'Story mode' difficulty for dungeons run with Trusts

I have to say, as bad as the MSQ is in DT, the dungeons and trials are excellent. For the first time in an extremely long time the boss fights have a lot going on and require you to pay attention making for a much more engaging dungeon experience.

I think this is what the majority of players want, but to be perfectly fair I'm sure there are those who play just for the story and want to clear story dungeons to see the story through.

My fear is that if the devs get feedback that they are too hard they may cater to to casual crowd and tone down these fights.

I really don't want to see that happen . . . so here's a concept for the developers: introduce a "Story Mode" option for players who enter dungeons with trusts.

It could act similarly to how certain fights work in MSQ quests where if you fail (or in the dungeons case, wipe) you can choose to re-enter with the 'Story Mode' difficulty. This could allow for tuning to be done where in damage dealt by enemies can be toned down, or speed of mechanics, boss health can be lower; etc.

To balance things out, the dungeon shouldn't reward gear since you're clearing it on an easier difficulty. Instead it should do what the mode implies, be for the story only.

This will allow for the best of both worlds: the devs can create dungeons with engaging and fun boss mechanics while also not having to worry about the casual crowd getting stuck in the story due to things being too difficult.

TL;DR: DT's boss fights are a breath of fresh air. Please don't tone them down if people complain they are too hard and instead give a way to make dungeons easier for them without watering down the gameplay experience for everyone else.

Personally I don't think this is needed - running them with Trusts is (albeit takes a bit longer than with Players) simple enough, heck - most of the time they show you where to stand (great for learning the fights). For those that fail you get the Echo buff which helps make the fights easier the more you lose to them so having a separate "easy mode" for them is a bit pointless.

I will agree however - the dungeons and raids in the expansion are great, I've had a lot of fun running them and really hope they don't get toned down because someone complains they are too difficult to progress the MSQ.

I sort of agree. There are some story encounters I found too hard (LVL 60 RDM boss, final SGE boss), and I've been playing this for a while and can usually run stuff blind and not be a floor tank. Not everyone has the same skills and reflexes.

That said, this game is in serious need of players doing more content than just the MSQ. The game isn't as hard and most of the people complaining about it either don't want to queue and haven't given the community a single chance, or are people that expect this to be IMVU and genuinely claim they get anxiety by doing anything that isn't MARE or Limsa RP.

The ideal solution would be to just do like some games have been doing lately and split the story and instanced advancement. You wanna chill and only follow the story? Go ahead. Don't care about it? Good.

I actually find trusts excellent in learning the dungeon for they are programmed in most cases to know where the safe spots are and do the mechanics relatively well. You do pay the price of it being considerably worth it but doing it at least once for the story and fun quotes is totally worth it.

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Originally Posted by Casti_EL

For those that fail you get the Echo buff which helps make the fights easier the more you lose to them so having a separate "easy mode" for them is a bit pointless.

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There is no Echo Buff and no easy mode in MSQ Dungeons with Trusts.

Dungeons with trusts are actually much harder than queued dungeons, due to the fact if you make a mistake and die with trusts you have to start over at whatever boss you were fighting but with players you just get a rez and continue. The plus side of trusts is that you don't have to wait for a queue, but it is for sure a much difficult experience.

A story mode is fine, but it should be slower then even normal trusts.

I think this is good cuz it allows dungeons to be slightly more difficult without being gatekeepy.

if they were willing to do two dungeon version then they wouldnt have changed old dungeongs and instead just made another version for trusts

I wish we have more options with Trust. Running dungeon with my Squadron Party, which has double arcanist, full max Offence Tactics, is waaay faster than this Trust

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Originally Posted by Zumi

Dungeons with trusts are actually much harder than queued dungeons, due to the fact if you make a mistake and die with trusts you have to start over at whatever boss you were fighting but with players you just get a rez and continue. The plus side of trusts is that you don't have to wait for a queue, but it is for sure a much difficult experience.

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They're only harder if you're healer, because they aren't scripted for you to heal the party. The NPC's will move to "perfect" pixel locations, but you can't. So when you get like the meteor markers (the pink ones that you're not supposed to stack on) they will always move to the same position, which means you need to run away from them, which sometimes means you can't avoid stacking.

I had this happen multiple times (and it was always Krile.)

In most of the Trusts lean "Slightly hard" because you always have to do the fight over. So there is always the possibility of dying at 2% remaining. Unlike in a player instance where the tank/dps will continue until they die. But since they have perfect positioning they likely won't die. The only adjustment in this case I would recommend is that if the player character is KO'd, the NPC's have 12 seconds to try and revive you, and if they don't manage to cast revive, then it's treated as party KO. *cue sonic the hedgehog drowning music*

As a healer, you can pretty much not take any "increased damage" stacks, because many of the attacks result in 5% health remaining so if there is even a single one of these, that means you have to be 100% and have to prioritize your HP over the party members in order to survive the next thing that causes unavoidable damage. So in effect, you're being trained to follow the NPC's movement to avoid stepping in bad, rather than react to the party conditions.

Overall, I think DPS have it easier, because they don't need to be concerned with anything but avoiding damage.

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Originally Posted by Verathel

I actually find trusts excellent in learning the dungeon for they are programmed in most cases to know where the safe spots are and do the mechanics relatively well. You do pay the price of it being considerably worth it but doing it at least once for the story and fun quotes is totally worth it.

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This has been my experience with trusts too - they essentially are they are easy/story mode. They do well not only at dodging mechanics but pre-positioning beforehand so it’s easier to learn which steps to take during fights to keep safe. You can fight the dungeon at your own pace, no pressure if you die, can take your time with dungeon interaction (i.e Info terminals in Origenics), and trusts won’t make Reddit threads about how they saw you doing [thing bad players do] lol.

Basically I think trusts already add a lot of safety options that wouldn’t be present otherwise, so I’m not sure adding an additional ‘easy/story’ option would do much good

I guess I think more for accessibility. As in, players who can't react fast enough even with tells. It's likely a very small portion of players but I'd still like the game to be accessible to as many players as possible without having the core game suffer for it.

Or put differently, I'd just hate for SE to go "aw geez even with trusts these rapid mechanics are so much for some...lets water down the combat" because I really love the direction they are taking fight designs in the newest dungeons.