The Difficulty Schism (And Why The Real Enemy is Scaling & Max iL Sync)

[Shurrikhan]

I'd still just like to see minimum item level runs added to the Duty Finder directly (e.g., a second checkmark one can fill, to queue for simultaneously with a regular version if they so wish) and give proportionately higher rewards. Normalize options for more significant challenge without necessarily taking away the ability to leave content a breeze for those who don't want it.

That said, ability acquisition and the appearance of mechanics really should be hastened (e.g., a full rotational kit [50 to 56-esque] by level 30 and a decently fleshed out kit [70-esque] by 50), and content nerfs reverted in favor instead of simply checkpoints before bosses in dungeons and at the half-way points of final-boss-in-tier raids.

[Kaurhz]

Honestly a lot of the problems that plague early-game, inc., expansion up to Stormblood is potency changes, but also changes in stats, e.g., Accuracy and Parry were both replaced by Direct Hit and Tenacity, respectively. These are massive damage gains considering accuracy was only relevant to a point, and parry was, well parry probability.

Scaling and max iLv sync is only a small part of the problem, really. But it is a contributor.

[Colt47]

This sounds interesting so I am trying to understand what it is you are trying to say, and what point you are trying to make with it, but could you make it a little less abstract? I have a feeling that this has a lot of context in your mind that you didn't include in your post and that is making it hard to interpret.

Well, lets say that at level 50 the best armor someone can wear is a full suit of high tech armor built out of state of the art composite alloys, and then right at 51 the first armor someone can wear is a cloth tabard and chainmail. Since its a new expansion the cloth tabard and chainmail has higher stats than the high tech suit of armor built out of state of the art composite, even though the former should actually be the better armor. And earlier on in the game the character progressed from starting armor that was literally a cloth tabard and chainmail, that ultimately ended in this high tech armor. It just doesn't make any logical sense that the level 51 armor is actually superior to the level 50 armor.

Flash forward to end game progression and we have non-canon super hard fights that supposedly somehow give us shinier armor that is superior to the armor we get from just doing the canon fight. So there is no grounded reality to the armor being better at all at our current level. They even break this further when we literally jump into the past when aether is much denser, and somehow gear that is composed of insanely dense aether is inferior to gear literally made out of emotional fluffiness and/or angst at the end of the universe or armor made of much less dense aether that comes afterwards.

What the armor is actually acting as is sort of a merit increase from ownership that represents extra effort put in by the player to advance their own character. I sort of feel that they don't give casual players enough merit and completely block them from achieving the same things that people who engage in the more time intensive content get. Even if savage or extreme is the faster way to get to the end of the road, there shouldn't be a situation where the casual player can't get optimal stats on their gear (and honestly, given the game abstracts away the benefits outside of some blurb of text there isn't much point to having choice on stats). Doing savage should be because someone likes the extra challenge, not because they want to get merits. The latter is the reason why things turn toxic because then the goal is to be optimal and collect as fast as possible.

[ThaCa]

They really should try to do something about both; the speed at which you gain new skills and the scaling of older content.

As it is, you spend SO much time having very few button that have absurd potencies during leveling that you learn practically nothing. You can straight up ignore most mechanics and win by pressing 2 buttons way too far into the game.

I don't think the difficulty should be upped to the level of regular raiding, but at the very least it should try to emulate what it was during the time the content came out. I enjoyed leveling my Jobs during Stormblood so much more than I have done since then.

[Jojoya]

I'd say most of it is the ilvl sync.

Honestly get rid of gear progression at this point. Solves a lot of problems and future proofing.

May solve a few problems but it creates one much bigger problem - it would also remove the incentive most players have for playing. Gear progression is a staple of MMORPGs. The unending journey to gain more power is a major attraction for most.

What's needed is for some genius person to come up with a side progression system that players would enjoy engaging with so power creep can be tuned down considerably. I can remember some that were being used in the early days of WoW that lost favor with players but I wonder if they could be revived now that glamour has become such a huge thing with players.

[Shurrikhan]

May solve a few problems but it creates one much bigger problem - it would also remove the incentive most players have for playing. Gear progression is a staple of MMORPGs. The unending journey to gain more power is a major attraction for most.

What's needed is for some genius person to come up with a side progression system that players would enjoy engaging with so power creep can be tuned down considerably. I can remember some that were being used in the early days of WoW that lost favor with players but I wonder if they could be revived now that glamour has become such a huge thing with players.

The problem with "side progression" systems is that they're ultimately vertical progression systems per content type but additionally push players to pick what kinds of content they'd like to progress in on a gear basis... at cost to others. They're essentially just ways of silo-ing off progression or forcing bundling therein, not expanding it.

I.e., do you want the best gear for doing Raids, Exploratory Missions, Alliance Raids, Savage Dungeons, Dark FATEs, Aeroterraglacipolis? Okay, now if that best gear for content type X each comes from content type X, then you're now investing towards content type X at cost to all else. And if it doesn't, you're now stuck dabbling in something you might not want to do at all for BiS for the content type you actually want to do.

Or, if it instead alters gameplay/rotation/playflow, then you're stuck playing your job in style A for content your favorite content type (A) regardless of whether that playstyle feels clunky to you.

[Urielparadox]

1)... Blackmage, will really show that to you.

2) but the Extreme Trials were a bit much for most Extreme Trial Enjoyers

3) kind of faced with your own inadequacy .

4)- the current content was not trivial back when we veterans learned the same lessons and the current content now is not trivial when these newer players are attempting to clear.

5) Mentor Roulette back then was wild - Imagine timing out on a normal Raid! But it was a frequent-enough occurance.

6) A lot of people complaining are going to be pleasantly surprised at their journey and how much they've grown if they stick with it. They'll remember DawnTrail Favorably for it.

Everything at #3 and down I 100% agree with you and is wonderfully written. Great job. 1 and 2 however.

1) This is a problem more so due to blms current damage output. Blm always required you to learn how to balance movement with damage, and are routinely forced to learn the mechs heavily in order to execute. Which is why blm has always been the hardest job to optimize well, and had the top or near top damage output in the past. BLM still has enough instacast to get through all of boss 2's high movement phases without loosing a cast. There are blms, that are already doing it. I'm a rdm main and can get through without loosing a cast. You even have enough time to get a hard cast off if u time it right. Similar things were said about p7n and blm. Because blm's current damage output is low, people feel more pressured to be able to maintain and not drop that uptime. To add to that I was able to have runs of 97 and 99 dungeon on blm with 0 cast lost while lvling it.

2) these extreme trails are not harder than old ones. Many of our FC members didn't touch last expac's EX's and are currently farming the heck out of these for those wings. They had never touched hard content b4. None of them are complaining outside of normal pf woes. The movement requirement for ex one, is very low once you know the fight. You just have to know where to stand, which is every ex. Majority of the mechanics actually give a very long time to move. In ShB Hades on content was harder/faster/higher movement than EX is currently. Zeromos had some required faster movement than EX1 does currently, with 1 mech in phase 1, and all of the final phase. beak with fire gives close to the same speed, but you also have plenty of time to preposition on the correct side, giving plenty of time. Just like every ex. Golbez also had faster required movement for dodge the fire circle thingies. These are not any faster, or harder, even for the unseasoned. More people in party finder are able to solve the puzzle in EX2 than they could solve Zodiark and u can also danger dorrito 90% of ex 2 if needed. Where as in zodiark I was required to be the DD 80% of the time. Almost every zodiark party finder was, "yes we have Danger dorrito, or, please we need a danger dorrito still." We don't have that in these ex's

[Eyrilona]

What the armor is actually acting as is sort of a merit increase from ownership that represents extra effort put in by the player to advance their own character. I sort of feel that they don't give casual players enough merit and completely block them from achieving the same things that people who engage in the more time intensive content get. Even if savage or extreme is the faster way to get to the end of the road, there shouldn't be a situation where the casual player can't get optimal stats on their gear (and honestly, given the game abstracts away the benefits outside of some blurb of text there isn't much point to having choice on stats). Doing savage should be because someone likes the extra challenge, not because they want to get merits. The latter is the reason why things turn toxic because then the goal is to be optimal and collect as fast as possible.

I believe that at the root of your complaint is that you have a selective perception of what the goal of the game is. It is not meant to be to get all the all-round BiS optimal stats on your character as fast as possible. The goal, is to have fun. It is that you are able to clear and enjoy the content you care about playing. For some people, that even means giving themselves a handicap for the sake of challenging themselves, e.g. people who go into duties with the min-ilvl option on. This is not a pure stat block chasing game where the sum of your stats is your ranking or something. The game is designed in such a way that the difficulty level you consider your personal endgame will always be very doable with gear acquired from content a little easier than itself, so there should never be a step that is out of your reach for gearing reasons alone.

You called Savage and Extreme as the fastest way to the end of the road, but you only see them as that because you have defined 'End of the road' to mean getting highest stats, when really, the only thing for which clearing Savage is the end of the road, is on the road for clearing Savage. If you are not on that road, then there really is no reason to be bothered that it does hand out some extra gearing as merit badges that won't even be relevant to casual content because of ilvl sync.

If you feel that you are denied merit in the game by not having those on your character, then I think you might be externalizing your worth and could improve your own happiness by rethinking your sources of validation as a person and player?

[Gortys]

I think it's hard for me to blame the devs and scaling since so many people try to out-dps any mechanic anyway. If they did scale all of this properly are people going to really want to take a chance on some more punishing mechanics they currently don't even have to deal with? Let's be honest and say that the majority wouldn't. This means for any roulette where they know one boss has a mechanic that causes a raid wipe (Amon, Nald'thal) many players may just drop group. Some would point out their 30 minute penality, but if you play for like 20+ min and then get to a boss that people wipe on the player logic is the penalty may be less than the time spent in the duty. In effect, it is difficult for me to blame devs for what is also caused by typical "gamer" mentality.

I came from WoW. I did the whole optional quest to learn the mechanics (lvl 15?)- it's optional though. There are lots of people who run away with stack markers still at lvl 100. Many of us will chase them down, but I think it's better if we don't so they learn. I also did all of the AR's and if there is a mechanic I don't understand then I look it up. I did them to learn the mechanics and understand them better.

To me this is the real problem more than tuning. Even if they retuned all of these old AR's and trials, most are optional so people still won't know the mechanics if they choose to not do them and to only do max level content or MSQ-required content. While there are definitely tuning issues that people have properly pointed out, we can't ignore that the playerbase itself can also be a roadblock to these corrections. Admitting one doesn't know everything and may be doing something incorrect is also a roadblock for many long time MMO players.

[Erothaur]

Hello, I started at the very end of Shadowbringers, so I think I'm in a healthy place to jump in and say I absolutely love the Dawntrail encounter design so far. It does NOT feel too hard at all, and actually I think the Extremes felt a little on the easier side as a whole compared to Endwalker so far.

As for normal raid, which seems to be the hot topic right now, I have no concept of whether they're harder or not. They were totally acceptable DF level content to me. Just felt like more trials.