The Stormblood Capstone fight pretty much killed my enthusiasm with the game.

[TheGrimace]

Thank you for sharing your experiences, OP. I have been complaining about the gradual ease in difficulty for the past year. I really want CBU3 to atleast impose stronger ilevel restrictions on capstone fights. It's true that Thordan was easy on release, but the others used to have a lot of bite to them. I remember Shinryu was a brick wall for many people and I had a blast queueing up for the fight just to help members of my Free Company get through. Similar things could be said of the other capstones at launch, though in my experience Shinryu was always the biggest hurdle.

I'm crossing my fingers that this major issue will be addressed during the upcoming Live Letter at TGS, but I don't want to hold my breath. Endwalker has only been out for a year and a half and is still considered to be "current content," and yet its capstone trial and the current Alliance raids are suffering from overkill far more than any previous expansion's. Along with the lack of proper ilevels synching, I imagine a large part of this is caused by the stat squish they implemented at Endwalker's release to make the game calculate numbers easier. The breakdown of content needs to be addressed sooner than later.

[Boblawblah]

If you're frustrated with the difficulty of the MSQ you might want to adjust your expectations, because the MSQ is never going to be difficult. The game DOES get harder to some degree, just comparing the early dungeons to something like The Dead Ends is enough to see that, but it never gets hard, that's not really the point. As for seeing all the mechanics a boss has, well, they'd have to just have invulnerable phases forced on players, which a lot of people hate, and would simply extend the fight without making it more difficult.

[vetch]

If you're frustrated with the difficulty of the MSQ you might want to adjust your expectations, because the MSQ is never going to be difficult.

'In From the Cold' is calling. Accept the call?

[Boblawblah]

'In From the Cold' is calling. Accept the call?

[Jeeqbit]

It wasn't even that difficult. It was just a basic thing you do in a lot of single player games. The people who couldn't handle that duty wouldn't like most single player games such as Tomb Raider.

[Canadane]

When did "capstone" become the term to use? I feel like I see it everywhere now and only a few years ago I never heard of it before.

[AngelCheese77]

When did "capstone" become the term to use? I feel like I see it everywhere now and only a few years ago I never heard of it before.

Same. No idea what it means.

[Snorky]

Same. No idea what it means.

What is the term capstone mean?
the high point
1. : a coping stone : coping. 2. : the high point : crowning achievement. the capstone of her career.

[RitsukoSonoda]

When did "capstone" become the term to use? I feel like I see it everywhere now and only a few years ago I never heard of it before.

Dunno why they're using the term as a duty label tbh. The origin of the term was the name given for that "Ultimate" final skill on a skill tree in games that have them like Borderlands

[Jojoya]

Adding an ilvl sync to the level cap MSQ content of each expansion would help. Power creep between the beginning and ending end game gear for an expansion is huge.

If players were defeating Thordan at 145 and Shinryu at 285, putting the ilvl sync at 180 and 320 respectively would make those fights feel better than they do when players are synced to 270 or 400. There's still a little bit of power creep to help a party with a few first timers without making the encounters faceroll.

Since they included ilvl sync with the level 50 dungeon remakes, I'm hoping they plan to add them to the MSQ dungeons and trials of the later expansions during Dawntrail.