How are you liking Pilgrims Traverse?

[Sililos]

So what, you want everything telegraphed with big obvious orange aoes and dumbed down even more? This is already the easiest deep dungeon in the game by far because I'm almost done with my second solo from 1 to 100.

Unless you have a better idea? Yes the dev team has not been on a roll in some departments but you haven't really suggested what they should be doing in deep dungeons.

Except i did, in my original comment i mentioned Dungeons/Trials/Raids/MSQ where the fight design, while not perfect, is fair and has some creativity instead of "Move out of this telegraphed 1 hit KO attack or die." Even the games with reputations for being unfair and difficult put tells on their fights and give you enough time within their systems to react.

The non Dungeon/trial/raid/MSQ 'hard' content tosses the rest of the games formula out the window and relies on "Hur hur hur you didnt move out of this mech we gave you no warning for, time to react nor clue it was coming Hur hur hur!" Nor does content outside of the mentioned take into account that people dont live ontop of the servers unlike the JP players, they HAVE to give players time to react and take latency into account, which world content/DD's do not.

So as my origional post sugested, bring all this other content into line with the traditional instanced fights (Dungeon, Trial, Savage) where they can be difficult but are always fair.

[DynamoAce]

So what, you want everything telegraphed with big obvious orange aoes and dumbed down even more? This is already the easiest deep dungeon in the game by far because I'm almost done with my second solo from 1 to 100.

Unless you have a better idea? Yes the dev team has not been on a roll in some departments but you haven't really suggested what they should be doing in deep dungeons.

I don't think it should be made super easy to always have everything be a big telegraphed AOE and no one shots at all. I think in doses letting some enemies have that it's fine, but its nearly every single enemy in those upper floors capable of it and when your health bar becomes a binary status of only alive or dead and no in between, sometimes it can feel really cheesy TBH and not only because "oh no I'm killed by a silly OHKO", what becomes a point for elements of gameplay like mitigation/healing? You can take a healer for sleep and a tank to stun things but if the goal is just to kill things as fast as possible with binary health bars, it almost feels encouraged to bring only DPS and you're likely to pick off enemy by enemy melting things down before their big casts even go off. All that is provided IF someone doesn't do something silly like stepping into a trap or pulling an enemy that's gonna have poor positioning so someone off guard gets cleaved.

The individual AOE elements might not be as bad of an issue on their own, but taking into account the randomness of deep dungeon and how a lot of overlap of these varying things can suddenly happen and make things go south fast, it can be VERY frustrating. "Oh no, the succubus was pulled and someone has pyretic, but oh no another enemy patrol came and an aoe is gonna go off but Im not suppose to move/stuns on CD/not gonna LoS it in time" etc etc the list of overlapping dangerous moments can go on.

On the flipside, I feel some approaches to game design like those invisible lizards that only appear when you get close was one of the more unique things I've seen and I wish we'd see more of this kind of approach to enemy design. Seeing some mechanics and telegraphs that you can remember from previous boss battles in other content can feel good when you know how to react in DD. A pomander exists for status effect cleansing but it feels like thats hardly used in those later floors when you're on a binary health bar. These are just some examples of positives that if the devs followed these routes and expanded on these considerations, we might see more unique mechanics instead of so many OHKO's

[Hyperia]

Nobody's surprised.
More annoyed at it being the same old poorly designed crap that shows a lack of creativity or understanding of what players want/enjoy.

My simple solution to encourage more dev creativity: Ban body checks and one hit mechanics in most content with the exception of tank busters.

[Doki]

Overall I'm just happy I get to utilize stun \ sleep \ interupts a lot in PT without it being yet another place everything is immune to everything by floor 29.

[Pricia]

I finally beat level 100 from dungeon matching only. Had to run 70+ probably 10 times to get there.

I enjoy it and will definitely keep trying until I get my 8 clears.

The issue I think is that it STILL requires PoTD floor 50, so people who haven't bothered with deep dungeons will not bother with it.

I love being able to use DF and not have to go back 50 levels back. I'm just not sure how long before it just stops popping again, because, once again... there's only so much replayability. The only thing you get for clearing 100 is a book you can exchange for very limited items (and what you can get with the oil is limited too). I'll get my 8 runs for the mount, get the emotes etc, then probably be done.

The challenge log is nice, but I can tell, as a casual player, that I will probably stop bothering before I get the mount (one week in and I have... 7 first light relics).

Absolutely 0 interest in Quantum.

[Raikai]

Overall I'm just happy I get to utilize stun \ sleep \ interupts a lot in PT without it being yet another place everything is immune to everything by floor 29.

Playing it as a DNC I did notice this! Makes the aiming a bit more desirable, as people sometimes forget the other Grazes do exist.

[Mesarthim]

The issue I think is that it STILL requires PoTD floor 50, so people who haven't bothered with deep dungeons will not bother with it.

I've never cared about this but I also do deep dungeons regularly. This is a nonissue as much as people like to make it one. It's easier than it ever has been. People really can't be bothered to spend up to a couple of hours in potd (and then never have to do it again) in the YEARS between deep dungeon releases? They were never interested in the new one then.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Seeing the extended back and forth between "I hate the one hits!!" vs "lol it's regular experience y u surprise bruh?" makes me want to write my PoV on the matter a bit sooner despite initially only wanting to chime after I have my first group clear of a full run. Admittedly I've only gone up as high as F70 as of today so I can't say much beyond that. But I do realize that 'mechanics' one shots you beyond F51+ and it also annoys me to no end as somebody who defaults to healer queues. However that's not all - this is compounded by other issues i.e. the fact that they neutered AA damage so hard I'm no longer relevant in the run beside being raisebot, reposebot, and maybe esunabot, which first two can be done by SMN/RDM just fine. Esuna is a bit hit or miss, but then again any okay group would minimize the risk of getting impeding trap by sticking to walls.

As a point of comparison, remember PotD F180 Behemoth? If you get hit by most of their mechanics you're not outright dead even as a non-tank. Sure it might spell an end to solo run because you're just 1 AA away from dying but that's not what I'm talking about. The fact is, you didn't straight up die and can be bailed if your healer is awake, giving them an actual value to the party. Meanwhile over here at PT F51 and onward, everything already starts killing you on top of having neutered AAs? Like EO, honestly this shift of incoming damage entirely to failure of mechanic handling makes me feel like a change tailored for DPS DD solo runs more than anything. Tanks? While anecdotal, my group's tank was also complaining that barely needs his cooldown because how binary the types of incoming damages are. He either gets hit by something that barely tickles, or it hurts so much he wouldn't live beyond two(?) hits. "What the f*ck am I even tanking?" he said. Hey, at the very least tanks can still interject, stun, and generally have more control to the flow of non-boss floors, I guess? lol.

EDIT: the “having to learn mechanic” excuse also doesn’t fly to me because (1)there is no job/role that’s excused from learning mechanics, and; (2)what do you supposed to do after you conquered the mechanic? We all know where this leads to. It’s just downright unfun. I thought this is a DD, not EW+ DDR simulator that the rest of the games runs by. If I want to do contents where not knowing mechanics would kill me & not having threatening AA I would do other normal/EX/some savage lol, not DD. But here we are, since EO’s introduction.

So far I have been having good amount of fun, but I can definitely see a future without anymore PT runs from my end despite that. The degree of unfun is big enough I don't think I can just let them slide. Maybe F71+ will change my mind (It won't).

[Celliera]

Pilgrim's Traverse is probably my favorite deep dungeon in the game at the moment as well as the very first one I've successfully soloed.

It really combines everything I like about the previous 3 deep dungeons. It has the lower hp and easier early floors of PotD and HoH combined with the mechanical difficulty of EO for later floors.

The new systems introduced are also a ton of fun. The incense being a combination of magicite and demiclones with each one having a niche is extremely cool. Then there is the candelabra system which I absolutely adore. The positive effects add so much to doing floors and the negative effects don't really feel that horrible. It's always a good time seeing what you will get from one.

To add to this, the checkpoints make practicing for solo runs easier than ever and being able to start at 71 is wonderful for group runs.

I personally think auto-attack damage is a horrible way to scale enemies. I primarily play melee but melee jobs seriously struggle in PotD and HoH. Being stuck on jobs like WAR, SMN, and MCH is just downright not fun for me and lead me to just not really even bother trying to solo older deep dungeons. Meanwhile EO is just a nightmare of enemies with massive HP pools and an extremely slow and downright boring first 30 floors.

Learning the mechanics of each enemy is actually a ton of fun for me. I love having to learn what's easy to pull and what everything does. I've never had so much fun just progging a solo clear.

I know not everyone is happy about this new content and dare I say that it's kinda ok for that to be the case. The people who like auto attack based deep dungeons have PotD and HoH. The people who like EO (are there people who like EO?) have EO. There is now a good variety of choices when it comes to deep dungeon so people can just play what they want!

[faiarrow]

Nobody's surprised.
More annoyed at it being the same old poorly designed crap that shows a lack of creativity or understanding of what players want/enjoy.

See, what gets me with this... is that in PT this isn't something most would consider poorly designed.

Unlike Orthos, where Floor 1 begins with 'any AOE/telegraph/late telegraph is a OHKO' and has HP sponge enemies out the gate, PT has the same natural build into it that you get with PotD 101+ or HoH 60+ regarding the main mobs. You should, by default, always assume boss AOEs will be minimal recovery chance-to-zero recovery chance because their autos are usually nothing to fear in Deep Dungeon from floor 10 anyway; at least that's been my mentality as a Deep Dungeon enjoyer.

By the time you get to PotD 160? You should be expecting that everything can and will destroy you outside of autos in some way. You learn what needs stuns, grazes, silences, sleeps. You learn the sizes of PBAOEs, and laugh as another conal becomes a cruisy Fachan sidestep with experience, even if you're in the face of a luring trap with two enemies who can absolutely nuke your run that may be unsyncronised in their OHKO, but dodgeable, mechanic. HoH began the OHKOs around 45+ on some enemies as a way of pushing you into 'hey, this is getting harder, assume death from all telegraphs soon' which has you ready for 70+.

PT has the same. You can survive certain AOEs in 40+ as a non-tank but 50+ you expect death and 71+ you are guaranteed death if you aren't paying attention. The nice thing is they are all telegraphed in some way. Yes, a late PBAOE or PB Cone is a telegraph. You die. You learn. The new checkpoints make that very comfortable to do which is a huge QoL change for getting skills up to scratch on higher floorsets before you decide to do a major solo climb entirely from stone 1.



In reponse generally to this thread as a whole:
My Deep Dungeon co-player (we love doing duo runs) and I have so far done up to Floor 90 totally blind and we hit true jackassery points of FAFO with mobs for science in 81+ re: discovering if stuff can be avoided, stunned, danced with, or negated with line of sight the other night, always ready to die if we get clipped by something but taking note of the size/scope of it if we did. Hella fun. Easily the most fun Deep Dungeon since HoH. The visual designs for floor 81+ are gorgeous!

I also really love that the weekly challenge log incentivises you for the item grind for the minions/mounts to run the whole thing.