The Difficulty Schism (And Why The Real Enemy is Scaling & Max iL Sync)

Hello!

I’m not a forum poster, but this seems to be where the discussion is unfolding regarding the difficulty of Duty Finder content in Dawntrail.

While I agree with the sentiment that I vastly prefer DT’s encounter design over ShB and EW, I’ve noticed a fundamental miscommunication happening between players who started in ARR-SB and players who started in ShB-EW.

People have been asking a fair question:

How did these players get to this point, hundreds of hours into this game, not knowing how to watch for arena & boss queues for mechanics? The game has always featured mechanics like this, how did they get this far without learning anything?

After discussing with several friends and taking notes during my own roulettes, I'm reaching the conclusion that players who began playing in ShB-EW didn’t actually have to learn any mechanics in order to clear more demanding ARR-SB content.

This isn't to say new players are inherently bad! I am friends with several who are better than me! But those players chose to learn, because the game never convincingly forced them to learn when scaling adjustments and maximum iL sync completely undid 99% of encounter design. It’s only getting wonkier as expanding Healer & Tank cooldowns can cover even more severe mistakes.

This is observable in real time as EW content melts, especially the alliance raids.

So I understand why players complaining about the difficulty of Dawntrail are getting heat. As someone who was healing A1N-A4N on the hot mess of launch AST, I cannot conceive of the Arcadion as difficult at all. I have 100% been engaging in some "get off my lawn" behavior this week.

But when I got A4N in a roulette yesterday, having forgotten every single mechanic? I didn't need to do a single one. A few panic Helios casts were enough to fix any mistake.

As I queue for ARR, HW, and SB content with this in mind, and it's becoming obvious what the problem is. The new content isn't becoming too hard! It's old becoming unrecognizably easy due to iL sync and other scaling changes.

Blaming newer players frustrated with DT fights just isn't being honest about the fact the game they played is completely different from the one we played when older content launched. If you're incredulous at newer players not being able to handle DT's difficulty, I recommend you queue up for some Duty Finder content that you found memorably challenging on release. How does it feel now? That feeling is all someone who began playing in 2021 knows.

tl;dr I think Dawntrail is so much fun! I hope they keep making fights more meaningfully challenging. But I hope we can also start asking the development team to reconsider the pacing & scaling of older content. In it's current state, it feels like we've been denying new players the engaging experience the old players won't shut up about.

Honestly get rid of gear progression at this point. Solves a lot of problems and future proofing.

I think it's safe to say, that things are more stressful than they were prior, even when we remove the discussion around ilvl sync and old-content becoming trivialized. The movement requirements and the speed of which mechanics are executed is a bit more demanding than say, P1 Normal, P2 Normal from Endwalker. The most you had to do there was a left-to right movement at a relatively brisk pace.

Now? Its a lot more frantic - stressful - you need to find your safe spots a bit faster. It's more demanding of the player - Playing the new fights on a hard caster, like Blackmage, will really show that to you.

Is it difficult content really? Not for a seasoned Raider - but the Extreme Trials were a bit much for most Extreme Trial Enjoyers - and now the Normal Raids Also.

But this isn't to say it's too hard. Your character became a higher level, the content became more demanding. This is a good thing - atleast you aren't bored, you're just... kind of faced with your own inadequacy .

Which we all were. We all have been there in this game at one time or another. The reason why people are saying these players need to get over it is because we all had to get over that same thing. I don't really care that the old content is trivialized - the current content was not trivial back when we veterans learned the same lessons and the current content now is not trivial when these newer players are attempting to clear.

Too Hard? Hardly. Why? Because Victory will be met. It may take 4-5 wipes. But this is no different than when Stormblood was new and normal raids were wiping parties UP UNTIL LOCK OUT EXPIRATION. Mentor Roulette back then was wild - Imagine timing out on a normal Raid! But it was a frequent-enough occurance.

And yet, I look back favorably on those times - many do. We may have to endure some hard learning for a time, but this will be some of the most fun we've had in casual content in quite some time. A lot of people complaining are going to be pleasantly surprised at their journey and how much they've grown if they stick with it. They'll remember DawnTrail Favorably for it.

iLV is only a small part of the problem. Heard people say that even doing minimum item level Cyrcus Tower, you still skip the super attack of boss 1 and 2.

The biggest issue are new jobs getting much more potent abilities at lower levels. Back in 2.x, DRG's Full Thrust was high damage at around 300 potency, SMN's Fester was one of the strongest abilities at around 450 potency I think.

Looking at new jobs, PCT got 3 hammers a minute for 560 direct crit, SAM has a 700 crit every 8th GCD or so.

The item level part is mostly an issue that will show itself in the patch series (Like Endsinger) due to no iLV sync on the content.

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Originally Posted by Kisshu

iLV is only a small part of the problem. Heard people say that even doing minimum item level Cyrcus Tower, you still skip the super attack of boss 1 and 2.

The biggest issue are new jobs getting much more potent abilities at lower levels. Back in 2.x, DRG's Full Thrust was high damage at around 300 potency, SMN's Fester was one of the strongest abilities at around 450 potency I think.

Looking at new jobs, PCT got 3 hammers a minute for 560 direct crit, SAM has a 700 crit every 8th GCD or so.

The item level part is mostly an issue that will show itself in the patch series (Like Endsinger) due to no iLV sync on the content.

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Oh, totally true! I was mentally considering this as part of "scaling" but probably could've afforded to be more specific about it. I know friends who do Ultimates are always discussing this element but I didn't even think to look into how it was affecting normal Duty Finder content...

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Originally Posted by Kisshu

iLV is only a small part of the problem. Heard people say that even doing minimum item level Cyrcus Tower, you still skip the super attack of boss 1 and 2.

The biggest issue are new jobs getting much more potent abilities at lower levels. Back in 2.x, DRG's Full Thrust was high damage at around 300 potency, SMN's Fester was one of the strongest abilities at around 450 potency I think.

Looking at new jobs, PCT got 3 hammers a minute for 560 direct crit, SAM has a 700 crit every 8th GCD or so.

The item level part is mostly an issue that will show itself in the patch series (Like Endsinger) due to no iLV sync on the content.

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Correct in that in Fester was based on how many dots were on the boss at 3 dots being 300 pot. Currently, it sits at 340. However, it's just one example. Take WAR fell cleave in endwalker, its starting potency was 460, over the course of the expac, it changed to 470 to 490 to 520.

MCH was the big one. Drill, Air Anchor and Chainsaw did 550, wildfire 150 per hit, heat blast 180, etc etc. Then by 6.3 the three moves did 600, wildfire 240 per hit, and heat blast 200.

It's the powercreep on all the gcds and ogcds that happens that helps in this gradual decay.

The more challenging normal content, especially in expert dungeons, has made me a more sympathetic player than the past hundreds of hours of braindead content. And when I think back, I've never been shitty to a new tank accidentally pulling everything in Aurum Vale either, because I was there once, man. But am I annoyed when a tank can't handle the most basic of the basics, like doing double-pulls after HW, though? Absolutely.

This attitude of "demand less than the bare minimum" breeds so much more the SE's dreaded "player friction" than it does challenging them a little, which becomes a shared experience.

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Originally Posted by Kisshu

iLV is only a small part of the problem. Heard people say that even doing minimum item level Cyrcus Tower, you still skip the super attack of boss 1 and 2.

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You could do that shortly after it was added. At least for the second boss, the phase where you jump around the outside of the arena has almost always been skippable.

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Originally Posted by koko-on-da-forumz

Honestly get rid of gear progression at this point. Solves a lot of problems and future proofing.

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They need to flatline end-game gear progression, not gear progression entirely. The point of gear and character level is to abstract out the gains from training in a way that isn't impacted by the true skill of the player, either because the level skill needed to play the game is rather low, or the game is not capable of enabling a growth in skill in some other way.

In FFXIV the representation of growth is split into the players class / job level and the gear they have equipped. Normally, the idea is that the gear improves or gets better as someone continues their journey, but in the case of FFXIV that only applies up to level 50. After that point it isn't possible to judge what the gears true strength would be since it just became a tool to show another aspect of character advancement. They basically needed a way to reward player effort if they went the extra mile to grab a full set of gear or went through some heavier trial. However, all the extremes and savage became non-canon so it never made sense that they rewarded better or more powerful gear.

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Originally Posted by Colt47

They need to flatline end-game gear progression, not gear progression entirely. The point of gear and character level is to abstract out the gains from training in a way that isn't impacted by the true skill of the player, either because the level skill needed to play the game is rather low, or the game is not capable of enabling a growth in skill in some other way.

In FFXIV the representation of growth is split into the players class / job level and the gear they have equipped. Normally, the idea is that the gear improves or gets better as someone continues their journey, but in the case of FFXIV that only applies up to level 50. After that point it isn't possible to judge what the gears true strength would be since it just became a tool to show another aspect of character advancement. They basically needed a way to reward player effort if they went the extra mile to grab a full set of gear or went through some heavier trial. However, all the extremes and savage became non-canon so it never made sense that they rewarded better or more powerful gear.

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This sounds interesting so I am trying to understand what it is you are trying to say, and what point you are trying to make with it, but could you make it a little less abstract? I have a feeling that this has a lot of context in your mind that you didn't include in your post and that is making it hard to interpret.

I'd still just like to see minimum item level runs added to the Duty Finder directly (e.g., a second checkmark one can fill, to queue for simultaneously with a regular version if they so wish) and give proportionately higher rewards. Normalize options for more significant challenge without necessarily taking away the ability to leave content a breeze for those who don't want it.

That said, ability acquisition and the appearance of mechanics really should be hastened (e.g., a full rotational kit [50 to 56-esque] by level 30 and a decently fleshed out kit [70-esque] by 50), and content nerfs reverted in favor instead of simply checkpoints before bosses in dungeons and at the half-way points of final-boss-in-tier raids.

Honestly a lot of the problems that plague early-game, inc., expansion up to Stormblood is potency changes, but also changes in stats, e.g., Accuracy and Parry were both replaced by Direct Hit and Tenacity, respectively. These are massive damage gains considering accuracy was only relevant to a point, and parry was, well parry probability.

Scaling and max iLv sync is only a small part of the problem, really. But it is a contributor.

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Originally Posted by Eyrilona

This sounds interesting so I am trying to understand what it is you are trying to say, and what point you are trying to make with it, but could you make it a little less abstract? I have a feeling that this has a lot of context in your mind that you didn't include in your post and that is making it hard to interpret.

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Well, lets say that at level 50 the best armor someone can wear is a full suit of high tech armor built out of state of the art composite alloys, and then right at 51 the first armor someone can wear is a cloth tabard and chainmail. Since its a new expansion the cloth tabard and chainmail has higher stats than the high tech suit of armor built out of state of the art composite, even though the former should actually be the better armor. And earlier on in the game the character progressed from starting armor that was literally a cloth tabard and chainmail, that ultimately ended in this high tech armor. It just doesn't make any logical sense that the level 51 armor is actually superior to the level 50 armor.

Flash forward to end game progression and we have non-canon super hard fights that supposedly somehow give us shinier armor that is superior to the armor we get from just doing the canon fight. So there is no grounded reality to the armor being better at all at our current level. They even break this further when we literally jump into the past when aether is much denser, and somehow gear that is composed of insanely dense aether is inferior to gear literally made out of emotional fluffiness and/or angst at the end of the universe or armor made of much less dense aether that comes afterwards.

What the armor is actually acting as is sort of a merit increase from ownership that represents extra effort put in by the player to advance their own character. I sort of feel that they don't give casual players enough merit and completely block them from achieving the same things that people who engage in the more time intensive content get. Even if savage or extreme is the faster way to get to the end of the road, there shouldn't be a situation where the casual player can't get optimal stats on their gear (and honestly, given the game abstracts away the benefits outside of some blurb of text there isn't much point to having choice on stats). Doing savage should be because someone likes the extra challenge, not because they want to get merits. The latter is the reason why things turn toxic because then the goal is to be optimal and collect as fast as possible.

They really should try to do something about both; the speed at which you gain new skills and the scaling of older content.

As it is, you spend SO much time having very few button that have absurd potencies during leveling that you learn practically nothing. You can straight up ignore most mechanics and win by pressing 2 buttons way too far into the game.

I don't think the difficulty should be upped to the level of regular raiding, but at the very least it should try to emulate what it was during the time the content came out. I enjoyed leveling my Jobs during Stormblood so much more than I have done since then.

I'd say most of it is the ilvl sync.

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Originally Posted by koko-on-da-forumz

Honestly get rid of gear progression at this point. Solves a lot of problems and future proofing.

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May solve a few problems but it creates one much bigger problem - it would also remove the incentive most players have for playing. Gear progression is a staple of MMORPGs. The unending journey to gain more power is a major attraction for most.

What's needed is for some genius person to come up with a side progression system that players would enjoy engaging with so power creep can be tuned down considerably. I can remember some that were being used in the early days of WoW that lost favor with players but I wonder if they could be revived now that glamour has become such a huge thing with players.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

May solve a few problems but it creates one much bigger problem - it would also remove the incentive most players have for playing. Gear progression is a staple of MMORPGs. The unending journey to gain more power is a major attraction for most.

What's needed is for some genius person to come up with a side progression system that players would enjoy engaging with so power creep can be tuned down considerably. I can remember some that were being used in the early days of WoW that lost favor with players but I wonder if they could be revived now that glamour has become such a huge thing with players.

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The problem with "side progression" systems is that they're ultimately vertical progression systems per content type but additionally push players to pick what kinds of content they'd like to progress in on a gear basis... at cost to others. They're essentially just ways of silo-ing off progression or forcing bundling therein, not expanding it.

I.e., do you want the best gear for doing Raids, Exploratory Missions, Alliance Raids, Savage Dungeons, Dark FATEs, Aeroterraglacipolis? Okay, now if that best gear for content type X each comes from content type X, then you're now investing towards content type X at cost to all else. And if it doesn't, you're now stuck dabbling in something you might not want to do at all for BiS for the content type you actually want to do.

Or, if it instead alters gameplay/rotation/playflow, then you're stuck playing your job in style A for content your favorite content type (A) regardless of whether that playstyle feels clunky to you.

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Originally Posted by Dhregin

1)... Blackmage, will really show that to you.

2) but the Extreme Trials were a bit much for most Extreme Trial Enjoyers

3) kind of faced with your own inadequacy .

4)- the current content was not trivial back when we veterans learned the same lessons and the current content now is not trivial when these newer players are attempting to clear.

5) Mentor Roulette back then was wild - Imagine timing out on a normal Raid! But it was a frequent-enough occurance.

6) A lot of people complaining are going to be pleasantly surprised at their journey and how much they've grown if they stick with it. They'll remember DawnTrail Favorably for it.

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Everything at #3 and down I 100% agree with you and is wonderfully written. Great job. 1 and 2 however.

1) This is a problem more so due to blms current damage output. Blm always required you to learn how to balance movement with damage, and are routinely forced to learn the mechs heavily in order to execute. Which is why blm has always been the hardest job to optimize well, and had the top or near top damage output in the past. BLM still has enough instacast to get through all of boss 2's high movement phases without loosing a cast. There are blms, that are already doing it. I'm a rdm main and can get through without loosing a cast. You even have enough time to get a hard cast off if u time it right. Similar things were said about p7n and blm. Because blm's current damage output is low, people feel more pressured to be able to maintain and not drop that uptime. To add to that I was able to have runs of 97 and 99 dungeon on blm with 0 cast lost while lvling it.

2) these extreme trails are not harder than old ones. Many of our FC members didn't touch last expac's EX's and are currently farming the heck out of these for those wings. They had never touched hard content b4. None of them are complaining outside of normal pf woes. The movement requirement for ex one, is very low once you know the fight. You just have to know where to stand, which is every ex. Majority of the mechanics actually give a very long time to move. In ShB Hades on content was harder/faster/higher movement than EX is currently. Zeromos had some required faster movement than EX1 does currently, with 1 mech in phase 1, and all of the final phase. beak with fire gives close to the same speed, but you also have plenty of time to preposition on the correct side, giving plenty of time. Just like every ex. Golbez also had faster required movement for dodge the fire circle thingies. These are not any faster, or harder, even for the unseasoned. More people in party finder are able to solve the puzzle in EX2 than they could solve Zodiark and u can also danger dorrito 90% of ex 2 if needed. Where as in zodiark I was required to be the DD 80% of the time. Almost every zodiark party finder was, "yes we have Danger dorrito, or, please we need a danger dorrito still." We don't have that in these ex's

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Originally Posted by Colt47

What the armor is actually acting as is sort of a merit increase from ownership that represents extra effort put in by the player to advance their own character. I sort of feel that they don't give casual players enough merit and completely block them from achieving the same things that people who engage in the more time intensive content get. Even if savage or extreme is the faster way to get to the end of the road, there shouldn't be a situation where the casual player can't get optimal stats on their gear (and honestly, given the game abstracts away the benefits outside of some blurb of text there isn't much point to having choice on stats). Doing savage should be because someone likes the extra challenge, not because they want to get merits. The latter is the reason why things turn toxic because then the goal is to be optimal and collect as fast as possible.

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I believe that at the root of your complaint is that you have a selective perception of what the goal of the game is. It is not meant to be to get all the all-round BiS optimal stats on your character as fast as possible. The goal, is to have fun. It is that you are able to clear and enjoy the content you care about playing. For some people, that even means giving themselves a handicap for the sake of challenging themselves, e.g. people who go into duties with the min-ilvl option on. This is not a pure stat block chasing game where the sum of your stats is your ranking or something. The game is designed in such a way that the difficulty level you consider your personal endgame will always be very doable with gear acquired from content a little easier than itself, so there should never be a step that is out of your reach for gearing reasons alone.

You called Savage and Extreme as the fastest way to the end of the road, but you only see them as that because you have defined 'End of the road' to mean getting highest stats, when really, the only thing for which clearing Savage is the end of the road, is on the road for clearing Savage. If you are not on that road, then there really is no reason to be bothered that it does hand out some extra gearing as merit badges that won't even be relevant to casual content because of ilvl sync.

If you feel that you are denied merit in the game by not having those on your character, then I think you might be externalizing your worth and could improve your own happiness by rethinking your sources of validation as a person and player?

I think it's hard for me to blame the devs and scaling since so many people try to out-dps any mechanic anyway. If they did scale all of this properly are people going to really want to take a chance on some more punishing mechanics they currently don't even have to deal with? Let's be honest and say that the majority wouldn't. This means for any roulette where they know one boss has a mechanic that causes a raid wipe (Amon, Nald'thal) many players may just drop group. Some would point out their 30 minute penality, but if you play for like 20+ min and then get to a boss that people wipe on the player logic is the penalty may be less than the time spent in the duty. In effect, it is difficult for me to blame devs for what is also caused by typical "gamer" mentality.

I came from WoW. I did the whole optional quest to learn the mechanics (lvl 15?)- it's optional though. There are lots of people who run away with stack markers still at lvl 100. Many of us will chase them down, but I think it's better if we don't so they learn. I also did all of the AR's and if there is a mechanic I don't understand then I look it up. I did them to learn the mechanics and understand them better.

To me this is the real problem more than tuning. Even if they retuned all of these old AR's and trials, most are optional so people still won't know the mechanics if they choose to not do them and to only do max level content or MSQ-required content. While there are definitely tuning issues that people have properly pointed out, we can't ignore that the playerbase itself can also be a roadblock to these corrections. Admitting one doesn't know everything and may be doing something incorrect is also a roadblock for many long time MMO players.

Hello, I started at the very end of Shadowbringers, so I think I'm in a healthy place to jump in and say I absolutely love the Dawntrail encounter design so far. It does NOT feel too hard at all, and actually I think the Extremes felt a little on the easier side as a whole compared to Endwalker so far.

As for normal raid, which seems to be the hot topic right now, I have no concept of whether they're harder or not. They were totally acceptable DF level content to me. Just felt like more trials.

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Originally Posted by Eyrilona

You called Savage and Extreme as the fastest way to the end of the road, but you only see them as that because you have defined 'End of the road' to mean getting highest stats, when really, the only thing for which clearing Savage is the end of the road, is on the road for clearing Savage. If you are not on that road, then there really is no reason to be bothered that it does hand out some extra gearing as merit badges that won't even be relevant to casual content because of ilvl sync.

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Please work on your phrasing before trying to reply to something that you have apparently no degree of understanding about. iLvL sync doesn't exist past the end of the MSQ because the game is actively developed for people to get to feel the power difference when they have the better gear. This is why there is a cycle of people that state things feel too easy on the later patches, because the iLvL the players have far exceeds the min iLvL of the dungeons. The devs are trying to mitigate this with how they are designing dungeons to be more engaging than last expansion, but this same thing is going to happen again. Almost no one uses the iLvL sync feature willingly outside of some rare instances. (Also, yes I am aware of iLvL sync on dungeons that eventually cycle to the roulette that is basically "old expert dungeon roulette", but the iLvL is so far above the base iLvL it really doesn't make a difference)

I agree. I started at SHB, and I had interest in FFXIV boss design since ARR launch because of how fun it loked and how cool the music was. Lo and behold, since the Ifrit fight and until I reached Endwalker, the instanced content was one of the biggest dissapointments I've ever had. Very good game design, having the player lose about an hour and a half doing a banquet so a group of douchebags tell you that the weak point of the boss is the obvious unprotected shiny spot on its chest, and then have this battle that was hyped some hours before that take at most 2 minutes, and that was with Duty Support.

I don't know why on earth they gave Ultima and Castrum a pass to make it less anti-climatic. Ultima is still a fun and challenging battle for complete sprouts, and it isn't an absolute snoozefest compared to Shiva, Leviathan, and everything else after it and until Endwalker. Heck, they bothered fixing the ilvl sync of Endsinger to make her less pathetic, yet Shinryu and Hades are still an absolute joke of a fight.

And seriously, I don't understand why some old bosses still take longer to kill than others. Lakshmi for some reason still takes a decent time and requires more attention span than other bosses after her. Ryne/Shiva gets literaly melted by damage compared to the bosses before her. Carbuncle in the Pandaemonium raids is pathetic compared to what comes before him, but suddenly everything after him is still enjoyable. And the Myths of the Realms ARs aren't fun anymore, everything gets killed before it has a chance to do anything; Dun Scaith is somehow still harder than Myths, heck, Nier has pretty much remained consistantly challenging through patches.

And it's getting worse. I recently got with my sprout friend into Eden raids and he was dissapointed at how things die too fast. I played them for fun a week before Dawntrail launch and they still took a decent amount of time to clear (except the aftermentioned Ryne); we are still in phase 1 of Dawntrail endgame and the raid already feels like it was released and powercrept 3 expansions ago.

I completely agree. This game needs more care put into preserving the experience of older content. I still do not understand why the devs seem adamant on only putting ilvl syncs on 4 player content. And even with those, a lot of them - especially pre-Shadowbringers - are too lenient. I was so disgusted getting Aglaia the other day and seeing how Nald'thal had been butchered that I'm not sure I'm ever going to do AR roulette again.

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Originally Posted by Aldath

Heck, they bothered fixing the ilvl sync of Endsinger to make her less pathetic, yet Shinryu and Hades are still an absolute joke of a fight.

And seriously, I don't understand why some old bosses still take longer to kill than others. Lakshmi for some reason still takes a decent time and requires more attention span than other bosses after her. Ryne/Shiva gets literaly melted by damage compared to the bosses before her. Carbuncle in the Pandaemonium raids is pathetic compared to what comes before him, but suddenly everything after him is still enjoyable. And the Myths of the Realms ARs aren't fun anymore, everything gets killed before it has a chance to do anything; Dun Scaith is somehow still harder than Myths, heck, Nier has pretty much remained consistantly challenging through patches.

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Lakshmi is a leveling trial, so her fight is properly synced at level 68 and relatively immune to ilvl creep. Proto-Carbuncle is supposed to be fairly easy. There is supposed to be a difficulty curve for each Normal Raid tier, where fight 1 is easiest and fight 4 is the hardest. Imo the devs have been failing to accomplish that since Eden's Gate, and likely putting all their balancing focus on Savage.


Ryne and Hades are just simply horrible design. Even when they were each current groups only ever saw all the mechanics if dps was really low. If your fight is going to be heavily scripted you have to make sure the fight lasts long enough to exhaust all the unique mechanics.


Shinryu would be a pretty challenging fight for a normal mode that would give new players a taste of later game difficulty if it were properly synced.


Myths of the Realm were genuinely awful mechanically, the only reason people gave them a pass was "pretty". It's no wonder Dun Scaithe is harder. It's actually challenging to begin with, and because the min ilvl is 235, the effective ilvl sync is only 40 higher at 275 (level 60 max). Contrast that to Aglaia, which was braindead easy when it was current, and with a min ilvl of 565 and an effective max of 665, it's getting absolutely melted.


The Nier raids - and ShB content as a whole - are in a bit of a weird place. ShB benefited the most from the 6.0 stat squish, so there actually is not that much of a difference between, say, ilvl 435 and 535. It does matter, and there are a few mechanics that are always skipped on Copied Factory, but it's a far cry from the situation of most other Alliance Raid series.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I'd still just like to see minimum item level runs added to the Duty Finder directly (e.g., a second checkmark one can fill, to queue for simultaneously with a regular version if they so wish) and give proportionately higher rewards. Normalize options for more significant challenge without necessarily taking away the ability to leave content a breeze for those who don't want it.

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I would LOVE this. It would solve so many of my issues with the current state of roulettes and make it a pretty consistent experience across the board. No more wondering if Trial Roulette will give you a short or a long one for example. At min ilvl, they pretty much all average 8-12 minutes, except for the leveling Trials which do not even have a min ilvl.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

That said, ability acquisition and the appearance of mechanics really should be hastened (e.g., a full rotational kit [50 to 56-esque] by level 30 and a decently fleshed out kit [70-esque] by 50),

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The problem with this is they would have to do a complete rebalancing of the potencies of actions at these lower levels. Losing abilities when level synced sucks, but the alternative is worse. I've hopped around between several MMOs. Every MMO that has tried to allow players to keep all abilities when level synced has had massive power creep at low levels. Yes, worse than this game. I would indeed like to see them do this, but I honestly don't know if they can/will spare the time to do this correctly.

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Originally Posted by Kisshu

iLV is only a small part of the problem. Heard people say that even doing minimum item level Cyrcus Tower, you still skip the super attack of boss 1 and 2.

The biggest issue are new jobs getting much more potent abilities at lower levels. Back in 2.x, DRG's Full Thrust was high damage at around 300 potency, SMN's Fester was one of the strongest abilities at around 450 potency I think.

Looking at new jobs, PCT got 3 hammers a minute for 560 direct crit, SAM has a 700 crit every 8th GCD or so.

The item level part is mostly an issue that will show itself in the patch series (Like Endsinger) due to no iLV sync on the content.

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I remember critting Bahamut on my Nin with Aeolean Edge right before HW for like 937 or so. Also remember at one point being excited that ruin 2 finally hit for over 100 damage in ARR somewhere on SMN xD

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Originally Posted by CrazyDude

The problem with this is they would have to do a complete rebalancing of the potencies of actions at these lower levels.

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Potency creep already necessitates this.

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Losing abilities when level synced sucks, but the alternative is worse. I've hopped around between several MMOs. Every MMO that has tried to allow players to keep all abilities when level synced has had massive power creep at low levels.

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Which has what exactly to do with my suggestion (learning more skills early on, even if just by siphoning active skill/mechanic acquisitions from later levels)?

No part of my post asks to retain skills above the syned-to level when synced.

Yeah, I actually fully agree with this take. I don't really know what a good solution might be, though. Having everything set to min ilvl sync by default would probably upset a lot of people, though I wouldn't particularly care. I like having that challenge.

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Originally Posted by cloveCardamom

Hello!

I’m not a forum poster, but this seems to be where the discussion is unfolding regarding the difficulty of Duty Finder content in Dawntrail.

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Healers still don't get engaging content. Square is still ignoring healers.

The ilvl is just ridiculous at this point and needs a severe nerf.

Also, we should be able to ADJUST THE ILVL IN A PREMADE PARTY.

Just change the percentage drop rate accordingly or whatever. We need more difficulty options. Not just brain-dead and go find 7 other people if you want to have fun.

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

Also, we should be able to ADJUST THE ILVL IN A PREMADE PARTY.

Just change the percentage drop rate accordingly or whatever. We need more difficulty options. Not just brain-dead and go find 7 other people if you want to have fun.

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Yes! It's so annoying having to do fights like Ravana EX at flat-out min ilvl to have a fun time when really just a slightly stricter ilvl sync would be enough. But it's all the difficulty or nothing.

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Originally Posted by cloveCardamom

Hello!
People have been asking a fair question:
How did these players get to this point, hundreds of hours into this game, not knowing how to watch for arena & boss queues for mechanics? The game has always featured mechanics like this, how did they get this far without learning anything?

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In my opinion SE make a rod for their own back they nerf and change the lower dungeons which were already easier due to level cap/materia/gear. So this means new players have it extremely easy for a good 70 levels. Now if the level 100 dungeons were side quests and the only requirement to raiding was level 100. They could throw them a jump potion for x levels so they can fight in harder content and then level another class through the story.