Increase Difficulty of Dungeons

[Metricasc]

the only argument i would have to make for tough dungeons, is that only if its not for leveling or tied to MSQ progression, (which sadly rules out all the level 80 dungeons so far), i would generally love to see some more challenging dungeons thrown into the mix overall since i find dungeons to be very easy in a way that it allows bad habits to be fostered, but i can understand that its best to make the tougher dungeons optional and slightly increase the difficulty curve of more later level dungeons overall.

[Jirah]

Look no further than the 80s dungeons. Aumurot being the only good one. Twinning has nice trash in the last room, Academia, Anyder, and Cosmos is so routine and trivial you can do it in your sleep. And these are the “endgame content?”

Bosses are usually ok the emphasis needs to be on the trash and have DPS matter more with mid pull mechanics. Tons of examples include past dungeons idk why 80s are the easiest ones.

The issue being YoshiP doesn’t want the single healer to be freaking out (PTSD from a newbie party in Longstep/Aurum Vale where the tank tries to drag the whole room) and that’s fair but at the very least make pulls interesting instead of the AOE fest.

[Nyxheart]

Honestly i think they should unnerf ARR dungeons as a start and maybe tweek it a bit in some areas to make some things a bit easier bit not by that much. Early ARR dungeons made you learn mech at a decently graduale rate imo. By having people learn earier in game that YES you need to learn mech and actually do them I believe we would have less issues with people late game not understanding they need to be done and more cohesion between the players in general. This also means it wouldnt be a shock to new players when things go from obserdly afk easy to the normal difficulty that anyone whose played through the game when they had that more gradual learning curve expect, dodging, positioning, kiting, needing to follow mech in general used to be taught in dungeons to a minimum requrement degree and just isnt anymore. I think it's lead to a larger gap between apsolute casual and extreemly hard core and increasing an anomosity between the POVs in general. No amount of skill gap closing will fix that issue and just increasing the health of something only makes things tedious when the actual fun part of doing intressting things with mech is all but removed. Also it would be nice if the brought back the optional areas in dungeons too. It can potentially give a challange, makes dungeons less one dimentional, and yet still allow for streamlining through a dungeon if desired, expecially if you dont need everything like gear from that instance. Are there flaws to that, sure, but i think it would be better than the one way or nothing direction weve been stuck following for years now. And i do think other fresh ideas would be nice too. No matter what you just cant please everyone at the same time.

[Talking_Citrus]

In that case, what makes you think anyone is interested in your opinion on the subject?
Don't post anything if you aren't interested in getting replies to your post.

He doesn't care what You have to say. He's providing feedback for anyone from SE scouring the forums looking for it. It also has the potential of starting a conversation amongst other players, which is the point of a public forum, he doesn't have to be intimately involved or interested in anyone else's opinion.

As for the dungeons being "difficult for those at the right gear threshold and who don't know the mechanics" is a non-argument when you consider that most of the time you get matched with at least a few endgame characters just grinding duty roulette. The point of scaling characters down is specifically to keep the content relevant, and a dungeon that you can spam one skill while watching Netflix isn't relevant. It's a question of balance and the downscaling has always been horrible as far as balance goes. Even if it were largely due to new skills, you can account for those by lowering the ilvl cap in proportion to each job's new power curve without influencing people running the dungeon for the first time.

I know a lot of people just want to turn their brains off and get the shiny loot which I don't understand but that's their prerogative and I can't blame any company for accommodating the majority of the player base but it wouldn't be hard to jack the numbers up a bit on down-scaling and make it its own queue for people who actually want to play the game.

Your points were too absurd not to address, even if I had to add a new job to the game. Everyone welcome... The Necromancer :P

Edit: Fixing typos

[Talking_Citrus]

I like your ideas, Nyxheart. Theme park or not, fact is if you don't accurate follow the correct formula (ie responding correctly to specific mechanics or unexpected situations like pulling pats etc) you should get punished. There should be consequences for not being careful. Unfortunately, that idea seems to have been abandoned across the board in all the biggest MMORPGs... If you could name one that was still punishing, had a decent story & world building I'd be on it in a hot minute. This is more of a short rant but feels to me like mmorpgs have turned into online single-player focused experiences that friends can enjoy together and people can power trip on with no effort. "Play it your way" is good and all, but if your way is to try to speed run everything, spam click through dialogue and afk during mandatory cutscenes you're just playing the wrong genre, there are no two ways about it.

Not every game is meant for everyone, and that's fine. The sad thing is though, it feels like this entire genre has slid from its original idea of socially focused role playing experiences that felt rewarding both through the connections you made with other people and the struggles you overcame in PvE (be it dungeons, just normal quests or end game content - it all used to be challenging in the early days. Think of vanilla WoW before the Pre-BC nerf patch or Everquest).

Now, I don't even know what I'd call it but absolutely none of that remains. Social aspects? Fuck social elements when you can just click a button and have 4 people magically appear like AI would. Why would you even talk to them? You can just do the same thing for your next run. No need to get along and run more dungeons together, fuck these guys and just get new ones. Challenge? Like many of you have pointed out, if there's any challenge at all now it's stacked at the endgame with a seeming disregard for the fact that endgame will always only be a FRACTION of the available content, every expansion further increasing the problem of a game full of completely pointless content if you the systems in place don't allow for a level 30 (for example) dungeon to feel how it SHOULD feel for level 30 players even if a SINGLE group member is downscaled.

It's just sad to see what was such an awesome genre from which I have so many amazing memories has gone so far in a different, completely unnecessary direction, to chase the money. Yeah, they're all businesses and businesses aim for the fattest bottom line, but I miss the days when games were made with passion, for people who were passionate about games. Now it's just such a bland commercialized experience, it's unrecognizable. Only reason I find myself playing mmos at all anymore is every couple years I'll give it another go in hopes that there have been enough tweaks to provide a passable experience, but I feel like what old school mmo players learned an mmo was is just dead.

[st0ut717]

thats what savage and extereme are for.

[Sazuzaki]

thats what savage and extereme are for.

I just wish there was more extreme content. There's not really many extreme trials which is kinda of a bummer, cause those are the perfect difficulty for me tbh.

I would love to see four man extremes or extreme four man dungeons with mob pulls that actually require some thought. For example, there's a big bad mob that's empowered by all the other mobs nearby. So, the tank baits him somewhere and the healer keeps him asleep. Now the the DPS have to burn down the smaller guys as fast as possible before the big bad mob becomes immune to sleep. Like a mini-DPS check.

Ofc this isn't exactly the most ideal plan, but something like that. To make use of all our role actions which have practically been forgotten about.

[ijuakos_xqwzts]

Hello,

Can we please increase the difficulty of dungeons? And perhaps the game as a whole?

It saddens me that there is all of this seemingly great content from ARR, Heavensward, and Stormblood but it poses little to no challenge.

I recently ran The Stone Vigil, a level 41 dungeon, on an alt, and I couldn't believe how easy it was. The tank pulled multiple rooms at once, more than I had ever seen before, was able to stay alive no problem and I flew through the dungeon faster than I ever have before.

This kind of play style may be suitable for some but I am not a fan. I need a challenge to enjoy a game. If everything is a cake walk, I am going to lose interest as I am already beginning to do.

I always thought that our gear was down leveled enough so that even old content would provide a reasonable challenge, be engaging and fun to complete again. Now though, it feels like the majority of the game, dungeons, and bosses are a complete joke.

I know there are aspects of Shadowbrings that provides more of a challenge, raiding being one of them but what happened to the other 90% of the game?

I would love to see an increase in difficulty around the board.

The lack of difficulty poses a problem as well. People get so used to barely doing anything and coasting through the game until they are faced with a dungeon that has maybe 1 or 2 mechanics that simply can't be ignored and all of a sudden nobody knows how to act.

This game should be constantly challenging you and steadily increasing in difficulty and demanding more from you until it reaches an appropriate level and remains consistent.

Without difficulty, your content becomes meaningless filler with no purpose. This is just sad. If things stay this way I have to say, I won't be playing for much longer, what is the point?

While I don't raid that much, I have enjoyed it in the past and would maybe get more into it when I'm ready to but if the other 90% of the game is a joke why would I care?

This really needs to be fixed and I'm not sure how it got so bad. At the very least, properly scale us back in these lower level dungeons so we can have a challenge.

Thanks

I chuckled a little when I read this. Momentarily, tanks have slowed down to pulling one group at a time instead of several groups. It was pretty nice. Healing was tricky, but doable. Now, they're back to "balls-to-the-wall" ludicrous speed pulls.