What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[Silverquick]

The cannons in Hard were always there. See MTQ's guide from nine years ago.

Maybe... I don't remember Storm Vigil Hard as well... but they used to be at that fight too. Here's the MTQ guide from that time period for Stone Vigil normal. That fight is way different now. @1:48. Now that fight is just the dragon and some whirlwinds, the fun parts are gone and there's no roof over it anymore. It's sleepwalk city now even though it actually managed to take out players on occasion back then. That is a major change which alters the entire thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zokx7g6VbbY

So I stringently disagree, they changed the entire scheme for some of those boss fights when it wasn't really needed.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Maybe... I don't remember Storm Vigil Hard as well... but they used to be at that fight too. Here's the MTQ guide from that time period for Stone Vigil normal. That fight is way different now. @1:48. Now that fight is just the dragon and some whirlwinds, the fun parts are gone and there's no roof over it anymore. It's sleepwalk city now even though it actually managed to take out players on occasion back then. That is a major change which alters the entire thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zokx7g6VbbY

So I stringently disagree, they changed the entire scheme for some of those boss fights when it wasn't really needed.

I'm....not sure what you're disagreeing with? Your previous post implied the cannons in the corridor on Hard were new. I pointed out that they're not. I'm well aware of the ARR dungeon reworks. I'd argue that some are better for it (every boss in Copperbell) and some are worse for it (the final bosses in Haukke Manor and Brayflox come to mind), but that wasn't what the previous post was about.

[Vyrerus]

What Silverquick is trying to drive at is that the dungeons didn't actually need to be changed, and the changes they made weren't actually for the sake of new players. Nor were they for better design.

They were for making them easy to tailor to Duty Support Trust NPCs. I don't know for sure, but since Trusts generally can only do one thing at a time.... deal damage, heal, or dodge an AOE, it's really more that these dungeons were changed and stripped of their real mechanics because Trusts could not be made to do them.

The entire philosophy behind Duty Support is that the Trusts carry the player, and the player only has to, at bare minimum, "Trust the Trusts." i.e. Follow NPCs to safe zones, let NPCs do the fight for you, let NPCs heal/tank for you etc.

He's basically disagreeing with the idea that the changes to the dungeons were minor.

While he may be mistaken on the exact particulars, I understand the sentiment. I don't like the loss of originality either.

[ZavosEsperian]

What Silverquick is trying to drive at is that the dungeons didn't actually need to be changed, and the changes they made weren't actually for the sake of new players. Nor were they for better design.

They were for making them easy to tailor to Duty Support Trust NPCs. I don't know for sure, but since Trusts generally can only do one thing at a time.... deal damage, heal, or dodge an AOE, it's really more that these dungeons were changed and stripped of their real mechanics because Trusts could not be made to do them.

The entire philosophy behind Duty Support is that the Trusts carry the player, and the player only has to, at bare minimum, "Trust the Trusts." i.e. Follow NPCs to safe zones, let NPCs do the fight for you, let NPCs heal/tank for you etc.

He's basically disagreeing with the idea that the changes to the dungeons were minor.

While he may be mistaken on the exact particulars, I understand the sentiment. I don't like the loss of originality either.

Agreed. The changes generally caused a lot of the dungeons to lose their originality. Some of the dungeons suffer from this more than other, and it shouldn't be discounted that boss design was also impacted, granted some of the bosses from ARR did need changing due to how they work, as I would find it hard to find someone who would disagree with Copperbell's reworked fights.

All that said, this was ofc done for the duty support system since the support characters cannot do complex tasks.

[fulminating]

as I would find it hard to find someone who would disagree with Copperbell's reworked fights.

All that said, this was ofc done for the duty support system since the support characters cannot do complex tasks.

Here I am. The slime boss trades one tedium for another, and largely removes the lesson that mechanics oughtn’t be ignored. The first giant not having minions removes emphasis on how long and deep they’ve been there - similar to but less so than the removal of estine’s heal check in the eyrie. The final boss doesn’t have minions emphasising his importance anymore either, the giant leader just having slow predictable aoes that aren’t quite the same shape as other giants untelegraphed swing/swipe/glower. On the positive side, they seem to have a more appropriate health pool for the average gear people wear there.

As an addendum, self-recentering bosses actively teach bad tanking and should be receive nothing but scorn. They could easily have turned the last boss into baby’s first coincounter, with helpful patterns on the floor when centred to show where the potentially threatening aoes are likely to be. Hell, make them deal a flat 50% damage if not dodged, the healer gets to heal and any clipped dps are likely to regen to full by the time the next comes out anyway.

They can’t do simple tasks either, aoe on two or more is beyond basic and yet they refuse. Utter waste of resources.

[Gordita]

Sadly the game has been so dumbed down there won't ever be an epic fight for an msq boss/villain etc , they'll all be faceroll content. I didn't have any problems with endwalker story, I enjoyed it. Except that cutscene when you fly out to space on the ark... That was straight up like watching a super low budget kids puppet show , such bad animation.

[Vyrerus]

I would find it hard to find someone who would disagree with Copperbell's reworked fights.

Copperbell's reworks miss the mark in my opinion. They were clearly designed by an SHB or later battle dev, placing far more importance on dodging particular AOE types, rather than having memorable dungeon encounters tied to lore.

In particular, the change to the slime boss got rid of an FFXI reference to the Gigaplasm from Bastok Nation mission 9-1, as well as its real mechanics, which sets up new players to expect ANYTHING from later bosses in the game.

Basically, old Copperbell Mines was designed for the Vitruvian Man whereas new Copperbell is designed for apes that haven't contacted the Space Odyssey monoliths yet.

It's actually the epitome of the changes made to FFXIV over the years. Even its old game tended to treat players like they were fully engaged and reading everything, and queued in to notice environmental storytelling. New XIV is literally just, "Don't stand in the colorful markers."

See the changes to Steps of Faith and Pharos Sirius as well to get earlier examples of this.

We will and have been robbed of everything that makes players grow and love the game.

[Dorito_Burrito]

Here I am. The slime boss trades one tedium for another, and largely removes the lesson that mechanics oughtn’t be ignored. The first giant not having minions removes emphasis on how long and deep they’ve been there - similar to but less so than the removal of estine’s heal check in the eyrie. The final boss doesn’t have minions emphasising his importance anymore either, the giant leader just having slow predictable aoes that aren’t quite the same shape as other giants untelegraphed swing/swipe/glower.

I don't think there was anything about the first two Copperbell bosses pre-6.1 you couldn't have already learned or intuited from doing Hall of the Novice (and probably not too), and I never had a party where anyone cared about killing Gyges' adds. If they had retooled those fights without duty support ever being a thing I don't think anyone would care (regardless of the above) since they were that boring.

[Vyrerus]

I don't think there was anything about the first two Copperbell bosses pre-6.1 you couldn't have already learned or intuited from doing Hall of the Novice (and probably not too), and I never had a party where anyone cared about killing Gyges' adds. If they had retooled those fights without duty support ever being a thing I don't think anyone would care (regardless of the above) since they were that boring.

Hall of the Novice is not mandatory.

[ReynTime]

I'm an ardent defender of ARR's game design.
ARR always had the best dungeon design in the entire game, and frankly anyone who disagrees might as well praise Final Fantasy XIII level design.

I'll concede that the removal of some of the boss mechanics in the MSQ dungeons from ARR were unnecessary. But Copperbell only benefitted from the redesign. The layout is literally the same as before. They focused on changing the bosses.
The boss design in that dungeon was horrendous. Duty Support is not engaging, but a boss where the whole party spends 2/3 of the time waiting to take any action and a boss that involves waiting for the weak adds to slowly make their way to you only to die in 3 seconds each are even less engaging. Boss fights where half the party just stands around waiting are trash.
Even the last boss was trash. Or rather became trash, because for the past 2~3 expansions you never had to bother dealing with its original mechanic unless your party had miraculously bad dps.