Dungeon Mechanics are a little repetitive [[Spoilers]]

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Originally Posted by ddwarbird

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I mean, this game is kind of bad when you actually look at its mechanics, compared to other MMO's.

Endwalker's dungeons are honestly some of the worst I've ever played. Not only is the 2 packs, boss, rinse repeat format rather stale but the bosses are not really that fun to fight either, their mechanics feel rather stale...

The whole "Do X, Dodge X or DIE" is a little bit too much. Punishing players in such an extreme way for the slightest mechanical error is a little too much.

This is where the divide between eastern and western design philosophies come in. Eastern games tend to be more mechanical, dance, dance revolution based then western MMO's and for such a visually stunning game, the Endwalker dungeons have been so stale... its a real shame.

Can we at least have one dungeon that is not just "Do X, Dodge X or Insta-death". I am not complaining about dungeons being "too hard"... they are just very boring, to the point where one person on your party makes the smallest mistake, they die.

I do think that the developers are using this as a crutch a bit too much to cover up the fact that they are out of interesting designs. FFXIV takes itself way too seriously, where is the Karazhan?

Where is the weird boss battles? Shadowbringer gave me a lot of hope with the Temple Splunking with Ysh'tola, that was really fun and the Fairy Castle dungeon with the Frog man but this expansion is just dull...

I'm sorry, maybe its me but Endwalker seems to want to take itself super seriously and when it segways into wierdness or fun, its all to do with those horrible space rabbits... honestly, the quests for them were terrible and felt like complete filler.

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Welcome to modern MMOs!

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Originally Posted by Ririta

That's not true at all. For example, why was healers balance so obligatory that they completely gutted healers in SHB? Did it matter if x or y healer had z or w quirk while they were grinding dungeons, FATEs, daily beast tribe quests or whatever? It only mattered for savage.

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I disagree with all of your post, but this especially. Healers didn’t lose their quirks because raiders complained. They were simplified because people found Cleric Stance dancing too hard. Juggling two DoTs was too hard. Healer openers from HW were too hard. The simplification of healers had zero to do with raiders asking for them to be dumbed down.

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The same can be said about boss mechanics, DPS uptime is now the most considered thing while designing mechanics. Bosses like what we had in Heavensward and A Realm Reborn where they go untargetable, either due to mechanics or the boss literally being invincible while they do a thing, also became extremely rare.
Casuals didn't complain that Leviathan would hide in water, or that they had to control the Gobwalker or become a Gorilla to push out bombs, or get jailed by Quickthinx...
It's not a coincidence that all of this changed one expansion after FFLogs became a thing.

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You use uptime as example—all the while ignoring the myriad of bosses that do go untargetable in SB, ShB, and current Savages and all three Ultimates—but you’re failing to realize the major thing that happened to Extremes and Savages. They got easier because players complained they were too difficult and not accessible enough. I’m not talking about the mess that was Gordias. I’m talking about Midas onwards.

Even normal content has suffered this. There are people complaining now that the EW MSQ trials are too hard and should be nerfed. Alliance raids are constantly complained about with regards to nerfing—Weeping City, Dun Scaith, Rabanastre, Orbonne Monastery, the NieR raids. Orbonne Monastery has the horrible honor of being the only alliance raid with automatic echo now. All because people complained TGC was too hard.

That’s not the raiders complaining.

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Gearing too is dictated by hardcores. It was hardcores that complained about every little thing that the dev team made for casuals. I remember very well the drama over Mythology gear in ARR being the same ilvl as Coil, which prompted them to extend the grind for casuals by nerfing tome gear and adding upgrade items exclusive to Coil. The Diadem that could reward BiS if you were lucky, also bad because potentially better than Gordias. Oh, and what about the relic grind... I've read so many predictions on relic being like "it won't be better than (x raid)". When the old Relic + 1 (later renamed to Zenith I think) was potentially better than Allagan weapons, until they bumped Allagan because... well, guess who complained.

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I won’t speak on Coil since I wasn’t around when it was relevant—but original Diadem was a horribly designed mess. Raiders complained about the RNG pink gear being better because, back then, Gordias actually took immense skill to kill. Gear actually mattered for it, since you couldn’t kill A4S without tome weapons. To release better gear in Diadem that also had the agony of RNG substats was bad design. The complaint there was completely justified, in my opinion. I started playing in HW and even I thought the OG Diadem gear was stupid. And I wasn’t a raider back then.

Another fun fact is, the i280 Coven weapons that dropped from Diadem 2.0? People complained they were stronger than the relics—and in those complainers were non-raiders. The raiders were the ones actually saying the substats were so RNG and the weapons so rare they literally didn’t matter in terms of BiS. Ignore them, and continue to use your Alexandrian weapon or i275 relic.

Now gear barely matters because most content is so easy, you can wear the base crafting set released every other patch cycle and clear everything just fine. Tome gear doesn’t matter because the content doesn’t call for it. Savage only matters to gear for Ultimates. That’s it.

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Most of this game's battle content is designed around high end raiders first. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, I really don't care, but I really dislike seeing how casuals are blamed for all of this game's shortcomings after seeing so many things become worse because they pandered to hardcores... hell I've seen them release a DoA extreme just because they were afraid of displeasing raiders and then rushing to fix him because nobody was doing him.

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Very hard disagree here. You say hardcores are pandered towards, but jobs are simplified because people complain about having to press X button to mitigate a raidwide when they’re a barrier healer. That’s legitimately a complaint I’ve seen on here. Or they complain managing DoTs or procs is too hard. Or too many oGCDs is too hard. And then, you have the content people constantly say is too hard and needs to be nerfed because “MSQ stuff doesn’t need Savage-level mechanics in it”. And the content gets easier. Thankfully, some things manage to get through unscathed, but the majority of content nerfs aren’t at the cry of raiders. That’s not pandering to hardcore. I’m sorry, but you are entirely mistaken if you think content in this game is designed around raiders first and non-raiders second.

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Originally Posted by ddwarbird

I just think the FFXIV needs more light-hearted new content as all this Endwalker stuff has been edgy, depressing and a bit "crawling in my skin", if you get the reference. Sometimes this game seems too "anime" for its own good. The best content for me personally, story wise was the contextualised inter-state politics, it felt more mature rather then lapsing back into this "Shadow the Hedgehog", end of the world rubbish.

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I think you mentioned FFIX was your favorite Final Fantasy game? For me as well, though FFXIV rivals it.

I really don't see what you mean. There were plenty of very anime and dark, depressing moments in FFIX too. As well as light and comedic moments in FFXIV -hanging out with the Scions, the Loporits, etc.

It feels pretty par for the course as far as Final Fantasy games go. Regardless I'm guessing we'll be getting something of a fresh start now that we've saved the world, so maybe you'll enjoy what comes next.

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Originally Posted by Ririta

That's not true at all. For example, why was healers balance so obligatory that they completely gutted healers in SHB? Did it matter if x or y healer had z or w quirk while they were grinding dungeons, FATEs, daily beast tribe quests or whatever? It only mattered for savage.

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Because they designed Healers to be accessible to everyone, even the lowest common denominator. Do you really think Raiders, especially Hardcore raiders, enjoy this incredibly simplistic design? There's a reason Yoshida specifically mentioned they aren't going back to the Heavensward design. Guess which demographic has been asking for that? Hint: It ain't the casual playerbase who struggles to keep up buffs like Heavy Thrust and Straight Shot.

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The same can be said about boss mechanics, DPS uptime is now the most considered thing while designing mechanics. Bosses like what we had in Heavensward and A Realm Reborn where they go untargetable, either due to mechanics or the boss literally being invincible while they do a thing, also became extremely rare.
Casuals didn't complain that Leviathan would hide in water, or that they had to control the Gobwalker or become a Gorilla to push out bombs, or get jailed by Quickthinx...
It's not a coincidence that all of this changed one expansion after FFLogs became a thing.

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This is primarily due to the fact most jobs in this game are extremely rigid and feel awful to play with prolonged downtime regardless of your skill level. Likewise, most players, especially melee, don't like essentially sucking their thumbs because they're unable to actually press their buttons since the boss jumped. Keep in mind, range attacks broke your combo until Endwalker. Therefore, they were rarely worth pressing. Put simply, it isn't fun watching a boss do pretty animations instead of you killing them... while doing pretty animations. That being said, we still have plenty of downtime fights. In Shadowbringers alone, Titania, Hades, Ruby, Emerald and Varos all have varying amounts of forced disengagement or straight going untargetable.

Casuals did complain, incessantly, able Leviathan. Nobody liked the Gobwalker because it meant you basically weren't playing your job. Which, again, isn't fun. I can tell you right now how mechanics like that will be handled both in Normal and Savage equivalents. Everyone makes a healer, tank or the Prange do it depending on whether other mechanics necessitate the former two's responsibility. Why? Because you either don't need two healers/tanks for mechanics or you do, thus you naturally opt for the weakest DPS. Guess who that always is? Casual players are also why fights as a whole are considerably easier than they once were. Hardcore players weren't upset over Thordan and Sephirot's difficulty. In fact, many raiders even at the midcore level still lament how challenging those fights were. It was the more casual centric players who quite literally couldn't clear them. And the demands for nerfs were numerous. There's been threads each expansion that the Normal modes are too difficult.

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Gearing too is dictated by hardcores. It was hardcores that complained about every little thing that the dev team made for casuals. I remember very well the drama over Mythology gear in ARR being the same ilvl as Coil, which prompted them to extend the grind for casuals by nerfing tome gear and adding upgrade items exclusive to Coil. The Diadem that could reward BiS if you were lucky, also bad because potentially better than Gordias. Oh, and what about the relic grind... I've read so many predictions on relic being like "it won't be better than (x raid)". When the old Relic + 1 (later renamed to Zenith I think) was potentially better than Allagan weapons, until they bumped Allagan because... well, guess who complained.

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Because it invalidated that content. What's the point of clearing the hardest content in the game if someone spamming Expert Roulette can get equal or even better gear? Case in point, Tome pants are BiS for tanks. So I have literally no reason to even look at P3S as a tank main were it not for Savage having exclusive upgrades until the follow up patch. You mention Diadem but ignore that a sizable portion of complaints came from casual players whose relics were also outclassed by those same Diadem weapons a mere nine days after the final step released. Most raiders didn't actually care all that much since the raid tier was long over. Several people simply criticised how desperate it made SE look they threw a RNG BiS weapon in content that was received so poorly, they've redesigned it three times.

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Most of this game's battle content is designed around high end raiders first. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, I really don't care, but I really dislike seeing how casuals are blamed for all of this game's shortcomings after seeing so many things become worse because they pandered to hardcores... hell I've seen them release a DoA extreme just because they were afraid of displeasing raiders and then rushing to fix him because nobody was doing him.

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If that were the case, we wouldn't have the current job design. Healers have been screaming for years to increase outgoing damage; tanks have wanted more responsibility like boss positioning, and DPS want complexity in their rotation. All of these are requests and criticisms from the "high end raiders." Considering Hydaelyn and Zodiark can be killed without even bringing a healer on the day of their release. Guess which demographic the dev team catered towards?

Essentially every dungeon and alliance raid in this game is just a one-way theme park ride through an imaginary hose, with things outside of the invisible guard rails you can never interact with, ironically the same what FF7 Remake is.

These dungeons have no real soul, flavor or niche, the few cringe “mechanics” they tried to add like the keys in Hauke Manor were seemingly quickly discarded in following expacs, as it was almost an insult to the intelligence of the player. And that’s also my biggest gripe with the game: it feels too guided and guard railed.

I’d like to see dungeons like the Sunken Temple or BRD from WoW, but that likely won’t happen. It’s still a japanese game for the domestic market and we simply play the dub, it’s designed “quick in and out” for japanese and their tight schedules (no sarcasm here), where they have to spend 3 hours at an Izakaya with their co-workers after work and indulge in meaningless chit-chat just too look good.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Because they designed Healers to be accessible to everyone, even the lowest common denominator. Do you really think Raiders, especially Hardcore raiders, enjoy this incredibly simplistic design? There's a reason Yoshida specifically mentioned they aren't going back to the Heavensward design. Guess which demographic has been asking for that? Hint: It ain't the casual playerbase who struggles to keep up buffs like Heavy Thrust and Straight Shot.

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Heavensward was notorious for excluding certain jobs for Alex, first it was astrologians and then white mages after they overbuffed astrologians. They specifically said that they wouldn't be adding a new healer in Stormblood because they wanted to fix healer balance first, and then they came with this design that we have now in Shadowbringers.

None of this mattered in any content outside of Savage, them throwing their hands into the air and balancing healers around two spells, being clones of one another, doesn't means they're pandering to casuals. It means that it's exactly as I said, they're designing the game around raiding first.

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This is primarily due to the fact most jobs in this game are extremely rigid and feel awful to play with prolonged downtime regardless of your skill level. Likewise, most players, especially melee, don't like essentially sucking their thumbs because they're unable to actually press their buttons since the boss jumped. Keep in mind, range attacks broke your combo until Endwalker. Therefore, they were rarely worth pressing. Put simply, it isn't fun watching a boss do pretty animations instead of you killing them... while doing pretty animations. That being said, we still have plenty of downtime fights. In Shadowbringers alone, Titania, Hades, Ruby, Emerald and Varos all have varying amounts of forced disengagement or straight going untargetable.

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Regardless of you considering it fun or not (that's subjective, personally I liked having to only focus on mechanics for some moments), it is a fact that uptime is the most important thing they consider now and thus, greatly limits what kinds of mechanics they can add to the bosses. Mechanics like the examples I gave are almost gone from the game.

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Casuals did complain, incessantly, able Leviathan. Nobody liked the Gobwalker because it meant you basically weren't playing your job. Which, again, isn't fun. I can tell you right now how mechanics like that will be handled both in Normal and Savage equivalents. Everyone makes a healer, tank or the Prange do it depending on whether other mechanics necessitate the former two's responsibility. Why? Because you either don't need two healers/tanks for mechanics or you do, thus you naturally opt for the weakest DPS. Guess who that always is? Casual players are also why fights as a whole are considerably easier than they once were. Hardcore players weren't upset over Thordan and Sephirot's difficulty. In fact, many raiders even at the midcore level still lament how challenging those fights were. It was the more casual centric players who quite literally couldn't clear them. And the demands for nerfs were numerous. There's been threads each expansion that the Normal modes are too difficult.

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Outside of being thrown out of the stage and being unable to be raised, I've never seen anybody complain that Leviathan dived. As for mechanics like the Gobwalker and offloading that work to healers and tanks, you vastly over estimate how much the common player in DF optimizes their gameplay to maximize group DPS. Sure it's the best way that raiders will certainly do, but most groups won't.

And if a mechanic doesn't exist in savage or extreme, it sure as hell won't in normal mode, thus, it's (almost) dead. Yet another less possibility for OP's desires.

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Because it invalidated that content. What's the point of clearing the hardest content in the game if someone spamming Expert Roulette can get equal or even better gear? Case in point, Tome pants are BiS for tanks. So I have literally no reason to even look at P3S as a tank main were it not for Savage having exclusive upgrades until the follow up patch. You mention Diadem but ignore that a sizable portion of complaints came from casual players whose relics were also outclassed by those same Diadem weapons a mere nine days after the final step released. Most raiders didn't actually care all that much since the raid tier was long over. Several people simply criticised how desperate it made SE look they threw a RNG BiS weapon in content that was received so poorly, they've redesigned it three times.

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If bribing players into certain content takes precedence over everything else, then it proves what I said, right? (nevermind the implications for the content's quality if it relies on bribery to get people to play it).

Either way, in that case, Coil wasn't even invalidated. I still geared up twice as fast as somebody who didn't do it even if my group couldn't clear Turn 5 yet. It's not like anybody was better off not doing the content (this also counts for the extremes that dropped i90 acc), but just the thought of some casual doing Pharos Sirius and getting i90 riled up some feathers and SE rushed to coddle them over everybody else.

On the whole relic being outclassed thing, nobody would have cared if relic wasn't such a massive grind, which was in itself a product of people complaining about +1 being i90 just like Allagan weapons.

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Originally Posted by Ririta

Heavensward was notorious for excluding certain jobs for Alex, first it was astrologians and then white mages after they overbuffed astrologians. They specifically said that they wouldn't be adding a new healer in Stormblood because they wanted to fix healer balance first, and then they came with this design that we have now in Shadowbringers.

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ASTs were excluded in early HW because they barely functioned as a healer. And this wasn’t even at just a Savage level. I had non-raider friends tell me people would leave dungeons if they saw that their healer was an AST. One even said she got kicked a couple times for being one. It had nothing to do with raider complaints and everything to do with AST being borderline unplayable and unfunctional as a healer.

Healer balance still doesn’t exist (at least between WHM and AST), and a lot of that has to deal with the design philosophy the development team cling to regarding WHM. Giving it a buff to compete with AST back when AST had the old card system would have closed that discrepancy a lot more, since WHM had no answer to Balance. Now, it’s WHM has no answer to the myriad of tools in AST’s kit because they want to push the Lily system that hard. And it also has horrible MP economy due to the Thin Air changes.

Reading any healer balance discussion would show you raiders advocate more often than not for the healers to be balanced. And none of those discussions involved stripping them of the multiple DoTs and giving them 1 nuke + 1 DoT. When jobs get dumbed down, it’s usually always because “some players found X thing too difficult, so we removed it”. Or “the gap between skilled players and not-skilled players was too large, so we lessened it”.

As for other jobs, that was 100% the fault of the development team. They were the ones who kept repeatedly buffing BRD and MCH in HW until they ousted casters in Creator due to simply being broken. It also didn’t help that they outright admitted they never balanced either around the fact that piercing resistance down gave them +10%—later +5% in SB.

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None of this mattered in any content outside of Savage, them throwing their hands into the air and balancing healers around two spells, being clones of one another, doesn't means they're pandering to casuals. It means that it's exactly as I said, they're designing the game around raiding first.

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Please see above. Also job simplification for ALL roles has been to close the skill floor and skill ceiling. The developers have gone on record saying this. And it’s not because of raiders. They literally removed DoTs and buffs like Straight Shot and Heavy Thrust because players complained it was too difficult to keep those buffs up. Again—that wasn’t the raiders complaining.

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Regardless of you considering it fun or not (that's subjective, personally I liked having to only focus on mechanics for some moments), it is a fact that uptime is the most important thing they consider now and thus, greatly limits what kinds of mechanics they can add to the bosses. Mechanics like the examples I gave are almost gone from the game.

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Except you aren’t acknowledging the myriad of forced downtime mechanics still prevalent in fights since HW. All three Ultimates have them—you know, content explicitly designed for the hardcore. Raiders come up with uptime strats but depending on your data center’s PF, they aren’t the norm unless explicitly stated. That’s not proof the developers cater fights with uptime in mind. If they did, there would be zero forced downtime mechanics—yet, they still exist. And “uptime strats” would have no reason to exist because uptime would already be guaranteed.

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Outside of being thrown out of the stage and being unable to be raised, I've never seen anybody complain that Leviathan dived. As for mechanics like the Gobwalker and offloading that work to healers and tanks, you vastly over estimate how much the common player in DF optimizes their gameplay to maximize group DPS. Sure it's the best way that raiders will certainly do, but most groups won't.

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Yeah, they got rid of perma-death in fights because people complained it was “unfair”—and a lot of those complaints came from non-raiders. A2S in and of itself was nothing more than Trash the Fight a la T4. Not a very well-designed fight and I’ve heard even casual raiders complain about it. Kind of boring to be sitting in a mount not pressing your buttons for a fight, wouldn’t you think? The fact that no other fight like it has been made probably stems for way more than “whiny raiders complained”. Such as “this encounter design is actually quite bad”.

And you’re underestimating casuals with the rest of this. It wouldn’t be just the hardcores that would shove their healer in a Gobwalker. O6S Typhon was a healer mechanic, and no sane group was throwing their DPS in there to blow the Easterlilies out of the way. Especially not in Gordias where damage was way too important to clearing because the developers didn’t tune the fights properly.

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And if a mechanic doesn't exist in savage or extreme, it sure as hell won't in normal mode, thus, it's (almost) dead. Yet another less possibility for OP's desires.

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Incorrect. Exdeath’s normal mode Doom mechanic that requires Esuna says hello. That’s not in Savage. Omega’s Duty Action isn’t in O11S—you don’t destroy fists or charge up for his Delta Attack: you simply dodge (or have 4 players getting punched by the fists) or tank LB3. It might be less common to find Normal Mode mechanics that don’t exist in a more extreme form in EXs and Savage, but they do exist.

Mechanics are taken out of Normal modes because most players that prefer to play at the casual level—or players in the lowest common denominator group, keep in mind I am taking about two separate groups of “casual” here—would whine that they were too hard. Again, they already do that with MSQ trials and most Alliance Raids. I have no faith in regular DF being able to do things like Limit Cut in A11N (they already struggled with Optical Sight), Electric Slide in O12N, Tsunami or Black Smokers in E3N. And most players would probably complain those mechanics were too hard to belong in a normal mode anyways.

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If bribing players into certain content takes precedence over everything else, then it proves what I said, right? (nevermind the implications for the content's quality if it relies on bribery to get people to play it).

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No. It just proves that the content is poorly designed. Has nothing to do with “the developers catered it towards the hardcore crowd so we need to bribe the casuals to jump in here somehow…” and has everything to do with “if we don’t put a shiny carrot in here, people probably won’t do the content…”. See: Eureka and Bozja. Without the relic in both, I highly doubt participation would have been that high. But they threw the relic into both—something that all players like to do, not just raiders—to incentivize it.

Meanwhile, I do think it’s worth pointing out that a lot of raiders do the Ultimates beyond getting their weapon tokens because they simply enjoy the fights. And don’t care nearly as much about the rewards as people want to believe most Ultimate raiders do.

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Either way, in that case, Coil wasn't even invalidated. I still geared up twice as fast as somebody who didn't do it even if my group couldn't clear Turn 5 yet. It's not like anybody was better off not doing the content (this also counts for the extremes that dropped i90 acc), but just the thought of some casual doing Pharos Sirius and getting i90 riled up some feathers and SE rushed to coddle them over everybody else.

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And on the other hand, the lowest common denominator player feathers get riled up anytime an end-of-the-expansion boss isn’t Thordan normal mode levels of easy, and rush to the forums or other social media sites to complain that the game is getting too hard, that “Savage-level mechanics” have no place in the MSQ, that they play the game for fun and it shouldn’t be walling them, etc..

You are so busy focusing on the few instances where raiders were given something because they had complaints that you’re ignoring all the instances where non-raiders complained just as loudly about something else. The only difference was that content nerfs weren’t given to the latter group because there’s no reason to nerf the content they wanted nerfed. It wasn’t hard, it just required them to pay attention and push buttons.

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On the whole relic being outclassed thing, nobody would have cared if relic wasn't such a massive grind, which was in itself a product of people complaining about +1 being i90 just like Allagan weapons.

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And these complaints about relics also come from the non-raiding side. You can’t cherry-pick and choose to present only “the raiders complained” when non-raiders have complained about relics being outclassed as well.

The team jump rope is getting a bit....tired.

It reminds me of the scene in Hairspray where she tells her daughter to dance...

"Mash Potato! ..... FASTER!!"

I always said this game will fail because the devs are doing the opposite of blizzard and listening to the fan base. Sadly about 70% of this games player base is hyper focused on casual play, aesthetics, and entitlement to access all content.

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Originally Posted by LisSquid

Page 3 and still no specifics about what you'd like to see in dungeons beyond not understanding the story and how you hate rock music.

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Surprised u waited till page 3 to realize OP was trolling, lol.

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Originally Posted by Mika_Zahard

Surprised u waited till page 3 to realize OP was trolling, lol.

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I am not trolling actually, this is genuinely how I feel about the game. There is a lot of what APPEARS to me, from my perspective to be power fantasies to recapture the lost magic of being a kid again for people in their 30's and 40's and that is really shown in the style of music that BOTH Shadowbringers and Endwalker chooses to put out. So instead of the sweeping Orchestral pieces of ARR and Heavensward, we have the super "edgy" themes of Shadowbringers and Endwalker, performed in a very 2000's style, pandering the nostalgia of a Millennial Generation.

Dungeon mechanics are also the same way, they rely on one-hit kill mechanics too much and basically make healers completely redundant because if everyone is dodging everything, there is nothing to heal and a healer becomes a substandard DPS instead.

There is nothing wrong with that, its just not my taste. But sure, label any take you don't understand as "trolling", probably better for your circle jerk bubble. Catholics used to do that too back in the 1500's, they called it Blasphemy and Heresy. I thought we'd moved on from witch burnings but guess not, especially not in 2022.

If dungeon mechanics are as repetitive as you claim, why do I constantly see people fail the exact same mechanic over, and over, and over, ad nauseum. Or run away with stack markers, and I'm not talking about sprouts running away with it when they first see it, but non-sprouts/returners running away with it. It's one thing if it's a tank that's going to use their invuln to take it solo, but when it's someone else....

I've had many instances of having to duo/solo bosses down, in current end game dungeons none the less with nobody new to the instance, as a DNC with the tank becoming my new dance partner, that it doesn't surprise me that the mechanics are so repetitive due to people constantly failing simple mechanics that have been seen in at least a dozen story instances since level 50.

Footfalls has orchestral sections in it tying it in with previous main themes, which is actually quite nice and fits with EW being an ending to the story we’ve had for almost a decade. A lot of these compositional differences could also be because Soken composed ShB’s and EW’s themes. Uematsu was responsible for Answers, Dragonsong, and Revolutions. They both have distinct styles—and that’s just their style as a composer. But I don’t really think that has much bearing on the musical quality, nor do I think Soken is trying to pander to “millennials”. I think the theme style suits the expansions. Much like Answers suited the end of 1.0/ARR, Dragonsong suited HW (especially with regards to the aesthetic of Ishgard as a region), and Revolutions suited SB. Both composers have incorporated more rock elements in their songs, and orchestral elements. I do think Uematsu leans more towards the latter, but again. That’s just his style.

Dungeons and dungeon mechanics literally haven’t changed in 8 years. Occasionally you get a new one introduced, but they are rarely threatening. As for one-shots, there aren’t really any mechanics within a dungeon that will one-hit KO you if you’ve been doing everything properly up to the point you eat one. The only time you get one-shot is usually because you’re sporting vulnerability stacks—which is the result of failing mechanics beforehand—and in several dungeons it takes multiple stacks to even pose a threat to your survivability.

Healers are redundant in most content. This also isn’t anything new.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Footfalls has orchestral sections in it tying it in with previous main themes, which is actually quite nice and fits with EW being an ending to the story we’ve had for almost a decade. A lot of these compositional differences could also be because Soken composed ShB’s and EW’s themes. Uematsu was responsible for Answers, Dragonsong, and Revolutions. They both have distinct styles—and that’s just their style as a composer. But I don’t really think that has much bearing on the musical quality, nor do I think Soken is trying to pander to “millennials”. I think the theme style suits the expansions. Much like Answers suited the end of 1.0/ARR, Dragonsong suited HW (especially with regards to the aesthetic of Ishgard as a region), and Revolutions suited SB. Both composers have incorporated more rock elements in their songs, and orchestral elements. I do think Uematsu leans more towards the former, but again. That’s just his style.

Dungeons and dungeon mechanics literally haven’t changed in 8 years. Occasionally you get a new one introduced, but they are rarely threatening. As for one-shots, there aren’t really any mechanics within a dungeon that will one-hit KO you if you’ve been doing everything properly up to the point you eat one. The only time you get one-shot is usually because you’re sporting vulnerability stacks—which is the result of failing mechanics beforehand—and in several dungeons it takes multiple stacks to even pose a threat to your survivability.

Healers are redundant in most content. This also isn’t anything new.

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Don't you think that is an issue though? Dungeon Mechanics haven't changed in 8 years, so they can certainly feel very stale and Square's unwillingness to mix up the formula every now and again, although consistent in quality does come off as kinda "safe" rather then innovative. I'm not saying I have all the answers, I do not.

All I am saying is that I'm not personally a fan of the "Rock style", its fine every now and again but for me personally, it can detract from the enjoyment. Ultima Thul's theme would have sounded so much better with the lady who sung "Tomorrow is Tomorrow" (She is a magnificent singer and the Crysterium night theme is still one of my favourite city themes ever). I realise this is subjective entirely.

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Originally Posted by ddwarbird

Don't you think that is an issue though? Dungeon Mechanics haven't changed in 8 years, so they can certainly feel very stale and Square's unwillingness to mix up the formula every now and again, although consistent in quality does come off as kinda "safe" rather then innovative. I'm not saying I have all the answers, I do not.

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I do find it stale. But I’m mostly just correcting your assertion that the mechanics are punishing in the slightest. Most you can just ignore. That said, repetitive mechanics still have people that fail them repeatedly—and not even newcomers. A poster above mentioned stack markers. I wouldn’t be surprised if the developers don’t want to spice things up and add more variance if for no other reason than people still struggle with the very obviously telegraphed ones that have been around since I started playing at the least (at least, the current stack marker iteration has).

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All I am saying is that I'm not personally a fan of the "Rock style", its fine every now and again but for me personally, it can detract from the enjoyment. Ultima Thul's theme would have sounded so much better with the lady who sung "Tomorrow is Tomorrow" (She is a magnificent singer and the Crysterium night theme is still one of my favourite city themes ever). I realise this is subjective entirely.

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Which is fine—but I think your assessment that Soken is catering to millennials is wrong. Rock aspects have existed in FFXIV songs since 1.0, so they aren’t new. And it’s not really pushing any sort of musical time period. More so just fitting into an aesthetic.

Personally, regarding Ultima Thule, I prefer the original theme where it was more muted and had no vocals. Fit the atmosphere a lot better. The vocal version works for where they put it in the story; but it being a constant theme doesn’t suit the zone itself, in my opinion. Generally, they’re pretty good about using zone themes in ways that suit the zone, but I think the final version for Ultima Thule misses that mark.

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Originally Posted by ddwarbird

Dungeon mechanics are also the same way, they rely on one-hit kill mechanics too much and basically make healers completely redundant because if everyone is dodging everything, there is nothing to heal and a healer becomes a substandard DPS instead.

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LOL

Okay boss, tell me how do you DODGE a party/raid wide aoe like Smiledon final boss?

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Originally Posted by Mika_Zahard

LOL

Okay boss, tell me how do you DODGE a party/raid wide aoe like Smiledon final boss?

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Honestly a question for the “healers useless” crowd.

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Originally Posted by EgilTheStressedMage

Honestly a question for the “healers useless” crowd.

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I guess I can bite: the AOEs in dungeons are so infrequent or so minuscule that passive regens, AOE mitigations from other roles, or things like Bloodbath/Second Wind can be used in most instances to get by without a healer. WAR since ShB has been able to use Nascent Flash (now Bloodwhetting) to heal itself and a party member. I’ve duo’d many bosses lately with a WAR as a DPS and we’ve been just fine without a healer. I’ve also done dungeons with 1 tank and 3 DPS—so yes. Healers are still quite redundant in most of them; and them actually doing anything usually requires people eating excessive amounts of AOEs. Not the content being designed to actually put them to work.

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Originally Posted by EgilTheStressedMage

Honestly a question for the “healers useless” crowd.

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Collective Unconsciousness to mitigate, keep Lady of Crowns Handy, among other AOE heals to recover quickly.

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Originally Posted by ddwarbird

Collective Unconsciousness to mitigate, keep Lady of Crowns Handy, among other AOE heals to recover quickly.

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So.. .. healing? .. and skills that only healers can do?

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

I guess I can bite: the AOEs in dungeons are so infrequent or so minuscule that passive regens, AOE mitigations from other roles, or things like Bloodbath/Second Wind can be used in most instances to get by without a healer. WAR since ShB has been able to use Nascent Flash (now Bloodwhetting) to heal itself and a party member. I’ve duo’d many bosses lately with a WAR as a DPS and we’ve been just fine without a healer. I’ve also done dungeons with 1 tank and 3 DPS—so yes. Healers are still quite redundant in most of them; and them actually doing anything usually requires people eating excessive amounts of AOEs. Not the content being designed to actually put them to work.

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Chiming in just because:
• RPR’s disgusting crest of returned time regen, on top of its ridiculous prerequisite shield at 30s cooldown.
• DNC’s improvisation regen & curing waltz.
• DRG’s self heal from the crit guaranteed buff.
• NIN’s self shield.
• SMN’s self shield, resurrection, and phoenix phase regen.
• BLM’s manaward.
• RDM’s Vercure & Verraise.
• All physical jobs access to Second Wind.
• All melee dps access to Bloodbath and Feint.
• All magical dps access to Addle.
• All physical ranged access to party mitigation.
• BRD’s Minne, RDM’s Magick Barrier, and MNK’s Mantra to augment healing actions.
• Tanks and their various self sustenance capabilities, with WAR being the greatest example of ”Healer who? Idk them.”-tank.

All these tools: I’ve seen and used them plenty enough of times already to also know how redundant healers participation can be. That being said, I wouldn’t think it’s the norm either. (Not disagreeing with you btw)

Take away healer from the equation & most generic, random parties will fall apart.

OP is a troll and you all fell for it hook, line and sinker.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

I guess I can bite: the AOEs in dungeons are so infrequent or so minuscule that passive regens, AOE mitigations from other roles, or things like Bloodbath/Second Wind can be used in most instances to get by without a healer. WAR since ShB has been able to use Nascent Flash (now Bloodwhetting) to heal itself and a party member. I’ve duo’d many bosses lately with a WAR as a DPS and we’ve been just fine without a healer. I’ve also done dungeons with 1 tank and 3 DPS—so yes. Healers are still quite redundant in most of them; and them actually doing anything usually requires people eating excessive amounts of AOEs. Not the content being designed to actually put them to work.

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Most people aren’t that good though, and beyond bragging rights doesn’t offer any incentive besides maybe quicker loot. The amount of times healer is called redundant suggests this forum is demanding everyone become that good, which we all know is not going to happen. People still prefer healing over the other two or they just lack the ability and/or skill. You want to run your duties that way, go right ahead. Just don’t get upset when others won’t.

For all the "I am calling out the moral corruption of these types of people and their low personal moral standards" OP is pushing:
https://64.media.tumblr.com/522d2527...o3_r1_540.gifv

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Originally Posted by EgilTheStressedMage

Most people aren’t that good though, and beyond bragging rights doesn’t offer any incentive besides maybe quicker loot. The amount of times healer is called redundant suggests this forum is demanding everyone become that good, which we all know is not going to happen. People still prefer healing over the other two or they just lack the ability and/or skill. You want to run your duties that way, go right ahead. Just don’t get upset when others won’t.

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Disagree. It’s merely healers commenting on the severe lack of actual healing they have to do. Or their complete reliance on their party being a total meme to spend any significant amount of time pressing a button other than their DPS AOE or single-target nuke.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Disagree. It’s merely healers commenting on the severe lack of actual healing they have to do. Or their complete reliance on their party being a total meme to spend any significant amount of time pressing a button other than their DPS AOE or single-target nuke.

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Well a majority of my runs are walltowall when I’m healing, so outside of bosses and occasional single pull, I’m not seeing the nothing to do argument.

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Originally Posted by EgilTheStressedMage

Well a majority of my runs are walltowall when I’m healing, so outside of bosses and occasional single pull, I’m not seeing the nothing to do argument.

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My argument wasn’t that there was nothing to do—unless you want to be a non-DPSing healer. My argument was there’s very little healing to do. Even in wall-to-wall unless you have a tank allergic to cooldowns. Most wall-to-wall with even a semi-competent tank can be healed with oGCDs alone. And most of your time as a healer during them is pressing your AOE button. There’s very few exceptions to this.

In 8-man content like normal modes, having two healers is very often redundant. One could easily solo heal with low effort provided the party aren’t clowning around while the other primarily does damage. Alliance raids are much the same.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

My argument wasn’t that there was nothing to do—unless you want to be a non-DPSing healer. My argument was there’s very little healing to do. Even in wall-to-wall unless you have a tank allergic to cooldowns. Most wall-to-wall with even a semi-competent tank can be healed with oGCDs alone.

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Or if you get DPS who are allergic to AoEs like the RPR I had in expert roulette last night....ended up burning through practically all my CDs each pull...and had to Superbolide a couple times as well during that run...and I don't even remember the last time I had to use Superbolide in a wall to wall pull.

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Originally Posted by ddwarbird

I think its really bad that the DPS monkeys with no life get to dictate what is fun in the game. I have always appreciated FF for its wierdness in a lot of areas and its light hearted tone juxtaposed with heavy themes (Which is why FFIX is my favourite game ever made). It just feels that the Emo's and Edgelords are the only demographic Square Enix seem to care about now. I mean "Reaper" and rock music... come on... It feels like a load of 30+ year old people trying to relive the 2000's again.

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Pot meet kettle.

"Please take away any semblence of danger from dungeons next"
I lost man, we went from designs like xelphatol and brayflox hm to just corridor corridor 2 packs, boss that cant kill anything but a sleeping dps, corridor corridor, 16 invulns as tank still cant be wiped

And you want to remove the joy of watching literal pepegas wipe to "read my ability cast or die for litterally sleeping" mechanics next.

No, they literally reduced the dungeon per patch to ONE. ONE DUNGEON. You can press expert roulette in a shadowbringers patch and all you would get is that one patch dungeon for months on end.

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Originally Posted by RatKing

"Please take away any semblence of danger from dungeons next"
I lost man, we went from designs like xelphatol and brayflox hm to just corridor corridor 2 packs, boss that cant kill anything but a sleeping dps, corridor corridor, 16 invulns as tank still cant be wiped

And you want to remove the joy of watching literal pepegas wipe to "read my ability cast or die for litterally sleeping" mechanics next.

No, they literally reduced the dungeon per patch to ONE. ONE DUNGEON. You can press expert roulette in a shadowbringers patch and all you would get is that one patch dungeon for months on end.

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Wait what was so different about xelphaltol?

Cool upwards climb that isnt a bunch of jump pads. I liked the hermes dungeon but it would have been infinitely more fun if the journey was more physical and they did jumppads less: xelphatol.

A vertical dungeon with wooden platforms with like 2 zipline things near the end. Pretty neat design.

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Originally Posted by RatKing

Cool upwards climb that isnt a bunch of jump pads. I liked the hermes dungeon but it would have been infinitely more fun if the journey was more physical and they did jumppads less: xelphatol.

A vertical dungeon with wooden platforms with like 2 zipline things near the end. Pretty neat design.

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Ok but that was just aesthetics, what does that have to do with dungeon mechanics?

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Originally Posted by Saraide

Ok but that was just aesthetics, what does that have to do with dungeon mechanics?

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Nothing, thats why its two seperate points, maybe specify what you mean.

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Originally Posted by Saraide

Ok but that was just aesthetics, what does that have to do with dungeon mechanics?

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Nothing, thats why its two seperate points, maybe specify what you mean.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

My argument wasn’t that there was nothing to do—unless you want to be a non-DPSing healer. My argument was there’s very little healing to do. Even in wall-to-wall unless you have a tank allergic to cooldowns. Most wall-to-wall with even a semi-competent tank can be healed with oGCDs alone. And most of your time as a healer during them is pressing your AOE button. There’s very few exceptions to this.

In 8-man content like normal modes, having two healers is very often redundant. One could easily solo heal with low effort provided the party aren’t clowning around while the other primarily does damage. Alliance raids are much the same.

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My last runs of both Vanaspati and roulettes all needed healers. Tanks were taking large amounts of damage at near all times regardless of cds. Had to use my gcds because my ogcds were already spent. That’s not taking into account the raidwides and DPS getting slammed by avoidables. We later got Mhach and there was death all around. They never would have cleared the first boss without healers. So no-healing is not redundant. I have plenty of healing to do.

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Originally Posted by RatKing

Nothing, thats why its two seperate points, maybe specify what you mean.

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The way you wrote your post made it read to me like you mentioned xelphaltol and brayflox for being mechanically different. Nothing in that post made me think it had anything to do with aesthetics.

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Originally Posted by EgilTheStressedMage

My last runs of both Vanaspati and roulettes all needed healers. Tanks were taking large amounts of damage at near all times regardless of cds. Had to use my gcds because my ogcds were already spent. That’s not taking into account the raidwides and DPS getting slammed by avoidables. We later got Mhach and there was death all around. They never would have cleared the first boss without healers. So no-healing is not redundant. I have plenty of healing to do.

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Then you've had bad tanks. I have solo'd several dungeon bosses. In fact, the first boss of Dead Seas has a stack marker that does so little damage, I took it with simply Bloodwhetting and Reprisal. That's only 20% mitigation for a supposedly split damaging stack marker. Likewise, I solo'd Hermes from 57% despite getting wind burns a couple times. He still couldn't get me below 10k. Granted, Warrior's self-sustaining is utterly insane but even Gunbreaker and Paladin can solo these bosses. From a healing perspective, I've ran all the Experts on Sage and pressed only the following buttons: Kerachloe, Soteria and Taurochloe for one pull then Haima into Taurochloe for the next. There's only a few spicy pulls in the leveling dungeons, specifically Tower of Zot.

If you're having to GCD heal, it's almost always due to poor mitigation from the tank or bad use of your own abilities. White Mage is probably the only exception since it can't generate Lilies instantly.

Dungeons in the MSQ are always a little bit less dynamic than the ones that come later from side quests.

That noted, I find them way ahead of most other games, with the caveat that for all it's faults Shadowlands of WoW actually had good mechanics to it's dungeons - but they were undertuned in their normal, heroic, and M0 versions so most people were skipping the mechanics even from day one, and the majority of players don't go far in M+...
- good content no one sees is not a fair thing to use to judge against content everyone has to see.

As in, if you compare the MSQ dungeons here to the 'MSQ Dungeons' of other MMOs - the ones you MUST run while leveling... then we're way ahead here.

Where I get torn myself is when I compare these to GW2's newest Fractals. But the same analysis applies - most players never see those. And when I compare those to the optional dungeons FFXIV gets in the patches, it's a wash but FFXIV has better music so my mood is always more 'hyped up' when running them. But GW2's MSQ dungeons are famous for how bad they are... It's one of the things the game is known for...

My other main MMO, Elder Scrolls Online. The community splits the dungeons into 4 groups: MSQ normal and vet, and DLC normal and vet. Again the 'MSQ dungeons are seen as bland and easy, even in Veteran mode. But the DLC Dungeons are often praised, feared, loved, super hard, or just cool (it varies).

Right now for Endwalker other than the raid and the 2 extreme trials, all we have so far is the 'MSQ Content' - which is always the least dynamic stuff. Come back to this issue once we get a dungeon that is NOT tied to the MSQ (they haven't been doing as many of those as they used to though...).

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Originally Posted by ddwarbird

I am not trolling actually

There is nothing wrong with that, its just not my taste. But sure, label any take you don't understand as "trolling", probably better for your circle jerk bubble. Catholics used to do that too back in the 1500's, they called it Blasphemy and Heresy. I thought we'd moved on from witch burnings but guess not, especially not in 2022.

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yeah, not trolling at all.

well, thank you for sharing your "opinion" then.