People that say dungeons are too easy...

[Shurrikhan]

These are normal dungeons and if you want a greater challenge you run mythics

And there's the contrast: XIV has no difficulty levels beyond the normals. It's less of a steamroll than WoW's normals (minus the occasional over-/better-tuned Timewalking while leveling), but there's no other options.

[Lium]

And there's the contrast: XIV has no difficulty levels beyond the normals. It's less of a steamroll than WoW's normals (minus the occasional over-/better-tuned Timewalking while leveling), but there's no other options.

This is partly true. But WoW dungeons from vanilla and TBC required CC, strategy good group composition and tanks would only pull a pack at a time. Sometimes you would even have to pull strategically or risk aggroing another pack which would result in a wipe.

And classic dungeons like Blackrock Depths and Maraudon could take hours to complete fully.

Wrath of the Lich King is what started the YOLO pull everything, with dungeons being super easy, barely an inconvenience. Players, similar to what is happening now in this community, began complaining that dungeons were way too easy. So Blizzard responded in the next expansion Cataclysm, by making dungeons a lot more challenging.

Everyone hated it.

So, they went back to the YOLO pull snoozefest and that's where they've been ever since. If you want a greater challenge, you have to run mythics. Maybe players here want something similar. I will say this may be a case of forum posters not being what the majority of the playerbase actually wants.

[Mayhemmer]

If you want a greater challenge, you have to run mythics. Maybe players here want something similar. I will say this may be a case of forum posters not being what the majority of the playerbase actually wants.

In theory, I would like the return of optional dungeons, and for said dungeons to be designed to be more challenging. But then, I'll just get told to go do criterion or something, which is besides the point and doesn't address the desire for more interesting dungeons.

Someone in another thread brought up the idea of "challenge" content, and maybe that's something they could do. Rotating challenge dungeons with interesting modifiers and increased rewards. Nothing on Unreal or Criterion levels, but more than what dungeons provide now.

[Shurrikhan]

This is partly true. But WoW dungeons from vanilla and TBC required CC, strategy good group composition and tanks would only pull a pack at a time. Sometimes you would even have to pull strategically or risk aggroing another pack which would result in a wipe.

And classic dungeons like Blackrock Depths and Maraudon could take hours to complete fully.

Wrath of the Lich King is what started the YOLO pull everything, with dungeons being super easy, barely an inconvenience. Players, similar to what is happening now in this community, began complaining that dungeons were way too easy. So Blizzard responded in the next expansion Cataclysm, by making dungeons a lot more challenging.

Everyone hated it.

So, they went back to the YOLO pull snoozefest and that's where they've been ever since. If you want a greater challenge, you have to run mythics. Maybe players here want something similar. I will say this may be a case of forum posters not being what the majority of the playerbase actually wants.

The comparison made was between current XIV and current WoW, which reached its difficulty levels beyond Heroic more than a decade ago and has had M+ for over 7 years.

And many still consider Cataclysm to be the best period Normal/Heroic dungeons ever had. Dislike for any difficulty in dungeons was far from unanimous.

Wild times, set up CC on 5/6 targets in a trash pull or prepare to wipe lmao

Unless you were running a Survival Hunter and/or there was the perfect mixture of mobs for your composition, hard CCing at least as many enemies as you have party members wasn't even possible. Nor was that amount of pre-fight hard CC (unless you mean something else by "set up") necessary unless the whole party was significantly underskilled and/or undergeared.

CC was essential, yes, but not to that point. Smart interrupts (DK had ~4 at the time by itself, and some other specs came close to that) and just 1-2 hard CCs on the most annoying but isolateable mobs was enough for decently geared and skilled parties and made dungeons far faster than sacrificing all AoE damage.

Cataclysm dungeons were a terror only for those equivalent to Ice Mages, won't damage-even-in-downtime healers, or those without utilities even on hotbars. For most randomly matched players, they caused some wipes, and not every party was guaranteed a clear without their knowing/learning at least parts of their spec and fights'/mobs' mechanics, but they were plenty manageable.

[Striker44]

And many still consider Cataclysm to be the best period Normal/Heroic dungeons ever had. Dislike for any difficulty in dungeons was far from unanimous.

This...doesn't feel legitimate. The sudden ramp up in difficulty of dungeons in Cata is near-universally given as a big reason Cata crashed, and the significant re-vamps they were given to tone the difficulty down considerably are further evidence of that. I spent years in WoW, both in-game and on the forums, and for every rare person I encountered who "liked" the original Cata dungeons, there were probably a dozen others who didn't...and even that rare one who did likely acknowledged the difficulty level was overwhelmingly disliked.

[Shurrikhan]

This...doesn't feel legitimate. The sudden ramp up in difficulty of dungeons in Cata is near-universally given as a big reason Cata crashed, and the significant re-vamps they were given to tone the difficulty down considerably are further evidence of that. I spent years in WoW, both in-game and on the forums, and for every rare person I encountered who "liked" the original Cata dungeons, there were probably a dozen others who didn't...and even that rare one who did likely acknowledged the difficulty level was overwhelmingly disliked.

I've played about 16 years of WoW. More relevant to this point, I played through all of Cata, half of MoP, most of WoD. Across MoP and WoD among Challenge dungeon parties or in Dungeon Finder Heroics one of the most frequent complaints I'd hear was that there was no "real" dungeons outside of those requiring premades (and often dependent on being undergeared even then). Heck, I encountered far more irritable/angry/impatient/generally-upset parties in tBC and WotLK Heroics than in Cata Heroics.

Perhaps there were just fewer people running them --that's not something I can know beyond queue times, which were largely the same-- but for those who actually like dungeons for the dungeoning, instead of just for the Valor farm / grinding gear-currency, things were pretty damn good.

They were not particularly hard for people who at least mostly knew their spec and could at least mostly figure out mechanics, but they weren't a steamroll. But neither, a couple weeks in, was there any expectation of them being a steamroll, which in many ways made the experience far more enjoyable than WotLK. You had actual dungeons again, not just mere hallway sprints the speed of which was, above all else, determined by gear and just how gun-ho your tank was or could be made to be (WoW's version of "Pull to the ****ing wall, tank!").

* And for however much talk there may be Cata dungeons being intolerable, they had nothing on the toxicity-inducing speedbump that was Pit of Saron and Halls of Reflection in terms of the average quality of Dungeon Finder parties.

[Volgia]

My hot take here is that the dungeons feel dumbed down because they require the trust AI to be able to do them, so you will never get interesting mechanics with trash before bosses. Even bosses have a hard time surprising you because it needs to be doable by the AI itself.

You cannot have an adventure without stakes, and gameplay wise the stakes are always to lose or wipe, but nothing Endwalker from the 2 years I've been playing has been threatening, maybe I saw a couple of wipes at the beginning of Smileton but after 6.1 it never happened again.

Some of the design decisions this expansion feel like a response to what the devs think the players find fun. People figured weird openers to have a 6 min buff aligment? Well let's make a 2 min buff aligment so everyone can do that easily. People liked wall to wall enemies and had to do some work not everyone could do to kill big amounts of mobs? Well let's do without aggro and make AoE as simple as possible so everyone can do it, cuz that's what players find fun right?

[Sacae]

My hot take here is that the dungeons feel dumbed down because they require the trust AI to be able to do them, so you will never get interesting mechanics with trash before bosses. Even bosses have a hard time surprising you because it needs to be doable by the AI itself.

You cannot have an adventure without stakes, and gameplay wise the stakes are always to lose or wipe, but nothing Endwalker from the 2 years I've been playing has been threatening, maybe I saw a couple of wipes at the beginning of Smileton but after 6.1 it never happened again.

Some of the design decisions this expansion feel like a response to what the devs think the players find fun. People figured weird openers to have a 6 min buff aligment? Well let's make a 2 min buff aligment so everyone can do that easily. People liked wall to wall enemies and had to do some work not everyone could do to kill big amounts of mobs? Well let's do without aggro and make AoE as simple as possible so everyone can do it, cuz that's what players find fun right?

Nah, you have prey mechanics and healing down tethers in Amaurot, and that can be done with trusts. Amaraurot actually had pretty interesting trash for dungeons.

Sohr Kai has those fans that give you haste after you kill them. Exploding enemies like the ones at the beginning of Thalalia or the adds in Sephirot EX could easily be done with trusts; they don't aoe anyway. Trap enemies, like in Shisui, mimics like in Lost City of Amdapor, more debuffs, like Misery from the Gremlins in Holminster Switch, environmental hazards, like in Lost City of Amdapor, the first part of Dead Ends or the last part of Tower of Babil, enemies that spawn adds, like those gate things in Alzadaal's Legacy, miniboss enemies like that ghost thing in Sirensong Sea that you used to have to interrupt, or endlessly spawning enemies until an objective is fufilled, like the balloons in Xelphatol. Every expansion has had at least one dungeon with something to make trash interesting. They just won't do it consistently for some reason.

As far as boss attacks that can one-shot, the one I see most often is the final boss of Grand Cosmos. That one hits hard, mortal flame can easily put parties in a bad place if they're not coordinated or paying attention to wear the fires are hitting. That's a great fight.

Also, not a mechanic that'll kill you, but the debuffs you get from island hopping in Hullbreaker Isle's Kracken fight are a great idea. Give resources to the player that they must use, but give them downsides that the players will have to manage at the same time. Zombie/Mega Death is another good example of that.

[Xaphire]

This...doesn't feel legitimate. The sudden ramp up in difficulty of dungeons in Cata is near-universally given as a big reason Cata crashed, and the significant re-vamps they were given to tone the difficulty down considerably are further evidence of that. I spent years in WoW, both in-game and on the forums, and for every rare person I encountered who "liked" the original Cata dungeons, there were probably a dozen others who didn't...and even that rare one who did likely acknowledged the difficulty level was overwhelmingly disliked.

I loved the cata dungeons, but they were tuned too hard for queueing into with randoms. I did all the heroic dungeon achievements for the mount the first week or so of the expansion. As much as I would personally enjoy more challenging dungeon content, the experiences I've had in duty finder makes me think they're as difficult as they can be while still being able to consistently be cleared.

[Shurrikhan]

I loved the cata dungeons, but they were tuned too hard for queueing into with randoms. I did all the heroic dungeon achievements for the mount the first week or so of the expansion.

I still don't get this. I PuGed consistently, with just a Mage, Druid, or Paladin friend with me once in a blue moon and... maybe averaged a wipe or two per run, with all of maybe... 4 failed runs to well over a thousand clears. (Yes, I ran a lot of dungeons in Cata. They were actually fun to me, and that shit happens when things are fun, almost regardless of reward efficiency.)

Amdapor Keep, before overgearing and Demon Wall losing so much of its mechanics, had a lower success rate than most Cata dungeons. Pharos Sirius, pre-nerfs, lower still. Our literal 2nd and 3rd endgame dungeons in FFXIV. With the latter being one of the types of experiences veterans most have most wished to see returned.