2 new dungeons ?

[Sylve]

Well before it was nerfed, a lot of people found it hard >.>
No idea why though

Funnily enough, it had to do with overgearing it.
The way the first boss works is that he summons dogs at specific percentages of his HP, the gap between those spawn points gets shorter at lower HP levels for him.

And people don't like the concept of holding back on DPS. So you'd often get 2 extremely well geared DPS blasting the boss fast enough that you get overwhelmed by adds and the debuff they put out.
It was especially bad when one DPS thinks the other one can solo the adds and just kept blasting away, spawning more and more dogs, lol.

For Siren, people just couldn't figure out how not to get Charmed ...
I don't actually remember what they did change though, to make it so easy now. I was kinda sad when they did nerf it, as i really enjoyed it in its original form.

Is it this one?

"We’re planning to introduce new content where you explore uncharted islands with your crafted airships. Multiple parties can explore the same island at the same time. The concept will be to defeat lots of strong monsters. Gathering nodes are also available on these islands, so once the island is secured by the battle team, gatherers will be able to gather items to take back.

We wanted to give an old MMO-like feel for this one, and for FFXIV it'll be fresh content that hasn't been seen before."

If it is.. I would've preferred to get the third dungeon as my FC still doesn't have house, and no access to airship crafting.

They might allow us to participate in other FCs explorations, which would let those without an Airship of their own do the content.

[Rahzel]

Seems like that's not the case, and with only two dungeons it's disappointing. Let's hope that the airship exploration is interesting enough to be a replacement for that missing dungeon (although the visuals being similar to Neverreap with all the floating islands already put me off).
Arboretum looks interesting though.

I believe the reason given for only adding two new dungeons from now on was so that they could put more development time into things other than just dungeons for content patches. 3.1 promises to add a lot: An entire new system to the Gold Saucer on par with TT and Chocobo racing, a substantial expansion to FC airships, and QoL additions for the housing system; all of which are no small feat. Hopefully, that trend continues moving forward.

That said, I'll admit that I was a little disappointed that one of the two new dungeons is a hard mode.

[FoxyAreku]

Pharos was the last really difficult dungeon this game had before it was nerfed. I'm actually hoping the hard mode will bring back memories for some.

[Colorful]

I believe the reason given for only adding two new dungeons from now on was so that they could put more development time into things other than just dungeons for content patches. 3.1 promises to add a lot: An entire new system to the Gold Saucer on par with TT and Chocobo racing, a substantial expansion to FC airships, and QoL additions for the housing system; all of which are no small feat. Hopefully, that trend continues moving forward.

That said, I'll admit that I was a little disappointed that one of the two new dungeons is a hard mode.

The thing is we got all that, without sacrificing dungeons in 2.x, didn't we? The marriage system, FC/Personal housing system (not just QoL changes) the entirety of the Gold Saucer (2 big games, minigames, the area, rewards). The only big thing we're getting otherwise that's different is the Airship changes, which is why I'm hoping it'll be somewhat decent.

[Gunspec]

If it is.. I would've preferred to get the third dungeon as my FC still doesn't have house, and no access to airship crafting.

Yoshida said there will be an airship from Ishgard for players without housing. (Actually he said that it would be for players without an FC, coyly trying to avoid the issue that many FCs can't find houses.)

It leaves me wondering what advantage there will be to actually having the airship though, because they are a fair investment. I've blown through about 12 stacks of coke so far, and I'm just getting started.

Now, what was weird is that he said there would be super difficult monsters there, like level 80-90. Not sure how monsters of that level would work, since our accuracy would theoretically be nil.

As for Pharos Sirius, I actually like the idea of revisiting dungeons like we do. It's almost always a completely different experience, and we get to know how the location has changed overtime due to our previous actions. Halati was cleared of monsters and became a fighting arena again, the longstop got taken over by a rival faction of goblins, Haukke manor became the haunting ground of the voidsent that the previous owner had sacrificed herself to, etc.

I keep looking at Pharos Sirius from the outside, and I wonder if the lighthouse will actually be repaired in the story like they claim they are trying to do. Now we get to see the result of the repairs in a new dungeon. When you compare that to other mmos which have static story elements that never evolve (ie. hard mode is just the same exact group of cultists with the same boss and everything), I really like the direction choose in FFXIV.

[Belhi]

To be honest, the Hard Modes of dungeons have always been different enough in layout and encounters for it not to bother me that they are reusing terrain assets. Its not like its the exact same dungeon just with harder hitting mobs.

[Nekodar]

Well before it was nerfed, a lot of people found it hard >.>
No idea why though

People made it difficult by ignoring boss mechanics.
First boss spawned adds at fixed percentages of health. Kill adds and go back to boss, no problem... But most people insisted on just trying to burn boss.
Last boss was difficult because Siren wasn't silenced/stunned making it very hard on the healer for one specific move...

All in all, people found it hard because they wanted to burn everything instead of dealing with easy mechanics.

[Moonleg]

The thing is we got all that, without sacrificing dungeons in 2.x, didn't we? The marriage system, FC/Personal housing system (not just QoL changes) the entirety of the Gold Saucer (2 big games, minigames, the area, rewards). The only big thing we're getting otherwise that's different is the Airship changes, which is why I'm hoping it'll be somewhat decent.

The question we will never get an answer to, though, is how much of that was worked on during the 2.0 production phase. Was the Gold Saucer half finished when 2.0 launched and just needed more tweaking and testing? Was the marriage system ready to go once the last few bugs got ironed out? I think it's fair to say they had a bunch of things that were beyond the stage of being just a fancy idea on a napkin, but sooner or later they had to run out of those.

[DragonSlayer45]

Pharos Sirius was nerfed so hard, they removed trash mobs for whatever reason. I don't remember anything threatening about the trash other than the Elementals and letting Banish III go off.

I don't remember ever wiping to the first boss pre-nerf/overgearing it. Overgearing the first boss seems to have done more harm than good.

I had the odd group that would wipe to Zu occasionally because they thought somehow killing all the eggs was a great idea, and Tyrant was always an lolboss. It was Siren that was mostly causing the issues with groups. Lunatic Voice going off made it more rough on the healer than it needed to be and I'm not sure if the debuff was dispellable pre-nerf. Her outgoing damage hurt a lot more if I remember right.

[Airget]

The thing is we got all that, without sacrificing dungeons in 2.x, didn't we? The marriage system, FC/Personal housing system (not just QoL changes) the entirety of the Gold Saucer (2 big games, minigames, the area, rewards). The only big thing we're getting otherwise that's different is the Airship changes, which is why I'm hoping it'll be somewhat decent.

The examples you presented though don't require the same amount of balance as dungeons do and battle content in general.

Golden Saucer, only real balance are MGP values
Triple Triad, opponent AI and point value of tourney
Marriage, no balance at all

Dungeons however have to be fine tuned and thus they require more effort in the quality assurance department then other content they have released. You might see it as "sacrificing" but honestly I see it as expanding on a system by providing an option that isn't just defeat 3 bosses get loot and win. The sky content has opportunity to be more flexible than dungeons because it doesn't have to follow a formula to entice players to go to them, they can play each island as it's own unique entity with positives and negatives unlike dungeons where they have to play the same, take the same amount of time, and the difficulty curve has to be worth the reward.

Make a dungeon to hard, people will just flock to the easier dungeon because they can be done faster (This is what happened with brayflox HM)

Dungeon takes to long, they will ignore it and do a more time efficient dungeon (Again brayflox HM)

They learned early on that if they aren't careful with finely tuning each dungeon to take the same amount of time/have similar difficulty that people are less likely to do them.