Shiva Unreal, why not just change the way min ilvl works?

[GeraldineKerla]

Right now, even if you undersize an old fight, if you just select minimum ilvl, it sets you down to the same LEVEL as well as ilvl.

What is the actual purpose of implementing Unreal Shiva when the minimum ilvl feature could be reworked so that your stats are fixed down to an ilvl cap? That way they don't have to release it as a new fight.

I understand that level comes into this, but they could put fight specific caps on stats that force you to have the same *stats* and scaling as a level 50 character while still retaining all of your abilities.

The way they're doing it now is just one single fight as a time, whereas capping character stats to what they were at the given ilvl of the original content release when using the min ilvl function would make this permanently functional for all content in the game rather than doing 1 single fight at a time.

I guess my question is, why are we doing it this way?

Edit: There seems to be quite a few people mentioning balance, let me ask you this. What of Ultimate balance? Why are we holding a content minigame to a higher standard of balance than UcoB and UWU, who's DPS checks are abysmal in comparison to where they used to be. I don't think we should. There should be a minimum amount of effort made to keep it functional and not absurd (its not like if the balance isn't perfect on day one, they can't nerf a class' damage by x%), and that would be perfectly acceptable.
I've cleared all three and honestly, if we're okay as a community with Ultimate being the balanced that it is in damage, then we should be okay with min ilvl content having far more options but literally *slightly* worse balanced, to the point where it isn't actually noticeable.

[EaMett]

nvm I learned to read and retract my message.


Potentially the formulas used to calculate damage and healing have changed, the potencies for skills probably don't scale linearly either, giving you more/less at higher levels even if you had the same stats as back then. Lastly it gives them room to make minor tweaks to mechanics to cover for the new skills we have.
tis all I got though.

Edit again: oh and it's more "new" content at a very low cost.

[GeraldineKerla]

Honestly, they didn't make any mechanical tweaks at all in Shiva, which makes me feel like that's not actually what they're gonna do.
They've not sold it as new content, they've sold it as old content re-released at 80 to do again.

If they're gonna remake the content, sure, this method makes sense, but they didn't do that with Shiva at all. Its identical to release in everything but numbers.
And... to be quite honest, the potency increases we have, the abilities we have access to now don't trivialize it far more than the content is currently trivial in it's level 80 form.
If they really feel that you're killing it too quick, they could do what they do with frontlines and have an invisible debuff on certain classes to lower their potency by x% amount as balance for any given level.

Its really just the way they're releasing it like this instead of fixing the min ilvl system and making incentive to do old content like that is really weird. I feel like someone should ask them why they decided to go this route instead of fixing the minimum ilvl function as a whole.

[Wyakin]

The fact remains that item level sync on “new” content is dumb. People claim it’s to allow new players to join in when a new player wouldn’t clear this fight in a month of Sunday’s. Stop syncing content, make it aimed at the current item level tier

[Canadane]

Minimum ilvl is more than just challenge mode, it ensures certain drops from fights.

[tdb]

I understand that level comes into this, but they could put fight specific caps on stats that force you to have the same *stats* and scaling as a level 50 character while still retaining all of your abilities.

A level 80 character synced to level 50 / ilevel 110 stats is not equal to what a level 50 / ilevel 110 character was in patch 2.4. New abilities with higher potencies have been added, new cooldowns have been added, old abilities have been buffed. In order to ensure the experience is similar to what it used to be, the fight would need to be rebalanced anyway.

As an example, here's a chart of Ninja skills from 2.4 (https://i.imgur.com/x6k3Jma.jpg) as opposed to the current skills (https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/jobguide/ninja/).

• Basic combo used to be 150/200/320 potency, now it's 220/330/480.
• Shadow Fang used to have 440 total potency, now it has 1100.
• Raiton used to be 360 potency, now it's 800.
• Doton used to be 240 total potency, now it's 800.
• The entire Ninki system didn't exist; Bhavacakra is a free 300 potency attack every 15-20 seconds.
• Dream within a dream didn't exist and Assassinate required target to be below 20% HP; those now give free 800 potency every 60 seconds, 200 of which is a guaranteed direct critical hit.
• Direct hits didn't exist.
• The vulnerability debuff was removed, as well as the damage buff from weapon poisons. This is a roughly 25% nerfs, but not enough to compensate for the buffs.

This list is not exhaustive, but you can see how only syncing stats would still make the fight way easier than it used to be.

[Hasrat]

Because doing it this way allows them to create an extra little minigame around the content?

Tweaking the system to allow the same challenge within its current limitations only really benefits the players bored and looking for a challenge. This seems like a way to get far more players interested in participating.

[GeraldineKerla]

Substats already are in effect at the minimum ilvl.
They already have values correlating to the gear we had at the time, that gear didn't just stop existing.
Balancing Nightmare is not true. They don't make a significant enough difference to make classes "impossible to balance", you're WAY overstating the effects of substats in lower content.

If job damage output is so vastly different at 50 than it is right now, you can do literally what I said, put an invisible %buff/debuff on the class at that level when doing minimum ilvl content to retain some semblance of balance.
Its not like its actually difficult to figure out how much damage a job would do at those levels to a point that would be considered reasonable levels of balancing. If a job like RDM is doing 200 more dps than NIN in 2.4 Shiva, nerf it by like 12%.
Its not actually important or breaking anyone's immersion when old min ilvl job balance isn't literally perfect.

Scaling the substats down or even damage output down is something they only have to do once per set of level cap, and not even to a perfect degree. The "balancing nightmare" here is blown way out of proportion. You literally do not have to adjust all of these abilities, you only have to adjust the actual output of a given class. There aren't any abilities we have that trivialize the content more than we are going to trivialize it anyway with it at level 80.

[GeraldineKerla]

Because doing it this way allows them to create an extra little minigame around the content?

Tweaking the system to allow the same challenge within its current limitations only really benefits the players bored and looking for a challenge. This seems like a way to get far more players interested in participating.

Honestly, you could make it a minigame without implementing it the current way it is, through the min ilvl system. It would work functionally identically but not be 1 primal release every few months.

[GeraldineKerla]

Minimum ilvl is more than just challenge mode, it ensures certain drops from fights.

Could just keep it. It doesn't conflict at all.