EX Dungeons in Heavensward please?

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May we please see OPTIONAL EX-Difficulty Dungeons in Heavensward? "Wandering Minstrel: Sunken Temple of Qarn," etc.

Refer to: WoW Heroic Dungeons.

You've confirmed Normal & Hard Difficulty Raids but not harder dungeons. One of the games biggest critiques is that dungeons (even hard-mode 50 dungeons) are pathetically easy.


No, the pre-nerf Pharos example isn't a good counter-argument because it's primary issue was difficulty:reward ratio as compared to the dungeons it was released alongside of. And the complainers made up only half (for illustration) of arguers for/against Pharos' nerfing... many, many people wanted the difficulty retained but reward become appropriately proportionate. Many people, in fact, have argued for generally harder dungeons all around. And not merely statistical difficulty, but primarily mechanical difficulty.

Not everybody wants more difficulty options, but from researching, a sufficient plenty do enough to justify EX-Difficulty Dungeon implementation.


Normal-Difficulty Raids are an answer to providing more "Midcore Content" to the game.

EX-Dungeons would serve the same, exact purpose.

If you think it best, I think it'd be Ok if these were premade-only (no DF, at least for a long while, if at all).

EX-24 Man's to supplement this request would be HUGE too (same as before, Ok if no DF IMHO).

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We want harder dungeons! When do we want em? Now! XD No really harder dungeons would be nice maybe something that requires a little more strategy on the boss battles rather than some gimmick have phases in the boss battles like Brayflox HM? Multiple paths to the boss? You could even have "easy routes" and "hard routes" with the harder one dropping better loot than the easy.

I thought something was mentioned about the idea of "Savage" dungeons in either one of the interviews or live letters recently.

I definitely agree with this. If trash pulls in dungeons could be more like pre-nerf T10 and T11, they'd be so much more interesting and rewarding to do even when the content is somewhat outgeared. Thing is though, the rewards in terms of loot need to be there as well - I find little incentive to spend valuable playtime on Savage Coil because it doesn't give me anything more than bragging rights and an interesting fight. Those are good to have, but loot is why we play. :p Raise the currency reward slighly and have each boss drop one more piece of loot and I'm there.

That said, I do think that instead of nerfing raid content they should introduce an Easy Mode - again allowing people who aren't used to endgame raiding to progress, but with a lower currency reward per run and only one loot reward instead of two.

More content is always good but

1) what loot or other reward do you expect there?
2) gear progression has been like: farm dungeons -> do the raid/ex-primal stuff
3) what gear should be required for those? If you need top level gear for those, the only reward you can give are titles and such
4) will there be enough players doing this, considering the above things about loot and reward vs. gear you need? How many players do savage right now?
5) I'd rather see more full party content.
6) What you want could also be achieved by tightening the iLevel synch on current and future dungeons.

Graduating the difficulty is not an easy task. Usually new dungeons are a bit difficult (with random parties) for some time, and when most people know them well and are a bit more geared they become a bit too easy. As soon as a place is a bit more difficult you start to find people who quit the place just at the start in DF. It happened in Pharos Sirius but also in Tam Tara HM when it was a new place.

The problem from my point of view are the rewards. If these harder dungeons give better gear rewards, then they become the way to go or the fastest way to gear up and either everybody would do them (they become sort of obligatory) or there would be a widening gap between people who can do them and people who can't. It might be they give more tomestones of the capped variety so you would just cap earlier on the week, but now you already cap quite easily so people might complain they do not have enough things to do.

Of course more content is always welcome but resources are limited so usually there must be choices.

Ilvl sync may be a way to make content not so easy. If we (optionally) get synced to the entry ilvl or near it, things would change a lot. I don't think people would sync to entry ilevel every time when farming tomestones, but maybe from time to time with friends just for fun.

In terms of difficulty, Pharos may have been the closest thing to what I want. Before it was nerfed to hell, that is. The problem with Pharos was never how challenging it was, it was that other, far easier dungeons gave the same rewards.

I'm all for more varied, difficult options. And while I do like the idea of using item sync to say, bring down the player's power to near-to/the minimum item level required, it doesn't add mechanical difficult. Just tightens what's already there.

As for rewards, perhaps glamour options. Don't provide increase iLVL but perhaps side-grades or different appearances to the existing normal mode's gear.

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Originally Posted by Caraway

I'm all for more varied, difficult options. And while I do like the idea of using item sync to say, bring down the player's power to near-to/the minimum item level required, it doesn't add mechanical difficult. Just tightens what's already there.

As for rewards, perhaps glamour options. Don't provide increase iLVL but perhaps side-grades or different appearances to the existing normal mode's gear.

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For the mechanical stuff please consider that many mechanics are just very watered down or even completely skipped over by dps burn or hp pools to even be noticed as mechanics if you don't know they are actually happening with actual overgearing.

I wouldn't mind optional Extreme Dungeons. I wouldn't mind if there were 8-man dungeons. I wouldn't even mind harder dungeons (thought outside of ilv restrictions or mechanical gimmicks, I don't know how you'll up the difficulty. And once a mechanic is known and people have done it enough, the difficulty of the dungeon/trial/raid drops considerably).

What I do mind is a 24-man anything that cannot be DF'd. If anything that should never happen, it should be that.

Honestly hardmode should be the last difficulty level for dungeons.
( lorewise and ofc re rehashed content is a nono in 3.0 )
Just give the remaining dungeons their hardmode and im game. Im excited for pharos hardmode, hopefully they will have made it as dificult as pre nerfed version.
Anyways SE should really tie up loose ends from 2.0 ( finish all the hardmodes ) and start focusing on the new 3.0 future stuff.
Cuz i know ppl r like ( including me)
Where is:
- ultima ex
- fcob / bcob savage
- the other hardmode dungeons
- urths fount ex
- perhaps a gilgamesh ex fight

Im sure half the playerbase do not want another rehashed titan fight just because they thought hey lets make a titan savage fight.

harder dungeon? yes, dungeon heroic ala wow? hell no! they are only the same dungeon with more hp and hitting harder. what they need is to add more gimmick and skill to the monster, they need to make us think and know the monster.

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Originally Posted by silentwindfr

harder dungeon? yes, dungeon heroic ala wow? hell no! they are only the same dungeon with more hp and hitting harder. what they need is to add more gimmick and skill to the monster, they need to make us think and know the monster.

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Kinda like a wow heroic dungeon?

Because seriously if you think they just make the numbers bigger, you're not paying attention.

One question: How did WoW did it with their Heroic Dungeons? Did they change the mechanic to a harder one or just make the enemies in there stronger?

I'm all in to make optional extreme mode dungeons but what can 4-man dungeons do much with mechanics? I'd like to see EX-mode dungeons be full party instead and requires mechanics similar to LotA. As for rewards, how about make them drop green meldable items? I see an increasing trend to equip melded equipments than go for the highest ilvl.

And as for difficulty, the players will ALWAYS try to get the most reward by doing as LEAST as possible. I mean... who pulls normally at Brayflox HM anymore?

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Originally Posted by elemental10

One question: How did WoW did it with their Heroic Dungeons? Did they change the mechanic to a harder one or just make the enemies in there stronger?

I'm all in to make optional extreme mode dungeons but what can 4-man dungeons do much with mechanics? I'd like to see EX-mode dungeons be full party instead and requires mechanics similar to LotA. As for rewards, how about make them drop green meldable items? I see an increasing trend to equip melded equipments than go for the highest ilvl.

And as for difficulty, the players will ALWAYS try to get the most reward by doing as LEAST as possible. I mean... who pulls normally at Brayflox HM anymore?

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Most of the time mechanics were added to bosses (generally trash was only made stronger). So a boss on normal mode might just do his thing while on heroic mode the thing may be enhanced in some way or the fight may contain adds. Either way the heroic encounter will throw more at you than the normal encounter did, this is on top of the numbers going up.

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Originally Posted by Spoekes

More content is always good but

1) what loot or other reward do you expect there?

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While WoW's MOP challenge dungeons were just overtuned speed runs, their reward system would translate perfectly here: class specific glamour gear, mounts, and maybe titles.

Now that Heavensward has been released, may you please consider this feature for future development(s)? 3.x??

A feature like Diablo 3's greater Rifts would not be that bad.
Maybe limit it to once per week to make it feel special.

The problem is pretty much that players demand harder content, but if its hard and doesn't drop the very best loot, they do not want anything to do with it.

I love to raid because i love fighting raid bosses. I don't care about the loot so much as the interesting fight to get to it.

Original Savage Coil is a prime example, despite that the content was harder like what they claim to want, because the rewards were the same as the regular version, no one wanted to do it. They just took the path of least resistance to the loot.

Old Expert dungeons gave Bright light for Nexus Weapons but now that Expert Roulette doesn't include those old dungeons, it's kinda lame. Let us get light in new HW dungeons, or make a new roulette that included the old Expert Dungeons. Maybe make a Expert Roulette 1 and Expert Roulette 2.

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

Old Expert dungeons gave Bright light for Nexus Weapons but now that Expert Roulette doesn't include those old dungeons, it's kinda lame. Let us get light in new HW dungeons, or make a new roulette that included the old Expert Dungeons. Maybe make a Expert Roulette 1 and Expert Roulette 2.

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The old expert dungeons are included in the high-level roulette option.

While it might be interesting to have new extreme or expert dungeons, I fear that FFXIV is just going to add one hit kills to the new enemies where a simple screw up or not knowing an attack pattern results in an instant wipe. If this is the case, it is better that they do not implement them at all.

Problem is what will you have it reward? It can't really be on par with ex primals or raids because that would essentially kill that content, nor can it not reward anything or people won't run it.

They gave us the undersized party option. Now I just want them to give us a level-synced party option. I want to be able to queue for any dungeon with a premade party and select the level we will be synced to (maybe this is already an option idk)... but then I want a title or other such reward (maybe vanity gear) for beating dungeons while synced down. Such as beating Satasha (lv 15 dungeon) while everyone is synced to level 10. Let us choose the level sync, so we could practice doing it at any ilevel of our choosing - with the rewards being for ilevel 10 and below... or something like that. I think this would be a great way to make older dungeons more interesting. We already have a lot of dungeons, why not reuse them.

I'm certainly tired of primals being the hardest content other than BCoB/Alex raids. I mean, its just a single boss. I want something with lots of strong mobs instead of just a single boss.

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Originally Posted by Kyant

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There is a fine line between letting people still do old content for some rewards (cards, pets, etc), and recycling old content. A lot of games that did that got backlash for recycling instead of new content. If it's just custom level sync I have no problem with it (as it's already 90% implemented anyways), but once they start recycling old content and selling it as "new" then it's a problem.

The only reason the bosses are even strong at the moment is due to their ability to instant wipe your team for failing a damage check or not solving a kill the correct target puzzle. However, I do not believe that dungeons should be like this. Instant wipe mechanics are just plain lazy by designers.

Since you're only doing 2 dungeons per major patch now, you ought to release two difficulties at a time then. Just saying.

Tam-tara Savage would be amazing. We aren't finished with that questline yet. I can't really think of any other dungeons whose questlines we didn't finish off the top of my head, but I'm sure there are some good storylines out there that would justify us returning to some of them.

Tam-tara was always my favorite hard mode dungeon due partly to the story and atmosphere and partly to how it balanced DPS checks and mechanics. Especially earlier on, if you had two melee DPS going against the final boss, it was very difficult to kill the grooms before they reached the center and wiped the party. It required players to think outside the box and form strategies to cover their own weaknesses. The mechanic was a simple one, but one that could not but avoided until way later, when everyone was very well-geared.

I think an evolution of that formula (or even T2's formula) would be a great way to go for dungeons. It would also provide players with a new challenge outside of Alexander.

They do want to add a kind of time attack aspect but it would be much better if it was kind of like challenge mode from WoW in a sense. Where you get vanity armor for completing all the dungeons 50-60 on expert/heroic in X amount of time. And doing so you can't unsync to do it so it would have more longevity to the game as a whole. Honestly it'd be a great idea to reward players for such high effort.

I want much more mechanical complexity/difficulty... statistical difficulty is pretty dull by itself.

I would just happily settle for more than 2-3 dungeons being in EX roulet. If we insist on an iLvl 200+ dungeon set can we just add (yet another) roulette as a "Savage" Roulette and have like 10+ dungeons in HM and 4-5 in Savage? Running the save 2-3 week in and week out makes the content so frigging monotonous I can literally do other things while running them. And I'm the friggin Melee DPS. I shouldn't have time to do ANYTHING but Dps during a pull.

I agree completely. We should have "[Dungeon]: Master" that is on par with coil in difficulty (not savage) and drops gear in the i195-200 range. Make it challenging, 4 man content, that drops a reward worth the challenge. Alexander Easy Mode dropping 190 gear with lockout is fine.

I doubt the 2 new dungeons will be any more interesting with challenges, they might be better designed but I'm skeptical. It's more because we're getting the airship thing and since that's the reason it means we could just get standard filler dungeons again.

I had higher expectations for the dungeon design in HW but it's disappointing to see that a lot of the pre 50 dungeons are still more interesting than the level 50+ dungeons. Revamped 1.0 dungeons still have the best design except toto-rak imo. Neverreap and fractal are slightly above average at least.