Why is there no automatic ilvl sync for old Trials?

When dungeons start getting outgeared by the community, Square Enix implements ilvl sync to keep the experience intact and keep speedrunning to a minimum.

But Trials never get that treatment, even when it gets to the point where the boss dies in under a minute, despite the fact that Trials are supposed to be a challenge, while dungeons are supposed to be easy. And most Trials are designed with a certain DPS range in mind, where having too high DPS means you miss out on parts of the fight. Most fights at level 50 and 60 are usually ruined for new players because of this, while the early leveling Trials, ironically, are still hard because of the level sync.

This also creates a massive difficulty imbalance in the Trial Roulette, leading to stuff like people instantly quitting the more recent Trials because they'd rather take the penalty and re-queue later hoping to get something like Ifrit Hard.

This is just some really perplexing decision making from Square Enix. Oh, and the same obviously goes for Castrum Meridianum/Praetorium, but that's on top of a whole bunch of other issues with those two dungeons.

Most people think dungeons are boring after the first couple of times, while Trials remain exciting time after time. So why do only dungeons get special treatment?

Not all dungeons get ilvl sync

Only the very early dungeons (wanderers palace through stone vigil hm) because they are more likely to get extremely undergeared players whereas stuff like snowcloak and keeper of the lake don't have an ilvl sync.

The early 3.0 dungeons (alwaysreap and the fractal always continuums) are synced because they have a very low ilvl requirement, to stop 220 players from absolutely stomping on a 145 tank

Lost city of amdapor hm, pharos Sirius hm, these dungeon tiers aren't synced.
They likely will get synced very late in this expansion, but the last 1-2 tiers of dungeons aren't going to be ilvl synced either.

Snowcloak and KotL are synced to i135. So is everything else from 2.0 that doesn't have an explicit level sync in DF. Unfortunately, that's ungodly overkill for most of the trials - Ifrit Hard only requires an item level of 49 to enter, compared to KotL's 90.

Yeah, I don't see the point of Slappah's post, all dungeons are kept reasonably difficult, with more syncing added as required, except for the 8-man dungeons. Those two and the trials are the problem, and I just don't get why it has to be that way.

Why not sync Ifrit, Garuda and Titan HM to 70, Leviathan to 80, Ramuh to 90, Shiva to 100 and so on? They would still be easy but at least they wouldn't be punching bags where all mechanics are ignored.

The best example for this thread is Cape Westewind, a level 49 trial. It gets destroyed in less than 30 seconds where you barely even see add phase, if at all.

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Originally Posted by Zomkei

The best example for this thread is Cape Westewind, a level 49 trial. It gets destroyed in less than 30 seconds where you barely even see add phase, if at all.

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Yes, and this is even an important story-centric Trial, so even more reason to at least make it last a little longer for the new people.

I totally agree. I even go more far. Add Item level synch to 60 at Castrum/praetorium, and people will think two times before pull all the damn dungeon and left behind new people.

In general, on 50/60 dungeons/trials, no synch cause people start ignoring mechanics or trying solo tank things that are supposed not to be solo tank. Rushing every damn thing in the game. After few days of a new dungeon release, peope already pulling every thing. Now we got a clear message on the Antitower/Lost cirty hard. The game saying us "do not rush" because the dungeons are designed to not rush. I'm glad of it.

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Originally Posted by Xlantaa

I totally agree. I even go more far. Add Item level synch to 60 at Castrum/praetorium, and people will think two times before pull all the damn dungeon and left behind new people.

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I can guarantee you as soon as most player's daily roulettes included a Praetorium that couldn't be rushed, nobody would get it done at all, because most would rather leave and take a 30 min penalty than spend 45 minutes in a dungeon.

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Originally Posted by Xlantaa

I totally agree. I even go more far. Add Item level synch to 60 at Castrum/praetorium, and people will think two times before pull all the damn dungeon and left behind new people.

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If they did this then new players would not be able to get it done and progress the story. If they made it so it could not be rushed then all those level 60s in high gear would not run it anymore, the time vs tome bonus would not be worth the it to them and the que times would be tremendously long.

It is has a easy solution. Increase the prize for doing it. More tomes, more gil, any kind of item, I dont know. Anything atractive. Of`course, only synch level is not the solution. And the dungeon should be "remodeled". More similar to Aetherochemical Research Facility. 4 man dungeon with only few CS. But of course, because is old content, no one will spent resources on modify the dungeon.

Having high ilv and Echo in trial roulette makes things easier to beat when there are bad or inexperienced players in a group, but at the same time it doesn't help those players think "oh, I have to pay attention to mechanics now if I want to win".

Right now it's a huge mixed bag where you can get Westwind or Titan HM and roll your face through it, or cry after endless wipes in Bismark and Ravana because some DF players play like they bought the game today and queued up for these fights with no prior knowledge of anything. I got Typhon in trial the other day and I started laughing when I realized that not performing the mechanics correctly doesn't cause a wipe anymore. Can the devs please stop babying their playerbase? it only hurts us in the long run. I'd welcome a more challenging Trials roulette.

The only way to "fix" Cape Westwind, Meridianum and Praetorium is to rework them completely for solo story experience and take them out of the roulette hula hoop. No prize incentive is going to be enough for older players to run the places for whatever time it takes to watch the scenes.

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Originally Posted by Vurtney

The only way to "fix" Cape Westwind, Meridianum and Praetorium is to rework them completely for solo story experience and take them out of the roulette hula hoop. No prize incentive is going to be enough for older players to run the places for whatever time it takes to watch the scenes.

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It's easy. Increase the tome reward to something like 200 Poetics and 200 Eso once a day, then make CM/Praetorium cutscenes unskippable the first time when done via DF/Roulette, removing all possibility of toxicity from players.

Or keep them unsynced and just reduce the party size to 4 players, no other changes needed.

Or as you say, make them solo dungeons, but that would take a little longer to implement.

There's many ways to make this stuff enjoyable for first timers, and Square Enix is doing the exact opposite.

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Originally Posted by Takfloyd

Why not sync Ifrit, Garuda and Titan HM to 70, Leviathan to 80, Ramuh to 90, Shiva to 100 and so on? They would still be easy but at least they wouldn't be punching bags where all mechanics are ignored.

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Just saying, but until about patch 2.2, a whole lot of people saw i70 as the entry requirement for Titan HM. I don't think they could justify having a cap lower than the max gear available for a given patch, so i90 through Mog, i110 through Ramuh, and i130 through shiva/odin (or +5 to all these).

I'm not 100% sure why they haven't added item level sync to trials, but I would be against it. After doing nexus once (even after one nerf), I really don't want Garuda HM to take more than two minutes (or equivalent content for similar reasons). There is undersize for totally roflstomping content that you out level now, but then you also have to find people and que manually.

I respectfully disagree, OP.

I really, really, really have no intention of doing Titan (HM or Ex) near minimum iLevel at any point ever again and would absolutely loathe any sync on it. Making people go in at or near minimum iLevel would be horrible; you'd just end up with wipes because half of the people never learned the mechanics that strictly. At least as it is I can get in and get out quickly and help and/or carry new players through their trials.

But with this forced me?

Good luck getting me to do Trial roulette ever again.

(Also, lol 70 for Titan HM? Have you even done Titan at this iLevel? That's the 2.0 iLevel for Titan, which Titan HM was fresh content.)

It's working as intended. Trials should become easier when the content is outdated so more players can clear it and progress.

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Originally Posted by Vurtney

The only way to "fix" Cape Westwind, Meridianum and Praetorium is to rework them completely for solo story experience and take them out of the roulette hula hoop. No prize incentive is going to be enough for older players to run the places for whatever time it takes to watch the scenes.

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They could do that without much change to the structure. If you think about a lvl 60 player soloing it, as long as PLD and WHM can solo it at 60, They simply need to look at how viable each job or role is in soloing that content. If it's viable, then they simply need to rescale the enemies so that they are at the same point relative to the player, as the unscaled enemies are to a lvl 60 player. For that matter the strength of the party could be gauged at the outset and the enemies scaled appropriately. If you bring a light party then the game can rescale based on the combined DPS of the DDs and tank, if you duo it as tank and healer, it can scale off the combined DPS of a healer and tank, and so on. The scaling would depend not only on the balance of jobs, but their relative gear ilvls. I mean the DPS potential for all jobs is known to SE, as is the healer output and tank mitigation, I can't believe tht it's beyond them to meaningfully rescale the enemies in any piece of content accordingly.

I mean, it's not like it would prevent anyone from running it for giggles unsync'd with friends.

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Originally Posted by Takfloyd

It's easy. Increase the tome reward to something like 200 Poetics and 200 Eso once a day, then make CM/Praetorium cutscenes unskippable the first time when done via DF/Roulette, removing all possibility of toxicity from players.

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There's no incentive whatsoever for veteran players to queue up for that. If you watch all the cutscenes, Praetorium is 45-50 minutes long. You can get 200 Poetics/Esoterics way more quickly doing other things. No veterans queueing means newbies can't even get into the dungeon to progress their story. That's the ultimate goal of the Roulette - to allow newbies to progress.

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There's many ways to make this stuff enjoyable for first timers, and Square Enix is doing the exact opposite.

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It's outdated content, so I honestly don't see them making any major overhauls to it.

I feel like it'd actually be a waste of development time.

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Originally Posted by CyrilLucifer

I respectfully disagree, OP.

(Also, lol 70 for Titan HM? Have you even done Titan at this iLevel? That's the 2.0 iLevel for Titan, which Titan HM was fresh content.)

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LOL, yeah, I thought that too. Forced ilvl 70 for Titan HM would make it a blocker for new players, even though it's been nerfed considerably. Maybe the three original primals could employ item sync, and lock ilvl to 90 (vs ilvl49), 100(vs ilvl52) and 110(vs ilvl57) respectively. Players could still be quite overgeared, but not stupidly so.

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Originally Posted by Ashkendor

There's no incentive whatsoever for veteran players to queue up for that. If you watch all the cutscenes, Praetorium is 45-50 minutes long. You can get 200 Poetics/Esoterics way more quickly doing other things. No veterans queueing means newbies can't even get into the dungeon to progress their story. That's the ultimate goal of the Roulette - to allow newbies to progress.

It's outdated content, so I honestly don't see them making any major overhauls to it.

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If the reward of Poetics would not entice veterans, the make the reward richer, but not in a manner that drives progression. By that I mean if the reward would a good one, but not a key to progression, the veteran players who are all about speed would not have much more incentive to run it with relatively strict ilvl sync. But there is a huge population of players who are not chasing end-game, who might well be attracted to running this kind of content if there were rewards geared to them.

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Originally Posted by CyrilLucifer

I respectfully disagree, OP.

I really, really, really have no intention of doing Titan (HM or Ex) near minimum iLevel at any point ever again and would absolutely loathe any sync on it. Making people go in at or near minimum iLevel would be horrible; you'd just end up with wipes because half of the people never learned the mechanics that strictly. At least as it is I can get in and get out quickly and help and/or carry new players through their trials.

But with this forced me?

Good luck getting me to do Trial roulette ever again.

(Also, lol 70 for Titan HM? Have you even done Titan at this iLevel? That's the 2.0 iLevel for Titan, which Titan HM was fresh content.)

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Good thing not everyone is like you then.

Plenty of players queue for the Trial roulette not just for quick tomestones, but to relive cool fights and help newcomers have a fun experience. Whenever I get Westwind or another early Trial and there's new players in there, I do my part by standing still and not attacking to give them some more time to enjoy it, and in the case of Westwind, warning the new players about doing the next two dungeons alone via Duty Finder.

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Originally Posted by Takfloyd

Good thing not everyone is like you then.

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You have too much faith in the community.

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Originally Posted by Takfloyd

Plenty of players queue for the Trial roulette not just for quick tomestones, but to relive cool fights and help newcomers have a fun experience.

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You take out the tomestones and watch just how many people actually queue up for the Trial Roulette.

Bismarck and Ravana Trials should already give you an idea of just how bad things can turn out if you were to force an ILvL sync. Newcomers aren't going to have a fun experience when they have someone yelling at them over how they should have watched the video beforehand and how they should already know all the mechanics, nor will they enjoy being berated by people just trying to get their Trial Roulette over with for repeated failure.

I like helping people. I love teaching battles.

I do not like helping people wipe over and over on content because it's been isynced and half the party has never properly learned the mechanics (like you've clearly never done i70 Titan if you think the average "newcomer" party is going to pass that in Trial Roulette - they're not). That's why no one does Ex primals in DF anymore - it's horrible.

I don't think it's selfish to say that I don't want to waste my time on a Trial roulette that would potentially take 40 minutes for its current, minimal rewards.

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Originally Posted by Bixillarla

If they did this then new players would not be able to get it done and progress the story. If they made it so it could not be rushed then all those level 60s in high gear would not run it anymore, the time vs tome bonus would not be worth the it to them and the que times would be tremendously long.

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So increase the tome bonus (or any sort of high level reward) to match the increase in expected time. Then it would get run and run correctly, so that new players not only get the game to think they did the run so they can skip over it and do further quests, but they get to actually do the run. Sounds far better than the current version.

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Originally Posted by Evangela

It's working as intended. Trials should become easier when the content is outdated so more players can clear it and progress.

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Slightly easier, sure, but not face-roll meaningless. A proper iLevel sync still allows it to get easier as more people would be at the max iLevel rather than the minimum iLevel.

I suspect it's because there's generally been no pressing need for it. The reason most dungeons have item level syncs is to keep gaps between low-geared tanks and high-geared DPS narrow enough that threat doesn't become an issue.

Since most Trials are single target affairs and there are two tanks, however, it's much less of an issue in Trial fights.

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Originally Posted by Takfloyd

This also creates a massive difficulty imbalance in the Trial Roulette, leading to stuff like people instantly quitting the more recent Trials because they'd rather take the penalty and re-queue later hoping to get something like Ifrit Hard.

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No, people leave because new people want to go in blind on very old content, so there needs to be a a few minutes of explanation first followed by wipes when your fresh meat fails to follow mechanics.

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Originally Posted by Gokuhan

No, people leave because new people want to go in blind on very old content, so there needs to be a a few minutes of explanation first followed by wipes when your fresh meat fails to follow mechanics.

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It's not even that stuff needs to be explained, it's that 5 wipes later, people are dying to the same things without any communication going on because they still think they can ignore mechanics, and to their defense, they've been able to do so until this point. That's the main reason why I'm against nerfing old content. Can't get through it? Learn it and practice.