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

[Jeeqbit]

And what I'm telling you is that the mechanics aren't more obvious with that modern scripted crap than what we had before. I still have no clue of half of the mechanics seen in Meso during my only run, and I'll either have to figure them out by going back there, or watching... a video guide. Exactly like it's always been.

That supports what I said. That Dawntrail content in general, including its dungeons, are trying to make mechanics not as obvious the first time you do it. "What hit me?" or "I didn't know that would happen" is the general theme they're going for in Dawntrail, whereas that had got pretty rare before Dawntrail.

[Valence]

That supports what I said. That Dawntrail content in general, including its dungeons, are trying to make mechanics not as obvious the first time you do it. "What hit me?" or "I didn't know that would happen" is the general theme they're going for in Dawntrail, whereas that had got pretty rare before Dawntrail.

Agreed then.

Not sure if agreed on the fact that purposely making things harder to understand, visually or otherwise, is a good game design direction though.

[Jeeqbit]

Not sure if agreed on the fact that purposely making things harder to understand, visually or otherwise, is a good game design direction though.

It's their response to the common rhetoric on the forums that dungeons are "predictable", "braindead", "samey", "a joke", etc.

I think it is also due to what happened with the final alliance raid in Endwalker, which was universally trashed by everyone I saw give feedback on it. It had a lot of mechanics and seemed like a really good raid, but everyone found it "easy" because it had these gigantic arrows saying "stand here!!!" and had extremely long cast times (and you see how they are trying to do the opposite of that now). Since there was no figuring it out required due to these big arrows, a lot of people seemed to find it trivial and weren't happy with it.

As for whether it's good game design, everyone's going to disagree on the matter, but personally I think it's alright for a casual fight to take, say, 3 pulls to figure out and not get any vulns. And I do think that is their belief as well. Although I would have to say CEs went a lot harder with that - people are unlikely to have a flawless run after just 3 encounters with one, but maybe Occult Crescent doesn't need to hold hands as much as MSQ dungeons.

[hydralus]

I found it pretty easy to understand. Think the only thing that got me was the first boss where the AoEs went first rather than the knockback, but it was still survivable even as a DPS and it had a very clear indicator it was going to go first so it was my fault for not paying attention. Can't think of anything the second or third boss did that was out of left field. It's fairly intuitive that you should stay away from the packs of people that spawn especially after seeing that the first few people indicate the no-no zones. Hell I play on crystal which isn't exactly known for its raiders and out of ~12 runs the only time I ever saw someone die was a healer who didn't realize they needed to esuna themselves.

[Gwenkatsu]

It's their response to the common rhetoric on the forums that dungeons are "predictable", "braindead", "samey", "a joke", etc.

Which - if it is true - would be a really stupid thing to do, because

At first I've just been baffled about what's going on, and got slapped around by things gathering vuln stacks, but as I've done it more I've figured the mechanics out and can do them flawlessly

When you're about to play this dungeon in expert roulette 120 times until the next dungeon drops, there is 0 point in obfuscating the mechanics on your first run - as your next 119 runs will again bei "predictable, braindead, samey, ..."

[Supersnow845]

Which - if it is true - would be a really stupid thing to do, because



When you're about to play this dungeon in expert roulette 120 times until the next dungeon drops, there is 0 point in obfuscating the mechanics on your first run - as your next 119 runs will again bei "predictable, braindead, samey, ..."

You are right, rather than one out of 120 runs being somewhat esoteric and more interesting all 120 runs should be beige slop. You should enter meso terminal at the same expectation of competency first time as your 120th run of everkeep

[ovIm]

You are right, rather than one out of 120 runs being somewhat esoteric and more interesting all 120 runs should be beige slop. You should enter meso terminal at the same expectation of competency first time as your 120th run of everkeep

I'm fairly certain the point Gwenkatsu is making is more akin of "why not try to make all 120 runs interesting" really. Because no matter how obscure you make a puzzle, once you have the solution the fun in replaying it simply tanks.
As much as I enjoyed the Meso Terminal, especially the second boss, I see what it is that people find exhausting about it.

[LinaAkayomi]

This has to be ragebait

[Valence]

It's their response to the common rhetoric on the forums that dungeons are "predictable", "braindead", "samey", "a joke", etc.

I think it is also due to what happened with the final alliance raid in Endwalker, which was universally trashed by everyone I saw give feedback on it. It had a lot of mechanics and seemed like a really good raid, but everyone found it "easy" because it had these gigantic arrows saying "stand here!!!" and had extremely long cast times (and you see how they are trying to do the opposite of that now). Since there was no figuring it out required due to these big arrows, a lot of people seemed to find it trivial and weren't happy with it.

As for whether it's good game design, everyone's going to disagree on the matter, but personally I think it's alright for a casual fight to take, say, 3 pulls to figure out and not get any vulns. And I do think that is their belief as well. Although I would have to say CEs went a lot harder with that - people are unlikely to have a flawless run after just 3 encounters with one, but maybe Occult Crescent doesn't need to hold hands as much as MSQ dungeons.

I disagree with their response because their response is essentially trying to make things harder often by chipping away at accessibility, which should NOT be something to be conflated with difficulty and even less compromised for the sake of difficulty, and I do feel that especially lately, DT has been pretty clear that it's ready to cross that rubicon.

If anything, at least at the casual level, the more complex a mechanic is (DDR or not), which means the more elements and moving parts it has to correctly identify, added to the time it takes to process all of that information, should inform the pace of the resolution of a mechanic. And what I've observed in a lot of content below savage is that they do cope out on this by keeping it fast paced, but actually introduce "cheeses" or "exploits" to look for, which essentially simplify the mechanic into one or two elements to identify, making sometimes 90% of the rest of the mechanic completely irrelevant and to be ignored as essentially "chaff".

I think this is really, really bad design.

I do agree with the idea that a fight, even at the casual level, should not always be an easy one shot. But that's going to be very difficult to gauge in a pve environment where everything has turned into fully individually focused binary checks of pass or fail.

( and I also honestly think that people get a lot less mad when dying to fair systems and mechanics than the now usual "gotcha" moment )

I'm fairly certain the point Gwenkatsu is making is more akin of "why not try to make all 120 runs interesting" really. Because no matter how obscure you make a puzzle, once you have the solution the fun in replaying it simply tanks.
As much as I enjoyed the Meso Terminal, especially the second boss, I see what it is that people find exhausting about it.

Welcome to scripted DDR, the game where only the first run is interesting, am I right

[Mana_Azir]

I think it is also due to what happened with the final alliance raid in Endwalker, which was universally trashed by everyone I saw give feedback on it. It had a lot of mechanics and seemed like a really good raid, but everyone found it "easy" because it had these gigantic arrows saying "stand here!!!" and had extremely long cast times (and you see how they are trying to do the opposite of that now). Since there was no figuring it out required due to these big arrows, a lot of people seemed to find it trivial and weren't happy with it.

Yeah i had to make a head cannon for that "they love us so much" the bosses in there decided to coddle us while we fought them, doing a gimmick one at a time. Otherwise the last boss had best chances of using mechs from previous fights in the raid series and spice things up.