MSQ Difficulty and Exclusion

[Jirah]

The solo instances are harder than most if not all dungeons after ARR and are even somtimes more fun to do. Between that theirs the inevitable heavy HEAVY go-to-the-place-and-talk-to-the-thing scenario that kills the pace. (Which isn’t ff14 fault more the formula of MMOs these days)

[Shibi]

Not sure what making the story harder would achieve, except driving people off. You want to be encouraging more people to play the game, not less.

Plus of course, if it's too hard you will have a cohort who just boost, then use beast tribes to level. Meaning when you finally get them in a dungeon, they will be complete instance-virgins.

[VelKallor]

As in someone hit the button, got a shock, and screamed so you knew they were there?

Of course. It has to be loud, doesnt it?

[hagare]

Of course. It has to be loud, doesnt it?

what if you get a mute guest?

[Amenara]

I think my biggest disappointment was how much fun I had with Tower of Zot (Specifically the trash pulls being akin to Holminster Switch and the last boss fight) and then going through the rest of the MSQ dungeons and being disappointed at the drop off in fun. It was all a big bait and switch and kind of annoyed me until I got to Dead Ends which was fun again because of punishing mechanics. You mentioned Titania and I remember how it took a couple of different groups through the roulette to finally clear it back when ShB launched and thinking about how difficult it was vs the Zodiark fight and clearing it in a couple of pulls in one group. I think one of the worst parts of encounter design in EW is that the difficulty curve is like an inverted bell curve with the level 81 and 90 dungeon being the hardest points and everything in between being pretty simple comparatively. I do remember that Holminster Switch in ShB was the hardest dungeon because of the trash pulls but even then, the rest of the dungeons still felt difficult at the time, especially compared to the EW dungeons.

As for what I think it should look like. I do agree that the difficulty curve should ramp up as you go through the MSQ of an expansion and think that the difficulty of Zot and Dead Ends would have been good for the 89 and 90 dungeons and the difficulty of Hydaelyn would have been good for the 90 boss, but I also think that the level cap dungeons should be of the same difficulty as a Dead Ends instead of being brain dead easy comparative to it. I am all for having the MSQ be used as a way to encourage players to improve as they continue through it. That being said, if you just want to steamroll through story mode MSQ, soon enough all of it will be able to be done with trusts so that option will exist.

[technole]

Considering you can do all the EW dungeons with trusts, along with Venat's trial it's about as mute as it gets. I did that trial with trusts because I didn't want to wait but also it was cool to experience 8/8 scripted people who actually know their roles and won't give me unnecessary drama. They always bring the stack marker to the center, whereas some random DF will run away somewhere lol. If anything some players can learn a bit from the Scions.

Zodiark I liked being forced to group up, you can tell who doesn't own a waffle presser right away and that's good comedy.

[Imora]

I still don't get why people hate square/circle boss arenas. I personally prefer them. Nowhere for morons to LoS my heals, no elevation nonsense making lalafell unable to see the tank/healer/boss.

The hell kind of arena you want? Even wow primarily uses big open spaces.

[Packetdancer]

I still don't get why people hate square/circle boss arenas. I personally prefer them. Nowhere for morons to LoS my heals, no elevation nonsense making lalafell unable to see the tank/healer/boss.

The hell kind of arena you want? Even wow primarily uses big open spaces.

I assume when people want more complex arenas, they mean things like the Rivenroad from 1.x. (For those not familiar, the Rivenroad was a multi-level arena where you fought Nael van Darnus; the main platform survives as the arena for the Nael fight in T9.)

Personally, I don't care about the shape, I just wouldn't mind more fights where the arena itself is an integral part of the fight, rather than just a patterned surface on which the fight takes place. E3S, E4S, E9S tiles phase... heck, I'd argue that even P2S is a decent example.

(The arena in P3S is part of the fight too, but that's less due to actual mechanics involving the arena and more due to really bad color palette choices.)

[AmiableApkallu]

I still don't get why people hate square/circle boss arenas. I personally prefer them. Nowhere for morons to LoS my heals, no elevation nonsense making lalafell unable to see the tank/healer/boss.

That reminds me of my first run of Sastasha as a Lala WHM. I had not yet learned line of sight was a thing... Let alone that ambient furniture mattered...

I assume when people want more complex arenas, they mean things like the Rivenroad from 1.x. (For those not familiar, the Rivenroad was a multi-level arena where you fought Nael van Darnus; the main platform survives as the arena for the Nael fight in T9.)

Personally, I don't care about the shape, I just wouldn't mind more fights where the arena itself is an integral part of the fight, rather than just a patterned surface on which the fight takes place.

Ditto. I mean, don't get rid of the patterns on the floor (I can't visualize a straight line to save my life), but not everything needs to be a neat little stage upon which we dance.

[Packetdancer]

That reminds me of my first run of Sastasha as a Lala WHM. I had not yet learned line of sight was a thing... Let alone that ambient furniture mattered...

To quote the wonderful Josh Stryfe Hayes Anime Healers vs MMO Healers video...

"Can't heal through walls, can I, genius?"

1.0 got a lot of things right but damn if nael and the rivenroad encounter isn’t still one of my absolute favourite encounters in the game up until this point, that fight was so iconic

I would say that 1.0 got a lot of things right -- sometimes more than it gets credit for -- but it also demonstrably got a breathtaking number of things wrong; it's just easier to focus on the good stuff now, from a safe distance of many years. But if I actually think back, I remember the frustration of getting lost in a maze of copy-pasted trees in the 1.x Black Shroud. I remember market wards. (Imagine everything that's wrong with our current housing system... and now make that the basis for the player marketboard system! WOO!)

I remember running out of anima at one point and thus not being able to use aetherytes for the rest of the day, because I had only 1 anima point and I needed 4 even to teleport within the Black Shroud, much less to anywhere else... though I'll own that one, as I depleted my anima entirely through my own stupidity in bouncing around the realm haphazardly. (But man, of all the regions to get stuck in...)

...but yeah, the Rivenroad was pretty dang cool. You're not wrong. I mean, there's a reason it came to mind and I used it as my example of a non-standard, interesting arena design that wasn't just a single circle or square.