Quote Originally Posted by Nyastra View Post
Yeah I get the point about content longevity, and you’re not wrong that there’s a skill ceiling and that some encounters are only engaging for a narrow range of players. But the solution isn’t as simple as making everything granular for all players. That would drastically increase the barrier for the majority, who just want to log in, play, and enjoy the content without spending hours optimizing every action. There’s a reason SE balances around the broadest segment of their player base: they have millions of players with wildly different skill levels and playstyles. Granular content for all might extend shelf life for some, but it risks alienating most, and that’s not a trade-off they can make lightly. And just note that I said "lightly" not "can't". But, what else they can do about it however, I do not have the answer and I'm not sure that they even have that answer themselves.
Granular content would make skill floors lower, not higher. That’s why there was such a dichotomy in response to DT’s battle content over EW’s. Anyone who was above the skill floor for EW’s content liked the DT changes because at least some more stuff was happening, anyone below the skill floor hated the changes because the encounters now present hard floors for them

So the current design only works where there is a floor SOMEWHERE. If you make it too low you bore anyone above it, if you make it too high you exclude too many people. EW did the former and DT you could argue is doing the latter.

That’s why granular difficulty surrounding the jobs is the better design. You SHOULD be able to clear everything below extreme spamming cure 1. But if you have more than 3 brain cells and know that’s the least efficient thing you could possibly do then your job should present a ceiling you can willingly interact with up to your comfort level. Putting the granular difficulty into the job basically bakes quantum into every fight without them actually having to balance quantum into every fight. And it removes hard floors on encounters they raised to pander to people bored to tears by EW