The Stormblood Capstone fight pretty much killed my enthusiasm with the game.

Okay, let me explain the situation. Long post incoming, I need to vent. I've mentioned this in other posts: I'm a new player, but I've been a long time fan. I started playing three months ago and took my sweet time to get some classes I enjoyed to 60/70. Although many things are new to me, I know of the evolution of this game just because I lurked the subreddit, watched videos and read news about it since it became ARR. I used to play GW2 but I jumped into XIV because people praised how devs kept older content relevant and how it was regularily played. That might have been an exaggeration.

I was really surprised at how easy ARR trials were, but I kept going and I found the new Ultima battle an excelent finale, and the pre-HW dungeons were actually fun (at first). HW felt a little more balanced and I was really excited for what was to come.

And then Thordan happened.

After the battle with Ascian Prime, I was expecting Thordan to surpass it and I think you all know what happened next. That's when I decided to read on what people thought about Thordan and found out not only he was dissapointing during launch, but every single capstone fight, even the most recent Endsinger one, has become so easy some people has to open PF for synced groups or ask the party to go easy to avoid skipping entire segments. I was even more surprised to find out the Alexander Raid contained only three encounters that didn't outright explode by auto attacking them; by that time I even stopped reading guides before entering instanced content because I wouldn't even get to do many of the mentioned mechanics. The Void Ark Alliance Raid series gave me hope as it was fun and challenging without being overwhelming, and the patch dungeons and Nidhogg battle were actually really fun despite being on the easier side and I don't mind doing them whenever they pop in roulette. From there, I was sure SB would improve because HW's content, besides Thordan, wasn't all that bad.

SB happened. The first three dungeons were fun and I had no issue with the bosses as you actually get to see what they do and they had interesting mechanics, but after that even dungeons, which so far had ironically been more challenging than the trials, also started becoming victim to the "the boss dies before it gets to do anything" syndrome. It was a joy to see FFVI and VII bosses in the Garlean facilities, except I still don't know why you should hurry and kill the Tank Dispatcher hand before it reaches Inferno because people just burn him to the ground before it even matters. At least Susano and Lakshmi were fun and didn't die in two minutes.

When I reached Shinryu I was ready to try suggestions from the subreddit. I joined a Synced content Discord, opened a PF, and even used Yell in Limsa and Uldah to invite people into the capstone fight (a strategy that accorting to the subreddit works all the time). 40 minutes in PF, advertised in said Discord. Nothing, not a soul. I decided to suck it up and queue in DF, and try to ask the friendliest community in MMO space to go easy because I would like to experience the capstone fight.

"Hi! This is my first time fighting Shinryu! Mind if we go easy on him so I can experience the capstone fight mechanics?"
"I don't know how to read, sorry, so I won't do whatever you asked"

So much for the friendliest community. I understand you want your tomestones, just don't be an arse about it. I said nothing, proceeded to fight. I expected nothing from Shinryu at that point and I still got dissapointed. The cherry on top?

"Unfortunate". The dude drops that before leaving.

To make it even better I enter the forums and see that people now are skipping Aglaia's balance mechanic just by playing decently, and that's still far from SB. I had hopes that content would scale better at the very least in Alliance Raids/Raids and Trials, but it seems it won't. I'm not a hardcore player, I don't even think content is necessarily "mindlessly designed" because the fights that don't instantly die are at the very least fun, it's just that the scaling is so awful that it makes fun things feel trivial, like chores. I love getting Susano and Alexander Prime in roulette; I know we are always gonna clear but the mechanics are fun and the fights are exciting. I hate getting any ARR trial not because we are always gonna clear, but because there's nothing to them.

I'm not asking for a difficulty increase, I believe the boss mechanics are good enough as they are, I'm just baffled that CBU3 and SE, with all the damn resources they get from subs and cash shop, for some unknown reason, only decided to adjust ONE capstone fight. They haven't took the time to future proof the experience and ensure that newer players till be able to learn as they play and enjoy older content. Yoshi-P once said they don't like people skipping content they worked so hard to make, but they do absolutely nothing to keep it interesting. Discord PF for EX content isn't a solution, it's just a very dirty, peeling bandaid with barely any glue left.

I'm at a point where I even doubt Yotsuyu and the Four Lords will be fun, that Omega raids won't explode, and that I would get to do Rabanastre after tomestone event ends. Just thinking that by the time I make it to EW I'll be in the exact same situation as now feels disencouraging.

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Originally Posted by Aldath

I'm not asking for a difficulty increase, I believe the boss mechanics are good enough as they are, I'm just baffled that CBU3 and SE, with all the damn resources they get from subs and cash shop, for some unknown reason, only decided to adjust ONE capstone fight.

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To a first approximation, the answer is simple: ilvl sync. For example:

• ARR capstone: At Lv.50, your max ilvl is 130/135. The trial has a min ilvl of 42 and syncs you down to 60. Everyone is, at best, only 18 ilvls over the minimum.
• HW capstone: At Lv.60, your max ilvl is 270/275. The trial has a min ilvl of 142 and does not sync you down. A lot of folk will be a whopping 128 ilvls over the minimum.

You can probably guess how "true to its original design" content will be in practice by comparing the gap between the min ilvl required and the max ilvl you're allowed to enter in as.

I have no idea why SE doesn't put ilvl syncs on more content.

Welcome to FFXIV. The community really isn't that much different from any other online gaming community. The only difference is that SE has a pretty harsh policy against profanity and insulting other players. That's about it. You're going to find that several people will try to argue with you and pester you now that you decided to go public with your criticism, so... just a forewarning. But, otherwise, welcome!

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Originally Posted by Swordsman

Welcome to FFXIV. The community really isn't that much different from any other online gaming community. The only difference is that SE has a pretty harsh policy against profanity and insulting other players. That's about it. You're going to find that several people will try to argue with you and pester you now that you decided to go public with your criticism, so... just a forewarning. But, otherwise, welcome!

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Thank you. I'm aware I might get backlash, but I'd rather take this out of my chest and add to the voices of unsatisfied people. I know CBU3/SE might actually not even care, but I believe as clients and consumers we hold the right to complain about the quality of the product we invest time and money into.

I really want a game for everyone (hardcore, casual, RPer, you name it), it's just that the lack of care and polish is becoming more evident and it clashes with the idea a party of the community spreads. I left Gw2 because of similar reasons with abandoned content (pretty much every post Core map there is another Bozja situation), and although I believe the issues in FFXIV are less accentuated, they will eventually grow bigger if nothing is done.

1st you can edit your posts to get around the original character limit. The only other Capstone fight that acts like this is the EW one. I find that the easy part of Shinriyu is the adds. People still get slid off the side via tidal wave or still mess up later on. You should be able to get through the Ivalice raids now that you've gotten into SB post patch. Moogle tomes will be around til sometime early October.

There was once a time when very difficult content gated progression and my intuition says that SE saw a decline in subscription rates and their bottom line associated with it. Anecdotally, I know a lot of people never made it to Heavensward. Many more dropped off in Stormblood. There's no point buying new expansions that you can't experience because you're stuck at some point earlier in the game. So they shifted gears to help more of their player base stay in the game. They lowered the difficulty for MSQ trials, eliminated perma-death mechanics, added more and better telegraphs. They eased up on tanking/healing requirements to the chagrin of some. They created the Duty Support system to help get people through the slog of queuing up for dozens of different dungeons, while also giving inexperienced or just not very good players a crutch to learn the mechanics of boss fights and fail as much as necessary without feeling they're wasting other peoples' time, or seeing those people drop out of parties after wiping. The application of this approach has coincided with the biggest growth the game has ever seen. Evidently, CBU3 does not see this as being a coincidence because they've committed to this approach.

At the same time, this created an inherent split between the community of those who wanted to feel challenged and those who just want to experience the story and new areas, etc. This is exactly why the Party Finder and iLevel sync were created. To give you the opportunity to set your own terms of engagement. If you want to experience the content at its hardest level, you need to use PF with iLevel sync engaged. Maybe even with fewer players. This will take more time but you can absolutely make that decision for yourself. That is the trade off.

Ilvl synch for the capstone fights probably needed

We’ve been sandbagging them if we get first timers just so they can see some of the cooler bits of the fight

Endsinger with half decent dps hits 1% before you even get into that final phase. How terrible an experience where she dies before anyone gets a quote off lol

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Originally Posted by Aldath

I was really surprised at how easy ARR trials were

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They are story modes. The optional (Extreme), (Savage) and (Ultimate) is what is meant to be hard. The MSQ is very long and they don't want to make people feel like they can't progress. There are people who genuinely struggle with the ARR story content and die to things. Some people are just not gamers like that and just playing for the story.

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but I kept going and I found the new Ultima battle an excelent finale, and the pre-HW dungeons were actually fun (at first).

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Some of them were redone very recently so they have a more modern design like what they make at level 90.

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And then Thordan happened.

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This is designed for the item level we have upon completing Heavensward (142), but it syncs higher level players down to the maximum item level of Heavensward (270). Being over 100 item levels above the content, a healer literally does not need to cast any heals.

We wish they would apply item level syncs to previous expansions, but currently they don't apply them to 8-person content at all (except 2 leveling trials per expansion). However, it is possible to recruit 7 people and with a pre-formed party, enter the duty with the "Minimum IL" and "Silence Echo" settings.

Gear progression is important but only when the expansion is current. Once it's the previous expansion, they should just go back and sync everyone to the crafted gear level of the patch it released in.

(By the way, there is a relatively small community of people who do content with the Minimum IL and Silence Echo settings, there are discords and CWLS for it on every data center and sometimes you see PFs for it)

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Originally Posted by Korbei

There was once a time when very difficult content gated progression and my intuition says that SE saw a decline in subscription rates and their bottom line associated with it. Anecdotally, I know a lot of people never made it to Heavensward. Many more dropped off in Stormblood. There's no point buying new expansions that you can't experience because you're stuck at some point earlier in the game. So they shifted gears to help more of their player base stay in the game. They lowered the difficulty for MSQ trials, eliminated perma-death mechanics, added more and better telegraphs. They eased up on tanking/healing requirements to the chagrin of some. They created the Duty Support system to help get people through the slog of queuing up for dozens of different dungeons, while also giving inexperienced or just not very good players a crutch to learn the mechanics of boss fights and fail as much as necessary without feeling they're wasting other peoples' time, or seeing those people drop out of parties after wiping. The application of this approach has coincided with the biggest growth the game has ever seen. Evidently, CBU3 does not see this as being a coincidence because they've committed to this approach.

At the same time, this created an inherent split between the community of those who wanted to feel challenged and those who just want to experience the story and new areas, etc. This is exactly why the Party Finder and iLevel sync were created. To give you the opportunity to set your own terms of engagement. If you want to experience the content at its hardest level, you need to use PF with iLevel sync engaged. Maybe even with fewer players. This will take more time but you can absolutely make that decision for yourself. That is the trade off.

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^this all of this^ this was done before the great exodus of WoW. This MMO is 10 years old of course it changes it's suppose too. Anyone new coming in is up against a wall of being able to complete parts of the MSQ, and unlocking harder content. This game can not be designed with one group of or kind of player in mind. That's not how MMOs work or are successful. I am going through the MSQ again and I have a dozen or more of hard or extreme trials or dungeons that require a group use to be pretty fast using the duty finder now it's 45 mins or more for a DPS to get a group. They need more trusts for these to get through them.