Quote Originally Posted by kaynide View Post
Arguably they do have a difficulty curve.
A. Well-crafted. Difficulty. Curve. That is the difference. Ours is more like a messy square root curve that suddenly jumps at the end.

Our problem is that our situated difficulties largely rely on now-defunct experiences, be that due to expansion-by-expansion obsolesce or pruning.

When were the habits useful for Savage last situated without repeated head-to-wall collisions in an ill-prepared attempt at Savage itself? When there was only one difficulty level, right about halfway between Savage and the later Normal mode. Where does one reach that now? Extreme trials, to some extent, but at a much greater stretch. The gap has widened.

At the same time, design changes have necessarily made any return to depth all the more daunting. When last were concerns and related skills like those of CC, focus targeting, kill order, kiting, or enmity-swaps outside of Provoke/Shirk alone actually situated in typical content? Early ARR.

By steadily reducing player means and agency -- the means, taken or not, by which we might approach content, giving tuning sufficient not to be overwhelmed by the simplest strats of run to gate, AoE all, repeat -- XIV has necessarily reduced the available points of interest in typical content and made the gap between typical content and more novel or involved content all the wider.