Quote Originally Posted by Dracian View Post
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Agreed, on most of this. Or at least, I think, the spirit of it.

The following is a bit tangential, though. Sorry.

I guess what annoys me most is that even truly optimizing, say, a Brayflox NM run in week 1 (albeit, week 1 among other legacy players, so already leveled up to sync) of ARR had more going on than most dungeons seem to now. Dungeon design has obviously improved in almost every way except fundamental creativity (and ARR dungeons were nothing great in that regard, either), and most toolkits are far more robust (perhaps Monk being the only exception, and only then in terms of certain rotational elements and interplay with CC), but there was more variance in how a run ought to be optimized based on one's composition, and just more cross-role engagement possible (kite loops for mitigation, focus-targeting, deliberate threat-passing, etc.).

Naturally, novelty breeds experimentation (and age, stagnation), but a lot of that change has been the result of deliberate trimming, too. There was a point at which they had this available pool of depth and, rather than tune around it or otherwise reward it, polish it, or the like, they decided to obfuscate any such lack of effort that might otherwise have been seen... by removing those mechanics entirely. That, to me, is a worrisome direction that only tends towards narrower and narrower, more and more limiting, ruts in design.

In the end, I just want some variety in intrinsically enjoyable combat experiences. When the game launched, I enjoyed dungeons immensely, because they had these different factors of play available to them that excited me (even if I could certain imagine, even then, their being much more polished or better situated). Moreover, they excited me in ways that pulling to gate, AoE spam, pulling to gate, AoE spam, and a boss kill, on repeat, just can't do for me except under such tuning as forces out certain elements of deliberate, choiceful play and wherein that play is itself interesting. ("Non-choices", like simply playing in a blatantly nonoptimal manner, need not apply.)

Bringing back in a level of situation (apparent relative reward, related gameplay loops, cohesion, etc.) that gives us the most possibilities for engagement, or both the number of competitive ways by which to approach a situation and the depth of engagement in following one such path, seems essential to providing more variety in enjoyable combat experiences. But that requires some actual commitment to a difficulty level that won't necessarily be open to every player on the first run, and ideally a way to smoothly scale up from there so that players can retain that same level of challenge for themselves for as far as they wish to go. That kind of design can't shy away from polish or just throw over it a blanket of "All enemies are now immune, so stop talking about it."