Difficulty In FFXI - A Retrospective

Bit early maybe, but I'd like to read more opinions on other old time FFXI players concerning content difficulty in FFXI.
First of all a premise, what is "difficulty"?
I don't think there is an unambiguous way to define it, it's subject to context, personal opinions and scenarios.
Ultimately the most efficient way to measure it would be by amount of players completing a specific content in a window of time post release. A smaller number of players completing a content X weeks after release, would hint at that content being more "difficult" than others. With the uningnorable key aspect that it's hard to measure it since there is no official, open and transparent list (like in WoW for instance) and we only get approximate values from boards like FFXIAH, where only a small part of the overall player base participate in discussions, hence this can lead to biased perceptions.
Also right now we have a much smaller player base compared to several years ago, this skews the results because there are less overall attempts at a specific content, at the same time on average the player-base still playing these days is likely more proficient at the game than the average level we had several years ago.
The amount of different tools in the players' hands and how widespread they are compared to several years ago, also affects the result.


From the developers' point of view
"Balancing" the difficulty of content for Devs is much higher when you have too many variables at play.
This is exactly the reason why over the years most MMOs, following WoW's model, tried to standardize these variables.
With less and less of them at play, it's easier for Devs to "control" the environment and hence create a more predictable one where the difficulty isn't too hard or too easy according to those variables.
WoW started this progressively with several steps bit by bit. The most important one has been the "homogeneization" approach started in patch 3.0 (WotLK), followed by 4.0 (Cataclysm).
In FFXI the definition of "roles" according to the trinity system is more bland. This is made furtherly complex by the fact you can customize role/purpose by combining different subjobs, by variable number of players participating in the content (3-18) and by the fact that there's a plethora of different support buffs, most of which can be combined together because they don't share the same slot.
This makes it incredibly hard for devs to "balance" content because players have too much freedom and what can be borderline impossible with some setups, becomes a joke with some combinations (synergy) of specific jobs/buffs.

Lately SE tried its own way to "standardize" things without completely changing the game approach like WoW did.
They did this by creating limitations (6 people content, no subjob, WS wall), immunities (targets immune to several abilities/spells/effects) and "fuck you" mechanics (instant death, unresistable full dispel, AoE weakened status, targets ignoring enmity rules, systems that require a specific proc with that proc getting progressively harder to activate each following time) and much higher HP pools of targets (making zergs with buff-stacking and short duration invincibility things like Perfect Defense, uneffective, especially in environment where content is fixed for 6 people and not variable).

All of these features together greatly limitate the excessive freedom in the hands of players, making content somewhat more "equally difficult" instead than being excessively difficult with some setups, but easy with some others.


A Retrospective of end-game content difficulty
Here's my personal take on some end-game content I can think of

Abyssea
Voidwatch
Legion
Delve
Incursion
Vagary
Aeonic (Zi'tah, Ru'aun, Reisen highest tier battles)
Omen
Master Trials
Divergence Dynamis
Odyssey Sheol-Gaol


My personal take is that, thanks to the extremely controlled environment Odyssey Sheol Gaol is so far the "most difficult" content for FFXI.
They succeeded in making the hardest version of the content "desirable".
They succeeded in limitating the huge amount of freedom/synergy in the hands of players, hence creating content that's more averagely/regularly difficult, instead that the classic Black or White FFXI situation (where a content is extremely hard with most setups, but somewhat easy with a few others).
They succeded in creating this extremely controlled environment, without completely changing the core of the game (like WoW, for instance).

They failed in making, in my humble opinion, the content a bit too unaccessible (too many requirements, too many punishments, too many random/uncontrollable things).

I'm glad they managed to reach these goals.
I hope over the next few years the content will be progressively made more accessible for everyone but I don't see how they can do it given how there are no Job adjustments plans, ML is capped at 50 (and quite hard to reach) etc.
We'll see!


All things said, despite me whining a lot for all the choices they made for Odyssey, I can somewhat see why they made them and apreciate the fact they managed to reach this level of challenge.
Wish the content would mantain this level of challenge but with more reasonable/accessible requirements, but oh well, it is what it is.