square please challenge us a little

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I understand what you are asking for. Making something too easy will not make players get better at their jobs or learn faster. A little challenge will do that. This could even stop people from going lazy mood during dungeon runs. But then again, we have some hard dungeons like Aurum Vale which many people seem to leave duty as soon as they enter it. You don't want that to happen with new dungeons do you?

This only happens if the alternatives offer better rewards. People left Steps of Faith because they knew they could queue for Trial again and likely get something else. With Expert Roulette, your choices are limited to whatever the current new dungeons are. Look at Weeping City. Despite all the initial whining, people eventually sucked it up because if you wanted to upgrade your Lore gear or get gear itself, you had no choice but to learn and embrace its challenge. And WC isn't even "hard". It simply keeps you alert due to the sheer amount of mechanics-- none of which are overly difficult once you figure out the pattern. If dungeons followed a similar design, I think people would gradually adapt.

As long as duty finder matches you with random players who may, or may not, do more than push three buttons at a time... No thanks. I'll be more than happy with dungeons that only take me and the tank to do reliably.



Edit: Bolded the relevant words to clarify which direction I lean on the subject.

If you maintain the status quo, what motivation do people have to improve? The lack of any meaningful challenge is why people 1-2-3 combo. They know they can get away with little to no effort and get carried. If dungeons were made so DPS who didn't do an active rotation became slow, sluggish or even dangerous, you would gradually see less "Ice Mages" either from community demands or those players getting frustrated the rest of us can't carry them through. Right now, I know I could Impulse Drive the whole way through Hullbreaker Hard. I'd be bored to tears, but I could do it.

[PArcher]

Most people don't know what went on with Pharos Sirius, how people would utterly fail at it so much and just insta leave on seeing it (I'm pretty sure this dungeon got us a lot of the leave penalties we have now). Dungeon wasn't hard pre-nerf, you just had to pay attention...but that was too hard for most. So it got nerfed (and yet, I still see people fail at it in 50 Roulette. Makes me giggle)

And then, there were the Bees with Demon Wall...


Point is, there *were* dungeons that required a slightly elevated level of skill...they got nerfed because the vast majority couldn't handle them.

[Nestama]

I'm sure people would have stayed in Pharos Sirius if it dropped i75 gear or something (instead of recycling Amdapor Keeps i60 gear). Maybe.

[Kewitt]

Try the EX and Savage while it's new content. Bismark EX is old content now. And your over geared for it.

[Khalithar]

This is actually faulty logic (even if it is sound), simply due to prior experience. In WoW, with Cataclysm, the devs tried to bring back a need to slow down runs by requiring things like CC for most parties. In other words, a return to old school gameplay.

I loved Cataclysm for this reason. It required everyone to step up compared to the difficulty from Wotlk and a lot of players that couldn't hack it were given a wake up. From there the players I knew either got better and stepped up or they quit running the high level content. Of course, for those of us that raided at that time, once we got the raid gear we went back to speedrunning since once you overgeared them the harder dungeons were a joke. The dungeons were only difficult the first time through, eventually we just overpowered the mobs and brute forced most mechanics without issue.

Edit: Although at the time I basically stopped pugging. I only ran the dungeons with raid geared friends from my raiding guild or their alts, i.e. people I gamed with all the time (synergy and knowing how to work together is definitely a thing), knew how to play their role at the raid level, and had the really good gear.

[Zojha]

If you maintain the status quo, what motivation do people have to improve?

Right now, I know I could Impulse Drive the whole way through Hullbreaker Hard. I'd be bored to tears, but I could do it.

You're kinda answering your own question here.

In general, people improve because getting better at something comes with increased satisfaction or enjoyment, be it via flashier animations, less anxiety about potentially holding people back, a higher engagement level, ego boosts (in the case of PvP), a better integration into a social group or other reasons.
I wager especially the last point is a large reason why the JP community has so much higher clear rates for challenging content (and is probably better on average as well).

Trying to motivate people with frustration instead also motivates them to stop doing the content altogether. So next thing is clamoring for higher rewards to compensate for the frustration caused earlier.

[cammi]

Do you REALLY want harder content that'll just get nerfed cause the masses WON'T clear it like soo many dungeons and raids have taught us so far? Or do you just want something different. Cause I don't think people asking for harder content are remembering all the times SE DID give harder content only for it to be NERFED. >> just saying.

[Khalithar]

Do you REALLY want harder content that'll just get nerfed cause the masses WON'T clear it like soo many dungeons and raids have taught us so far? Or do you just want something different. Cause I don't think people asking for harder content are remembering all the times SE DID give harder content only for it to be NERFED. >> just saying.

There can be a middle ground between faceroll easy (like Hullbreaker HM for example) and Savage level raid difficulty. It's just a matter of finding that sweet spot, as is I don't think SE is willing to try because they don't think they can make it harder without making it too difficult for the majority.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

You're kinda answering your own question here.

In general, people improve because getting better at something comes with increased satisfaction or enjoyment, be it via flashier animations, less anxiety about potentially holding people back, a higher engagement level, ego boosts (in the case of PvP), a better integration into a social group or other reasons.
I wager especially the last point is a large reason why the JP community has so much higher clear rates for challenging content (and is probably better on average as well).

Trying to motivate people with frustration instead also motivates them to stop doing the content altogether. So next thing is clamoring for higher rewards to compensate for the frustration caused earlier.

There's a difference though. You can scale up the difficulty without it becoming frustrating. Weeping City is a prime example. People complained, yet once it was clear it wouldn't see any nerfs, they sucked it up because the rewards were enough. Dungeons lack this kind of incentive, thus why people tend to see them as repeatable chores you just do. I am not asking for Savage, which yes, you aren't going to convince the average player to do. Just something that requires you to actually know how to play your job. Level 60 dungeons should be a step above, not utterly mindless like some have been.

[Zojha]

People complained, yet once it was clear it wouldn't see any nerfs, they sucked it up because the rewards were enough.

Either that, or the people still doing that content are not the same people that complained it was too hard for them in the first place (See also: "People" complaining about the cash shop while at the same time, "people" ask for additions to the cash shop). You could make everything Savage difficulty and after a while, almost everyone who remains would be fine with it - because the people who aren't just left. Neither you nor me have numbers one way or the other however - best approximation would be average queue times and even that is faulty because of the player fall-off in the course of an expansion.

I feel the thing people don't quite get is that "difficulty" is very subjective. If dungeons are "easy" to you and your social circle, that doesn't mean they are "easy" to the average person or even everyone. I not only know but also regularly experience people for whom just doing their rotation without any mechanics is already too difficult (And Yoshida has openly acknowledged that doing both at the same time has become a bit of an issue for many). You can't find a universal "sweet spot" in difficulty when everyone has an individual one, you can only offer more options and hope to hit as many as possible - and then people demand better rewards for having a higher sweet spot >_>