Quote Originally Posted by Nixxe View Post
Because you can't go past floor 100 in a matched party. Aetherpool only goes up to 99/99, which you can use in its entirety on the last few floors of 91-100. Beyond that aetherpool stops scaling while the dungeon keeps scaling. 101+ is basically the "challenge" floors, though I'm not sure exactly how difficult it gets as I haven't gotten around to trying it. Even with a low aetherpool party, 1-100 will never really get hard unless you are woefully under"geared" and have a bad comp to boot (like four DPS, none of which have off-heals). Even then, if you just make good use of poms and do mechanics, it still falls over.

Even with no aetherpool buffs, 1-10 falls over in a hurry. The first time I did PotD it was solo on a PLD and I was still 2-3 shotting most of the mobs. Palace of the Dead had been out a while when I came back, so I had the same experience you did of being brand new in the midst of people who had been speed running it for months. I'm just saying I don't really think the mismatch of aetherpool levels is really what makes it boring. Still, try out some of the later floors and see how you feel about it. You gain 20 levels in the first 10 generally speaking (highest level I've been was 23 I think), while they highest level mob is only like 16. As you go through the later sets, this will reconverge until you hit the cap of 60 around floor 50 or so.
So what you're saying is POTD is boring at the beginning regardless of what anyone has.

That's not much better either, especially since new players might not buy all the expansions right away and there is a floor cap of 40 for anyone who doesn't have expansions yet (which why would a new player buy them early if there isn't a major discount, and they don't know yet if they'll play long enough to warrant the extra purchases).

I guess I just won't do POTD unless I'm tired and not in the mood to do anything that requires thinking.