Game difficulty, syncing, minimum ilvl and new players

[Iscah]

Yes agree with you on that. What I meant is, this can be used to fix ARR MSQ to make in 2021-newbie-friendly, making it more up to standard to SB and ShB, things like that.

The edits in 5.3 were intended to do that already, so I can't see them doing further work on it besides possibly a focused update of the two MSQ roulette dungeons.

[technole]

MMOs have a shelf life on content and if you were not around when it was hot like Ravana or Bismarck story mode, you're going to miss a point in the game where 100% of the players were new or have similar gear. Today some people still get wrecked and falloff in Ravana because the tank doesn't realize they need to stop attacking when the shield is in-front.

Let us not forget the salty people in Stormblood when they complained that Shinryu trial story mode was "too hard". YoshiP never touched it once, they just let the player base catch-up.

[Jin-]

I remember good old times people wiping multiple times on Garuda NM. Now it's just an another close your eyes and do 1+2+3

[Barwara]

I am trying to get a friend to play but the issue is they get all excited about a trial as a first time player, like they have it in their head it's going to be an epic boss battle and the boss is dead in 20 seconds.

Ya I feel you. I gotta say as a newish player, I'm disappointed by how easy the game is. I understand the need to do daily roulettes quickly just to get your exp, hence rush through content. Unfortunately this is something you'll have to get used to.

One thing I started doing was to go back to doing content blind, instead of researching before hand. I started researching after the embarrassing experience that was failing as tank in Aurum Vale, but now I'm much more comfortable with my classes so I feel like I'm better at thinking on my feet. So I go in blind now, and I don't give two cents if I mess some mechanics and make other people angry. At the end of the day I want there to be some challenge for me and this is the way I'm making the game 'fun' and 'dificult'.

Preparing for a dungeon for a whole day is not really necessary, but as I've just said, just go in blind and try to figure out the mechanics if you can (if they even have time to kick in). Or, look for other beginners who might want to do new content with you (through a FC, party finder).

These days I try to delay new content so I can do it with two of my friends. The 4th random person joining has to suffer our antics but oh well. :P We have fun! And we actually are forced to do the mechanics, instead of being carried by the rest of the party.

So far (I'm at HW) the Extreme Trials have proven the most challenging content, and it usually takes the party I'm with 30+ minutes to clear, if not almost the entire time.

[Packetdancer]

One thing I started doing was to go back to doing content blind, instead of researching before hand. I started researching after the embarrassing experience that was failing as tank in Aurum Vale, but now I'm much more comfortable with my classes so I feel like I'm better at thinking on my feet. So I go in blind now, and I don't give two cents if I mess some mechanics and make other people angry. At the end of the day I want there to be some challenge for me and this is the way I'm making the game 'fun' and 'dificult'.

I left the game around the time of Heavensward launch, having lost steam somewhere in the post-ARR slog. I got lured back properly after Shadowbringers had been out for several months. One of my favorite early-game experiences was as I was leveling through Heavensward en route to catch up to friends at endgame, when I queued into the Vault for the first time.

I (as healer) go "First time, btw."
Tank goes, "Me too, actually."
One DPS goes, "Three."
I go "Wow, three first-timers! What are the odds?"
Other DPS goes, "...four."

We realized that absolutely none of us knew the dungeon (and all of us were in in gear that was at-best on-level for it, so it wasn't like we were going to steamroller things), and went "Should we go look up a guide?" and decided that nope, we were going to go in blind and figure it out. And it was a blast. Sure, the run took at least 2x longer than it would've with someone experienced pulling us through full-tilt, and we wiped I think twice due to unexpected boss mechanics, but we were really enjoying ourselves doing so. At the end, everyone sort of went "That was the most fun I've had in a dungeon in a while, maybe ever!"

It was that experience that made me so eager to do things like run the Puppets' Bunker alliance raid early on day one, when absolutely no one would know mechanics.

So I totally understand what you mean about doing things blind adding some challenge... and also making them a lot more fun. So I try to remember that when I'm just doing a roulette and end up in some dungeon I've run fifty times and just want to get through it; if someone's there for the first time, I'll try to get everyone to slow down a bit and let the first-timer enjoy the experience. It won't be quite the same thing, since many of us will still vastly outgear the content, but at least it won't be a total zerg rush steamrollering everything.

I am part of a discord group that does the old stuff at Min I-level and no Echo and we recently cleared Thordan EX. [...] I am currently doing the whole of Coils MINE too and T9 is the Bitch. Good Lord Nael is hard! We hope to finally beat her next weekend and move on to T10.

...I now really want to start a version of this Discord for my data center. A group from my FC (including me) has been doing that with Coils, since people wanted to see the challenge it originally posed (or at least something like it). We finally got through Nael in T9 a couple of weekends ago, and man that felt like more of an achievement than doing anything in current savage in some ways. (Admittedly, this is in large part because I had so many fewer tools to heal with, and basically none of them were oGCD.)

[Wissp]

...I now really want to start a version of this Discord for my data center. A group from my FC (including me) has been doing that with Coils, since people wanted to see the challenge it originally posed (or at least something like it). We finally got through Nael in T9 a couple of weekends ago, and man that felt like more of an achievement than doing anything in current savage in some ways. (Admittedly, this is in large part because I had so many fewer tools to heal with, and basically none of them were oGCD.)

Congrats with doing that, it was QUITE hard, wasn't it? ;p So you did it MINE too or synced? MINE of course is only I-level 90 with no echo. We saw 3% last weekend and it was so heartbreaking to fail. I see you are a WHM so I guess you got stuck with being golem bait. LOL

Yes, I also think it is harder than the current stuff for as you say, what you have to work with. Stuff like cure 1 is actually needed for MP conservation. If you have a current content healing mentality, you are screwed; you need to adjust, greatly. Also, I am curious, how much DPSing did you do? As we are only using 1 tank, it is mainly my job to keep him up to the point of all else. I don't DARE try and DPS, or the likelihood of him dying is very great with all the damage he takes from Nael, especially in the later phases.

[Packetdancer]

Congrats with doing that, it was QUITE hard, wasn't it? ;p So you did it MINE too or synced? MINE of course is only I-level 90 with no echo. We saw 3% last weekend and it was so heartbreaking to fail. I see you are a WHM so I guess you got stuck with being golem bait. LOL

I was WHM during T9, yeah, though I tanked the first Coil as GNB before the group makeup changed and I swapped back to healing. We did run with no echo, but I don't *think* we did min ilevel. (We had decided we were not *that* masochistic as a group for T9, after having done min ilevel for a few previous floors... but I wouldn't put it past the person who queued us in to have mischievously set that option without mentioning, and I admit I didn't check. It certainly hit hard enough...)

And yes, it was weird to be in content where I genuinely did need to remember healing habits from my first time around in the game, back when Freecure was valuable, and Cure II was genuinely excessive save for dire situations.

But it was also quite fun. I wish more content was made to work that way, to stay relevant and challenging. Maybe not min ilevel—then the gear you got from things like raids wouldn't actually have any value in said raids—but not so easily outgeared.

On the other hand, as I mentioned in the previous post, I feel like some older content might actually be more difficult synced now than it was when current. (Especially with min ilevel on.)

After all, when Coils was current, I seem to recall WHM (as an example) had a lot more abilities at level 50 than it does now. Protect and Stoneskin could be some pretty chonky mitigation (remember the days when everyone waited at the start of a dungeon until the WHM had put Protect on everyone?), Divine Seal was basically what we have now as Temperance in terms of healing potency buff with a shorter cooldown (albeit minus Temp's lovely mitigation factor), the Freecure trait was actually useful (as I mentioned above) and Cure could in fact proc Overcure as well as Freecure, plus you could pull in Eye for an Eye using cross-class skills, etc. And you still had most of our relevant good low-level friends like Cure/Cure II/Cure III, Medica/Medica II, Stone/Stone II, Aero/Aero II, Regen, and Benediction. (And Shroud of Saints; while it's gone now, Lucid Dreaming is basically just Shroud with the serial numbers filed off.)

If you do Coils now, in terms of relevant abilities you have basically Cure/Cure II/Cure III, Medica/Medica II, Stone II, Aero II, Regen, Benediction, and Presence of Mind. Plus the usual role stuff like Lucid Dreaming, Swiftcast, Surecast, and friends... a few of which you admittedly used to have to pull in via cross-class skill slots if you wanted them. Though I suppose there's also some argument to be made for the fact that no longer needing to stance-dance with Cleric Stance does remove a bit of complexity.

Either way, you could make a fairly solid argument that it's not the same experience it used to be, even synced down to appropriate level and gear. But it can still be fun.

And I'd honestly still love to see the Crystal Tower raids done that way, where we'd get to see the return of mechanics that have been long forgotten. Make it an experience as epic as it's supposed to be, lore-wise. Make Praetorium a challenge again. Etc.

We can dream...

[Deezy103]

Eh, I feel like "up the difficulty, up the reward" would be a pretty simple solution comparatively to most others. Yeah it'll take longer but as long as you get compensated for that time it shouldn't be a problem for higher level players looking to zoom through roulettes.

[ReynTime]

I totally get you, but right now there doesn't seem to be an easy solution.
Daily roulettes are already seen as a chore by a lot of players, they just want to hurry with it and cross that off the list.
MSQ content like the normal (and IIRC hard) trials can't be excluded from the roulette since MSQ queue time would suffer dramatically from that.

And with how gear progression works in this game even weekly tomestone gear already feels pointless outside raids due gear sync, I'm pretty sure people would be upset if they started being synced to the min ilvl in low level content of all things.

You mean every other MMO. I stated it in a different thread and i'll state it here. Beginning/previous content will always be made easier to catch the player up to the current content. This is standard basically in every MMO that has been out a while.

Not every MMO has ilvl syncing. In which case you expect to make short work of the lower level content because that's how your characters' progression works.
It feels more frustrating here because this is a game where syncing is supposed to be done to pull advanced characters down to be proportional to the instance being run. However it's really redundant when said sync doesn't even prevent the content from being trivialized by gear regardless.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Not every MMO has ilvl syncing. In which case you expect to make short work of the lower level content because that's how your characters' progression works.
It feels more frustrating here because this is a game where syncing is supposed to be done to pull advanced characters down to be proportional to the instance being run. However it's really redundant when said sync doesn't even prevent the content from being trivialized by gear regardless.

Part of the problem is that a lot of the old endgame content is level synced but not ilevel synced. Hard to take Praetorum seriously when your ilevel is synced to 250% the ilevel it was tuned for.