offers a more linear difficulty as you progress through it, but it's not designed to be hard, as the monsters are tuned in a way that once you get 99/99 gear, floors 1-99 are a push over, and only floor 100 offers anything difficult depending on your party configuration and pomanders collected. After 100, I assume the difficulty just curves up less steeply since no additional gear is available, and your success hinges on not stepping on traps.


Other MMO's, don't even try to make their content challenging. You can overlevel everything on day 1, and then the entire content can be cleared with a sneeze.

What I hope happens, at some point is that Square-Enix puts ilevel locks on all older content so that it retains some level of challenge, especially the 24-player content. Because as it stands right now, when you do the alliance raids, you keep getting LotA, and the reason for that is people don't want to play the SB 24-player content because it takes too long just to get the roulette reward. Elsewhere on the forum, people say they specifically remove gear so they won't get it when queuing for it. Please don't reward this kind of behavior. If the system knows they won't be eligible for the lighthouse, remove the tomes of creation from the reward.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

I come at this from a healer's perspective. My whole job is to fix people's screw ups and there is a large majority of the player base who screw up. A lot.

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The healer in general is least affected by his mechanics, though. But the thing is, the ex trials are self selected, and a lot of people who would struggle with them just never bother doing them. That kind of leads to skewed difficulty perceptions overall, and if the same content were forced and everyone has to do it, you'd probably see a lot more issues with it. You're cutting off a lot of the bottom skill levels of players just with the self-selection aspect.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

What I hope happens, at some point is that Square-Enix puts ilevel locks on all older content so that it retains some level of challenge, especially the 24-player content.

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...so you don't want people to do it?

I mean, i did all I wanted of rab when it launched. I don't even do it now, despite needing to do it to upgrade 360 to 370. Neither pagos nor HoH will require above 360 I think, and most casual content doesn't require 360+. Even if I wanted to do it though, I don't want to go back to launch day and watch everyone wipe multiple times for a bunch of tomes that I can get easier elsewhere. The content is stale for me, and the easiness is to get vets to bother with running it at all. Before rab, the rewards are virtually useless now.

You're kind of relying on people liking the content enough to put up with this. Idk how many people do, to be honest.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

There are more people in a single eureka instance than there are making pug pfs for all of savage. On primal Pug PFs for all savage tend to cap out at 4-5 instances per fight, with the majority of them being farm parties. This is per data center; seeing all of 20 pfs for savafge per data center is not a sign of a healthy game. The amount of people doing savage or ex learning parties drops tremendously after the first two weeks the content is live, often without a single learning party in pf at a random time.

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This isn't comprehensive and don't try to play dumb like you think it is. This is like looking out at the ocean and seeing one fin break the surface only to think "Well I guess that means there is only one shark!"

It's an easy way to lose a foot.

The problem is you have no actual evidence to back up your claim since it would require access to information we just don't have. The truth is that the only evidence that leans one way or another here is the circumstantial - SE keeps making Savage so they have to be seeing enough people do it to justify the investment.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

There are more people in a single eureka instance than there are making pug pfs for all of savage.

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This makes absolutely no sense.

1 - One PF is comprised of multiple people so the number of PFs up isn't a good way of showing how many people want to do the content.
2 - You're completely disregarding parties that have already filled and are doing the content when you look.
3 - You're also not taking into account the fact that most people who do Savage have a static so they're not using PF in the first place.

And most people in Eureka are just tabbed out anyway until a NM spawns, I bet they're really enjoying themselves.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

...so you don't want people to do it?

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Better than people going into it and ignoring the mechanics and wiping to enrage/pads mechanics that are brainddead obvious. 1 in 4 runs of LotA, wipe to Ancient Flare. Why? Because people try to skip the mechanic. There's also the random Behemoth + comets mechanic where people all stand near the boss, the comets drop and everyone dies because it's within the mechanic kill zone.

If there was still some challenge to these raids, players would need at the minimum to do the mechanics, and not ignore them.

Syrcus Tower, both Scylla and Glasya Labolas, never even get to their primary mechanic. Xande hits like a wet noodle.

World of Darkness, the only boss that retains any difficulty at all is Angra Mainyu, which is the first boss, and only because you can't ignore Double Vision and Mortal Gaze.

The Void Ark raids are also a push over, but as they're level 60 content, they're not as easy as the level 50's, but they still experience the gear creep.

The only mechanic that ever seems to put "dps burn" zerg players in check are Doom/Instant-KO mechanics like Deathgaze Hollow in Dun Scaith.

I would rather play The Royal City of Rabanastre and The Ridorana Lighthouse back to back each day, than play Labyrinth of the Ancients twice in a row which is what happens with the roulette on any day that isn't tuesday.

If the rewards are going to be the same from the roulette, then the difficulty should be the same as well.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

I would rather play The Royal City of Rabanastre and The Ridorana Lighthouse back to back each day, than play Labyrinth of the Ancients twice in a row which is what happens with the roulette on any day that isn't tuesday.

If the rewards are going to be the same from the roulette, then the difficulty should be the same as well.

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I know we don't always see eye to eye but I just wanted to say I think this is well said and I very much agree with the idea behind the post.

I can't lie, this is an odd post to make, but I'm happy to have common ground with you for once! :D

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

If the rewards are going to be the same from the roulette, then the difficulty should be the same as well.

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So you are annoyed at them from wiping by doing mechanics wrong, and the solution is...to make those mechanics harder so they can wipe legitimately from them, got it. And you're not going to be just as frustrated when they wipe from failing a mechanic then as you are now. Because you know, the amount of wipes are not really going to change, except to get worse since making it close to their original level means its easier to fail.

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

The problem is you have no actual evidence to back up your claim since it would require access to information we just don't have. The truth is that the only evidence that leans one way or another here is the circumstantial - SE keeps making Savage so they have to be seeing enough people do it to justify the investment.

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They keep boosting feast, too. But where is the evidence people want casual content to be harder? I don't see it. You're assuming your own evidence is ironclad, when its not too.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

So you are annoyed at them from wiping by doing mechanics wrong, and the solution is...to make those mechanics harder so they can wipe legitimately from them, got it. And you're not going to be just as frustrated when they wipe from failing a mechanic then as you are now. Because you know, the amount of wipes are not really going to change, except to get worse since making it close to their original level means its easier to fail.

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I think you're missing something here: one reason people fail mechanics is that for most fights they actually dont matter. You actually wont wipe, because someone failed a mechanic. So what people learn is: Mechanics dont matter. You probably could and should do them, but why bother if the end result is the same?
So they dont learn how to deal with certain things. We tell newbies in Copperbell NM to ignore the adds and then we wipe at the first boss in Copperbell HM because they're doing excatly that - because thats what they learnt: Adds dont matter, burn boss.

Personal example: I started the game as gld/pld and had a hardtime moving out of AoEs. Eventually I noticed that they didnt kill me, so I stopped trying - why bother?
The answer to that presented itself with Brayflox and Titan - because suddenly it DID matter. Today not even that holds true - I saw tanks eating every dragon breath in Brayflox and getting knocked off in Titan and the duty still being cleared.

I am NOT talking Savage-like mechanics - just mechanics that actually matter and are worth following. If a frontal-cone AoE deals 8k damage and my paladin has 60k with a regen ticking for 2k... why should I bother to move out of that?

Some people might legit struggle with real simple mechanics like moving out of an orange circle already, yes - but the game gives them almost no reason to improve upon that, work on themself and actually try. So they dont and their skill doesnt increase.
People struggle and wipe, because they never learnt, because they were never taught. The game really needs to do a better job at that - and I doubt that it would actually cost them any subscriptions if they tuned it the right way by making mechanics meanigful enough that following them is actually worth it outside of Savage-content.

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Originally Posted by Vidu

I am NOT talking Savage-like mechanics - just mechanics that actually matter and are worth following. If a frontal-cone AoE deals 8k damage and my paladin has 60k with a regen ticking for 2k... why should I bother to move out of that?.

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There's nothing they can do short of instant death or severe, uncleansable debuffs to make that paladin move. The effective HP a tank with healers backing them is too high. They do make DPS take severe damage if they fail to dodge an aoe in many trials, to the point of two-shotting; Castrim Flummins last phase is essentially "dodge the mechanics perfectly and stack, or die." Look at Construct 9's dispose, you can take all of one hit.

I mean, the mechanics for nontanks already hurt a decent amount. A lot of times you can and do lose 75% of your health. They already stack you with things like a really nasty slow (gigas boss in lighthouse) vuln and damage down stacks, paralyze, etc. If you push that back to older content, you just make it a pain for vets to do. The chimera relic boss for example has a horde of "don't stand here" mechanics...can you imagine having to face those with half effective HP?

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Originally Posted by Vidu

I think you're missing something here: one reason people fail mechanics is that for most fights they actually dont matter. You actually wont wipe, because someone failed a mechanic. So what people learn is: Mechanics dont matter. You probably could and should do them, but why bother if the end result is the same?
So they dont learn how to deal with certain things. We tell newbies in Copperbell NM to ignore the adds and then we wipe at the first boss in Copperbell HM because they're doing excatly that - because thats what they learnt: Adds dont matter, burn boss.

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A perfect example of this is HoH. Friends and I reached floor 50 before wiping. I was one-shot by the boss there whose cast is much faster than his dungeon incarnate. Mayhaps with a much higher aetherpool level, he'll be easier but going back, we're going to play it much safer as a result. In general, we treated floors 31-50 with some measure of respect; small pulls, tank stance and etc. Compare that to Swallow's Compass, where I charged in blind and wall pulled everything then immediately switched to Deliverance. Why? The damage is completely trivial, so I have no reason whatsoever to play safe or worry about mechanics. When something actually hurts, I'm forced to play less aggressively not by arbitrary but due to things actually hurting.

Apply this to all levels of content and you will see far less tanks throwing caution to the wind and everyone demanding mass pulls, healer DPS and tanks in DPS stance.

Edit: An addendum to my above mentioned point. Let's assume 4.4 reveals Sephiroth as the concluding tier of Omega. We have two scenarios of potential boss mechanics.

Scenario A: Standard array of mechanics which place a vulnerability stack in you, however it takes several before they beginning to cause much hindrance.
Scenario B: His sword slash cleave places a significant bleed on its target; another aoe causes paralysis; if too many players take avoidable damage he summons Jevona spawns; upwards of only two vul stacks are enough to nearly kill a tank.

In scenario B, I am making a point to dodge every aoe because they impact how I play and cause a great deal more hindrance, especially if tuned better. On the contrary, in scenario A, I'll scarcely pay any attention as I'm not even remotely at risk. I certainly cannot speak for everyone but the scenario B sounds far more interesting even if it results in more wipes.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

There's nothing they can do short of instant death or severe, uncleansable debuffs to make that paladin move. The effective HP a tank with healers backing them is too high. They do make DPS take severe damage if they fail to dodge an aoe in many trials, to the point of two-shotting; Castrim Flummins last phase is essentially "dodge the mechanics perfectly and stack, or die." Look at Construct 9's dispose, you can take all of one hit.

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Then they should do that - give more AoEs debuffs that actually matter. Not everything needs to outright kill me, but things like paralysis, heavy, mini, sleep... are all annoying enough to get me out of an AoE.
Make vul-stacks "strong" enough that having one or two of them actually matters! (The third boss in Rabanstre has this mechanic that deals damage based on distance - you need to be far away to take less damage, but everyone can actually survive that even when they stay more close-ish as long as they dont have any vul-stacks. Was always a huge motivation to NOT fail previous mechanics and avoid getting them if that meant I was able to keep attacking during that - not as paladin this time but as bard)
Add damage-down debuffs for dps-AoEs - any decent dps will care about their numbers enough to move out of those!
Give the healer a healing down debuff and pair it with a tankbuster that follows after that mechanic.
Let adds appear if you fail a mechanic - adds that hit hard enough or are annoying enough that you want to kill them.

...there are ways outside of an instant wipe to punish you for failing mechanics - and we need more of those instead of the kind that deals so little damage that two regen-ticks will take care of it.

Edit: Or do it the other way around and reward people for doing a mechanic the right way! Not by not dying, but by giving them a buff, restoring TP/MP... Construct 7 is a good example of that: succeding at the math-mechanic gives you a damage-up-buff (and if you fail, you're more likely to die later...).
But we need to see all of that way, way before endgame-content.
Mechanics need to matter in Sastasha NM, so a new player understands right away to pay attention to them instead of developing the bad habit of not caring and thus failing "easy" mechanics later when they do matter and that catched them by surprise.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

There's nothing they can do short of instant death or severe, uncleansable debuffs to make that paladin move. The effective HP a tank with healers backing them is too high. They do make DPS take severe damage if they fail to dodge an aoe in many trials, to the point of two-shotting; Castrim Flummins last phase is essentially "dodge the mechanics perfectly and stack, or die." Look at Construct 9's dispose, you can take all of one hit.

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Actually, Construct 7's Dispose, if you're at full health, you can survive up to 2 or 3 hits (more if you have tank privilege)--and it gives you Damage Down if you manage to dodge enough more to survive.

But Vidu's point is, is that the lower level content teaches players bad habits that carry over into higher level content. Hence why people cry for things like Castrum Fluminis, Royal Menagerie, and Final Steps of Faith to be nerfed. Because finally mechanics punish them for failing. Same thing with some 24-man mechanics (when current, though some in older 24-mans still kick your teeth in for trying to cheese them). I truly do believe if players were taught from lower levels that things cannot be ignored or cheesed, there wouldn't be the issue if them even trying to do that in higher level content. Which goes back to Kisai's post about restoring difficulty of older content that people now just try to barrel through and cheese (like Labyrinth of the Ancients).

Why does everything have to be so easy all the time? Why do vulnerability stacks have to be so meaningless? Why can tanks in Kefka normal mode eat up to 8 stacks of vulnerability before they finally get bested by the boss?

We get it: you don't like hard content and you don't want content to be difficult. That doesn't mean that others want everything to stay faceroll easy all the time.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Why does everything have to be so easy all the time? Why do vulnerability stacks have to be so meaningless? Why can tanks in Kefka normal mode eat up to 8 stacks of vulnerability before they finally get bested by the boss?

We get it: you don't like hard content and you don't want content to be difficult. That doesn't mean that others want everything to stay faceroll easy all the time.

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To add to this: I'm not even asking for content to be made more difficult as in: have more mechanics added.
I'm asking for the mechanics that are already present to matter in every content. To have mechanics that people actually want/need to follow in order to avoid death, debuffs or adds - or gain buffs, I'm totally onboard with rewarding good play instead of punishing bad aswell.

The current state of most content is: There might aswell be no mechanics, because there are no consequenses to failing them. Yet the content was clearly designed with those mechanics in mind, so enforce them! From Ifrit NM (...hey, the nail there actually DOES wipe you if you ignore it... good job, Ifrit!), to Final Steps of Faith, to Kefka NM... make mechanics matter and people understand that they need to follow them.

Content wouldnt get more difficult if you actually played it correctly already.
You wouldnt have to remember wether thunder and blizzard are truth or lie in Kefka and perform both correctly like you in Savage. You just had to follow that one mechanic thats happening right now - as you should already be doing.
I'm not asking for Savage-mode mechanics in normal content.
I'm asking for normal content mechanics to matter.

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Originally Posted by Vidu

Some people might legit struggle with real simple mechanics like moving out of an orange circle already, yes - but the game gives them almost no reason to improve upon that, work on themself and actually try. So they dont and their skill doesnt increase.

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https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/sta...39865858396162

But let's go with the assumption people do indeed rise to the challenge: In that case, you should be happy people are struggling and wiping, because that is precisely what the learning process looks like. You get to see and experience it live. The people who do so should end up becoming better players for it, because the mechanics apparently DO matter right there and thus, people should improve their skills through it.

Personally, I doubt the effectiveness of it. And truth be told, I am not overly hyped about "mechanics that matter" either, because of how powerful healers in this game are.
The crux of healers as a design lies in the following: The win/loss condition of a fight hinges on health and the lack thereof. Whoever gets the other party to 0 HP first wins. That means the only thing that truly matters is damage and thus death, because it progresses the win condition. CC, vulnerability, damage down, healing down debuffs... they're all inconsequential if they don't lead to damage/death (e.g. via enrage/follow-up mechanic), because a delay as such does not affect the win/loss condition.
Since healers undo damage (and death), damage get more trivialized the more powerful healers are. In turn, mechanics get trivialized, because they use damage/death as punishment. To make them matter again, you need to crank up the damage to compensate. And with as powerful as healers are in this game, it's typically gonna end up as insta-gib, which in my opinion is not very fun.

I'd rather we just nerfed healers until taking 70% of your HP as punishment is actually meaningful instead of a slap on the wrist. As it stands, reducing the entire raid to 1 HP is an easy and inconsequential normal mode mechanic. But that's just me.

If I know that content, I have some interest in, gonna be made easier in a future, I simply postpone it until it becomes easier and then do it. That's ofc if I feel it's currently too hard and not really worth the effort. That applies both to ex raids and crafting/gathering.

I feel it's a good thing, cos otherwise i'd be left with less things to do and might even consider quitting this game.

I don't mind old content becoming easier. In fact it benefits the game as a whole for it to do so. When content is too difficult for someone to engage in, it might as well not exist. But when that content becomes easier (say through out leveling it), then that content becomes something to do. When players go back to do old content SE is getting more "bang for their buck" as far as development time and dollars goes and that's a good thing for the game overall.

I'll never understand why some people feel that someone getting something easier than the guy before somehow devalues the first guy's accomplishment.

No matter how easy it gets for the guy after you, nothing will change what YOU did and how much effort and/or skill it took for YOU to do what YOU did.

Don't base your self worth by comparison to others, because what they do and however easy or difficult it was for them has nothing to do with you and what you accomplished.

Nothing easier then over geared and 20% echo...

On anything we needed to collect large amount of stuff. Changed to get more or 100%
Relic books should be reduced to 4 books one for each stats.

Eureka Crystals should be increased at this point.

I am fine with echo and outgearing, but when things are outright nerfed it annoys me.

I'm fine with it. I don't care what pixels or what colour text someone else has. Other people's gear has zero effect on my enjoyment of the game.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

Because it eliminates the prestige. Which is one of the biggest driving forces of the human race.

It's like owning an Aston Martin for example quite prestigious normally... doesn't mean avthingbif the entire stat owns one...

Prestige is a massive human motivator. Because it's something virtually everyone seeking one form or another

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That assumes other people care. When it comes to in-game achievments they don't care.
Nobody cares if you beat Coil when it was brand-new and the hardest thing in the game, or if you did it unsynced and just skipped all mechanics. Or if you haven't done it at all.

In short, there is no prestige involved - because nobody cares what other people have done or not done.

Unsync was the worst thing to ever happen to this game

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

Where the game needs to fix or adjust things is to have the "minimum ilevel" be the default setting until the content is cleared by everyone in the party.

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This just means the new players will get kicked and never get to complete it. Veterans already rush new players through as it is. If the new players are holding them back, then many won't have any qualms about just removing the problem.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

This just means the new players will get kicked and never get to complete it. Veterans already rush new players through as it is. If the new players are holding them back, then many won't have any qualms about just removing the problem.

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Remember why the change to the MSQ cutscene happened? If Veterans want to farm content, they're not going to do it via roulette DF.

There's always two issues at play here, the roulette rewards, and the difficulty not being equal for all content in that roulette. If you queue for ANY roulette, to get the reward, it should be the same difficulty for everyone, which means minimum ilevel or some difficulty level that actually reflects the initial release state of the content. If you don't want that, don't roulette. If everyone has cleared it and want to farm it, they shouldn't be doing so via roulette anyway.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

Remember why the change to the MSQ cutscene happened? If Veterans want to farm content, they're not going to do it via roulette DF.

There's always two issues at play here, the roulette rewards, and the difficulty not being equal for all content in that roulette. If you queue for ANY roulette, to get the reward, it should be the same difficulty for everyone, which means minimum ilevel or some difficulty level that actually reflects the initial release state of the content. If you don't want that, don't roulette. If everyone has cleared it and want to farm it, they shouldn't be doing so via roulette anyway.

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This would probably kill a lot of content off as the roulettes would be rarely used if they went minimum ilevel.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

They do alter the content. Echo is basically a nerf.

The problem with making content easier all the time is it destroys accomplishment, prestige and exclusivity of rewards.. All of which then destroy value of the content..

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I don't get it. You're mad that someone is getting mounts/titles/glamour that you got 8 months ago? Cmon, give me a break. and Echo isn't basically anything, its to help those wiping LONG AFTER THE CONTENT IS RELEVANT! Honestly, you just sound like a stingy kid at this point.

why i will care about old challenge? don't we must focus on the new one?
if people can more easily catch up, great for them, if i did beat this challenge when it did come out, that what is important, why care about what the other do?

content nerfed? why care? if you have already completed this content, why care that it was nerfed? it's OLD content, this game get new content every 3 month... you do realize the number of dungeon, quest, primal and raid we do have now? and it will not reduce, it will only increase.... if people must spend 1-2 month to train to run an old content, they are missing the new content... and well it's like create a wall between old player and new player...

anyway, i feel is more a trouble of ego than really content nerfed.... because people tend to forget that some content did get nerfed with reason, right T5 i look at you... if a content can only be pass by like 3-4% of the community that are super elite of doom... what the point? i means create content for carter only for 3-4% of the community is not really sane.... look at wildstar, when it did come out they didn't stop to say that the game was hardcore and that it was for hardcore player.... in the end they had to go free to play, because.... big news.... you don't run a mmo with 3-4% of the community.

allowing more people to complet old content is not a bad decision, hardcore can still complet it when it come out, before nerf, they even have the achievement with the date for prove it. instead to look at what other do.... focus on what you can do.

that why i have always feel this course at the first down is stupid.... what is important, is you can do the challenge or have the bragging right for this content? do, be the first to down a content will bring you anything? nothing... what is important, is do the challenge with your friend, your group.... hell, even do it with group not optimized... to push the challenge farer by going without food, without potion or without the perfect group....
the goal is to do the challenge, be proud of it, is natural, show to other that you have complete it with crazy formation is always insane, like when you had a group of healer with one tank complete some primal.... insane... i'm more amazed by people doing this, than the first down.

if people need that old content is simpler for beat them for see this content, great for them.... *shrugs* the important one is the challenge your group is willing to face.... not what the other group is doing.

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Originally Posted by jameseoakes

This would probably kill a lot of content off as the roulettes would be rarely used if they went minimum ilevel.

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Doubtful. The purpose of the roulette itself is to back-fill people who need to get through content. It's really anti-productive for the hardcore players to drag a player who hasn't cleared the content through it already, as though they were expected to have spoiled the content for themselves. Hence if the difficulty remains at the level it was intended to be played at, then the rewards for doing the roulette that way should apply, and who cares if it takes longer. Doing the mechanics properly = faster clear. Trying to skip mechanics, or ignore them just to clear it faster results in players learning nothing but "the mechanics don't matter."

Right now, people just remove gear items when queuing so they keep getting LotA instead of the Lighthouse, because the reward from the roulette is the same. Yet the difficulty is not the same. That needs to be fixed. For the Leveling queue, they should be capped at the maximum gear that was available when that gear was introduced. So for all the ARR content that would probably be ilevel 80, with the Relic weapon and the darklight gear.

Something has to give here, because if they do nothing at 5.0, the difficulty curve will be so far above, even for regular content, that those who didn't learn any mechanics what-so-ever, will cry for everything to be nerfed. Y'all remember Steps of Faith? And Shinryu? And now Tsukiyomi. This is because there's no difficulty to anything that isn't the new content.

I played 2.0 at release. Every dungeon had some level of difficulty to it. Let me list them off:

Sastasha Seagrot - Denn the Orcatoothed, you used to have to interact with the gates. Now you can just kill the boss and ignore the adds.

Tam-Tara Deepcroft - Galvanth the Dominator, you used to have to get the DPS to take out the adds. The adds are barely a tickle.

Copperbell Mines - Gyges the Great, you had to prevent the adds, or kill them. Or as we all learned, let the healer kite them and everyone else burn the boss.

Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak - Graffias, you had to kill the adds. Now you can pretty much just ignore them. Don't even need to deal with the tail.

Haukke Manor - Lady Amandine, actually used to offer something of a challenge, because the orbs would interrupt casters, this was the first dungeon where "running out of mp/tp" could wipe. It's also the first dungeon with actual roaming monsters that a tank had to actually interrupt.

Brayflox's Longstop - Inferno Drake (Second boss), you had to put the boss to sleep, and kill the mob that follows Brayflox. Now you can just skip that and Brayflox will survive as long as the tank has both of their attentions.

The Sunken Temple of Qarn - Teratotaur (first boss), instant death mechanic, pads mechanic. Temple Guardian (Second boss) was always a healer killer. Adjudicator the "box" mechanic is seen for the first time, and we will keep seeing it. This dungeon also introduced the "kill something on some spot" mechanic, but now you can just burn through all three bosses.

Cutter's Cry - Myrmidon Princess, adds would be summoned, and the trick we learned was to cast regen as the healer and just kite the adds. Now the adds just do so little damage it doesn't matter. The Chimera (third boss), also used to present some difficulty, but mostly now you can just eat the AOE's and ignore the mechanics.

The Stone Vigil - Oh yes, the first dungeon that having left hand and right hand gear actually mattered. This is the only dungeon, to date, where Tanks ever used their markers during 2.0. This was because this is the second dungeon with strong roaming monsters, so you can be overwhelmed quickly. Even if you play this with the squadron right now, you'll typically get overwhelmed if you don't drag them off to a corner. All three of the bosses used to offer some difficulty, but Isgebind was the one that would result in the gear check.

Dzemael Darkhold - All-seeing Eye, first version of "look away to avoid AOE", Taulurd, another boss where "regen and kite" worked. Batraal took a long time to kill because you couldn't just kill the crystals in three hits.

The Aurum Vale - We do not talk about Aurum Vale. Suffice it to say, it remains the only ARR dungeon with mechanics that can't be ignored.

Castrum Meridianum - Oh where do I begin... each boss used to take about 5 minutes to defeat. You would run out of MP if you played it like players play it now. Only Livia Part 1 remains the same. The correct mechanics was to use the canons to kill everything. At 2.0 players would actually drag the Colossus's out of the area and back to the cannons because that killed them faster. Now those things are dead before I even get the door open.

The Praetorium - Absolutely no challenge in it's current state. Everyone still skips the first group of mobs and drags the third group to the second teleporter. Colossus used to take about 3 minutes. Now it's dead before you get up the stairs from unlocking the door. Nero, used to take several minutes, and you used to have to kill the adds. Now the adds barely get a chance to spawn before Nero escapes. Look at his attack list, he has at least 7 attacks, and you barely see more than 3 of them. Gaius was always a push over. There used to be a question asked during the cutscene, but it has no relevance. Gaius has 6 attacks, you barely get to see past the Judgement AOE, so everyone just stands in it. In 2.0 Gaius would have to be chased around the room so you'd get 2-3 rounds of those AOE's, and one Medica II was enough to ignore it then, and even now. Ultima Weapon was the real DPS check (you had to wait for Hydaelyn to remove Ultima's buff, or you'd waste resources.) It used to take longer. Much longer. You'd run out of MP as a healer if the gear check wasn't met by all players. The second part is where that check was actually tripped since the self-destruct telegraph would start, and most 2.0 runs would clear it with a few seconds to spare. Now? Ultima Weapon's HP is completely drained and the self-destruct phase barely lasts 1 second before it's defeated. Lahabrea was also always a push over, and that actually hasn't changed.

If SE were to restore the 2.0 level of difficulty by capping all the 2.0 content to ilevel 80, and the 2.x content to ilevel 130, maybe we wouldn't get so many zerg players who don't know anything about any of the mechanics. PotD would look more attractive as leveling content, but as PotD actually integrates with the 2.0 storyline with Edda, for the first two dungeons and one 2.x dungeon, it would make sense to only unlock PotD after completing Tam-Tara Deepcroft (Hard).

Question, Kisai. For the old longstop, what would've happened if Brayflox died? If the dungeons were like this originally, I wonder if there are some old videos that showcase that original difficulty. I've been running squadrons and they still don't reach the level of difficulty that you've written, sadly. I kinda wish there was like a challenge roulette the brought the original mechanics with minimal ilvl if it was like this.

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

Question, Kisai. For the old longstop, what would've happened if Brayflox died? If the dungeons were like this originally, I wonder if there are some old videos that showcase that original difficulty. I've been running squadrons and they still don't reach the level of difficulty that you've written, sadly. I kinda wish there was like a challenge roulette the brought the original mechanics with minimal ilvl if it was like this.

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They probably don’t reach that difficulty because Squadrons are over-powered, and the dungeon itself was nerfed when HW came out, like with all ARR dungeons (HW dungeons suffered a similar fate when SB dropped). For old videos, you could probably YouTube old ARR guides or playthroughs to see, but I’m assuming if Brayflox was killed, you would fail the boss fight somewhat similar to how you do if Estinien dies in The Aery (with the latter, no Draconian Light shield to protect from Nidhogg’s ultimate).

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

They probably don’t reach that difficulty because Squadrons are over-powered, and the dungeon itself was nerfed when HW came out, like with all ARR dungeons (HW dungeons suffered a similar fate when SB dropped). For old videos, you could probably YouTube old ARR guides or playthroughs to see, but I’m assuming if Brayflox was killed, you would fail the boss fight somewhat similar to how you do if Estinien dies in The Aery (with the latter, no Draconian Light shield to protect from Nidhogg’s ultimate).

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Fair enough...I forget that squads are stronger than usual groups. I'll have to hunt down the videos over the weekend just to see. Or unsync and let the dragons go ham on Brayflox just to see what happens.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

Right now, people just remove gear items when queuing so they keep getting LotA instead of the Lighthouse, because the reward from the roulette is the same. Yet the difficulty is not the same. That needs to be fixed. For the Leveling queue, they should be capped at the maximum gear that was available when that gear was introduced. So for all the ARR content that would probably be ilevel 80, with the Relic weapon and the darklight gear.

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If every raid in roulette is the same effective difficulty, and only rab and lighthouse currently are needed for upgrades, people would just queue directly for rab and lighthouse for the upgrades, or only lighthouse for the 360 gear. You would have to make all 24 mans give the token to upgrade and current ilvl armor to make roulette attractive.And to be honest once you have leveled all you need, raid roulette is useless; there's no real need for the sheer amount of creation they give you unless you mass produce the highest tier ingredients for crafts.