(Idea) Repeal and replace EX Roulette

[Cetonis]

It's pretty common to hear players wanting 4-man dungeons that are a little more challenging. Maybe not savage-grade, but there's a lot of nostalgia for the 2.0-2.1 level of difficulty.

SE can't / won't do that, seeming mostly because they want to make sure all players (regardless of skill) can cap tomes on limited time via daily EX roulettes.

So what if we didn't have EX roulette? What if dungeon farming wasn't the only good option for capping tomes?

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What I'm thinking is, there's already a concept of a weekly challenge log - one that currently grants most every non-tome currency in the game. Why not have a category for tomes?

Then you could start with, say, 50 tomes for downing the two current dungeons once during a week. But maybe also give a good chunk of tomes for doing 10 HW FATEs. A bonus for killing some count of A ranks. Maps rewards, other dungeon things, all the usual stuff. Make it so that you can cap by focusing on different sets of things from week to week.

And as a level 60 thing, SE could add in story raids, 24-mans, Diadem... they could even get spicy and offer rewards for going back to prior Savage tiers, min sync stuff, level 50 things, combinations of those, even rotate them. It could effectively replace the need to shoehorn things into the relic quest.

And they'd be freed from needing to force dungeons to be joke-easy.

There are already plenty of things like hunts and FATEs in the game that will always be content that anyone can do. So why not leverage those as the path for unskilled players to cap tomes, and make dungeons interesting again?

[Kaurie]

Personally, I'd rather just have the different roulettes be our form of having different difficulty levels.

Expert Roulette should be an expert level of difficulty

Level 60 roulette should be the main daily roulette people will want, and so on.

[Belhi]

If they just added some kind of bonus to ilvl syncing for the newest dungeons it would up the difficulty lvl quite a lot. Just doing that would make mechanics many people practically ignore far more deadly and the dungeons far more challenging. Perhaps add a bonus for completing the dungeon quickly while ilvl synced so people had to play very well to get the best rewards?

[Jetstream_Fox]

Personally, I'd rather just have the different roulettes be our form of having different difficulty levels.

Expert Roulette should be an expert level of difficulty

Level 60 roulette should be the main daily roulette people will want, and so on.

So, how the game is now? Which is dreadfully uneventful and boring for about 90% of the player base until a new patch cycle comes. If they add more variety and outlets to obtain items, everything becomes more populated. Look at 2.0 with the hunting log, it granted a nice chuck of exp, fates were also more plentiful because of the bonus tethered to them, and dungeons were still the main outlet for exp. All OP is suggesting is bring all that back and tether some tomes to the challenge reward, which in turn makes the world feel more active.

[Kaurie]

So, how the game is now? Which is dreadfully uneventful and boring for about 90% of the player base until a new patch cycle comes. If they add more variety and outlets to obtain items, everything becomes more populated. Look at 2.0 with the hunting log, it granted a nice chuck of exp, fates were also more plentiful because of the bonus tethered to them, and dungeons were still the main outlet for exp. All OP is suggesting is bring all that back and tether some tomes to the challenge reward, which in turn makes the world feel more active.

Not how the game is now. I said expert rouletet would be an expert level of difficulty.

Currently, the most difficult dungeon is Aetherochemical Research Facility. For some reason. It's actually the only one, as a SCH, that I need to focus on healing and not DPSing (OK, I mean focus on healing greater than 3% of the dungeon). The dungeons in Expert roulette are easier than any dungeon since level 32. They're pretty close to on par with Haukke Manor in difficulty.

As a side note, I am not against having alternative methods be more viable for capping tomestones. Personally, I'd advocate having an end-game zone with daily quests that reward lore.

[Cherie]

I agree that the roulettes are way too easy and that is why they are boring.

Higher gear ilvl requirement is the only thing that makes expert roulette what is is. It has the highest ilvl cap. Stuff hits harder yes, but you are *required* to have better gear to even queue up for it so therefore it hits about the same as any other dungeon in the game. Leveling dungeons can take more effort and time to complete because people can queue for them almost naked and that makes them take forever to finish sometimes. How many healers can attest to tanks queuing with no accessories at all or like missing 2/3 of their gear and being a beast to heal cause they have the least health in the party?

It's not really about having more difficult content to keep it interesting however. It's about having a range. We have normal content, which is all exactly the same difficultly and then we have savage which is like NES hard. There is no in between and I think that is what is frustrating people as far as being bored. If we had some scale of difficulty in content there would be more to do because you might not one shot everything and it would take more time and therefore be more engaging and not make you /doze.

[Kaurie]

I agree that the roulettes are way too easy and that is why they are boring.

Higher gear ilvl requirement is the only thing that makes expert roulette what is is. It has the highest ilvl cap. Stuff hits harder yes, but you are *required* to have better gear to even queue up for it so therefore it hits about the same as any other dungeon in the game. Leveling dungeons can take more effort and time to complete because people can queue for them almost naked and that makes them take forever to finish sometimes. How many healers can attest to tanks queuing with no accessories at all or like missing 2/3 of their gear and being a beast to heal cause they have the least health in the party?

It's not really about having more difficult content to keep it interesting however. It's about having a range. We have normal content, which is all exactly the same difficultly and then we have savage which is like NES hard. There is no in between and I think that is what is frustrating people as far as being bored. If we had some scale of difficulty in content there would be more to do because you might not one shot everything and it would take more time and therefore be more engaging and not make you /doze.

The thing is, the 2 new expert dungeons do not hit harder than the previous two. The damage per second to the tank is roughly 1/3rd. This is in the same gear level between each.

I do agree that difficulty != fun. For example, I prefer the two new expert dungeons over every other Heavensward dungeon, despite them being easy. The atmosphere and style play a large role in this, I think. Another example would be A6S, which is now one of my least favourite raids that I've experienced. It feels difficult for the sake of difficult, rather than fun.

[Rhaja]

Honestly, what I'm hoping will happen in 4.0 is to completely redesign the concept of EX roulette to be more like Guildheist.

Lets say in 4.0 we're level 70. Instead of our current set up, just put all level 70 dungeons in the 70 roulette. Then turn the EX roulette into a more mission based run. They would take the existing dungeons, limit it to a short run but with an objective. Protect and individual, quickly retrieve an item and escape, solve a series of puzzles, hold an wave off; something that could spice the usual run up a bit. Its also a easy way to reuse the hell out of assets in the game already.

[Derio]

Palace of the Dead is there for your challenge.

Devs have already stated time and time again that dungeons are geared towards the casual crowd. There is the whole endgame argument, but realistically most people use dungeons and EX-Roulette as their primary source of tombs.

[Ragology]

If they just added some kind of bonus to ilvl syncing for the newest dungeons it would up the difficulty lvl quite a lot. Just doing that would make mechanics many people practically ignore far more deadly and the dungeons far more challenging. Perhaps add a bonus for completing the dungeon quickly while ilvl synced so people had to play very well to get the best rewards?

Doesn't doing a dungeon at minimum ilevel sync already guarantee that you'll get lots of drops at the end? I saw a post on reddit where a group got lots of drops at the end because they ran at minimum ilevel. ( or maybe it was undersized minimum ilevel, I forget.)