square please challenge us a little

[Fluffernuff]

Honestly... I don't get the mentality. Dungeons aren't designed to be overly challenging. I'm not even saying having them be easy or hard is bad/good, either.

Ok, let's think about what these dungeons will be run for and the average player you would expect to run them:
Gear upgrades
Possible glamour pieces... if the set is nice enough
Ex Roulette rewards. you cant choose what you get, after all
Returning players
First-time 60 players
"softcore" players (players that run roulettes/EX primals regularly and are on daily, but aren't "hardcore raiders")
Alt characters
"hardcore" players gearing secondary/tertiary/etc. Jobs

Now if we have these dungeons be more difficult yet designed to be cleared reliably on a daily basis, the rewards NEED to match this curve, or they wont even be run in the first place. I mean... would YOU run weeping City every day for ilvl 200-215 gear? Didn't think so.

Now who would benefit from an unreliable yet rewarding daily experience?

New players just gearing up on their first 60? no, they wont like have the previous gear/experience to even clear the content without getting carried/kicked. They would need to grind more on previous content first.

"softcore" players? well, they'd certainly run it daily, but these players also make up the bulk of players who drop at the first sign of any difficulty, high change they would drop to re-roll their roulette. I fear the fun added from more difficulty would be overshadowed by the annoyance of other unwilling players.

Hardcore end game raiders? well I'm not one myself, so I can't say I can speak for them... but I cant imagine they would have much enjoyment in having another checkbox they need to clear on the same level as theyre getting locked out of

Ok then.. what does a higher difficulty give in return?
Fun? well fun is subjective anyway... but for the sake of devil's advocate let's just say every single person that plays this game wants everything harder and challenge = fun unanimously

Pride in clearing the content? well... hmm... how long will that hole up once the tome farm kicks in?

Rewards scaled to the difficulty of the content? Well if dungeon gear becomes the "BiS" i would think that would defeat alot of the purpose of dungeon gear being the baseline.

I for one would like the idea of more difficulty being added to dungeons, but I can't really see it being beneficial for the playerbase... or fit for purpose. unlike raid content or EX primals, dungeons are meant/designed to be repeated and cleared reliably and somewhat quickly. granted, i know all 3 eventually ARE cleared reliably and quickly on a regular basis, but only ex roulette dungeons are DESIGNED to be

[Nestama]

Now if we have these dungeons be more difficult yet designed to be cleared reliably on a daily basis, the rewards NEED to match this curve, or they wont even be run in the first place. I mean... would YOU run weeping City every day for ilvl 200-215 gear? Didn't think so.

I think most players run Weeping City once a week (with Void Ark if they're still in need of upgrading gear). The dungeons themselves don't need to be overly challenging, just... engaging and not obnoxious (bosses that make themselves untergetable and/or make the floor ice. That's annoying), but also have mechanics that punish the player for ignoring them (punishment varies).

[Fluffernuff]

I think most players run Weeping City once a week (with Void Ark if they're still in need of upgrading gear). The dungeons themselves don't need to be overly challenging, just... engaging and not obnoxious (bosses that make themselves untergetable and/or make the floor ice. That's annoying), but also have mechanics that punish the player for ignoring them (punishment varies).

That's exactly what I mean. would you be satisfied with a weeping city equivalent of 4-man dungeon you "have" to run with outdated rewards? every day? thats the sort of thing we need to think about when we think of dungeon difficulty. their longevity is directly tied to roulettes- being repeated daily.

I've seen way too many bails on trial roulette seconds after seeing nidhogg's ugly mug to be convinced difficulty is something we need more of in our daily grinds

[Kurogaea]

That's exactly what I mean. would you be satisfied with a weeping city equivalent of 4-man dungeon you "have" to run with outdated rewards? every day? thats the sort of thing we need to think about when we think of dungeon difficulty. their longevity is directly tied to roulettes- being repeated daily.

I've seen way too many bails on trial roulette seconds after seeing nidhogg's ugly mug to be convinced difficulty is something we need more of in our daily grinds

I think your idea of difficulty is rather limited to what FF14 see difficulty as, mechanic heavy and tedious. In your typical 24-man raid you follow the path, see groups of baddies, nuke them down, nothing special, follow path, boss, do a buttload of things to find a way to kill them, including standing on a puddle you would have no idea what it does till you die and realize it saves you from instant death. <--- I'm not asking for that. Thats not difficulty, thats just testing your patience with your teammates and vice versa, though its a challenge of its own when you put it that way.

Challenging dungeons give the player trials (I don't mean BOSS FIGHTS), things we've seen in the game but mixed up. Found a crescent shape, use said key to open a symbol'd door. Not all of it has to be extensively long. Afterall, once you run a dungeon once, your prone to get the pattern down and it will become a speedrun overtime. "Got this key this time? Door's this way." Its not unheard of.

Anyways your saying dungeons are meant to be quick for dungeon gear, ok. I'd buy that more if we didn't already have sooooooooo many other options. You have tomestones, raids, hunts, and crafting. Tomestones are actually easy to get regardless of dungeon difficulty. As always the longest dungeons get the most tomestones, like that last lvl 50 dungeons for the story (cant remember the name right now). Nidhogg is only avoided because relying on players to be on point for the entire fight is not worth the time and effort for what little award you get. If you say that helping others is the award itself, then I guess running the same steamrolled dungeon 4 times over just so others can get their rewards is just as rewarding. It isn't, it just wastes your time.

Speaking of which the reward system itself is somewhat broken. If they WERE going to make more challenging dungeons, they'd have to compensate by adding more chests and rewards in the dungeon, makes sense? The more pathways the more chances of loot too, which means more chances. Personally to me, chance can go suck it as Guild Wars 2 and Phantasy Star Online 2 said, but this wouldn't be a problem.

So yeah, other ways to get gear, more rewards because monotony/hallway is broken, Not asking for FFXIV idea of challenging. Quick example: Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. All puzzles can be solved with one person and once you know the dungeons, its a breeze.

[Nestama]

snip

If they made a Raid Roulette and I got Weeping City every time, of course I would. A Weeping City equivalent dungeon would actually be pretty decent, as most wipes caused in Weeping City are due to alliances screwing over other alliances. Forgall is only hard because of Hell Wind and those 'stand on it' AoEs (harder to deal with if the tank doesn't tank Forgall in the middle) and Ozma is only hard because a player in another/your alliance will place a Meteor in the wrong place, players stacking in Triangle phase (don't do this. Every attack Ozma does selects a random person and it's an AoE + Bleed), doing actions during countdown and tanks not getting hit by orbs during Cube phase (ignoring them activates Supernova). They're otherwise very easy fights, but they require you to actually do the mechanic correctly.

If you were to put Forgall and Ozma into a dungeon environment, they'd most likely be easier.

As for Nidhogg... if there's a newbie, just explain bits of the fight. Get the priority on which add to attack first down ASAP and tell the newbie to watch out for Nidhogg's Eye AoE's (that happen after he glows or whatever), as they're sort of the same colour as the ground. Any other attack is sort of self-explanatory when seen (and SE were kind enough to make Akh Morn have the 'stack' marker, which should be common knowledge by now).

[Archaell]

"softcore" players (players that run roulettes/EX primals regularly and are on daily, but aren't "hardcore raiders")

Players who do Ex primals yet it is too much difficult for them without enough carry/gear is plenty of reason to make the dungeons harder. 4man content is easier than 8man content even if it has the same difficulty per the individual player, so more difficult dungeons would improve the learning curve and easy the transition to Ex primals.

Now if we have these dungeons be more difficult yet designed to be cleared reliably on a daily basis, the rewards NEED to match this curve, or they wont even be run in the first place. I mean... would YOU run weeping City every day for ilvl 200-215 gear? Didn't think so.

The reward atm does not match the curve. The reward is too big for the current difficulty. Even if the dungeons were harder as long as it is the best option to get tomes players would do them... of course they would certainly cry about having less time for their Netflix shows due to their toxic team mates.