Your thoughts on the direction of this game?

[Mcshiggs]

Whoah, dps races? Tank swaps? Cleansing?

You know that this game has that already.

You obviously didn't play it, but even though it may sound a bit the same, but it was completely different. Tanks swaps consisted of more than just a provoke and go, people had to actually watch their threat, not just tanks. The second fight in BWL the boss starts in execute range, and everyone has infinite combat resources, so watching your threat was the key because if you spun the boss 30 people would take a breath attack. Some of the dragons had threat issues not because of buffing the dps, but because the tanks would get debuffs that lowered their own. Classes like rogues and hunters would need to push their dps to the point of almost stealing aggro, then start with their threat dumps, cleansing was more than just a healer hitting one button, you had to see what type it was and the correct class had to handle, hell even mages got in on it, since they could cleanse curses, druids would handle poisons, and priests and paladins had theirs as well. One fight, Chromaggus, if you got 4 different types of debuffs before they were cleansed, and he would debuff multiple people at once, you would turn into a giant dragonkin for the remainder of the fight and destroy the people in your raid. One nifty little fight I just remembered was in ICC, the goal wasn't to kill a boss, but you had to save one, a big assed dragon being attacked, the raid not only had to kill the attackers, but the goal of the fight was to heal the dragon to full health, while npcs were trying to kill it.

When 2.0 was fresh, a great amount of content was actually fairly challenging.

Did they keep that up though? NO, Pharos Sirius was considered too difficult for XIV players, and Yoshi has admitted it, so all the dungeons getting released can't be too hard or the people will whine about it.

[Krr]

Did they keep that up though? NO, Pharos Sirius was considered too difficult for XIV players, and Yoshi has admitted it, so all the dungeons getting released can't be too hard or the people will whine about it.

That's not entirely true. Haukke Manor HM was fairly challenging as well, as was Copperbell. The difference was, Haukke Manor was speedrunnable and well-designed, where the other two dungeons were a catastrophe of stupid, opaque mechanics that instantly killed you if you didn't have a guide even if you knew your job and the basic mechanics of the game well. "Too difficult" can mean a lot of things in game design that aren't so simple to explain in a public statement.

I agree that dungeon difficulty is too low right now and that's probably in part an overreaction to what happened in 2.1. But, I'd also implore you to look at the item level requirements and rewards of these dungeons, and the average item level of the max level player right now, and ask yourself if, possibly, there is a misunderstanding of how new players experience the item level curve rather than "HHH THEY RUINED IT CATERING FOR THE CASUALS HHHHhhh".

[Mcshiggs]

I agree that dungeon difficulty is too low right now and that's probably in part an overreaction to what happened in 2.1. But, I'd also implore you to look at the item level requirements and rewards of these dungeons, and the average item level of the max level player right now, and ask yourself if, possibly, there is a misunderstanding of how new players experience the item level curve rather than "HHH THEY RUINED IT CATERING FOR THE CASUALS HHHHhhh".

They admitted they lowered dungeon difficulty, and that this is the difficulty they intend to maintain. If they are releasing these new dungeons with high ilvl rewards and low ilvl requirements, then they are releasing dungeons for folks that aren't playing the game yet, so they can catch up gear wise. That just makes it worse, each patch then the people that are already max level basically get a primal released for them, and every other patch a new coil, as the dungeons are just there for people to play catch up. I didn't say anything about casuals, I talked about people whining because stuff was too hard, if you want to imply that means casual then by all means go ahead, it doesn't change the fact that when they released Pharos, people complained, and this is how it was handled, dumbing down dungeon difficulty.

[Krr]

I didn't say anything about casuals, I talked about people whining because stuff was too hard, if you want to imply that means casual then by all means go ahead, it doesn't change the fact that when they released Pharos, people complained, and this is how it was handled, dumbing down dungeon difficulty.

You're honestly missing the point of the Pharos Sirius nerf. Pharos was complained about because its item level requirements and rewards were out of whack with its actual numerical fight difficulty, as well as the opacity of its terrible boss mechanics, and accordingly, the numbers of the fights were decreased as a band-aid. It was put in line with the other two dungeons released at its scale, not "dumbed down".

There was literally nothing whatsoever that was even enjoyable about prenerf Pharos Sirius unless you liked looking at Siren's boobies, and the reason the devs gave was because it was numerically overtuned. Whereas the other dungeons, which also posed their own legitimate threats to players, were numerically in line.

If it wasn't clearly implied enough in my initial posts on the issue, I don't agree with the current retro-fitting of item levels using dungeons that are already outdated for the majority of the playerbase to help new players "catch up". Especially when they aren't necessary for those players to "catch up" with everything sneezing myth.

What I am saying is - the dungeons you see now are braindead easy not because S-E is "dumbing down" the game. They are braindead easy because S-E is putting in stopgaps to the item level curve we don't need when they should be adding in 4-mans for players on the mid-high end of it who need to be challenged.

[Mcshiggs]

the numbers of the fights were decreased as a band-aid. It was put in line with the other two dungeons released at its scale, not "dumbed down".

So you are saying the didn't make the fights easier, they only decreased the difficulty, gotcha.

[Krr]

So you are saying the didn't make the fights easier, they only decreased the difficulty, gotcha.

You're doing a bad job of literacy right now if that's what you read.

I'm saying the complexity of the fights remained and that your nomenclature of "dumbing down" is inapplicable to the situation, because it was a numerical retuning to match what was in other content in the game that was challenging at its intended item level.

[Mcshiggs]

You're doing a bad job of literacy right now if that's what you read.

I'm saying the complexity of the fights remained and that your nomenclature of "dumbing down" is inapplicable to the situation, because it was a numerical retuning to match what was in other content in the game that was challenging at its intended item level.

When you reduce the numbers, you can trivialize the moves, I see now many tanks not stunning Giga blast, because it is easy to just heal through, not killing adds on the bird fight, because the boss dies faster, and the adds don't do as much damage so they can just be ignored now until the boss flies up. I know the mechanics are technically the same, but when you lower the damage of those attacks, many become less important to deal with the "proper" way so in my eyes that is dumbing them down, because even though they are still there, they can be ignored now.

[Ryel]

That's not entirely true. Haukke Manor HM was fairly challenging as well, as was Copperbell. The difference was, Haukke Manor was speedrunnable and well-designed, where the other two dungeons were a catastrophe of stupid, opaque mechanics that instantly killed you if you didn't have a guide even if you knew your job and the basic mechanics of the game well. "Too difficult" can mean a lot of things in game design that aren't so simple to explain in a public statement.

I agree that dungeon difficulty is too low right now and that's probably in part an overreaction to what happened in 2.1. But, I'd also implore you to look at the item level requirements and rewards of these dungeons, and the average item level of the max level player right now, and ask yourself if, possibly, there is a misunderstanding of how new players experience the item level curve rather than "HHH THEY RUINED IT CATERING FOR THE CASUALS HHHHhhh".

Pretty much this ^

Pharos Sirius wasn't deemed too difficult, it was it's ilvl ratio to its rewards that were deemed to be improperly scaled. When you had a dungeon rewarding ilvl60-ish gear with an ilvl48 entry requirement giving players who were ilvl80-ilvl90 difficulty issues its an obvious problem.

Keep in mind this game is still at MID-LEVEL, we haven't reached true endgame yet.

[Eej]

You obviously didn't play it, but even though it may sound a bit the same, but it was completely different.

In Vanilla I did everything from MC to Naxx. I was one of the Hunters very active on the forums figuring out the best rotation given our awful mechanics back then. You don't have to patronize me.