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

[Jeeqbit]

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.

The only way this could be true is if you got lucky. See, SE used to test certain job roles more than others depending on the fight. Some fights were super challenging for the tank, but easy for the DPS. Others were super easy for the tank, but rough for the DPS and healers. And then some had a lot of reliance on the healer. Of course, SE started to move away from that over time, and made us all do the same mechanics in a lot of fights, tanks have lots of self-heals, etc.

So, if you experienced an extreme trial where your job role was the "easy" role in that fight, I could see you potentially making that argument. Bismarck as a DPS for example, where if you just dodge and stay spread you're probably good. Innocence as a tank where, quite frankly, as long as you can tankswap you can mostly just eat vulns (however, other roles often had deaths despite the ease of the fight).

But that's the point, isn't it? The "easy" extreme trials we are referencing you would generally clear them pretty quick, but with some vulns and deaths - exactly like can happen in dungeons.

Even if they are like miniature Extreme fights, maybe it's because Extreme is not usually this super hard and scary thing people think it is - take the latest Unreal, an old Extreme from Stormblood, which you can go from fresh prog to clear in 1 pull, despite vulns, damage downs and mistakes. A common story for a lot (not all) of the Unreals we've had actually.

Hell, the final boss has mechanics straight from P5S. Literal carbon copies of savage mechanics.

I assume you mean the part where the arena leaves small pockets of safespots due to there being puddles all around the arena. It's still nothing like P5S because it's personal responsibility, whereas 1 person getting it wrong could doom the party in P5S. It's therefore safe to just find a safe spot without coordinating ahead of time NW/SE for example. Also, if you understand snapshotting at all, there's a moment to spread after the puddles disappear so you don't overlap an AoE with someone that chose the same safe spot.

They also scaled the fight in a way that tanks can solo it, a good healer can hold it together, I think I even ate a tank buster on a DPS by using mit, addle and a healer shield, something that wouldn't happen in Savage. Generally I've not normally seen any issue in the fight even if people occasionally died to it.

are now being pushed out of content they used to be able to do.

Maybe it's just that they are afraid of deaths and vuln stacks and have a pressing need for a perfect, flawless run? Even I die or get a vuln stack occasionally, especially on a DPS job. I just get a rez or the rest of the party finish the fight and it's no big deal.

this shift in difficulty has massively raised the difficulty of CDPS and healers a lot more than it has the other 3 roles

If I had to compare healer difficulty now to the past, I'd have to say that healers used to be harder. And they were still easy if you got over the anxiety of someone potentially dying on your watch. In fact, I dare say I don't need to heal much at all, if at all, when healing Expert. Why don't we use some "past" examples of tough fights for a healer?

The Vault's final fight, where you had to dodge waves of marching soldiers, break a tether by running away, all while healing not only the raid wides, but the fact most other people got hit by mechanics. It was easy to get hit yourself during that, or not focus on splitting the tether due to healing. The Burn, which has you triangulating the safe spot, not to mention be rough in the raid-wide AoE department and often catching people with devastating ice vulns. First fight in The Dead Ends because of healer needing to be around when someone gets hit and needs Esuna.

interesting mechanics while still allowing something as basic as 3 second cast bars in the game.

These still usually happen even if there isn't an actual cast bar. Once you've done the fight and know to expect it, you can just imagine the cast bar.

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

I often get hit by it. Despite having a high ping, I found the solution to the mechanic is rather to just not be in their path. Act like where they are facing is a line AoE. That tends to work for me so if I get hit it's just due to the sheer number of them or them spawning at an unfortunate location/direction, or honestly just not wanting to put in that amount of effort to constantly dodge them and greeding instead.

But I feel like you're using the one and only problematic mechanic in DT to make a point about the entire expansion's direction, because I can't think of any other examples like that.

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.

I agree that a lot of people will quit but not necessarily just due to the difficulty, but rather due to how unpolished the game feels in certain areas. I feel like SE is committed to quality but this ultimately only gets reflected in the visual aspects of the game, such as the environment or the music, because anything involving programming seems to be riddled with problems - such as not having an FC finder in the game itself, arbitrary limits that are insufficient, snapshotting, bloated menus, etc.

I feel like if people would quit because of Dawntrail dungeons then they'd probably quit over The Vault, Bardam's Mettle, Doma Castle, Ala Mhigo, The Burn, Ghimlyt Dark, Holminster Switch, Malikah's Well, Mt. Gulg, Amaurot, Grand Cosmos, Anamnesis, Heroes' Gauntlet, all of which have bosses that I see give trouble to or kill first time sprouts regularly. The Vault is kinda a joke at this point due to DPS changes but I could see it having put people off in the past.

You can find a job that everyone of all skill levels enjoyed in stormblood.

While true, many people want to play the job they like the aesthetic of, so I think job difficulty sliders would solve that.

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

True and I don't necessarily need the dungeons to be fast-paced or anything. But we did have people coming to the forums for years saying "dungeons are too easy", so I guess this is the response. It's why players need to articulate what they actually want better. If they want dungeons to be less repetitive, they should say that, rather than saying "they are too easy".

[JadeCurtiss]

Difficulty is highly subjective

-snip-

You're right. And because you're right, I say your other points are nonsense because of their subjectivity.

[Valence]

Want to experience the hardest challenge? Try optimizing machinist in literally anything. The class was an actual nightmare of bad design.

I would have liked the post, but sorry it's because of takes like that we got the butchered mess we now have had since SHB. And next expansion it was SMN.

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.

And this is a good thing for the health of the combat system how exactly?

[Kohashi]

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.

The proper word that you are looking for is Snapshot. They absolutely did introduce a lot more snapshot mechanics where you have to look at the boss's castbar timer and not just wait for a visual que to move out.

Which is absolutely a move in the right direction; however, people are surprised by it because in older content, that is heavily underutilized.

[Liyinabi]

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.

I wouldn't say fights in this game are completely broken at high ping, they just need to be approached differently and more carefully - Nothing as game-breaking as you seem to be implying.

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.

"Dawntrail should be more challenging" and "Square Enix should fix their netcode" are statements that can and should coexist. As much as I hate getting snagged by those dolls from a mile away, I don't think dungeons are coming even close to becoming completely broken or unclearable on high ping as someone with high ping and awful internet myself.

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.

Trust me, people know exactly what and who to blame when they get snapshotted by something they shouldn't have, and are very quick to do so.

They absolutely did introduce a lot more snapshot mechanics where you have to look at the boss's castbar timer and not just wait for a visual que to move out.

I don't agree with OP but they do happen to be describing a mechanic where staring at the cast bar won't do you any good and you absolutely just have to react to the moving parts. This is another type of mechanic that seems to be getting more use this expansion, but the hitboxes and execution can be a bit... Faulty. Hitboxes always feel too big/small/snapshotty/not snapshotty enough depending on the fight.