A request for Endwalker Dungeons (No more Undertuned)

[ssunny2008]

We always have two or three complicated (i'm using 'complicated' to classify instances where you can wipe) dungeons for the "story" mode
ARR: Aurum Vale and Wanderer's Palace

Heavensward: Gubal Library and Dusk Vigil

Stormblood: Ala Mhigo, Doma Castle and Ghimlyt Dark

Shadowbringers: Grand Cosmos, Heroes' Gauntlet and 3rd nier raid.


From my perspective, there is two things that determinate the difficult of a instance: your role and your gear.

When they released the first NIER raid it was hard. You could die easily in one shot against Engels, now you can handle two or even three attacks (ilvl 520-530).
Praetorium and Meridanum was harder back in the days of ARR too.

All those dungeons are far away from being hard. Nier Raid wasn´t hard too. And calling something back in the days hard, of course, might be, but we live in a world where FF14 Shadowbringers is a thing.
Yes stuff is getting easier with better gear, but "easy to laughable easy" isn´t a real difference. There is no fear... getting oneshotted by an aoe is not even a great design. We´ve hundred years of animations and casting times. If players fail, then they either suck hard or watch netflix nearby.

When ppl start a new dungeon / ally raid / normal raid and clear them by the first or atleast 2nd pull easily, then something is going completely wrong with the game, the scaling and mechanics. Any new dungeon is a rundown, while the raids cause only a wipe, when every rezzmage / healer / smn is dead. It´s lame.

Honestly i don't see any problem. Maybe you all are just bored and want something new...as the devs already said "if that is the case, you can play something else".
I'd like to reinforce the fact that WoW started his decay when the devs listened this kind of appeal.

Of course ppl are bored by braindead content grinds. If you´re not bored by them, then.........
Devs got lazy and you obviously can´t see that. We got less and less dungeons with each expansion. All of them are more like copy&paste with new visuals, mechanics are not really a thing. Every expansion is pretty much the same just with less content, but more grind and many dumb downs on any classes "for the balancing". It´s ridiculous.

And WoW didn´t lost players because the devs listened. The devs failed with the design in the background like the weekly blocks on 10 / 25 raids if you´ve only done one of them. Or that boss 1 is easier with 10 while the 2nd is easier with 25 ppl.
Imo, WoW lost the most players with all the casual and QoL changes, Mythic PF and other bs. That´s why Classic is so popular. It brings back some difficulty, long time achievements and the "WE".

[ACE135]

I don't necessarily need harder dungeons. All I would like to have is that the bosses live long enough to do all their mechanics at least once. Designing several mechanics for (dungeon) bosses almost feels like it is a waste of time when after a certain time so many are being skipped.

[Shurrikhan]

I don't necessarily need harder dungeons. All I would like to have is that the bosses live long enough to do all their mechanics at least once. Designing several mechanics for (dungeon) bosses almost feels like it is a waste of time when after a certain time so many are being skipped.

Then... that's at least going to require a lower gear ceiling or higher mob (HP) scaling.

[Tavieon]

Agreed. Everything in this game, except for a few things like savages and extremes for example is just WAY to easy, like cellphone level of easy, like kids game easy. Please make normal and hard dungeons at least twice as hard. Also: trash mobs shouldn't exist, please make trash mobs actually require a little bit a of tactic, care to pull, and give them some dangerous AOEs, nothing boss level, but make "trash" dungeon bosses a challenge, be creative, otherwise: why bother?

Level 80 dungeon experience as a fresh 80 now... I've reached 80 at Lakeland... yeap, leveling is that fast these days, just following MSQ. I thought this level 80 dungeon would be deadly for me to tank... So, I've pulled 1 group at a time before the 1st boss... Healer was overspeeding and didn't even heal up while the last group before the 1st boss died. I did pull 1 group at a time to check up what kind of funny skills those trashes have... none of them were there. Just simple telegraphs.


So, I just got lazy after 1st boss, which was also quite easy after checking up some YouTube video anyway, and pulled to next wall. And I didn't even bothered to avoid telegraphs... not a single problem... I believe any fresh, not tanked anything before this dungeon, person can tank those dungeons without problem.


Why did they design later expansion dungeons this simple? Then, what's the point in trash monsters? They don't even showcase next boss' skills either. Why not just drop all the corridors and maze looking parts then implement three consecutive boss fight arenas, connected by some simple player characters running cut-scenes?



What's the point of level scaling if all the trashes are so easily scraped and AOEed together? In fact, as a tank, you do not need other skills but one AOE offensive skill and a few survival/damage mitigation skills for trash pull and one single target melee skill/damage mitigation skills (could be just one with short cooldown though =_=) for the boss fight. What is the point in implementing more than 20 skills to clog up the hotbar? I believe you can reduce it to 8-10 at max, just like GW2... It's confusing.

[SnowVix]

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.

Bard was not popular on its own merits, it was popular because it was the only good physical ranged. MCH required far higher execution plus good ping to do.... the same raw damage, with no party utility.

[DPZ2]

Of course ppl are bored by braindead content grinds. If you´re not bored by them, then.........
Devs got lazy and you obviously can´t see that. We got less and less dungeons with each expansion. All of them are more like copy&paste with new visuals, mechanics are not really a thing. Every expansion is pretty much the same just with less content, but more grind and many dumb downs on any classes "for the balancing". It´s ridiculous.

...
Imo, WoW lost the most players with all the casual and QoL changes, Mythic PF and other bs. That´s why Classic is so popular. It brings back some difficulty, long time achievements and the "WE".

Of course, some people are bored. Many who post on the forums about this topic have entry dates on the forum from 7+ years ago. It might be boring because, well, they have 7+ years of experience with the battle system. I'm certain that I've progressed to a point where most dungeon content is no longer difficult, regardless of the job I am currently playing.

But this poster isn't really talking about dungeon instances. They're complaining because of Raid content (as is anyone else who mentioned Nier in a post). You can tell that's their main point of interest because they mention "casual and QoL changes, Mythic PF and other bs" -- what's missing from this list of reasons for player loss? Raid content.

To be clear, as someone who spent 10 years playing that game, WoW lost out because they backfilled the major story line through books. WoW lost out because their "content" devolved into a daily grind with little or no story at all. WoW lost out because our characters were never important in the grand scheme of things. We, as characters, never did anything worthy of notice by major characters in the game. We, as characters, did not defeat the end-boss of a raid or dungeon, or even major story line battle. Some entitled NPC did. In a cutscene. Or in a book explaining how Garrosh, for example, escaped judgement and moved to another version of Draenor, while in-game we were not informed about anything other than the assumed incompetence of our leaders because, somehow, Garrosh moved to another Draenor.

As for "Classic" WoW, I played through it when it was new material in a game called World of Warcraft, without that "classic" label. Was it as difficult? Not particularly. But then I believe this poster is thinking about raids again, rather than dungeon instances.

There is one very very important Mod that Real Vanilla WoW never had that is available for Classic: Deadly Boss Mods. How difficult can it be to raid when every boss move is noted by an active mod? Talk about braindead.

As an aside: "achievements" were part of the Wrath pre-release, not available for the first 4 years of the game. How "classic" can it be if it incorporates mechanisms that were never available when the game was Real?

[Shurrikhan]

Of course, some people are bored. Many who post on the forums about this topic have entry dates on the forum from 7+ years ago. It might be boring because, well, they have 7+ years of experience with the battle system. I'm certain that I've progressed to a point where most dungeon content is no longer difficult, regardless of the job I am currently playing.

Possibly. But in many cases, if the battle system had remained largely as it was in certain areas (positionals actually mattering contextually due to the frequency of boss positionals, tanks actually needing to manage arena space, the harder among melee and especially immobile casters having proportionally higher throughput ceilings, physical ranged either having higher skill ceilings or a real contextual purpose for their hypermobility, etc), we'd also be happier.

There's much that isn't dull just because it's "more of the same." Much has grown dull specifically because it has less depth or commensurate reward.

[ssunny2008]

Of course, some people are bored. Many who post on the forums about this topic have entry dates on the forum from 7+ years ago. It might be boring because, well, they have 7+ years of experience with the battle system. I'm certain that I've progressed to a point where most dungeon content is no longer difficult, regardless of the job I am currently playing.

The playtime doesn´t matter for the most players, who´re bored at this game. Ppl who´re new to MMORPG´s might have some trouble first as much as those who sit on their PS4/5, which have never played something else than singeplayer FF games. Whoever doesn´t fall under both categories but still fails in dungeons and is like "Oh soooo cool!", is either 5 years old, disabled or really really bad at gaming perse. Sadly i still meet ppl who don´t even read their class - skills or healers who prefer to jump around when i´m full-health as tank instead of doing damage. But that they´ve time for such stuff or that such ppl are able to clear any content but savage says enough i guess.

I can only speak for myself and as i´ve written somewhere else, i get used to everything pretty quickly. I don´t need 7 years to be good at a game like FF14. This game has become easier and easier. The current content and class-designs are NOT "casual", they´re "braindead"!
It´s not only the difficulty, it´s the whole design. Running from A to B, no debuffs, just strict AOE patterns, classes have less possibilities, tanks and healer can easy solo dungeons, DPS are just there to save us time, etc....There is no variety, nothing which puts pressure on the player, nothing where players can grow at.
E8s has been the only fight the whole expansion and for ages, which brought more than "running from A to B" to the table. You got even rewarded for playing the addphase (DPS check) perfectly fine and you had the possibility to swap within the 2 teams if 1 side has some trouble. Just small things, but they mean a lot. Even the add-kiting in E7s was actually something especially for tanks.

Pretty much everything else in this game just got stale and copy & paste. I´ve a bunch of hours in this game, but i do have a bunch of hours in other games with much less content too. So how?! Because they´ve an attracting gameplay. That´s even the whole reason why roque-like / roque-lite games are so popular these days. Interesting gameplay, unique classes and variety, stuff SE has thrown away since the release of SB.

I´ve enough games with 1000h+ or multiple playthroughs because of it and i never got bored to play them again and again. Just for example:

- League of Legends - says enough?
- Warhammer Vermintide 1+2 - repetitive PvE gameplay, but insane gameplay
- Hunt Showdown - PvPvE Shooter with insane gameplay and atmosphere
- Kotor 1 & 2 - Just top rated RPG´s with an awesome story
- SWTOR / Tera / BDO - MMORPG´s with unique worlds, systems and gameplay
- ... the list goes on

FF14 has so much potential, but so many ppl out there just hinder it to grow with their lazyness and ignorance to learn. And SE just caters such ppl with more and more dumbdowns, which don´t even help them.

And for real, what´s the point of dungeons in endwalker, when only bosses matter? Why do we have long hallways and adds?
And do you know how the current dungeons / raids are for such "bad players"? It´s nothing but bullet-sponging. They spend like 45mins in 1 dungeon, maybe even more, just to spam 1 1 1 1 1 on an add for ages. Maybe they do even die 10 times to a boss aoe or something. So how?! How can this be fun for any kind of player?
And as last, yes, i meet a bunch of those players in mentor-roulette. But guess what? Those aren´t newcomers who´re willing to learn or the WoW players. Those are players with multiple classes on 80, maybe even a mentor-sign by themselves. Such kind of players don´t understand the game and shouldn´t be catered, seriously.


FF14 has a lot to offer, but in kind of gameplay, homogenized classes and "copy & paste", it has become one of the worst games i´ve ever played and that´s not because of my playtime, it happened because of bad player voices and SE´s decision-making and lazyness. Yoshi should give his "child" to someone visioniary with fresh ideas and who doesn´t stuck in the past for 10 years. Such noobs play the game for other things than gameplay anyway, so there is no need to cater everyone else with braindead content and dumbdowns on classes again and again.

[Nuttymiked]

While I do understand the desire for more challenging, lower player count content - regular roulette (despite being called expert roulette) will not be the place it is added. I know people don't like when other MMOs are referenced, but the early heroic dungeons in World of Warcraft's cataclysm expansion tried to bring back more challenging mechanics to its dungeon content and what happened was a tier of content that couldn't be completed by casuals, players sitting in queues for 40 minutes for a one-in-five chance of being able to clear the assigned dungeon.

The developer team has said in the past that they want dungeon content to be easily accessible to all the player base, which is a big part of why it isn't particularly challenging. The average skill level of players is surprisingly low.

God I miss that time in Cata when dungeons were an actual challenge. The 1st tier of cata was probably the most fun I had in the game.

[Nuttymiked]

I was watching Preach talk about how he is enjoying the <50 dungeons because they have all these little extra mechanics to do and side areas to explore and discover and how he was excited to see how it would improve. And all I could think was how sad I was because all they did was remove those nice little extra things in favour of making a big corridor of trash boss trash boss trash boss. Because people seemingly couldn't deal with taking a wrong turn on their first run I guess? Shame. I wish they would bring back the exploring to dungeons. Because as they stand now they are just so linear and dull. The story they are in, what you see is all nice sure. But I would like to actually have something to discover, to get lost and find my way etc. FFXIV really doesn't have much in the way of exploring at all honestly and it's sad.

Hmmm So I'm a new player. I'm close to finishing HW and I gotta say...HW seems a lot easier than ARR. Are you saying SB and ShB is going to be even more braindead easy? I was thinking that the dungeons and trials would "progress" overtime and expect the player to have gotten better at playing, introduce new mechanics, etc.