Please go over old Duties and give them all a fair level / itemlevel Sync

[Chyro]

I don't know why this hasn't been done yet.

There's so many old cap-level duties that become too washed out by a loose itemlevel-sync. The worst offenders being the climatic finale fights of the main stories.

It makes the content boring, there's no stakes and no engagement when the enemies hit like wet noodles even when getting hit by avoidable aoes. And in the case of the trials, it makes them very anti-climatic. You fight the big bad of Shadowbringer, but he's not threatening at all. The sub-80 trials are more threatening than the final boss due to level-sync vs very loose itemlevel sync. Same with Endwalker. Probably plenty of other cases, dungeons too, that are just made unengaging by not having a fair itemlevel sync.

I really wish SE would go over all the old content and apply a proper sync to every duty. They don't have to be super hard, but I think being at max 20-30 itemlevels above the content compared to when it was released should be enough.

This also makes it unsurprising that people newly reaching the current levelcap get surprised by more difficult content, when a lot of old content just gets washed out by loose syncs.

[Asari5]

i agree

they like to pretend old content doesnt matter but it does. through roulette most people do more old content than new. and also new players HAVE to go through so much old content... and yet in terms of balancing, power creep and engagement its terrible.

[Jeeqbit]

I agree they should do this.

After the success of doing it with Endsinger it makes even more sense.

I really believe they should just set all old-expansion content to minimum item level, since gear progression is no longer a thing at lower levels.

Sprouts either don't gear up and are minimum item level anyway, or they grabbed max item level from tomestone vendors. All the people syncing down are max item level. So pretending there is gear progression at all is ridiculous. There isn't. All it results in is the content isn't even fun anymore in many cases.

Fun is the most important thing and the best way to recreate the fun of the old content is simply to sync it to Minimum Item Level. There is a lot of content that people may not even be aware is fun at that item level. Just a very tiny increase - even 5 item levels - can drastically change how much the mechanics matter or are noticed. 5 item levels across 8 people, for example, is a grand total of 40 across the whole party.

A lot of old normal raids people think have always been a joke, for example, were great on release day and wiped people a lot. Then people got the gear drops, crafted some gear, and it was a joke every day following that and was never the same. A lot of the Dawntrail content people are praising now will probably suffer this fate as well going into the future.

[Galvuu]

snip.

I agree with what you're saying, but it's not enough.
I've done min ilv old duties, and your low level rotations are just broken- you're missing so many actions it's really frustrating to play as most jobs. Potency creep is also not solved simply with tighter ilv sync.
XIV needs some sort of sweeping rebalancing of its lower levels (and maybe with a level squish).
But I doubt SE will fix this chronic issue that becomes worse with each expansion...

[Silver-Strider]

There's a spectrum of issues with older content. Poor ilvl synch, potency adjustments over the years, fight mechanic changes that have occurred as a result of nerfs or the trust system, how quickly you outlevel the content itself, etc. just all culminate in trivializing the old content.

Sure, go back and adjust ilvl synch in older content but that isn't going to instantly solve the problem either and will just as likely create new problems too. As much as I would like to actually do mechanics again for older content, can you imagine how much of an uproar there would be if people were getting stonewalled by Syrcus Tower because I'm sure the larger part of the community doesn't even know them, much less how to resolve them? Instead of dealing with it, people would just leave if it pops up in roulette; look at Orbonne Monastery, people still leave that instance immediately because they don't want to deal with the hassle, even after years of powercreep have rendered most of it trivial (I'm sure Cid has a few more wipes in him).

I want to see it happen. I would love if the community would actually improve as they leveled up after having to deal with some of the more difficult stuff that was once present in the game instead of having level 100 Tanks that don't mitigate, DPS that freestyle their rotation and Curebot Healers but I know this community has become far to coddled by ease that they're more likely to complain about the changes rather than get good.

[lolnotacat]

This would require more than an ilvl sync. Many of the low level stuff has to be remade from scratch to be engaging. Much of the older content was originally made with a different design ethos (Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak before the rework) and when the jobs were in a completely different state. For example, a lot of content was designed without so much healer uptime because we used to have Cleric Stance back in the day. This caused a lot of healers to hesitate swapping to DPS mode and even created a lot of arguments that "hEaLeRs ShOuLdN't DPS!". Plus we had elemental materia and other types of materia which used to impact damage. Ever wonder why there's different types of damage? That's a holdover from that system.

All that's not to say I'm not on-board. I'd love to have older content be fun/engaging. Especially Alexander or my favorite Raid Series (Ivalice). But an ilvl adjustment for them probably won't cut it.

[luca20]

I do agree that an ilevel cut wont immediatedly fix every issue but is without a doubt the easiest way to make old content immediatedly better. A clear example is the first 3 StB capstone dungeons (ala mhigo, doma castle, temple of the fist) they have a much lower ilevel sync that the rest of the StB capstone dungeons and theres a clear difference. you actually get to see the bosses mechanics and you gotta respect those pulls to some extent (that firsttemple of the fist full pull being one of my favorites even), unlike the rest of the capstone dungeons where stuff just dies too fast. ilevel wont fix every problem but is for sure much easier to implement than to rebalance every duty in the game just for them to be outdated again next balance patch

[Remolia]

The Singularity Reactor

[hynaku]

They already have just jobs do more dps now than they use to.

[Granyala]

I would love if the community would actually improve as they leveled up after having to deal with some of the more difficult stuff that was once present in the game

Except they won't improve. They will just not do the content or quit. That is the sad reality of MMO design.

Very few players ever "rise to the challenge". Most players just don't do the content when it poses too much of an obstacle.
The players that do rise, won't consider the difference in difficulty meaningful enough anyway, since those are the kind of players that gun for savage raids etc.

It's therefor in SE's best interest when basic story stuff does not pose too much of a problem. As someone who liked the somewhat meaner ARR dungeons: yeah it sucks for people like us.

And then you hav the other side of the coin: overly aggressive ilvl sync in the old Nier raids where boring bosses and trash minibosses just live WAAAAA.... zZzZzZ .... Hm? still not dead yet? ...AAYYY too long.

No wonder people insta quit the roulette and eat the penalty than slog through that.