Old content has become so easy that it is no longer fun

[PangTong]

See title. Lack of ilvl syncing and general power creep and tuning adjustments with expansions have rendered pretty much all content pre-Stormblood into a joke, and even Stormblood and Shadowbringers content has suffered a fair bit. I had hoped the stat squish might address this somewhat, but it's just as bad if not worse.

Dungeon packs die in 10 seconds and the bosses don't fare much better. Trial fights which are supposed to be epic story moments get deleted before you even get to see half their mechanics or hear half their music. There is no damage even if you fail mechanics, pretty much the only way to die is Doom or if you fall off the edge of the arena.

I dread signing up for any roulette besides Expert these days because probably 80% of the time I will be put into a piece of old content that was once fun but is now a dull chore because of poor scaling. At that point I have to wonder if I'm playing the game to enjoy myself or simply to farm currency.

It's not only a bad experience for veteran players, it's a poor representation of the game for new players. They have to play through hundreds of hours of content before seeing a fight that doesn't instantly fall over before it can do anything. If you don't already know what the mechanics do it's impossible to tell how they work because there's almost no penalty for failing them, and even if you somehow die the rest of the party will just clear without you. You can't learn anything about the game.

Min ilvl helps but is not perfect, and not an option for the vast majority of players. You cannot sign up for roulettes min ilvl and even if you could, few would do so without increased reward.

I don't think it's fair to say "just do Extreme/Savage then" either. The vast majority of content in the game is normal mode and there's no reason it shouldn't be fun. Everyone has reason to run that content, not just players who don't do Extreme/Savage. Trivial content isn't fun. If people want content to remain trivial so it's faster to farm, they may as well just implement a system where you wait some given amount of time and then have the rewards given to you automatically.

I humbly ask the devs to do something. Even just dialling up the enemy HP on old content by a bit would go a long way. Implementing ilvl scaling for old trials and normal raids would be nice too. If you're worried about people complaining about their duties taking longer, feel free to increase the rewards by an appropriate amount too.

[Jin-]

I'm replaying the game with my brother who is new to the game and honestly I'm embarrassed to show him the content around. Zero difficulties and most bosses die before the mechanics even get to play out. Power creep is real sadly. It was already really bad in ShB but now it's on another level.

We are midway of HW

[Raskbuck]

I agree with this. I guess I can understand why they do it, but I still wish old content wasn't laughable easy now. I ran the 5.3 trial not too long ago, and it was a bit disappointing how quick the boss died. I still remember how fun the fight was when it first released.

One of my fondest memories is struggling with Shinryu when it first came out. We wiped a lot, and it was a tough fight to do in the DF, but man I had a blast. It's part of the reason why running content when it's new and fresh out of the oven is so fun for me personally.

[YukikoKurosawa]

I'm replaying the game with my brother who is new to the game and honestly I'm embarrassed to show him the content around. Zero difficulties and most bosses die before the mechanics even get to play out. Power creep is real sadly. It was already really bad in ShB but now it's on another level.

We are midway of HW

Power creep is not really a thing in this game though. Due to every instance having by-default level and itemlevel syncing (always syncing down your iLevel to a specific number which is generally the highest possible item level for that instances specific character level), it's impossible for it to get easier with subsequent expansions. A level 90 dragoon who ques for Tam Tara hard is just as powerful as a level 50 dragoon who ques for it. They're both synced to the same item level and have the skillset while in said instance. It's quite literally impossible for content to get easier with new level caps due to how this game is designed.

If you're noticing anything changed it's due to either the stat squish messing up the numbers somehow or the devs manually nerfing specific content (which they definitely have as I mentioned).

[PangTong]

Power creep is not really a thing in this game though. Due to every instance having by-default level and itemlevel syncing (always syncing down your iLevel to a specific number which is generally the highest possible item level for that instances specific character level), it's impossible for it to get easier with subsequent expansions. A level 90 dragoon who ques for Tam Tara hard is just as powerful as a level 50 dragoon who ques for it. They're both synced to the same item level and have the skillset while in said instance. It's quite literally impossible for content to get easier with new level caps due to how this game is designed.

If you're noticing anything changed it's due to either the stat squish messing up the numbers somehow or the devs manually nerfing specific content (which they definitely have as I mentioned).

With each new expansion they adjust damage scaling at lower levels. They do this because the game is only designed to be balanced at max level when everyone has their full toolkit. The further you go back in levels, the less and less of your rotation you have. A level 60 job in Endwalker is vastly different to a level 60 job in Heavensward. Since different jobs gain new actions at different levels, a job's damage output and relative balance can change drastically from one level to the next based on what they have unlocked. To compensate for this and make sure that no jobs are too weak in old content after expansion adjustments, they just crank up your damage and defense at low levels so that everyone is overpowered.

The issue is that they went massively overboard and it only gets worse and worse with each new expansion. ARR and Heavensward content is pure faceroll now, bosses die long before you see all their mechanics and what mechanics you do see can be largely ignored because the damage they deal is so non-threatening.

It's not simply a matter of changes to the way jobs work, or new expansions granting players more DPS potential with things like removal of TP, tank stance, cleric stance, etc. Those things contribute sure, but it cannot explain the (in some cases) tripling or more of damage output in the same content at the same item level, or how a mechanic which would one-shot you back then only deals a tiny fraction of your HP now. This is even comparing the same ilvl and no echo.

In Syrcus Tower, even if you go in at min ilvl no echo, Glasya Labolas will still die before he does his platform mechanic, even with an average group. The only way to see it is if you have less than a full alliance or people are doing bad damage on purpose. In Brayflox's Longstop, until around Shadowbringers you HAD to pull the final boss out of the poison pools to beat him even with a group of max ilvl synced players. Now you can simply outdamage the regen. In Sohm Al, you can kill the second boss long before he summons the green slime, and even if the slime explodes it will not wipe the party like it would originally. Most dungeon bosses pre-Stormblood have entire mechanic patterns that you now never see because they just die so fast.\

This is not even mentioning how they for some reason do not implement ilvl sync in alliance raids, normal raids, or endgame trials, even though they DO use ilvl sync for dungeons, capping you to the max ilvl for the patch the dungeon was released in. When you get old raids in roulettes, the first tier raids are ridiculously easy while the third tier raids still have a little bite to them. Even within the same expansion, by the end of the expac the challenge of the initial raids and trials is all but gone. By 5.5 players were skipping mechanics in Copied Factory. There's just no need for it.

With the game now having so much content in this trivialized category it has become honestly dreadful to run roulettes, barely any better than sitting in cutscenes in Praetorium in terms of engagement.

[Darthgummibear]

In Syrcus Tower, even if you go in at min ilvl no echo, Glasya Labolas will still die before he does his platform mechanic,

I didn't even know that mechanic was supposed to be a thing until just now...case in point, I guess.

[Mika_Zahard]

I didn't even know that mechanic was supposed to be a thing until just now...case in point, I guess.

You start to skip and avoid a lot of mechanics as your ILVL increases. The same thing happens in NieR raids of all places.


Hobbes, 9S, 2P and Red Girl take so long to kill that you see a lot of the mechanics that were only displayed when people were taking way too long.

So no, not case on point.

Thordan normal was always easy. Even when it was new.

You're not wrong, and thats the actual crime. They should have NEVER ever have to nerf it. Now Thordan is an actual pinata.

[SDaemon]

I didn't even know that mechanic was supposed to be a thing until just now...case in point, I guess.

Glasya Labolas hasn't done his platform mechanic in years, and not just a few years but like 5+ so this was long before the stat squish. Job changes, new stats, the reduction to 1 tank per Alliance so 1 extra DPS per party, the majority of the group being synced to i130 vs around i70. A lot of factors have made mechanics skippable over the years.

[YukikoKurosawa]

snip

Having done dungeon/raids before and after 6.0, such as Tam Tara Hard and Breath of the Creator normal, I can say nothing has fundamentally changed whatsoever, besides certain mechanics in certain instances no longer being one-shotters (while many of them still being so, even in 50 instances like Tam Tara hard). Managed to wipe on the first and last boss of Tam Tara Hard because we messed up the mechanics of both. Healed Breath of the Creator and his health pool was no different than before, perhaps higher, took a few minutes to take him down, and the damage being put out across the whole raid made it quite difficult for me even with another healer to keep everyone up.

You realize potencies have been NERFED for a lot of jobs' abilities, right? Unless we get look at the raw numbers before and after 6.0 for content, than it's hard to say anything's changed. But you're suggesting they've been upping potencies across the board each expansion which is just not even remotely true. I'm sure some things are different now, some content marginally easier, others marginally harder, but it's definitely not easier accross the board, let alone with each subsequent expansion. Except when they go back and deliberately nerf fights like Thordan. Part of the problem as another user mentioned is content not being designed for how jobs play now. Like how threat worked in ARR and how it works now. I don't really know what they could do about that though.

[redheadturk]

Having done dungeon/raids before and after 6.0, such as Tam Tara Hard and Breath of the Creator normal, I can say nothing has fundamentally changed whatsoever, besides certain mechanics in certain instances no longer being one-shotters (while many of them still being so, even in 50 instances like Tam Tara hard). Managed to wipe on the first and last boss of Tam Tara Hard because we messed up the mechanics of both. Healed Breath of the Creator and his health pool was no different than before, perhaps higher, took a few minutes to take him down, and the damage being put out across the whole raid made it quite difficult for me even with another healer to keep everyone up.

You realize potencies have been NERFED for a lot of jobs' abilities, right? Unless we get look at the raw numbers before and after 6.0 for content, than it's hard to say anything's changed. But you're suggesting they've been upping potencies across the board each expansion which is just not even remotely true. I'm sure some things are different now, some content marginally easier, others marginally harder, but it's definitely not easier accross the board, let alone with each subsequent expansion. Except when they go back and deliberately nerf fights like Thordan. Part of the problem as another user mentioned is content not being designed for how jobs play now. Like how threat worked in ARR and how it works now. I don't really know what they could do about that though.

They nerfed Steps of Faith because it was too hard. I am honestly of the opinion that I have no issue with content being easy if it's story content [I say this and I have begun savage this tier]. No one should be blocked out of the story by content they can't clear, and if MSQ content is faceroll to make it so that the players who have a harder time due to disability can clear it, so what? If you want harder content run savage or ex or ultimate.