Quote Originally Posted by Vyrerus View Post
1. I agree largely, but the thing about dungeons is that they can only really remain challenging if people don't improve at the game.
Responding to your well-thought out points in kind:

1) I was really just referring to the design and layout of dungeons in this first point, not the challenge. It's disappointing that other than Bardem's Mettle, the ~30 dungeons we've gotten across SB and ShB have just been hallway simulators with different window dressing. Just as a simple example, why not have a new version of Haukke Manor with three wings and parties can tackle each wing in any order they so choose?

2) You're probably right about the nostalgia of past raids like Coils, Karazhan, and Icecrown making me forget about the tedium of farming them later . But at the very least, I'd like to see more varied arenas besides our usual circle/squares. I didn't realize though that there are engine complications that may prevent boss arenas from having different elevations, like Twintania/Caduceus.

3) Yup, I recall that heavy gear check in Gordias. I feel a scaling echo buff though for enemies would be simple to implement, and gives us an additional challenge like PotD. It also gives more incentives for groups to continue farming once they clear a Savage tier. Like I mentioned, my static has typically fallen off after clearing the first Savage tier in an expansion, and I think that's largely because there isn't any further content to make use of the gear upgrades. At that point, farming for more gear is just epeen flexing for DPS parses, and we inevitably get bored. And knowing that we can easily catch up in this game in a future raid cycle, why keep grinding?

But really, my suggestion was more for 4-man dungeons than Savage raids. It'd be nice to have some challenging small-group content to do in the interim of Savage tier releases, even if the only reward are bonus tomestones. This doesn't have to be Savage levels of difficulty, but like you mentioned above with Pharos Sirius in 2.1, SE is perfectly capable of designing 4-man dungeons to not be completely faceroll. And it's a way for us to actually make use of our improving gear ilvls.

4) You're probably right about set bonuses doing more harm than good. It'd also discourage the flexibility we have now mixing and matching raid gear and tomestone gear. I still feel our current materia options are very lackluster. I just don't think the complexity is there right now. Probably a hot take, but I even preferred Accuracy materia over Direct Hit, cause it added more nuance in gear customization (they just needed to display our hit % in the character window instead of leaving it to guesswork). As for my suggestion on trinkets, I only bring that up because I really enjoyed the Lost Action system in Bozja lol. Would love if a more minimal version of that was brought over to the main gameplay via a trinket slot.