The Difficulty Schism (And Why The Real Enemy is Scaling & Max iL Sync)

[Colt47]

You called Savage and Extreme as the fastest way to the end of the road, but you only see them as that because you have defined 'End of the road' to mean getting highest stats, when really, the only thing for which clearing Savage is the end of the road, is on the road for clearing Savage. If you are not on that road, then there really is no reason to be bothered that it does hand out some extra gearing as merit badges that won't even be relevant to casual content because of ilvl sync.

Please work on your phrasing before trying to reply to something that you have apparently no degree of understanding about. iLvL sync doesn't exist past the end of the MSQ because the game is actively developed for people to get to feel the power difference when they have the better gear. This is why there is a cycle of people that state things feel too easy on the later patches, because the iLvL the players have far exceeds the min iLvL of the dungeons. The devs are trying to mitigate this with how they are designing dungeons to be more engaging than last expansion, but this same thing is going to happen again. Almost no one uses the iLvL sync feature willingly outside of some rare instances. (Also, yes I am aware of iLvL sync on dungeons that eventually cycle to the roulette that is basically "old expert dungeon roulette", but the iLvL is so far above the base iLvL it really doesn't make a difference)

[Aldath]

I agree. I started at SHB, and I had interest in FFXIV boss design since ARR launch because of how fun it loked and how cool the music was. Lo and behold, since the Ifrit fight and until I reached Endwalker, the instanced content was one of the biggest dissapointments I've ever had. Very good game design, having the player lose about an hour and a half doing a banquet so a group of douchebags tell you that the weak point of the boss is the obvious unprotected shiny spot on its chest, and then have this battle that was hyped some hours before that take at most 2 minutes, and that was with Duty Support.

I don't know why on earth they gave Ultima and Castrum a pass to make it less anti-climatic. Ultima is still a fun and challenging battle for complete sprouts, and it isn't an absolute snoozefest compared to Shiva, Leviathan, and everything else after it and until Endwalker. Heck, they bothered fixing the ilvl sync of Endsinger to make her less pathetic, yet Shinryu and Hades are still an absolute joke of a fight.

And seriously, I don't understand why some old bosses still take longer to kill than others. Lakshmi for some reason still takes a decent time and requires more attention span than other bosses after her. Ryne/Shiva gets literaly melted by damage compared to the bosses before her. Carbuncle in the Pandaemonium raids is pathetic compared to what comes before him, but suddenly everything after him is still enjoyable. And the Myths of the Realms ARs aren't fun anymore, everything gets killed before it has a chance to do anything; Dun Scaith is somehow still harder than Myths, heck, Nier has pretty much remained consistantly challenging through patches.

And it's getting worse. I recently got with my sprout friend into Eden raids and he was dissapointed at how things die too fast. I played them for fun a week before Dawntrail launch and they still took a decent amount of time to clear (except the aftermentioned Ryne); we are still in phase 1 of Dawntrail endgame and the raid already feels like it was released and powercrept 3 expansions ago.

[CrazyDude]

I completely agree. This game needs more care put into preserving the experience of older content. I still do not understand why the devs seem adamant on only putting ilvl syncs on 4 player content. And even with those, a lot of them - especially pre-Shadowbringers - are too lenient. I was so disgusted getting Aglaia the other day and seeing how Nald'thal had been butchered that I'm not sure I'm ever going to do AR roulette again.

Heck, they bothered fixing the ilvl sync of Endsinger to make her less pathetic, yet Shinryu and Hades are still an absolute joke of a fight.

And seriously, I don't understand why some old bosses still take longer to kill than others. Lakshmi for some reason still takes a decent time and requires more attention span than other bosses after her. Ryne/Shiva gets literaly melted by damage compared to the bosses before her. Carbuncle in the Pandaemonium raids is pathetic compared to what comes before him, but suddenly everything after him is still enjoyable. And the Myths of the Realms ARs aren't fun anymore, everything gets killed before it has a chance to do anything; Dun Scaith is somehow still harder than Myths, heck, Nier has pretty much remained consistantly challenging through patches.

Lakshmi is a leveling trial, so her fight is properly synced at level 68 and relatively immune to ilvl creep. Proto-Carbuncle is supposed to be fairly easy. There is supposed to be a difficulty curve for each Normal Raid tier, where fight 1 is easiest and fight 4 is the hardest. Imo the devs have been failing to accomplish that since Eden's Gate, and likely putting all their balancing focus on Savage.


Ryne and Hades are just simply horrible design. Even when they were each current groups only ever saw all the mechanics if dps was really low. If your fight is going to be heavily scripted you have to make sure the fight lasts long enough to exhaust all the unique mechanics.


Shinryu would be a pretty challenging fight for a normal mode that would give new players a taste of later game difficulty if it were properly synced.


Myths of the Realm were genuinely awful mechanically, the only reason people gave them a pass was "pretty". It's no wonder Dun Scaithe is harder. It's actually challenging to begin with, and because the min ilvl is 235, the effective ilvl sync is only 40 higher at 275 (level 60 max). Contrast that to Aglaia, which was braindead easy when it was current, and with a min ilvl of 565 and an effective max of 665, it's getting absolutely melted.


The Nier raids - and ShB content as a whole - are in a bit of a weird place. ShB benefited the most from the 6.0 stat squish, so there actually is not that much of a difference between, say, ilvl 435 and 535. It does matter, and there are a few mechanics that are always skipped on Copied Factory, but it's a far cry from the situation of most other Alliance Raid series.

[CrazyDude]

I'd still just like to see minimum item level runs added to the Duty Finder directly (e.g., a second checkmark one can fill, to queue for simultaneously with a regular version if they so wish) and give proportionately higher rewards. Normalize options for more significant challenge without necessarily taking away the ability to leave content a breeze for those who don't want it.

I would LOVE this. It would solve so many of my issues with the current state of roulettes and make it a pretty consistent experience across the board. No more wondering if Trial Roulette will give you a short or a long one for example. At min ilvl, they pretty much all average 8-12 minutes, except for the leveling Trials which do not even have a min ilvl.

That said, ability acquisition and the appearance of mechanics really should be hastened (e.g., a full rotational kit [50 to 56-esque] by level 30 and a decently fleshed out kit [70-esque] by 50),

The problem with this is they would have to do a complete rebalancing of the potencies of actions at these lower levels. Losing abilities when level synced sucks, but the alternative is worse. I've hopped around between several MMOs. Every MMO that has tried to allow players to keep all abilities when level synced has had massive power creep at low levels. Yes, worse than this game. I would indeed like to see them do this, but I honestly don't know if they can/will spare the time to do this correctly.

[Hypnotic13371337]

iLV is only a small part of the problem. Heard people say that even doing minimum item level Cyrcus Tower, you still skip the super attack of boss 1 and 2.

The biggest issue are new jobs getting much more potent abilities at lower levels. Back in 2.x, DRG's Full Thrust was high damage at around 300 potency, SMN's Fester was one of the strongest abilities at around 450 potency I think.

Looking at new jobs, PCT got 3 hammers a minute for 560 direct crit, SAM has a 700 crit every 8th GCD or so.

The item level part is mostly an issue that will show itself in the patch series (Like Endsinger) due to no iLV sync on the content.

I remember critting Bahamut on my Nin with Aeolean Edge right before HW for like 937 or so. Also remember at one point being excited that ruin 2 finally hit for over 100 damage in ARR somewhere on SMN xD

[Shurrikhan]

The problem with this is they would have to do a complete rebalancing of the potencies of actions at these lower levels.

Potency creep already necessitates this.

Losing abilities when level synced sucks, but the alternative is worse. I've hopped around between several MMOs. Every MMO that has tried to allow players to keep all abilities when level synced has had massive power creep at low levels.

Which has what exactly to do with my suggestion (learning more skills early on, even if just by siphoning active skill/mechanic acquisitions from later levels)?

No part of my post asks to retain skills above the syned-to level when synced.

[Bibine_Bine]

Yeah, I actually fully agree with this take. I don't really know what a good solution might be, though. Having everything set to min ilvl sync by default would probably upset a lot of people, though I wouldn't particularly care. I like having that challenge.

[BunnyQueen]

Hello!

I’m not a forum poster, but this seems to be where the discussion is unfolding regarding the difficulty of Duty Finder content in Dawntrail.

Healers still don't get engaging content. Square is still ignoring healers.

[Payadopa]

The ilvl is just ridiculous at this point and needs a severe nerf.

Also, we should be able to ADJUST THE ILVL IN A PREMADE PARTY.

Just change the percentage drop rate accordingly or whatever. We need more difficulty options. Not just brain-dead and go find 7 other people if you want to have fun.

[CrazyDude]

Also, we should be able to ADJUST THE ILVL IN A PREMADE PARTY.

Just change the percentage drop rate accordingly or whatever. We need more difficulty options. Not just brain-dead and go find 7 other people if you want to have fun.

Yes! It's so annoying having to do fights like Ravana EX at flat-out min ilvl to have a fun time when really just a slightly stricter ilvl sync would be enough. But it's all the difficulty or nothing.