The new dungeon is still ENTIRELY too easy

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Originally Posted by Altina_Orion

??????????????????????

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Yanno, FromSoft games. That Dark Eldenborne Blood Souls Ring stuff.

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Originally Posted by BlisteringFrost

Dawg like, it's always Roegadyns for some reason lmao

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Silly, I'm not a Roegadyn I'm an Ixal. Also me and Alti are buddies.

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Originally Posted by Altina_Orion

Seriously? It seems like you don't know how ilvl works. Things will hit harder and take longer to kill, but if you just do the mechs its actually exactly the same difficulty. In savage, it matters a bit more because of the enrage. You could just dodge mechs for 30 minutes straight in a casual duty and never be punished for it.

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It seems like you're going into a dungeon overgeared for it. Things will melt faster with higher ilvl. Boss mechanics will be skippable. Tank busters will take 10% HP unmitigated. At most. Of course it will be too easy. There is a reason there is a ilvl cap in some harder duties.

Alas, you guys already have a hard content to do. Dawntrail was a raider fest, with occult crescent normal being so hard that only raiders could clear it. You will have your ultimate, your shiny new savage tier.

Another thing: an interesting dungeon is not necessarily a hard one. A content that's hard for the sake of difficulty is just annoying.

It's a little ironic that there was a pretty popular thread about how the new dungeon is actually pretty challenging and OP of that thread couldn't clear it with DSS. :D

Really shows that what some might perceive as easy, others might find difficult! :)

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Originally Posted by AlienDiplomat

I'm not exactly sure what you are talking about is even possible. By the nature of discovery, ANYTHING they add mechanically, once you know how it works, will be muscle memory after you demystify the initial unknowns. What sort of mechanics are you suggesting they add that would overcome this? Do you mean totally randomizing the boss encounters so they never do the same moves twice?

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I'd love more randomization personally. It doesn't have to be to the point where the boss literally never does the same thing twice, but I shouldn't be able to memorize the fights. Give bosses larger abilities pools and let them choose which to use and what order. Make mobs meaningfully different from one another and place them randomly between the bosses. Multiple dungeon paths would be nice too.

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Originally Posted by PyurBlue

I'd love more randomization personally. It doesn't have to be to the point where the boss literally never does the same thing twice, but I shouldn't be able to memorize the fights. Give bosses larger abilities pools and let them choose which to use and what order. Make mobs meaningfully different from one another and place them randomly between the bosses. Multiple dungeon paths would be nice too.

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This will require a revamp to healers (which is fine, and desperately needed anyway), but it does create a problem with the stated design goals of not wanting to make healers the absolute lynchpin of completing content. I 100% agree with you though, everything in this game needs more randomization and less script. And healers need to be healing, not playing DPS bots.

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Originally Posted by miraidensetsu

It seems like you're going into a dungeon overgeared for it. Things will melt faster with higher ilvl. Boss mechanics will be skippable. Tank busters will take 10% HP unmitigated. At most. Of course it will be too easy. There is a reason there is a ilvl cap in some harder duties.

Alas, you guys already have a hard content to do. Dawntrail was a raider fest, with occult crescent normal being so hard that only raiders could clear it. You will have your ultimate, your shiny new savage tier.

Another thing: an interesting dungeon is not necessarily a hard one. A content that's hard for the sake of difficulty is just annoying.

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Where's this so called "feast" for raiders?

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Originally Posted by Atma

Honestly the simplest answer is to simply create a toggle-able "epic hero" mode that gives you x many free deaths and just call it a day.

It's a trust. It doesn't impact the difficulty level for party play at all. Let the people who are only here for the MSQ enjoy the MSQ. It has no bearing on anyone else's enjoyment of the game if the experience designed for purely solo play is reduced to easy mode. You don't even need to remove gear rewards, no one's experience is being 'ruined' by people getting free 745 gear when we've had 750 gear available for what, 4 months for people collecting tomestones?

If you feel like your experience is being cheapened because people can just progress through an MSQ dungeon without 'gitting gud' then I don't know what to tell you. You're probably a joy at parties. I mean I have a surprise for you - you can get waxed several times 'for free' during duty support for the trial.

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Ur so right why dont we just put an "I win" button on every msq duty in the game! Or how about AI takes over ur character and u can just watch the game play itself for you! How about we dont make u need to even move ur character for all of msq u will just teleport instantly where u need to go. Why should people be forced to actually play the video game? So true

If you want to dampen the vast majority of other peoples fun because you would rather mash ur face on the controller to win then actually put in effort to learn then I dont know what to tell you. Youre probably a joy at parties.

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Originally Posted by Volgia

Where's this so called "feast" for raiders?

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Occult crescent MANY casual players beat. It's about as hard as an ex, maybe a bit easier. The only requirement is to join the discord and sign up.

We've already been without a savage for 5 months which is typical and without a new ulti for 9 months. Not sure what you are talking about.

And all of this, is of course besides the point that nobody is asking for story dungeons to be savage. So go ahead, keep up with the strawman.

General reminder irrespective of thoughts from others. Dungeons are mandatory, casual content. If a savage/ultimate raider isn't bored out of their mind doing the dungeon, the dungeon is way, way too hard. People need to be able to make mistakes and survive, to practice mechanic styles and survive. And ideally, not be picked on as any individual attack unless that mechanic is laser-focused to pick on that role (E.G. a generally easy to do but melee-targeted attack like a melee-out aoe.) Anything else is literally and irrefutably bad dungeon design.

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Originally Posted by Flowerscody2

Ur so right why dont we just put an "I win" button on every msq duty in the game! Or how about AI takes over ur character and u can just watch the game play itself for you! How about we dont make u need to even move ur character for all of msq u will just teleport instantly where u need to go. Why should people be forced to actually play the video game? So true

If you want to dampen the vast majority of other peoples fun because you would rather mash ur face on the controller to win then actually put in effort to learn then I dont know what to tell you. Youre probably a joy at parties.

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Or you can do a better with not being this melodramatic over a suggestion that effectively allows a capped number of free raises in content that does not impact you in any way, shape or form, especially seeing as this implementation already exists in a select number of duties already...

Literally asked for it in trust duties, not duties where you're placed with other players, so I fail to see how this would dampen the fun on other players' experience, unless you're actually, and unironically placing some personal satisfaction in being a person that managed to complete a story dungeon LOL

every dungeon in this game i badly designed cause its just a corridor of duty

The new Dungeon was complete trash..

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Originally Posted by Taranok

If a savage/ultimate raider isn't bored out of their mind doing the dungeon, the dungeon is way, way too hard.

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Completely false and this kind of thinking is poison for the game. If you don't design so that everyone can find at least some engagement in something you are setting yourself up for failure. I found the bosses in Meso Terminal to be engaging and it's not because it's anywhere close to Savage. No, it's because you have to simply pay attention at the bare minimum instead of watching Youtube on your other monitor. People treat death as some egregious fault of the game design that shouldn't exist. If people think it's okay to stand in aoes because they won't be punished they will continue doing it. You will never learn anything if there is no failure state. Even Yoshida thinks the player base has been coddled too much by lax design so he's set out to reverse that.

I want to also reiterate that none of this is new. Many old dungeons are on par with current difficulty if not harder. The game is not getting harder, it is going back to what it used to be.

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Originally Posted by JadeCurtiss

Completely false and this kind of thinking is poison for the game. If you don't design so that everyone can find at least some engagement in something you are setting yourself up for failure. I found the bosses in Meso Terminal to be engaging and it's not because it's anywhere close to Savage. No, it's because you have to simply pay attention at the bare minimum instead of watching Youtube on your other monitor. People treat death as some egregious fault of the game design that shouldn't exist. If people think it's okay to stand in aoes because they won't be punished they will continue doing it. You will never learn anything if there is no failure state. Even Yoshida thinks the player base has been coddled too much by lax design so he's set out to reverse that.

I want to also reiterate that none of this is new. Many old dungeons are on par with current difficulty if not harder. The game is not getting harder, it is going back to what it used to be.

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Dungeons are casual content. It is mandatory for the biggest part of this game, the MSQ. There are 60 year olds who might play this game for the story that need to be able to clear this content. Your thinking is why dawntrail is collapsing the playerbase. Hell, your thinking is literally what killed Wildstar. They catered to the hardcore so hard that they ran their playerbase into the ground, and had too large a team for what they were trying to do.

The order of operations for difficulty is Open World < FATEs < Dungeons < Trial (normal) < Alliance < Trial (extreme) Savage < Ultimate. Dungeons are part of the 4 sections of mandatory content, they must be easy enough that your grandmother can do it. The mechanics need to be simple enough that a 12 year old can do it and not get more than a slap on the wrist for failing a mechanic.

And you may say many older dungeons are as hard as this, I say check those dungeons again. The overwhelming majority of ARR, HW, SB, and ShB dungeons are nowhere close in difficulty to what EW and DT have been putting out. Especially if you have cast bars or lag. Doubly so if both. Of the hard ARR dungeons like Aurum Vale (original,) people couldn't stop griping about it to the point where it was their least favorite dungeon for multiple expansions in a row. Your argument holds no water.

Remember, the devs had to change the implementation of a mechanic that has been unchanged (and largely forgotten) since literally the relaunch of the game, because dungeons had a single point of failure and kept wiping off of that single point of failure dying. This is, objectively, trash design.

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Originally Posted by Taranok

Dungeons are casual content. It is mandatory for the biggest part of this game, the MSQ. There are 60 year olds who might play this game for the story that need to be able to clear this content. Your thinking is why dawntrail is collapsing the playerbase. Hell, your thinking is literally what killed Wildstar. They catered to the hardcore so hard that they ran their playerbase into the ground, and had too large a team for what they were trying to do.

The order of operations for difficulty is Open World < FATEs < Dungeons < Trial (normal) < Alliance < Trial (extreme) Savage < Ultimate. Dungeons are part of the 4 sections of mandatory content, they must be easy enough that your grandmother can do it. The mechanics need to be simple enough that a 12 year old can do it and not get more than a slap on the wrist for failing a mechanic.

And you may say many older dungeons are as hard as this, I say check those dungeons again. The overwhelming majority of ARR, HW, SB, and ShB dungeons are nowhere close in difficulty to what EW and DT have been putting out. Especially if you have cast bars or lag. Doubly so if both. Of the hard ARR dungeons like Aurum Vale (original,) people couldn't stop griping about it to the point where it was their least favorite dungeon for multiple expansions in a row. Your argument holds no water.

Remember, the devs had to change the implementation of a mechanic that has been unchanged (and largely forgotten) since literally the relaunch of the game, because dungeons had a single point of failure and kept wiping off of that single point of failure dying. This is, objectively, trash design.

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Sounds like a whole lot of NOT MY PROBLEM.

60 year old who can afford a living space and a computer to play XIV on (or a playstation, no judge) can rub enough brain cells together to problem solve how to complete a dungeon. You, on the other hand, are treating them as if they are utterly invalid by assuming they aren't capable of doing so.

I feel insulted for my own intelligence for even feeling like you need this pointed out to you. I feel insulted for yours too. Be better.

The Dungeon difficulty is fine right now. There is only a few people having problems clearing it, but if you increase the difficulty too much, you can be sure more casuals are gonna leave the game.
People that enjoy harder content will feel it as well. Do you think they pushed the Ultimate to 7.5 for no reason? It's to set up an Ultimate in 8.3 and then pushing the next one to 9.1 giving us only one Ultimate next expansion.
SE has to cut content cause they lost to many casual players/money.

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Originally Posted by Taranok

Dungeons are casual content. It is mandatory for the biggest part of this game, the MSQ. There are 60 year olds who might play this game for the story that need to be able to clear this content. They must be easy enough that your grandmother can do it.

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I suggest they level WAR and play with trusts. If their only desire is to finish the MSQ they should be fine even with 10 vuln stacks.

please tell me where EW casual content was difficult, everything a fter Tower of Zot was a snoozefest. if you cant learn basic telegraphs then i really question your ability to play this game

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Originally Posted by theunhappypotato

please tell me where EW casual content was difficult, everything a fter Tower of Zot was a snoozefest. if you cant learn basic telegraphs then i really question your ability to play this game

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They didn't really say that it was difficult in and of itself, just that relative to other expansions it had more difficulty tied to it, which if you look at it relative to Stormblood they definitely aren't wrong, Stormblood dungeons were just as much, if not a greater snoozefest than anything EW pushed out. Shadowbringers as well, really..

ARR is a case where the overwhelming majority of the dungeons you could completely fall asleep in and not worry about anything, it just happened to be the case that ARR had some outliers, but they were far and few between.

They really aren't wrong if you actually think about what they actually wrote.

https://www.enworld.org/media/the-bi...gif.97663/full

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

They didn't really say that it was difficult in and of itself, just that relative to other expansions it had more difficulty tied to it, which if you look at it relative to Stormblood they definitely aren't wrong, Stormblood dungeons were just as much, if not a greater snoozefest than anything EW pushed out. Shadowbringers as well, really..

ARR is a case where the overwhelming majority of the dungeons you could completely fall asleep in and not worry about anything, it just happened to be the case that ARR had some outliers, but they were far and few between.

They really aren't wrong if you actually think about what they actually wrote.

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i personally take faster mech's like in DT over anything we got in EW dungeons, esp because with how boring jobs are, fight complexity is the only thing to really keep people enganged

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Originally Posted by Taranok

Your thinking is why dawntrail is collapsing the playerbase.

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No the player base is declining because the story fell short which amplified other cracks that were already there, such as:

-content being too formulaic
-lack of QOL features
-long waits between patch cycles
-job homogenization
-inadequate reward structures
-gearing in general

This alarmist trend of "things are too hard now" is a fallacy only applicable to a small minority of players. It is not a real, high profile problem like the others. If it was real, the player base would have dropped off a cliff a long time ago.

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Originally Posted by Altina_Orion

Occult crescent MANY casual players beat. It's about as hard as an ex, maybe a bit easier. The only requirement is to join the discord and sign up.

We've already been without a savage for 5 months which is typical and without a new ulti for 9 months. Not sure what you are talking about.

And all of this, is of course besides the point that nobody is asking for story dungeons to be savage. So go ahead, keep up with the strawman.

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I think you misquoted me Altina lmao.

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Originally Posted by JadeCurtiss

I want to also reiterate that none of this is new. Many old dungeons are on par with current difficulty if not harder. The game is not getting harder, it is going back to what it used to be.

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I'd like some examples because this statement is fundamentally baffling to read?

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Originally Posted by theunhappypotato

i personally take faster mech's like in DT over anything we got in EW dungeons, esp because with how boring jobs are, fight complexity is the only thing to really keep people enganged

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In order to keep things interesting, let's double down on fight complexity even if that's precisely what's killing off job identity, depth and complexity in the process?

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Originally Posted by Valence

In order to keep things interesting, let's double down on fight complexity even if that's precisely what's killing off job identity, depth and complexity in the process?

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I hope i dont fuck this up with quoting i'm new here but yes do you expect people who think the current msq dungeon is too hard too do a semi complex dps rotation? and i'm just beeing realistic, we/re so deep in the current fight design that overhauling it all would be too much efford to warrant for a 12 year old game with netcode from the 1990's

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Originally Posted by theunhappypotato

I hope i dont fuck this up with quoting i'm new here but yes do you expect people who think the current msq dungeon is too hard too do a semi complex dps rotation? and i'm just beeing realistic, we/re so deep in the current fight design that overhauling it all would be too much efford to warrant for a 12 year old game with netcode from the 1990's

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Having played the game in HW especially (but SB also works to an extent), I can confidently say that yes, it wouldn't matter if their rotation isn't perfect, unlike eating binary DDR checks in the face. Let's not forget that what we have today comes from a conscious choice on their end to overhaul what we used to have in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Having played the game in HW especially (but SB also works to an extent), I can confidently say that yes, it wouldn't matter if their rotation isn't perfect, unlike eating binary DDR checks in the face. Let's not forget that what we have today comes from a conscious choice on their end to overhaul what we used to have in the first place.

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well i'd love a more complex job/class system in the game but it sjust not realistic anymore, with how everything past SHB got designed every fight since eden turn 1 adhers so much to the 2 min meta that every "overhaul" would completly mess it up i think

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Originally Posted by theunhappypotato

well i'd love a more complex job/class system in the game but it sjust not realistic anymore, with how everything past SHB got designed every fight since eden turn 1 adhers so much to the 2 min meta that every "overhaul" would completly mess it up i think

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People could equally have said back then "I'd love a more difficult, twitchy action focused encounter design in the game but it's not realistic else we'd have to change and simplify everything in the battle system".

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Originally Posted by JadeCurtiss

No the player base is declining because the story fell short which amplified other cracks that were already there, such as:

-content being too formulaic
-lack of QOL features
-long waits between patch cycles
-job homogenization
-inadequate reward structures
-gearing in general

This alarmist trend of "things are too hard now" is a fallacy only applicable to a small minority of players. It is not a real, high profile problem like the others. If it was real, the player base would have dropped off a cliff a long time ago.

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I agree that all of these are problems, but ... I think the base is "declining" because the experienced an overblown population of players for a variety of circumstances (Blizzard scandal, pandemic years, really good Endwalker marketing) that made the game overhyped, and now that people tapped out of content to do, content they expect every expansion to have.

I say this because, Stormblood had massive backlash over it's story and it's main character, and it was fine. We had 2 expansions worth of job homogenization, and it was fine. QoL features have been being added and the inadequate reward structure and gearing is not a complaint i hear outside the forums and reddit.

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Originally Posted by BlisteringFrost

Sounds like a whole lot of NOT MY PROBLEM.

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I feel insulted for my own intelligence for even feeling like you need this pointed out to you. I feel insulted for yours too. Be better.

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Funny enough, whatever you feel insults your "intelligence" is not our problem either. Feel insulted all you want, for whatever you want. Why would I care?

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Originally Posted by Teno

Jumping from one side to the extreme. To make having to scrape people off the ground it'd have to be savage variant, which we know it'll never be in a roulette. Don't be dramatic to make your point.

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It's not common, but I do get dungeons with groups that just can't dodge mechanics to save their lives and end up getting one-shot by the next thing that hits them after taking on too many vulns, even as it is. Sometimes it's my casual friends, and sometimes it's just randoms. I don't need to be dramatic or make things up to make my point if they're actual scenarios I end up in.

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Originally Posted by Altina_Orion

They had how many expansions and up to 11 years, is that not enough?

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From my experience, apparently not :( I'd love for people to scale their abilities proportionately with their level/gameplay experience, but it just doesn't always happen. Not naming names, but I've watched some raiders get worse as expansions go by because they can't keep up with mechanics or changes in job design.

Trust me, I want dungeons to get harder so I don't feel like I'm falling asleep at the keyboard, but I have very little faith in the worst of the worst to keep up. As much as I want a more fun gameplay experience for myself, I'm not willing to sacrifice my time or braincells watching a party member walk themselves into certain death for the nteenth time because I made the sin of queuing into an expert roulette. This is kind of just a consequence of encounter design slacking in EW + stat squish making a lot of older synced content a joke, imho.

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Originally Posted by miraidensetsu

Alas, you guys already have a hard content to do. Dawntrail was a raider fest, with occult crescent normal being so hard that only raiders could clear it. You will have your ultimate, your shiny new savage tier.

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Btw this is crazy because I literally sat in hours-long debriefs before, during, and after my Forked Tower clear where a bunch of people in the static admitted that they're casuals who don't usually do raid-style content. Admittedly, we cleared it kind of late, but we still very much cleared with minimum corpses picked off of the ground in the earlier sections/bosses that we had all progged mostly as a group.

Also, there's no guarantee we'll even get ultimate this expansion. They've honestly been horrible with their transparency with ultimate releases + exact savage dates all expac :/

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Originally Posted by Liyinabi

From my experience, apparently not :( I'd love for people to scale their abilities proportionately with their level/gameplay experience, but it just doesn't always happen. Not naming names, but I've watched some raiders get worse as expansions go by because they can't keep up with mechanics or changes in job design.

Trust me, I want dungeons to get harder so I don't feel like I'm falling asleep at the keyboard, but I have very little faith in the worst of the worst to keep up. As much as I want a more fun gameplay experience for myself, I'm not willing to sacrifice my time or braincells watching a party member walk themselves into certain death for the nteenth time because I made the sin of queuing into an expert roulette. This is kind of just a consequence of encounter design slacking in EW + stat squish making a lot of older synced content a joke, imho.

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honestly you're right about it, everyone wants more "complex" jobs and whatnot but vast majority of people wouldnt be able to actually play those jobs and would just default to the easiest thing itskinda sad but its the truth so the only real complexity in this game can come from the fights at this point

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Originally Posted by Valence

I'd like some examples because this statement is fundamentally baffling to read?

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Stone Vigil (Hard) Boss 2
Snowcloak Boss 2 (pre-patch)
Aetherochemical Research Facility Boss 3 (post-patch ironically)
Sohr Khai Boss 3 (pre-patch)
Bardam's Mettle Boss 2
Castrum Abania Boss 2 (pre-patch)
Castrum Abania Boss 3 (pre-patch)
The Burn Boss 3 (pre-patch)

You may notice a lot of these have the caveat of 'pre-patch'. This is because a lot of these bosses had mechanics changed or removed to allow Duty Support. Regardless, these are examples that require some basic problem solving or adequate reactions to clear smoothly.

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Originally Posted by JadeCurtiss

Stone Vigil (Hard) Boss 2
Snowcloak Boss 2 (pre-patch)
Aetherochemical Research Facility Boss 3 (post-patch ironically)
Sohr Khai Boss 3 (pre-patch)
Bardam's Mettle Boss 2
Castrum Abania Boss 2 (pre-patch)
Castrum Abania Boss 3 (pre-patch)
The Burn Boss 3 (pre-patch)

You may notice a lot of these have the caveat of 'pre-patch'. This is because a lot of these bosses had mechanics changed or removed to allow Duty Support. Regardless, these are examples that require some basic problem solving or adequate reactions to clear smoothly.

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cant have simple problem solving skills in my weeb mmo or its too hard

Kinda think if they did hard mode dungeons they could satisfy both camps. Problem is what should the rewards be?

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Originally Posted by Liyinabi

Not naming names, but I've watched some raiders get worse as expansions go by because they can't keep up with mechanics or changes in job design.

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I feel attacked :(

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Originally Posted by JadeCurtiss

Stone Vigil (Hard) Boss 2
Snowcloak Boss 2 (pre-patch)
Aetherochemical Research Facility Boss 3 (post-patch ironically)
Sohr Khai Boss 3 (pre-patch)
Bardam's Mettle Boss 2
Castrum Abania Boss 2 (pre-patch)
Castrum Abania Boss 3 (pre-patch)
The Burn Boss 3 (pre-patch)

You may notice a lot of these have the caveat of 'pre-patch'. This is because a lot of these bosses had mechanics changed or removed to allow Duty Support. Regardless, these are examples that require some basic problem solving or adequate reactions to clear smoothly.

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The kind of difficulty you're bringing up is a completely different type of complexity tied to a completely different type of encounter design and dungeon experience. I am not saying that this is insignificant, but most of what you cite comes from obscure solutions required to clear a boss, solutions not being clearly accessible to the average jane or joe going through said casual content. The difficulty isn't in execution or how to play the content, but in figuring out what the game is expecting out of you, which understandably could make this kind of design bad in other ways.

- Boss 2 of Snowcloak is a perfect example that required people to know they had to aim the snowballs at the boss, although not doing so you'd kill it eventually anyway.
- ARCF is problematic because post patch, this is very much in line with current dungeon difficulty that's all about execution and understanding the DDR patterns. It wasn't as so back then, and the one thing people had to understand was that they had to jump into the tears during the room wide, which is similar to case 1: a boss gimmick. I'm not super fond of gimmicks but that's a different type of difficulty.
- I've never seen people struggling with old Sohr Khai ever personally... And I've ran this countless times in expert roulette with both vets and new players.
- Bardam is literally an old, early version putting out the base lego blocks of the current DDR we're dealing with.
- Castrum Abania boss 2 was definitely a problem, and again, tied to a boss gimmick that was actually lethal to boot.
- Boss 3 is very much an example of current DDR models, but it's true that it had spicy tank attacks that could catch unprepared tanks off, and that's closer to the kind of difficulty the older battle system had. And outlier in casual dungeons though.
- Yeah the Burn killed a lot of parties. A combination of DDR models (the hexa shaped AoEs on the floor) and older battle system mechanics (ice spikes), combined to a boss gimmick (the fog). A pretty hefty concoction.

Still, of the few that aren't tied to bad gimmicks, some are outliers (like mist dragon). Most encounters before ShB were crazy easy. Some actually had great mechanics in the older fashion, but unfortunately could be bruteforced through without even noticing (take say, the second boss of the Aery for example).

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Originally Posted by Valence

The kind of difficulty you're bringing up is a completely different type of complexity tied to a completely different type of encounter design and dungeon experience. I am not saying that this is insignificant, but most of what you cite comes from obscure solutions required to clear a boss, solutions not being clearly accessible to the average jane or joe going through said casual content. The difficulty isn't in execution or how to play the content, but in figuring out what the game is expecting out of you, which understandably could make this kind of design bad in other ways.

- Boss 2 of Snowcloak is a perfect example that required people to know they had to aim the snowballs at the boss, although not doing so you'd kill it eventually anyway.
- ARCF is problematic because post patch, this is very much in line with current dungeon difficulty that's all about execution and understanding the DDR patterns. It wasn't as so back then, and the one thing people had to understand was that they had to jump into the tears during the room wide, which is similar to case 1: a boss gimmick. I'm not super fond of gimmicks but that's a different type of difficulty.
- I've never seen people struggling with old Sohr Khai ever personally... And I've ran this countless times in expert roulette with both vets and new players.
- Bardam is literally an old, early version putting out the base lego blocks of the current DDR we're dealing with.
- Castrum Abania boss 2 was definitely a problem, and again, tied to a boss gimmick that was actually lethal to boot.
- Boss 3 is very much an example of current DDR models, but it's true that it had spicy tank attacks that could catch unprepared tanks off, and that's closer to the kind of difficulty the older battle system had. And outlier in casual dungeons though.
- Yeah the Burn killed a lot of parties. A combination of DDR models (the hexa shaped AoEs on the floor) and older battle system mechanics (ice spikes), combined to a boss gimmick (the fog). A pretty hefty concoction.

Still, of the few that aren't tied to bad gimmicks, some are outliers (like mist dragon). Most encounters before ShB were crazy easy. Some actually had great mechanics in the older fashion, but unfortunately could be bruteforced through without even noticing (take say, the second boss of the Aery for example).

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Point being none of the current dungeons are any more demanding than the examples given, in my personal opinion. It was not a widespread problem then, therefore it shouldn't be now. This is all subjective ultimately. But the assertion that we are dealing with Extreme/Savage level mechanics now is totally absurd.