Overtuned MSQ 4-mans and subpar story ends 12-year journey

[AlienDiplomat]

I have enjoyed my time here since pre-ARR, and every expac up to ShB and EW have been excellent. I loved the depth, character progression, music, crafting, housing, glamor, battle, and other content. But more than anything the story has always stood out among MMOs as the strongest draw for this game.

I avoid extremes and progression raiding in all games I play as I neither have the time nor interest to devote hours of my life to a 2nd job (or what feels like one to me anyway), but I am perfectly happy for the people who do enjoy it. Up until now that play style has been totally OPTIONAL and didn't negatively impact the game I enjoy.

However, this begain to change with Dawn Trail.

The story is not even in the same time zone as past expansions. I am truly sorry for those that can't see the difference between nuanced characters like Emet-Selch and the oftentimes outright silly tropes we get in DT, never mind the emotionally tone-deaf main character. It definitely has its moments but it doesn't really seem to be setting up much of anything anything new (until maybe post 7.1 which I haven't gone through yet, reasons below). It has just been a total sleeper expac coming after ShB and EW by any metric of symbolism, eloquence, emotional impact or general intelligence.

But nail for me has been some of the new dungeon decisions.

The problem isn't "too hard vs. too easy," it is that EDIT: SE is sticking with one difficulty tier for MSQ group content and seem to be stuck between appeasing the raiding/savage/extreme crowd who want EVERYTHING to be more challenging (even random roulette stuff that new players need to progress MSQ), and the casual crowd who may prefer a more "normal" difficulty level the first time through content, or just don't want to deal with more stressful mechanics when queueing for a quick roulette.

EDIT: SE do seem to be cognizant of this and have invested in creating Duty Support options for most content which is a great step. However the mechanics in duty support are generally the same as when run with people with the added challenge of NPCs not using Phoenix Down or resurrection spells, so the player dying means an instant reset of the current fight. So while they are nice for faster queues for DPS in particular just looking to level up through dungeon XP, it doesn't really address the difficulty problem.

It definitely seems there is a push in Dawntrail to increase the general difficulty of group content, with more mechanics relying on memorization or puzzle type mechanics, or telegraphs that use boss gestures instead of the traditional ground indicators.

The main problem with this strategy moving forward is that there are SO many dungeons in the roulette now, that it is unreasonable to expect every casual random dungeon to require all these progression style memorization mechanics. People might enjoy figuring things out through attrition or looking up guides once in a while but if it gets to the point where it is basically EVERY time you just want to queue for some random dungeons after work/school, this will lead to people just avoiding yet another system.

Yuweyawata Field Station is a perfect example.

In the past dungeons like The Dead Ends were story-rich, and had mechanics you had to learn but which were visually interesting and intuitive.

EDIT: I sincerely apologize for this post being full of bitterness before.

I tried to tone it down. I've been dealing with a lot lately, losing my dad and little brother in rapid succession and being generally not in a very happy place mentally. But that is no reason to be rude or disrespectful. I love FFXIV and everyone involved and it deserves better.

One thing I thought that might help the situation...

Add difficulty filters to the duty finder.

Let people manually de-select hard modes when queueing for random dungeons. Also, the ability to exclude specific dungeons would be helpful. That way, people could still get the daily roulette bonus but not have to worry about doing more difficult content when they don't have time/energy. This would also free up SE to add more of these type of mechanics for people that want them.

Additionally, icons could be added to the "looking for x" bonus on roulettes indicating that to get those bonuses, you would need to allow certain filters. Or, remove them if the current groups looking for members do not match your own filters (so the bonus is greyed out unless you de-select the necessary filters).

[Supersnow845]

Did you really just say the second boss of field station mechanic dark souls is an extreme progression mechanic and compare it to the rich and fair dead ends

If you are getting destroyed by dark souls what chance did you have against the second boss of dead ends

[AlienDiplomat]

Did you really just say the second boss of field station mechanic dark souls is an extreme progression mechanic and compare it to the rich and fair dead ends

If you are getting destroyed by dark souls what chance did you have against the second boss of dead ends

No. Dark Souls is a simple tank buster. If you read more carefully you will see I was pointing out it is an overt name drop for the clear design philosophy shift Yoshida has been publicly talking about. He specifically said he wants to bring in more Dark Souls/Elden Ring style difficulty (which I would term "fake" difficulty as it is totally unintelligent and "easy" and relies on memorization of physics-defying 180 degree weapon swing shifts, 1-shots, and "heat seeking" enemy telepathy, among other things).

Regardless the point here is that this sudden carpet sweep does NOT belong in MSQ dungeons that gate average players out of the base game quest if they can't complete it.

I could point out more of the actual mechanics of boss 3 in there, but what would be the point? People here are so hyper-tuned to shame and belittle people who don't agree with pushing these changes on 12-year loyal players in MSQ-gating dungeons that they won't hear anything anyway.

[Valence]

It's the natural progression of SE's changes in design over time. We have gone mostly through 3 main phases in terms of difficulty and engagement:

- ARR/HW/SB: piss easy encounters at the story level that rarely went beyond the occasional orange AoE to dodge, but the actual complexity was found in 1) different threat mechanics tied to the battle system and 2) harder jobs with more failure points and skill expression, where said skill expression was a non mandatory metric to get by, but kept more skilled players happy.
- ShB/EW: slightly increased encounter mechanics and the progressive removal of battle and job mechanics, leading to the bottom of the barrel EW experience that many complained about including the producer
- DT: encounter mechanics cranked up even higher to bring in some manner of difficulty again, and trying to pass different visual cues and obfuscated mechanics for "new encounter design"

[AlienDiplomat]

It's the natural progression of SE's changes in design over time.

If you honestly believe gating average players out of MAIN STORY CONTENT if they don't play like raiders is a natural and healthy progression for the game, I don't know what to say.

SE will continue to lose revenue to this. As they deserve. Hopefully they can learn, unlike this community, that it is fine to design OPTIONAL content with radically increased difficulty, but not to gate MSQ for average players that are not raiders.

[Supersnow845]

No. Dark Souls is a simple tank buster. If you read more carefully you will see I was pointing out it is an overt name drop for the clear design philosophy shift Yoshida has been publicly talking about. He specifically said he wants to bring in more Dark Souls/Elden Ring style difficulty (which I would term "fake" difficulty as it is totally unintelligent and "easy" and relies on memorization of physics-defying 180 degree weapon swing shifts and "heat seeking" enemy telepathy, among other things).

Regardless the point here is that this sudden carpet sweep does NOT belong in MSQ dungeons that gate average players out of the base game quest if they can't complete it.

I could point out more of the actual mechanics of boss 3 in there, but what would be the point? People here are so hyper-tuned to shame and belittle people who don't agree with pushing these changes on 12-year loyal players in MSQ-gating dungeons that they won't hear anything anyway.

So a tankbuster that has a relevant name to the boss is a representation of a design change philosophy when yoshi P’s point was that EW was too easy which you should know because anything pre EW was much harder than EW

I don’t understand this modern DT philosophy of “DT is harder than EW so it’s a betrayal” when everything pre EW was harder than EW. Like no joke what were you doing in launch brayflox when SCH couldn’t leeches and PLD had no agro control?

Like people never seem to be able to define why DT is such a problem other than “but it’s worse than EW”

If you honestly believe gating average players out of MAIN STORY CONTENT if they don't play like raiders is a natural and healthy progression for the game, I don't know what to say.

SE will continue to lose revenue to this. As they deserve. Hopefully they can learn, unlike this community, that it is fine to design OPTIONAL content with radically increased difficulty, but not to gate MSQ for average players that are not raiders.

And likewise how many people did EW lose because people didn’t feel engaged in content they were forced to do

[Valence]

If you honestly believe gating average players out of MAIN STORY CONTENT if they don't play like raiders is a natural and healthy progression for the game, I don't know what to say.

SE will continue to lose revenue to this. As they deserve. Hopefully they can learn, unlike this community, that it is fine to design OPTIONAL content with radically increased difficulty, but not to gate MSQ for average players that are not raiders.

I think you may be misunderstanding me. Perhaps I didn't convey my message clear enough.
I think the encounter and design changes brought with DT are adding difficulty in all the wrong places and are going the opposite direction of where they should be going, which should be back to my first bullet point.

Also to people saying that encounters were harder before EW, go play through them right now and we'll talk again. You're just remembering them within their own expansion with their own job mechanics that we have lost or have been watered down over time.

[AlienDiplomat]

@Supersnow845

Plenty of people define why DT is unacceptable. You just aren't listening.

I literally just pointed out that 4-mans required to progress the main quest should not be the target of significant increased difficulty experiments. You just ignored it.

Many have talked about how there is a big shift in DT to boss moves that are much faster (less time between telegraph and damage), have much less forgiving levels of damage, take up more of the arena with "clutter," lean more heavily into memorization puzzles and spatial visualization exercises, on and on.

EW was also not objectively easier than past expansions. This may be your personal opinion but it is not a popular one. Already in EW they were introducing a lot of these arena quad or multi-bisecting non-visual telegraph buster moves on bosses, where you have to pay attention to the physical arm gestures of the boss to know where things are happening.

But there was never a problem with groups disbanding due to not wanting to raid progress an MSQ-required 4-man before DT, at least in my experience of running hundreds of dungeons in every expac since ARR.

[Supersnow845]

@Supersnow845

Plenty of people define why DT is unacceptable. You just aren't listening.

I literally just pointed out that 4-mans required to progress the main quest should not be the target of significant increased difficulty experiments. You just ignored it.

Many have talked about how there is a big shift in DT to boss moves that are much faster (less time between telegraph and damage), have much less forgiving levels of damage, take up more of the arena with "clutter," lean more heavily into memorization puzzles and spatial visualization exercises, on and on.

EW was also not objectively easier than past expansions. This may be your personal opinion but it is not a popular one. Already in EW they were introducing a lot of these arena quad or multi-bisecting non-visual telegraph buster moves on bosses, where you have to pay attention to the physical arm gestures of the boss to know where things are happening.

But there was never a problem with groups disbanding due to not wanting to raid progress an MSQ-required 4-man before DT, at least in my experience of running hundreds of dungeons in ever expac since ARR.

Yoshi p literally said that EW was too easy for their design (a comment he never made about the prior expansions). I happen to agree with it but outside of the forums I wouldn’t say it’s an unpopular opinion considering it was EW’s biggest complaint on the combat design

Regardless it’s not that I’m not listening I just don’t necessarily agree. There has been a movement towards memorisation but not necessarily faster, it’s just that you can’t rely on orange floor tells, you have to actually understand the mechanic going on around you.

And like I said you say “you should never make required content harder” but what about the people who lose interest in the game because the required content puts you to sleep? Is there opinion not relevant

[AlienDiplomat]

...what about the people who lose interest in the game because the required content puts you to sleep? Is there opinion not relevant

Apples and oranges. On one hand you are talking about raiders being bored because they can't have their daily roulette all be raids too. You HAVE raids. You HAVE savage/extremes. No one is stopping you from doing it.

Compare that to gating non-raiders out of even getting to play the base game story AT ALL because they are forced into raid mechanics in MSQ-required 4-mans.

Your problem is being inconvenienced because not ALL content is raid content. Their problem is being gated out of content they paid for for not being raiders.