Level 50 Dungeon Level Syncs

[Raist]

I perfectly well understand what a precedent is. I should point out that just as you gave an example of personal experience as precedent, so did I. Are you contending that your personal experience is more factual than mine? Your experience in one game does not make your opinion supported by that experience a fact, and yet that is what you appear to be saying here.



All of this is opinion which you are dressing as fact. Your experience in FFXI is not the only experience with players being overpowered at end-game. I'm not going to reply further to you since a) people would rather attack the wording of my posts than address the merits, and b) you persist in explicitly stating your opinion as fact.

Your example was a bit of a straw man...

Oh, and just so you know, there were some dungeons with two or even three levels of difficulty, the low level version might (for instance) be level 30, and the high level one might be level 50.

Three different versions of a dungeon is not what is at issue here. This is the same dungeon, the same mobs, the same difficulty. What is being discussed is the restrictions being placed directly on the players. That is in fact what the level synch is, which you have yet to acknowledge and in fact have challenged...which is in large part at the heart of why you have people that are reluctant to run them just for the sake of running them, but only do them because it is a means to a desired end---not some magnanimous gesture to help out new players. For such players, once they get what they want, they are more likely to abandon that content until they are either forced back into it, or they see a more direct need to assist a specific person (either a friend struggling with it, or someone asks them directly--but not so much queuing a dungeon just for the sake of doing so).

The example I gave is a near identical parallel to what has been requested--restricting players down towards the original level of the dungeon. The example I offered up is relative in that it would be roughly the same scenario (not to mention how much of this game feels like rehashed copy/pasta of that game--WP-HM is just a few elements short of being a revamped Nyzul Isle floor, complete with HD versions of monsters and even an enemy leader from TAU), and if history were to repeat itself it could have the same negative effect. It is not an opinion of mine as to what that impact was. It was known that many players gave up on the game because they could not progress past fairly early level-capped stages of the game because they could not get anyone to help them with the capped content. Discuss it with any really long-time players of that game and you will likely hear a similar tale. It was a real problem. Multiple server mergers are a bit of a testament to that effect.

Such problems did not plague just that one game either. It is a very common dilemma that can eventually face any game, and in fact has. You could even see it in much simpler games like the Diablo series or even older games like Freespace. Once players move on to a certain level, there is a large group that simply doesn't have the patience/will to do outdated content unless they are effectively forced to do it to achieve a certain goal. And in those scenarios, if they realize there are viable alternative options that are far less tedious to obtain (note Abyssea and later, SoA content in the scope of XI)... well it is often human nature to be drawn to the path of least resistance.

In the present state of the game, we are looking at that very scenario starting to play out. There appears to be a growing consensus of players that aren't doing these older runs for "altruistic" reasons---it is because they have to in order to achieve a certain goal that they still value. Once that goal is obtained, or no longer holds a high enough level of value (and thus they no longer have a valid enough reason to do them with any sense or regularity), will they be running them even as a daily roulette? That remains to be seen for certain, but if history is any indication the odds would support the stance of "not likely".

I'm surprised you can't see any truth in that, even when it is playing out before our very eyes right now. It's a shame you just want to put the blinders on and have chosen to refuse to participate further in any debate contrary to your apparently more narrow world view. Interesting how conveniently people can do that on the internet....

The bigger point of my FFXI example though, was to demonstrate that SE (you know, the company that developed and runs both games) already has a playbook for this very debate to review as to how to proceed from here. It provides a very cautionary tale to help them best determine how to proceed...if in fact they feel inclined to even address any player's concerns on the topic. After all... this is SE, and their scope and criteria on "balance" has always been and will likely remain a great mystery to all of us.

[Krr]

Players won't avoid an i90 synced AK because it's 'too hard'. They won't do it because it'll take way too damn long for the terrible piss tiny rewards it gives nowadays.

Level 50 Dungeons from the 2.0-2.2 bracket barely give enough tomestones or useful gear to be worth speedrunning in 15 or so minutes, and a Roulette bonus very barely pushes them into 'worth doing, once a day, if I feel like it'. That's compared to other, more recent dungeons, notwithstanding other even more efficient non-dungeon-run ways of getting 'stones in 2.5.