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

[Hycinthus]

Do you think this has been successful in variant dungeons?

They could just extend the variant dungeon concept to normal dungeons, but I also find it a bit boring redoing the dungeon over and over slightly differently just to see different outcomes.

We definitely had this for ARR. I would say that more than 99% of the time, these were skipped and still are.

Months down the line, after rewards are outdated, yes people will skip and pick the shortest route. However, in the beginning, it still provides a fresh new experience right, and to me, even if that lasts only for 2 weeks, it’s still worth it compared to how it is now. Imagine - 1 years later we are still talking about how unique Aurum Vale or Bardam’s Mettle is.

Basically now anything slightly different is already a highlight. That’s how low the bar is.

But I agree with you - It has to be accompanied by proper reward, or people will just start skipping even faster.

[Supersnow845]

Months down the line, after rewards are outdated, yes people will skip and pick the shortest route. However, in the beginning, it still provides a fresh new experience right, and to me, even if that lasts only for 2 weeks, it’s still worth it compared to how it is now. Imagine - 1 years later we are still talking about how unique Aurum Vale or Bardam’s Mettle is.

Basically now anything slightly different is already a highlight. That’s how low the bar is.

But I agree with you - It has to be accompanied by proper reward, or people will just start skipping even faster.

I don’t think variant provided a remotely new or different experience, there is functionally no difference between doing mount rokkon’s 12 routes and just doing aetherfont 12 times

[Jojoya]

So why does the normal content have to be easier for people like you


This game gets easier and easier then people who started last year act like it’s always been this easy and any attempt to return even a semblance of the old “challenge” (I say challenge very loosely) is just a plot by toxic tryhards

It's not getting easier and easier. But it has stopped getting harder and harder as you progress through MSQ.

Like it or not, the game is made to attract casual players who are looking for a good time playing through story. Different players have different skill caps and different interest levels in difficulty. Start making the content intended for all players too difficult and SE starts losing paying customers.

Regardless of what you, I and others might feel, the average player does not find wiping fun. They don't see it as a respectful use of their time. They don't feel accomplishment once the boss dies. They're there to see the story and get their loot for glamour.

And so SE is tuning difficulty for the average player in everything but EX, Savage, Ultimate and Criterion. You don't mind wiping and want a challenge? There's the content you want to do.

Alliance raids are also for the average player. YoRHa generated a lot of negative feedback from players because of the mechanics and difficulty. SE applied that feedback in designing Myths.

It's a waste of time to ask for "normal" content to be made more difficult. SE has their internal metrics. They can see completion rates and what content tends to be the obstacle that tends to cause players to quit the game. They are most definitely keeping those things in mind when designing "normal" content.

If you want more content that is challenging to your skill level, then ask for that content to be added instead of asking for content intended for other players to be changed. There's a fair amount of talk here about Alliance Raids. Instead of asking for Alliance Raids to be more difficult, has anyone thought to ask SE to add Alliance Extreme to the game for those that want the greater challenge with large group content? There would be the usual issue of what would make an appropriate reward for the content but it would be much easier and cost effective for SE to add in a higher difficulty level of Alliance Raids than to create an additional raid from scratch. It could go side by side with EX trials in filling the midcore content gap.

[Hycinthus]

It's not getting easier and easier. But it has stopped getting harder and harder as you progress through MSQ.

Like it or not, the game is made to attract casual players who are looking for a good time playing through story. Different players have different skill caps and different interest levels in difficulty. Start making the content intended for all players too difficult and SE starts losing paying customers.

If they quit after 1 wipe, those are like hyper-casuals. I think there are more normal-casuals community who still enjoy somewhat of a challenge.

[caffe_macchiato]

Anyone else remember when video games used to be games instead of cutscenes and walking simulators? Why is an MMO of all things trying to fit in with the Sony snooze bandwagon i.e. God of War and TLOU? Shouldn't an MMO be the last type of game to switch over to the drone n' doze genre?

[Gemina]

I agree with you that levelling dungeons do feel more engaging because there is more at stake, so completely agree with how I feel replaying Vanaspati.

However, not every dungeon can be made to have a "world-ending" stakes though, can it?

In my opinion, SE set up the capped dungeons with proper lore and set-up already, so how much more can they change if it still feels monotonous and formulaic?
For example:
- Fell Court of Troia - this is properly looped in into the MSQ, and it's part of the lore.
- Lapis Manalis - Cagnazzo was there, this was properly set up by the MSQ
- Aetherfront - This was also properly set up by MSQ.

When I meant properly set up, I meant that there are valid points for our party to be going to that specific dungeon, as set up by the story. It's not just wandering for wandering's sake.

Not every dungeon can be set up to have a life or death stakes.

So if this is the case, then what more can SE do? Even with all of these proper set-ups, they still feel monotonous and boring.

The setup is only one piece that goes into the formula I spoke of earlier. When taking Troia into mind, think about what is missing. Compare it to another EW leveling dungeon like The Tower of Babil. How is the setup, music, suspense, stakes, and reward in comparison. What seems to be missing? Why is it not as fun as Babil?

Think about these two dungeons if you were to read about them from a novel. In Babil, the action starts with more than just the three others going in with you. Lyse is there, so is Sadu and Magnai, among others. You're fighting on a train, you battle through some trash and a boss to make your way to the elevators. On these you can see your comrades fighting their respective engagements, making this set of trash mobs feel more real and threatening. You battle hard to finally reach your objective. Anima. A horrific enemy that stands between you and Fandaniel/Zenos and is tempering Garleans with every passing second. The abomination is also very powerful, and capable of killing you and your friends.

In Troia, it is in exploration of this part of the 13th. The scenery is interesting, there are sentient voidsent, and a hostess who is as happy to see you as she is hungry to eat you. Unfortunately for her she has no idea how powerful you are. It's intriguing, the music is fitting, but it lacks the stakes. You almost feel bad for the hostess as she is ruthlessly ended by Scarmiglione, who swoops in unexpectedly, and as a result the reward isn't really there. While I do like this part of the story, it's not really fitting for a dungeon. This goes back to my point about capped dungeons being lackluster. The whole expedition could have taken place within a solo instance.

Lapis Manalis isn't too bad. The set up is pretty good. The music is up tempo. The scenery changes which helps to make dungeons not feel so linear. There is some lore for RPR fans, respectable bosses, and high stakes. Lapis is a good dungeon. It has good replay value because much of the aforementioned formula is intact.

Aetherfont suffers the same as Troia, and would be better as a solo instance. Poor setup. Scenery literally has cute polar bears running about. Trash is made up of colorful golems and apkallu birds. Even the shark boss and mutant polar bear are kind of cute. The music is calming. It serves so much better as a more relaxing objective in between high stakes events. When I queue for expert roulette, I am always hoping for Lunar Subteranne, which is another high stakes, action paced dungeon that follows the formula and has a better replay factor as a result.

I know that even with a good replay factor, any dungeon can still get boring after so many runs. One thing SE can do is allow for more dungeons in the expert roulette. I'm honestly not even sure why there is a separate roulette for expert and other capped dungeons. They also should ilv sync them lower as the maximum allowed is far higher than the requirement.

Bosses for leveling dungeons also tend to have more interesting mechanics, and this is something they need to do as well. They need to be more creative and allow more punishment for failing these mechs. I'm not necessarily calling for EX type mechanics, but if the devs are willing to put in lethal mechanics like the Antlion's charge + falling pillars, or inflicting players with Doom who do not dodge AoEs, then they can certainly do a better job with all dungeons to make them more engaging to run.

[Ath192]

Months down the line, after rewards are outdated, yes people will skip and pick the shortest route. However, in the beginning, it still provides a fresh new experience right, and to me, even if that lasts only for 2 weeks, it’s still worth it compared to how it is now. Imagine - 1 years later we are still talking about how unique Aurum Vale or Bardam’s Mettle is.

Basically now anything slightly different is already a highlight. That’s how low the bar is.

But I agree with you - It has to be accompanied by proper reward, or people will just start skipping even faster.

I think the correct way to implement this is that when it is a roulette it automatically picks 1 of the paths for you and you have to do it that way. in other words the other options/paths become blocked off. This way it will always be a different experience. And you may even get lucky and get to the secret boss in one of them and itll be a novelty. For full premade or solo, all paths open and you can execute as normal variants work now.

[Jeeqbit]

Anyone else remember when video games used to be games instead of cutscenes and walking simulators? Why is an MMO of all things trying to fit in with the Sony snooze bandwagon i.e. God of War and TLOU? Shouldn't an MMO be the last type of game to switch over to the drone n' doze genre?

Because it's a Final Fantasy game. SE, Yoshi-P and even the creator of Final Fantasy, perceives Final Fantasy as a game that was mostly a film/novel that you got to watch with bits of playing in between, which is obviously in contrast to some modern games where they do the narrative and cutscenes without preventing you from moving and fighting.

[Supersnow845]

Because it's a Final Fantasy game. SE, Yoshi-P and even the creator of Final Fantasy, perceives Final Fantasy as a game that was mostly a film/novel that you got to watch with bits of playing in between, which is obviously in contrast to some modern games where they do the narrative and cutscenes without preventing you from moving and fighting.

I honestly think genre comes before series, if you can’t make the series fit the genre you change the genre you are working with, not try to change the core tenants of the genre to make the series fit

The quote “this is a FF game first and an MMO second” only really applies if it is still both

[Lady_Silvermoon]

Basically make the dungeons hard and annoying making people want to not run them anymore with pugs and rage and quit and call yo mama, telling you have no life, uninstall FFXIV because youre trash and basically make roulettes a hell because people bail so fast due to the affixes and ok I think my rant is done now

Doesn't this go against the message of Endwalker? That if things are too easy we'll just get bored and quit, which actually makes way more sense when talking about a video game and not...life.