So, we will not get any adjustment to ilvl of previous content or what?

[Aldath]

Well, the live letter was pretty much "revealing" everything we knew would come to the expansion beforehand + a couple QOL stuff. It still baffles me how Yoshida says he wants new people to not skip the story and "suffer the same the others did" while CBU3 hasn't done anything to adress the fact about half of the content released might as well be a custscene now for the level of engagement it gives, and some other stuff has 0 incentive to make players even queue for it. Good luck to the new players who decide to go out of their way to queue for Alexander just to have to wait up to 40 minutes in queue for encounters that can be completed by an unborn child.

Like, we keep adding more and more content on top of the new releases, but Roulettes and alts are still a thing and not only does forcibly removing your abilities for lower dungeons make things boring: the fact that they also provide little to no actual challenge makes it even worse (and don't say "UHHH THEN GO PLAY EXTREMES", Dungeons should be at least to par with the newest ones in terms of how much they make you PLAY the damn game).

So, cheers for other 2-3 years of getting CT and Amadpor nonstop I guess...

[Rekh]

Well, the live letter was pretty much "revealing" everything we knew would come to the expansion beforehand + a couple QOL stuff. It still baffles me how Yoshida says he wants new people to not skip the story and "suffer the same the others did" while CBU3 hasn't done anything to adress the fact about half of the content released might as well be a custscene now for the level of engagement it gives, and some other stuff has 0 incentive to make players even queue for it. Good luck to the new players who decide to go out of their way to queue for Alexander just to have to wait up to 40 minutes in queue for encounters that can be completed by an unborn child.

Like, we keep adding more and more content on top of the new releases, but Roulettes and alts are still a thing and not only does forcibly removing your abilities for lower dungeons make things boring: the fact that they also provide little to no actual challenge makes it even worse (and don't say "UHHH THEN GO PLAY EXTREMES", Dungeons should be at least to par with the newest ones in terms of how much they make you PLAY the damn game).

So, cheers for other 2-3 years of getting CT and Amadpor nonstop I guess...

Bare minimum into infinity we go! If it's not ultimate/savage related it's stuff that's not even on their radar.

[Musashidon]

lowering the ilvl cap of most dungeons would only hurt que's which is the opposite goal and since there is so much old content people are forced to slough through its better for them to be easily beaten and quicker so players can make it to cap easier without feeling as pressured to get the skip books due to the length.

[Kaurhz]

lowering the ilvl cap of most dungeons would only hurt que's which is the opposite goal and since there is so much old content people are forced to slough through its better for them to be easily beaten and quicker so players can make it to cap easier without feeling as pressured to get the skip books due to the length.

Giving duties some teeth will only help people, not hinder them. It will actually make their experience more meaningful, especially between the times where they will need to spend 100-150 hours of slogging through the walk from-A-to-B quests.

The absolute majority of it is questing, and personally, I cannot see anything worse than being told "Just power through, there's only 100 hours more before some content has a modicum of enjoyment behind it".

[Striker44]

Low-level content is always simpler, in practically every MMO I can think of, because it's what gradually teaches newer players how to play. Just throwing someone into an end-game difficulty dungeon when they're still learning how to play is a recipe for disaster. Also, those same "simpler" kits at lower levels can actually make things more challenging. I'm currently leveling AST, and every roulette dungeon I do features me needing to do significantly more actual healing than when I take my SCH or WHM into an "Expert" one, precisely because the tanks don't yet have all the same mitigation and self-healing abilities they'll get at higher levels.

[Post]

I think this is a very important issue with the state of the game for players new and old.

Obviously, many players at higher levels often complain that they only get to use very, very basic kits at low levels, much more basic and stripped down than their actions would have been in, say, Labyrinth of the Ancients than when it was currently the alliance raid in 2013-2014. This is a legitimate gripe. I think the simplest answer would be something like giving more of a player's actions spread intelligently throughout their levels instead of at the very end (e.g. SMN has the same rotation from 6 to 86; maybe that means its actions are a little too spread out at max level, let alone how simple it is at max level).

New players, however, aren't as vocal in my experience, I'd assume partially because they're not aware of places to leave feedback like these forums and partially because they're just plugging away at the story which, barring some revisions here and there, is largely the same and even more accessible due to things like faster mount speeds / flight / free trial. They're largely engaged and aren't hitting any 'walls' that used to exist and slowed down player progress through the MSQ, such as needing to do side quests and FATEs to have enough exp to get to the next MSQ or patches like 2.1 that had endgame players return to do low level Guildhests and The Sunken Temple of Qarn (probably to help queues along at the time).

As a result of this, however, new players probably may not even be aware that they're missing out on anything. If I had come to the game in 2024 and run LotA as it is now my first time, I would have no reason to think that it was significantly different for players back in 2013 at all, might struggle to keep my bearings at the pace players do the raid in the new setting, and have no idea how the bosses work, and be given no chance to learn as it wouldn't matter in the slightest if I just afk'd the whole thing, let alone died 5 times and got rezzed by other players.

Given how long it takes to get through a decade of MSQ, I think it would be very valuable to offer newer players a version of the required MSQ duties that plays closer to how they did when they were current, and closer to how the game feels to play at max level, as this would both allow them to get a better sense of how the game plays (and if they even like it) and take more of a break from the hours of reading cutscene text.

"I just spent 3 hours and 5 levels of MSQ following NPCs making a huge deal about this Titan chap, and then we won in 2 minutes."

Some places in the game I would have felt like it really hurt the story they were trying to tell if it played like it does today when I went through it. I'm lucky I got to do Prae before it was cutscene-skip ditch-all-the-newbies crazy mode (even with forced cutscenes, bosses died in a fraction of time spent watching), and before Shinryu was nerfed to the point that I'd be left wondering what the hell Zenos was going on about when he kept talking about trying to recapture a fleeting moment.

But story and pacing issues aside, just not being strong because of how powerful gear and actions have become relative to old duties (some even within the current expansion) would mean that you at least get to see what the old duties actually bring to the table. Just cuz they're old doesn't mean they lack variety or good, fun mechanics.

A simple solution to this would be using systems they already have in the game: ilvl cap adjustment, as OP said, and potency value adjustment for level ranges (e.g., the traits that exist at level 84 and now ~94 that boost general potencies on basic actions should exist for EVERY level range, so that the actions you have the whole game are exactly as they're meant to be for level 50 content and not twice as strong as they were in 2013). Another thing to put on top would be compensating systems adjustments like AoE being much weaker and not available in low level dungeons (as TP was a consideration; low level dungeons do not remotely have the HP values on enemies required to sustain the amount of AoE even a single tank can throw at them nowadays because these aoe actions are balanced around ShB/EW dungeons), or like not allowing Direct Hits until level 61 (Direct Hit did not exist in the game until StB, so any enemies from ARR and HW that were not reworked recently like Ultima Weapon in Porta Documena do not stand up to direct hits existing, even at MINIMUM ilvl).

I am led to believe that they aren't really considering the 'gameplay' experience of reworking content other than just trying to make sure players aren't relying on other players to exist to enter the content (no need to wait for DF or PF). Which makes sense, as their solution to it with Duty Support doesn't even consider that a new player might have 1 or 2 other friends, but not 3, so they can't even field a light party to do dungeons with and can't get an NPC or two to help them along. Only solo or random in with some max level veteran that just wants to blitz and get their tomes.

I swear, anyone arguing that they shouldn't consider adjusting the pacing of lower level duties because 'muh roulette efficiency'... The game wasn't that much slower or more difficult, it just required that we actually meet it on its terms instead of utterly ignoring mechanics.

[Jeeqbit]

Many of us have wanted this for many, many years. It's not really a surprise for them not to be doing anything. But they should, especially after the success of adjusting The Final Day to minilvl.

[Aldath]

Many of us have wanted this for many, many years. It's not really a surprise for them not to be doing anything. But they should, especially after the success of adjusting The Final Day to minilvl.

Which still baffles me. I would feel a little less worse if they gave the same treatment to every capstone trial from SHB and below. I mean, they pretty much the entire Praetorium and Ultima Weapon so they're ACTUALLY less of an exercise in killing one's braincells, but then Zenos transforms into Seiryu, the calamity that is supposedly as bad as Bahamut and that required the sacrifice of a friend to contain, and it's fucking easier than Lakshmi, the random ass Primal no one cares for.

[LianaThorne]

I feel like the devs are more concerned with having people see the entirety of the work they put in, rather than making it actually convenient for people to get through all of it.

Like BDO forcing people to ride for 5+ minutes across the map for certain WB's and grind spots so the player can admire the work they put into the environment prior to adding in Magnus lol.

[Aldath]

I feel like the devs are more concerned with having people see the entirety of the work they put in, rather than making it actually convenient for people to get through all of it.

Like BDO forcing people to ride for 5+ minutes across the map for certain WB's and grind spots so the player can admire the work they put into the environment prior to adding in Magnus lol.

It's ironic since a big chunk of the flashiest, most elaborate content comes from the optional ARs, Raids and Trials; heck, even some optional dungeons like the Twinning are miles better than plenty of MSQ ones. The current moogle event at the very least has helped me play the STB endgame stuff with a friend and even then the queues are wild as a healer. AS1 was 10 minutes long after cancelling it because it was taking more than 20 as a tank; the rest of AS battles were queues under 5 minutes thankfully.

I've played F2P games where at the very least each week there's rotating extra rewards for random instances which makes it so people queue for specific ones and keeps the flow going for those who want to do old content. This game from a AAA company does it only for events...