Add difficulty/challenge modes to dungeons

[Viridiana_Sovari]

You need challenge go have a test of savage

But now Savage is dumbed down. The reason is there isn't enough stuff to ease people into harder fights. You used to get either get face roll easy, or actual quality challenges. Now you get face roll easy, or kind of a challenge. Adding higher difficulties for dungeons wouldn't take too much money. The art assets are the same, and you would simply add maybe a couple mechanics. It would go a long way to smooth out the progression of difficulty of the game to help teach players their jobs. Which would make it so they didn't have to neuter savage.

[Viridiana_Sovari]

I do expect real challenge from 100 to 200

With the way palace of the dead is designed, I highly doubt it. It only has a chance if they design floors 100-200 for a 1 tank, 1 healer, 2 dps set up. If it is designed for 4 dps to be able to clear it again it will be a joke no matter what as long as you have a healer, tank, or both.

[Shurrikhan]

Realese of Potd proven that traps are jokes and Potd is joke in matter of difficulty.
Also NO to your tomes, i dont need tomes, i need challenge.

Try it again with 4 DPS on a no-regen floor and see if you don't care about having one person scout ahead to clear traps.

And why shouldn't the reward be proportionate to the difficulty?

And if number tuning is a good enough start, why not just allow players to run minimum ilvl and undermanned parties (to a cap of player choice) even via duty finder and receive bonus rewards based proportionately on the difference between their highest ilvl job and the minimum ilvl used for the instance, to a cap or following whatever non-linear exchange rate people would find balanced for time (including effort) vs. reward (including fun), or split the empty slots' share (+ a small further bonus), respectively?

Personally, I'm just hoping for means to make challenging versions of various dungeons relevant again, instead of being limited to two dungeons per patch.

[Daniolaut]

Not trying to be rude or anything, just curious is you are aware of:

Minimum Item Level

Settings in duty finder?

It doesnt make it "harder" per say, since a lot of dungeons have been seriously lowered in difficulty such as Pharos Sirius, and Amdapor Keep for examples.

It does however lower your HP, defense, and damage etc. Basically akin to raising the enemies HP or damage output but the opposite, lowering yours.

[Leigaon]

Not trying to be rude or anything, just curious is you are aware of: Minimum Item Level....

You're right though, the minimum iLV does the same thing as doing it as a "+1 Dungeon" making this an option to put on but go into roulette would be fun. I say roulette only because that's where people go. Some incentive may be increased Tomes or XP. Along with some Achievement.

Lets make dungeons which are already implemented in game challenging again by adding completly optional challenge future with adjustable difficulty levels.
Easy to implement with just simply modifiers of already included in game content.

True, the dungeons are beautiful in my eyes (yes all of them!) so the ground work is there. On top of the +1 dungeon or the minimum iLV I could see all the suggestions here to make these dungeons fun but challenging.

* The minimum iLV or the ability to increase the dungeon level would take care of the basics: Using Cooldowns to compensate for the extra damage, extra healing power or reducing damage.

* You are absolutely right in your comments on how we can skip some mechanics and ignore the fights. Even in min-iLV. I think they have to adjust these to where it won't be a wipe, but do it enough and you will. Forgiving, but not too forgiving I guess? Not in dungeons either..I think of Guildhests too.

* Adjust the AoE indicators. Stone Vigil HM was a good example of how, if done correctly, we can see the mob performing the action and can try to adjust. Or the Vault, that shows that we can do indicators other than the orange, but have to watch out. (Maybe that's a QoL on my end and not needed?)

* Tank busters - Hullbreaker Isle HM and Vigil HM stand out in my mind with the tank busters. Heighten those so we know they're dangerous. As a healer, I remember when I first saw those dragons swipe hard at my tank. My mind went back to turn 5 where you had to have Stoneskin up at the right time. Properly timed buffs is a great little mental toolkit to have for later, so teach it along the way?

* AoE and debuffing. When I think of it, I remember Pharos Sirius. The elementals that would cast banish would make me heal, I always have my targets on that little guy. So instead of an intense tank buster, make a mid-heavy AoE for the group. Mix that up with stuff like healing reduced debuff (make me use esuna more?), then I have to do more than spam my dps and toss in a cure.

* Adds could always enhance each other in another way, think of the Wanderers Palace HM. Where the mobs were by a staff that boosted them. Well, to go with what you said earlier how we can ignore things and get by, we just move them out of the circle. But what if they were tethered and as a group they enhanced each other with Dmg -%, or another that gave them shock spikes..that could be debuffed.

* Alone, those traps for the most part in PotD are a joke, though sometimes..in the right situations it can be devastating. Still the % of bad is low compared to being able to ease through it. I would think with potent / unique traps mixed with everything else it would be helpful. Alone? Not so great..combinded? Could be something.

Then again to adjust for all of this, maybe we need less trash along the way. Toss in a heavy hitter along the way for the groups of 3. I think for a while, in lower dungeons, you gather these groups of mobs and do single target damage so much you're bored. You just did your rotation so many times and only took out 3 guys..doing it 30 more times it gets repetitive. 1.0 had an AoE toggle for spells so stone would be AoE. Melee had abilities that made their weaponskills LoS andother ways to hit multiple mobs. At a cost of course, higher MP / Casting time..

If it takes too long a lot of people will not care though. I fully agree that dungeons need to be more difficult, and there needs to be a learning curve so that when you hit 50 or 60 it's not such a giant gap. Ways for players to learn rotations on their own and ask "why is it so hard to heal/tank/kill?"

[Ilan]

If you want to have it harder, gather some people and go into savage. That should make it difficult enough.

[Rennies]

If you want to have it harder, gather some people and go into savage. That should make it difficult enough.

We want harder, but not static shatteringly hard. Please reread if you don't understand.

[Tint]

We want harder, but not static shatteringly hard. Please reread if you don't understand.

exactly, this game still lacks the middle-ground of difficulty. especially harder content for 4 people would be nice, because it's way easier to find and coordinate 4 people than 8. that alone will make savage content for 4 people easier than for 8 people and could fit the middle-ground.

i hope for deep dungeon, but my expectations are low :x

[Ilan]

We want harder, but not static shatteringly hard. Please reread if you don't understand.

Oh i understood you completly right, but i can tell you how it will be if you add an extra mode for the 4 people dungeons. One part of the people start to demand that the harder modes should have better drops or more tomes as reward, the second part will complain that this mode is to hard. And IF it would give better rewards for the harder version, people will start to complain about that too, because they want the higher rewards but they don't want to do it the hard way.

SE could make the comming dungeons harder, but people would start to complain that its to hard for casuals and others who don't want to spend long in dungeons for roulettes will complain about the 5-10 minutes that it will take longer to finish a roulette dungeon. I mean just take a look how many people complain that it is to hard and other people complain about "bad" players in there.

I understand your wish but the chance is most likely 0 especially since SE wants to make even the savage raids and the primals easier to keep the casual players at bay.

[SessionZero]

One part of the people start to demand that the harder modes should have better drops or more tomes as reward, the second part will complain that this mode is to hard. And IF it would give better rewards for the harder version, people will start to complain about that too, because they want the higher rewards but they don't want to do it the hard way.

I disagree with this. I don't think people are so unreasonable that they would think it's okay to demand higher tier rewards without doing higher tier content. If anything it may push traditionally casual players into a less casual mindset to try and achieve these higher tier rewards. Pushing dungeons out with a normal mode and a heroic mode is the best of both worlds. Casual players get gear aimed at casual content and hardcore players get better gear aimed at more hardcore content. Everyone wins.