Tower of Babil, the worst dungeon in Endwalker

Personally, I've been very down on dungeon design for years so this comes to no surprise. Endwalker dungeons so far have been incredibly safe and in some ways just reductive with Lv83 dungeon being the worst (rivaling Ktisis, which ill get to in some other thread) instead of dissecting the dungeon like I usually do ill just go over why I hate going here so much

The Gates: First two corridors are VERY gate heavy possibly worse than Relict for how little sense it makes. Gates in general suck due to the devs severely underestimating the power of their mobs, and on paper it could've worked as a frantic rush to get mobs comming into the train in Phase 1, or rushing into the platform in phase 2....but no its all so safe and boring and none of the mobs have any distinction, no mechanics no cleaves no nothing just training dummies that are only relevant to the tank. Worse is that u have allies so DPS are even more useless and can go wait idly in the corner if they dont wanna play the game.

The undertuned mechanics/ Bosses: Zot was probably the best dungeon until the 90s roll in (not including Aitiascope) that being said idk why the mechanics lack a punch to push. First boss electric field is so ridiculously mild, as a sage I wait in there to gather addersting and the obligatory stack marker mech isnt super vital for 4 and can be 3 manned, as a tank I wait inside there to evade essentially all the mechs. Boss #2 is very boring in general but the switch mechanic is so offkey and very very forgiving, not useless tho as u can drown if you gte like 7 stacks or 8? and as a healer/dps the chakrams can murder you if you somehow get hit twice. and as for the final boss..

Waste of potential: Babil was the one dungeon/trial I was looking forward to do *spoilers* due to it being on the trailer, housing Anima and the source of all the Telophori. Finally doing it was a waste of creativity for how little they added to the place. Music and aesthetic once again will NOT save a boring dungeon. Anima is sadly the highlight of the dungeon but even then its sooooo lacking in mechanics and the 2nd phase barely touches anyone besides the ultimate. Anima has some unique mechanics more so than the last 2, but compared to the utter chaos that was the Magus sisters NONE of these minor mechanics weaved unto eachtoher at any point making the fight stagnate ( Example being the move Phantom pain and Lunar nail executing at the same time, or Boundless Pain and mega graviation)all that visual flare gone to utter waste and i think that makes it worse, far worse. Yea Ktisis is very boring, yes all dungeons in EW have similar malnourish issue but Babil being the turning point of the story suffering aswell is a let down.

I have been doing leveling roulettes every day since mid-Dec and have somehow never gotten this dungeon. I have only done it once in a Trust :O

The dungeons in Endwalker were fine. One of the biggest mistakes made by World of Warcraft was the difficulty increases in dungeons during Cataclysm and yes, this is a 100% "you think you want something and then you don't". Imagine what it is like running a dungeon that is normal content in a roulette where every mechanic a boss does can potentially one shot a DPS, or three shot a tank. People would get incredibly tired of running the content when it provides no other benefit than to let people level up alt jobs, and people need to learn their jobs during leveling dungeons, not get frustrated because they are on the floor during the second boss because the healer got tired of resurrecting them for the sixth time, assuming they can even keep enough MP to heal the rest of the party in this hypothetical harder dungeon.

Easy content has a right to exist, even if some of the stuff at the lowest end needs to be given a few tweaks. Syrcus Tower itself needs some modifications to make it at least have some teeth, and there are good arguments for bringing back the slightly tougher mechanics for Ivalice. Albeit, Ivalice was probably the hardest set of 24 man dungeons they ever made in the history of the game.

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Originally Posted by Colt47

Snip.

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This argument again..”wow did it, and it was bad so Ff14 should never condone it”

Argument can be made somewhere that leveling dungeons shouldn’t be too hard and to that I say, your ignoring my points completely on this one. It’s difficulty is very mellow but the mechanics themselves are such a joke that they may as well be pointless (Electricity field in Boss 1, basically all the mobs in the 2nd corridor ect ect). The fact EW dungeons don’t do anything outside the norm despite being the 4th expansion is not a good thing, the fact they are a lot easier than most ARR dungeons is not a good thing. Disregarding difficulty, does anyone find these remotely thrilling? Fun? In all roles not just tank or healer. Most arguments go down to “they aren’t supposed to be fun” or “dungeons aren’t supposed to balanced, everything is balanced for savages and ultimates” or yours “you think you want it but don’t”

For the 8th time I’m not asking for 4 man savages I’m asking for the dam mechanics to appropriately managed and somthing to break the monotony of trash mobs. Babil is horrible due to being just a bare bones as any other dungeon, with a worse sting due to how little of a threat the place is

Gonna be real. As much as I wouldn't mind for some of the content to be more challenging, I have zero interest in that challenge coming from the trash pulls. Dungeons exist as leveling tools and tome fodder. If they're going to be challenging, then that challenge should come from the bosses. I suspect this is a sentiment reflected by the lion's share of the player-base.

Not that it would amount to much anyway. Do you know how dangerous trash would have to be to pose an actual threat to a tank? The survivability gap between tanks and DPS is so vast at this point that you would essentially have packs of one-shot machines as far as DPS are conerned, and three of the tanks probably still would only be mildly inconvenienced at worst. Basically just means healers working overtime for the fourth tank.

Ironically, Babil has been my favorite EW dungeon to run with all the little gimmics it has. That's mainly because of the unique double pulls you can do as a tank through the walls before Anima. Which is a neat little trick at best, but it feels good when people are like "Oh, I didn't know you could do that". You can also ignore the frog phase on the 2nd boss for the most part by turning into a frog to reset the drown stack, then immediately turn back to normal for increased dps uptime. It's true that the bosses are kinda tame though.

Edit: Arm's Length/Surecast to ignore the Anima teathers for dps uptime also feels pretty good. Babil in general feels like it rewards player knowledge more than any other dungeon. Is all of that useless for the most part though? Absolutely.

10/10 dungeon.. others need just as many if not more gates to slow down players the gotta go fast crowd is a bane on this game for those who enjoy dungeons, music, design an lore.. plus the Anima boss fight was really cool

I actually love the dungeon, music is pretty catjam.

As someone else said it, I wouldn't mind more challenge, but not on the trash mob. More on the bosses really.

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Originally Posted by Baxcel

10/10 dungeon.. others need just as many if not more gates to slow down players the gotta go fast crowd is a bane on this game for those who enjoy dungeons, music, design an lore.. plus the Anima boss fight was really cool

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Are they against truth, justice, and good dental hygiene as well?

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Originally Posted by Colt47

The dungeons in Endwalker were fine. One of the biggest mistakes made by World of Warcraft was the difficulty increases in dungeons during Cataclysm and yes, this is a 100% "you think you want something and then you don't". Imagine what it is like running a dungeon that is normal content in a roulette where every mechanic a boss does can potentially one shot a DPS, or three shot a tank. People would get incredibly tired of running the content when it provides no other benefit than to let people level up alt jobs, and people need to learn their jobs during leveling dungeons, not get frustrated because they are on the floor during the second boss because the healer got tired of resurrecting them for the sixth time, assuming they can even keep enough MP to heal the rest of the party in this hypothetical harder dungeon.

Easy content has a right to exist, even if some of the stuff at the lowest end needs to be given a few tweaks. Syrcus Tower itself needs some modifications to make it at least have some teeth, and there are good arguments for bringing back the slightly tougher mechanics for Ivalice. Albeit, Ivalice was probably the hardest set of 24 man dungeons they ever made in the history of the game.

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What you just described sounds leagues more fun and engaging than spamming my AoE buttons mindlessly because trash mobs do paltry levels of damage. At least then I'd actually have to be mindful of mechanics instead of all but ignoring them. The caveat here is they don't need to put a system like this in your standard dungeon affair. Just take the Lost Actions from Bozja, combined it with a sort of Mystic+ system and make it a separate piece of repeatable content with its own progression objective. They could slap in all kinds of enhancements since it wouldn't affect anything outside this particular content. Let mob pulls go wild, let players mess around with ability builds and so forth. Bam, you just gave us something to do for potentially months.

Alas, we instead have boring dungeons that require zero thought and nothing else.

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Originally Posted by Jirah

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Argument can be made somewhere that leveling dungeons shouldn’t be too hard and to that I say, your ignoring my points completely on this one. It’s difficulty is very mellow but the mechanics themselves are such a joke that they may as well be pointless (Electricity field in Boss 1, basically all the mobs in the 2nd corridor ect ect). The fact EW dungeons don’t do anything outside the norm despite being the 4th expansion is not a good thing, the fact they are a lot easier than most ARR dungeons is not a good thing. Disregarding difficulty, does anyone find these remotely thrilling? Fun? In all roles not just tank or healer. Most arguments go down to “they aren’t supposed to be fun” or “dungeons aren’t supposed to balanced, everything is balanced for savages and ultimates” or yours “you think you want it but don’t”

For the 8th time I’m not asking for 4 man savages I’m asking for the dam mechanics to appropriately managed and somthing to break the monotony of trash mobs. Babil is horrible due to being just a bare bones as any other dungeon, with a worse sting due to how little of a threat the place is

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To me, the first and second boss fights are an actual insult to the source material from where the bosses come from: FF4. In FF4, Barnabas has a timer that requires him to be oil or he will self-destruct and could possibly wipe your party. Dr. Lugae in his human form would oil him in intervals, but it applying the oil would heal Barnabas.

So we could have had an interesting fight were Barnabas could have debuffs self apply over time (like a Slow debuff, then damage down debuff, then countdown to self-destruct). You would keep Lugae alive for him to apply Oil to him to wipe the debuffs and give Barnabas an "Oiled" buff... OR you could grab a "less quality oil" to just roll back one debuff (ie: "Less Quality Oil" woudl remove the "countdown to self-destruct, but lead the Slow and Damage down debuff), which would also give Barnabas an "Oiled" buff and Lugae won't be able to apply a better oil. We could do all this while doing the mechanics built into the encounter we have already.

It would be way more entertaining then just "do mechanics and hit rotations." Then again, I keep running into people who don't remember how magnets work... so maybe not...

I am more upset they made the Magus Sisters AND Anima bosses in freakin story dungeons. If I never set foot in those two dungeons again I would not be upset.

What a disservice to them and the fans of the series.

Honestly, I think I found Ktsis Hyperboreia the most dull out of all the Endwalker dungeons overall. The aesthetics/spectacle are pretty bland and only the final boss is terribly interesting as far as mechanics go.

The only thing in Babil that makes it lose points in my book is being forced into single pulls during the elevator section.

Dungeons are made to be a leveling tool and to grind for spiritbond/minions. One thing they can add is the slider from levequest you can pick from +0 to +5. The more +, the more stats the bosses and trash have but especially the boss. Making them much harder at +5 at which point screwing up mechanic can insta kill you and you have to use more mits and heals than usual. Add more exp/spiritbond gain and up to 8% increase in minion drops as an incentive for doing them because not only they become harder but will also take more time.

I feel like in this game the endgame dungeons provide enough challenge/busyness/awareness from mechanics that usually we havent seen in previous expacs. They just lack a punch. And it literally happens during anima. Those multi hit punches just tickle you. I prepared mits for it and I could actually take it without mits...

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Originally Posted by Jirah

This argument again..”wow did it, and it was bad so Ff14 should never condone it”

Argument can be made somewhere that leveling dungeons shouldn’t be too hard and to that I say, your ignoring my points completely on this one. It’s difficulty is very mellow but the mechanics themselves are such a joke that they may as well be pointless (Electricity field in Boss 1, basically all the mobs in the 2nd corridor ect ect). The fact EW dungeons don’t do anything outside the norm despite being the 4th expansion is not a good thing, the fact they are a lot easier than most ARR dungeons is not a good thing. Disregarding difficulty, does anyone find these remotely thrilling? Fun? In all roles not just tank or healer. Most arguments go down to “they aren’t supposed to be fun” or “dungeons aren’t supposed to balanced, everything is balanced for savages and ultimates” or yours “you think you want it but don’t”

For the 8th time I’m not asking for 4 man savages I’m asking for the dam mechanics to appropriately managed and somthing to break the monotony of trash mobs. Babil is horrible due to being just a bare bones as any other dungeon, with a worse sting due to how little of a threat the place is

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Somehow this feels a bit ignorant... just pointing out on the fact that they had experience with WoW and trying to discredit them based on that... I do believe any other game player's opinion should be welcome, cause maybe their experience can bring value to this game...

However, to focus on the topic, majority of the dungeons are part of the MSQ content. You do not want to gatekeep casuals from completing the MSQ. There were actually forum posts before here about Ktisis because people kept failing on the last boss... because it had no line indications for the wind. People also complained about the MommaCrystal being too hard on normal mode...

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Originally Posted by DarkMasamune

I actually love the dungeon, music is pretty catjam.

As someone else said it, I wouldn't mind more challenge, but not on the trash mob. More on the bosses really.

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Funnily enough when you get into conversations about dungeons they only mention music…sorry but I don’t play games just to Listen to music and if the game fails to engage it sounds super out of place, much like Babil

From the way how Squeenix balances their Dungeons in terms of Enemy/Boss design, i'd say every Dungeon can be considered as the worst one. Also, they aren't even Dungeons in the first Place, just Marathon Tracks with Panorama View.

All I will say, is that the average player will probably not enjoy a difficulty bump.

SE takes this average player into consideration, especially for msq content.