I already know from a certain set of people this will sound strange. Mostly to people that have never done ultimate and even to some raider that just like extremely hard fights but I think we've reached a cap in the player base skill first with dsr and now especially and the nail in the coffin with top.

We're at the point if you want to do top it's mandatory to use auto markers. I know dragon song ultimate used this but it wasn't a requirement. Top is however. Top is also the only ultimate where it's pretty much necessary to voice communication due to how dynamis stacks work. This on top of the very heavy RNG, this made it to where players have to use 3rd party add on's. Though let me say I'm not against add on's, Franky I don't care what people use.

But the playerbase having to use these things is a big indication that the new ultimate difficulty wall is pushing what the playerbase can do without assistance. And if you think everybody in the world races wasn't using add on's you're naive. Everybody uses it and if they're not, someone in their team is and they are directly benefiting.

I already see comments hyperboling what I mean by make ultimates easier. I'm not saying make it barely higher than savage or extreme trials. What I think is, CBU3 needs to find a sweet spot for ultimates just like how they did for savage. I don't think making ultimates increasingly harder is the best decision.

I know ultimates is suppose to be the hardest content in the game but it's still suppose to be beatable and most importantly....fun. Top is the most hated ultimate ever made, not just because it was hard but because it was just trying to be too confusing in p5. Was too heavy on adjusting and RNG. Basically what they call, artificial difficulty.

Top was just purposely trying to be too taxing on the player with players having to adjust every single phase or than phase 6. This on top of RNG, top is the only ultimate where voice communication is required if you're not using third party tools and to me. That's unacceptable, you shouldn't need voice communication. Using macros is too much due to the RNG, this on top of me playing on controller and other console users that use controller, trying to use all that on your hotbar is just too much. There are other things we can do but that's exactly the problem. You shouldn't have to do all of this.

No other ultimate has this problem. I think it's impossible to try to purposely make a ultimate easier than your previous if you don't try to tone it down but rather just change the mechanics and mechanic type. I think that's what happened with top. Since top is basically more of a brain teaser fight than a pure difficult honest mechanics like dsr. CBU3 must've thought that makes top easier or they overestimated the playerbase.

And even with dsr being more honest than top. The player base still used 3rd party tools, not as extreme as top but they still did. I even heard people use Auto markers for dsr as well.

So in CBU3 shoes....wouldn't the best course of action would be just to make ultimates easier? I think so. And once again I'm not saying make it barely harder than savage or ultimate reframe( though ultimate reframe is easy because it was made more to be a mystery fight)

What I think is the perfect difficulty for ultimate and what they should aim for is The Epic Alexander(Tea) Tea is without a doubt the most consistent top ultimate for every raider which is quite Ironic because the person that designed tea also created top, the most hated ultimate of all time. Tea is fair, balanced in its difficulty and most importantly. It's fun. Something top and to a lot of people dsr failed to be.

I feel in an effort to make ultimates harder they forget it has to be fun as well. Something they were able to do with ucob which is the first ultimate and also a fan favorite by a long shot and tea. Uwu is quite debatable due to how boring it is before titan starts.

I feel like for endwalker, rather than designing ultimates to be fun, they just designed with a mindset of how to make the players rip their hair out and quit. With how much top makes you adjust with zero rest, I feel like this for sure was their mindset. (Though I think the fast pace of top was very well done)

Ultimately I think ultimates need to be easier going forward. Top shown our limit and I don't think we should push much more. CBU3 needs to find the difficulty standard they want to do and stick with it. Making ultimates harder and harder will just make players use assistance tools(Once again saying I don't care if you or anything uses it. Just making a point) just to clear or prog the fight.

I think it's quite ridiculous you have to basically sim p5 top because top is so back loaded and it's so finicky...that groups make it a requirement to spend a spend a day using a sim to practice thd phase.

CBU3 needs to find ultimates sweet spot because as I said, ultimate have to stop getting harder because it's clear players can't take anymore. If CBU3 chooses to keep making ultimates harder then I suppose they just need to just accept people are going to use assistance tools to help them clear everytime.

Also I'm aware people will still them but the amount of people using them and people making it a requirement will drop.

Edit: I'll also like to add, because a comment made me remember. This will also lead to faster burn out. Even though savages are not really getting that much harder, doing savage then couple of months later doing a even harder ultimate then back to doing savage is way too much raiding. Since ultimates are getting harder each new addition, so does the progression time extension. This makes it so a vast majority of players will have two or less months max until savage starts. This is way too much for a midcore and even for hardcore raiders This by default makes players bitter for the next ultimate and savage and this isn't good for raider player base health. Less and less people will start raiding.

TL;DR Overall: Make ultimate easier, ultimate still need to be fun, just making it harder and more annoying isn't fun to the majority of raiders. Pushing players to their limit is backfiring and causing the majority to make assistance tools a requirement. Only a select few finds that fun. It's hard to find that balance but CBU3 has done it before with ucob and tea. They can do it again.