Request: Please tone down PoTD Solo 181+. My experience and partial rant.

[Angelusdemonus]

I am! I know the issue isn't something that really affects any sort of gameplay and it can be completely ignored but then...why have it?

Possible fixes for this have included

• Increasing the amount of gold chests and decreasing mimic spawns in later floors
• Decreasing the damage and hp of enemies while solo
• Allowing aetherpool stats to go above 99/99
• Allowing players to reach level 70 and use level 70 abilities in there
  
• Increasing the amount of pomanders that can be held by a solo player
• Increasing the amount of time for completion on later floors
• Making a specific solo mode (perhaps with the aforementioned fixes)
• Removing the achievement

One thing that I've been racking my brain about is how do you adjust solo PoTD without ruining PoTD as a whole? Because yes, a number of what Louvain suggested are good...along the lines of what I had posted. However, some of those type of adjustments affect everything about it (light party, etc). So my big question that I wanted to find an answer for is: How do you adjust solo PoTD ONLY, without touching and adjusting the experience of PoTD 2-4 player, which much of the community will say is well balanced, and I think it is.

I've said in a few posts and in my original that I feel the scale of difficulty for enemies, all the way up to 199, is fine. I had an opportunity with one of my light party groups where my other teammates had wiped on 196 and I was left standing, so I had to raise them and open the portal solo...and granted I had Strength/Steel, I honestly did not find it impossible to solo that floor specifically. So I would hate for them to nerf the enemies and make it too easy.

So here is an idea I would like to propose: Add special solo-specific abilities and, as Louvain said above, increase our amount of pomanders held by a solo player. I think these two should be easy to implement, and I'll explain below.


Special Solo-Specific Abilities


A big issue with the other 14 jobs that aren't called RDM is that they are missing key abilities that can push them to the high levels. RDM has "almost" the full toolkit to reach 200, but there is still an enormous amount of luck required (duh). So, I would like to propose that you add in special solo-specific abilities that can be used by all jobs, and only when you run solo.

You guys have already introduced the "orders" menu option for squadron, which only show up when you do command missions, as well as the duty specific abilities like in Lakshimi, so I would like to think adding special abilities to PoTD Solo might not be too crazy.

The abilities I would propose would be (all OGCD, by the way):

- Stun (30s~ recast, close range or long range)
- Silence (30s~ recast)
- Stoneskin (short recast, but only useable outside of command)
- 50%-60% HP Cure (15-20s~ recast)
- Melee Range powerful attack (5-8s~ casting time, would do 60%+ damage to a single enemy, and can only be used in combat)

Stun

It's pure utility. There are many times as a RDM that I wish I had one useful CC option, because buying time even for one GCD makes the difference between living and dying. Also, there are a few notable enemies who have DPS checks, so having a stun handy can save you from what was suppose to be a light party DPS check, and not punishing to a solo player who will more than likely not make it to the DPS check.

Running a job like MNK, who has stuns, definitely makes getting through the floors easier, because you are buying time for CDs to come down, and you get that extra tick of Sustaining Potion.

Silence

There is really only one major use for this, and it's to stop the Wisent on 171-180 floor set from doing it's DPS check. There might be other places you can use it (like stopping the elementals from casting a GCD), but I think this has a place for the solo abilities.

Stoneskin

Bring this baby back! More specifically for floor sets 181-190, because of the Deep Worms that attack you from a distance. That attack is unavoidable and does a large amount of damage....sometimes you can get hit at the worst moment and die because of it. Stoneskin can help mitigate that a little bit, and also it can be useful as some buffer when you use Pomander of Rage in the higher floors, where enemies can 1-4 shot you easy. Important to note that you would only be able to use this outside of combat.

50%-60% HP Cure

This to me is the key, for all the other jobs that aren't called RDM. One of the specific situations that a huge cure like this is needed is against the 180 Boss Floor, Behemoth. RDM is viable because you can cap yourself off between meteors very easily, but every other jobs, except healer, will not survive multiple meteors AND do enough damage to kill the last 15% of behemoth. A "percentage" cure is important, because jobs with higher HP pools, like tanks, will benefit from this also. A PLD against behemoth would struggle to stay alive; yes, they have their own cures, but because Meteor does percentage damage, you have to cure all that HP just to be in the safe zone again to survive another meteor...and you'll also be spending all that time casting Clemency and not doing damage.

Additionally, a big cure like that should also assist in surviving floor 190 boss, because your big concern there is it's cleave combo that can potentially 3-shot you WITH steel pomander.

Additionally, additionally, a low cast big cure will be huge for clearing the floors. Lets face it, Max-Potions are a big joke and certainly doesn't keep you alive in 151+, and sustaining potions can only do so much regen (and also does not scale per job).

Jobs that don't have any significant cures (mainly a majority of the dps jobs) will gain a major benefit to just having a cure option, it should allow them to climb far higher in solo PoTD.

Melee Range powerful attack (with a long casting time)

This is more for healers and tanks, which are the job roles that can survive the best, but can clear the floors the worst.

Healers with pre-nerf Cleric Stance were viable....a lot of runners got pretty high before Stormblood because you had the best of both worlds: good damage and survivability. But check the board now, and you'll see almost every data center has no new healer floor records since Stormblood, because what they are suffering is in the damage department. I know also, running PLD, they also suffer from a lack of damage, especially on the bosses. You probably wont die on PLD, but you're not getting anywhere fast.

So I propose a special, big damage attack, as the last solo specific ability, which can help solve the DPS issue. But, the caveat is that it has a long casting time, just to balance it's usefulness. There are enemies in the higher floors that can kill you in 2-3 GCDs, so I would want such a useful attack to have a big risk in using it, where unless you prepare it properly or time it properly, you might die before the ability goes off. There is an obvious plus side to a powerful attack which would be saving time, and for jobs like healer and tank, it would be more useful to them. Also, it shouldn't be useable outside of combat, otherwise anyone can just walk up to any enemy and just farm down things, making the entire thing trivial. It should also not be useable on bosses, for obvious reasons.

I will say as a word of caution that as useful as a big attack would be, that would probably need to be more thought put into it so that it doesn't become such a broken ability that it makes soloing trivial. Of all the additional abilities I mentioned, I think this last one is a little iffy and would be to balanced really good.


Increasing Pomander Maximum Limit

The other part of the adjustments is increasing the amount of pomanders a solo player can hold. This in my opinion should also not be a hard implementation. The game already reads the fact that you are going in solo, both in the game log before you start the floors warning about the fact you are entering solo, as well as a separate solo ranking board. Also, on bosses such as Floor 50 and Floor 150, the enemies adjust to how ever many people are on the field....so with a light party the attacks will spawn 4 separate attacks, where as on solo only 1 will spawn.

Because of how that is setup, I believe it you should be able to have the game increase how many pomanders that can hold based on how many people are running PoTD. For instance, A Light Party will have the standard 3 limit, but if its a party of 3, then the limit would be +1 (so they can hold 4 max), party of 2 a limit of +2 (so they hold 5 max), and solo a limit of +3 (so you can hold 6 max).



Welcome to the conclusion of my term paper, thank you for reaching this far. I'm really, really hoping this get's adjusted somehow that all 15 jobs can clear, not just RDM. But as a few of the posters have also said, we don't want this to be destroyed and made so easy that people can obtain the title in their sleep. I think giving classes the tools they need to succeed for solo only is a way to accomplish this, AND/OR let us has more access to pomanders. If we can hold more pomanders, then you are eliminating a lot of the luck and RNG that is basically destroying everyone's attempts. If you give us more tools to survive and clear floors, then you are also removing much of the RNG on floor spawns that also destroy our runs.

SE, I want this title, and so do many of my fellow runners. Keep it challenging, but give us a chance here.

[RiyahArp]

Um..to be honest potd floor 101+ was ruined when they released it. Before they worry about solo crap, they need to open it up so that people can pug queue for it, as well as get rid of the stupid "you can only wipe once" on it. The annoying solo stuff is literally holding it back, for what? So only one job can suffer through ridiculous balancing to try and get a single achievement? Meanwhile no one even bothers with 101+ in a party. You can tell from your server's market board; in 101+ replica dreadwyrm gear drops, but barely any ever hits the market compared to the ton of drops you see in 1-100.

Next time they need to not make solo achievements punish everyone else.

[Stormfur]

Let people queue in Duty Finder for floor 100+

[Louvain]

One thing that I've been racking my brain about is how do you adjust solo PoTD without ruining PoTD as a whole? Because yes, a number of what Louvain suggested are good...along the lines of what I had posted. However, some of those type of adjustments affect everything about it (light party, etc). So my big question that I wanted to find an answer for is: How do you adjust solo PoTD ONLY, without touching and adjusting the experience of PoTD 2-4 player, which much of the community will say is well balanced, and I think it is.

thinking about this, it is technically balanced for light parties, yes...but would it really be such a bad thing to have it made easier at this point? The content has already been out a year. As someone who frequently runs it in a light party, even a good run can take us 6-7 hours. Many people I know have not cleared it - either because they (or their party) don't have the experience or disposition to deal with the later floors, or because its long and boring. Touching on the latter point, even with my party usually doing its best to remain upbeat, getting to 200 is still extremely tedious and draining because of how boring it can be (particularly, 140-170 because there's nothing special about those floors, its your typical aggro > kill cycle just done a lot more slowly with very little strategy involved)

And wait a second, your name is a bit familiar... were you by any chance that Kalahan fangirl from DN? (also, Mayu says hi!)

YES....THAT'S ME.....

[SaitoHikari]

Bumping this in support of my good friend Louvain here.

Even though I don't POTD much, from a game design perspective, I think the major problems expressed in this thread boil down to two things: RNG and how POTD isn't future-proofed at all. So to that end, here's some ideas I've been throwing around.

1) Critical hits should be removed from mobs, period. If people are getting one-shot WITH steel pomanders, that's a big problem. POTD has enough RNG crap as it is.
2) Clearing every 10 floors starting from 100 should also automatically add 1 of every type of Pomander into your inventory.
3) Update POTD so players can actually level to 70 in there. This ties into how POTD isn't future-proofed at all. With all the new changes to jobs between HW and SB, some classes lost a lot of utility, either because some skills got shuffled into class role, locked behind gauges (that in many cases can't be utilized effectively until late-60s), and/or removed and replaced by a similar skill gained at 61+. Stoneskin is a huge example of this.

[UnstablePersonality]

Real talk, I'm thinking when the next deep dungeon releases they will end up adjusting this, as OP said, it's been 300 plus days, that's nearly a year and no one has cleared it, I get keeping hard content and such...but there is a such thing as too difficult. I haven't finished solo but I've been to 198 in a party and past 180/190 with the party a few times I know that it's a massive pain then. Plus I actually want the title..but all this? For just a title? The prize doesn't exactly justify the nightmare this is.

[Commander_Justitia]

Seems like the devs are focusing 95% on new content always, it happens so rarely that they adjust something old just for the sake of adjusting it.

FFXIV became a game with lots of content, and a lot of that old content is becoming 2 much of a trouble/time investment to even go for it even after 2 addons, it is sometimes still the same effort as day1.
I know this is a MMORPG, it is supposed to be a grind, but with every new content they release, I cant imagine that new players have any chance of getting to the same point unless they spend atleast somewhat like a total year playtime in it. Players who stay only for content patches will leave anyway after they cleared savage or ultimate, if they don't nerf the time investment for sideactivities I cant see many people will stay for it either.
For an example.. I would never try to complete a relic weapon even now, the fate waiting, kills in different areas, light step,alexandrite etc... Anima is less troublesome(faster) as you can prepare for it in advance, but actually 10lvl higher, should be more difficult/take more time..It doesn't fit.

Adding the achievement with adding a sustain potion only didn't work out, it needs a different approach.

[Kaliesto]

Hello, I hope people don't mind if I make this topic relevant again because I do believe POTD has a lot of issues compared to HoH.

Given this is from the stormblood era (this particular topic), but the problems listed are still a problem as of 2022, and I've been pretty irritated after all these years nothing has been done about it. I don't mind a challenge myself, but POTD has the problem of going overboard in everything damage and Monsters have tons of defense (this wouldn't be a problem if it were not for the limited selection of Job Skill Rotations), and I really don't like the fact how much of a tight DPS check that 180 boss has for solo runs and the insane gymnastics you have to do with the 190 boss (because if you screw up once you're dead since that boss hits like a truck).

It can take a day or two just to get back to those floors if you failed (depending how much free time you have), and that is pretty annoying compared to HoH.

There is also the matter of the outdated pomander selection, compared to HoH which is actually way more balanced for solo runs but the old original POTD pomanders are very unbalanced and with combined with bad RNG you better be praying to RNGesus.

It would be nice if the Devs. imported the changes from HOH into POTD just so its not some anxiety run from 1 to 200.

I tried for so long clearing POTD, but I just can't see myself doing it without extreme luck.

Edit -

Another reason I like to make this relevant again because if the next new deep dungeon ends up having the same issues then they're not listening to the playerbase.

[Rufalus]

This is the ultimate punishing content. One mistake or terrible luck or internet drop and it deletes hours of progress. High difficulty is fine but I don't like videogames to be overly punishing, like making you repeat hours of easy stuff to reach your next attempt at the hard part. For sanity reasons I would never make a serious attempt at solo 200. I think it's for gluttons for punishment by design. I'm all about low stress, casual content

[Hanayumi]

Another reason I like to make this relevant again because if the next new deep dungeon ends up having the same issues then they're not listening to the playerbase.

Almost certain a majority of the player base is totally fine with the current state of potd, really the only big complaint I hear about is the lack of Blu...