Anyone else concerned by the extremely low skill ceiling?

[QooEr]

TLDR - Skill ceiling has gone up, but probably not at the same rate as the average player skill has increased. It makes it seem like things have gotten 'easier' when theyve actually gotten harder, but we've gotten better faster averagely.

i want to agree but its really not the case. Midas did the whole "harder mechanic dance with easier dps check" and yet the fights were still harder and more punishing than creator-onwards. even ex primals have gotten easier ever since sophia. thordan extreme on release was pretty challenging, sephirot and nidhogg were punishing even if the mechanics werent too hard (remember fang & claw?). fast forward to stormblood and lakshmi was absolutely brainless, byakko ex could be cleared blind on the first run, etc. over the years, mechanics HAVE been getting easier and less punishing, and dps checks more lenient.

[Melichoir]

i want to agree but its really not the case. Midas did the whole "harder mechanic dance with easier dps check" and yet the fights were still harder and more punishing than creator-onwards. even ex primals have gotten easier ever since sophia. thordan extreme on release was pretty challenging, sephirot and nidhogg were punishing even if the mechanics werent too hard (remember fang & claw?). fast forward to stormblood and lakshmi was absolutely brainless, byakko ex could be cleared blind on the first run, etc. over the years, mechanics HAVE been getting easier and less punishing, and dps checks more lenient.

I dont agree. I think true complexity has increased per xpac, and the difficulty back during midas was a mix of player inexperience and overly punishing design due to lack of dev team experience. I think it seems easier now because of a wider variety of factors - better encounter design, increased player base skills, more resources on hand to get through fights and game/class mechanics, and the skill ceiling not increasing as fast as the player base. Simply saying everything is easier now I think is a 'rose tinted glasses' effect, where people are remembering the highlights of a tier rather than the reality of it in context to the game at the time.

This all being said, If we wanted to increase the skill ceiling more to keep it at relative pace with the player base growth, we would have to address the skill floor first. Hyper disparity between the top and bottom tier players is just as bad as their being a skill ceiling to low that top and bottom players is almost indistinguishable. If we want to make Savage and EX harder, then I would propose that Regular Trials and Dungeons need to start being scaled up in difficulty. Dungeons are a joke because it is almost impossible to fail them. I love Nier but within a week itll most likely be easy mode afk farm status once people learn the single gimmick per boss fight. Hard mode dungeons are just the same dungeon at a higher level and just as easy. The issue isnt the skill ceiling IMO. It's teh skill floor. Raise the floor, youll have more room to raise the ceiling.