I think SE needs to focus on making players feel important again.

[Atelier-Bagur]

That’s why I made that point, this is an MMO there should be coordination between players, I don’t want to be some god (read WAR) who can just treat the other party members as faceless NPC’s I don’t really need. We shouldn’t be able to unilaterally drag a deadbeat party through on the knowledge and overpowered skill set of one player

I’d much rather die on aurum veils first room and have that be a teaching and coordination moment then have WAR charge in pull the whole room and treat the healer like they don’t matter

Then were not arguing about dungeon difficulty anymore but instead combat and job design. Because youre 100% right in the fact that Warriors are so OP in survivability and thats an issue that needs to be addressed.

I think coordination needs to be relaxed and free form rather than being more strained. Ive made a post in this thread but I think what they should actually do is overhaul the dungeon design because thats actually whats killing the fun of it. Not because the dungeons are not difficult.

Who would want the current boring linear dungeon design to be harder? I want dungeons to be varied in the experience. Thats what makes them more fun. Not going through the same hallway but just having mobs hit harder and with added mechs.

[Bonoki]

Totally off topic here now but I think 16 both did this really well and really poorly, the trip through sanbreque, the fight with benedikta and the culmination at the oriflamme mothercrystal was flawless (well except for chests that give 2 Gil when opened) and 99.9% of the reason why I now headcanon my 14 character as an escaped bearer. However once this “chapter 1” segment is done the same ultra linearity really becomes a downside for the game.

I in general don’t like ultima anyway and wish the bearers remained the central focus of the plot but even removing ultima the hard linearity and false “open world” of 16 really made the game suffer after that incredibly tight and flawless first chapter

Yeah don't get me wrong, I think there was at least one or two dungeons in FF16 that did it fine. I think the linear dungeon designs do have a time and place, especially for story telling. It's just when it's every dungeon with no branching paths, then it gets tiresome.

[NekoMataMata]

The Aurum Vale example isnt that good because we also have to take into account the other players, which Ive also stated that counts into the difficulty factor. If you know the mech but the they dont know the mech (or in this case the first pull) then that arbitrarily makes the encounterd difficuly which...I dont know about you but thats not really satisfying in a gaming aspect when you have to rely on forced outside your control to not screw you over. Its why MMO toxicity exists and why difficulty is more beloved in a single player experience.


Also btw Aurum Vale is only bad in that FIRST ROOM. Everything else is just normal cakewalk lol

Aurum Vale and literally any dungeon under level 50 is not a good example for anything. For some reason SE decided not to add ilvl requirements for under 50 dungeons, meaning that you can enter Vale with level 1 gear. If they added an ilvl restriction to Vale, most of the horror stories would absolutely stop.

Myths I think is a good example of what the OP is talking about

In myths there is functionally no role divide, just as there is no party divide, you are basically just 24 DPS wailing on the boss with almost no interaction of anything, even healing is barely there, byregot does 1 (ONE) raidwide in his first 5 minutes, rhalger does 1 (ONE) in his first 8 minutes, the healers are just boring casters and the tanks (the only ones that get targeted by any semblance of a role mechanic) can just face tank the ticklebusters and keep wailing on the boss as boring melees

Sub that random SCH out for another BLM and nothing would change, sub one of the tank out for a NIN and all you need is a light shield to keep them alive through the ticklebusters, everything is beige because nothing matters)

On a grander scale I guess. Even in regular eight or four person content though this issue really persists.

I feel like a lot of content is just dumbed down so that casuals can be carried by other players. Casuals get free passes, and other players don't have to worry about being gated from passing content because they have party members who are incapable of doing their jobs. No one's asking for savage or ex level difficult in regular content, but the difficulty bar for normal mode content has dropped to an incredible low and this is the most likely reason.

I've been here since 2.X and remember when people loved it when things were challenging back then. As more new players and casuals come to the game, I've felt more like I'm the outcast despite being here the whole time. Like I'm the one who doesn't fit in anymore as the game has gotten dumbed down to appease the new wave of influx gamers.

Probably because you are. I've been mocked before for just playing through the game's actual content outside of MSQ.

[Bonoki]

I miss the pre-level 50 dungeons before SE dumbed them down. Like I don't disagree that things are actually better this way, but I'm more disappointed that this was the solution we had to come to for them.

[Supersnow845]

I miss the pre-level 50 dungeons before SE dumbed them down. Like I don't disagree that things are actually better this way, but I'm more disappointed that this was the solution we had to come to for them.

Not a level 50 dungeon but modern hraesvalgr is a legit travesty

[IvoryBadge]

Now instead of complaining about the dungeon difficulty I prefer to provide feedback in how to make the encounters better.

I’d suggest going back to good old ARR formula and start from there, despite ARR dungeons being low lvl and pale, they’re actually interesting, in fact my favourite dungeon in the entire game is Huakke Manor, you can literally pull everything and have a party in the boss room, tank and healer die from sweat and DPS are just enjoying loads of numbers on screen while boss music is playing, But that’s just me.

i think the Criterion formula is way better. 1-2 threatening mobs are way more interesting than a whole braindead mobs constantly cast AoEs.

I also wish Potions have some use in dungeons, just like Bozja (well not buffs and stuff i meant like actual JRPG potions.. Antidote and stuff) and maybe some traps like Dalriada

Also shortening mid bosses/final boss cast time for mechanics. It’s not like every boss is Burns Mist Dragon or Lost City’s Diabolos. I think that’ll make it more engaging and memorable.

That’s all i think of on top of my head rn

[Ardeth]

And see, I hate being important in stories. I like being the nobody. Granted, we have never been that in this story, but I don't play this game for the story. It's just a part of it I also enjoy, but not the main part.

[SchwarzwaelderTorte]

A big part of this issue is the fact that the playerbase is incredibly casual.

Ah yes, now I can start talking about my other problem with normal content. Like KageTokage said, there's no real learning or difficulty curve from 50 to 90 at the moment, and that has been especially exacerbated by: the echo buff.

I've been in mentor roulettes (the usual ARR EX trial experience) where people would just ignore mechanics and explanations, wipe a few times, and say "it's fine, we can clear now, we have echo". And lo and behold, between the outgeared mentor dps and the echo buff, they were right.

So what did these people learn from this trial, for which they queued sync in Duty Finder? That the echo buff makes things a lot easier. Did they learn anything about the actual fight? No. So will they remember how the mechanics work if they're re-used in higher level content? Also no.

Likewise, many dungeons, trials, normal raids and alliance raids have lost half of their mechanics due to too much dps (did you know Hashmal in Rabanastre has an adds phase for which you had to save caster LB3 to not fail the dps check? when was the last time you saw these golems? have you ever seen them at all?*), and that's just tiny bits of knowledge that newer players just never get to learn.

*The reason I remember after 6 years is because I used LB3 too early, got told off, and we failed the dps check. Sure, I felt bad at the time. But now I know! That's how learning works!

It's not just a problem of people having to "get good". It's the game not teaching anything to casual players anymore.

I used to be a casual player myself, up until Shadowbringers (when I started savage raiding) I didn't even know what an opener was, but I still had to learn Ozma, Dun Scaith and Thunder God, hell I was even explaining mechanics in World of Darkness myself when I was only here for glamour farming. So while I didn't make any effort myself to "get good" until many, many years later, the game still taught me tons of things that I just... don't see anymore now when I'm replaying through the same content.

And that's what I find troubling with the latest alliance raids: if we're already skipping mechanics 2 weeks after release, can you imagine in 7.0? In 2 years?

And I think this also really polarizes casual players vs savage/ultimate raiders, if casual players are not expected to learn or remember specific mechanics, if they ever decide to check harder content, the learning curve from lvl 90 normal content to lvl 90 first savage raid tier is going to be really steep, and I think also overwhelming and discouraging for them.

Imo that was one of the big failures of Criterion, I've seen many casual/midcore people being interested in the content after doing Variant, but even I wasn't expecting the difficulty to be set so high. And then there's a savage version of that too? Yikes.

[Jeeqbit]

I cannot think of a single mechanic in thelia that might spiral into a clusterfuck

Tanks not interrupting maybe.

oschon couldn’t kill anyone if he tried

This is really because it's so well telegraphed. If they made that fight in Heavensward or Stormblood, none of it would be telegraphed and people would be meant to guess how the mechanics worked. You'd just have to remember where it's going to cleave, how arrows typically rotate, which casts are tank busters, which casts are frontal cleaves and so on.

Still are we really asking people to “get good” when we ask for a raid that is made up of 3 seperate parties to actually have to attempt to acknowledge that said raid is made up of 3 seperate parties or that if you mess up 4 mechanics in a row you should die for it

I feel like the majority of people who mess up 4 mechanics in a row die as a result, even in the latest alliance raid. This idea that people are surviving them all on a DPS seems exaggerated to me.

Take the age old comparison of aurum vale to modern dungeons, no matter how much you specifically know the mechanics and how much you have played the game aurum veil is still harder than any dungeon released since about SB

I... definitely disagree with that. Even before Coincounter had its telegraphs added, Aurum Vale was a complete joke compared to:

Holminster Switch, Dohn Mheg, Qitana Ravel, Malikah's Well, Mt. Gulg, Amaurot, The Twinning, Grand Cosmos, Anamnesis Anyder, The Heroes' Gauntlet, Ktisis Hyperboreia, The Dead Ends... and really the big pulls in many of the leveling dungeons I didn't mention still wipe far more often than I've ever wiped in Aurum Vale.

Aurum Vale was never a hard dungeon. It is just that people thought it was a hard dungeon and abandoned it always. Because of the fact they always abandoned it and never actually did it, they continued to think it was hard even though it wasn't, based on their first impression from when they were a new player. As a new player, they obviously did not understand how to heal the first boss. I would regularly get it in-progress as a Scholar and be told that the previous healer couldn't handle the first boss... so I just went into it, kept them alive and killed it. It was literally just the healers not being good enough or the party not cleansing themselves regularly. Either of those things happen, the boss is a joke.

And coincounter? That was never even hard either. I literally solo'd it many times before the change. I even solo'd it as a melee DPS multiple times. If you have fought enough cyclops in the game or simply observe the range different casts hit, you know the fight for life and can do it without barely taking damage. If they even needed it, DPS have Bloodbath and Second Wind which is more than enough to tank that joke of a fight.

[Ath192]

The Aurum Vale example isnt that good because we also have to take into account the other players

This is exactly it though. This is what I mean when I say people matter. You have to acknowledge their existence, if they mess up talk about it, if they do something dumb, correct them, if you are the noob, ask them, if you are one of the players in the party, need them.

The difficulty of Aurum Vale was debatable, and the environment wasn’t the prettiest to look at. But I would argue it at least made people feel something. Even if it was negative, it had a personality. What we have right now is so flavorless no one has any opinions about it anymore, and to me that is worse. No one is going to dell stories about Lapis Manalis or any endwalker dungeon because nothing is memorable anymore.

I agree a lot of this lack of personality in a bid to keep everything accessible carried over to XVI, and so while everything else (graphics, music) was well done the game wasn’t super fun to play, and this is what cost them awards at the 2023 awards. This is also why the game didn’t get an A+ in metacritic.

Not needing others or making things too simple is just a vacuous gameplay design philosophy. You’ll never have a good game if you don’t make it involved for the players.