The dream of Mythic is basically dead... Frost Interview with Yoshida

[Dracian]

It's a real shame, because a "Savage+" system for dungeons would do a lot of good for this game. The way I envisioned it would be like this:

"Savage" difficulty would present gear roughly equivalent to starter end-game gear or a little above. So, say in Shadowbringers it would drop items around i435. Savage+1 would be slightly harder but drop i440. Rinse and repeat until you get Savage+5 would end up around i460, which is between Normal, but not quite up to Savage raid gear level. Then, every time a new raid is released, we'd get another 5 levels of Savage+ difficulties to bridge the game in gear, with the top-level always being around 5ilvl below Savage (and maybe missing a materia slot or something).

To make the dungeons more interesting, I'd bring in a system like PoTD/HoH with modifiers and items that you can use to change up the runs.

That way it would serve as a side gearing source, allowing players to fill in slots they may be having some bad luck on in their main raids or in the alliance raids. As well as providing an alternative gearing path outside of just tomestone gear. Plus, it could keep all of those unique dungeon gearsets viable longer, as the game could just scale them up as rewards. Not to mention time-based leaderboards, community races/events that could be built around it, etc.

I know I personally would spend a lot of time on that type of content, especially if they made it difficult enough to require coordination, cooldowns, and maybe some light CC/slowing here and there (with items available for jobs that may not have certain abilities).

[Shurrikhan]

Guess XIV's going to have to stay as a "log in on new patches only" game for me, since midcore content with actual longevity and doable by smaller friend groups isn't apparently worthwhile....

[Shurrikhan]

....

Agreed, on most of this. Or at least, I think, the spirit of it.

The following is a bit tangential, though. Sorry.

I guess what annoys me most is that even truly optimizing, say, a Brayflox NM run in week 1 (albeit, week 1 among other legacy players, so already leveled up to sync) of ARR had more going on than most dungeons seem to now. Dungeon design has obviously improved in almost every way except fundamental creativity (and ARR dungeons were nothing great in that regard, either), and most toolkits are far more robust (perhaps Monk being the only exception, and only then in terms of certain rotational elements and interplay with CC), but there was more variance in how a run ought to be optimized based on one's composition, and just more cross-role engagement possible (kite loops for mitigation, focus-targeting, deliberate threat-passing, etc.).

Naturally, novelty breeds experimentation (and age, stagnation), but a lot of that change has been the result of deliberate trimming, too. There was a point at which they had this available pool of depth and, rather than tune around it or otherwise reward it, polish it, or the like, they decided to obfuscate any such lack of effort that might otherwise have been seen... by removing those mechanics entirely. That, to me, is a worrisome direction that only tends towards narrower and narrower, more and more limiting, ruts in design.

In the end, I just want some variety in intrinsically enjoyable combat experiences. When the game launched, I enjoyed dungeons immensely, because they had these different factors of play available to them that excited me (even if I could certain imagine, even then, their being much more polished or better situated). Moreover, they excited me in ways that pulling to gate, AoE spam, pulling to gate, AoE spam, and a boss kill, on repeat, just can't do for me except under such tuning as forces out certain elements of deliberate, choiceful play and wherein that play is itself interesting. ("Non-choices", like simply playing in a blatantly nonoptimal manner, need not apply.)

Bringing back in a level of situation (apparent relative reward, related gameplay loops, cohesion, etc.) that gives us the most possibilities for engagement, or both the number of competitive ways by which to approach a situation and the depth of engagement in following one such path, seems essential to providing more variety in enjoyable combat experiences. But that requires some actual commitment to a difficulty level that won't necessarily be open to every player on the first run, and ideally a way to smoothly scale up from there so that players can retain that same level of challenge for themselves for as far as they wish to go. That kind of design can't shy away from polish or just throw over it a blanket of "All enemies are now immune, so stop talking about it."

[Arohk]

because a single player playing poorly will not necessarily wipe the run.

Uhm, pretty much that what happens in Savage raids, one player can do a small mistake and it is a wipe, people who don't want difficult content will avoid it anyway.

I am personally not a fan of World of Warcrafts Mythic+ system, I despise it, but that has less to do with the difficulty curve but how it is implemented.

[Shurrikhan]

also i'm glad mythic + was ion's greatest failure

Usually you don't need to run contrary to any and all statistical evidence (e.g., regarding large-scale surveys of favored activities) to make a hot take, but I guess any bad faith argument cupcake ought to have its sprinkles, too...

but like i said this is simply my opinion

You're making an assertion that content above the lowest difficulty should be stripped of its rewards. That's not exactly a "just my opinion, man" kind of proposition once placed in a public space where it can (unlikely but possibly) stimulate action that would be to the detriment of many.

[Dracian]

....

A couple of things happened that led to what you are referring to. The first is that class rotations become longer and more complex with each subsequent expansion. But, in order to minimize the amount of buttons we have to manage on our hotbars, stuff got cut, and most of that was crowd control and situational abilities (such as Quelling Strikes). What was left was basically spread across entire roles, so that you didn't have to try and hunt for a specific job to do something. That's the overarching problem. They can't give us anything more complex than wall-to-wall trash pulls, because we don't have the tools to manage those.

The second was that the developers really wanted to streamline the dungeon experience to be no more than around a 15 minute chunk of content. Gone are the branching pathways of Toto-rak, or anything beyond hallways and trash packs. I'd love to see this be better balanced, but I doubt it.

[Shurrikhan]

A couple of things happened that led to what you are referring to. The first is that class rotations become longer and more complex with each subsequent expansion. But, in order to minimize the amount of buttons we have to manage on our hotbars, stuff got cut, and most of that was crowd control and situational abilities (such as Quelling Strikes). What was left was basically spread across entire roles, so that you didn't have to try and hunt for a specific job to do something. That's the overarching problem. They can't give us anything more complex than wall-to-wall trash pulls, because we don't have the tools to manage those.

That's not remotely the full story, though.

We have more than enough buttons to have many times more depth than we currently provide. Our bars are simply notoriously inefficient. The single decision to "do single-target GCD damage" on Dragoon, for instance, has seven buttons allotted to it.

For the devs to create such inefficient design, and all the while retain bloat that does nothing but devalue mechanics already made¹, makes it incredibly disingenuous to for them to then say that "there is room left to allow for dungeons to be anything but the same old pull all, AoE spam, pull all, AoE spam, boss, repeat."

¹ This includes such skill as Lucid Dreaming, which mostly turns MP from something to actually manage into UI bloat appended to a one-minute CD, or Arm's Length, which merely removes the effects of most meaningful knockback mechanics, effectively wasting that part of fight design or converting it from pre-positioning into yet another button press.

The second was that the game really wanted to streamline the dungeon experience to be no more than around a 15 minute chunk of content.

The game is not sentient. So what community or part thereof are we talking about? How did the developers come to know that the majority of players wanted dungeons to be nearly as defined by their time spent sprinting along a hallway as actually fighting? And if not, why is it their decision being sold as such?

Moreover, why did it need to be a ubiquitous change, instead of dungeons simply offering a wider range of rewards proportionate to their likely clear times, and the roulettes bonuses themselves de-emphasized to allow for more choice in consecutive play length (and more choice in when players can spend their hours free time per week to pursue weekly-capped goals)?

[Dracian]

That's not remotely the full story, though.

We have more than enough buttons to have many times more depth than we currently provide. Our bars are simply notoriously inefficient. The single decision to "do single-target GCD damage" on Dragoon, for instance, has seven buttons allotted to it.

I think we're both saying the same thing, just in different ways. My point was that they expanded DPS rotations so much (in an effort to have "progression" through leveling) that we have unnecessarily long DPS rotations/bloat and they clearly opted to prune out situational-use abilities to compensate for the bloat.

More variety in dungeon content would likely require tools that most players don't have. If you want to avoid wall-to-wall pulls with AOE, you need to have options for crowd control/stuns that this game currently lacks for the most part.

The game is not sentient. So what community or part thereof are we talking about? How did the developers come to know that the majority of players wanted dungeons to be nearly as defined by their time spent sprinting along a hallway as actually fighting? And if not, why is it their decision being sold as such?

That was a typo on my part. I edited my original post for clarity. I was referring to the development team wanting dungeons to become short, casual pieces of straightforward content, which has been stated by Yoshi-P on more than one occasion.

[Shurrikhan]

That was a typo on my part. I edited my original post for clarity. I was referring to the development team wanting dungeons to become short, casual pieces of straightforward content, which has been stated by Yoshi-P on more than one occasion.

I see, and I apologize if my rant came off as directed at you, rather than more of a stream of related thoughts alone.

My point here was merely that such seems an immense disservice, especially in a game that was originally centered on a sort of promise for variety. If every iteration within each type of content feels the same, it matters little whether there are many content types, since we'll ultimately be left feeling like we've only as many actual iterations as we have types of content, just repainted frequently for at least a shallow level of briefly renewed novelty.

There are several threads here on the official forums, alone, that ask for revitalization and variety in dungeons, specifically (and yet more on Reddit). Similarly, of all the friends who've quit over the years, lack of variety (especially, within content types) has been a reason for departure second only to one's job being gutted.

The means to allow for more variety at no additional or unique annoyance are all there. Nothing about more dungeon variety would necessitate the reward-per-minute imbalance among dungeons on the scale of Praetorium vs. Castrum Meridanium. Nothing about more dungeon variety would necessitate more minutes spent per week grinding tomes. Nothing about more dungeon variety would necessitate longer queue times. Nothing about more dungeon variety would necessitate greater stress or frustration.

And yet they would insist on something so counter to their broader mission, something so wasteful? It's, sadly, not quite shocking, but it is at the least painfully depressing.

[ReynTime]

IMO it's the general idea that everything needs to be designed to be duty finder-friendly is what kills any potential of better 4~8 party dungeons.

Just like there are a lot of players who run hardcore content with statics XIV shouldn't have been shying away from designing midcore dungeons for fixed parties. Not every content is supposed to appeal to solo/casuals. It would have been a fun content for people who want more engaging dungeons that aren't routine and don't groan about needing to actually meet players to do it. If they could implement as little as like 2 such dungeons per expansion I would've been satisfied enough.