Quote Originally Posted by Amiral_Benson View Post
You've been misinformed.
It's tricky to rely on translating XIV difficulty naming over the 2 games.

I cleared both Ultimate and Rivenroad (Hard), I think I can give accurately enough my 2 cents about comparing their difficulty.
But as opposed as some people, I'm taking everything into account to measure their respective difficulty, because in the end, you have to go through all those things to get your clear, not just popping in the arena, and this is what will dictate the number of hours, your involvement level and all the resources you had to deploy.

I could write a whole page about every little things making Rivenroad (Hard) really challenging, from all the servers being only in Japan with 300ms to 400ms crazy latency, to the length of the fight (30 min, 10+min longer than UCoB), to the gear up with Darklight and Relics that were really testing one's abilities, to the special item you had to craft and use in the fight, to the instance that was kicking you for each wipe, and forcing you to re-queue until one of the instance gets available to your group, and so on and so on.

So many things, so many layers of difficulty. In the end it took me a bit less hours than an Ultimate to clear it, but way way way more hours and efforts than an Ultimate if you take into account all the requirements, and way more sporting stress.

I'm gonna give you another example where you can't rely on XIV difficulty naming between the 2 games, Ifrit Extreme 1.23 and Ifrit Extreme 2.1. The reason I can compare their overall difficulty well enough is because I did them with the exact same players.

For Ifrit Ex 1.23, it took us a month, going there everyday for hours.
For Ifrit Ex 2.1, it took us one hour.

And those are completely different fights with different mechanics on two different games.

Current XIV and 1.23 are as challenging as each other when it comes to true end-game, but for completely different reasons, and those reasons don't matters, only the challenge does.
And i'm pretty sure that your memories betray you and here is the reason: The longer you play the better you learn how to play mechanics and your general skill with your class improves. I would say if you would've to play that fight again you would say its easy.

Honestly i don't understand the fuzz about these earrings. They are earrings which means that most people won't notice them or even care. Also why don't you just enjoy that you've got them 5 or 6 years before all the others or enjoy them because you like them? Nope it HAS to stay unavailable because people want to show that they are supperior because they have earrings (lol) which are not obtainable anymore. Feels pretty petty to me.