Expert dungeon "difficulty"

I've seen people criticize the difficulty of the current expert dungeons already and while the natural response is obviously to simply say "skill issue" I think it's important to look at what makes them difficult. In my opinion the difficulty comes mainly from there being little mechanical downtime, stuff is just happening and when the previous mechanic ends, the next one is already starting.
This is something the endwalker alliance raids have critically failed at. Rapidfire mechanics can make even easy encounters with simply mechanics feel engaging and I am glad SE has realized that (atleast for the current dungeons). We need more normal mode content design like this. I dont think the ability to simply power through the vuln stacks is a big issue either since it's more fun to engage with the mechanics honestly imo (and it keeps the encounters easy).

The expert dungeons can't really be different than "normal" dungeons because in a few patches the now current expert dungeons aren't "expert" anymore but "normal" dungeons.

There's only 1 mechanic that becomes annoying, and it just shifts your camera angles. Thats pretty much it. Otherwise, I think this level of difficulty needs to be ramped up. They should be much more difficult overall. I welcome this nice change of pace to regular dungeons

They're not difficult they're just new. Once everyone is a little more geared and it becomes normal for a few members of the party to have cleared already, going through them will be a breeze.

That's not to say I didn't die on them the first time around, I did — but I'm pretty sure when the average player is past them they'll be straight forward as usual.

Yeah can people please stop gracing us with their great wisdom about things being too hard after barely a week?

Because SE is apparently inclined to jump the gun based on such feedback.

Part of the dungeon difficulty comes from ilvl scaling and only exists until the savage raid tier, as soon as your full savage gear any new dungeon they release will basically be a joke as you over gear it 20+ item levels in power.

Also the biggest issue with their new dungeon design is these single monsters at the end with inflated HP and they show up in over half of the new dungeons of DT.
No there is nothing interesting about attacking a turtle or rock monster with a billion HP before the final boss

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Originally Posted by BeserkFury

Part of the dungeon difficulty comes from ilvl scaling and only exists until the savage raid tier, as soon as your full savage gear any new dungeon they release will basically be a joke as you over gear it 20+ item levels in power.

Also the biggest issue with their new dungeon design is these single monsters at the end with inflated HP and they show up in over half of the new dungeons of DT.
No there is nothing interesting about attacking a turtle or rock monster with a billion HP before the final boss

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That's a good point, I wasnt a fan of the turtle either. I think the first boss of the spooky expert dungeon is actually a great proof of concept how a dungeon can still be engaging even if the difficulty is never really there and also further torn apart through overgearing. There's always something happening and if you get grabbed you are made to look like a goober and cant attack for a bit

It’s not difficult, just a new approach and pacing for this game. People will get used to it. Btw “expert dugeons” has never meant more difficult dungeons: they are just the higher level/most recent dungeons. One of the current expert dungeon is MSQ. When they start releasing patches, expert dungeons will be MSQ only (current and previous patch) as was the case in the past and the old ones will move to a category called lvl 100 dungeons or something like that. People are reading too much into the name “expert dungeon”.

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Originally Posted by ACE135

The expert dungeons can't really be different than "normal" dungeons because in a few patches the now current expert dungeons aren't "expert" anymore but "normal" dungeons.

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That depends. They may break that tradition and keep the expert dungeons seperate from the others. Wise imo

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Originally Posted by Toutatis

It’s not difficult, just a new approach and pacing for this game. People will get used to it. Btw “expert dugeons” has never meant more difficult dungeons: they are just the higher level/most recent dungeons. One of the current expert dungeon is MSQ. When they start releasing patches, expert dungeons will be MSQ only (current and previous patch) as was the case in the past. People are reading too much into that name.

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I hope they keep this new approach and pacing. Nothing more boring than an alliance raid boss who takes several years from start to finish of a cast.

People just aren't used to the mechanics, but they'll have an easier time once they're experienced. However, a real issue they have are forced small pulls, such as the final MSQ dungeon, or slowing down the run right before a boss by making you fight a damage sponge monster that isn't even dangerous and just takes forever to die. The biggest example is that giant turtle, its stomp isn't dangerous at all unless you're almost dead. I've healed the place tons of times and tell the dps to just stay in the stomp to kill it faster, but they just run out, lose uptime on it, and it takes forever to drop dead.

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Originally Posted by DontReadThis

People just aren't used to the mechanics, but they'll have an easier time once they're experienced. However, a real issue they have are forced small pulls, such as the final MSQ dungeon, or slowing down the run right before a boss by making you fight a damage sponge monster that isn't even dangerous and just takes forever to die. The biggest example is that giant turtle, its stomp isn't dangerous at all unless you're almost dead. I've healed the place tons of times and tell the dps to just stay in the stomp to kill it faster, but they just run out, lose uptime on it, and it takes forever to drop dead.

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I'm seeing a bit of a miniboss-ification of trash pulls recently and I think we are in the phase where it uses the worst of both worlds: complete nothing burgers in terms of mechanics (endless turtle stomps, unending doll slams) but also HP high enough to make them do their thing. We need to get out of this phase asap.

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Originally Posted by sindriiisgaming

That depends. They may break that tradition and keep the expert dungeons seperate from the others. Wise imo

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They won’t. One of them is MSQ. It’s the same old model.

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Originally Posted by Saraide

I'm seeing a bit of a miniboss-ification of trash pulls recently and I think we are in the phase where it uses the worst of both worlds: complete nothing burgers in terms of mechanics (endless turtle stomps, unending doll slams) but also HP high enough to make them do their thing. We need to get out of this phase asap.

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It’s pretty much the same as before. It’s just the gear.

It is called expert for a reason

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Originally Posted by Saraide

I'm seeing a bit of a miniboss-ification of trash pulls recently and I think we are in the phase where it uses the worst of both worlds: complete nothing burgers in terms of mechanics (endless turtle stomps, unending doll slams) but also HP high enough to make them do their thing. We need to get out of this phase asap.

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I also think they need to not place them in the same spot each time.

Becomes predictable..

Not even sure it's a difficulty issue. The first two bosses in the nightmare circus one aren't exactly hard on paper, just... not well designed?

The dancing is fine in the first one, but its easy to make mistakes, and instead of taking damage, you are paying with a pretty long downtime for each. Usually we're just punished with damage and after a few too many failures death.

The second one with the cups is... I'm honestly not sure how I'm supposed to track both of the cups, as my FOV is just not wide enough fully zoomed out in melee. I've seen others doing it, so I may just really suck with tracking things off-screen?

Just not for the reason you expect it to, it just means "newest dungeons".
Also, unironically skill issue, we had a brand new party and no wipes, only one dps died couple times.

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Originally Posted by ACE135

The expert dungeons can't really be different than "normal" dungeons because in a few patches the now current expert dungeons aren't "expert" anymore but "normal" dungeons.

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Honestly I think the easy solution would be for optional dungeons to be "Expert", and for Current Level to just go into "High Level" for daily roulettes, or Level 100 Roulettes, separate from optional, harder ones. Simple.

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Originally Posted by Lersayil

Not even sure it's a difficulty issue. The first two bosses in the nightmare circus one aren't exactly hard on paper, just... not well designed?

The dancing is fine in the first one, but its easy to make mistakes, and instead of taking damage, you are paying with a pretty long downtime for each. Usually we're just punished with damage and after a few too many failures death.

The second one with the cups is... I'm honestly not sure how I'm supposed to track both of the cups, as my FOV is just not wide enough fully zoomed out in melee. I've seen others doing it, so I may just really suck with tracking things off-screen?

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You track one of the cups and remember where the other one is in relation to it. If two ghosts jump into opposite cups then they will still be in opposite cups at the end.

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Originally Posted by Roda

I also think they need to not place them in the same spot each time.

Becomes predictable..

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The way I see it is that enemy HP needs to scale up or down depending on their complexity. An enemy with many and intricate mechanics should have more HP so they actually do many of those mechanics while an enemy like the turtle that only does one thing should have low hp because it just does the same simple aoe over and over again.

I'm loving these, and I say this as someone who's just unlocked them yesterday and ate dookie in the msq level 100 final boss because I wasn't expecting them to layer 3 things at once. It's awesome.
I've also really loved how they use the trash mobs as a way to foreshadow boss mechanics. Like in the msq dungeon with the holo walls, they foreshadow fake walls on your way to the boss and then fake walls are part of the fight. The content has been the highlight of this expansion, which is a good thing because it's the content we'll be repeating the most. Whoever designed these, give them a raise and keep them on staff please. Even after you "get used to" the mechanics, you still have to perform them which is a lot more than I can say about the slop we got in endwalker.

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Originally Posted by Saraide

I've seen people criticize the difficulty of the current expert dungeons already and while the natural response is obviously to simply say "skill issue" I think it's important to look at what makes them difficult. In my opinion the difficulty comes mainly from there being little mechanical downtime, stuff is just happening and when the previous mechanic ends, the next one is already starting.
This is something the endwalker alliance raids have critically failed at. Rapidfire mechanics can make even easy encounters with simply mechanics feel engaging and I am glad SE has realized that (atleast for the current dungeons). We need more normal mode content design like this. I dont think the ability to simply power through the vuln stacks is a big issue either since it's more fun to engage with the mechanics honestly imo (and it keeps the encounters easy).

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There being little downtime is a good thing though, downtime is boring and why dungeons are never dangerous these days

I love the new expert dungeons. They're different and have some interesting mechanics. Dumbing them down will just ruin them.