What exactly did the improved encounter design do?

[Voidmage]

snip for length

Hmm, yeah. I think I agree.
I also think those Fates are really good but they need to be "more accessible".
How often they spawn like you said, being out of the loop without a plugin and such.
The game should actively point to them in some way because tbh I know a lot of people who don't even know those things exist.

The critical engagements imo are not a bad idea for them. Make them spawn with a pop-up where you can join a group to tackle them. If you already are in a group like a hunt trains them you could join in as a while group as well.
The whole "jump in to do content" is imo the biggest strength of this game in parts.

[Jeeqbit]

I think we’ve reached a critical mass of people who simply didn’t play anything before ShB

I do for sure agree that, for quite a long time, the amount of people who started in Shadowbringers has been way exceeding the people who played from ARR and HW. Which is a given when we reached like 3 times the Stormblood numbers in Endwalker.

That said, to this day, my friends list is full of people I added in HW and SB and they are almost all still playing, to the point it always surprises me looking at my list. I don't really talk to them but I note they are still around doing raid content. Many people I didn't add who I remember from HW, I still bump into them in PF sometimes or see them around on Aether because their names are distinct enough. I get that isn't most others' experience here who usually say all their friends/FC left, but my experience is the people I've known are still around. There are for sure people like me that just continue to enjoy whatever they put out - including people who played before ShB. But I also have no doubt that many have quit over time, whether because of discontent or because of the passage of time, because I've seen countless goodbyes and venting over the years about the content or job design (not just on the forums, but in the game as well) but it's mostly people I didn't know.

I don't know what it is that makes them stay. Collecting things regardless of how the content is, sunk cost, enjoying the content for the social aspect rather than the depth of the raids themselves, or enjoying the aesthetic/visual difference enough regardless of if they can be broken down to something familiar. Maybe a combination of these things.

The player count is at abysmal levels right now

It certainly hit a 10-year low, but almost conveniently timed, the expansion announcement seems like it's got a lot of people to come back and I am curious just how much that will turn out to be.

even if they had the resources.)

The Square Enix CEO announced that they'd give all the resources Yoshi-P wants. Or it seemed like that was what they were saying at Fan Fest, because they are aware this is a common sentiment in the community. So if something doesn't materialize, it can be firmly put as something Yoshi-P decided rather than a resource issue.

[Kaurhz]

How many times exactly have they promised something to the effect of "Sparing no expense"?

To answer the question on a normal mode level --- I don't really think there's any notable design differences.. There's examples you can use, but it's about the same volume as any other expansion.. I feel like they were trying to lean too much on people forgetting how expansion launches always are, so that they can attribute it to things like 'improved design' or 'harder difficulty' or 'more stress'.

[flowerfairy]

I'll be fair and say that from 7.2 and on, there's at least a façade of fights doing some things reminiscent of attrition-type fights from ARR-HW.
You could tie a connection to Howling Blade's speed buff to Cerberus from WoD getting a speed buff as a soft enrage. You could also say Vamp Fatale's attack range buff is similar to T9 Nael getting healed anytime someone got hit by the donut AoE.
You can at least see its potential as a soft enrage mechanic. But these aren't explored thoroughly.
At the end of the day, the mechanics are still played out, like you said, "positioning first". The fights are still laid out in a very strict timeline as opposed to HP phase changes, making everything predictable.

The consequences of failing mechanics aren't explored thoroughly, either.
In older fights, the consequence would be tanks and healers resources getting burned out to the point where the fight is unsurvivable. What makes this interesting is that the skill of the tanks and healers could determine when that point is.
Nowadays, the consequence is getting hit by a body check. Or a damage down, so the hard enrage is unreachable. The improved encounter design didn't change this.

[Jeeqbit]

You can at least see its potential as a soft enrage mechanic. But these aren't explored thoroughly.
At the end of the day, the mechanics are still played out, like you said, "positioning first". The fights are still laid out in a very strict timeline as opposed to HP phase changes, making everything predictable.

The consequences of failing mechanics aren't explored thoroughly, either.
In older fights, the consequence would be tanks and healers resources getting burned out to the point where the fight is unsurvivable. What makes this interesting is that the skill of the tanks and healers could determine when that point is.
Nowadays, the consequence is getting hit by a body check. Or a damage down, so the hard enrage is unreachable. The improved encounter design didn't change this.

What about Honey B Lovely? The way that worked was relatively flexible. I had parties that cleared with 6 or more stacks because the healers were amazing and could even make it unnoticeable in some cases, but I also had parties where any were kind of overwhelming for the healers. And at the end it was sort of a soft enrage in that just some people could die while others finish it off.

[Coolyy]

What about Honey B Lovely? The way that worked was relatively flexible. I had parties that cleared with 6 or more stacks because the healers were amazing and could even make it unnoticeable in some cases, but I also had parties where any were kind of overwhelming for the healers. And at the end it was sort of a soft enrage in that just some people could die while others finish it off.

M2S was the best Savage fight of the entire Arcadion for me, it's absolutely amazing. It's rare for a second floor to actually punish the party for individual mistakes rather than having hard body checks. They made it so the DPS check could literally be much harder than M4S. The regular M2S DPS check is 138k, but I have a clear where the DPS check was 153k. It's 1% HP regained for each stack, so that's around eight stacks. For reference M4S DPS check was 143k, so three stacks already passes that damage check. The mechanics aren't freebies either. Alarm Pheromones 1 and 2 are actual mechanics people were raging on. The spread or pair memorization game with the various patterns was quite creative. Obviously the Heart phases with the mini hearts and towers is iconic for people simping. Beat 3 with the Defamations was a cool final mechanic that was the main wall of the fight, which is good design. It's really an amazing and interesting fight if you think about it, I think the stack mechanic should be used a lot more in Savage. The music is pretty catchy too.

All of the second floors are literally the top three fights in the Arcadion from an enjoyability standpoint, these second floors have been really great man I think it's the new standard. Even the third floors have been good this expansion, just extremely consistent.

[Ankhira]

M2S was the best Savage fight of the entire Arcadion for me, it's absolutely amazing. It's rare for a second floor to actually punish the party for individual mistakes rather than having hard body checks. They made it so the DPS check could literally be much harder than M4S. The regular M2S DPS check is 138k, but I have a clear where the DPS check was 153k. It's 1% HP regained for each stack, so that's around eight stacks. For reference M4S DPS check was 143k, so three stacks already passes that damage check. The mechanics aren't freebies either. Alarm Pheromones 1 and 2 are actual mechanics people were raging on. The spread or pair memorization game with the various patterns was quite creative. Obviously the Heart phases with the mini hearts and towers is iconic for people simping. Beat 3 with the Defamations was a cool final mechanic that was the main wall of the fight, which is good design. It's really an amazing and interesting fight if you think about it, I think the stack mechanic should be used a lot more in Savage. The music is pretty catchy too.

All of the second floors are literally the top three fights in the Arcadion from an enjoyability standpoint, these second floors have been really great man I think it's the new standard. Even the third floors have been good this expansion, just extremely consistent.

I actually agree, yeah, I really loved M2S a lot, I felt like it really hit the fantasy of Honey B perfectly as you said with the simping and hearts and such, but I loved all of Lightweight, tbh. For cruiserweight Sugar Riot was a bit rough for a second floor, but with some practice my static got through it eventually, but god was it stressful without a lot of gear. Don't have big feelings on m10s kinda hated how they sometimes surfed behind me and made me cancel my cast, but overall it was a fun fight. I think Howling Blade was the least enjoyable fight for all of the arcadion series to me, just genuinely didn't enjoy it at all, the fight, the music and such.

[flowerfairy]

What about Honey B Lovely? The way that worked was relatively flexible. I had parties that cleared with 6 or more stacks because the healers were amazing and could even make it unnoticeable in some cases, but I also had parties where any were kind of overwhelming for the healers. And at the end it was sort of a soft enrage in that just some people could die while others finish it off.

She's reminiscent of the damage stacks in Coils for sure, such as Melusine getting a stack whenever someone petrified her, or Avatar getting a stack if towers charged at the same level.
But every other part of Honey follows the same paradigm as every fight in the entire raid series, and the past series, and the series before that. Her damage stacks don't feel as threatening if all of her damage still comes from extremely long casts in extremely specific intervals.
So I find her a façade like the other examples. Something that leaves you wishing for more.

[Derio]

We saw improved encounter design in the early dungeons and some of the leveling dungeons but after the haunted mansion dungeon and people complained it was too hard we saw a drastic revert back to EW dungeon design.

[Valence]

So improved = increased difficulty? That's it?