Duty Support has now killed every required ARR to SB dungeon

[Sigma5]

unironically names some of the worst/brutal dungeons in the list, duh they were nerfed they needed to be, bro.

[vetch]

I'm curious, why do you 'need' difficulty before reaching cap? The dungeon 'restructure' honestly introduces people to the basics of what they will encounter at endgame better than the old dungeon format did. Not like dungeons were ever difficult to begin with, so making them more 'linear'/easier/whatever you want to call it honestly doesn't matter.

Why do I 'need' engaging and fun challenges in the 300 hours of MSQ between level 1 and level 90? Is this a real question? Do you know what a videogame is?

[Jeeqbit]

Keeper of the Lake's last boss went from a crazy AoE dodgefest to a snoozefest
Castrum Abania's second boss went from the cool elemental mechanic to generic AoE attacks
The Aery's last boss no longer has Estinien's RP
Practically every boss now just jumps back to the center by itself invalidating the tank's role completely

I wish these bosses hadn't changed as well, but I was sort of expecting they would do it because of how the mechanics weren't intuitive to new players and that's been their new direction.

I was dreading the AoE dodging being changed in Keeper of the Lake, but tanks also didn't know to tank one add close and the other far away, or didn't face adds away from the shield so it kept interrupting the person to use it, or people stood in front of adds and got cleaved.

Never saw anyone doing the element mechanic correctly, they just tried to DPS and heal through it while doing it all wrong. It was so obvious to me that it was going to change.

I have to plant my own healer shield to replace Estinien's now in The Aery.

[EgilTheStressedMage]

unironically names some of the worst/brutal dungeons in the list, duh they were nerfed they needed to be, bro.

Said no one period.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Keeper of the Lake's last boss was always boring. It was the same AoE patterns that people always complain about, plus a couple of adds.

And "all" isn't entirely true anyway. I still maintain that Copperbell's much better now that the bosses actually do things. But most dungeons are lateral moves at best.

[Shurrikhan]

But most dungeons are lateral moves at best.

Aye. Some good, some bad, but mostly just sad in that they double down on "Dungeons should only ever be hallways with interchangeable trash and largely the same basic DDR mechanics on bosses."

Just imagine if they had instead gone the other way, fleshing out those dungeons' currently lackluster unique aspects instead of axing them outright. Imagine if Copperbell went the other way, with significant use of Duty Actions, or if Totorak actually used its unlock mechanic to allow for multiple paths through the dungeon and some (pseudo-randomly placed) trash packs were hard enough to encourage unlocking more ways around them, or if Brayflox actually allowed you to build up a small squad of saved Gobbies so that you could challenge otherwise overly difficult optional bosses, etc., etc.

Just the fact that nothing of that sort has even really been attempted since ARR Hard Mode dungeons and now the outlying elements are taking their purposeful disuse as excuse to be pruned is... pretty disappointing, to say the least.

[Shurrikhan]

To be fair, at this point, I'd be okay with every piece of mainstay 4-man content having a streamlined-to-death interchangeable form... if that weren't the only choice.

Allow at least 1 in 3 MSQ dungeons, for instance, to have "Delve" or "Forrays" form that's generally twice as long for at least twice the rewards and is far more creatively varied, generally acting as content somewhere in between (A) the most creative of old dungeons if they'd just been given their full due and thereby fleshed out and (B) far more openly explorable settings, complete even with areas they might grind for advantage against other areas if speedrunning would be too difficult, enjoyable little interactive loops between the components of the environment, maybe even a sort of central base or two, etc. Earlier dungeons would be more akin to (A), with gradually more variety being available as would seem fitting for the setting as the content levels increase.

And there you go: You've got more of that iconic FF experience available to players without players needing to spend more than 25 minutes at a time to progress through the MSQ.

Start with just adding these things to endgame atop the current content flow. Soon after, begin experimenting with upward scaling systems (levels mobs up to the stats and ppm of the players of a given lvl and ilvl, instead of only ever scaling players down). Finally, start introducing these more involved versions of dungeons to the earlier leveling experience as well and have Dawntrail's Relic grind tie into some of that new content that would otherwise be relevant only to levelers. In that way, the development time can be useful both to new and veteran players.

[Sove92]

Whatever you want to call it, there is no way it was necessary to remove the elemental tower mechanic to accomodate trusts.

No, it was changed because average df people can't read anymore nor use any sort of thinking ("hmm everyone went to that circle, nah it's probaly nothing"). You were typically hard carrying at least one player in that fight. If a mechanic isn't immediately apparent from a visual alone, it's too hard for a story dungeon, basically.

[Striker44]

Aye. Some good, some bad, but mostly just sad in that they double down on "Dungeons should only ever be hallways with interchangeable trash and largely the same basic DDR mechanics on bosses."

Just imagine if they had instead gone the other way, fleshing out those dungeons' currently lackluster unique aspects instead of axing them outright. Imagine if Copperbell went the other way, with significant use of Duty Actions, or if Totorak actually used its unlock mechanic to allow for multiple paths through the dungeon and some (pseudo-randomly placed) trash packs were hard enough to encourage unlocking more ways around them, or if Brayflox actually allowed you to build up a small squad of saved Gobbies so that you could challenge otherwise overly difficult optional bosses, etc., etc.

Just the fact that nothing of that sort has even really been attempted since ARR Hard Mode dungeons and now the outlying elements are taking their purposeful disuse as excuse to be pruned is... pretty disappointing, to say the least.

Well, the "hallway" approach is largely because of us (the players). They made dungeons with various branches, side paths, etc., and what did we do? Ignore all of the side paths and choose whichever branch was fastest.

Remember that the dungeons we're talking about here are now introductory ones, too. Having "significant use of Duty Actions" in one of the very first dungeons a new player will ever encounter probably ends up being very bad design. Low-level dungeons should be simple and about getting people used to playing in a party. It felt strange seeing what used to be a sensible progression of difficulty become odd ebbs and flows between expansions now that we go from 1-90 instead of just 1-50. Things that were designed as "endgame" before with more mechanics in mind are now very much "early game" instead and were adjusted accordingly.

[DragonFlyy]

I couldn't celebrate Grimace's birthday as McDonalds has a shoddy ice cream machine vendor. It's so good, that iFixit bought their own machine to see why it's always "down".

McDonald's ice cream machine being down is not actually a problem with the machine. It's employees. After working at one for years I can 100% say it's because no one wants to stay the extra 2 hours it takes to clean at the end of the night. So it's "down" because they are cleaning it. THEN they do a shit ass job and when the morning people turn it on, it fucking leaks everywhere because they didn't add the lubrication right and now the whole thing has to be re-cleaned again ... during rush. So most managers just say fuck it, we aren't cleaning it now, the night crew can redo it. Hence it's shut down for an entire days, and instead of explaining it to people, it's easier to say it's broken.