As I'm sure a lot of people are noticing especially clearly now, something's definitely wrong with how HP, and maybe enemy stats in general are scaled here. Multiple MPAs of my team full of plenty who never fought Profound Darkness before were able to clear the whole thing in under 10 minutes, and even outright skip a phase. And this goes for content in general now that everyone has decent weapons and knows how the game works; this isn't even very fun anymore.

I would like if someone corroborated this observation, but playing on JP this morning, it takes me at least a few PAs to kill a mob in an XH exploration quest, with a 15* weapon. In the City UQ a few hours ago, it took a few basic punches from Nox Knuckles. Adding to the fact that SH seems to have strangely minor differences from XH, don't you think something is bugged here? Surely an oversight? Either way, things are getting steamrolled too quickly for practically any content to have any challenge here, and this even applies to purely NA players who didn't have years to figure out everything, and if that doesn't need attention I don't know what could.

Welcome to NA where everyone has Ep 5 gear in Ep 3 content. But wouldn't be surprised if HP values were weird like others have been.

@MoldyAsp33874 said in XH is Too Easy; Possibly in Error?:

Welcome to NA where everyone has Ep 5 gear in Ep 3 content.

Basically this. NA made it no challenge when they added OP gear for lower content.

@Temuorin said in XH is Too Easy; Possibly in Error?:

@MoldyAsp33874 said in XH is Too Easy; Possibly in Error?:

Welcome to NA where everyone has Ep 5 gear in Ep 3 content.

Basically this. NA made it no challenge when they added OP gear for lower content.

This is true, but even then, the scaling for the whole difficulty seems to be messed up. Remember when SH Luther actually had MORE HP than XH? I'm starting to think they nerfed SH since when they should have buffed XH, and now we're left with this braindead easy mode on everything. That's partly conjecture, but I'm certain something isn't working as intended here.

XH exploration on JPs with exception of Kuron/Tokyo/Vegas were all released in EP5 with HP levels between Ultra Hard and XH we have now. Right now we got a version of Profound Darkness from EP3, and in EP4 it received a slight HP + moveset buff. That doesn't really mean much because EP4 would be steamrolled in similar fashion I think. It's just that power creep for the game has gone too far and especially EP5 started another massive HP curve for enemies to match player power. I think SH level of HP for NA are alright to account for that, but we there should also be buffs to XH difficulty. One trick Sega can pull is with level 85 enemies that had some crazy HP scaling in certain quests compared to level 80 enemies.

Unlike other poster says our gear isn't that much of a problem compared to what we would be getting from Austere OT weapons, but rather most of the power creep is in form of changes to classes and weapons that made them faster/stronger/better.

The problem is that they gave NA the original version of the quest, not the buffed one that came during Episode 4 where it can actually be deadly. Why they thought to give the old, slow and easy version of PD instead of the actually aggressive and dangerous one is something I can't understand.

@Kos said in XH is Too Easy; Possibly in Error?:

The problem is that they gave NA the original version of the quest, not the buffed one that came during Episode 4 where it can actually be deadly. Why they thought to give the old, slow and easy version of PD instead of the actually aggressive and dangerous one is something I can't understand.

They probably thought we wouldn't like it or hate how "hard" it is lmao.

@Maple said in XH is Too Easy; Possibly in Error?:

As I'm sure a lot of people are noticing especially clearly now, something's definitely wrong with how HP, and maybe enemy stats in general are scaled here. Multiple MPAs of my team full of plenty who never fought Profound Darkness before were able to clear the whole thing in under 10 minutes, and even outright skip a phase. And this goes for content in general now that everyone has decent weapons and knows how the game works; this isn't even very fun anymore.

Unfortunately they released the 2015 version of Profound Darkness, and not the enhanced 2016 version, which has more HP and more aggressive movesets.

@Maple said in XH is Too Easy; Possibly in Error?:

I would like if someone corroborated this observation, but playing on JP this morning, it takes me at least a few PAs to kill a mob in an XH exploration quest, with a 15* weapon.

Forest, Caves and Coast XH expeditions on JP are balanced towards Episode 5. Enemies in old XH urgent quests on JP are as weak as NA's, I think.

@Maple said in XH is Too Easy; Possibly in Error?:

In the City UQ a few hours ago, it took a few basic punches from Nox Knuckles. Adding to the fact that SH seems to have strangely minor differences from XH, don't you think something is bugged here? Surely an oversight? Either way, things are getting steamrolled too quickly for practically any content to have any challenge here, and this even applies to purely NA players who didn't have years to figure out everything, and if that doesn't need attention I don't know what could.

There is indeed an HP bug, seems like urgent quest enemies and bosses have more HP on SH than on XH. Since on JP SH urgent quests had lvl 70 enemies and bosses, seems like the increase to lvl 75 on NA came with higher HP than it should.

Though, while it seems like the bug is on SH having higher HP, I believe they should keep SH as it is now and increase enemies HP further on XH.

@GM-Deynger (Tagging you since you seem to be one of the more active GMs).

This really should be looked into, even the newest urgent quest (Profound Darkness) seems to have more HP on SH than on XH, based on this:

https://forum.pso2.com/topic/4526/extremely-hard-boss-hp-lower-than-super-hard/61

While the issue seems to be on SH having too much HP, taking into consideration the currently overpowered equipment available, it really would be better for enemies and bosses HP to be increased on XH urgent quests instead of lowering SH. (Or maybe even just swap the current SH and XH HP values).

@Temuorin Kind of reminds me of how the Japanese thought that FF was too difficult for westerners back in the day and that it was the reason for poor sales. So they created mystic quest, a very easy dumbed down rpg that even a 6 year old could complete.

My main complaint is that the boss goes by so fast that there is no way to appreciate the great theme that is playing while fighting it. It is truly a shame.

the ep 5 equipment being in ep 3 is purely a result of their simplifications to the OT-NT weapon system. you are all overthinking what is most likely just the result of laziness. moreover, UH (current max difficulty) urgent quests also clear in about 10 minutes on JP. the game is far from difficult

@lily-rain said in XH is Too Easy; Possibly in Error?:

the ep 5 equipment being in ep 3 is purely a result of their simplifications to the OT-NT weapon system. you are all overthinking what is most likely just the result of laziness. moreover, UH (current max difficulty) urgent quests also clear in about 10 minutes on JP. the game is far from difficult

The version of Profound Darkness released on NA can be soloed in less than 20 minutes in XH, that's how easy it is. The current JP's urgent quest version of Profound Darkness on UH isn't soloable that fast (videos from JP players soloing it are at least 40 mins long).

that doesn't really change that it's due to laziness rather than "NA won't like the difficulty"

also, you can most certainly find videos of people solo clearing PD in 2016 in 20 minutes. heck you can even find videos of an organized MPA clearing it in under 5. your comparison is good, but it's hard to draw very large conclusions from such a small sample size, especially for solo runs where you're only measuring one player. this is further muddled by them having episode 4 austeres (the 13* versions are weaker than nem/slave, i was thinking of 15*) but not the episode 5 balance changes that we have (i will note, however, that in all cases you can tell it's the EQ version rather than the solo trigger from the ARKS support buff)

@lily-rain said in XH is Too Easy; Possibly in Error?:

that doesn't really change that it's due to laziness rather than "NA won't like the difficulty"

I don't disagree with that. xd

@lily-rain said in XH is Too Easy; Possibly in Error?:

also, you can most certainly find videos of people solo clearing PD in 2016 in 20 minutes. heck you can even find videos of an organized MPA clearing it in under 5. your comparison is good, but it's hard to draw very large conclusions from such a small sample size, especially for solo runs where you're only measuring one player. this is further muddled by them having episode 4 austeres but not the episode 5 balance changes that we have (i will note, however, that in all cases you can tell it's the EQ version rather than the solo trigger from the ARKS support buff)

Well, you're the one that started comparing the current NA version with JPs UH, but yeah, there's a video of a known top player clearing XH PD solo in 21~ mins back when the lvl cap was still 75.

Anyway, despite the current OP equipment available on NA, what they got now was the weaker original 2015 version of PD, not the 2016 version (though I'm sure the 2016 version will come out in less than 2 months, since it came out on JP right after Yamato).

The biggest problem though is the issue of urgent quests enemies having more HP on SH than on XH (NA SH has lvl 75 enemies in urgent quests instead of lvl 70, they somehow screwed up this change), this is something that they definitely need to look into (though in my opinion, ideally they should increase enemies HP on XH instead of fixing the SH HP).

well, i think both of our comparisons are helpful, but maybe not as much as i initially thought. i personally like your suggestion of swapping the current SH and XH HP, though i wonder if it's that simple. even if we do that, it is worrying that most of the weapons for upcoming EQs will be irrelevant compared to nemesis/slave

SH HP is still too little since in best case it's XH HP + 10-25%. The game is not really difficult, but even Sega realized once that bosses are better if they last for a bit. There is a difference between EQ with 60 minute time limit that doesn't even punish dying in MPA and the same EQ that has boss rapidly skip phases on semi competent groups. Super weak EQs are not fun because you can only play them in low headcount groups or by gimping yourself, as even a weak random 12/12 breezes through those way too fast for it to be fun.