Duty Support has now killed every required ARR to SB dungeon

[SieyaM]

I feel that having the duty support function is a way for them to try and future proof, we clearly can't rely on players using the roulette to fill earlier dungeons and queues. Especially when players will just leave if they get something that doesn't suit them or they feel isn't worth their time. People are already waiting an hour or more for things to fill if they have to queue for certain dungeons and raids. Before the moogle event I had Ridorana for a WT and after waiting for over an hour I just used a retry point for 90 dungeons and ran another expert roulette.

[Hyperia]

Duty support was specifically added because there is a vocal group of people in Japan who said that they won’t play XIV because it’s multiplayer.

[Reap00]

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

Duty Support has now made every required ARR to SB dungeon a McDonald's hamburger, mass-produced, streamlined, and they all taste the same.

If you are doing dungeons for challenging content you are doing it wrong. Step it up for gods sake.

[Kuroka]

If you are doing dungeons for challenging content you are doing it wrong. Step it up for gods sake.

Theres is no step up. Our Raids are just trials.

Also, level 1 to 50 had a learning curve and it was fine. Now it goes from 1 to 90 and takes months and people are still like, nah, that one mechanic where you need to open your eyes is at level 48 too much. Remove it and put it in current savage or something. lol Like how patronising can you be?

"nah those for arrows surely mean nothing, right?" *dies*

Yes game got nerved way too hard.. what we used to learn about lv 50 or towards 60 is now not even a given on 90 anymore... and those reworks... i just dont wanna see those dungeons anymore.

[Shurrikhan]

Yes, people do not care for it, noone runs through those optional areas for the rewards that they give.

Which is because of...

(A) hating the idea of dungeon being potentially longer than the standard 12-15 minutes,
(B) hating the ability to vary the length of dungeons (possibly having conflicting wants, etc.), or
(C) not finding the rewards sufficient (because they offered less reward-per-minute than not doing them)?

Those different reasons produce different best design outcomes. They should NOT be conflated with one another. {X lacks sufficient reward-efficiency to be considered worth doing} =/= {X must not be fun}.

I have never made the case that players couldn't, nor that they shouldn't, speedrun content. I'm not sure why you're acting like I had.

To continue with the side-rooms example (which were not my suggestion anyways, but whatever), if the rewards for doing side-rooms were proportionate, yes, it would become optimal (if only by a slight margin) to do said side-rooms for those with non-instant queues whose time between runs can't productively be used on other tasks.

In the content I actually had suggested, I gave no expectation that players would not speedrun the content. I pointed out merely that I'd like, say, for the difficulty to increase over the course of the dungeon in ways that spending additional time in the dungeon could deal with (such as through acquisition of key items, NPC allies, etc.), and rewards to be varied such that parties could have varying optimal routes. A Savage BiS groupl, for instance, would likely speedrun right to the end, while a less skill and/or min ilvl group might farm gear and acquire key items or the like that'd make the final fight easier for themselves. And, yes, I expect some premade groups might even use that Delve for rep-grinds instead. Etc., etc. The point is just to offer a new form of content that, more like a pseudo-zone able to provide whatever one might expect that setting to provide, would meet varied needs instead of being useful only for specifically gear/glam grinds and/or tome grinds in an inflexible proportion.

Which is all still secondary to just having a form of content that would be different from just the almost wholly sandbox grinds of Exploratory Missions on the one hand and from the interchangeable hallways sprints of "Dungeons" on the other and could thereby offer more for players to enjoy.

[vetch]

This. It's usually the people who complain about this the ones who want WtW tanking and usually seek to skip. I come from Gw2 where dungeons have a more open design, and even there people devise ways to not do mechanics and skip adds, and it's become the expected way to play a dungeon.

Yeah, that's because it's fun to do. Sneaking around bothersome stuff is fun. Cheesing mechanics is fun. I boggle at players whose imagination is limited to 'I'll just do whatever the developers want me to do'.

[Runeslayer]

Which is because of...

(A) hating the idea of dungeon being potentially longer than the standard 12-15 minutes,
(B) hating the ability to vary the length of dungeons (possibly having conflicting wants, etc.), or
(C) not finding the rewards sufficient (because they offered less reward-per-minute than not doing them)?

Those different reasons produce different best design outcomes. They should NOT be conflated with one another. {X lacks sufficient reward-efficiency to be considered worth doing} =/= {X must not be fun}.

I have never made the case that players couldn't, nor that they shouldn't, speedrun content. I'm not sure why you're acting like I had.

To continue with the side-rooms example (which were not my suggestion anyways, but whatever), if the rewards for doing side-rooms were proportionate, yes, it would become optimal (if only by a slight margin) to do said side-rooms for those with non-instant queues whose time between runs can't productively be used on other tasks.

In the content I actually had suggested, I gave no expectation that players would not speedrun the content. I pointed out merely that I'd like, say, for the difficulty to increase over the course of the dungeon in ways that spending additional time in the dungeon could deal with (such as through acquisition of key items, NPC allies, etc.), and rewards to be varied such that parties could have varying optimal routes. A Savage BiS groupl, for instance, would likely speedrun right to the end, while a less skill and/or min ilvl group might farm gear and acquire key items or the like that'd make the final fight easier for themselves. And, yes, I expect some premade groups might even use that Delve for rep-grinds instead. Etc., etc. The point is just to offer a new form of content that, more like a pseudo-zone able to provide whatever one might expect that setting to provide, would meet varied needs instead of being useful only for specifically gear/glam grinds and/or tome grinds in an inflexible proportion.

Which is all still secondary to just having a form of content that would be different from just the almost wholly sandbox grinds of Exploratory Missions on the one hand and from the interchangeable hallways sprints of "Dungeons" on the other and could thereby offer more for players to enjoy.

I bet if dungeons had side rooms with optional mini bosses you could tackle that awarded a good chunk of leveling EXP, more people would be inclined to explore it; I definitely would.
Maybe have what miniboss you fight random so not all encounters are the same, and introduce a new currency you can exchange for things by doing 'optional routes' in dungeons, dropped from the minibosses.

[Payadopa]

Yes, people do not care for it, noone runs through those optional areas for the rewards that they give. If noone explores that part, what is the point of adding it in the first place? This is why, whenever someone says, just add a reward, the question needs to be asked what reward do you think would entice people over there? For an added question, when was the last time you went to get the treasure chest at the start of AK that contains a minion just before the first boss? Or do you skip it every time? This is the sort of thing that is being mentioned. Noone wants to do the optional route because the reward is not there. So, what reward would entice everyone there when everyone has different wants and needs?

That's a flawed argument.

Because a dungeon will be boring and people will skip parts doesn't mean you should make them boring from the get-go.

You are assuming everyone shares this hive mentality. There are also people out there who will not touch stuff if it's boring or only run content with friends where what you are saying is not an issue. It's like saying why make a video game if people will quit it once they are done.

And I'll level the same criticism against the current job design. Just because people will find an optimal rotation doesn't mean you should therefore strip everything away to make it even easier and boring. That line of thinking is just reductive. What's the point of higher difficulties if all it does is prolong my play time? There is more nuance here yet you point every player in the same light. I'm not a robot and I don't play as one. Raw efficiency isn't my goal when I set out and play an MMO. I also don't mind if, say, a new player hasn't done a certain path yet and I tag along for "nothing" in return. Not everyone is as calculating.

[Mikey_R]

That's a flawed argument.

Because a dungeon will be boring and people will skip parts doesn't mean you should make them boring from the get-go.

Not once did I say anything about it being fun or not, it was all about the reward. You can make something as fun as you want, the general populace will still ignore it unless it provides a suitable reward. Like it or not, that is the mentality of players now.

You can even see this in Variant/Criterion Dungeons. People have said they are fun, but they won't continue to run them if the reward isn't there. The evidence is right there, slapping everyone in the face, yet people always seem to forget, or don't want to admit, that this is the reality of the situation. There are countless examples of this across all types of content, so what makes you think your idea (or anyone else's for that matter) is going to be different?

As for comments about jobs, that is a completely different discussion. No, stripping everything from a job is not a good idea, because you are making it more boring to play, however, on the flipside, should you keep things if they are getting in the way of other potential improvements? In FFXIV, people play harder content, not only for the enjoyment of the fight, but also the gear reward. As a general rule, people stop doing Savage and Ultimates once they have the rewards they want.

I also do not paint every player in the same light, I just tell you what the general player base does. Are there outliers? Of course, there always will be, doesn't stop the majority from doing what it wants to do. You might not rely on raw efficiency, however, players do value their time a lot more, especially the average player who has to play the game around a job and family.

So again, when you make a piece of content, you need to think about how the general player base will handle it. How will they progress, how will this change over time and is there a big enough reward for them to spend their limited time in doing this piece of content over something else that has a better reward attached to it.

[TaleraRistain]

I've been going through MSQ again with an alt as they finished Duty Support and I feel like the changes are less for Duty Support and more consistency of mechanics and indicators of those mechanics. I've seen Duty Support able to do some sophisticated mechanics, more sophisticated than some of the original mechanics in these changed dungeons. But the one thing I have been seeing again and again is the introduction of mechanic indicators that we're all used to from higher level content earlier in the MSQ or streamlining previously varied indicators to the more commonly used ones. They're also introducing types of mechanics we've only seen later earlier because of these changes. So it's really felt like just trying to streamline the MSQ experience and make it consistent to me.