Please don’t rework old content willy nilly

[Xeronia]

While Square says implementing the duty support system is to provide a single player experience for players that want that (as this is a "final fantasy" game), that clearly is not the true reason for this. The real reason is because previous MSQ and Non-MSQ duties have very long queue times throughout most of the day, especially if you are a dps player. It's not a good look for veterans to have to inform new players of the game to "just wait for peak times to potentially get a queue". It makes it sound like this is a really old maintenance mode MMO with a few hundred players at peak times. They then need to re-work the dungeons to flawlessly work with trusts as this will now be the true new player experience.

Yes, the game is not actually a 1000 player peak MMO, but FFXIV has many moments where it feels like it (especially for new players). Old zones are empty, queue times for old 4 player content is extremely long, and your best option is to just do it solo with bots in a massively multiplayer game.

And this is why I was baffled when the EW relic was simply tomestones instead of sending you directly into old content like ARR/HW/ and ShB outside of Bozja did. There have been ways in the past to keep content alive without needing Duty Support.

I do understand the desire to want all dungeons to be able to be done solo but having to change all of them to be Duty Support friendly is an issue. Let's take Halatali as that one Squadrons can also do, Squadrons don't do any mechanics but have inflated health pools and defensive stats to make up for it. I see no reason why they can't do that for Duty Support instead of changing the dungeons.

[TomsYoungerBro]

Let's take Halatali as that one Squadrons can also do, Squadrons don't do any mechanics but have inflated health pools and defensive stats to make up for it. I see no reason why they can't do that for Duty Support instead of changing the dungeons.

It's because Squadrons are for veterans (or those who have already done the dungeons), while duty support is built for first-timers. Having the NPCs at least do the dungeon somewhat properly is a cleaner experience than just having these trusts tank everything and get through the dungeon in a very janky way. So now they are streamlining everything because nobody is doing this old content.

And this is why I was baffled when the EW relic was simply tomestones instead of sending you directly into old content like ARR/HW/ and ShB outside of Bozja did. There have been ways in the past to keep content alive without needing Duty Support.

This is definitely part of it, but I believe there is also the fact that many players don't want to play at such low levels anyway. Why would i want to queue up The Sunken Temple of Qarn when i have to play at level 35. Going from 100 to 35 is a nightmare in terms of game experience. So I think its two-fold: Incentive (as you pointed out), and Gameplay.

In the end, they chose the easier route. No need to solve the gameplay and incentive issue if we just revamp all the content so official bots can run new players through the game.

[CuteBucket]

It goes to show that this is a flaw in both dungeon design and job design. I have a friend who simply will not play most content lvl 50 and under anymore. If the roulette lands them there, they just leave and eat the penalty and do something else for 30 minutes. They would rather not play the game than be forced into one of the old dungeons because they're too annoying and janky and/or syncing down that low level feels awful.

I understand most people aren't this extreme--if I get content like this I just sigh and deal with, albeit unhappily--but if the devs actually want any longevity here, ironing out every dungeon to be a cakewalk isn't it either. Like I said previously, I hated old Toto-rak and hate current Halatali and Qarn. Some of these old dungeons just suck and the "unique" mechanics they have aren't fun or interesting, especially after your umpteenth run through them. So they're replacing the old janky mechanics with new mechanics (good) except the new mechanics aren't any more fun or interesting (bad). They also just really need to fix syncing down to feel less awful and make sure every job has a fully functional kit and rotation at lvl50 so it feels better to play.

[kiotsukete]

I do agree that ARR dungeons were "unique" but they were very unenjoyable for the most part, I personally don't see many people actually enjoying old ARR designed dungeons at least from the people I know usually complain about them.

At the time they were new, these dungeons were far from perfect but to me what made them enjoyable was the sense of exploration and discovery that the newer cookie cutter dungeons don’t have anymore. Such as more than one path through, optional objectives, wandering mobs, little puzzles or mysteries to solve. Also, everyone was still learning the game and/or their class, so parties would actually have to talk to each other and the lack of skills wasn’t so bad.

Nowadays yeah, these dungeons are utterly unenjoyable to run because all the novelty is long gone, optional objectives don’t increase roulette rewards, and losing 90% of your skills sucks big time. If level sync just capped your damage rather than tie both hands and a leg behind your back, it wouldn’t be so bad.

But this is old, optional content we’re talking about. Much more content has been added since then for new players to do, so what’s wrong with just letting old content die if nobody wants to run it anymore? LL digest even said many newer players haven’t even unlocked these non MSQ dungeons so I’m just not seeing what the problem is here.

I guess as a point of pride, maybe the devs just want more players to experience their old content. But I would much rather they spend their time on designing new content or at least reworking old dungeons into hard modes like they used to.

[noumen0nn]

I see a lot of people saying that the old dungeons don't hold up, but I feel the need to point out that some of them really do. Hullbreaker Isle is in my top 5 dungeons in the entire game.

The bear traps in the first area that the tank needs to spot and avoid while pulling mobs are a unique, fun twist. Trusts can't navigate around those.
Knocking fruit off the trees to distract the first boss and halt its raidwide spam, while not doing so too fast to avoid stacking the damage boost it gives to the boss, is novel and tests more than just your ability to dodge aoes. Trusts can't do that one either.
Jumping between platforms on the last boss, chasing the tentacles as they spawn, baiting tornadoes away from where the party is fighting, getting tossed around to throw chaos into the mix; all awesome touches. Forget it, Trusts couldn't even handle Hraesvelgr's arena.

Yes, it's jank. I fully admit that the last boss can be a frustrating affair with how slow jumping between platforms is and how randomly the tentacles move around. But these are all examples of concepts that could be explored further, iterated on, and cleaned up with modern QoL touches in future content. But they never will be, because apparently the plan is to make everything trust-compatible, which limits the creative toolkit to another 100 variations of dodge, stack, spread.

[fulminating]

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PLEASE. Honestly they could be reworked into full party dungeons and put into their own roulette and I'd be completely OK with that.

I would much rather they experiment with a tighter ilvl sync on lota and syrcus before resorting to a heavy-handed rework. Not minimum item level of course, but it seems an obvious place to start given lota is 50 min/130sync (approaching triple). Even 75-100 range would let most parties see bacon and consider interacting with the behemoth lightning switches. Similar for syrcus, scylla may get around to daybreak in the average party, glassy is probably still going to be a joke, Amon we all know can be made more challenging by disabling the ice cube mechanic and xande’s tankbuster hurts if you’re a blue mage with a particularly critty opener. WoD I think has several mechanics that generally get respected, even if cloud’s snakes haven’t been seen often lately. Several-headed dragon has the firebird tether swap, expanding knock up and slime that usually get dealt with properly, Cerberus is saddled with a catchy but not optimal strategy, angra has doom, hourglass and swapping halves.

There is a lot of potency creep that has made things melt faster than they did, but I think WoD feels fairly comparable to aglaia in terms of engagement these days.

[Supersnow845]

I would much rather they experiment with a tighter ilvl sync on lota and syrcus before resorting to a heavy-handed rework. Not minimum item level of course, but it seems an obvious place to start given lota is 50 min/130sync (approaching triple). Even 75-100 range would let most parties see bacon and consider interacting with the behemoth lightning switches. Similar for syrcus, scylla may get around to daybreak in the average party, glassy is probably still going to be a joke, Amon we all know can be made more challenging by disabling the ice cube mechanic and xande’s tankbuster hurts if you’re a blue mage with a particularly critty opener. WoD I think has several mechanics that generally get respected, even if cloud’s snakes haven’t been seen often lately. Several-headed dragon has the firebird tether swap, expanding knock up and slime that usually get dealt with properly, Cerberus is saddled with a catchy but not optimal strategy, angra has doom, hourglass and swapping halves.

There is a lot of potency creep that has made things melt faster than they did, but I think WoD feels fairly comparable to aglaia in terms of engagement these days.

If you synced syrcus to the 75-90 range you would definitely see black floor on gassy Legolas so I think that’s a good baseline

[Absurdity]

It goes to show that this is a flaw in both dungeon design and job design. I have a friend who simply will not play most content lvl 50 and under anymore. If the roulette lands them there, they just leave and eat the penalty and do something else for 30 minutes. They would rather not play the game than be forced into one of the old dungeons because they're too annoying and janky and/or syncing down that low level feels awful.

I do the same but it's not because I hate the actual dungeon, I just hate the gameplay of any job below at least 70. Job reworks and the removal of low-level abilities over the years has made the jobs an absolutely miserable experience from 1-70 and even at 70 a lot of them just feel like an incomplete mess.

Yes, it's jank. I fully admit that the last boss can be a frustrating affair with how slow jumping between platforms is and how randomly the tentacles move around. But these are all examples of concepts that could be explored further, iterated on, and cleaned up with modern QoL touches in future content. But they never will be, because apparently the plan is to make everything trust-compatible, which limits the creative toolkit to another 100 variations of dodge, stack, spread.

This 100%

Yes the old dungeons are often jank, they still hadn't quite figured out what worked and what didn't, of course some of them just ended up being annoying.
But they're also a window back in time when the devs were actually experimenting with new and interesting designs.

I can't stand doing "modern" dungeons more than a few times, sure they're a faster and smoother experience, but that's because they're the "fast food" of MMO dungeons.
Just like you can go to any McDonalds and know exactly what you're getting, you can do any XIV dungeon after level 70 and know exactly what you're getting, a quick and easy but also entirely unsatisfying experience.
Hell, they've been pretty much the exact same dungeon with a different backdrop for like 5+ years now.

[Birdbrain]

I wonder if people are mistakenly conflating "syncing down is unfun" with "this dungeon is unfun". I just ran Halatali a few times to get a refresher and I found it entirely inoffensive =P It's actually quite a charming little dungeon; feels appropriately dungeon-y for newbie characters back when they weren't saving the world and were just harassing some non-named local wildlife-- I mean adventuring.

People call it jank, but what does jank even mean? Annoying that there are different paths to take? Yes, it now takes 20 more seconds to complete the dungeon, I guess. Because sprouts miss pulling the chains? Just make them sparkle prominently to catch the eye. In a dungeon you got to click anything that sparkles.

Syncing down can be incredibly unfun, I agree with that. Halatali is such a typical RPG adventure dungeon I can't see what's even close to "aging like milk" that it needs a rework.

[Aco505]

The way abilities are learned while leveling up needs to be overhauled for most jobs so that by 50 you already have a core kit with an almost fully fleshed one at 60, just missing the extras from further levels.

But that's not related to the problem of reworking all old content, especially optional content.

The issue with this is that any element -quirky, janky or not- becomes streamlined so that the trusts can do it, not to improve upon them. The flying transformation thing near the end of Skalla, the platforms of Hraesvelgr... there's no need to remove elements of an older era when basically almost if not all dungeons from 60 onward already have the exact same structure.