Min ilvl setting and people saying this game is too east

So I’m curious here, I’ve seen a lot of people say the game is over all too easy and want more challenging content, my question is, how many of you are actually using the min ilvl setting with pre mades for more challenging runs?

That should be too easy in the thread title, sorry iPhone typos of which I am the king....

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So I’m curious here, I’ve seen a lot of people say the game is over all too easy and want more challenging content, my question is, how many of you are actually using the min ilvl setting with pre mades for more challenging runs?

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Probably no one, as there's no real incentives to doing so because you can't complete roulettes that way. There's also the matter that you yourself stated -- you'd need a premade, meaning you'd need 3/7/23 other like minded people who also feel like wasting their time doing a harder/slower duty without even getting roulette rewards for it.

A handful of ex trials will drop their (mostly worthless by now) music rolls more often. That's the only incentive. It isn't nearly enough.

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Originally Posted by SerLuke

So I’m curious here, I’ve seen a lot of people say the game is over all too easy and want more challenging content, my question is, how many of you are actually using the min ilvl setting with pre mades for more challenging runs?

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all content outside Ultimate and current Savage is relatively easy, which is what, 95% of the content. So they're not technically wrong but I have to assume they don't do the challenging content.

There is a Discord that exists for players that want to group up for min ilvl content so there is definitely some that enjoy it that way. Roulettes aren't all that important for everyone (it varies) if they have everything they need, so it gives a different and challenging activity to do

Hey, grinding until you severely outgear/outlevel content and then complaining that everything's too easy is an RPG tradition. We don't actually want things to be challenging; we just want to say tryhard/hardcore sounding things to make people think we're awesome at video games.

Such is the plague of people in literally every MMO I've seen (even WoW, the so-called 'king' of endgame content).

99 times out of 100, these people have also not cleared the current endgame.

Here the complaint goes "I don't have no mounts b/c I don't like no mounts and I can't get no savage because I don't ever work a schedule and PF sux but I easy-clear all the things and never get loot and also have no parses proving that I've done anything ever because I'm the ultimate anomaly in the universe!"

On WoW it goes "Endgame sux b/c it's all about raids and the raidz are all ezpz even though I've never cleared anything above LFR it must be an anomaly on my profile or I'm really on an alt so don't judge what my profile says and I iz hardcorez uberMythicz raiders when you must be a baddie b/c you've only cleared 4/8 by the end of week 3 and this is all because I'm the ultimate anomaly in the universe!"

In SWTOR it goes "All the operations are way too ezpz even though I've cleared none of them b/c they're too ezpz and I'm the ultimate anomaly in the universe!"

TL;DR - People who do this can be defined with a simple, five-letter word: troll

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

Probably no one, as there's no real incentives to doing so because you can't complete roulettes that way. There's also the matter that you yourself stated -- you'd need a premade, meaning you'd need 3/7/23 other like minded people who also feel like wasting their time doing a harder/slower duty without even getting roulette rewards for it.

A handful of ex trials will drop their (mostly worthless by now) music rolls more often. That's the only incentive. It isn't nearly enough.

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I thought these people were claiming the incentive was the challenge itself and the rewards were meaningless? For example running The Burn at min ilvl vs a party of full i400s is a totally different animal, at min ilvl mechanic failures will kill

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Originally Posted by Goji1639

Hey, grinding until you severely outgear/outlevel content and then complaining that everything's too easy is an RPG tradition. We don't actually want things to be challenging; we just want to say tryhard/hardcore sounding things to make people think we're awesome at video games.

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I won’t lie I prefer being over geared for stuff too so it’s either, I’m just trying to understand the difficulty complaint when min ilvl which is basically turning stuff into hard mode is not utilized.

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Originally Posted by SerLuke

I thought these people were claiming the incentive was the challenge itself and the rewards were meaningless? For example running The Burn at min ilvl vs a party of full i400s is a totally different animal, at min ilvl mechanic failures will kill

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thats not the same as "harder content", thats just gimping yourself to make the content more challenging. I know people that do this for the laughs maybe once or twice when they're extremely bored. Like when SB was winding down, my FC tried to take down Seiryu extreme w/o job crystals. they got it to about 20% surprisingly.

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I thought these people were claiming the incentive was the challenge itself and the rewards were meaningless? For example running The Burn at min ilvl vs a party of full i400s is a totally different animal, at min ilvl mechanic failures will kill

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Well, that's not what I'm claiming. Doubt it's what most people are claiming either. People usually want to be tangibly rewarded for performing challenging feats in games.

People also will usually follow the path of least resistance. It's precisely why people are dropping their ilvl for alliance roulette, for instance.

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Originally Posted by galbsadi

Such is the plague of people in literally every MMO I've seen (even WoW, the so-called 'king' of endgame content).

99 times out of 100, these people have also not cleared the current endgame.

Here the complaint goes "I don't have no mounts b/c I don't like no mounts and I can't get no savage because I don't ever work a schedule and PF sux but I easy-clear all the things and never get loot and also have no parses proving that I've done anything ever because I'm the ultimate anomaly in the universe!"

On WoW it goes "Endgame sux b/c it's all about raids and the raidz are all ezpz even though I've never cleared anything above LFR it must be an anomaly on my profile or I'm really on an alt so don't judge what my profile says and I iz hardcorez uberMythicz raiders when you must be a baddie b/c you've only cleared 4/8 by the end of week 3 and this is all because I'm the ultimate anomaly in the universe!"

In SWTOR it goes "All the operations are way too ezpz even though I've cleared none of them b/c they're too ezpz and I'm the ultimate anomaly in the universe!"

TL;DR - People who do this can be defined with a simple, five-letter word: troll

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Wow.

You're one of those, "Raiding is the ONLY way to play! If you're not raiding then you're doing it wrong! Only raiders should get stuff! Raiding deserves to be the only badge of honor! Get raiding, get parsed, or GTFO plebs!" Types aren't you?

Never considered that other player types deserve special things too did you? Rewards for roleplaying. Rewards for community building. Rewards for teaching newbies basic mechanics. How about a reward for maxing out a retainer or maxing out a crafting or gathering job?

Oh wait, you don't want those because, in your mind, raiding IS the end game.

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Originally Posted by HWalsh

Wow.

You're one of those, "Raiding is the ONLY way to play! If you're not raiding then you're doing it wrong! Only raiders should get stuff! Raiding deserves to be the only badge of honor! Get raiding, get parsed, or GTFO plebs!" Types aren't you?

Never considered that other player types deserve special things too did you? Rewards for roleplaying. Rewards for community building. Rewards for teaching newbies basic mechanics. How about a reward for maxing out a retainer or maxing out a crafting or gathering job?

Oh wait, you don't want those because, in your mind, raiding IS the end game.

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How you gonna get a reward for role-playing? I thought the reward was your fantasy or something. How would SE reward someone for role-playing? You turn on the RP flag and *bam* reward?

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Originally Posted by SerLuke

So I’m curious here, I’ve seen a lot of people say the game is over all too easy and want more challenging content, my question is, how many of you are actually using the min ilvl setting with pre mades for more challenging runs?

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Originally Posted by galbsadi

Such is the plague of people in literally every MMO I've seen (even WoW, the so-called 'king' of endgame content).

99 times out of 100, these people have also not cleared the current endgame.

Here the complaint goes "I don't have no mounts b/c I don't like no mounts and I can't get no savage because I don't ever work a schedule and PF sux but I easy-clear all the things and never get loot and also have no parses proving that I've done anything ever because I'm the ultimate anomaly in the universe!"

On WoW it goes "Endgame sux b/c it's all about raids and the raidz are all ezpz even though I've never cleared anything above LFR it must be an anomaly on my profile or I'm really on an alt so don't judge what my profile says and I iz hardcorez uberMythicz raiders when you must be a baddie b/c you've only cleared 4/8 by the end of week 3 and this is all because I'm the ultimate anomaly in the universe!"

In SWTOR it goes "All the operations are way too ezpz even though I've cleared none of them b/c they're too ezpz and I'm the ultimate anomaly in the universe!"

TL;DR - People who do this can be defined with a simple, five-letter word: troll

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I think there is a huge key missing here, and especially to Galbasadi's point which I think they're painting with way too big of a brush stroke (there are people they example but those people they're discussing really don't seem to be the people who started the concept of this thread).

That this thread concept is in response to people wanting what they feel is really easy content to return to the kind of hard content that it was. They weren't asking for ultimate. To say "go do ultimate" (or savage/ex) is like telling a person sad that you nerfed Garuda hard "well there is always bahamut ultimate". Lol..? They're not even sort of similar in challenge XD. I'm sure the people who wanted harder Crystal Tower, specifically hard like it was (not savage CT), will also do the new Nier alliance raid when it's actually available.

On top of that if you use the min ilvl system you have to go premade and you also lose roulette bonus, adding two more hurdles (which could be quite the challenge to get that many people together, depending on what it is). Also you might have that itch in your mind that it is an ineffective reward choice, which shouldn't matter if you're having fun but this stuff does matter lol. Like if there is a way to cheese the boss (that isn't a glitch/bug) and then a way to do it "hard", everyone is going to do the cheese most of the time. All of that Fynlar was pointing out.

So I feel like some people are saying "return the difficulty in a way that is convenient, for me" and people are respond with "don't you have an inconvenient option?". Which is a response but one should see that if it is inconvenient that maybe people want to make it not that lol (in King Otter's defense he adds more reasons/counter points in the other thread, you just don't see that in the OP). Or I think worse though is the people asking for hard garuda to be hard again and getting "so go clear savage/ex/ultimate, troll" in response which those are like 100000x harder than returning a "sort of hard" content back to form. First day alliance raids are not as hard as savage/ex/ultimate.

I feel there is quite a bit of talking past each other here, and a bit of poisoning of the well on top of that. Which is unfortunate.

Edit:
As an aside just for clarity sake, as responded in the other thread, I don't want to see a bunch of old content returned to form via tighter syncs- at least in the current roulette. I prefer that content slowly nerfs itself for a few reasons (mentioned in the other thread). That said I did think it could be fun to have some rotating roulette "blast from the past" content pieces that get returned to their original experience and perhaps even have some modifiers / mutations applied for variation and more challenge (meaning you can use roulette, and the reward is worth the time even too). So I'm all for adding an old content difficultly revival for current players, just not in the main roulette we already use- make it a new one :3. That mentioned post: here.

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Originally Posted by Sub-Xero

How you gonna get a reward for role-playing? I thought the reward was your fantasy or something. How would SE reward someone for role-playing? You turn on the RP flag and *bam* reward?

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the logic being applied here, imo, is that RP, community building, teaching, etc, all deserve material rewards like raiding does. However, I would disagree and say that the rewards for those things listed should be inherent to the the activity whereas raiding should stick to material rewards. Raiders really only care about the material rewards anyway, imo.

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Originally Posted by Sub-Xero

How you gonna get a reward for role-playing? I thought the reward was your fantasy or something. How would SE reward someone for role-playing? You turn on the RP flag and *bam* reward?

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doesn't square already give real life rewards for people who create in game events (rp or not).

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Originally Posted by Sub-Xero

How you gonna get a reward for role-playing? I thought the reward was your fantasy or something. How would SE reward someone for role-playing? You turn on the RP flag and *bam* reward?

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There are tons of ways. Literally tons.

There is another game I've played, for example, that had GMs go undercover as newbies. If they ran into a player open world RP'ing they would mark it down.

Later on the player would get a message that they had an item waiting for them - It was a special sword, the most powerful sword in the game, better than the highest level dungeon content could give.

Nobody knew who they interacted with to get it, and there were only 3-4 of them on server, but it encouraged open world RP.

There was another game called Asheron's Call where players could write books in character. Collections of short stories, combinations of reagents for the in-game spells (guides were rare in that game initially) and some books were so popular that they started fetching high prices and some players would manually recreate them, by hand, to sell for in-game gold to other players.

Every year Microsoft would reward a player who had written the most popular in-game book.

I'm too old to ever say the game is too easy. I work all day, and want to have fun and relieve some stress when I get home. A super hard or challenging game is not fun for me, and just makes me more stressed. I understand some people want difficulty for some reason, but just sharing my point of view and I can't be the only one that feels this way. :D

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Originally Posted by Nora_of_Mira

the logic being applied here, imo, is that RP, community building, teaching, etc, all deserve material rewards like raiding does. However, I would disagree and say that the rewards for those things listed should be inherent to the the activity whereas raiding should stick to material rewards. Raiders really only care about the material rewards anyway, imo.

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I don't see why they couldn't have rewards for other playstyles though, and along those lines. Example for RP would be cosmetics, which are a big aspect of RP. materials for crafting, FC rewards for community building, etc. plenty of ways to reward activity types while keeping the rewards along those activity lines. Raiders aren't the only ones that like material rewards. I think that its just more central to a raiders behavior...i.e. they need better gear to do harder content.

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Originally Posted by HWalsh

There are tons of ways. Literally tons.

There is another game I've played, for example, that had GMs go undercover as newbies. If they ran into a player open world RP'ing they would mark it down.

Later on the player would get a message that they had an item waiting for them - It was a special sword, the most powerful sword in the game, better than the highest level dungeon content could give.

Nobody knew who they interacted with to get it, and there were only 3-4 of them on server, but it encouraged open world RP.

There was another game called Asheron's Call where players could write books in character. Collections of short stories, combinations of reagents for the in-game spells (guides were rare in that game initially) and some books were so popular that they started fetching high prices and some players would manually recreate them, by hand, to sell for in-game gold to other players.

Every year Microsoft would reward a player who had written the most popular in-game book.

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What game? What game gave someone a weapon better than what end-game centric players could receive? I'd be fine with ERPers, RPers, basket weavers etc getting stuff for being in character, but for it to be better than anything A progression geared person can get is a bit absurd. Maybe they can get glamour others can't get outside of rping etc. But getting something content given for not doing relevant content is crazy.

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Originally Posted by Temjiu

I don't see why they couldn't have rewards for other playstyles though, and along those lines. Example for RP would be cosmetics, which are a big aspect of RP. materials for crafting, FC rewards for community building, etc. plenty of ways to reward activity types while keeping the rewards along those activity lines. Raiders aren't the only ones that like material rewards. I think that its just more central to a raiders behavior...i.e. they need better gear to do harder content.

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in my opinion, and i may be entirely wrong, is once you attach a material reward to something, you will get lines of people doing that content JUST for the reward whether they care about the content or not. I cant imagine that would be good for those communities, especially the RP community. I do understand that other people would like material rewards but Idk how to help there.

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Originally Posted by Nora_of_Mira

in my opinion, and i may be entirely wrong, is once you attach a material reward to something, you will get lines of people doing that content JUST for the reward whether they care about the content or not. I cant imagine that would be good for those communities, especially the RP community. I do understand that other people would like material rewards but Idk how to help there.

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Honestly, I think that is how it works regardless. I wouldn't say I run my dailies because I love them. I run them because it's how I get my tombs, which I need to get the reward I'm seeking. It wouldn't be any different for them. If RP got some neat glamour I wouldn't rp because I love it. I'd do it because I need to unlock the challenge log or whatever is needed to collect the reward.

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Originally Posted by HWalsh

There are tons of ways. Literally tons.

There is another game I've played, for example, that had GMs go undercover as newbies. If they ran into a player open world RP'ing they would mark it down.

Later on the player would get a message that they had an item waiting for them - It was a special sword, the most powerful sword in the game, better than the highest level dungeon content could give.

Nobody knew who they interacted with to get it, and there were only 3-4 of them on server, but it encouraged open world RP.

There was another game called Asheron's Call where players could write books in character. Collections of short stories, combinations of reagents for the in-game spells (guides were rare in that game initially) and some books were so popular that they started fetching high prices and some players would manually recreate them, by hand, to sell for in-game gold to other players.

Every year Microsoft would reward a player who had written the most popular in-game book.

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What game AAA game has every rewarded someone with the best weapon available for a random roleplay? Not only is the very idea completely absurd. It renders Savage utterly meaningless. While roleplaying is a nice activity, it's more than a touch insulting players pushing themselves to play the actual game at its highest level can get a weaker reward than someone who could otherwise use discord or even a forum not unlike this one if they so chose.

As someone who roleplays themselves. The "reward" is writing a story and developing my character. Getting an i475 weapon for doing such in game would feel incredibly arbitrary since I'm technically not even playing the game.

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thats not the same as "harder content", thats just gimping yourself to make the content more challenging.

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This.

Challenging content shouldnt require you to ignore the last x months of character advancement, it should require you to have done it.

For me, this is one of the places 14 falls short. Its character advancement is ONLY through gear, and gear is exceptionally narrow in statting.

This isnt even an min iLvL thing. Some of the people complaining the game is to easy dont even touch EX or Savage. There's already challanging content in the game but people choose not to do it. If youre breezing through EX Savage and Ultimates, then I can see the need to say something. But Breezing through dungeons in max iLVL gear for that dungeon and then saying "This is to simple! Make everything harder!' never made sense to me as a point.

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Originally Posted by HWalsh

Wow.

You're one of those, "Raiding is the ONLY way to play! If you're not raiding then you're doing it wrong! Only raiders should get stuff! Raiding deserves to be the only badge of honor! Get raiding, get parsed, or GTFO plebs!" Types aren't you?

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You seem to be a huge anti-raider type going off of this nonsense right here, if I’m being honest. I do think that raiders who tackle the hardest content in the game should be rewarded with some of the best gear during the respective tier. It makes zero sense for someone who does easy content to be rewarded with BiS.

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Never considered that other player types deserve special things too did you? Rewards for roleplaying. Rewards for community building. Rewards for teaching newbies basic mechanics. How about a reward for maxing out a retainer or maxing out a crafting or gathering job?

Oh wait, you don't want those because, in your mind, raiding IS the end game.

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There is a “reward” for being a mentor—technically, if you do 2,000 Mentor Roulettes, you get a special two-seater mount. Unfortunately, this “reward” attracted players to the Mentor role that have very little interest in helping and tons of interest in the shinies. That said, if I want to help someone, I don’t think I should be rewarded simply for being nice to a new player. That’s called being a decent person, which is reward enough for me.

Rewards for roleplaying? The story you craft when you roleplay should be reward enough. Attaching a reward to this kind of activity seems pointless to me. I enjoy the stories I craft on the occasions I dabble in RP. I don’t need a physical reward tied to it.

Rewards for maxing out a retainer? That’s not even hard to do—you assign them ventures every hour and they eventually hit level cap. The “reward” you get from that is that they can go out and get you either mob drops (battle retainers) or DoL items (gathering retainers), saving you time of gathering the items yourself.

Rewards for maxing out a crafter/gatherer? Each expansion they come out with special Blessed tools for crafters and gatherers that level-capped DoHs/DoLs can use provided they meet the achievement requirements for them: which usually involve crafting one of every item (crafters) or gathering of one of every item (gatherers). The tools are glowy and shiny, and they have stats on them. There’s also the added caveat of crafting the latest crafted gear, raid food, and potions; and earning money off of that. That seems to be reward enough for people who do max-level crafting/gathering. Myself? I’m fairly content to be self-sufficient in making my own gear/food/pots, being able to meld my own gear, and being able to repair everything on the fly.

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Originally Posted by HWalsh

Wow.

You're one of those, "Raiding is the ONLY way to play! If you're not raiding then you're doing it wrong! Only raiders should get stuff! Raiding deserves to be the only badge of honor! Get raiding, get parsed, or GTFO plebs!" Types aren't you?

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No, I'm one of those people who doesn't believe it's justifiable or even reasonable to skip a large portion of endgame content and then complain that there is none, or to avoid the hardest content in the game and then claim it's "too easy." Big difference. Of course, you probably knew that, and are probably trolling.

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Originally Posted by HWalsh

Never considered that other player types deserve special things too did you? Rewards for roleplaying. Rewards for community building. Rewards for teaching newbies basic mechanics. How about a reward for maxing out a retainer or maxing out a crafting or gathering job?

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Those rewards all exist. Roleplayers can get rewards for dressing up under particular themes each week, community building is its own reward, as is teaching newbies (which I've done on several occasions, I don't need a special shiny for it), and, to boot, there are rewards for doing things as a mentor, including titles, glamour, and even a special mount. There are plenty of rewards for maxing out a retainer (typically in the form of gil and rare items), as well as for maxing out crafting and gathering classes (of which, your trolling might have conveniently failed to notice I've maxed out ALL of).

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Originally Posted by HWalsh

Oh wait, you don't want those because, in your mind, raiding IS the end game.

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Go troll elsewhere.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

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Thanks for adding that in. You also bring up some good points that I didn't think to mention.

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Originally Posted by SerLuke

So I’m curious here, I’ve seen a lot of people say the game is over all too easy and want more challenging content, my question is, how many of you are actually using the min ilvl setting with pre mades for more challenging runs?

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Tried a few dungeons once but apart from everything taking longer there was no big difference in terms of difficulty.
Sure mechanics hit a little harder but nothing that would make it problematic as a healer.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

You seem to be a huge anti-raider type going off of this nonsense right here, if I’m being honest. I do think that raiders who tackle the hardest content in the game should be rewarded with some of the best gear during the respective tier. It makes zero sense for someone who does easy content to be rewarded with BiS.

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It's not just about rewards but also about tuning.

Giving out gear higher gear in raids allows the DEVs to tune later bosses to said gear and make them harder than they are if the raid would drop no gear at all, giving the elite sth to gnaw on.
Time and catchup mechanics eventually compensate for that so lesser skilled folks get to see the content too.

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Originally Posted by Nora_of_Mira

all content outside Ultimate and current Savage is relatively easy, which is what, 95% of the content. So they're not technically wrong but I have to assume they don't do the challenging content.

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Content is easy, it's the people that make it hard.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

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You're right, I was painting with a bit of a broad stroke on this (specifically referring to a particular thread that keeps popping up on the first page in this forum), and I am by no means saying the current system is anywhere near perfect.

Currently there are a few places where a skill gap could be filled in with more middle-difficulties of content, and I think that'd be interesting to see.

Current scale, ascending in difficulty:

• Lv50/60/70 Dungeons (and lv80 dungeons when Expert eventually evolves)
• "Expert" Dungeons
• Leveling Dungeons
• Alliance Raids (other than CT, which doesn't even belong on the scale)
• "Hard" Trials / Normal Raids
• EX Trials
• Savage
• Ultimate

Up to about EX trials, I think the skill build is pretty well designed and flowing. There is a jump between EX Trials and Savage raids, however, and I'd be all for a difficulty level between the two. In terms of difficulty, I would view EX trials as about on par with 'normal' raids in WoW, and Savage as about on par with late-heroic/early-mythic in WoW...and I'd be all for a 'heroic' equivalent difficulty between for players who want more of a challenge than EX but aren't yet ready for savage. This could also fit well into gearing (for example, the 'heroic' equivalent Eden could drop 460 gear, whereas savage currently drops 470).

(I can't speak as to the jump, if any, from Savage to Ultimate, as I have not yet gotten there [but I will, eventually].)

That said, even this idea does have a problem, though. From my experience in WoW, 'normal' raids became mandatory when progging heroic, because the gear upgrades were still worthwhile, and heroic was still mandatory while progging mythic, for the same reason. (Actually, it was even worse still, with Mythic+ dungeons also being mandatory for some mythic raid prog groups [like the one I left when I quit WoW {again} back in December].) Of course, I believe we have some great people behind the development of this game, and they could probably figure something out.

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Originally Posted by galbsadi

....

Current scale, ascending in difficulty:

• Lv50/60/70 Dungeons (and lv80 dungeons when Expert eventually evolves)
• "Expert" Dungeons
• Leveling Dungeons
• Alliance Raids (other than CT, which doesn't even belong on the scale)
• "Hard" Trials / Normal Raids
• EX Trials
• Savage
• Ultimate

.....

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I think this is a bit skewed though. Consider the list you made - Most of it is older content and with that comes stipulations. Game design evolving being one of them. How certain fights were tuned between then and now is not the same. It is also iLVL is a big part of that consideration. If you go into, lets say, Shinryu EX with 440 iLvL synced, youre gonna get synced to the max iLvL nad that fight is gonna be substantially easier compared to TitaniaEX. Even now, Titania EX is 'easier' compared to when people first started doing it due to iLvL and Eden/'Fanta' gear.

This means the scaling jump you are referring between regular stuff and EX may not be an issue of things jumping up but rather the fact that youre comparing old to new content.

From my perspective, TitaniaEX (King EX cause Titania is to hard to type cause Im lazy...) is an appropriate Jump in difficulty from the End Game Dungeons of Twinning, Amarot and that Research Place. And King EX to Savage is another appropriate jump in difficulty. The jumps between End game to EX to Savage is probably a bit bigger than from lvl 71 dungeons to Mt. Gulg, but it's appropriate as the gear level difference also increases more substantially. I mean you go from 418 to 430 at lvl 80 almost immediately, and can grind to 440 in a day Before even setting foot into King or Inno.

I think people put EX and Savage on a pedastel. Part of that is SEs fault. The curve may not be as smooth because they dont introduce certain mechanics in dungeons (like death walls or petrify markers, etc). But it's not as bad as people think. Its all learnable and not as complicated, especially at the beginning of the tier.

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Originally Posted by galbsadi

You're right, I was painting with a bit of a broad stroke on this (specifically referring to a particular thread that keeps popping up on the first page in this forum), and I am by no means saying the current system is anywhere near perfect.

Currently there are a few places where a skill gap could be filled in with more middle-difficulties of content, and I think that'd be interesting to see.

Current scale, ascending in difficulty:

• Lv50/60/70 Dungeons (and lv80 dungeons when Expert eventually evolves)
• "Expert" Dungeons
• Leveling Dungeons
• Alliance Raids (other than CT, which doesn't even belong on the scale)
• "Hard" Trials / Normal Raids
• EX Trials
• Savage
• Ultimate

Up to about EX trials, I think the skill build is pretty well designed and flowing. There is a jump between EX Trials and Savage raids, however, and I'd be all for a difficulty level between the two. In terms of difficulty, I would view EX trials as about on par with 'normal' raids in WoW, and Savage as about on par with late-heroic/early-mythic in WoW...and I'd be all for a 'heroic' equivalent difficulty between for players who want more of a challenge than EX but aren't yet ready for savage. This could also fit well into gearing (for example, the 'heroic' equivalent Eden could drop 460 gear, whereas savage currently drops 470).

(I can't speak as to the jump, if any, from Savage to Ultimate, as I have not yet gotten there [but I will, eventually].)

That said, even this idea does have a problem, though. From my experience in WoW, 'normal' raids became mandatory when progging heroic, because the gear upgrades were still worthwhile, and heroic was still mandatory while progging mythic, for the same reason. (Actually, it was even worse still, with Mythic+ dungeons also being mandatory for some mythic raid prog groups [like the one I left when I quit WoW {again} back in December].) Of course, I believe we have some great people behind the development of this game, and they could probably figure something out.

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I appreciate the thought out response, thank you :). I can understand frustration to the audience that's begging for everything to be suffering but actually does none of the content they're making "better" to them, and worse for everyone else lol. "Of course you want it harder, you don't even do it!" /rage.

However since the thread, I saw, as a response to another thread that wasn't asking for hardcore content just "more how like it was" because they felt it became too easy and wasn't as fun anymore- I therefore felt the broad stroke wasn't very fair as it didn't really paint the audience this response thread born from in the proper light. That the audience this thread was born from wasn't the audience you were talking about, at least entirely. I'm sure there was a strong middle Venn diagram relationship somewhere in there. Just that I felt like people were getting lumped together like we see in politics and stuff lol, you know that stuff where Jane is like: "I want x" and so Karen goes "unbelievable they want X Y Z upside down on the moon with a gold jump jet" and Jane is just left whip lashed by how far their desire was forcibly morphed away on them.

At least I see it that way since the same suggestion to solution of the other thread and person were all tied together in a short time frame with another fairly related thread. It's fair to say you didn't feel or see that, but then I guess we're talking and not screaming so that's fine.

Definitely if you're doing current content I agree there is good spread of challenge options. Mostly what I'm reading from people (from the thread that I strongly feel made this thread, you may be getting vibes of another- perhaps the Otter King had a multi-thread addressing desire, who knows) is that people are doing the roulette for the roulette rewards and they remember this content being fun and thoughtful but as the ilvl increases and such now it's all brain dead simple (not true for everyone, obviously). Not that they're going "punish, salt in the wounds, death, savage CT or riot" they just want CT to feel like CT again lol. Of course OP said "why not ilvl sync?" but that's why I was trying to say people want the reward of the content and if it's harder maybe a bigger one (because even if we like to act better most of us definitely want the carrot on that stick lol). That was at least what I was trying to get at with the whole cheese mechanics vs normal challenging play, people will do the cheese-er one even if it might take away some of their enjoyment because the carrot and speed to get that carrot are really important even if a bit silly ("I love doing this content" "why don't you do it, like ever?" "because it doesn't give me the good gear. . . ;(").

And of course as said in the post you quoted I don't think we should change that specific roulette's challenge because it serves other purposes (like quick progress for people trying to catch up, less annoying reruns like when you beat a game you might mod it for QoL and some ease, those who just enjoy adventure mode difficulty content and there is nothing wrong with that, and more of course).

To all that I felt it might be fun, for most everyone then, if we perhaps we had a new roulette or more (I was thinking 2-3) that each week made a nice reward bonus (one time clear) and boosted some of the base bonuses (like exp, maybe items and low / mid tier tomes), revitalizing that specific content to be hard like before and perhaps even slightly harder than before. Since most of us all know the mechanics, it's hard to recreate that first few weeks of play otherwise. I thought three might be fun because you'd get two content pieces that were old revitalized with a tighter sync and maybe a mutation or two (and never rolls ex/savage content, this is for people who want to remember old content as being hard-ish but not looking for savage / ex content), and then the third one just being "kill all the PUGs, troll the streamers, death comes for you" (ex/savage and dungeons with a laundry list of mutations only).

In order for content to be challenging, it needs to be at a level where some people are unable to do it.

But then, the people who can do it, say it’s too easy, while those who cant, request a version at a lower difficulty level. The loop never ends and no amount of difficulty level helps because there is always someone saying too easy and others saying too difficult for any level of content.

At the end of the day, the developer has to decide how many people they want clearing each piece of content cause there will always be upset players.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

What game AAA game has every rewarded someone with the best weapon available for a random roleplay? Not only is the very idea completely absurd. It renders Savage utterly meaningless. While roleplaying is a nice activity, it's more than a touch insulting players pushing themselves to play the actual game at its highest level can get a weaker reward than someone who could otherwise use discord or even a forum not unlike this one if they so chose.

As someone who roleplays themselves. The "reward" is writing a story and developing my character. Getting an i475 weapon for doing such in game would feel incredibly arbitrary since I'm technically not even playing the game.

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Pretty sure it was Ultima Online actually.

Lord British was pretty awesome back in the day to reward RPing. I'm pretty sure something similar happens in Shroud of the Avatar.

That game where the creator, Lord British himself, tweets a congratulations personally to a player who finished the main quest line.

You used the term AAA and you need to remember back in the wild west of MMOs there were games like UO, AC, EQ, and even before that were games like LOFP which had life GMs running events. Not everything was about raiding - Heck, a lot of early games didn't even HAVE raiding.

TRO (which is still running) also did events like I mentioned.

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There was one incident that I heard of in UO where a "player" was calling for help while fighting a monster. While many players passed him by (one even watched him be killed) this was repeated numerous times.

Finally someone stepped in to defend him - The "player" revealed himself to be a God and gave the hero a unique weapon. A sword I believe. If the story holds true (and since UO was known for crazy stuff like this) it was said to be a sword only a "true" hero could use. It couldn't be looted off of the bear's corpse.

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Originally Posted by HWalsh

Not everything was about raiding - Heck, a lot of early games didn't even HAVE raiding.

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Except, this game has raiding. You cannot start awarding BiS-tier gear to anyone outside of Savage-tier content because then it renders the harder content irrelevant. You have to balance around that because this game HAS raiding. It doesn’t matter what past games that didn’t have raiding did: they clearly didn’t have to worry about balancing gear if there was no such thing as Savage to award BiS-tier items. You can’t apply what they did to this game and expect it to work.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Except, this game has raiding. You cannot start awarding BiS-tier gear to anyone outside of Savage-tier content because then it renders the harder content irrelevant. You have to balance around that because this game HAS raiding. It doesn’t matter what past games that didn’t have raiding did: they clearly didn’t have to worry about balancing gear if there was no such thing as Savage to award BiS-tier items. You can’t apply what they did to this game and expect it to work.

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I didn't say they had to do that here, it was an example of what I saw in another game to reward RP. For FF XIV I could see awarding a rare BiS item with a unique skin once in a while. So long as it is rare then no raider will be butt hurt that some filthy RPer got an item they didn't "earn" they "earned it" in a different way.

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Originally Posted by HWalsh

I didn't say they had to do that here, it was an example of what I saw in another game to reward RP. For FF XIV I could see awarding a rare BiS item with a unique skin once in a while. So long as it is rare then no raider will be butt hurt that some filthy RPer got an item they didn't "earn" they "earned it" in a different way.

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You fail to realize that a lot of RPers have very little need or desire for BIS, as a lot of them don’t participate in content and prefer to spend a lot of their time roleplaying instead. And there’s nothing wrong with that. The items would be more or less wasted on them. So I don’t think your suggested items have any place in this game, and I would be saying this to you regardless of being a raider or not.

You’re also still suggesting a BIS item to drop outside of harder-tier content, which, I direct you again to what I said about balancing gear drops. Didn’t WoW start offering BiS-tier gear in lower-end content? And isn’t that a factor contributing to its current crisis/decline?


I disagree with your notions that activities people enjoy (i.e., RPing) deserve super special rewards. Participating in said activity is usually more than enough for players that actively enjoy them. As for your other examples you provided (helping newbies, community building, crafting/gathering), I already explained to you that those had rewards existing in-game.

—Helping newbies: Mentor Roulette offers titles, glamour items, and a two-seater mount for participating.
—Community-building: this one I didn’t touch too much on (another poster did), but I think it’s self-rewarding. You build a community, perhaps a small FC, and you make a bunch of friends and spend time together doing things you enjoy. I think that’s more than enough reward.
—Crafting/gathering: money, self-sufficiency, and there are special Blessed tools released every expansion that have endgame-tier stats, are shiny, and tend to sparkle to reflect how super awesome they are.


EDIT because posting limits:

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Originally Posted by HWalsh

So, it's okay for RPers to get nothing because they enjoy RPing... But raiders... Who enjoy raiding... They should get special rewards.

Doesn't that seem... How do I put it...

Ya know, reading it, I'm sure you'll see what it looks like...

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I think it looks like you trying to twist words to fit a rhetoric.


Raiding is (relatively) difficult content that rewards its players with better gear to challenge the later floors with. It takes a certain amount of skill to clear these raids Week 1 with mostly crafted gear (which is essentially minimum item level for the content). The gear rewards from it (as well as Tomestone gear purchases) are to improve performance to make clearing easier for those who may actually need or those who want the comfiness of higher item level gear (no, this isn’t meant to be a jab at them—clearing Week 1 is extremely tight even for skilled players, and some raiders would rather be more casual about it and clear with comfiness as opposed to minimum item level stress for the higher floors).

That said, our gear is obsolete every other patch anyways. They last only so long as they’re needed for the Ultimates at that point.


Roleplaying is a leisurely activity that doesn’t need super special awesome rare BiS weapon rewards tied to it, which are all your suggestions are for it. At most, glamour can be a reward for it...and glamour options are added to this game each patch (see: the Indigo set, the new set that is made with mats from the new map dungeon, which seems to have 2 versions). Why should RPers get BiS weapons as rewards? It’s simply not needed because most don’t participate in content that would even call for it.

I wouldn’t say they get nothing—there’s plenty of glamour and housing items that they get and can use to further their RP experience, and these items are probably more valued by them compared to BiS weapons or gear. Have you ever been to Balmung or Mateus to see some of the RP cafes or the like that players design out of their houses? All that said, I still don’t think many, if any, of them would demand any sort of in-game rewards for participating in the content they enjoy like the examples you have given (e.g., BiS-tier rare weapons).


However, I still stand by what I said when I said I don’t think every thing in this game needs rewards attached to it. When I RP, I’m more than happy to just craft a story with friends. I don’t need super awesome weapons or BIS gear to go along with it. When I raid, my gear drops are more a means to an end: I like to chase leaderboards and I also like to tackle Ultimate—which, you need gear better than the crafted gear for. I still think that demanding rewards for every thing makes one come off as superficial and caring only about the shinies, not the activity they’re participating in.

As a side note: I love how you seem to think I look down on RPers by snidely referring to them as “filthy RPers”. I don’t look down on anyone, especially those who like to roleplay. You know, being that I indulge in RP myself from time to time, that would be fairly hypocritical to think of roleplayers as “filthy RPers”.

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Originally Posted by galbsadi

Such is the plague of people in literally every MMO I've seen (even WoW, the so-called 'king' of endgame content).

99 times out of 100, these people have also not cleared the current endgame.

Here the complaint goes "I don't have no mounts b/c I don't like no mounts and I can't get no savage because I don't ever work a schedule and PF sux but I easy-clear all the things and never get loot and also have no parses proving that I've done anything ever because I'm the ultimate anomaly in the universe!"

On WoW it goes "Endgame sux b/c it's all about raids and the raidz are all ezpz even though I've never cleared anything above LFR it must be an anomaly on my profile or I'm really on an alt so don't judge what my profile says and I iz hardcorez uberMythicz raiders when you must be a baddie b/c you've only cleared 4/8 by the end of week 3 and this is all because I'm the ultimate anomaly in the universe!"

In SWTOR it goes "All the operations are way too ezpz even though I've cleared none of them b/c they're too ezpz and I'm the ultimate anomaly in the universe!"

TL;DR - People who do this can be defined with a simple, five-letter word: troll

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The OP didn't mention endgame content so you must be one of the 99 out of 100 people in MMO forums that only read the subject of a thread before posting? Joking aside, I haven't done end game content and probably never will and I find all the content I do - quests, FATEs, leves, and light-party instances - far too easy. Dungeons are just tanks gathering as many mobs as possible while DPS just does AoE; quests never take any thought and never present a danger of dying; the only time I feel threatened in a zone is when on a low-level character and I don't notice a level 50 hostile hunt mob (everyone's done that right? please say I'm not the only one...)

TLDR: there is far more content then raiding and it is very very easy.

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I disagree with your notions that activities people enjoy (i.e., RPing) deserve super special rewards. Participating in said activity is usually more than enough for players that actively enjoy them.

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So, it's okay for RPers to get nothing because they enjoy RPing... But raiders... Who enjoy raiding... They should get special rewards.

Doesn't that seem... How do I put it...

Ya know, reading it, I'm sure you'll see what it looks like...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HWalsh

So, it's okay for RPers to get nothing because they enjoy RPing... But raiders... Who enjoy raiding... They should get special rewards.

Doesn't that seem... How do I put it...

Ya know, reading it, I'm sure you'll see what it looks like...

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Please, don't play the victim card.

Plus you know very well that if you're not running the content, you don't need the ilvl. Raiders do.