Bring back Aggro, resource management, bring back consequences!

[Lyth]

None of the mechanics that you've described actually made taking harder.

Snap enmity was historically the main aggro related challenge. For this to have meaning, you need an add spawn that's capable of oneshotting a healer if not grabbed instantly, like a Shadow of Meracydia or Gordian Sniper. Maintaining an established enmity lead was never challenging. Nowadays, though, players are probably just as likely to just weave in an oGCD burst heal to grab aggro rather than fuss over spawn locations.

TP management wasn't interesting for tanks. It involved either bringing a BRD or pressing a button at a predetermined TP value. I'm glad that it was replaced by more interesting resource management systems. Likewise, lengthening the recast on Sprint and making it useable on melee jobs actually raised the skill cap around the ability, if anything.

I know that there's an ennui around tanking and healing at the moment, but it's not for the reasons that you've listed. If you want to make tanking challenging, then you have to work on making the positioning and survival elements more difficult.

[Malthir]

If you want to make tanking challenging, then you have to work on making the positioning and survival elements more difficult.

You can't do that without aggro, again not saying it has to be the old system, I'm saying they should have reworked it. You cannot have tanks without aggro that is literally what a tank is for, without aggro you don't have a tank.

You also cannot create interesting mechanics for boss fights really because you never have to worry about aggro. An example is look at the difference between some of the Coils fights and modern fights. Essentially all MMO combat boils down to don't stand in aoe's, but because that becomes tedious and boring, games do things like add mobs that have to be moved to certain places and then be frozen to protect you from damage, carry orbs that do XYZ, or things like World of darkness Cerberus where the party needs to split. However because there is only really the need of one tank now in pretty much all fights, it's been reduced to it's base concept, tank has boss/any adds everyone avoid circles, it's a type of Flanderization where the game is being reduced to the base form of what an MMO is however that's seldom fun to play. You can't do decent positioning because you never need to worry about a tank not being bale to hold a specific mob in a specific location, aggro is guaranteed constantly so all positioning mechs with adds are redundant.

As a Drk it takes me a couple of seconds to grab an entire room worth of mobs I never have to worry anyone will take aggro so I'm free to run them round on leashes to any location I need. Why do you think dungeon design's been simplified, because the Devs know this. They are all corridors 2 packs to a room that from the first run even with basic on level gear you can wall to wall. In fact I don't think I've not wall to wall'd a dungeon in like 2-3 expacs now. Every dungeon all the time, I don't have to go slow, I don't have to think, I can run in press 3 buttons and then play a DPS class. Occasionally they make the off tank feel useful by immobilising the boss spawning 2 adds we walk to two different corners I hit one once, the other tank hits the other once gg wp all round.

[Alzinor]

You can't do that without aggro, again not saying it has to be the old system, I'm saying they should have reworked it. You cannot have tanks without aggro that is literally what a tank is for, without aggro you don't have a tank.

You also cannot create interesting mechanics for boss fights really because you never have to worry about aggro. An example is look at the difference between some of the Coils fights and modern fights. Essentially all MMO combat boils down to don't stand in aoe's, but because that becomes tedious and boring, games do things like add mobs that have to be moved to certain places and then be frozen to protect you from damage, carry orbs that do XYZ, or things like World of darkness Cerberus where the party needs to split. However because there is only really the need of one tank now in pretty much all fights, it's been reduced to it's base concept, tank has boss/any adds everyone avoid circles, it's a type of Flanderization where the game is being reduced to the base form of what an MMO is however that's seldom fun to play. You can't do decent positioning because you never need to worry about a tank not being bale to hold a specific mob in a specific location, aggro is guaranteed constantly so all positioning mechs with adds are redundant.

As a Drk it takes me a couple of seconds to grab an entire room worth of mobs I never have to worry anyone will take aggro so I'm free to run them round on leashes to any location I need. Why do you think dungeon design's been simplified, because the Devs know this. They are all corridors 2 packs to a room that from the first run even with basic on level gear you can wall to wall. In fact I don't think I've not wall to wall'd a dungeon in like 2-3 expacs now. Every dungeon all the time, I don't have to go slow, I don't have to think, I can run in press 3 buttons and then play a DPS class. Occasionally they make the off tank feel useful by immobilising the boss spawning 2 adds we walk to two different corners I hit one once, the other tank hits the other once gg wp all round.

I agree with making the off tank job and even the MT job more challenging, i disagree with the aggro generation back, tank already have to worry to many thing including moving boss in time, mitigate things, dodge stuff and do mechanics without f***** too much your melee mate and positionnals.
change and adjust on job and role are based on savage content, since you lack of experience on them you can't know but i can tell you that you have already enough thing to do and i would feel aggro generation return as a painful mechanics without any upgraded difficulty, just an annoying change.

dungeon design has been simplified to prevent people from skipping pack like you can do in old dungeon or pull everything until boss room with endgame gears and clean the dungeon in 5 min, not to make them more easy.

[Malthir]

I agree with making the off tank job and even the MT job more challenging, i disagree with the aggro generation back, tank already have to worry to many thing including moving boss in time, mitigate things, dodge stuff and do mechanics without f***** too much your melee mate and positionnals.
change and adjust on job and role are based on savage content, since you lack of experience on them you can't know but i can tell you that you have already enough thing to do and i would feel aggro generation return as a painful mechanics without any upgraded difficulty, just an annoying change.

dungeon design has been simplified to prevent people from skipping pack like you can do in old dungeon or pull everything until boss room with endgame gears and clean the dungeon in 5 min, not to make them more easy.

I wasn't trying to say they've designed them to be easy. I'm saying they've designed them that way, because we literally wall to wall pull. There's no point in doing any major dungeon mechs, we wall to wall cause we can wall to wall, so dungeon design reflects play. Why can we wall to wall so easy (by easy I mean as an on gear level character not maxed out) because we have infinite resource, because aggro is never an issue, because there is next to no penalty when you mess up. By in large most classes have no resource management anymore, all classes are becoming a meter build and spend class.

It's a bad idea to focus on the savage and extremes for balance for the same reason I've mainly been referring to dungeons. Dungeons are the majority of what is ran by the player base, it is the content that is most seen and it is functionally the same experience as the levelling experience in the game. Players will spend more time in dungeons collectively throughout the life of the game than they will in savages and extremes. Balancing your game for the lets say 10% of the content and leaving the rest bare, you will end up alienating your player base, most of their time is spent in tedious activities and I would not be surprised if you find close to 80% of the player base never step foot in savage or extremes.

Outside of the savage and extremes there's not a single bit of content that you can't run while only paying a tiny fraction of attention to it, even brand new content dungeons are auto pilot runnable. The game is no longer engaging, bar the MSQ

[Alzinor]

I wasn't trying to say they've designed them to be easy. I'm saying they've designed them that way, because we literally wall to wall pull. There's no point in doing any major dungeon mechs, we wall to wall cause we can wall to wall, so dungeon design reflects play. Why can we wall to wall so easy (by easy I mean as an on gear level character not maxed out) because we have infinite resource, because aggro is never an issue, because there is next to no penalty when you mess up. By in large most classes have no resource management anymore, all classes are becoming a meter build and spend class.

It's a bad idea to focus on the savage and extremes for balance for the same reason I've mainly been referring to dungeons. Dungeons are the majority of what is ran by the player base, it is the content that is most seen and it is functionally the same experience as the levelling experience in the game. Players will spend more time in dungeons collectively throughout the life of the game than they will in savages and extremes. Balancing your game for the lets say 10% of the content and leaving the rest bare, you will end up alienating your player base, most of their time is spent in tedious activities and I would not be surprised if you find close to 80% of the player base never step foot in savage or extremes.

Outside of the savage and extremes there's not a single bit of content that you can't run while only paying a tiny fraction of attention to it, even brand new content dungeons are auto pilot runnable. The game is no longer engaging, bar the MSQ

I think you forgot something : despite the fact it's a mmo, FFXIV is a RPG and even more, a final fantasy games.

it have to keep easy content for story, that's why ultimate and savage are a thing, for player in seek of challenge outside the STORY content.

there is no need to make dungeons harder, you say it yourself : dungeons are ran by a majority of player and the majority in FF is casual and is not looking for any challenge + dungeons are part of MSQ or a side quest one but still, for story.

It is not a bad idea to focus the balance change and job adjust on the most difficult content, if you use NM or dungeons as standard for balance, you'll end up with unecessary nerf. That's why savage like any mmo with heroic, mythic etc is the standard used to apply change and balance jobs