Game difficulty, syncing, minimum ilvl and new players

[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.

[technole]

I don't see an issue with old fights retaining their difficulty - or at least enough of it to still feel like an epic battle and not a pushover. Don't enforce a min-ilevel sync but keep it at or not too far above the best gear you could own when the fight was current.

The "reward" of getting stronger from current high-level gear should be felt in current fights, not old ones.

Well they did do this for the ultimate fights where they cannot be unsync, and are ilevel sync/capped so they can't be outgeared. It was felt like that was a players request to retain the difficulty and value of the titles.

I do think they should extend this mindset to other end-game content, possibly savage and normal difficulty trials at level 80. The leveling up ones like Ravana, and Titania tend to stay as-is on difficulty over time since they are downsynced.

[Absurdity]

I do think they should extend this mindset to other end-game content, possibly savage and normal difficulty trials at level 80.

I don't see much of a reason to keep savage synced. It doesn't add any titles so the only "bragging rights" you get from it is the gear, which will be rather useless once the next raid tier is released, and mounts, which you rarely ever even notice. Forcing a sync for savage accomplishes very little besides keeping less skilled players from getting the glamour and mounts later on. Considering that savage is normally the only way to acquire the dyeable version of the normal raid gear this is bound to annoy people and do little else.

[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...

[Dogempire]

The playerbase as a whole is (understandably) afraid of wiping and having to press that return to start button, so SE has to cater content with a participation trophy mentality where barring the most serious of mistakes it's very hard to actually wipe to things and simply showing up and pressing buttons gets you a clear.

Even with situations where there are 6 people dead except the tank and the healer, it's there isn't much danger of wiping, the only danger is having to collect dust on the floor while the healer raises people 1 by 1, and by that point you're probably tabbed out wondering if you'll be dead last on the rezzing queue, plus the aforementioned situation rarely happens since there's so few normal mode mechanics that actually carry any risk of killing a single person, let alone 6.

[Jonnycbad]

Yeah, it's just that going back and helping my friends to be motivated to keep playing through ARR and early HW basically amounts to me hedging it with "keep it up and it'll get better", meanwhile I'm biting my nails hoping it's not too discouraging/boring for them. They aren't really MMO players but are longtime FF fans, so I'm hopeful they'll stick with it. It's just theres 0 strategy for the first 100 hours of FFXIV because shit just melts and it can really suck the wind out of the sails of new players who get this huge buildup for fights like Thordan or Ultima Weapon and then it's just a snooze fest.

[technole]

I don't see much of a reason to keep savage synced. It doesn't add any titles so the only "bragging rights" you get from it is the gear, which will be rather useless once the next raid tier is released, and mounts, which you rarely ever even notice. Forcing a sync for savage accomplishes very little besides keeping less skilled players from getting the glamour and mounts later on. Considering that savage is normally the only way to acquire the dyeable version of the normal raid gear this is bound to annoy people and do little else.

They already add echo a patch or two later from the next savage anyway, and people already can't just go into Alphascape let alone Eden's Gate Savage and take a win without knowing the mechanics. E4S will probably be a gate for those who don't know the fight for awhile regardless.

[Puremallace]

Then form a group and do min ilvl sync. It would be a nightmare to queue for a normal roulette just to feel like you are fighting a savage level fight. A lot of the classes, spells and methods did not even exist when a lot of these fights were originally made.

Expecting new content to be on par as difficult as the latest expansion would cause content cycles to literally take forever as they would have to rebalance the entire game everytime they modified a single ability.

[dsgawwewerfw]

lowering the item level synch of duties is probably combined with an enormous effort, similar to rebuilding the entire game from the ground up
otherwise there is really no reason for not doing it