Rename the game to the Crystal Tower?

[MikeCake]

The last 15 AR I spammed for Aetherwells were all the 3 CTs, just a bad streak of luck, but it should be obvious that the most unlocked content is where the players get funneled into.

[AlliciaCapulet]

Square-Enix pretty much CAN'T make it hard otherwise it would roadblock countless people from ever getting out of ARR.

I don't think this is necessary true. Every 24 man dungeon can be carried with some dead weight in the team. It's true for current content, and was true back then too.

A lot of players are bad and can't access harder content because the game doesn't allow them to learn on the mandatory stuff. This is one of the biggest issue.

Back in ARR, we didn't had loads of content. I started on Jenova when it opened on 2.2 on April 04 2014. Back then, we only had Ifrit, Titan and Garuda. We had few dungeons. We had the first step of crystal tower. And the first steps of coils of bahamut. So, of course to keep us challenged and engaged in the game, everything had a chance to wipe us. Even the early fight of Garuda/ifrit/Titan could wipe us back then, I'm not talking of the hard mode or extreme, but the normal one. Because we were only 4 in it, if the healer was going down, the team was going down. But peolpe managed anyway to get pass everything. Dungeons were unique, had mecanics to do, and again, were wipable. The moment you had a bad tank or bad heal, it was a wipe. But what I did like of the community back then, it's that most of the people were trying to help people to improve and clear the content.

But yeah, you are right on the fact. SE have been taking the "easy road" for mandatory stuff, at least since Shadowbringer, making everything before the current expansion super easy. And I don't get it. I mean, if I were a new player, I wouldn't be in a hurry to "catch up" the current expansion, I'd enjoy everything the game have to offer before. And I'd like to be challenged for that content too. Because let's be honnest, a new player is, in a way, in a better situation than most of us are : They have lots of new content to explore, while the majority of people on the current patch "waits" for new content to comes out.

[FudoMyoo]

They are FORCING endgame players into Alliance Roulette.

How? /scratching my head. I've not done this weekly DR for quite a few years UNLESS I'm levelling a new job which I find CT is fast! Love it.

[SalamanderIX]

Crystal tower doesn't have to be so easy though. A lot of that evidence is in well, Crystal Tower itself!
People still die a lot or even wipe to Angra Mainyu, Phlegethon, and Cerberus. There's a good amount of difficulties fighting Amon too, and some of the ads like the pools, and the eye.

So it's puzzling why so much of it is so trivial, why can you stand in Vile Utterance and take less than a 10th of your health? Why can you survive Scylla's Ancient Flare comfortably without doing the mechanic? A lot of stuff is just so very trivial, especially the Syrcus Tower. The most painful part of Crystal Tower feels like dealing with these fussy veterans who haven't caught on to the allaince raid being mostly a joke. Like wasting time moving the Bone Dragon north, when it's so easy to heal to heal if the Skeletons reached. Spending two minutes in The Walk of Fire for the parties to all get to their spots, Making ready checks for Phlegethon and pulling him south for +0.5 seconds of Ancient Flare, and getting bent out of shape about pulling if anybody is watching cutscenes. The cutscenes are 10 seconds long and nothing happens in them.

I'm not sure I want to see a rework. Maybe a duty support. Maybe tuned up numbers.

[VeyaAkemi]

People still die a lot or even wipe to Angra Mainyu, Phlegethon, and Cerberus.

I will grant you Angra and Cerberus, who can be genuinely deadly, but every Phleg wipe boils down to "Half the alliance went to pads, half wanted to greed, it wasn't enough for either", there is nothing genuinely difficult there, it is a slow cast that kills people who greed too hard.