Dungeons we need to talk dungeons

[HappyHubris]

Quoting for emphasis. Also a WoW refugee. The things people are asking for have ruined countless other MMO's not just WoW. Overly competitive content just breed toxicity. A side note Im actually concerned about Endwalker "bring more PvP content." The few front lines I have done are one of the only places where I have seen people call out others so negatively and be super toxic. Im really glad you at least can't see the names of enemy team mates.

You don't have to play every tier of content, so adding more difficult content - even if the culture is one you don't like - won't affect you at all. Just like you don't have to do say Savage content if you don't want to.

Nerfing everything into the dust so that no one can fail might reduce conflict, but it will also decrease engagement. Dungeons are currently a chore when they could be fun.

[Shurrikhan]

It wasn't so much the cast bar on the cyclops as it was the confusion about "where is the telegraph?".

Idk, when I see a giant cyclops squeeze down on his club, tighten his muscles, and begin to glow slightly, I tend to assume that the guy might not just be doing isometrics...

The change in Aurum Vale corrected what I considered to be an anomaly in this 'signaling'.

It wasn't an anomaly, though -- merely a type. Quite a few bosses at the time, especially across FATEs, followed similar practices. Heck, probably the only "anomoly" still, to this day, is the ease of dodging the follow-up frontal cleave from Cyclops, which still has no indicator.

(That or perhaps the likes of Frost Breath in SV, which is likewise situationally actively dodgeable by changing angle between when the boss's position is snapshotted in preparation for the queued instant cast, since any others actively dodgeable, like Vine Probe, tended to require Sprint or AV 1st boss's frontal cleave or a mobility skill, but had many more examples in similar type.)

[Velnora]

I could only wish dungeons were anything more than an uninspired, incredibly dull and boring activity. Though I know that will never happen. SE will play it safe and continue to churn out hallway simulators and tack on mediocre incentives to run them.

[Hazama999]

I've mentioned it before, but the one dungeon that always sticks in my mind is the 2.1 iteration of Pharos Sirius. It actually felt sorta challenging, especially on day one. I remember timing out on it a few times, and some people going "AW HELL NAW" whenever we got it on roulette... lol. I know, I know. People don't want to potentially have to go more than 30 minutes in a dungeon. It's just that after almost 8 years, I do tend to miss that sort of small rush an instance like that provided.

Dungeons nowadays really do just feel like a formality.

[RitsukoSonoda]

I've mentioned it before, but the one dungeon that always sticks in my mind is the 2.1 iteration of Pharos Sirius. It actually felt sorta challenging, especially on day one. I remember timing out on it a few times, and some people going "AW HELL NAW" whenever we got it on roulette... lol. I know, I know. People don't want to potentially have to go more than 30 minutes in a dungeon. It's just that after almost 8 years, I do tend to miss that sort of small rush an instance like that provided.

Dungeons nowadays really do just feel like a formality.

TBH a majority of the 4 player duties we've had after ARR probably would have been better off as a solo MSQ experience. Especially the ones in Stormblood and Shadowbringers where we have MSQ npcs appearing in them in areas. So maybe what they need to do is seperate 4 player duties from the MSQ starting with Endwalker and make 4 player duties optional content going forward as well so we can get more challenging and involved content in them?

[Alexandre_Noireau]

There is no difficulty curve in this game. Instead there are difficulty tiers and the game is sectioned into them, maybe there are slight deviations inside each tier for each particular instance: but the diference in difficulty tier is categorical. Dungeons ARE easy content - And this shouldn't be.

The Dungeons level up, but the skill requiered to finish them doesn't scale properly. At some point arround 50 Dungeons become basicaly non-progressive in terms of difficulty.
I say a level 90 dungeon should be much, much, much harder than a level 50 dungeon - Gear and stat syncing considered - Which is another point, the level sync system in this game is atrocious.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

So maybe what they need to do is seperate 4 player duties from the MSQ starting with Endwalker and make 4 player duties optional content going forward as well so we can get more challenging and involved content in them?

Being blunt, this wouldn't change anything. The devs want a simplistic, easy content for the playerbase to gain tomestones in for their dailies/weeklies/etc so that even the most casual of players can keep up with the grind without having to set foot into harder content. Even if dungeons were decoupled from the MSQ, they would either need to make new content that satisfies the 'easy, repeatable, anyone can queue up and be out in 20mins' condition, or (realistically) just keep the newly decoupled dungeons as that source, only now they're not tied to MSQ.

Like, look at the Twinning/Akademia. Neither is mandatory for MSQ and they were mass pullable from day 1 of the expansion. Because there always needs to be an expert roulette or equivalent. Decoupling dungeons from the MSQ solves nothing of the main issue: There always needs to be a super easy content for casuals to get a lot of tomestones quickly on the daily with. And since they're only designing 1 dungeon a patch, guess where the single allocated resource is going?

[Shurrikhan]

The devs want a simplistic, easy content for the playerbase to gain tomestones in for their dailies/weeklies/etc so that even the most casual of players can keep up with the grind without having to set foot into harder content.?

I wonder if they'll ever encounter the passing thought that we wouldn't so need to help players "keep up with" the grind if there wasn't so much (predominantly dull) grind to begin with...

[QooEr]

its ironic cuz there really isnt much grind at all if you dont care about harder content. if youre is so casual all you do is msq and dungeons then... what exactly do you even need tome gear for? glamour?

making the expert dungeons extra braindead so people who dont even need the tome gear can farm tomes doesn't make much sense

[RitsukoSonoda]

*snip*

The "casuals" you're referring to don't even need tomestone gear unless they plan to do the content people like to label as "hardcore". So then these "casuals" then get the gear needed to meet the ilvl requirements to jump into the "hardcore" content because they want the shiny mounts, sparkly trial weapons, etc. They spend 95% of the time on the floor because they were allowed to stand in AoE markers pressing 2-3 buttons most of the time due to current dungeon design and easy mode settings in the MSQ.

As for it being a grind. Yeah anything feels like a grind when its boring. Dumbing it down to run until you hit wall then mash AoE until duty is finished just makes the content boring right from the start even on the first run because it's already boring by initial design. Instead make the dungeons more difficult and involved. So the people running them repeatedly are at least getting practice dealing with mechanics and variables they will see in that harder content and these "casuals" become less likely to be a drag or hinderance to people when they decide to jump into other things.

You could jump into EX trials in DF in ARR and have a fairly good chance at clearing it. There was a reliable chance of clearing HW's 2 initial EX trials with random people before they nerfed the 8 player duty at the start of the HW MSQ after players not doing the mechanics complained non stop for weeks about being "gated" then the rate of failure started increasing. The initial 2 trials in Stormblood were the same. They were cleared with random people reliably until they nerfed Shinryu normal after people again complained for weeks that they were being "gated" out of content. I see all content as accessible to everyone so long as they are on a version of the game that allows access to it. However doing said content should involve the player actually learning how to effectively play the game. The dumbed down 4 player duty design and nerfs to various duties and the MSQ is nothing but an act of appeasing lazy players and enabling their behavior. Something that I feel should not be done because it does nothing but damage the player base. It's the game equivalent of giving a child screaming and throwing a tantrum in a store, toys and candy because you don't want to listen to it. And when others lacking morals, ethical standards, and integrity see rewards being given out for essentially being a little prick they start being a little prick as well.