The problem with Eureka Orthos

[TaleraRistain]

What kept me interested in PotD was the arcades game feel to it…like Gauntlet. It was absolutely not a guarantee to get through the dungeon on any given run (my skill is mid at best, don’t judge me!). This was fun. I liked having to pull carefully and take down a few monsters and minimize auto attack damage to get through it.

I remember when it first came out and you'd get a full party on 11-20, round a corner and see a slime, and everyone starts screaming in party chat and trying to run away quickly. And forget the rooms that had multiple slimes. I think we were more afraid of those slimes than some of the stuff on 40-50. Good times.

[Noumenon]

Nobody likes grinding early snoozefest floors. Not just hardcore players. PotD was praised for multiple reasons. Being the first deep dungeon of course which created new interesting content. But it was also praised for real genuine hardcore solo content that was actually fun and globally more impressive than clearly Ultimates, at it's infancy. HoH tried to carry the torch but failed to deliver and EO didn't even try to carry the torch. Even hardcore DDers have zero interest in EO because there is no real challenge to chase on top of boring unspeedrun-able floors. Obviously the difficulty isn't the only thing that carried PotD but I think it's disingenuous to not say it played a tremendous part in it's legacy. Even to this day, Necromancer is still the most sought after of the three. Maybe it's because it has 100 more floors to fight through or maybe it's just better designed? That answer is personally subjective and always will be.

(Also more rewarding sack drops with a mount drop that people actually want as well as other good rewards like Fire Crest/Pumpkin Glass earrings)

I am not talking about its legacy. I was explaining why the content is enjoyable on its own.

If SE followed the same design principles, expanded some features, cut the bloat, and made a midcore version of it it'll be massively successful.

[Bonoki]

I am not talking about its legacy. I was explaining why the content is enjoyable on its own.

If SE followed the same design principles, expanded some features, cut the bloat, and made a midcore version of it it'll be massively successful.

I agree. I think another issue that is often not talked about is that the exp gain for EO is extremely bad for leveling. Deep Dungeon is historically the expected go to quick leveling location and EO just wasn't it for EW. Though that might fall in line with rewards depending on who you asked.

[AceNoi]

EO is frankly just a miserable experience for casual play. My partner and I cut our teeth doing full duo clears in POTD and HoH and were both looking forward to the new deep dungeon a lot, but our time spent just farming aetherpool was incredibly unfun with how even basic enemies took way too long to kill + the sheer amount that could spawn at once, to the point where new enemies spawning in before we could even clear out a room was a regular occurrence. Trying to level alt jobs was twice as frustrating, since the highly punishing mechanics and bloated hp on enemies left no room for error on jobs we weren't as comfortable playing. We both ultimately decided to cut our losses and give up on the whole deal.

While I'm at it, I'd love to know what they were smoking when designing the layout for 20-30, the set of floors most frequently run by everyone whether for EXP or early aetherpool. I like Allagan nonsense, but they're so visually busy that everything blends together (even the enemies!), the dumb curved hallways makes scouting room harder than it should be AND the uneven terrain makes it a pain in the ass to even move around in, let alone dodge the billion AoEs enemies throw at you.

[Raikai]

Interesting, I think how they designed mobs and bosses really fine in Orthos, but what it gets me is that is literally the same Deep Dungeon system for the 3rd time. The pomanders are almost the same, and the new gimmick of clones only can do so much when it comes to novelty. Most of it all, the same type of level layout. I hope the next one gets to be more innovative - imagine if instead of 100 levels we had just 10, but each being huge horizontal, maze like scenarios.

Oh, another thing that I disliked about EO is the story. Idk if we needed yet another Crystal Tower narrative, especially when there's Meracydia and Corvos for the future with certainly a lot of Allagan references. If they wanted a 'tech-themed' Deep Dungeon, they could've used an abandoned Garlean subterrane laboratory, exploring the same trope of bosses being the forgotten experiments. We could even revisit the Black Rose, or its origins.

[ty_taurus]

I'd love to see deep dungeons take a page out of Honkai Star Rail's book. The Simulated Universe is a piece of content in HSR that's similar to Deep Dungeons. The enemies become progressively more and more unfair to a standard party, but every enemy you defeat earn you a choice of random augments called "Blessings" that you can stack as your progress through the different floors, and there are different categories of blessings that, when stacked, enable you a special nuke based on which category you're stacking.

For example, the Preservation path revolves around barriers. Different passives do things like granting you a barrier after so many turns, or converting a percentage of the damage you take as a barrier, as well as attacks that increase the damage you deal based on the value of the barriers currently on you, and other things like that. You also gain a nuke that deals AoE physical damage that gets stronger the more barriers there are on your team. And there are a bunch of different routes you can take with these.

I don't think FFXIV should copy that exactly of course, but something that lets you collect random power ups, or collecting tokens that you can spend on different augments that change how you interact with the enemies and the dungeons would make deep dungeons way more interesting to replay over and over.

[Toutatis]

EO is frankly just a miserable experience for casual play. My partner and I cut our teeth doing full duo clears in POTD and HoH and were both looking forward to the new deep dungeon a lot, but our time spent just farming aetherpool was incredibly unfun with how even basic enemies took way too long to kill + the sheer amount that could spawn at once, to the point where new enemies spawning in before we could even clear out a room was a regular occurrence.

This is my biggest problem with Orthos. I love PotD and HoH but the amount of HP low level mobs (<40) have in Orthos is ridiculous. You hit like a wet noodle and so do they (unless you stand in stupid). In HoH and PotD I can go in solo at 0 aetherpool and start farming it by myself without any problem within a reasonable time. In Orthos, even at 99 aetherpool they take way too long to kill. If you move to the higher floors where things start to become interesting and happen to die, you have to clear that trash again. Just cutting the HP of lvl <40 mobs would go a long way for me. I prefer the attacks of the mobs in HoH and PotD vs the AoEs of EO.

I don't think the mechanics are hard though, you just need to know what kind of aoe the mobs do. Mobs do very little unavoidable damage.

I am ok with the layout and I find the bosses better than HoH and PotD.

[Deceptus]

Putting the Triple Triad card on floor 40, that requires a group, despite the card representing the level 10 floor boss was a boneheaded move.

[Toutatis]

Putting the Triple Triad card on floor 40, that requires a group, despite the card representing the level 10 floor boss was a boneheaded move.

It would also encourage participation for aetherpool farm. Atm it is dead contrary to the other two old dungeons. Lvl 30 would have been much better

[Bonoki]

It would also encourage participation for aetherpool farm. Atm it is dead contrary to the other two old dungeons. Lvl 30 would have been much better

The Aetherpool weapons is easily the worst of the three in aesthetics.