leveling roulette feedback

The dungeons are too easy.

i do appreciate the changes to MSQ roulette places, and i like some of the changes made to copperbell, toto-rak, et cetera. i really am thankful the devs care about making these old places a good experience.

but now i think they need a small bump up in difficulty. right now a lot of the 'trash' mobs don't really do damage unless the tank is already experienced and does wall to wall pulls. similarly, some bosses have very weak machanics, weak auto attack, and die too fast for their mechanics to happen more than once or twice.

heres a few examples:

sastasha coeul boss: dies too fast, only aoes once, doesn't really do any damage to the tank. it sucks to get hit by the aoe which is great, but it'll probably only get to use that once. final boss, also dies too fast to get the adds and stuff going.

tam-tara - great final boss but it doesn't do any damage, and the adds don't either. I'm exaggerating a bit, they do some damage, but I often go the whole fight without having to heal.

toto-rak - ochu bosses die too fast to do anything - like 30 seconds. last boss used to output some decent damage, i would have to sometimes medica or w/e back in the day, but now that's just not the case.

i could mention every dungeon, but it's more or less the same across the board. bosses should be 60-120 seconds to kill imho, and their mechanics should have to be respected. I'm not advocating that dungeons become super duper hard, just hard enough to be 15-20 minutes instead of 8-12 minutes. occasional wipes and stuff should be a thing

despite all that i still really enjoy spamming leveling roulette just so people get their tank/healer faster, but it's just such a nerfed experience from what it once was. it was never that hard, but it felt more appropriate for a dungeon back then.

anyone feel free to opine on this. am i totally nuts? am i rite?

I mean mechanically the early dungeons were always easy. I don't think anyone was wiping on Sastasha or Tam-Tara even when they were new. I do sometimes wish the ilvl sync was a little tighter, but yeah. Easy dungeons are easy. They get more complicated as you go (though rarely truly difficult).

The first three are supposed to be easy. Heck most of the pre 50 dungeons are meant to be teaching tools. Especially before the 6.1 changes. Yet power creep happened fast. Not saying they were great at doing so or that some people realized they were meant to help teach people mechanics and whatnot. This is why Aurum Vale was the way it was with the cyclops being the first showing no Aoe markers.

Only way around the issue really is to build a scaling system outside of level sync that either scales enemy HP to adjust for potency changes over the years or to lower potency on skills in lower level content and I just don't think the devs care enough to code something like that. SWTOR has tried that type of scaling and its constantly broken.

Also, the dev team seems hell bent on making dungeons as simple as possible lately for solo players and to be clearable by trusts. I wouldn't expect any changes in that regard either which is why we are getting those criterion dungeons for midcore content.

Personally I like harder dungeons just so I can feel more engaged. But even if the goal is to keep them easy and breezy as mellow teaching tools, having them too easy is counterproductive.

For example, Denn the Orcatoothed (Sastasha final boss) was pretty clearly initially designed to teach players to watch for and react to interactive elements like the bubbles. Unfortunately, Denn now dies so quickly that the lesson being imparted is "ignore everything except the boss." I haven't run Copperbell since it got retooled but its last boss at least used to have the same problem (no reason to target the adds before Kottos). On the other hand, Tam-Tara's last boss still at least forces the player to grapple with the task of killing adds to remove Galvanth's invulnerability.

But if mechanics can be ignored by new players they cannot function as teaching tools.

It feels like just about everything in ARR and HW, including dungeons, has been revamped so that free trial players don't get frustrated before they buy the game.

(And also so people can get to the later content in a reasonable amount of time without buying the level-to-80 and clear-everything-before-Endwalker cash shop items.)

I don't really mind. I miss some of the old mechanics, but it's still fun.

Hey everyone. thanks for the replies.

I think I did not articulate the problem clearly. Those dungeons being easy is fine, they were indeed easy from the beginning. The problem is, they've been nerfed over the years to be easier-than-easy, like, guildhest-easy. Too easy to be instructive. The dungeons can be 'easy' while still requiring the tank to tank, the healer to hard cast some cures, and for the dps to not run ahead of the group and solo things.

It might alleviate frustration for free trial players, but i think it will also be the cause of frustrating behaviors. for example, now healers and dps can run ahead and pull if a new player is tanking. Or, if a new player is healing, they could get a seasoned tank used to pulling everything into the boss room to be aoe'd down.

in general things just die too fast and don't do enough damage; direct hit was added, cleric stance removed, and potencies have increased over the years, flash was replaced with aoe for gla/pld.

Hey!

From reading the origional post about things dying too easily. I totally agree!

I hope we can get alot of reworked such as the 24 man raids at level 50.

At the moment we have alot of easy content in dungeons past lv 50! We have some reworked but people are simply watching TV through certain dungeons then hitting curves in certain content and becoming flabbergasted.

I think dungeons should become scary. Reduce the ilvl to minimum, up the strength of monsters in rouletes and make it like it is now for people who would like to enjoy the story.

Make people enjoy the duty finder content and work together, not steamroll it.

yeah they made dungeons scary once or twice. member OG Pharos Sirius or The Burn on launch? people actively avoid hard stuff like the plague.

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Originally Posted by DivineP

Hey!

From reading the origional post about things dying too easily. I totally agree!

I hope we can get alot of reworked such as the 24 man raids at level 50.

At the moment we have alot of easy content in dungeons past lv 50! We have some reworked but people are simply watching TV through certain dungeons then hitting curves in certain content and becoming flabbergasted.

I think dungeons should become scary. Reduce the ilvl to minimum, up the strength of monsters in rouletes and make it like it is now for people who would like to enjoy the story.

Make people enjoy the duty finder content and work together, not steamroll it.

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MSQ dungeons are designed such that casual players who aren't that interested in using a perfect rotation and are prone to making mistakes with mechanics are able to complete it. I would not expect any difficulty increase of dungeons, especially those required by the MSQ.

You sound like you'll be interested in the Criterion dungeons that they are adding to the game.

When I started the game, I actually remember having to do mechanics on the Sastasha final boss. Haven't had to do them in years.

I like how they redid a lot of the boss mechanics.
I remember as a new fresh-out-of-the-novice-hall tank, Sashtasha was a little rough, but now as a lvl 50-something in Gear from Ishgard, the dungeons seem pretty easy. Probably easier for folks in the 80-90 lvl range.

Let's face it, even the level 90 dungeons are super easy. Even the 2 new expert ones. The 90 alliance raid isnt too difficult either. The problem I see is that there is a massive (not an understatement) gap between normal content and savage/extreme/unreal/etc..

This is mostly because normal content forgives mistakes a lot. But savage for example has mechanics that if 1 person fails , can wipe the whole party.

The game is either afk easy or requires a dedicated static (or 100s of fails before a clear using party finder).

I just wish they add something that is in between savage and normal. Maybe a version of extreme dungeons, that can be done with DF but also require some semblance of paying attention..

And I have a feeling criterion dungeons are gonna fall under the same difficulty gap. Either piss easy or require dedicated statics.

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Originally Posted by Razhius

And I have a feeling criterion dungeons are gonna fall under the same difficulty gap. Either piss easy or require dedicated statics.

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We already know Criterion Savage is going to require dedicated groups. Criterion Normal should be on the easy side though I think they said they were aiming for EX difficulty with it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

We already know Criterion Savage is going to require dedicated groups. Criterion Normal should be on the easy side though I think they said they were aiming for EX difficulty with it.

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Then that proves my point. They just keep adding content at the ends of the difficulty bell curve.. either super punishing or tutorial level content.

We need content at the median, pugable but harder with mechanics that dont punish 3/7 other players because 1 player made a mistake.

Something in between extreme/savage and normal. Let's call them intermediate duties.

Edit: IF they make the normal one EX difficulty and its pugable, that will be at least a small step in the right direction.

Maybe Criterion Normal will fill that gap between Extreme and Normal.

The way I see FFXIV is that it is a casual game meant for casual players, with a few elements of difficulty added. The "difficulty" for the non-raiding community is the grind. Instead of learning a rotation for a savage raid, other players might learn a rotation to be more efficient earning levels, relics, mounts, achievements, etc. Maybe they find their joy and satisfaction from that.

ARR dungeons were tuned, in part, based on gear players were expected to have back then. As a release player, I can tell you that few players were going around with HQ crafted gear on all their slots that was within a few levels of their current cap. Most had NQ crafted/store-bought gear or dungeon drops that were probably 3-10 iLvl below their level. It isn't until 50 when players began to get gear that was strong enough to carry them to the next level cap at 60.

While today's player likely would go into these ARR dungeons with a good knowledge-base of how mobs work, how their abilities work and gear appropriate to their level, the game still needs to cater to new players that won't have level appropriate gear since they are just starting out.

New players also do not have the benefit of knowing the dungeons beforehand.
I remember the first time I did Sastasha I got concerned about the bubbles, so I started running around clicking them.

"Ignore the bubbles! Focus on the boss!"

This went against everything the game had taught me to that point.