Quote Originally Posted by Ranaku View Post
Idk why you should care but just for example, why should other athletes care if the other competing athletes are on steroids and winning all the medals? I know that analogy doesn't work exactly since players here aren't competing directly against each other but it still devalues the achievement overall, for example when all players just buy their way through Ultimate it makes the status symbol of your weapon less worth it in the eyes of others. Yes for you that might not be a big problem cause you got your personal value out of the fight and the reward for yourself but others do want to show off what they achieved and furthermore this is what the devs envisioned. They didn't created Ultimate etc. so people can just cheat their way through it, it's just disrespectful. It's like someone building a fun maze for you and you just decide to go around it.

But i also think people have to differentiate between the different tools. I personally think damage meters are alright cause self improvement is important and lets be honest the training dummy doesn't deliver any data that is worth it. On the other hand tools that basically tell you what the boss is casting next or where you have to stand etc. is blatantly cheating. One tool is to prepare to play good and the other one is so you don't have to play the game basically.
The problem is the line drawn between accessible content and rewards vs trophy worthy events. FFXIV end game design is not at all built to properly deal with trophy / achievement style rewards in a professional way. The difficulty curve has no customization to it that is accessible from the players own end, which is one of the major reasons that people end up making ways to make the content easier.

And there is zero reason to not have tighter control over difficulty curve in end game content. The idea of having a slow gear ramp up until the next content patch to make content easier is dated and lazy design. If someone wants to down the savage content with 15% echo on from day one because they want to complete the content and go do other content they are releasing because they lack the time to deal with min-iLvL and pentameld, they should have the option to do so with a group. And if this makes savage overall easier to complete all the better because right now the savage experience deteriorates into the floor after the first month for progression. People clear content and then go on to do reclear groups with other people that clear content. And with the new class designs there are a lot more people trying to clear savage now than there was even in Shadowbringers.

There is not a single person on this forum who can say with a strait face that they have a "fun and enjoyable time" doing PF after the first wave of prog is over and everyone is now stuck on something like p3s because of fight design. Not to mention this applies for statics that can't get in more than two days in a week.

I mean, level sync the gear in savage and let people have a difficulty slider via echo. Problem solved. If people want to achieve clearing at the min-ilvl, they can go back and do it after learning how the fight works so the field is actually fair.