Increase the Skill Floor for Dungeons Next Expansion

[EgilTheStressedMage]

But I do.

And I know that they had not only to nerf it but change expert roulette in a way that you have to unlock all dungeons in order to run the roulette. People left all the time when it popped up in roulette. Pharos Sirius had a huge impact on all future dungeons they released and is the main cause they are so dull now.

I miss it.

I just ran through it as WHM. It's easy as hell now. I would love to have tried it on release, it sounds more fun.

[Renathras]

a number of MMO developers have said and experienced the exact opposite of what you're saying based on ther experience and data. Increasing the difficulty of casual content does not make casual players play better or engage with harder content, it makes a significant portion of those that can't clear it just quit.

Yeah, this straight up happened with Cataclysm, and WoW never really recovered.

Besides, we have Criterion for this. It ends up being more gatekeeping than anything to try to force all content in the game to it. It's especially silly when Duty Support/Trusts exist, so that even if players continue to be bad, they'll still be advancing through the content (probably) since NPC party members scale up and are OP if you need them to be. So this has no useful benefit.

Increase Criterion rewards and institute a second difficulty (right now, we have "MSQ easy", "Savage", and "Savage but with a timer"), and make that second difficulty a roulette people can que for. Done!

[Nebelheim]

I would love to have the pre nerf pharos and amdapor and steps of faith and heavansward style dungeon difficulty again. But at this point i know it won't happen and just accepted the current difficulty of things is what we will continue to get.

[Jeeqbit]

I just ran through it as WHM. It's easy as hell now. I would love to have tried it on release, it sounds more fun.

It has gradually got easier because of potency increases and everything. But make no mistake, if you get a low damage party, it can still wreck you. It is only easy because of killing it before it kills the party.

In the first boss, if you don't kill the adds, they quickly overwhelm you and the party and the health of the party melts to the point of wiping. However, because of the battle system changes over time, you can just about kill it before it manages to wipe even if the adds are ignored. This is still a risk though, especially if the healer doesn't do something like regular shield casts.

In the second boss, it chases the tank with very large aoes. If you don't kill the correct eggs, it can result in a huge amount of vulns being applied to the party, and the raid-wide damage can then just wipe the party, especially if the healer doesn't manage to keep up. But again, we now have enough damage that even the worst parties usually get through it. But you may still run into a party that wipes to it.

The last one, for as easy as it might seem, if you don't kill the adds, they can cling to your leg and stun you. The party can thus become sitting ducks to the mechanics. But the boss is also easy to melt down with DPS and always has been for as long as I've done it. For safety though, should consider killing those adds.

[Amenara]

I would like the route SE takes to give tanks and healers more freedom in pull size akin to what Mt. Gulg gives us. Let us be able to go wild if we are comfortable with it to pull huge groups or if not be able to pull smaller groups. Something to vary up from 2 trash pulls > boss x3 routine we have for every single dungeon.

[IckeDerTyp]

Up the ceiling instead :3

[EgilTheStressedMage]

It has gradually got easier because of potency increases and everything. But make no mistake, if you get a low damage party, it can still wreck you. It is only easy because of killing it before it kills the party.

In the first boss, if you don't kill the adds, they quickly overwhelm you and the party and the health of the party melts to the point of wiping. However, because of the battle system changes over time, you can just about kill it before it manages to wipe even if the adds are ignored. This is still a risk though, especially if the healer doesn't do something like regular shield casts.

In the second boss, it chases the tank with very large aoes. If you don't kill the correct eggs, it can result in a huge amount of vulns being applied to the party, and the raid-wide damage can then just wipe the party, especially if the healer doesn't manage to keep up. But again, we now have enough damage that even the worst parties usually get through it. But you may still run into a party that wipes to it.

The last one, for as easy as it might seem, if you don't kill the adds, they can cling to your leg and stun you. The party can thus become sitting ducks to the mechanics. But the boss is also easy to melt down with DPS and always has been for as long as I've done it. For safety though, should consider killing those adds.

All of this happened. No wipes. Most fun I've had in a while. I'd ask for more of this but we all know that's as likely as Nintendo remaking Mother 3.

[Fyrebrand]

First of all, we need better tuning for item level sync. If the boss dies before it can do their more complex mechanics, then it doesn't matter how difficult those mechanics are.

Also, we need more optional, non-MSQ dungeons. That's where I think they're willing to get a bit trickier with mechanics and try more interesting things. It's also the content type where they don't need to worry about whether unthinking NPC Trust bots can complete it. I still can't believe how many optional dungeons ARR has, and even replaying them today they remain pretty interesting (especially if you get some new people in your group). It's staggering to see how these dungeons got progressively shaved away over the expansions -- to the point where we only have TWO in Endwalker, and I presume we're not getting any more. Even the ones we do have are frankly pretty easy. What even is that second boss in Smileton? That's like "Baby's First AoE Tutorial."

There was another thread about a need for "mid-core" content. I think optional dungeons are a prime place for something like that. I don't even think mid-core has to be an exact middle ground between Normal and Savage, it can just be something that is a few notches above Normal in how tricky and demanding it is, and the mechanics matter.

Another thing I think is a strong contender for "mid-core" are the Alliance Raids (the ones that are still synced properly at least) -- particularly the Ivalice and Nier raids. The mechanics in there are no joke, and player deaths happen pretty consistently. The thing is though, it's made for 24 players. There are so many people that if a few people die it almost makes no difference. Imagine an encounter on the difficulty scale of Red Girl, but made for a single party of 8, or even 4.

When you do one dungeon for 4-8 months, you become so good at it that you can do it in your sleep even if the mechanics are more deadly.

This is something we need to keep in mind, as well. When we ask for harder dungeons: harder for WHOM? Harder for we who've been playing this game for years and know the content inside-out? Or harder for casual newbies doing it their first time? There are people here who literally find no challenge in anything but Savage or Ultimate, and even then refer to lower Savage raid floors as "easy."

[Recon1o6]

To a degree raising the skill floor should be required. Ensuring basic competence is not the same as gatekeeping. By level 60 if you haven't got the basics down, then wtf are you doing. That's a lot of dungeons and trials that should serve as ample practice. The training wheels should be off at this point since we are at 90, going to 100.

this is why games have gradual difficulty curves. Take elden ring for example. The difficulty in that game is very low at the start. Enemies die in two to three hits and have wide openings to hit or block them throughout most of limgrave, gradually as you explore more, different enemies will use different attacks at you that become normal during the game.
Margit as a boss makes sure you learn your basics before letting you pass into stormveil and if you brute force him then the banished knights and godrick will likely beat you down until you learn.

Said banished knights and those two bosses, when you fight them again on a repeat play through is shocking by just how simple they are to an experienced player, but still have the capacity to trip you up if you get lazy.

We are at level 90 soon to be 100. Stuff should be more difficult because by this point everyone has some experience, there's just no reason to try anymore.

[GoatOfWar]

XIV is losing players because we're on the last patch of the expansion with a 9 month content drought before the next expansion.

What about a lack of any lasting battle content post MSQ?