Old content has become so easy that it is no longer fun

[van_arn]

The game its so easy that you don't even need farm or think about getting some gear.

-Zones are empty with nothing to see or discover besides quests that are already located on the map
-Enemies don't drop anything valuable and they are annoying to the point that you dont want to even kill anything just run away.
-Same dungeon design since 10 years go ; corridor - > mob -> corridor -> mob -> boss repeat.
-No more hard dungeons, there is nothing else to do in a dungeon after finishing for first time.
-Mounts are useless outside of Frontlines/Diadem etc. SE sells you tons of mounts via Moogle Shop but can't even use them on cities like Sharlayan/Crystarium etc.
-FC or guild system wasted completely, no clan wards, ladders etc, just a ghost chat because people gather on Discord channels.
-No legendary weapons/armors etc outside of Relic (which SE always makes sure to make them the most annoying/boring way so 80% of the player base just wait 2 months until nerfs) can't get anything fancy unless you are <The Legend>
-No skill build
-No stats build
-Not an unique or fancy enchant system.
-Limited Armoury chest besides including more and more items every patch.
-Character creator still the same than ARR, hair clipping even on premium items ( $$) , unfinished races can't wear hats (Viera etc)
-0 interactive open world, feels like a game from 2005, just walk/run to point A-B-C and return.
-Gathering system dull/boring/tedious, billions of rocks/plants etc but they still appearing as shiny objects after 3-4 expansions and tons of patches (1 decade )
-SE refuses to improve the base game and just add the same content (a bit of MSQ, 1 dungeon, 1 raid or 4 mini raid, raise and repeat)
-Economy- money (Thanks RMT) useless besides buying clothes for glam or items for the house you are never gonna get.

I could go all the night but meh.

I disagree on a few points, but I absolutely agree on the open world. The fate system is a good step in the right direction to sending people back to the zones -- and I'm including the bicolor gems in that system -- but there's little reason to return to the open world a few weeks after launch. We're missing a full-on system (maybe systems) that are able to reuse the existing open world to populate it again.

Relic weapons sending us back out to do fates isn't it, gathering isn't it, and fates can't do it on their own. I want excuses to go back to Camp Bronze Lake or Amh Areng, and beastmen/fates/sidequests aren't really making me want to do that. It needs to be something that isn't one-off, as a quest or journal would be.

[Raoabolic]

As a drk who got to see their favorite class go from cool hp draining monster to Dark "TBN" Knight I find this thread funny. SE wants to make easy content for everyone to the point of changing classes to make them easier for the average player. Are you that shocked that making classes easier wouldn't effect older content? They could change how gear scales but the underlying issue remains where each class has next to nothing to do in lower levels as far as their rotation goes and the content itself doesn't have a lot of brutal mechanics to deal with. That said, I still lol when I see Quarn pop and people unable to wrap their head over the fact the mob has to die on the platform and it's called final sting for a reason.

[LisSquid]

I personally didn't find the mechanics of ARR-HW dungeons all that engaging, and think now the options for new players would be cut to:

- Experience the dungeon as it is now; low hp mobs and quick completion.

or

- Make new players experience the ...exhilarating mechanics of Aurum Vale like *checks notes* eat fruit and *flips card* dodge aoe for longer than 2 minutes.

[Nafreyu]

I support scaling difficulty of old content ON THE PROVISO that you can use your full suite of abilities, whether you by 70,80 or 90. Scale them and don't remove them from scaled down content.

It's disorienting and disengaging to feel gimped with stripped down rotation and lack of ability charges or synergies.

[Melorie]

- Make new players experience the ...exhilarating mechanics of Aurum Vale like *checks notes* eat fruit and *flips card* dodge aoe for longer than 2 minutes.

Is that really a bad thing, though? I don't think Aurum Vale has ground-breaking mechanics, but how is remembering to eat a fruit in the boss or watch your step in a dungeon worse than face rolling through it? Especially if you're a new player. Imagine unlocking dungeon after dungeon and none of them leaving an impression on you because they each lack something that makes them at least a bit unique. Personally, I would find that a huge turn-off, but maybe it's because I never bought video-games with the intention of getting through it as quickly as possible, though - after all I'm a casual.

And even then, it's not like the dungeon would take you an hour and literally suck the soul out of you regardless.
Perhaps the dungeon design wasn't amazing, but acting like it's this dreaaadful thing that adds nothing to the experience is also a bit too much.

Let it be clear again that I don't believe that Aurum Vale was a masterpiece of dungeon design, but people remember it for a reason. Even nowadays, it is the dungeon that actually makes me speak with sprouts, I don't really see that as a bad thing.

I support scaling difficulty of old content ON THE PROVISO that you can use your full suite of abilities, whether you by 70,80 or 90. Scale them and don't remove them from scaled down content.

It's disorienting and disengaging to feel gimped with stripped down rotation and lack of ability charges or synergies.

I understand your point, but I don't see them doing that. However, as I said, I do wish they would think about lower-level content more given that roulette is a huge content of the game, and it is... terrible, really, most of the time.
It's kind of a paradox because I can tell people that FFXIV is good, but I have to ask them to please, be strong till you're like level 70 or for some classes even 80/90, so the combat gets a tiny bit better and even so, you're still going to be doing low-level content for a long time if you want to level your classes or simply waste time in the game doing something combat-related that's not raiding.

The new player experience already looks quite terrible if you ask me, I can't even fathom to think how it'll be when we have more 2 or so expansions. If this was a game that you simply blasted through it and worked on your endgame gear doing content like other MMOs I wouldn't really care as much, but that's hardly the case - if you want to care about the things that this game is good at you have no choice but to pay attention to the story and, when you actually have something that is combat-related, things melt without you barely understanding what's happening. It's disappointing.

[Anhra]

The funny thing about Aurum Vale was, that the rate of People who mindlessly zerg at everything without thinking and end up dying was so high, that they ended up giving the Coincounter visible Telegraphs to all his attacks, since most Dps (even ranged) as well as Healers always stood rather close to it when it was charging for the swing attack that oneshots everyone who isn't a tank popping a CD. And yes, ive seen multiple Perfect Legends die to this multiple times.

And what truly baffles me, is how People who already have the MSQ cleared and have multiple Jobs at max level, STILL consider themselves unironically as new Players.

[Jybril]

I may not have played the game prior to Stormblood, and I won't deny that old content is of course getting easier as jobs get more fleshed out and the stat squish certainly didn't seem to help. However, from my experience in WoW, where similar statements were being made regarding dungeons and raiding of old, it's mostly nostalgia and rose tinted goggles.

WoW classic proved and is still actively proving that there, old content isn't half as difficult as people remember it being and it was just them not being good at it. It's an educated guess to say the same applies to FF14.

People still wipe on Deadmines, the equivalent to Sastasha here after 15 years. WoW Classic is more about taking your time and being careful.
There's no wallpulls, there's no "HEALER DPS!!11" People actually need to learn their job, manage MP, DPS need to use their utility, tanks make sure aggro is dead set
because it's spicy trying to recover or you wipe and have to trek allll the way back.

Deadmine is by no means hard, though. It's more of YOU have to take time to go through the dungeon (1 hr maybe?) and need patience.
To me, while long, is way more fun than blasting through crap from wall to wall with with just dancing and twirling bosses for 15 mins even at level 90 dungeons.
I like being able to use more skills than just 3 oGCD heals and 1 DPS button.

Level 15 in a 2004 game dungeon is more engaging than a 2022 level 90 dungeon.
Like I said, I get this game caters to "Baby's first MMO" but it's so much from level 1-90
that this is is why I play the game less and less each expansion. It's just boring af man.

[Averax]

The thing is it's partly because we know the older content like the back of our hand so the challenge is long gone and the stat squish likely did it no favors since it's usually the low level content that get effected the most by these sorts of changes.

Nah it's power creep entirely. I don't think the people who drop their ilvl to only get LotA/ST/WoD would be able to handle it if they actually had to deal with the mechanics involved in those raids. People can barely handle the one cerberus mechanic.

[Commander_Justitia]

Nah it's power creep entirely. I don't think the people who drop their ilvl to only get LotA/ST/WoD would be able to handle it if they actually had to deal with the mechanics involved in those raids. People can barely handle the one cerberus mechanic.

They only make their ilvl lower, because they assume the old raids are faster than the new ones (which isnt even true that much anymore), and they can easily afk or do stuff on another screen during it. The additional mechanics would mostly be more flair than difficulty even for people who don't know them.

Making a game more casual invites the masses, but it won't let them stay for very long, if even new players complain about the difficulty/repetiveness, idk... the issue is there are not many other good MMORPG.
It is kinda sad that the most popular MMORPG on the market are from 2004 (WoW) and 2013 (Oldschool Runescape & FF14). Even Guild Wars 2, Elder Scrolls Online and BlackDesertOnline are around 2012-14... It is definetly not a dead genre, because a lot of people still want to play this genre even after almost 10 years, but there seems to be barely competition in the development to replace them.
I bet the next FF MMO would already be in development otherwise, instead of making X addons for FFXIV.

[FoxyAreku]

I've seen wipes in crystal tower raids as recently as last week.

What's your point?

You having a bad group doesn't change that the boss still dies -literally- 300% faster than it used to.

Very impressive you got a group that bad btw. I haven't seen a wipe in crystal tower in years.

And youre confused why content designed in one era is made easier when the jobs have evolved past that design?

Literally no one is confused, you're missing the point of the thread. What's there to be confused of? It's freaking obvious *why* this happens. And it's on the devs for being so lazy to just let it happen without any tweaks to fix it.