The general player base needs to improve

[RiyahArp]

The thing is though, we are not really getting "gradual" now, with some of the suggestions. A DPS check with potential DPS down...we already have with Nidhogg hard in the add phase. I'm not sure there is any strong infirmity similar. We're talking about fairly hard mechanics with decent timers, and they won't be appreciably different than from ex fights or easy savage ones.

The only way this dungeon can be different is that bosses have HP pools that don't take fifteen minutes to kill, don't have a strict enrage that kills you at 15:01, and have slower mechanics. To be honest, you're probably looking at ARR EX primal difficulty in a boss or so, as if we had full poetics synced. So if you introduce this, you kind of are going to make a big step up in difficulty, based on the casual player's reaction.

I think it's probably better overall if you just kept current ex level trial difficulty, and just required it for story completion if you wanted to do that. Optional experts would just get ignored; there's no real reward that you can't get in other ways in this game from them.

[KaivaC]

The thing is though, we are not really getting "gradual" now, with some of the suggestions. A DPS check with potential DPS down...we already have with Nidhogg hard in the add phase. I'm not sure there is any strong infirmity similar. We're talking about fairly hard mechanics with decent timers, and they won't be appreciably different than from ex fights or easy savage ones.

The only way this dungeon can be different is that bosses have HP pools that don't take fifteen minutes to kill, don't have a strict enrage that kills you at 15:01, and have slower mechanics. To be honest, you're probably looking at ARR EX primal difficulty in a boss or so, as if we had full poetics synced. So if you introduce this, you kind of are going to make a big step up in difficulty, based on the casual player's reaction.

I think it's probably better overall if you just kept current ex level trial difficulty, and just required it for story completion if you wanted to do that. Optional experts would just get ignored; there's no real reward that you can't get in other ways in this game from them.

The expert roulette already probably doesn't get used as much as level and 50/60 dungeons. If you increase the potential rewards with harder experts, that's incentive for players to optimize themselves through these. And if players choose not to do it, that's really no different than how the expert roulette is being used now. As it stands, expert is pretty much used as faceroll 5 days a week to cap out whatever the current tomes are for the week.

Much of what was discussed is gradual...it's just that with the nature of the forums, I think your somehow getting it twisted that all of the suggested new expert dungeons should immediately go straight to this. That's not the case at all. You can easily step up the difficulty over a course of dungeons. And again, you wouldn't start seeing truly challenging dungeons until the end of 5.0, which is probably, like, two years away, given the timeline of how HW and SB went. You can hit players with EX/Savage level mechanics without those mechanics being Savage/EX level. Most mechanics in the hard content can be easily stepped down. I mean, shoot, if healing was a major issue, then you could easily have a boss hit a healer with healing potency down at the start of the fight.

You could easily hit all DPS by shaving their current (not max) MP/TP down and throw in some mechanics that gets players used to quick thinking. There are so many tools that the devs could use that wouldn't jump dungeons straight into Savage. I'm not sure why you're not seeing it, or why you're thinking that implementing anything from Savage would automatically be Savage-level mechanics. And on the comment about experts and rewards - I know you saw some of the thoughts I had about how to incentivize players into going into the new Experts. Adjust the rewards appropriately - again, best way to do this in my eyes as I type up this quick sentence without thinking too deeply on it: offer up to 200 current tomestones over the weekly cap, and give gear that is about 5 or 10 levels below the 1st level of the current raid tier. Or better yet, if Eureka is successful, offer up accessories or food that enhances certain stats or skills (naturally make it unique and untradable). Say, right about now - offer up 355 gear in these harder expert dungeons (put a loot lockout on them to prevent farming). Thoughts like that.

Honestly, I really don't see the harm in this at all. These new expert dungeons could create content for the midcore, and for casuals hoping to go to a midcore level as far as player skill goes.

[RiyahArp]

The expert roulette already probably doesn't get used as much as level and 50/60 dungeons. If you increase the potential rewards with harder experts, that's incentive for players to optimize themselves through these....

You're not really getting my point. I don't know how much clearer I can make it.

If you want to make the players better, and things like rabanastre and shinryu have failed at that, you can't do things that are less difficult than it. Even if it's harder than current expert, you will still have the same problems. To really make players good, you have to make them either perfect the mechanic or die and be unable to complete the instance. But current casual content really doesn't demand this, and only ex primals and up demand it consistently. So the changes you will make will need the teeth of mechanic or die gameplay to teach the players what you want, in the same way Shinryu or Rab teaches you to look for a target outside of the arena and run the correct way or die (although surecast or fully mitigating the attack prevents it too in shin's case.) But they must be harder than those two, and that's perilously close to an easy EX trial or very easy savage. Otherwise it's just bardem's mettle, where it doesn't teach anything and you can carry people through it.

I don't think people care enough about rewards to do hard content. Arguably people stop caring to even do easy content; people stop doing the 8 man stories once they get a weapon for their main, and 50-60 roulette is dead because poetics and creation is worthless to any vet in the game. Carrots only go so far; people aren't going to do an hour of wiping for a few tomes. You'd need the stick; if you don't be hard expert, you can't progress the story.

[KaivaC]

snip

What? No, they do not need to be harder than Rabanastre or Shinryu, nor should they start off at that level either. I swear, there is no middle ground with you. It's either this or that, never something in between. Bardams Mettle, at that point in the story, reinforces what you should already know. Maybe in later expert dungeons, you can have them at a few steps below the kind of difficulty you would face with Hashmal. I hear what you're saying quite clearly - but you keep going straight to "it must be at near Savage level" to be effective. No, it does not if Expert Dungeons start increasing difficulty. Nor do you need to have hour long dungeons. These suggestions aren't for vets that raid... This is something for casual to midcore as a buffer to the sudden difficulty spike in Savage, or really, something for other players not interested in raiding, but looking for something relatively challenging. Not everything difficult has to go straight to punishingly difficult. Just because you personally won't do it doesn't mean that there aren't other players who won't.

[RiyahArp]

What? No, they do not need to be harder than Rabanastre or Shinryu, nor should they start off at that level either.

Then it wont teach anyone anything. They'll release it, and you all will complain at how easy they are, because harder than current expert but weaker than rab or shin is still really easy. So you just wasted the devs time. The weaker players will just get carried through them like they get carried through rab. The actual difficulty needed to make an expert that can wipe people and not let dead weight be carried is harder than rab or shin, and closer to an ex trial like susano. And the only way you teach people is by things that challenge them and force everyone to do their roll properly. So it will be in between rab and the easiest ex primal or savage instance to be effective.

People aren't thinking that to teach players effectively, in a way current content doesn't, requires it to be harder for everyone. I think people tend to fixate on one word i say "savage" and don't get i am meaning only it will borrow techniques from it; it may still be easier than alte roite or phantom train, but it cannot be easier than rab.

[KaivaC]

Then it wont teach anyone anything. They'll release it, and you all will complain at how easy they are, because harder than current expert but weaker than rab or shin is still really easy. So you just wasted the devs time. The weaker players will just get carried through them like they get carried through rab. The actual difficulty needed to make an expert that can wipe people and not let dead weight be carried is harder than rab or shin, and closer to an ex trial like susano.

What you are suggesting is making the suggested newer Expert dungeons punishingly difficult right out of the gate. Again - straight to one end of an extreme, never trying to meet in the middle. You can't do that right out of the gate, because all it does is give casuals and casual-midcore level players only the options of either wiping through it and deciding never to run these new types of Expert dungeons again, or opting to get carried through it just for the rewards, and hopefully learning the patterns that will get them through. That's a Leeroy Jenkins situation. You're taking the suggestions that I've been making and saying that they need to be hard right out of the gate.

I'm suggesting putting a gradual difficulty curve, spread out through multiple Expert dungeons that increase in difficulty as you approach the last of whatever set of Expert dungeons you will have, with watered-down-to-slightly-less-punishing mechanics from whatever the Ex/Savage tier placed into it. And again, Shinryu is the absolute bar for difficulty. Nothing dungeon-wise should surpass what that fight through at players who were, at the most, ilvl310 in that time-frame. The very last Expert dungeon in 5.0? Sure, make it about Shinryu-level hard. But the preceding Expert dungeons should gradually build towards this point. The devs are capable of it.

I don't understand why you are not able to see a middle ground between the current dungeons and Savage/Ex (no, Shinryu is not a middle ground...he's just the epitome of a storyline and an appropriately leveled boss fight...the dungeons preceding him are another story). Why must it be 'either this or that' with you? That's a serious question. Why? I really want to know the answer to this. Do you deal solely in absolutes? Because in the past, you've suggested something similar about raiders as well, that raiders in general find practically anything dungeon-wise easy.

[RiyahArp]

What you are suggesting is making the suggested newer Expert dungeons punishingly difficult right out of the gate.

Because punishing is the only way they get better. The way the difficulty is in this game in terms of individual mechanics means there is no gradual difficulty. There's no difference between an attack that lowers you to 50% HP for failng it, and one that lowers you to 1%. Both teach you the same lessons, the healer needs to recover you when you screw up, and dodging more or less is nice, but you don't die if you do and even if you do the healer will raise you. The fights that do teach you in the game have single, punishing mechanics that more or less wipe the party if one or more people fail them. Like if you don't sprint to the meteors in the chrysalis as a tank, everyone will die. If you don't position yourself perfectly from Rav's or titan's knockback moves you die and are out of the fight. But with Sophia you can literally die and fall nonstop; i cleared it with both white mages on the ground, 4 players, and me as only heals as rdm.

They'll seem punishingly difficult because to learn you really can't just keep having the healer fix your mistakes, nor the other dps carry you when you are on the floor. they probably will be a little less punishing than alte roite, who is pretty simple, but you need to have a mechanic like his where everyone has to go to their spots or they will die, and to a point the healer can't compensate for this nor the other member finish the instance.

You're saying gradual but in practice anyways it will be really hard.

And anyways, you truly only get better when you hit a wall and get mad/motivated enough to get over yourself and overcome it.

[MoroMurasaki]

You're not really getting my point. I don't know how much clearer I can make it.

There is a large difficulty gap between Savage and the rest of the game.

There is an appreciable gap between EX trials and casual content.

There is apparently quite a gap between Rabanastre and the dungeoning/normal mode trials included in the main story.

Despite all these large difficulty gaps somehow you think there are only Savage mechanics and faceroll dungeons. You say you don't know how you can make your point any clearer, maybe instead of focusing on that you should focus on understanding what people are telling you.