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

[Jeeqbit]

Add difficulty filters to the duty finder.

I agree. I've thought this for a long time. I mean, originally I was thinking a slider to vote and make a dungeon harder for more rewards but given threads like this maybe there should be an easier option too like no vulns and a 99% reduction in damage for 1% of the rewards (EXP/tomestones/gil).

Instead we got variant and criterion as a separate concept. Now that they are interested in making content in general scale in difficulty, maybe they will finally think of something like this.

It would be desirable to just select difficulties in advance so you're matched with others that are interested in it, but I think they do not want to over-complicate and divide the matching system.

[BlisteringFrost]

I agree. I've thought this for a long time. I mean, originally I was thinking a slider to vote and make a dungeon harder for more rewards but given threads like this maybe there should be an easier option too like no vulns and a 99% reduction in damage for 1% of the rewards (EXP/tomestones/gil).

Instead we got variant and criterion as a separate concept. Now that they are interested in making content in general scale in difficulty, maybe they will finally think of something like this.

It would be desirable to just select difficulties in advance so you're matched with others that are interested in it, but I think they do not want to over-complicate and divide the matching system.

Simple problems have simple solutions.

Rational thinking is "oh, I died, let me figure out how that happened and avoid it!"

So we ignore people who don't have this line of thinking. Keep making dungeons like Meso Terminal. Maybe a little bit harder. A little bit. And if somebody comes along with a thought process other than this, we just say; "get over it."

[Vukimukinukiduki]

Dunno about that. Even though my reaction has slowed down with age all dungeons except сriterion seem super simple to me.

[Asari5]

i wonder how often people try it before they say its too difficult.
if you dont know what to look out for and only seeing a bunch of visual effect its normal to miss stuff.

[theunhappypotato]

i wish this game was like the dark souls games

[Bibine_Bine]

I'm sorry that you're struggling but the difficulty currently is really a non-issue. And definitely not worthy of an entire rant. Yuweyawata Station in particular didn't even stand out as very difficult to me, aside from the second boss with the run-through-the-path-with-the-spinny-thing mechanic. Sure you might wipe a few times but you'll eventually get there. I'd rather have that than have content that is so non-challenging that you can first try everything without much of a problem.

[Taranok]

I'm sorry that you're struggling but the difficulty currently is really a non-issue. And definitely not worthy of an entire rant. Yuweyawata Station in particular didn't even stand out as very difficult to me, aside from the second boss with the run-through-the-path-with-the-spinny-thing mechanic. Sure you might wipe a few times but you'll eventually get there. I'd rather have that than have content that is so non-challenging that you can first try everything without much of a problem.

Difficulty is highly subjective, and I can say that most bosses in yuweyawata are easily at around the difficulty of extreme trials in past expansions. Hell, the final boss has mechanics straight from P5S. Literal carbon copies of savage mechanics.

This is the fundamental problem with FFXIV's shift in difficulty. Yes, they lowered the difficulty of jobs. However, they also raised the difficulty of fights. And there are many people who either liked the old fight design, or needed easier jobs in the older easier fights, and are now being pushed out of content they used to be able to do.

Hell, this shift in difficulty has massively raised the difficulty of CDPS and healers a lot more than it has the other 3 roles, who largely don't have to change anything because the devs forgot how to target classes by role to make fun and interesting mechanics while still allowing something as basic as 3 second cast bars in the game.

Then, on top of that, a lot of mechanics are getting so fast as to break with lag. Every raid in 7.2 is a perfect example of 'breaks because of lag.' At least one mechanic in every fight does this and the only way it doesn't break is if you're personally at a low ping. But the best example is boss 1 of Scareborough Deadwalk. Anyone who had a doll root them from over half the arena away understands why lag matters and why the push for DT's difficulty is objectively bad. When even a ping of 70 feels like crap, a lot of people will quietly quit because the game feels bad or unfair without knowing why.

This is why I will always support Stormblood's model. Easy fights, variable difficulty classes, role-based challenges. You can find a job that everyone of all skill levels enjoyed in stormblood. Want braindead in dungeons? you had rphys or melee or tank on tap. Want a challenge even in dungeons? Stormblood Black Mage had a lot of challenge optimizing stormblood dungeons. SAM did as well if you wanted to min/max. Want to experience the hardest challenge? Try optimizing machinist in literally anything. The class was an actual nightmare of bad design.

The worst dungeon can be made interesting by having a job you enjoy playing and optimizing in it.

[ForteNightshade]

Difficulty is highly subjective, and I can say that most bosses in yuweyawata are easily at around the difficulty of extreme trials in past expansions. Hell, the final boss has mechanics straight from P5S. Literal carbon copies of savage mechanics.

And I can tell you, objectively, this is complete nonsense. At the time of their relevance Titan, Sephirot, Thordan, Ramuh and Ifrit EX are an order of magnitude harder than anything in Yuweyawata. No offense, but you clearly haven't done any of them if you're making this sort of comparison.

You mention people who want easier fights are being phased out. Just play a tank if you're that concerned about failing mechanics. You are nearly invincible. Especially on Warrior. In fact, there is no point in this game's entire history where tanks have been as braindead easy and laughably overpowered for dungeon content as they are right now. You can eat 5+ vulns and tank busters still won't one shot you. Heck, several tanks deliberate eat 2-3 vulns in the current EX because it's that irrelevant for them. They'd rather have their uptime and can just shrug off the damage. A dungeon isn't even close to threatening them. Hence why all but Dark Knight can solo bosses.

As for lag. That has nothing to do with difficulty, but rather poor optimization on SE's part. Lag was present and equally frustrating in Stormblood. Part of why they overhauled Summoner is due to lag which caused their pets to ghost abilities. I'll admit, that first boss in Scareborough has terrible latency, but again difficulty isn't the culprit here. It's SE, and Japan as a whole, refusing to acknowledge how the rest of the world is far more ping reliant than they are. Dumbing down that dungeon isn't the solution because now you just have a boring slog that doesn't do anything. One of the biggest complaints from players of all skill levels is how boring dungeons have been. Yoshida literally said as much when asking JP players what they felt was a problem. At some point, they have to do different things. Faster mechanics is a way to accomplish that without reinventing the wheel.

Scareborough is only a miss because they didn't account for lag, not because the mechanic is fast nor difficult.

[hydralus]

Just play a tank if you're that concerned about failing mechanics. You are nearly invincible. Especially on Warrior. In fact, there is no point in this game's entire history where tanks have been as braindead easy and laughably overpowered for dungeon content as they are right now. You can eat 5+ vulns and tank busters still won't one shot you. Heck, several tanks deliberate eat 2-3 vulns in the current EX because it's that irrelevant for them.

Yep, I've been getting so many tanks who just stand in AoEs and even I was surprised when the medics in the new dungeon can hit them for ~50% of their HP. Usually those AoE barely do more than their autos.

[KitiaraIornsight]

I could post you dozens of YouTube videos talking about this problem with DT difficulty uptick in required MSQ dungeons. It is easy enough to do a search. Read the comment section on any of these videos to see how many are frustrated by suddenly being expected to have great ping (when often it is the game itself even if they are on fiber) and to prog through memorization puzzles and raid mechanics in 4-mans required to advance the main base game story quest.

I'm about as casual of a player as you can get. And I have played all dungeon content mostly day one. There are no SAVAGE or extreme raid mechanics in DT msq dungeons. The only dungeon boss prior to the current dungeon's second boss that was even remotely difficult was the first boss of Alexandria which would punish players with high ping. I cleared all of DT on my Sage as my primary main job for the expansion. I have not stepped foot in savage since Alexander was current savage prog. These dungeons are not too hard. They do require you to pay attention and know your job, even as a casual player. We certainly can argue about server ticks needing to be considered heavier with certain AOE damage, but that's another subject all together. Even on a DPS job I have never spent more than 20 mins on any dungeon in DT, even when learning it. I don't know who you're playing with or grouping up with or what server you are on, but it is absolutely LAUGHABLE that you are calling DT dungeons savage. And that's coming from a player who's played since 2.0 PS3 beta herself. You're forgetting how many bosses and raids in ARR that used to have ZERO telegraphs while healers had to stance dance. At this point I've run through the newest dungeon and already had an instance when I queued in where everyone died on the 2nd boss and a DARK KNIGHT soloed that boss fight. If you have played as long as you have, could it be possible that after 12 years your personal age and reaction time may be part of the issue? I'm 44, I fully recognize my reaction time to stuff isn't what it used to be which is why I don't mess with ACTUAL extreme and savage content and just stick to MSQ, normal raids and 24 mans. While there is a lot of issues with DT, the increase in boss difficulty actually has made things more interesting after how brain dead easy SHB and EW dungeons were.