A request for Endwalker Dungeons (No more Undertuned)

[TaleraRistain]

If all the duties at that time were like Pharos Sirius in terms of difficulty and mechanical involvement, people wouldn't have been queue bailing to try and get a different duty.

No, they would have instead quit the game. The more that is done, the more niche it becomes, the less players the game has. The devs want the basic content that everyone is required to do to be accessible. That means it's going to be easy and not ask too much and is probably going to bore some who aren't challenged by it. There are other things the devs put in the game for that exact challenge.

The other thing to remember is the devs also want players to do the content. They tried more hard mode or tricky dungeons, like Pharos Sirius, and the playerbase avoided them. So where is their return on the work put in if their players avoid it?

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

No, they would have instead quit the game. The more that is done, the more niche it becomes, the less players the game has. The devs want the basic content that everyone is required to do to be accessible. That means it's going to be easy and not ask too much and is probably going to bore some who aren't challenged by it. There are other things the devs put in the game for that exact challenge.

The other thing to remember is the devs also want players to do the content. They tried more hard mode or tricky dungeons, like Pharos Sirius, and the playerbase avoided them. So where is their return on the work put in if their players avoid it?

Actually most people's reasoning wasn't the difficulty, it was that the rewards were of the same ilvl as wp and AK, but it was more difficult, so why bother.

[Shurrikhan]

That's a slippery slope. As I understand it, Pharos Sirius was nerfed because so many people complained about it. The same thing happened in WoW during Cataclysm, and an entire MMO, WildStar, was literally shut down because - among its many problems - the content was intentionally hard.

Even with the bracketed off qualifiers there, that is a gross oversimplification...

I can understand where you're coming from to a degree, but making dungeons even a bit harder may lead to new dungeons becoming even more difficult down the road.

More difficult in terms of objective mechanical depth? Sure. That is likely.

More difficult in terms of exceeding what players are used to? No. Precisely because they've been made just "a bit harder" each step along that slope.

As players, we only feel the relative difficulty. We work in derivatives. So long as the rate of increase doesn't itself increase, we'll notice the bump the one time and, so long as the changes are in fact centered in and across the mainstay experience, that slope will feel flat thereafter.

[raelgun]

Liking WildStar and not wanting this game's normal content to become more difficult are not mutually exclusive.

And that's the last thing I'm going to say about that particular topic.

Wildstar shutdown because it released too early and the dev team got gutted right at the start gate, they didn't have the resources anymore to continue adding consistently to the game, people left before they knew about the attunements + difficulty but the game had a dedicated playerbase but the dungeon content was misjudged to be its downfall.

Cataclysm was not hard, it was a syndrome with how long WOTLK last patch took and people knew every fight to heart, Cata release was more of actually this is different and no more on auto pilot.

FF14 earlier dungeons were not hard but defo more challanging what we have now which has fostered a playerbase which skill base has regressed and gotten worse over time.

[Lily_Skye]

Can we PLEASE not get undertuned dungeons anymore? Matoyas Relict comes to mind. This is just, in my opinion, incredibly boring. Everything dies pretty much immediately and there isn't any serious risk. That's all.

Thanks for coming to my Talk.

FFXIV needs mythic plus dungeons IMO

[Shurrikhan]

FFXIV needs mythic plus dungeons IMO

Preferably without the BS of the Vault or the Keystones themselves.

A relatively low initial development cost to exponentially increase the enjoyable playtime per development hour spent on dungeons, all while providing incredibly fine and self-directed difficulty levels that'd allow for otherwise nearly inexistent midcore play? Yeah, I'll take that.

[RitsukoSonoda]

No, they would have instead quit the game. The more that is done, the more niche it becomes, the less players the game has. The devs want the basic content that everyone is required to do to be accessible. That means it's going to be easy and not ask too much and is probably going to bore some who aren't challenged by it. There are other things the devs put in the game for that exact challenge.

The other thing to remember is the devs also want players to do the content. They tried more hard mode or tricky dungeons, like Pharos Sirius, and the playerbase avoided them. So where is their return on the work put in if their players avoid it?

Try not to speak for other people as if you are some representative of the majority. If you're going to quit a game because they want you to actually play the game instead of letting it run itself like a spinoff of an idle heroes game that's your choice alone.

The player base did not avoid hard mode or tricky dungeons. The small faction I call lazy players avoided those while the majority of the player base actually did those duties when they appeared in roulettes and completed them without issue.

All of these "problem" duties that everybody supposedly avoids in roulettes, I've ran them all countless times. It was extremely rare to see someone actually abandon the duty just because it came up. Because of this at the current point in time I feel every single person claiming that they always see people abandon those duties are either the one abandoning the duty because they don't want to do it and are upset because they then have to wait 30 minutes to queue again, or are giving absurd exaggerations because they're afraid of having to learn basic competency in playing the game.

[Lium]

Wildstar shutdown because it released too early and the dev team got gutted right at the start gate, they didn't have the resources anymore to continue adding consistently to the game, people left before they knew about the attunements + difficulty but the game had a dedicated playerbase but the dungeon content was misjudged to be its downfall.

Cataclysm was not hard, it was a syndrome with how long WOTLK last patch took and people knew every fight to heart, Cata release was more of actually this is different and no more on auto pilot.

FF14 earlier dungeons were not hard but defo more challanging what we have now which has fostered a playerbase which skill base has regressed and gotten worse over time.

ARR dungeons definitely require you to pay more attention. I've said over on Reddit that whenever those dungeons pop up in the Leveling Roulette, I know it'll be more challenging than Expert dungeons, mostly because I can't remember the mechanics. .

But that begs the question. If ARR dungeons were more challenging than current dungeons, why is that? Why would SE slowly make the dungeons more faceroll easy if purportedly more players wanted that content to be more difficult? I obviously don't have the metrics but a logical guess would be because the majority of players wanted it that way. And remember, the forums are not where the majority of players are.

Your point about Cataclysm is partly true. It's been 10 years but I remember one of (please note the words "one of" before jumping in and saying "NO THE PROBLEM WITH CATA WAS...". Not you specifically raelgun, just the forum in general) the top complaints in Cataclysm was that it was too hard. And that was in fact a result of WOTLK essentially being too easy.

WOTLK was the first expansion I remember the tanks starting to YOLO pull everything. Prior to WOTLK, you actually had to have CC in dungeons (Improved SAP, Mind Control, etc.) and pull only a few mobs at a time, unless you were crazy overgeared and had a really good healer. I'll never forget going into one of the first Level 80 dungeons back then, and this undead warrior tank started running as soon as we zoned in and really didn't stop running until we got to the first boss. I thought he was griefing us, but I quickly found out that's how the game had evolved to be.

People started saying the game was too easy and boring. So to rectify this, Blizzard made Cata dungeons essentially go back to how they were in vanilla WoW. That is not anecdotal. You can google that.

And then everyone said the game was too hard. Again, Cata had other issues, many of which I don't remember, but the complaints about difficulty was certainly one of them.

Now, regarding FFXIV, if people are actually advocating for more ARR style dungeons, I'd probably be okay with that. But again, if that's the case, why aren't they doing that?

[ForteNightshade]

But that begs the question. If ARR dungeons were more challenging than current dungeons, why is that? Why would SE slowly make the dungeons more faceroll easy if purportedly more players wanted that content to be more difficult? I obviously don't have the metrics but a logical guess would be because the majority of players wanted it that way. And remember, the forums are not where the majority of players are.

Because developers make assumptions which are not always reflective of the feedback given or even welcomed. WoW is quite notorious for that despite very vocal opposition from practically every level. Keep in mind, their dev team said, and I quote "You think you want WoW Classic, but really, you don't."

In regards to FFXIV specifically, I need only point to current Bard and Monk as primary examples of the dev team not listening to feedback. Bard was the most popular DPS in Stormblood and has dropped to battling with Black Mage for the least popular. While Dancer inevitably played a factor in its decline. It's still a pretty sizable fall from grace. The Monk reception especially stands out as the dev team were forced to not only panic buff it but perform two overhauls through Shadowbringers all while claiming Monk had been the job they were "most proud of" at the media tour prior. And now they've overhauled it again for Endwalker.

The issue with previously difficult dungeons is there has always been an easier alternative. Why would anyone bother with a harder objective for the exact same rewards? Look at Alliance Roulette and how people ilvl cheese it to purposely force Crystal Tower. In fact, Orbonne had to be nerfed and given echo just to keep people from bailing. Was it too hard? No. It's just you could more easily wipe, thus wasting upwards of 40-60 minutes for the same rewards a braindead LotA offered. Pharos Sirius had similar problems; being much harder than its counterpart dungeons without the incentive to compensate. Imagine if you could only choose a hypothetical Roulette that either gave you all of Shadowbringers' leveling dungeons (71-80) or its Expert dungeons (80+). I guarantee you almost no one would ever touch the Leveling version because Expert dungeons are easier.

At the end of the day, it's all about the reward offered. If two dungeons released in a patch were the same difficulty, and both were harder than what we have now. No one would really say anything. They'd still run them just as normal because there isn't an "easier" alternative.

[Lium]

At the end of the day, it's all about the reward offered.

Excellent points all around, but your post brings up another issue I've seen repeated in this thread. Specifically, the part I just quoted.

Why is it only about the reward? That's the fallacy in the argument. If people just want a challenge, then shouldn't that be the reward in and of itself? Assuming that's what they are really after, the challenge. Not brain dead content.

If SE offers a more difficult dungeon than what we have now, but as you say, no one plays it when an easier alternative exists, is that not a player problem? Because if you go with that argument, it sounds like the content you're looking for is actually out there, you just don't want to play it because you can do an easier dungeon and gain the same reward for doing less work. (Not you specifically. Just you in general.)