Tighten the ilvl sync for early trials/alliance raids/raids

[catofsnake]

As it is, early raids throughout the game such as labyrinth of the ancients or alexander gordias, etc. are so trivialized by the non-existent item level sync that the content essentially just becomes whacking on a prettied up striking dummy for 10 minutes until you can get your roulette bonus for the day. When's the last time anyone has ever seen the mechanics in crystal tower? Apart from one or two instant kill mechanics, I'd bet that the answer would be "not in 5 years or so". The extra stats from being upwards of 80-100 item levels above the original item level the content was designed for just ruin it all. extra health making attacks barely a threat, extra DPS skipping mechanics entirely, etc. It all just builds up to a feeling of "why even play this?"

It could easily be fixed. Just tighten the ilvl sync from a level cap's max ilvl, down to somewhere like 20-40 ilvls above the original minimum. Enough that it'd be faster/easier at launch, but not enough to turn the content into a complete snooze. I know a lot of people want to just get their daily circus tower run for EXP or relics and get out, but is that really a healthy state for the game? Content that you have to run over and over should at least have some level of thought or intrigue needed. I know that all blurs together when you repeat it for the 10th time, but still; It's a problem for new players seeing the content for the first time, as well. Having Labyrinth of the Ancients be a player's first view of 24-man content doesn't make for a good impression...

I don't know... this problem is so prevalent throughout the game, with content becoming trivial not too long after it comes out. It's a normal raid, sure, but later normal-level content can get fun enough even for just being normal when mechanics are actually somewhat threatening. For the new player experience, it really just makes the game a matter of "get to current content faster so I can actually have a nice time" rather than being able to enjoy the content that's already there. Yeah, there's extremes and savages, but being able to enjoy the content fed to you through the story and roulettes would be nice, too.

[Stepjam]

I certainly would enjoy if the ilvl sync was tighter. It's a bit sad when a fight that was exciting at lsunch becomes faceroll.

[Rongway]

Wait a little bit to see if they'll put out more detailed information about the upcoming stat squish. So far they have explicitly said that doing content at the intended level will still feel the same as it does now, but the new power curve will have the side effect of making unsyncked content harder because the relative power levels between cap levels will be smaller. Whether "level" means "character level" or "item level", one of the possible consequences we can extrapolate from this is that severely overgearing content should also be harder than it is now, since much of the power difference between character levels is attributable to the difference in available gear, and the power difference between item levels is most sharply seen within the iLv spread of a single cap level. So you might get what you're asking for as a side effect of the stat squish.

[ItMe]

I certainly would enjoy if the ilvl sync was tighter. It's a bit sad when a fight that was exciting at lsunch becomes faceroll.

I feel a bit sad in general as I was never around for those exciting launches and ShBs alliance raids have been pretty faceroll on launch.
I keep hearing about how this alliance raid or that alliance raid was pretty tough on release.
Ozma
Thunder man
Even the skeletons in labyrinth of the ancients would wipe parties.
So I was hype to do the Nier raids on day 1 when everyone would be maximally confused and things would be chaotic and crazy, but things went pretty all right. I've never wiped on either of the Neir raids. I wanna have a crazy 24-man time

[Iscah]

Cape Westwind direly needs a tighter sync. It's at the point that bewildered newbies are left asking "that was it?" when he dies after a twenty-second fight that might as well be against a striking dummy.

I got to try it at minimum ilevel the other day and it was actually a challenge. Not enough to be a roadblock, but enough to feel like we came through a battle.

[Yuella]

Just make Cape Westwind cap at 49

[Asari5]

yes pls. do it.... sync the ilvl down to a lower lvl as now. i'm totally in for it. i heard a lot of new player saying how its WAY too easy and boring. its totally not helpful to keep new players if they dont have to do anything in the raids. The game is already very slow in the beginning... no need to make all these epic battles totally unepic through such a feeble lvl sync

i stopped doing alliance raid roulette because of the crystal tower raids.... i cant see them anymore... it would help at least a bit if we actually have to do something in there
and all the lvl 50 dungeons too... most mechanics dont even matter anymore. i dont understand it... new players dont understand it either. they ask: 'why even implement a mechanic if its this easy?'.

[ForteNightshade]

I would certainly welcome this. Hell, just last night I was going through ARR dungeons to help a friend and mocking at how ridiculously fast bosses die. Raids like Weeping City, Rabanastre and etc are a shell of their former selves, though nothing beats how comically overpowered we are for Crystal Tower. I can't help but think if I were a new player, so much of this content just... wouldn't be fun or engaging because it's so absurdly easy.

What I think they ought to do is scale each fight to the highest ilvl obtainable at the time of its relevance. So in the case of Weeping City, i240 was BiS. So that's what we're synced to. Crystal Tower would need to be synced further since I believe it's scaling was always been pretty ridiculous, but the general idea follows. They also need to address how imbalanced certain jobs are at low levels. It's another factor in why old content is a complete joke. Jobs like Ninja, Gunbreaker, Dancer and Red Mage are comically overpowered at various levels. I don't know why they seemingly abandoned trait upgrades this expansion, however it needs to be brought back so Ninja doesn't have an 800 potency attack at level 35 and a 30% buff to said attack by level 50.

[TaleraRistain]

Gotta disagree. I'm fine with how it is. Yep, Crystal Tower is a faceroll. It's also required for MSQ now and has a LOT more new folks going through it. They have issues with the mechanics even when they're explained. They're going to. They're new. They don't have the practice at them that veterans have. And when half the WoD raid is new, I usually see wipes. And if we wipe a couple of times on the eye due to new folks, then people start dropping. I do Alliance roulette pretty much every day because I find it enjoyable and it's good tomes, even on the runs that go pear-shaped, and it's a consistent pattern.

Right now newness can be mitigated by how powerful everyone else is. That will be more difficult with a tighter ilvl sync. And that will lead to greater frustration, so either more people will drop since we'll probably wipe more or just choose not to do the roulette at all, meaning new folks have less of a pool to help them get through a now-required raid. I also don't think they would have made it required if they intended to make it harder. It's only something they could add to the MSQ because it's so easy now. Same reason they modified the Ivalice raids, since they made them a requirement for resistance weapons, a non-Savage item and thus something a wider base would pursue.

And really, this goes along with the idea of Final Fantasy games. What happens when you have a boss you can't get past (minus XIII which artificially limits you)? You level up so you can overpower it and curbstomp it to continue.

[Rongway]

Yep, Crystal Tower is a faceroll. It's also required for MSQ now and has a LOT more new folks going through it. They have issues with the mechanics even when they're explained. They're going to. They're new. They don't have the practice at them that veterans have.

They're not going to get practice with "mechanics matter" if things are so faceroll that six people can carry the other eighteen. They're also not going to learn mechanics without feedback. It's never new people's fault for being new, and if after the first wipe nobody ever takes the five seconds to type "face away from Mortal Gaze" or "stand in light circle to cleanse doom", repeated wipes are on the vets.