because of duty support is slightly more difficult content even possible?

[Merrigan]

2 things here

1) nobody says dungeons should be hard, but there is also something to be said that dungeons shouldn’t be so damn easy and have such broken abilities like bloodwhetting that it makes the dungeon actively unfun for other people. There should be some element of challenge in them that makes them fulfilling

2) the casual content they shouldn’t have changed was things like alliance raids which were designed to be bridging content but they have been nerfed into the floor

Casual content should still offer engagement to higher end players and offer a sense of scale, EW casual content really does neither

I agree about the alliance raids, which are derisory compared to the raids in previous expansions. But as for the dungeons, I'll say it again (and I'll do it as many times as necessary): the challenge elements are already there. I'm playing with a player who's starting again at the moment, and while he doesn't find it excruciatingly difficult, he doesn't find it extraordinarily easy either. He's an average player, with decent mmorpg experience.

And I repeat: how do you maintain a sense of 'challenge' for people like you and me, who've done them hundreds of times? When I started the extremes, I found it hard. Now I find it easy, and the main difficulty comes from the fact that I'm doing it without a cl. So I turned to sadics for my dose of difficulty. And you'll get people who've done ultimate telling you that savage is for babies.

It's a never-ending loop. You can't fight players who repeat content so often that they end up doing it blindly, watching a series and learning a musical instrument on the side. If the difficulty is raised, all that's going to happen is that we (the old-timers) will be happy for a while... Then we'll get used to it again. And ask for the difficulty to be raised again.

Pure difficulty, in terms of mechanics, is not the solution here. Perhaps a more interactive environment, or more advanced class mechanics (removing, as you said, overly cheated skills) would be better solutions. But I doubt it will be appreciated, given the general tendency to want to farm this type of content very (too) quickly.

[Supersnow845]

I agree about the alliance raids, which are derisory compared to the raids in previous expansions. But as for the dungeons, I'll say it again (and I'll do it as many times as necessary): the challenge elements are already there. I'm playing with a player who's starting again at the moment, and while he doesn't find it excruciatingly difficult, he doesn't find it extraordinarily easy either. He's an average player, with decent mmorpg experience.

And I repeat: how do you maintain a sense of 'challenge' for people like you and me, who've done them hundreds of times? When I started the extremes, I found it hard. Now I find it easy, and the main difficulty comes from the fact that I'm doing it without a cl. So I turned to sadics for my dose of difficulty. And you'll get people who've done ultimate telling you that savage is for babies.

It's a never-ending loop. You can't fight players who repeat content so often that they end up doing it blindly, watching a series and learning a musical instrument on the side. If the difficulty is raised, all that's going to happen is that we (the old-timers) will be happy for a while... Then we'll get used to it again. And ask for the difficulty to be raised again.

Pure difficulty, in terms of mechanics, is not the solution here. Perhaps a more interactive environment, or more advanced class mechanics (removing, as you said, overly cheated skills) would be better solutions. But I doubt it will be appreciated, given the general tendency to want to farm this type of content very (too) quickly.

Dungeons basically just need to have cracked AOE skills removed and an option to pull beyond what is possible with the healer literally barely present, that is it, I don’t think I’m asking much here

[Merrigan]

Dungeons basically just need to have cracked AOE skills removed and an option to pull beyond what is possible with the healer literally barely present, that is it, I don’t think I’m asking much here

You forgot another factor : the fact that we have a high-ilevel gear rn. So.. Yeah, oc. The Endwalker's dungeons aren't going to be difficult. Do you remember Zot when Endwalker was launched ? As for your proposition, I would like some precise ideas - cause saying "it should be" ; "just remove cheat skills" isn't really specific.

Should we make tanks more reliable on healer ? I agree. Warrior (I am levelling it rn, since the jobs always seems... annoying, so I never bothered. Spoiler : it is annoying. And stupid). But beside that ? A dps rotation for healers, yup. And then ?

[Supersnow845]

You forgot another factor : the fact that we have a high-ilevel gear rn. So.. Yeah, oc. The Endwalker's dungeons aren't going to be difficult. Do you remember Zot when Endwalker was launched ? As for your proposition, I would like some precise ideas - cause saying "it should be" ; "just remove cheat skills" isn't really specific.

Should we make tanks more reliable on healer ? I agree. Warrior (I am levelling it rn, since the jobs always seems... annoying, so I never bothered. Spoiler : it is annoying. And stupid). But beside that ? A dps rotation for healers, yup. And then ?

Even zot is more the final boss than anything else, if someone wants to triple pull the final area of zot they should be allowed to, still zot is the high water mark, they need to “zotify” everything in EW

Bloodwhetting needs to go, the magic combo on PLD shouldn’t heal as well as holy Shelton, HOC shouldn’t be better excog healers should have more DPS options but in exchange need to heal more (id even take a nerf to healer AOE damage), BLM shouldn’t be as cracked in AOE damage as it is

Just small things like that

[Gullis]

I wouldn't put much stock in what Yoshi says in regards to difficulty

[Merrigan]

Even zot is more the final boss than anything else, if someone wants to triple pull the final area of zot they should be allowed to, still zot is the high water mark, they need to “zotify” everything in EW

Bloodwhetting needs to go, the magic combo on PLD shouldn’t heal as well as holy Shelton, HOC shouldn’t be better excog healers should have more DPS options but in exchange need to heal more (id even take a nerf to healer AOE damage), BLM shouldn’t be as cracked in AOE damage as it is

Just small things like that

Hm. Won't change a lot, actually. Those are really minor changes, and most of them concern job's design - not the actual difficulty and interest of dungeons. But agree, self-healing on tanks should be banned or reworked.


Will this be enough to make the dungeons interesting? No. Tank stance is a great culprit of the current monotomy imo, as well as the lack of interesting mecs for the trash's pulls.

[Moqi]

I feel like the people who claim everything is "too easy" are people who have done the duties over and over. Normal content is not "too easy" - I think there's some form of difficulty in them in your first play through.

I have just finished Shadowbringer, blind. Did dungeons with trusts and Dark Knight and w2w everything (except Gulg lol, I knew its fame but still wasn't prepared), did all trials blind as well. They were incredibly easy. Role quests were a joke too.

[Acelyn]

Wow, people have a range of feelings on the trust I see, i've used them a handful of times but I just think they take to long and remove one of the games best aspects, randomness.

But also for everyone who says the trust/duty support is needed because it helps new players, does it? Really? the trust will always do the right thing, they will always stack in the best place, always run to the best spot, thats not preparing a new player for whats to come, because all of us have ran to the wrong spot or crossed our marker with someone and caused a few deaths, but its no big deal because you learn and try not to do it again.

like how much needs to be done to cater to new players and also for how long? at some point there should be line where the game says were taking the training wheels off so pay attention, now go save the world.

for instance I ended up in the warrior of light fight randomly, elidibus right? got to the point where he chains everyone and you have to hammer buttons/keys to survive....we wiped. we wiped because someone thought they didnt need to do that, like how do you do that?

im not against duty suppport, yes it can suck to end up in something where everything goes wrong so if you wanna skip it and run with the bots go for it, but thats my point, it sorta undermines one of the main things a player learns, to realize and compensate for another player who isnt having the best of a run, theyre pretty much feeding into a problem theyre trying to fix, if new players are used to trust they wont wanna deal with actual parties and were just sorta stuck with this oh so meh content.

[AmiableApkallu]

Hm. Won't change a lot, actually. Those are really minor changes, and most of them concern job's design - not the actual difficulty and interest of dungeons. But agree, self-healing on tanks should be banned or reworked.

Will this be enough to make the dungeons interesting? No. Tank stance is a great culprit of the current monotomy imo, as well as the lack of interesting mecs for the trash's pulls.

"Difficulty" and "challenge" comes from the combination of encounter design and job design. For example, as the healer, I shouldn't be able to mentally check out of a wall-to-wall pull, startle myself awake, and find the tank chugging along at 75% health. Whether you want to make the trash hit harder, or instead dial back tanks' self-healing, or some combination both, I say whatever. But something there needs to change.

That said, dungeons themselves have lost a certain sense of variety. Picking up keys in Haukke Manor. Getting chased by the tonberry in Wanderer's Palace while de-rusting the safety mechanisms. The tornados in Neverreap. Being able to choose to pull everything from the 1st boss to 2nd boss in Shisui. Interrupting the frogs in Dohn Mheg. The mini-bosses at the start of Qitana Ravel. Etc. Etc.

None of those are "challenging" or "difficult" when being done for the 100th time. But, they are the sorts of things that making running a dungeon for the first time interesting while injecting some variety into roulettes.

[TaleraRistain]

Streamlined smooth w2w experience is great, I don't want to waste time with side rooms with pointless loot and keys to pick up. That's a waste of time, I'm glad they got rid of that bs. I just want more engaging mechanics during boss fights and trash and they absolutely gutted them because of Duty Support.

No they didn't.

Look at one of the dungeons mentioned in Hasrat's post, Copperbell.

Rather than everyone standing around waiting for spriggan to pop up and the flambeau and then the boss to drop from the ceiling, you're actively dodging and attacking the boss in that fight. You have to find the safe areas around three giant aoes that he jumps to. And you have to watch out for the direction his attack is going.

On the second boss, rather than just the person who kicks off the bomb and the tank getting something to do by pulling the boss into it so it divides (with everyone jumping on that one add so there is *something* to hit), the boss divides itself now and all those pieces form individual aoes where players have to find the safe spots.

On the third boss, rather than whaling away at the boss hitting the wall and maybe killing the adds, you have in/out mechanics on that fight and you have to pay attention to where he's aiming.

The trash is identical. Nothing was changed there. And every single boss has much more engaging mechanics and display mechanics that would only appear in later dungeons so now sprouts are seeing this right in their first set of dungeons and will recognize those mechanics later on.