Heaven on High: That's it?

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Originally Posted by Ryaz

Yeah, I'm currently in a group that just cleared 60 and will be continuing tomorrow. All those gold sacks gave me were materia and a couple clothing items.

I did get a sophic barding from my last from silver sack, though, which surprised me.

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Dang that's crazy, I've been to 63 and among the sacks I got two susano minions, two shieva minions, levi barding, Sophia barding, ravanna barding, two lvl 70 craft alc flower glam stuff I sold, and some sparrow minion I already had. Those are only the things I remember getting, there indeed was material and sparklers though.

Today I've run with a party finder random fixed party from floor 21 to 74. It was really fun. It's indeed needed to have 90+ for a easy go.

I do recomend it.

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Originally Posted by LeoLupinos

Today I've run with a party finder random fixed party from floor 21 to 74. It was really fun. It's indeed needed to have 90+ for a easy go.

I do recomend it.

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If I nhave to make a guess this is what they intended from the beginning, I think we need to man up and simply search ppl like we always did, also the addition of crossworld LS and friend list shouldn't make this so impossible as ppl make it looks like

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Nothing in his statement claims he was querying any specific part of the playerbase, but the playerbase as a whole—so anyone looking to say that it was “only the raiders” that enjoyed have no argument there. Which is basically what Riyah always says—the only players that enjoy hard content are Savage raiders, when PotD Floor 200 proves otherwise (as opposed to other anecdotal stories).

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But that statement also doesn't prove he asked anyone outside of those who had been to 200. The entire playerbase is everyone - those who do potd, those who don't do it, those who only do the leveling part, those who do the challenge floors. That's why I would want to see which were part of the sample size. Did he even look at people who hadn't been to 200 and ask why? Or why people didn't do potd at all? You can't just ask people who do the content and assume that's indicative of the entire population.

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Originally Posted by Tinibou

And what about the fact that you need to reach the 50th floor of the PoTD to have access to HoH ? That's so stupid...

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I don't see a problem in that. You can do that within 1 hour.

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Originally Posted by Felis

I don't see a problem in that. You can do that within 1 hour.

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It also ensures that the people tackling HoH aren't new to the base mechanics. Which means - in theory, anyway - that there's less people who don't have a clue what they're meant to be doing.

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Originally Posted by Ryaz

My biggest issue is that 99% of the items you get from bags is crappy materia and firewoks. SE never learns.

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I've gotten like 7 different barding for my chocobo, 2 minions, the new hairstyle. Just gotta keep at it.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

But that statement also doesn't prove he asked anyone outside of those who had been to 200. The entire playerbase is everyone - those who do potd, those who don't do it, those who only do the leveling part, those who do the challenge floors. That's why I would want to see which were part of the sample size. Did he even look at people who hadn't been to 200 and ask why? Or why people didn't do potd at all? You can't just ask people who do the content and assume that's indicative of the entire population.

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There are probably still more players that did Floor 200 runs and enjoyed them, even if they didn’t make it all the way to the end, than there are Savage raiders in this game. Regardless, it had to have been significant enough for them to do another challenge portion. If it had been a negligible percentage or an insignificant percentage, or if there had not been a demand for more challenge floors like Floor 200 PotD, they wouldn’t have implemented it. It would have just been 100 floors with a story for all 100. It’s disingenuous to say that “only raiders like challenges”, which is the issue I have with Riyah and her posts about this.




I cleared Floor 100 last night, and had more fun than I’ve had in any content that isn’t Savage or Ultimate. It’s a wonderful addition to a game where everything is snore-fests. Being actually forced to do nothing but heal on AST is something refreshing; usually I’m just a green DPS in “expert” dungeons, and being made to actually perform my healing role was fun. Not to mention the adrenaline from near wipes on 81+.

I didn't say that. The issue is that the quote you used indicated that the only challenge people wanted out of that were floors like 180-200, and I'm saying no, that can't be true. Not true enough to nerf the story portion to 1-30 and in the end, give us literally one floor to easily grind casually, 21-30. Very few peopls relative out of the population would have done 180-200, not because of challenge, but because you needed a static and often as many hours as you would put in raiding to seriously do the challenge floors due to the limitations. The challenge floors were boring, and not even challenging; you died mostly due to rng of wandering mobs or people getting bored and rushing in to trigger a trap; the problem was that one wipe just meant you had to start the whole thing over, so you were incredibly punished for a mistake or for rng.

I think people were expecting them to keep the challenge, but get rid of the silly limitations. They didn't. and they didn't even keep the challenge; only three sets of floors apparently are difficult at all. They actually overall nerfed the experience when no one really complained; I shouldn't be able to duo 1-40 with a friend with no wipes and not even breaking a sweat ever. This is what befuddles me.

Its the same as the stupid namazu quests. You know what you do with them as a fisher? You go to the mark, they tell you where to fish, and the very first fish you get is it. Fishing one time. There's no real reason to nerf them like that; as fishers, we really don't mind fishing for a bit. They keep doing these weird little gameplayless decisions, like doma rebuilding and fashion report.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

I didn't say that. The issue is that the quote you used indicated that the only challenge people wanted out of that were floors like 180-200, and I'm saying no, that can't be true. Not true enough to nerf the story portion to 1-30 and in the end, give us literally one floor to easily grind casually, 21-30.

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PotD’s story built off of a previous one, and even then 51-100’s story felt disconnected from the original 1-50 story, in my opinion. Like it had been tacted on after the fact. HoH’s story was lackluster, but people also rarely did PotD 1-50 in its entirety or even PotD 61-100 in terms of farming for aetherpool or experience; that was exclusively for PotD 51-60, which HoH 21-30 is the equivalent of.

All you’re doing right now is saying that Yoshida is lying. If you think he’s lying, then jus stay so straight-up. I doubt he has reason to lie about people liking the challenge floors as opposed to spamming PotD 51-60 all the time.

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Very few peopls relative out of the population would have done 180-200, not because of challenge, but because you needed a static and often as many hours as you would put in raiding to seriously do the challenge floors due to the limitations.

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Do you have proof to back up your claim? You don’t even need a “static” to do the challenge floors for PotD; I did my first run where we wiped on 197 with a random PF of people that were just advertising wanting to do it. My clear was done with my friends. Same with my HoH clear—done with 2 friends and another person that was a friend of one of mine. You don’t need a static, nor do you need to put in “tons of time” equivalent to the time you would put into clearing Savage or Ultimate.

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The challenge floors were boring, and not even challenging; you died mostly due to rng of wandering mobs or people getting bored and rushing in to trigger a trap; the problem was that one wipe just meant you had to start the whole thing over, so you were incredibly punished for a mistake or for rng.

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“The challenge floors were boring” is your opinion. Opinion =/= fact.

Again, your proof? Have you actually cleared PotD 200 or HoH 100, or are you just making assumptions about content you don’t actually do again? When mobs hit hard enough to force me to actually have to heal outside of regens or a faerie, or where one actually spams AOE damage after a cleave and a large circle AOE and requires me to actively AOE heal to keep people up (this is in HoH), that’s already a myriad above what most dungeon trash pack pulls do. Part of the challenge is also the RNG and having to be responsible with your pomanders. It requires judgment calls as opposed to just using them willy-nilly as you would during story floors.

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I think people were expecting them to keep the challenge, but get rid of the silly limitations. They didn't. and they didn't even keep the challenge; only three sets of floors apparently are difficult at all. They actually overall nerfed the experience when no one really complained; I shouldn't be able to duo 1-40 with a friend with no wipes and not even breaking a sweat ever. This is what befuddles me.

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Doing PotD Floor 200 or HoH Floor 100 with randoms? No. Then the challenge of the content doesn’t even match the challenge you’d face with matched parties charging into rooms and popping pomanders the second you find them. I understand completely why they don’t allow matched to do the harder floors.

Harder PotD floors started at 151+, only truly getting their punches in at 181+. HoH starts at 50, where you have to start being cautious, and then at 71+, you can no longer pull several mobs at once. And if you end up with 2 or 3 on you, you have to actually strategize depending on which ones they are. Got a mob that enrages and one-shots? Prioritize him. Another mob that has an attack/self-buff that needs to be stunned? Make sure to watch for that and stun it.

You’ve only been to HoH Floor 40; I don’t think you can really speak about what the higher floors are like without at least having some knowledge or experience of them. Duoing to Floor 40 is just about the same as how I duo’d to Floor 175 in PotD. I know two other friends that duo’d to the 190s.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

Its the same as the stupid namazu quests. You know what you do with them as a fisher? You go to the mark, they tell you where to fish, and the very first fish you get is it. Fishing one time. There's no real reason to nerf them like that; as fishers, we really don't mind fishing for a bit. They keep doing these weird little gameplayless decisions, like doma rebuilding and fashion report.

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Because the Ixali beast tribe quests were difficult for fisher? No, they just took longer. Beast tribes have always been easy; Namazu quests being easy shouldn’t be a surprise at this point.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

All you’re doing right now is saying that Yoshida is lying. If you think he’s lying, then jus stay so straight-up. I doubt he has reason to lie about people liking the challenge floors as opposed to spamming PotD 51-60 all the time.

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I'm saying he misinterpreted the data, along the lines what I said earlier. The casuals did the easier floors, the hardcore potders did the challenge floors to completion. So he would think that the casuals didn't care for lots of floors or difficult story ones, when it was more the incentives for casuals (leveling aetherpool weapons, tome farming, jobs) favored easier floors. The hard story ones weren't disliked because they were hard, but because they gave the same rewards as the easier ones.

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Do you have proof to back up your claim? You don’t even need a “static” to do the challenge floors for PotD; I did my first run where we wiped on 197 with a random PF of people that were just advertising wanting to do it. My clear was done with my friends. Same with my HoH clear—done with 2 friends and another person that was a friend of one of mine. You don’t need a static, nor do you need to put in “tons of time” equivalent to the time you would put into clearing Savage or Ultimate.

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And it took you how long?

You needed a static so you didn't have to do all the floors in one go, for 3+ hours a run. That's why the limitations were so bad, most NA players really aren't doing content for that long of a sustained period. Factoring in breaks or wipes and you can sink some really serious time into a single day's attempt. But if you hav a static, its easier to break off in the middle of floors.

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Again, your proof? Have you actually cleared PotD 200 or HoH 100, or are you just making assumptions about content you don’t actually do again? When mobs hit hard enough to force me to actually have to heal outside of regens or a faerie, or where one actually spams AOE damage after a cleave and a large circle AOE and requires me to actively AOE heal to keep people up (this is in HoH), that’s already a myriad above what most dungeon trash pack pulls do. Part of the challenge is also the RNG and having to be responsible with your pomanders. It requires judgment calls as opposed to just using them willy-nilly as you would during story floors.

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I got up to 170 before my static stopped. The person I play with simply doesn't have the time to spend 3+ hours on a single instance repeatedly. Its bone easy to heal it. Just because we don't do savage doesn't mean we haven't healed in other games or not know how to do mob triage or be aware of roaming mobs. POTD doesn't have any of the things that make this game specifically difficult, i.e. the precisely choreographed boss dances that demand very fast reaction times or holding multiple elements in your head. If you played ffxi, you played harder than the hardest potd floors anyways just by leveling.

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Because the Ixali beast tribe quests were difficult for fisher? No, they just took longer. Beast tribes have always been easy; Namazu quests being easy shouldn’t be a surprise at this point.

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Look at the moogle crafter quests and compare them to the namazu ones. No contest. Look at leves and compare them to namazu. No contest. The namazu are streamlined far too much; they don't even use spearfishing, and its like crafting a level 20 item when you are level 70. They nerfed them for some odd reason when no one complained about them being too long or involved.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

I didn't say that. The issue is that the quote you used indicated that the only challenge people wanted out of that were floors like 180-200, and I'm saying no, that can't be true. Not true enough to nerf the story portion to 1-30 and in the end, give us literally one floor to easily grind casually, 21-30. Very few peopls relative out of the population would have done 180-200, not because of challenge, but because you needed a static and often as many hours as you would put in raiding to seriously do the challenge floors due to the limitations. The challenge floors were boring, and not even challenging; you died mostly due to rng of wandering mobs or people getting bored and rushing in to trigger a trap; the problem was that one wipe just meant you had to start the whole thing over, so you were incredibly punished for a mistake or for rng.

I think people were expecting them to keep the challenge, but get rid of the silly limitations. They didn't. and they didn't even keep the challenge; only three sets of floors apparently are difficult at all. They actually overall nerfed the experience when no one really complained; I shouldn't be able to duo 1-40 with a friend with no wipes and not even breaking a sweat ever. This is what befuddles me.

Its the same as the stupid namazu quests. You know what you do with them as a fisher? You go to the mark, they tell you where to fish, and the very first fish you get is it. Fishing one time. There's no real reason to nerf them like that; as fishers, we really don't mind fishing for a bit. They keep doing these weird little gameplayless decisions, like doma rebuilding and fashion report.

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You're literally calling Yoshida a liar. Does he embellish things? Absolutely. But an embellishment in this scenario would be 120/150+ to 200 or that people enjoyed the challenge despite not actually clearing, not the entire thing. If only very few people attempted it, why did he specifically mention floors 180-200 in his interview with MrHappy? Keep in mind, Happy didn't even mention the challenge. Now you're claiming he misinterpreted the data. Alright, suppose I make the same argument regarding Savage, thus they should bring back Midas' difficulty. If we're going purely on anecdotal evidence, I am no less accurate than you are now. At this point, it comes across you simply cannot fathom the idea not everyone wants the game to be brain dead easy.

And no, you do not need a static. I cleared with a group I barely knew. And just late last night I saw a couple groups looking for people to attempt a full run. All you need is some measure of communication.

Claiming they nerfed it demonstrates you, once again, have no idea what you're speaking about. PotD floors were easy all the way until 150. That's why the common strategy was to chain pull everything to the exit and just aoe them down until floor 101, then you took a pack or two at a time until 140-150 before you finally had to slow down. Of course you can blitz the early tiers with the pomenders and magicates now. They aren't intended for those floors, but strictly for the higher ones. Basically, HoH isn't balanced around casual players who only wished to grind levels. If that is all you want from the content, it will disappoint. Fortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case, at least where most people are concerned.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

Look at the moogle crafter quests and compare them to the namazu ones. No contest. Look at leves and compare them to namazu. No contest. The namazu are streamlined far too much; they don't even use spearfishing, and its like crafting a level 20 item when you are level 70. They nerfed them for some odd reason when no one complained about them being too long or involved.

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Please tell me you aren't insinuating the Moogle quests were remotely difficult. They were just as easy as the Namazu ones.

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Originally Posted by OMega_ARcane

Dang that's crazy, I've been to 63 and among the sacks I got two susano minions, two shieva minions, levi barding, Sophia barding, ravanna barding, two lvl 70 craft alc flower glam stuff I sold, and some sparrow minion I already had. Those are only the things I remember getting, there indeed was material and sparklers though.

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

the reduction to only 30 floors wich you can queue for and then that you actually only queue for 21-30 because there is simply no point for 1-20 when you can skip that floors... makes this content really boring on day one.

i now did 1-30 one time and 21-30 two times and i am already bored to death. but well... i want that weapon, emote, pet, hairstyle... and after i have the weapon i need to grind to 99 again for the 30+ floors...

oh yeah, the 30+ floors... yes they exist. yes i ignore them. i am just giving feedback to the 1-30 floors, wich are the floors i can queue for and therefore are the floors wich i have to do to get all that stuff.

1-50 and later 51-100 in PotD was so much more fun and really felt like exploring a huge dungeon and like a rogue-like. maybe the 30+ floors will have the same feeling. but the accessible floors are just a disappointment.

you know what exist too? PF and crosserver too, ppl need to stop saiying that there's this huge barrier of entry because there isn't anymore

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

Look at the moogle crafter quests and compare them to the namazu ones. No contest. Look at leves and compare them to namazu. No contest. The namazu are streamlined far too much; they don't even use spearfishing, and its like crafting a level 20 item when you are level 70. They nerfed them for some odd reason when no one complained about them being too long or involved.

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Moogle quests and difficult? I think you mean the Ixal quests.
Without level down synch, cross-class skills turned off and reduced CP the moogle quests where like a walk in the park.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

But that statement also doesn't prove he asked anyone outside of those who had been to 200. The entire playerbase is everyone - those who do potd, those who don't do it, those who only do the leveling part, those who do the challenge floors. That's why I would want to see which were part of the sample size. Did he even look at people who hadn't been to 200 and ask why? Or why people didn't do potd at all? You can't just ask people who do the content and assume that's indicative of the entire population.

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Its the same with his Eureka statement, and how more people have done it for fun than rewards..And I am sitting here wondering, where he got that information, since there are no ff14 specific surveys, the forums and reddit were quite negative about Eureka and a lot of people even stated that they are only running it for the rewards..so yeah not really sure how they sometimes get their interpretations.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Doing PotD Floor 200 or HoH Floor 100 with randoms? No. Then the challenge of the content doesn’t even match the challenge you’d face with matched parties charging into rooms and popping pomanders the second you find them. I understand completely why they don’t allow matched to do the harder floors.

Harder PotD floors started at 151+, only truly getting their punches in at 181+. HoH starts at 50, where you have to start being cautious, and then at 71+, you can no longer pull several mobs at once. And if you end up with 2 or 3 on you, you have to actually strategize depending on which ones they are. Got a mob that enrages and one-shots? Prioritize him. Another mob that has an attack/self-buff that needs to be stunned? Make sure to watch for that and stun it.

You’ve only been to HoH Floor 40; I don’t think you can really speak about what the higher floors are like without at least having some knowledge or experience of them. Duoing to Floor 40 is just about the same as how I duo’d to Floor 175 in PotD. I know two other friends that duo’d to the 190s.

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I have done PotD until 150 solo and seemingly it only get harder after that. And I have done HoH with complete randoms until 81 where we died to those nice chimeras..We were not optimal, like not using the best pomanders, got unlucky with drops, lots of exploding traps and one healer that liked to run to chests while we still fought. And yet it was only a challenge 70+. Yes the ones after 65+ hit harder too but we still had no tank and I was the only one with full aether set at the end, the rest was like 20 points under me. If we had good pomanders we would surely have reached even higher. And again that was with total strangers. (And we were quite disappointed with a lot of bosses. Honestly the PotD <100 ones felt harder than anything including 80 and now you can even get Odin which one shots them..)So in PotD only the last 40 floors are a challenge and in HoH the last 20. Not really that great and I still dont understand why it was necessary to cut the casual part down that much. They still could have made more floors for casuals and just implement it that you can start at 101 or the challenge floors as soon as everyone cleared the floors before that once..so anyone that gets a challenge dont need the casual floors more than once and the rest of us that dont have the big amount of time to run this with a static or a unlucky to find randoms that stay with them that long can still have a big playground too.

(I am looking it at this with the whole group there. Which is exactly the amount of people that they created the challenge with. Everything else, like only duoing it, is your own challenge and I am not sure if that should be counted in the talk about the level of it)

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Originally Posted by Remedi

you know what exist too? PF and crosserver too, ppl need to stop saiying that there's this huge barrier of entry because there isn't anymore

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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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Originally Posted by Alleo

I have done PotD until 150 solo and seemingly it only get harder after that. And I have done HoH with complete randoms until 81 where we died to those nice chimeras..We were not optimal, like not using the best pomanders, got unlucky with drops, lots of exploding traps and one healer that liked to run to chests while we still fought. And yet it was only a challenge 70+. Yes the ones after 65+ hit harder too but we still had no tank and I was the only one with full aether set at the end, the rest was like 20 points under me. If we had good pomanders we would surely have reached even higher. And again that was with total strangers. (And we were quite disappointed with a lot of bosses. Honestly the PotD <100 ones felt harder than anything including 80 and now you can even get Odin which one shots them..)So in PotD only the last 40 floors are a challenge and in HoH the last 20. Not really that great and I still dont understand why it was necessary to cut the casual part down that much. They still could have made more floors for casuals and just implement it that you can start at 101 or the challenge floors as soon as everyone cleared the floors before that once..so anyone that gets a challenge dont need the casual floors more than once and the rest of us that dont have the big amount of time to run this with a static or a unlucky to find randoms that stay with them that long can still have a big playground too.

(I am looking it at this with the whole group there. Which is exactly the amount of people that they created the challenge with. Everything else, like only duoing it, is your own challenge and I am not sure if that should be counted in the talk about the level of it)

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The “story mode” portion was likely trimmed down because people that did the story floors of PotD tended to do it once for completion/story, or for more opportunities for aetherpool/weapons (since PotD 51-60 was very “speedrun/experience only, no silvers just gogogo). The most popular floors were PotD Floor 51-60, because they gave the best return in terms of time spent and experience. HoH 21-30 is the equivalent of PotD 51-60. If the developers see data that insinuates players ignore 90 out of the 100 story floors of PotD, why should they implement another 100 story floors that will likely also be ignored in HoH? At most, they could have done a flat 50 story floors to maybe flesh out the story a bit more, but they probably would have still started the challenge floors at Floor 41, and 41-50 would have been the new “spam for experience” set; there isn’t a need for 100 more story floors.

Re: Odin Magicite—it’s my belief that these exist for solo runs, and that they are for use on bosses only. Floor magicite are Garuda, Titan, and Ifrit, and really they should be planned around/used in an emergency (i.e., everyone but 1 player is killed by a series of unfortunate events on a higher floor, and the last person standing turns to a Magicite as one of their emergency pomanders if things like petrification are unavailable). Those pomanders aren’t intended to be used on story floors, but in later ones to either make quick use of a floor (like the big room ones) or to save from a stick situation. So of course they seem OP in floors where they are only challenging for solo runners with low, low aetherpool.

Bosses are not hard, though, so for full light-parties, Odin doesn’t even need to be used for them (probably not even for duos either, though I haven’t done any of HoH as a two-man party, so I cannot say for certain). I have to disagree with your assessment that HoH Floors 71-80 aren’t challenging; perhaps you got lucky with your Floor spawns, but each time I’ve hit those floors, it has been full of combined floor debuffs (had 5 in a row that were auto-heal disable + another debuff), treasure rooms with 10+ mobs, and danger mobs like the Griffins or Mammoths crowding the floors, especially around the exit. They aren’t as hard as the floors above them, but I wouldn’t say they are a cake-walk either.

The trimming down was also probably due to feedback about how irritating it was to do PotD Floor 51 to 100 for Floor 200 runs, and from how Floors 101 to 150 were also mostly fluff save for a few tricky mobs that could screw you over if you were unprepared for them. 100 fluff floors were not well received, from what I gather; hence why they trimmed it down.

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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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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).

You also only have to start at Floor 21; you don’t have to start at Floor 1 unless you are going for solo achievements.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

If only very few people attempted it, why did he specifically mention floors 180-200 in his interview with MrHappy?

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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.

The namazu...at least the moogle had separate steps and dialogue. Half the quests you go directly from catching the fish back home, and even the multistep ones only require 2 interactions. It's stripped down too much, and its hard to care about them at all because of it.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

The most popular floors were PotD Floor 51-60, because they gave the best return in terms of time spent and experience. HoH 21-30 is the equivalent of PotD 51-60. If the developers see data that insinuates players ignore 90 out of the 100 story floors of PotD, why should they implement another 100 story floors that will likely also be ignored in HoH?

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The problem is that they didn't give any rewards to do them in sequence as opposed to single floors. Tomes and exp are a flat rate with very little bonus for completing the whole set, aetherpool is not particularly more efficient past 60 than at 51. For some reason they simply don't get the fact that players will do whatever is efficient and are very good at finding that; they just put out systems and get shocked when spamming 51-60 or FATE trains exist, and then they made these dumb decisions to curtail them, like HW scaling fates.

Either they are rushed, or give content to junior people, or what, but they should have known how only 30 floors limits the story, or that casual floors have zero difficulty period because of decisions made for upper floors or soloing.

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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.

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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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Oh no, I have to get people that play the game the same time frame I do. What ever shall I do?

Honestly, you know 100% what they would have to do if it was still matched. Even just look at floor 30 boss, you think I got any idea how to pop those correctly? Even thinking I'm in the right spot I still get like 5 vun stacks and barely get hurt anyways. You want that all the way to floor 100?

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Originally Posted by uvuvwevwevweonyetenyevweugwemu

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.

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Except it doesn't. You are only required to setup a pre-made party, which you have the tools readily available to do through the use of cross world PF. People like to bring up FFXI all the time. Well, being forced to make parties was a key component of that game.

They need to release more stuff.

it's not that its bad, its that NA style is to do the whole run in one sitting. That really discourages pickup play, because when you factor in breaks, you coudl spend 4 hours plus doing it. You can do it over time, but unlike a raid static its impossible to sub members, so you have to wait till everyone is on and able to do it to resume. Its not impossible, not at all, but it kind of is like the relic; some people will nonstop grind fractal continuum for tomes to get it done, but a lot just do it slowly over time.

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Originally Posted by Jijifli

Oh no, I have to get people that play the game the same time frame I do. What ever shall I do?

Honestly, you know 100% what they would have to do if it was still matched. Even just look at floor 30 boss, you think I got any idea how to pop those correctly? Even thinking I'm in the right spot I still get like 5 vun stacks and barely get hurt anyways. You want that all the way to floor 100?

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And not everyone that you know will be good enough or even want to do the harder floors. (And honestly any boss including 80 is not hard. IMO the 80 boss is easier than the 30 one, so for me at least the bosses are already easier than the PotD ones)

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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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I understand completely why the challenge floors are not matched—they require strategic use of pomanders and party coordination when you get to Floor 71+ that random groups just either aren’t capable of providing, or are unwilling to provide. Do you remember what most players did when they found pomanders on early floors? Either used them immediately or ignored them outright when they could have actually been useful. I can already see the complaints people would have if something like HoH Floor 81 or HoH Floor 99 was open to matched parties: “we found a Garuda magicite a couple floors ago, but someone used it immediately, and then we got to a terrible room later on a floor with 3 debuffs and had no options to get out of a sticky situation, and then we wiped”. Followed probably by a demand to nerf the content because it’s too difficult.

You also have to stock up on pomanders to store for the later floors...which you cannot do in matched parties since they’re purged after every 10 floors. Matched would not work with the higher floors in its current iteration. But changing that would require pomanders to be held individually so that the save data goes with the character, not the party.

To be blunt, if someone cannot set aside a few hours a day to do this content with friends/FC mates/other reliable individuals that they know, then I really don’t know what to tell them. I was working full-time when I cleared Floor 200 with my friends with a schedule that was never the same each week, and still cleared it in 3-4 days with only doing 2 or 3 sets of floors a night. Both of my HoH clears literally took an evening to do. It’s not nearly as difficult or as “gated” as some people like to make it out to be.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

I understand completely why the challenge floors are not matched

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I understand it too, that's why I never mentioned matched mode. They should remain only for premades, but players should have the ability to swap players in the party. Assuming the new party members have cleared the prior boss and have an empty save slot, the party leader's save slot can be given to them upon entering. They can even enforce the save file's job selection to ensure people don't game the system. Just like it works for savage: you get the leader's lockout and that way you can skip what you have cleared previously. This way nothing about HoH is compromised, only more flexibility is gained.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

It’s not nearly as difficult or as “gated” as some people like to make it out to be.

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It could be less gated without making the content any worse and that is a perfectly good reason to make the suggestion. Just because it isn't totally awful and absolutely undoable doesn't mean there's nothing to improve. So everyone is welcome to leave the condescending remarks at the door.

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Originally Posted by Reinha

I understand it too, that's why I never mentioned matched mode. They should remain only for premades, but players should have the ability to swap players in the party. Assuming the new party members have cleared the prior boss and have an empty save slot, the party leader's save slot can be given to them upon entering. They can even enforce the save file's job selection to ensure people don't game the system. Just like it works for savage: you get the leader's lockout and that way you can skip what you have cleared previously. This way nothing about HoH is compromised, only more flexibility is gained.

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That sounds like a nightmare to design a backend for. Trying to merge two save slots, especially when removing one part to replace another, is likely far beyond the capabilities of the current system. The current save slot system neither has the capability to edit save slots, nor have two save slots interact with each other, and adding both of these features would likely involve a complete rewrite of the feature with those capabilities as a focus.

Also, logically when would this be used? Imagine your party is on floors 81-90, why would any single person be on 81-90 without having their own party? You are asking for a rewrite of a feature over something that would happen extremely rarely, even more so considering you are suggesting job restriction be added.

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Originally Posted by Reinha

I understand it too, that's why I never mentioned matched mode. They should remain only for premades, but players should have the ability to swap players in the party. Assuming the new party members have cleared the prior boss and have an empty save slot, the party leader's save slot can be given to them upon entering. They can even enforce the save file's job selection to ensure people don't game the system. Just like it works for savage: you get the leader's lockout and that way you can skip what you have cleared previously. This way nothing about HoH is compromised, only more flexibility is gained.

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What you’re describing is essentially the same thing as matched, though—you’re swapping out old party members for a new one. The only thing I can agree that should change that has been mentioned in this thread is the ability to remove a player from a save if they flake. But allowing them to be replaced is just the same as matched parties, and opens up other cans of worms along with it. One of which Lambdafish already described: a total rework of the save file system.

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It could be less gated without making the content any worse and that is a perfectly good reason to make the suggestion. Just because it isn't totally awful and absolutely undoable doesn't mean there's nothing to improve. So everyone is welcome to leave the condescending remarks at the door.

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I never said there weren’t improvements to be made. I said that the content isn’t gated, because it’s not. And again, if people truly have difficulty finding 1 or 2 or 3 other friends, FC mates, or other reliable people to do this content with them for a Saturday evening or couple hours a night for however long it takes to clear (PotD is significantly longer than HoH, but I haven’t had a Floor 100 run yet exceed 5 hours), then I don’t know what to tell them.

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Originally Posted by Amariel34

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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The issue with PotD is the sheer amount of time it took. Setting aside what essentially amounts to an afternoon isn't unreasonable. PotD, on the other hand, took upward of 10+. You also have to factor in cost for such a system. As Lambdafish cited above, this would necessitate a full overhaul of the save files to allow two parties both of whom made it to say floor, 81-90, and were both abandoned by their parties to join together. How often is that ever going to happen?