SE stop doing the "norm"

[Thebard]

I would like to see a kind of difficulty of XI on ARR. Now before anti xi'ers or fanboys jump this let me explain.
XIV difficulty was trying to avoid laggy cracks that basically split players between "F-you noob lolyoucantavoidcracks" and "F-youit'snotmyfaultSEmakeslaggygames", or trying to beat a dungeon as stupidly quick as possible only to not see DL untill 20 speed runs later.

In XI a good example of difficult im looking for would be Salvage. To even Salvage you had to beat story quests to a certain point, then beat out all the assaults with a full pt who also beat all assaults, then assault more to make points to even go into Salvage. After all that work youd get thrown into a dungeon completely naked, with no weapons, no ability's, no magic NOTHING and it was your job to unlock those ability's before you could go fight the monsters that dropped great gear. EVEN AFTER ALL THAT the drop wasn't 100% you hope to unlock enough ability's for your pt to succeed went to fight a big baddy and -maybe- got 1/3 of a armour peice that you wanted.

After all that you'd keep assaulting for points, then salvaging to try to get 3/3 on a armor piece, collect items to have it made to a salvage armor then turn it in to a NPC to have the peice you wanted.

THAT was work and people running around with salvage gear were regarded highly.

Salvage difficulty is the kind of timesink hard work and dedication that I loved of XI and much less annoying(imo) then standing around CC' failing 5 times waiting 15 mins to reenter, looking for a new tank that D/c half through the battle and going to bed that night without a single speed run complete. Or having 10 speed runs and no DL.

Although you very nicely summed up ffxiv 1.0 endgame I don't believe that there is any difference between repeating endgame content over and over and repeating endgame content over and over.
The key is character development through more than just the gear treadmill. Putting all the development emphasis at endgame and then letting your playerbase get to max level easily is the fatal flaw of almost every MMO ever.

[Kyri]

Putting all the development emphasis at endgame and then letting your playerbase get to max level easily is the fatal flaw of almost every MMO ever.

Totally. all jobs to 50 should be a rare accomplishment. I have had a lot of fun leveling in XI and even the various styles I was able to play with as SE worked out kinks for it here in XIV. I didn't feel like XI was the same thing over and over. I think why I enjoy that way to XIV's is assaults were each different and so was salvage. I wouldn't enter salvage and spam the heck out of it till bedtime or till I hated it. I was forced to go do other things to continue salvaging. The current XIv systems not like that a change would be ok instead of CC let's do AV. I don't know imo SE was kinda getting it with hamlet. You would have to do provisions to be a top provisioner to get the stones, but I think Hamlet needs some serious rethinking because waiting to reset and fighting the rest of the awake community for spots isn't a fun system.