Increasing difficulty in casual content ≠ Savage

[KaldeaSahaline]

This is a good definition, but under this definition, what exactly is casual content? Savage does not require more than a few hours a week in a lot of cases, but many would not consider Savage raids casual content. If we are deciding who is and who isn't a casual based upon the relative time spent in-game, casual or hardcore content becomes subjective, influenced by so many outside factors it would be impossible to determine what is and what isn't casual or hardcore content.

I don't believe in defining the content by those terms. I call it what it is (like another poster did in this thread). There's low skill required content, and high skill required content (and content in between naturally).

Whether this is the right/wrong approach, or even good/bad is highly subjective though, but it's how I choose to do it because it makes the most sense to me.

[MoroMurasaki]

I think there is definitely a happy medium hidden in here somewhere and I think something that could be done to gently increase dungeon difficulty (in optional content only of course) is to just increase the damage enemies do considerably and perhaps add some extra effects to those attacks to make them less ignorable.

Let's take Fractal HM as it is right now. The accepted pulls that I see in DF are always the largest ones possible, people generally eat a fair amount of paralyze from the Chimeras though. If it were an undispellable paralyze and also damage down/vuln up we would likely see more people dodging.

As it stands right now the first Chimeras before the Mothorbit do lightning and the Chimera between the second and third bosses does ice - give both attacks to both enemies so people need to pay attention to casts. Increase damage from the ice attack and up the potency on the ice dot to something approaching Hashmal's Extreme Edge. Right now honestly I don't even know the names of these Chimera attacks because I don't care about them I just dps through it.

The Minotaurs - let's make which ones get through their glass in the final hall and when they do be random. Remove their telegraphs and up their damage/add a stun to their hits. Give the poison slimes poison explosions when they die so if you kill them all at once you wipe to the incoming damage

How about bosses. Make Mothorbit less predictable and cause every hit not on the tank to give the player damage down. For every stack of damage down the boss gets a stack of damage up. Now if your BLM eats the obviously telegraphed AoE it's more than "eh, I'll Tetra it" and if the puddle gets dropped in a bad place the healer can't just run in and eat it then Esuna the heavy off/heal up.

These aren't "Savage" dungeon mechanics but they would make these sections more interesting and make doing them more time consuming/punishing to failure.

I'm just annoyed with people acting like there is no middle ground here - like everything has to be Kugane Castle or God Kefka. It doesn't. We could have more satisfying dungeons with greater rewards but we don't. It's on SE to give us a wider bredth of content and they aren't doing it. The very mentality this thread is speaking out against exists because they've fostered it.

[RiyahArp]

You don't get why they get hit by the lightning, though.

They target the minotaur, and stay at range because his aoe swipe can hit pretty hard. But unless you target the chimera or focus target him, they don't see his attack coming, because the name on the progress bar is often the only efficient way to tell. Mostly it's just making sure players target the one enemy that makes them vulnerable, chimera for ranged, minotaur for melee, and moving to deal with that.

The loss conditions are already a penalty; melee get thrown out of range, ranged get a mild para debuff. Most make you miss attacks for doing so. If you make harder ones, its really the same thing because the actual mechanic is simple and the reasons why they don't dodge are too, but it just makes ppl kill much slower. You can't get more annoying than Arjuna in temple of the fist.

[kikix12]

(...)and a bunch of secondaries that do absolutely nothing....

crit being the big one that everyone wants. but why is beyond me? because it does nothing...

I'm afraid that they do mean a lot, but for all the wrong reasons.

The secondary stats in this game are born from the games desire to be "for everyone" originally. And there are people that like variety, customization...call it however you want. Early on you had actual choice of whether you prefer this piece or that. There was some sort of variety (though still limited). The relics (at least the Anima one) is a perfect example of that. You choose the bonus stats you want, while the rest is the same. That means that you can promote one build over the others to suit your play styles.

For that reason, games with secondary stats like that normally have multiple set of gear at every relevant level that are mostly different in bonus stats. Either that...or have randomly generated bonus stats on top. Or both of these...It doesn't matter what path is chosen, what matters is that a player A could make a max-level warrior that have significantly different additional stats compared to player B, while still having the same overall power level.
In this game, there is no such thing. The higher level armors are generally simply better, while there is no alternative at the same level. You will get whatever secondary stats you get and the only difference is from (all in all) small amount of stats you can add using materia (which is FURTHER capped by what is naturally on the gear).


However, what this game DOES have...is the drawback of secondary stats. You see, if you have 300 spell speed at lvlX and 600 spell speed at X*2, then you have -20% cast time. But if you have 300 spell speed at lvlX*2, then you have only -5% cast time. For example.

The amount of secondary stat you need for the same effect grows with levels. However, the sets in the game are so brainlessly simplified, that your rough crit, spell speed and so on will stay on a relative same level when you put on the complete sets from level to level. If you mix and match however, for example use the lower-level top that have crit and direct hit instead of skill speed and direct hit, then you will have a higher crit rate and higher global cooldown. It's nice and all, but you will still be weaker because you will also lose significantly on strength and defenses. If you want variety...you suffer being weaker by design.


The developers know this. They outright said that they want to remove all variety in order to make balancing stuff much easier without alienating anyone. In other words, they don't want there to exist gear or any customization to characters, but in order to avoid people leaving the game due to how ridiculous and worthless it would be at that point (and to have a cheap incentive for people to run boring content), they make a smoke screen by giving gears that give a semblance of choice...even though they don't.

[VargasVermillion]

I feel like there aren't enough situations overall that come off as memorable, ever since pharos all the dungeons sort of blur together since they are all around the same difficulty, some have interesting bosses but in between that it's basically the same: pull adds, spam aoe/rotations until boss. The best enemies in the game that aren't always bosses are the chimeras, cyclops'/Minotaurs and the bees and they've been in the game since launch. I think the game needs more enemies that do actions you have to respect more and aren't just generic cone AoEs.

[kikix12]

I think the game needs more enemies that do actions you have to respect more and aren't just generic cone AoEs.

The crocodiles are "interesting" in that they use AoE against people getting behind them. No one goes there, they don't use it. And why is that interesting?! They stop attacking the tank while they charge that attack, so it's possible to bait them by entering their range to lower damage. A bard/machinist can even do that without any loss of attacks at any point. A simple mechanic using a simple cone AoE, doesn't affect difficulty, but rewards a smart play style. However, the crocs never appear in pulls where it really matters from what I can remember...

[Canadane]

You baited the boss in T1 the same way as crocs, back in the day.
There was a time things like this mattered.

[Aomine1992]

24-mans are kind of harder than dungeons, but for different reasons than how extreme/savage are harder than dungeons. But realistically, you can clear any 24-man with 2-3 wipes and not knowing anything at all.

I agreed with most of your post except this part lol idk if maybe you missed the wiping city of mahach but when it first came out it was literally disband at Oszma for like almost each instance...and even this expansion rabanastre's hasmal breaker of parties was literally disbanding whole raids so 24 man's is more so your middle ground and not many people are even good enough for that content

[Bourne_Endeavor]

You don't get why they get hit by the lightning, though.

They target the minotaur, and stay at range because his aoe swipe can hit pretty hard. But unless you target the chimera or focus target him, they don't see his attack coming, because the name on the progress bar is often the only efficient way to tell. Mostly it's just making sure players target the one enemy that makes them vulnerable, chimera for ranged, minotaur for melee, and moving to deal with that.

The loss conditions are already a penalty; melee get thrown out of range, ranged get a mild para debuff. Most make you miss attacks for doing so. If you make harder ones, its really the same thing because the actual mechanic is simple and the reasons why they don't dodge are too, but it just makes ppl kill much slower. You can't get more annoying than Arjuna in temple of the fist.

Those aren't lose conditions but minor annoyances no different than Skalla forcing you to partake in a mini-game. A perfect example of how poorly tuned dungeons are is the first boss of Hell's Lid. He puts a vulnerability stack on for each swipe yet the damage is so inconsequential, you rarely see tanks bother dodging. I have gotten 5-6 before and still haven't been brought down to half my HP. If that is the "lose condition," not only does it accomplish absolutely nothing it only reinforces the mindset people can get hit by things and shrug it off no problem. Even Kefka normal suffers, though to a lesser extent. I flat-out will not dodge his fake Blizzards because I can heal myself through the damage with just Bloodbath. What about the vulnerability stack? One stack means very little, especially with how significant heal potencies are.

You can increase the risk of both these mechanics without going the OHKO route. Leveling dungeons are standing proof of that. Weeping City and Dun Scaith have few one shot mechanics yet pose a challenge for the average player.

[Gemina]

You can increase the risk of both these mechanics without going the OHKO route. Leveling dungeons are standing proof of that. Weeping City and Dun Scaith have few one shot mechanics yet pose a challenge for the average player.

Yeah, I'm going to say no. Smooth runs through leveling dungeons is about 50/50, with the exceptionally optimal, and the atrociously awful run are both rare. But all it really takes is one 40+ minute clear time of a leveling dungeon for the devs to say the difficulty is staying right where it's at.

Suffice to say, a player won't learn if they are not punished for failing mechanics, but at the same time, a player also has to have the desire to get better. There will never be a middle ground content if the mindset remains 'Savage/everything else'. 24-man is about as middle as it's going to get.