(Spoilers) Ghimlyt difficulty was a step down from the Burn...and that needs to stop

[Beckett]

Ghimlyt Dark is essentially an interactive 20 minute cutscene and that's fine! It works perfectly as a Main Scenario dungeon for encapsulating the feelings of the story, and the story this time is WoL and friends cut swathes through the Garlean troops, not WoL and friends struggle against an overwhelming force and barely make it through alive. If the content were harder, most groups would have multiple wipes, and that would have absolutely killed the story hype.

Now on the other hand, when you have a story like Binding Coil of Bahamut, where in-story you are supposed to be struggling against all odds, constant wipes followed by eventual victory makes the story all the better. I love the challenging content of this game, but it has a time and a place, and Ghimlyt Dark was not it.

[Vahlnir]

Ghimlyt Dark is essentially an interactive 20 minute cutscene and that's fine! It works perfectly as a Main Scenario dungeon for encapsulating the feelings of the story, and the story this time is WoL and friends cut swathes through the Garlean troops, not WoL and friends struggle against an overwhelming force and barely make it through alive. If the content were harder, most groups would have multiple wipes, and that would have absolutely killed the story hype.

Exactly. We were also told at least twice that they were testing our defenses to see what we were capable of with the last assault so I wouldn't have expected the Garleans to go all out right away. They're sending Zenos and I'm assuming more troops the next time, so they're gonna mean business.

[Lord_Umbra]

The burn such an easy dungeon once know the final boss mechanics everything before the final boss was incredibly easy to burn through & final boss loses it's difficulty after one attempt, have run into no more issues after seeing it once.
I really don't like the comparison though since when people talk of the Burn they usually only referring to final boss because if you think rest of that dungeon was a challenge then damn you've had a lot of bad groups I barely remember first two bosses because how quick they get deeps down.

[Alleo]

I do agree that the dungeon felt a bit easy, especially since we also get the help of the NPCs in the fight. Also none of the bosses had really hard mechanics. On the other hand this is still a story mode dungeon. (I dont have much problems with them being easier but of course a bit more mechanics would be nice.) But some people just want to see the story and dont care much for group content and I honestly dont want something like Steps of Faith ever again because it could be too frustrating. (Honestly the only thing hard in the burn was the endboss, which did have a bite but even that was not really difficult)

At the same time I do wished that we got harder HM dungeons because they feel not that hard at all.

In the end all of this would probably be less of a problem if we had more midcore content for those that dont want to do savage raid but also dont want to have dungeons like this one. Then everyone could be happy (as long as there is no MSQ or other mandatory stuff behind that midcore content).

[KaivaC]

One of the things that I'm seeing being mentioned a lot is that some people think I'm suggesting that raising the difficulty means making dungeons harder. Maybe I should've used a different term and said challenging. Challenging doesn't automatically equate to hard. But I certainly would like to see even MSQ dungeons put less reliance on three bosses broken up by trash mobs that nobody will remember.

I get it : some people only care about the story, and that's fine. But this is still a Final Fantasy game, and most players certainly didn't face roll everything in the last 1/3rd of the other titles. Eventually, I feel like the devs will need to stop handing the majority of dungeons over to the casuals and make them work for the next part of the story a little bit. Lower the trash mobs and make the dungeons themselves actually interesting to run through.

[Yeol]

Is the later MSQ dungeons all really challenging? Not really. But it is far from beginner mode. Beginner Mode is A Realm Reborn Dungeons particularly the early, early ones.

HW on is more liked veteran dungeons or what you call normal difficulty. Good amount of mechanics.
Hard is normal difficulty but different locale and mechanics, but still normal difficulty.
Extreme is above normal difficulty, introduction to higher difficulty.
Savage is a step above that.
Ultimate is the highest difficulty.

Extreme onwards will come later. Final Steps/Shinryu/Burn vanilla skipped the process of having a normal mode even though they were called normal, and got ninja nerfed later. I don't want them skipping tiers of difficulty.

Are you asking for the omitting of normal mode?
If so starting in hard? Starting in extreme?

I was not talking about dungeons

[zuzu-bq]

Ghimlyt Dark is essentially an interactive 20 minute cutscene and that's fine! It works perfectly as a Main Scenario dungeon for encapsulating the feelings of the story, and the story this time is WoL and friends cut swathes through the Garlean troops, not WoL and friends struggle against an overwhelming force and barely make it through alive. If the content were harder, most groups would have multiple wipes, and that would have absolutely killed the story hype.

Being an interactive cutscene is fine, yes. I understand that is what the dungeon proposes to do and it fails at it.The interactive parts are bad and completly devoid of danger (you don't even die for not stayin in Kann-E's shield) except for the last boss and you're often placed in non-interactive moments that go for far too long (the second boss digs and takes over 20s to come back as a target and the whole hi-five and the final boost animation takes almost 10 whole seconds after an intermission mechanic). Compare this with Aetherochemical Research Facility, Ala Mihgo or Baelsar's Wall which all follow the same principle of being interactive joy rides and you'll see how Ghimlyt doesn't properly work as one.

As for the difficulty talk I've posted about it before, it's more about having a proper difficulty curve instead of having it to be inconsistent across MSQ dungeons, being not hard is a important factor for dungeons that will be part of your daily roulette in this game. But having dungeons all dungeons to be the same difficulty or rather having them go back and forth on how easy or not so easy they are is a problem of inconsistency in difficulty FFXIV has had since the devs changed their philosophy in dungeon design back at 2.3.

[Ryaz]

Seiryu Ex is a big step down from Suzaku Ex as well, imo.

[Alleo]

One of the things that I'm seeing being mentioned a lot is that some people think I'm suggesting that raising the difficulty means making dungeons harder. Maybe I should've used a different term and said challenging. Challenging doesn't automatically equate to hard. But I certainly would like to see even MSQ dungeons put less reliance on three bosses broken up by trash mobs that nobody will remember.

But how can something be a challenge and not be harder? If you for example make it a challenge for healer than this means imo that monsters are hitting harder or more often and thus its more difficult for healers. If you make it a challenge by introducing DPS checks its harder for DPS. Do you have some examples on what would be more of a challenge without making it more difficult at the same time thanks to that? (Just curious)

I also agree that it would be nice to have more different dungeons with less corridors and trash and boss fights. I would love to have riddles and things like that but again that would not necessarily make it harder or more of a challenge. (IMO)

The thing with other FF games: You play them solo. You can take all the time you have to learn a fight, to either beat it or grind for more levels. Here with group content, especially with something that has the MSQ behind it, you dont have that. If you have a harder time doing it you are holding back three other people.

Again I am not saying that it should be brain dead easy and I do wish that at least Hard mode dungeons would be hard mode dungeons but in the end the best would probably be more midcore content so that those that want a challenge but no savage can have their stuff and the rest can just run dungeons.

[ApolloGenX]

I think it's intentional. For those of us that don't bother tome grinding and just play for story- this instance is a catch up mechanic. It gives us higher ilevel gear easily and we can use it to get into other story trials etc. to finish up those lines. It's not about difficulty, it's about catching up so people can finish up story lines.

I loved it. It's the end of the expansion. It's a great start to the wrap up. It's why you can unsub for the better part of an expansion and come back and just finish everything out. Other games do it as well now. It's why grinding is obsolete.