I give up on Solo Deep Dungeons

Is it the difficulty? No I love that,
Is it the skill barrier? I love improving at things
Is it unrewarding? Absolutely not, the titles are amazing and the late floor items are great.

I have spent at least several hours across many attempts to climb heaven on high and palace of the dead both. This post is here because I've just disconnected on floor 73 of a very promising run, with platinum haloed sacks for appraisal, and some nail biting close calls. I spent the better half of my afternoon climbing this damn thing for the who knows how many times to get a random disconnect on floor 73. My connection was excellent, i'm connected via aethernet, I didn't even lag. Just abrupt disconnection. And i've just realized this content just is not worth the assault on my mental faculties to clear as I wish it would be.

There's probably like a really small niche group that care about rankings. The vast majority of other people tackling this content solo really just want their achievement and loot.That's it. That's all I want. And I cant have it, no matter how many hours i throw at this game, if rng is not on my side and i suddenly disconnect then i gotta spend another god knows how many hours climbing this stupid thing, for just the chance that i wont disconnect.

Okay that's my nonsensical straightforward rant. Now toward my plea.

Please, for the love of god Square Enix/Yoshi P. There's several ways you can make this content accessible to the players interested in grinding it for loot/achievements. Here's a couple of ideas

1. Seperate Ranked mode / Normal runs

Keep current potd/hoh exactly the way it is, but make it a Ranked Mode. Then allow a seperate option for unranked, where if you DC/Die you can go back in at any floor. but starting at the 10th floor you were at.

2. Introduce a Three Strike System

If you die/disconnect three times, you are can no longer enter later floors.

If none of the above, please make it so if you disconnect/die you still get your sacks. My worst experience EVER in final fantasy XIV was grinding to PotD 178ish, having had the achievement for floor 100 lined up. as well as a good amount of platinum sacks. Only to Disconnect on the floor without so much as attacking a single mob. I did not get any sacks, i did not get any achievements, i got nothing but a one way ticket to floor 1.

Tl;DR

Heaven on High/PoTD Solo is not worth the time investment whatsoever for people who dont care about rankings. Several hours of your day can be lost to a 90002 disconnection error. Please make it more accessible and maybe make dying/disconnecting less punishing.

Sorry for being all over the place, i'm probably having an aneurysm from this being like the 4th time i've disconnected on one of these high floor runs. I will not be trying again in the foreseeable future unless something is done.

try using a vpn on your runs. your native internet is not reliable it seems. if you are truly serious for these acheivements you'll have to find a solution because they will never say that the problem is on their end.

Yep, I’m sitting behind a 1Gbit/s hardwired line with 25ms tops and I’m getting disconnected in DD all the time. No lag, no on-the-spot moving enemies, which usually is the immediate buildup to a disconnect. Just a hard disconnect from one second to the other, like a GM logging you out. I think that’s their way of stretching content.

Somehow I suspect GMs aren't deliberately targeting you to disconnect you during solo PotD.

I don’t even know why they don’t just let you log back. It’s not like you could gain anything from a deliberate disconnect, because there’s a clock still ticking away in the background and the clock is usually the deciding factor on the latter floors. Even if you did it for some super awkward moves like trying to avoid a patrolling mob, it would be a feat to figure out the timing of the DC, so you don’t get actually killed in your ‘logout’ window.

Furthermore it’s not like FFXIV DD would be some uber competitive esports content the whole gaming world cares about, even if you somehow cheated with DCs, in the end you’d just cheat yourself out of another activity to strife for.

Couple this with the fact that the only interesting floors in DD are 81-99 in HoH and somewhat around 161+ in PotD and everything before is a snooze fest for a seasoned DD runner, that basically doesn’t give you anything outside of a couple loot chest which are mostly trash like 5 year old endgame materia or fireworks, but it still takes hours to get to these floors.

Because of this and the disconnect problem I suggest that they should just let you start from floor 51 in HoH and 101 in PotD, while it still gives credit towards a solo/achievement run, once you have a certain number of high floor entries racked up.
There is no excuse like: “oh no, you have to start from floor 1 or it’s not hard”, because, it isn’t regardless. The only times low floors can be a challenge is when you either don’t have maxed aether equip, and/or when you don’t have pots when you’re on a class that is dependent on self-healing, before you have leveled up enough to get the healing spell, like on RDM.
Two things which are out of the picture after dozens of hours of DD.