2 new dungeons ?

[CyrilLucifer]

I honestly don't care that one is a Hard mode dungeon so long as I don't have to run Neverreap in roulette again and again and again for another 4 months.

[Nestama]

I don't actually remember what they did change though, to make it so easy now. I was kinda sad when they did nerf it, as i really enjoyed it in its original form.

Some trash mobs have been removed from the dungeon. First boss was given more HP so that DPS couldn't spawn all the dogs in a short span of seconds. Zu adds I think dealt less damage and had their HP reduced (and I think they took the cockerels MP draining ability away... at least I think it drained MP) and Siren's Feral Lunge AoE's size was reduced, dealt less damage and... I think that's it, really. Dunno if they did anything to the zombies (probably reduced their HP and STR).

Pharos HM seems to have Kobolds involved in some way, so we'll most likely not have Siren as a boss again and chances are we won't get a third remix of the Pharos Sirius theme (assuming the siren was the one singing it).

Don't get me wrong. I would be happy to see a third Siren in the game.

[Colorful]

snip

The new pet battles is an entire new system, so it likely took more resources than a dungeon, as would airship exploration since they don't have a set pattern they can work with but I'm just guessing here. In an interview Yoshida did say instanced dungeons are fairly easy, cheap, and quick enough to develop, probably doesn't see them as being worth the time which is disagree with honestly. @Moonleg, fair enough. Gold Saucer was probably in development since 2.0 or 2.1. Didn't really think about that. >_<

[Mature]

I'm proper hype for pharos hard!! I love the music in there!!

[Ultimatecalibur]

People made it difficult by ignoring boss mechanics.
First boss spawned adds at fixed percentages of health. Kill adds and go back to boss, no problem... But most people insisted on just trying to burn boss.
Last boss was difficult because Siren wasn't silenced/stunned making it very hard on the healer for one specific move...

All in all, people found it hard because they wanted to burn everything instead of dealing with easy mechanics.

No, it was not just that.
All four bosses used the "adds spawn at X% HP" mechanic, but because most players were in i70 to i90 gear and PS and it was tuned for i60 problems started occurring in the bosses timings.

It was fairly easy to unintentionally burn the 1st boss to the second add wave trigger when the first set of dogs were spawning. This would not have been so bad if the debuff the dogs and the boss' AoEs applied wasn't a near instant kill explosion when you got to many stacks.

Zu (2nd Boss) gained enrage stacks for each egg broken and lost them over time. Because the eggs started hatching based on the boss' hp% but the enrage stacks fell off based on time a group, doing the mechanics properly (kill only the hatching eggs) would cause an enrage if your dps was to good.

Siren herself was basically a semi-HM Primal fight. One of her adds would chase and gaol the tank/healer if it caught them, every so often she would do a wide charge through the center or a room wide aoe that require being in the center to dodge (and it was random if she would charge or aoe each time), did a the healing down debuff was every 30 seconds on a fairly short cast and she was the first appearance of a "heal to full to remove" debuff in game. If you did to much damage to fast you could end up having the adds spawn when the tank/healer needed to do something.

All of that combined made for a dungeon that was not worth the rewards it gave.

[MistyMew]

Sounds pretty good, anxious to see if the gold saucer will become interesting again and hopefully they add a lot to the vendor to entice people to participate. We are in need of more rewards of all types, to work towards.

Im cautious about the airship thing...I think its excellent if they do indeed allow access for those with no FC or ship (about time ppl are not divided because of that)

But..idk, if i know se....its just not gonna quite be worth the time.

Its just my gut feeling, I cant shake it lol, that it will be either too difficult for the majority...and/or the rewards will be underwhelming, some thing will limit things so much that it will not be as popular as they expect...we will have to see, hope I am wrong though!

Hard mode dungeons are so different from the original that it is not really a rehash at all so tha'ts cool too.

I do wish that they would finally deal with all of the UI, game play, housing qol and improvement suggestions that have been floating around for 2 years before adding anything new. Imo, these are just as needed and have been in existence far too long already.

[Hyrist]

The moment we would get something new I had a feeling this complaint would stir up.

I've made this point before, and I will say it again. We're dealing with a singular set crew who can only do so much within a specific time-frame. The more variety of content they produce, the more you take away time-wise from their production schedule. For us to get something new for them to update - something had to give.

I also predicted groans towards any content not being endgame progression orientated being designated 'not worth it' and ignored. But we've yet to see what sort of impact this new content is.

Anyways, once the new systems are stable and can be added into the update rotation we may see a return to our 'normal' update schedule.

[Colorful]

snip

I think the problem with diverting attention content away from the endgame, and into something else is that they haven't proven that they can do that successfully. They've attempted to create fun things like Triple Triad and Chocobo racing, but in the end all they did was create an endless, infuriating grind, specifically referring to Triple Triad here. You're right that we shouldn't try to judge it before it's out, but I'm willing to bet the Verminion game is going to be yet another unfun grind. I have hopes for airship exploration, let's just they butcher that with boring grinds too.

[Daralii]

I think the problem with diverting attention content away from the endgame, and into something else is that they haven't proven that they can do that successfully. They've attempted to create fun things like Triple Triad and Chocobo racing, but in the ende all they did was create an endless, infuriating grind, specifically referring to Triple Triad here. You're right that we shouldn't try to judge it before it's out, but I'm willing to bet the Verminion game is going to be yet another unfun grind. I have hopes for airship exploration, let's just they butcher that with boring grinds too.

To be fair, you can say that about every piece of content they create.

[Hyrist]

<snip>

People can criticize the content, an that's fair. But say that to those who've collected a full deck of Triple Triad cards and/or do tournaments regularly to go for the ones they haven't, and you're insulting their pastime.

Let's get something out of the way here - progression is a Grind. No matter how you spin it, the idea of working for a goal categorically qualifies it for being a 'Grind'. So no matter who's sensibilities you appeal to, you're going to have someone complain. This is what we got here. People asked for new, but when we got new, people complained about not enough old.

The more plates we keep asking SE to spin, the more plates are simply going to be dropped.

As far as catering to endgame... just look at those Alex Savage Clear numbers. They rate in the hundreds. at the lowest of floors. We don't need more distribution in endgame right now, we need more people interested in clearing what we have.