Encounter Design needs to be overhauled at a fundamental level

[Saefinn]

while you bring up some interesting and completely valid new possible additions, ultra-mega-supra-level3saiyajin-avatarmode-tripleenrage-SSS modes are the content made for people who don't find challenge in the basics. If you make the normal encounters like this, the inclusiveness to all levels of players ramps down extremely quickly. Considering the amount of PuGs I get who cannot deal with the basics I am gunshy of raising the floor.

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But my argument is that how the game is designed is supposed to ease people into higher difficulty levels so they can learn and get used to playing the job and the mechanics so by the point they hit level cap to do endgame content they're prepared to deal with more complicated mechanics rather than throw them in the deepens.

But maybe it could be resolvable with 2 or 3 difficulty levels on each bit of content with different rewards? It worked in SW:TOR and it is sort of a thing in FFXI endgame.

We kinda have it with Normal and Savage raids. Normal and Extreme.

If we are cutting down dungeons, maybe it's room for the same dungeon with two different versions, normal and challenging. Challenging adds more mechanics but gives greater rewards, normal is what we have now.

Though personally I think 3 modes are better than two because you can do normal, hard and savage/extreme/challenge. Because there are people who sit in the middle who want a challenge but not to be a progression kind of challenge.

[linay]

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But my argument is that how the game is designed is supposed to ease people into higher difficulty levels so they can learn and get used to playing the job and the mechanics so by the point they hit level cap to do endgame content they're prepared to deal with more complicated mechanics rather than throw them in the deepens.

But maybe it could be resolvable with 2 or 3 difficulty levels on each bit of content with different rewards? It worked in SW:TOR and it is sort of a thing in FFXI endgame.

We kinda have it with Normal and Savage raids. Normal and Extreme.

If we are cutting down dungeons, maybe it's room for the same dungeon with two different versions, normal and challenging. Challenging adds more mechanics but gives greater rewards, normal is what we have now.

Though personally I think 3 modes are better than two because you can do normal, hard and savage/extreme/challenge. Because there are people who sit in the middle who want a challenge but not to be a progression kind of challenge.

The more difficulty level, the more item level variance. People are already complaining about old content being too easy with higher item level. There is also a matter of cannibalizing certain content. Some content will just be regarded as irrelevant unless you make it mandatory to gear through one difficulty level to go clear the next. I think it would just be too much.

[Flay_wind]

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But my argument is that how the game is designed is supposed to ease people into higher difficulty levels so they can learn and get used to playing the job and the mechanics so by the point they hit level cap to do endgame content they're prepared to deal with more complicated mechanics rather than throw them in the deepens.

But maybe it could be resolvable with 2 or 3 difficulty levels on each bit of content with different rewards? It worked in SW:TOR and it is sort of a thing in FFXI endgame.

We kinda have it with Normal and Savage raids. Normal and Extreme.

If we are cutting down dungeons, maybe it's room for the same dungeon with two different versions, normal and challenging. Challenging adds more mechanics but gives greater rewards, normal is what we have now.

Though personally I think 3 modes are better than two because you can do normal, hard and savage/extreme/challenge. Because there are people who sit in the middle who want a challenge but not to be a progression kind of challenge.

I would be one of those people. I dislike the strict formula of Extreme and Savage fights "do the dance or DIE."
I would be all for harder dungeons or rather something like "challenge" dungeons. In their own tier outside of roulettes.

[Recon1o6]

Something most folks won't remember is that Alexander was going to have 3 tiers of difficulty, Story, Hard and Savage
The devs cut hard due to time constraints and beefed up extremes in response

Yet for SB and Shb so far the difficulty jump between extreme and savage is a lot more pronounced due to the ease of the current extremes and Ramuh having some of the lowest margin for error before a party wipe out of most fights in the game. Eden prime wasn't much better at certain points in the fight (eg orbs 1) were it not for the dps checks being very lenient (though it was the entry level of the new expansion)

Another thing that is missing is difficult solo and 4 man gameplay. We have story duties that are genuinely well liked and some early ARR dungeons, but nothing whatsoever after that. The closest was the Eureka snore fest which everybody partied up for mass fate spawning so it was a moot point anyway.

Dungeons are desperate for a overhaul as well given how identical they all are to one another. Most of little to no challenge and no branching paths. People point out that the ARR dungeons had branching paths that nobody did- well no shit they didnt do them, the paths didn't lead to any kind of meaningful reward, nor were they alternate ways to progress through the dungeon.
The only exception was thousand maws, but that was made moot too by having one less orb on the alt path so you had to do the main one anyway.


We need a higher skill floor at this point as its been lowered far too much and more variance in combat encounter difficulty and content type.

There's a thread going round about making the older content have lower Ilvl, its something I've been wondering why it hasn't been implemented yet. I would also suggest a secondary restriction so that you must have your best gear on in order to enter alliance roulette and curb the excess of crystal tower and void ark

[yukiiyuki]

I would be one of those people. I dislike the strict formula of Extreme and Savage fights "do the dance or DIE."
I would be all for harder dungeons or rather something like "challenge" dungeons. In their own tier outside of roulettes.

We lost that fight already, if you want something hard, you can dance in extremes and savages, dungeons are dead on arrival, people dont want to waste their time on content, 24-man dungeons (raids) being nerfed and even new ones will not have harder difficulty. Just think of this game as life simulator or something, with a story, where you can hang out with friends. We're losing more and more PVE content for other stuff like RP/crafting and people want this, after all, its just final fantasy theme park with a decent story.