FF14 needs more difficulty levels

[Skiros]

Imo the game needs more challenging solo content.

Casuals are far more likely to try out gradual difficulty solo content than bother to meet and talk with people to get into a static to do raids, that takes times, mental effort and also requires specific times for raid and organize that many do not like being limited to.

Now they could also make a solo savage raid option where the npcs behave very average or slightly below average so victory COMPLETELY depends on your own PERSONAL performance but that is probably a lot of work instead of some solo designed deep dungeon.

It already exists in the form of solo deep dungeon and Bozja duels. But there are two significant problems:

Solo deep dungeon is way too hardcore for the majority of players. HoH solo took me around 40 hours which is the same amount of time you'd dedicate to an entire Savage tier. There is no incentive for players to solo deep dungeons up to any point other than the top floor, which IMO is an extremely bad implementation.

Solution:

The new deep dungeon should remain extremely tough for those who want to solo up to the max floor. However, there needs to be significant rewards every 10 levels beyond a certain "hard" floor so that players can actually feel good about soloing them without feeling like it's a drag.

I think the new deep dungeon needs to have 150 floors. It should start getting as hard as HoH floors 50-60 at floor 80. Then allow people to choose between three starting points: 1, 41, and 81.

IMO, for rewards:

Reaching floor 90: a title and an exclusive minion (one-time). Difficulty: HoH 61-70, PotD 151-170.

Reaching floor 100: 360 weekly tomes (weekly reset) Difficulty: Hoh 71-80, PotD 171-189.

Reaching floor 110: an exclusive mount and glamour (one-time) Difficulty: HoH 71-80, PotD 171-189.

Reaching floor 120: a title and a one-time significant boost to relic weapon completion of your choice (e.g. skip the Harrowing Memory step) Difficulty: HoH 81-100, PotD 190-200.

Reaching floor 130: 20M gil (one-time) and 24 Savage books of your choice (one-time). One relic step completion of your choice (weekly reset). HoH 81-100, PotD 190-200.

Reaching floor 140: An exclusive mount and glamour (one-time). 3M gil (weekly reset). Harder than HoH/PotD.

Reaching floor 150: An exclusive title and two relic weapon step completions of your choice (one-time). One relic weapon step completion of your choice (weekly reset). Harder than HoH/Potad.

---------

Party mode rewards:

Floor 120: Title and one-time relic step completion.

Floor 150: Mount, 20M gil, glamours, and one-time relic step completion.

They do different things:

Floor 1 is for everyone to experience the new deep dungeon for the first time at a casual pace.

Floor 41 is for people who want to grind levels or other stuff.

Floor 81 is for the challenge mode and I hope that they enable achievements even if you start from Floor 81. At the moment HoH solo is a drag all the way until Floor 61, which is just a huge waste of time. I didn't even bother with PotD solo because I had to grind so many potions and grind through 150 floors of boring snoozefests. This needs to change. Make all floors starting from 81 challenging and engaging. This way you have 70 floors of challenging content.

This is the reward structure that I think should be used.

Also please make it a non-reskin deep dungeon. I don't think I will even touch it if it's just PotD reskin 3.0

[Liam_Harper]

Solo deep dungeon is way too hardcore for the majority of players.

I personally don't find it too hardcore, I just find its not worth my time investment. It's strange that the devs ramble about how they can't make Mythic dungeons because it'll be stressful and punishing, yet they made a dungeon that literally erases hours of progress over a single wipe.

I'm just not motivated to run something that I could spend hours on and lose everything because I dc'd or had a string of really bad RNG on floor 199. Nor can I be bothered to run 150 floors of boredom just to reach the challenging part. It's like having an end tier Savage boss that requires you to beat 20 normal mode bosses, 10 EX bosses and the first few Savage bosses in a row without a wipe and then you finally get your challenging boss.
The save system is also rubbish. Imagine being bound to a static that you can never sub a player or pull someone in from PF without redoing the entire tier. Starting from Normal mode.

[Kuroka]

I personally don't find it too hardcore, I just find its not worth my time investment. It's strange that the devs ramble about how they can't make Mythic dungeons because it'll be stressful and punishing, yet they made a dungeon that literally erases hours of progress over a single wipe.

I'm just not motivated to run something that I could spend hours on and lose everything because I dc'd or had a string of really bad RNG on floor 199. Nor can I be bothered to run 150 floors of boredom just to reach the challenging part. It's like having an end tier Savage boss that requires you to beat 20 normal mode bosses, 10 EX bosses and the first few Savage bosses in a row without a wipe and then you finally get your challenging boss.
The save system is also rubbish. Imagine being bound to a static that you can never sub a player or pull someone in from PF without redoing the entire tier. Starting from Normal mode.

Excatly that... let us have saves and restart from them... id love to try, but the time... and as soon as im gettin tired in the evenings i dont even dare to try it, if something is up that needs me to leave i can trash my whole progress... If i could try 10 floors a time, id have cleared it years ago...

[Ralphe2449]

The new deep dungeon should remain extremely tough for those who want to solo up to the max floor. However, there needs to be significant rewards every 10 levels beyond a certain "hard" floor so that players can actually feel good about soloing them without feeling like it's a drag.

I think the new deep dungeon needs to have 150 floors. It should start getting as hard as HoH floors 50-60 at floor 80. Then allow people to choose between three starting points: 1, 41, and 81.

IMO, for rewards:

Reaching floor 90: a title and an exclusive minion (one-time). Difficulty: HoH 61-70, PotD 151-170.

Reaching floor 100: 360 weekly tomes (weekly reset) Difficulty: Hoh 71-80, PotD 171-189.

Reaching floor 110: an exclusive mount and glamour (one-time) Difficulty: HoH 71-80, PotD 171-189.

Reaching floor 120: a title and a one-time significant boost to relic weapon completion of your choice (e.g. skip the Harrowing Memory step) Difficulty: HoH 81-100, PotD 190-200.

Reaching floor 130: 20M gil (one-time) and 24 Savage books of your choice (one-time). One relic step completion of your choice (weekly reset). HoH 81-100, PotD 190-200.

Reaching floor 140: An exclusive mount and glamour (one-time). 3M gil (weekly reset). Harder than HoH/PotD.

Reaching floor 150: An exclusive title and two relic weapon step completions of your choice (one-time). One relic weapon step completion of your choice (weekly reset). Harder than HoH/Potad.

That is absolutely something I would love to see. Especially since that gradual design allows you to ramp up difficulty in a good manner.

I have honestly not bothered with potd/hoh much due to lack of rewards like those and the fact that I was told that getting to max floor as certain melee classes is not possible unless you use the "spinning" around mob circle to cancel their auto attack which honestly sounds like bad design, that is not kiting, it is not positioning, it is doing something incredibly specific to bug out a mob so it stops auto attacking.
Instead auto attack damage should be survivable(as long as you dont take too long) for dps assuming good use of your personal health/leech skills and obviously not getting hit by mechanics and dealing with adds appropriately.

Also the fact that Potd is stuck at lvl 50 is another issue since classes feel very boring and simple at that level