Please don’t rework old content willy nilly

[BunnyQueen]

I think that's true when you've done them enough times. They might be more fun if there was more variety in Expert roulette itself. But without that, the only way they can solve them becoming "autopilot" is to stop them being so scripted and just have pure RNG fights.

No the problem is that they have buffed tanks to the point where a braindead chimpanzee can slap their face on the keyboard and be fine.

[Kaliesto]

They're reworking it all because apparently a bunch of players didn't like the exploration aspect of the old days.

Which is a shame.

[CuteBucket]

They're reworking it all because apparently a bunch of players didn't like the exploration aspect of the old days.

Which is a shame.

I love exploratory content in most games. I love taking my time to explore an area and find stuff. I love virtual foraging simulators--it gives that little feral animal part of my brain so much joy.

I do NOT enjoy exploratory content when I am dumped repeatedly into the same area with 3 other people on a time limit where no one chose to go exploring, we all just ended up in this place by RNG from a dungeon roulette. There is no joy in exploring unless I make a party finder or run it with friends specifically to take our time and explore it all, and even then, once I've done that, I don't want to poke around take my time every single time the game dumps me back in there.

I'm all for more exploratory content, but I really don't think MSQ dungeons are the place to do it. I enjoyed the Variant dungeons to give some of this feel back, however. I just wish they had better rewards.

[kiotsukete]

They're reworking it all because apparently a bunch of players didn't like the exploration aspect of the old days.

Which is a shame.

Reworks of old dungeons aren’t because of player complaints about exploration or to improve them, they’re to make those dungeons compatible with Duty Support. In other words, dumb mechanics down so AI bots can run them.

From last Live Letter:
“Now that Duty Support is available for all dungeons available as part of the main scenario, we will be gradually adding support for non-main scenario dungeons as well. Some of our newer players may not have even unlocked any dungeons that were unrelated to the main scenario, but they have quite a lot of worldbuilding going on as well, so we hope you’ll give them a try!

With that said, our older dungeons have mechanics that were made back when we were still testing the waters, which don’t fit our current design standards. Adding support for these dungeons is quite the undertaking, so we’ll be implementing them little by little from Patch 7.1 onward.”

Source:
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...%23post6611318

[Kanehon]

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.

You are so correct on this. Balancing feeding the first boss with not giving it too much damage up is a fun, simple exercise. And the last boss is awkward, yes, but it could be improved on. But I believe they also simplified other plataform bosses for duty support.

The only thing they seem to have kept was the "Go into bubble to avoid danger" from the second boss.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[...]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.

To be fair the tentacles aren't even random to begin with. Yes they pick up and toss targets to random platform. But truth is they will -always- follow the person with highest enmity (so the tank, if they manage to hit the tentacle before they go untargetable first time real quick). That tentacle will then become targetable on the same platform once more, and will stay there if that person sticks their a$$ there.

The problem that happens often here is most DF tanks aren't aware of this and tries to 'chase' the tentacle around. Considering how slow these tentacle having to go from "become untargetable" > "submerge" > "re-emerge" > "become targetable", it can get frustrating to be stuck there for good minutes while the main boss flings stuffs at the party.

[SessyoinKiara]

Yeah this is one of the main things I REALLY don't like. There is honest to god charm in seeing what the design process and vision on how the game was back then. Like the gaslighting of how hard Cape Westwind is now lost on the newer players. Or how forgetting the key to the Magitek Armor is now no longer a thing in current Praetorium. Some things needed a trimming I'll admit, but man it's crazy how changing the infamously loathed Tam Tara Deepcroft to what it is now makes me miss the original. It's just so bland and samey.

[Marooned_Pilot]

I'll admit each time I get a reworked dungeon that's become mind-numbing I just pin Netflix to the screen and watch it over what's going on in the game. I get devs are thinking of how to keep the game alive once this game hits it's senior citizen stage for solo players to enjoy but the old design of dungeons used to be where people actually learned how to do mechanics and it felt a little alive at the same time. They should take what makes Criterion dungeons fun as an example to change some of this up if this is where the devs are going.

[chip793]

I like about half of the changed ARR dungeons more than their previous incarnations, Toto-rak especially stands out as that dungeon was A W F U L to run before Endwalker. I like that they're all duty support compatible now for new DPS players, I started around 5.2 and those queue times weren't fun. But as someone who since learned to just bite the bullet and play supports if I want a fast queue, some of the changes really lose appeal when seeing them in a party with other humans.

What I hate most though is how non-committal they were about balancing some of the ones left unchanged. Stone Vigil continues to be miserable as either support role if the other one doesn't know how to press 3 buttons, Aurum Vale still has that first room and the giga pull after Coincounter which is super fun when the tank knows what they're doing, but can quickly turn into a painful waste of time with the slightest hiccup. If they would just give some jobs their first AoE by Vigil's level it'd be a lot more bearable, Vale is just Vale. An easy dungeon with some heavy punishes.

Changes to dungeons like Snowcloak actually made some lackluster bosses more engaging. Fenrir's icicle fake-out comes to mind. It is odd that they left in the key doors though. I've yet to meet someone who likes them over just having a door/gate/wall/whatever open up as the last trash mob dies. The occasional "push elevator button" is fine here and there but after 50+ runs of an ARR dungeon with multiple key doors, or worse, puzzle doors it gets old quickly.

They did massacre dungeons like Keeper of the Lake and The Aetherochemical Research Facility by dumbing down the end bosses a bit too much imo. Old Keeper boss 3 was one of my favourite dungeon bosses, now it's a slideshow. ARF is in the same boat. It just feels like the changes in cases like those don't really do anything to teach new players mechanics. Wipes SHOULD happen on first runs so people learn what to look out for and how to avoid stuff. Though I guess that hardly matters when people just buy story and job skips without actually playing the game first. Getting a WHM in Grand Cosmos who exclusively casts Regen sounds funny until it happens to you. Really wish there was some sort of Litmus test on skips when new players go to buy them.

The most recent expert dungeons do a few things I absolutely love, the core MSQ dungeons for Dawntrail with one exception are all great fun still. I'm hoping the devs finally got the message that players want more than just "hallway with three boss fights and 2-3 trash packs in-between." Sure the mechanics in the expert dungeons aren't exactly reinventing the wheel, but having something to make sure the tank/healer is awake was a nice surprise and I hope they keep going in that direction.

[Valence]

Even if I do think that what they did succeed at with those reworks was the dungeon layout (notably Toto Rak), and totally failed by butchering most old boss mechanics that were often unique and could just have needed some serious dusting up, as well as removing unique dungeon objectives to fill instead of just killing the bosses and be done with it, saying that they dumbed down the ACRF's last boss must be a joke right? I've never seen a single wipe before the rework but after it? It slaughters new players all the time.