because of duty support is slightly more difficult content even possible?

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Yes, to dodge big orange nono zones. And that's basically where their capabilities end.

Activating things? Priority target switching? Mechanics that require different objectives from each "player"?

Trusts have basically shoehorned dungeon mechanics into "dodge the cleave, dodge the point-blank, dodge the line, dodge the donut AoE, don't stand in the bad"

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Speaking as someone who's programmed video game AI in the past for released AAA projects, Trusts can also be programmed to do all the above if they so choose, the only limitation is what the developers want to do.
Arguably, programming the trusts to do any complex mechanic would be easy compared to true, adaptive on the fly AI, since the trusts in this game, programming wise are effectively designed as a very simple AI: 'if x, do y'.

Like, take Dohn Mheg's intermission, where the moment the boss creates the illusion bridge, each of the trusts loads up its individual script on how to proceed and get to the other side that is unique from each other., something that could easily be replicated for any mechanic where each member of the party needs to do something different.

Trust me, their capabilities can be whatever Square wants to be, since their script for any mechanic can be as complex as needed to be. Trusts could easily do Ultimates if they were given scripts on how to perfectly complete each mechanic given buffs/debuffs and given damage buffs to compensate for the downtime while they dodge. The reason Square makes dungeon design the way it is isn't due to limitations of trusts, it's because that's their design vision for dungeons. Or laziness on wanting to have to make the more complex scripts needed for more complex mechanics.

Heck, we see more complex NPC AI inside of solo instances from time to time, showcasing the devs could make complex trusts if they so choose. it's an intentional decision that they don't, whether for design vision or for laziness.

Duty support absolutely gutted dungeons and since they also gutted optional dungeons, there are no more insteresting dungeons to run.

Duty Support didn't gut dungeons. Players gutted dungeons. Players that wanted a streamlined smooth wall-to-wall experience, players that wanted low-stakes brain-off grinds for leveling exp, players that wanted to pay as little attention as possible.

As evidence, I submit required duties, such as Copperbell and Toto-rak, as well as optional duties, such as Qarn and Dzemael.

The problem isn't mechanics. The problem is more complex environments. And we're not allowed to have any more complex environments because players start to complain that it takes too long, they just want to kill-move-kill. Until they inevitably complain that everything runs the same and is boring and they want some "excitement" except no not that, we don't want to have to think or otherwise stop the wall-to-wall pulls.

Streamlined smooth w2w experience is great, I don't want to waste time with side rooms with pointless loot and keys to pick up. That's a waste of time, I'm glad they got rid of that bs. I just want more engaging mechanics during boss fights and trash and they absolutely gutted them because of Duty Support.

I love trusts and duty support. I do not think things where made easier because of them at all. I would much rather go with the trusts at my own pace and enjoy my own company.

They are something that I really enjoy and I do all my MSQ with them. I wish they would expand on them and allow me to have another player as I duo also. I think raids and dungeons in general just got easier as the time has gone on.

I do not do savage I did a lot of my raiding a long time ago and just before ARR the dungeons like Darkhold and Aurum vale where really hard and took a lot of coordination.

We where not using comms and it was tough but a lot of fun and I miss those times but now it is boring dodge this dodge that and rush so I prefer the trusts. If they want to add harder dungeons that is fine I am more than capable of doing them but let me do them with my trusts.

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Originally Posted by Rudje

In From The Cold's difficulty arises from it testing skills that the game doesn't give a shit about outside of IFtC. Navigating without a map (especially in a place where everything looks the same), understanding enemy aggro types and radii, and doing both of the former while being nerfed to hell are not things you're forced to see unless you take a break from msq to do Eureka (which at least has a damn map), which is required for nothing in the story, and none of that is tested with a time limit. It's just badly designed, which only looks like difficulty if your only metric is player failure.

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and also, look, I loved In From The Cold and beat it before they nerfed it, but I also just absolutely hate it when games that lack explicit stealth mechanics expect me to stealth. I can't see vision cones of enemies and I have no radar showing their movements, nor any ability to take cover and hide behind something. So then the stealth just becomes, inherently, guesswork. Which worked with the narrative to some extent but as a gameplay experience......

It's not going to happen, as the entire game design paradigm is "as easy as possible." Look at the recent summoner class rework and how the healing classes have been reduced to spamming a 1 key.

I feel like the people who claim everything is "too easy" are people who have done the duties over and over. Normal content is not "too easy" - I think there's some form of difficulty in them in your first play through.

There should just be another layer of difficulty to cater to the "midcore players". That is what I hope for. A suggestion would be adding a difficulty between normal and extreme/savage with more challenging, more fun, higher replayability.

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Originally Posted by tsuchii

I feel like the people who claim everything is "too easy" are people who have done the duties over and over. Normal content is not "too easy" - I think there's some form of difficulty in them in your first play through.

There should just be another layer of difficulty to cater to the "midcore players". That is what I hope for. A suggestion would be adding a difficulty between normal and extreme/savage with more challenging, more fun, higher replayability.

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Thank you for this. Most of the people on the forums, or so it seems to me, are players who have been here a long time. I'm one of them. And as old players, we tend to forget what a dungeon represents for newcomers, and all those who in general are not regular players at all. There are those who have simply forgotten; those whose memory is a little selective (“bof, in one go I understood X dungeon” < a player who isn't necessarily lying... but forgets to mention that he had played three other mmorpg before)... and those who refuse to admit that their pace of play is the primary factor in the ease they blame on lambda content.

mmorpg players have always been more or less bulimic, but lately this has been taken to a rather remarkable extreme. Players who gobble up narrative content in a few days because they've taken days off for the release... Then complain that there's nothing left to do (?!). People who play almost daily, then complain that they find the lambda content easy (obviously, this is your umpteenth time in this dungeon! It would be surprising if you didn't find it easy, really). Even games like Darksouls and Sekiro are considered easy by some players, for the record.

So no, please don't touch normal content, at least when it comes to dungeons which are necessary for the narrative. That being said, we could imagine a system where the facultative instances, those who aren't necessary to progress in the story, would be more complicated. There are no barriers for those, since they don't block the player who just want to enjoy the story.

2 things here

1) nobody says dungeons should be hard, but there is also something to be said that dungeons shouldn’t be so damn easy and have such broken abilities like bloodwhetting that it makes the dungeon actively unfun for other people. There should be some element of challenge in them that makes them fulfilling

2) the casual content they shouldn’t have changed was things like alliance raids which were designed to be bridging content but they have been nerfed into the floor

Casual content should still offer engagement to higher end players and offer a sense of scale, EW casual content really does neither