Feedback: Dawntrail MSQ dungeon difficulty

[Alluneve]

Agreed on every point. I am the same way.
It is not too difficult. But the way they want me to learn is extremely frustrating and un-enjoyable.

They could have done a much better job.

As well there is no reason to lock themselves behind 1 difficulty setting. Why not just have a story mode? As well. Why not offer extreme/hard right away for those who want it? They are creating all of this discourse over difficulty for no reason. They could make everyone happy at once and they literally choose not to by believing they have to have 1 difficulty for all.

My brother in Hydaelyn, Normal mode dungeons ARE the story mode.
it's why Extreme and savage exists, because SE does not expect everyone to be able to do Extreme or savage

[Tsubasa_Kuran]

I am playing with 220 ping. Reaction time, mechanics, telegraphs, all are perfectly fine.
If I can do it and react with ease, I think people closer to the servers can as well. It's ok to fail sometimes and do some wipes.
For me and I think many as well, the satisfaction with doing well is a nice reward we haven't gotten since maybe Heavensward time.
And it is by no means close to savage difficulty.
This is a middle of the ground content, that asks you to pay attention to the screen and not have breaking bad playing on a second monitor.
We finally have an engaging experience during expert dungeons and leveling as well for that matter. It's fun, engaging and rewarding.
It has nothing similar to elden ring or dark souls, as the difficulty is on a whole different spectrum as well.

Also, this is release. They will for better or worse, undeniably become way easier as we get more gear and more people get used to them.

[Mlem]

Guys, this is the MSQ we're talking about. This is not optional dungeons. This is not raids. The fact that Alexandria in particular is both MSQ and scaled for Expert Roulette is a problem. The fact that Skydeep and Origenics fail to be complete snoozefests for the git gud crowd is a problem because no dungeon that presents a challenge to them is ever going to be accessible to the full breadth of people playing FFXIV. These are not optional things that only your conception of "proper gamers" do, these dungeons are frustrating and, in some cases, locking out the folks crafting your gear, the person designing your FC house, the RPer in that spicy venue, or the significant other of someone who does raid but mostly plays because their partner does. It is not, in fact, in your interest for all of those people to be frustrated and for their subs to be closer to lapsing. The low end fix to this is also super easy; you just slap on a massive buff to the Duty Support version and you're done, at least for the short term.

In time, you will all want to really think hard about how many people you want to gate out of how much content. I have seen a whole lot of people up in arms skill signalling their ability to clear dungeons and wipe repeatedly, but I haven't seen anyone here come up and say "I was unsubbed because EW was too boring but now I'm subbed because of DT". So if, despite all these alleged long running issues, you've always been subbed anyway and this change drives subs away, the business decision on where to go is pretty clear.

[Saraide]

Guys, this is the MSQ we're talking about. This is not optional dungeons. This is not raids. The fact that Alexandria in particular is both MSQ and scaled for Expert Roulette is a problem. The fact that Skydeep and Origenics fail to be complete snoozefests for the git gud crowd is a problem because no dungeon that presents a challenge to them is ever going to be accessible to the full breadth of people playing FFXIV. These are not optional things that only your conception of "proper gamers" do, these dungeons are frustrating and, in some cases, locking out the folks crafting your gear, the person designing your FC house, the RPer in that spicy venue, or the significant other of someone who does raid but mostly plays because their partner does. It is not, in fact, in your interest for all of those people to be frustrated and for their subs to be closer to lapsing. The low end fix to this is also super easy; you just slap on a massive buff to the Duty Support version and you're done, at least for the short term.

In time, you will all want to really think hard about how many people you want to gate out of how much content. I have seen a whole lot of people up in arms skill signalling their ability to clear dungeons and wipe repeatedly, but I haven't seen anyone here come up and say "I was unsubbed because EW was too boring but now I'm subbed because of DT". So if, despite all these alleged long running issues, you've always been subbed anyway and this change drives subs away, the business decision on where to go is pretty clear.

I have seen a lot of people lamenting about boring endwalker dungeons celebrating dungeons, trials and raids in dawntrail so far.

[Palladiamors]

Each expansion since Stormblood has ramped up the difficulty. Shadowbringers wasn't too punishing but bosses were damage sponges. Endwalker bosses had more moderate hit points but were harsh towards even small failures.

For the most part Dawntrail takes a happy medium but there are like three or four bosses who are overtuned. Overly punishing mechanics that fill the entire screen and often aren't clear about what you're supposed to do. You can typically survive a shot or two from them but they like on so many mechanics at once that recovering can get overwhelming.

I'm not looking forward to grinding back through them on other characters.

[Alyx-Greywind]

Each expansion since Stormblood has ramped up the difficulty. Shadowbringers wasn't too punishing but bosses were damage sponges. Endwalker bosses had more moderate hit points but were harsh towards even small failures.

For the most part Dawntrail takes a happy medium but there are like three or four bosses who are overtuned. Overly punishing mechanics that fill the entire screen and often aren't clear about what you're supposed to do. You can typically survive a shot or two from them but they like on so many mechanics at once that recovering can get overwhelming.

I'm not looking forward to grinding back through them on other characters.

Endwalker is considered very easy so I wouldn't say Dawntrail is a happy medium because it's largely much harder than Shadowbringers and Endwalker. If anything I consider Shadowbringers the medium point with Endwalker bringing the difficulty way down.

[Mlem]

I have seen a lot of people lamenting about boring endwalker dungeons celebrating dungeons, trials and raids in dawntrail so far.

Okay but just means they were subbed during Endwalker, still liked the game enough to buy the expansion, and are still subbed now. So if DT's direction actively alienates people, then it makes sense to accommodate them instead.

[Saraide]

Okay but just means they were subbed during Endwalker, still liked the game enough to buy the expansion, and are still subbed now. So if DT's direction actively alienates people, then it makes sense to accommodate them instead.

How do you know they didnt unsub during endwalker or wouldnt have unsubbed if dawntrail was the same as endwalker in this regard?

[Mlem]

How do you know they didnt unsub during endwalker or wouldnt have unsubbed if dawntrail was the same as endwalker in this regard?

Because nobody has shown up here saying that. Nobody in the git gud crowd has talked about personally being frustrated to the point of Endwalker being unplayable. I also took a glance at threads current around Endwalker's launch (not a full read, but it's like 20 pages in?) and there was no exodus of players off the back of the quality of dungeon gameplay at the time. No wave of hardcore casuals throwing up their hands and quitting. Indeed, dungeons seemed relatively unremarked at the time compared to how divisive they've been in DT.

By contrast, for DT, I have seen people saying they're done either because of the quality of the story, scenes and voice acting and pointing out how well Genshin fills that niche, or because of accessibility issues in MSQ and combat content with GW2 being pointed as an alternative. I don't always understand why these people have those problems, but I do believe them when they say they have them.

In other words, I think that, frankly, if the MSQ dungeons were nerfed to EW levels, all the hardcore casuals will grumble and moan and still stay subbed whereas if no course change is applied, at least some people will leave and the community will be worse off for it. So the business case I think is really clear; having an accessible game with a reasonable amount of rewarding casual combat content makes FFXIV bigger and more profitable.


And again, I think having a Story Mode checkbox that trivializes a Duty Support pass of the problematic dungeons with a giant buff would be an extremely low cost way of at least providing accessibility.

[Saraide]

Because nobody has shown up here saying that. Nobody in the git gud crowd has talked about personally being frustrated to the point of Endwalker being unplayable. I also took a glance at threads current around Endwalker's launch (not a full read, but it's like 20 pages in?) and there was no exodus of players off the back of the quality of dungeon gameplay at the time. No wave of hardcore casuals throwing up their hands and quitting. Indeed, dungeons seemed relatively unremarked at the time compared to how divisive they've been in DT.

By contrast, for DT, I have seen people saying they're done either because of the quality of the story, scenes and voice acting and pointing out how well Genshin fills that niche, or because of accessibility issues in MSQ and combat content with GW2 being pointed as an alternative. I don't always understand why these people have those problems, but I do believe them when they say they have them.

In other words, I think that, frankly, if the MSQ dungeons were nerfed to EW levels, all the hardcore casuals will grumble and moan and still stay subbed whereas if no course change is applied, at least some people will leave and the community will be worse off for it. So the business case I think is really clear; having an accessible game with a reasonable amount of rewarding casual combat content makes FFXIV bigger and more profitable.


And again, I think having a Story Mode checkbox that trivializes a Duty Support pass of the problematic dungeons with a giant buff would be an extremely low cost way of at least providing accessibility.

Oh we got a business expert in the house. You know amount of hours played in endwalker was kinda low compared to how many players were subbed, right? That's by itself a worrying sign because those people are the closest to just stopping entirely, on top of more likely not engaging with the cashshop. I'm sure as business expert you know this though.
Also, how do you know people will actually quit over this supposedly insurmountable difficulty? People have complained about hades, shinryu, holminster, seat of sacrifice being far too hard. And yet they made it through.