People that say dungeons are too easy...

[Lium]

Quick preface. I have been playing WoW: Dragonflight for the past month or so and got a character to max level over there. I am maining a Havoc Demon Hunter. (It kind of goes with my reaper main here.)

It takes no time at all to level a toon in WoW and it is an overall very shallow and empty experience, as most of the WoW community will readily tell you. (Just take a peep at their forums. It's just as bad as this one.)

But running dungeons is still the fastest way to level up, so I ran a bunch of Dragonflight dungeons and previous expansion dungeons on the way to level 60.

The dungeons are a complete joke, even at level 70. Everyone just ignores mechanics and the vast majority of boss fights are tank and spanks and they die in seconds. These are normal dungeons and if you want a greater challenge you run mythics, but normal dungeons is how you level.

Compare that to FFXIV dungeons where everything past level 50 has myriad one-shot mechanics that require you to be aware of your surroundings and to watch what the boss is doing. You are constantly tap dancing and doing the Hokey Pokey to avoid instant death. Especially in Expert dungeons.

I didn't have a care in the world while running WoW dungeons because mechanics in normal dungeons are inconsequential. I do, however, have to pay attention in roulettes because the moment I get complacent after running the same dungeon over and over again, I can die instantly. And sometimes do!

So, in your opinion, when you say dungeons here are too easy, what kind of challenge level are you looking for exactly? Should everything be on the level of Criterion dungeons?

[Zeastria]

I'm fine with lowbe dungeons beeing easy.. They're intented for new players....
Note: MMOs will become easy over time,
but that's because you have gotten better at the game/+ has way more expereince....
However that's not true for a complete new player!.

- Entry level should be low, and slowly build up!

(Just because i find dungeons easy,
doesn't mean i want it to be harder..
for the reasons above!)

[Ardeth]

I'm fine with lowbe dungeons beeing easy.. They're intented for new players....
Note: MMOs will become easy over time, but that's because you have gotten better at the game/+ has way more expereince....However that's not true for a complete new player!.

- Entry level should be low, and slowly build up!

(Just because i find dungeons easy,
doesn't mean i want it to be harder..
for the reasons above!)

Also, I mean, what can you do to a dungeon to make it harder? More HP? More ground effects? People are still going to wall to wall and aoe grind them down. The dungeons are still basically hallways. I just can't see a world where anything meaningful will come out of harder trash or harder bosses. If anything, you'd probably see a decline in players more than an increase. Like a dead game mode, etc. Like criterion or heck, even Eureka Orthos. That place was dead week 2. It's just not what people want.

[Deceptus]

Also, I mean, what can you do to a dungeon to make it harder?

"Tankbusters" that actually take more than 25% of the tanks total HP unmitigated

Frequent small aoe damage (think Barbariccia)

Big enemies that hit REALLY F*ing HARD in trash packs that have to be focused down first or CC'd and moved away so the group aoe don't hit them (requires DPS with CC to actually think instead of hurr durr flare goes BOOM)

Lots of ways.

[AnnRam]

I'm fine with lowbe dungeons beeing easy.. They're intented for new players....
Note: MMOs will become easy over time,
but that's because you have gotten better at the game/+ has way more expereince....
However that's not true for a complete new player!.

- Entry level should be low, and slowly build up!

(Just because i find dungeons easy,
doesn't mean i want it to be harder..
for the reasons above!)

Low level dungeons ok, most of them are 10 years old but current ones just no.

[Jeeqbit]

when you say dungeons here are too easy, what kind of challenge level are you looking for exactly? Should everything be on the level of Criterion dungeons?

To me, I just want tank busters to kill if mitigation isn't used, raid-wides to kill if Reprisal or other mitigation isn't used and for attacks not to be telegraphed with orange (at least until after it's too late to avoid).

They have mostly avoided telegraphing with orange since Shadowbringers and especially in Endwalker. If you take the Aetherfont, for example, almost the entirety of the first fight is looking at the surroundings to see what will explode first, where the boss is aiming and the orange only appears when there's not much time to avoid it. The second boss is just looking at the lines and anticipating where the aoes will be based on them. The third octopus boss hardly telegraphs with orange at all until it's too late, so you actually have to learn the script and learn how to read where the safe spots are or you will get hit by everything.

In fact, if you don't know how to read the surroundings to figure out the mechanics of that octopus boss and don't follow anyone, you will probably get a lot of vuln stacks and die quite a bit.

That is a massive improvement over, say, the Sastasha first boss and the nerfed Coincounter fight in Aurum Vale, the style of boss that amounts to "run out of the orange area, nothing else".

So why do people say dungeons are too easy despite how far they've come to have a fight like that Octopus boss?

I think it's because of repetition. People repeated this dungeon several times a week to cap tomestones, so regardless of making it require some environmental attention, people get the fight on farm pretty quick and then they can do it without thinking as much. If there was a random order to the mechanics, it might not go quite so smoothly, but since they know exactly what is coming next they know when they can relax and just treat the boss like a striking dummy.

[KenZentra]

I think its fine dungeons are easy, but I think there should be harder mode for them. For a normal mode, I dont think Tank Busters and AoE's should kill you for messing up or anything, but in the harder mode, they should nearly kill you, and absolutely KO you for Tank busters with no mit. Im fine if it just hits harder, or even if there are more mechanics for them while keeping the same feel of the fight. (ie. Do not make the current mechanics do something completely different, but with the same visual effects.)

Keep their reward appropriate for the challenge of course too. Do not make "hard" mode dungeons be glams, mounts, furniture and the such. It can have those, but not the sole things you get. We need gear, or some kind of progression with it. Give a bunch of tomes or something at the barest minimum.

[Malakii]

Personally, I think dungeons are fine and should be left as is. I think the criterion should continue and be the supplement of a hard version of Dungeons. Though I think there should be changes to criterion such as the normal mode having no raising limit and the savage mode being the one capped at 1 that refreshes over the dungeon. The issue comes down to rewards, but I think at least giving players a twine or shine for completing it at the bare minimum each week is a step in the right direction to gear alt jobs or to help new people gear up faster. With no raising in savage, it gets compared to an ultimate and I don't see a reward that they could add that would make people feel like it was worth it with the current gearing structure unless they added in a whole new combat system such as augements that could lower cd or give you new abilities.

[kayll]

Normal dungeons in WoW are basically just test runs for Mythic+.
They can make their normal dungeons easier because there are ways to scale them up to a difficulty that is actually challenging to each individual player, once you start doing Mythics you actually need to know the dungeon and your class to progress.

FF sadly doesn't have anything like that so I think only comparing normal dungeons in WoW to dungeons in FF in a vacuum doesn't make any sense.

[Mayhemmer]

I actually think individual boss mechanics in dungeons are interesting enough, and trash packs are... okay, so long as they aren't just spamming AoE puddles on random party members every 3 seconds, which happens in a few dungeons and I will always hate unconditionally. Boss mechanics, I think, are complex enough to give that puzzle-solving challenge to first-timers. Additionally, a lot of them are also designed in a way to not JUST effect inexperienced players who don't immediately know the solution. Plenty of mechanics effect the entire group of done incorrectly, which I do like because, if anything, it adds a bit more challenge to work around for experienced players.

So, when it comes to actual difficulty and time-to-kill, I'm mostly satisfied. There's just two issues I have with dungeons, and by extension, other """leveling methods""" the game provides. That being dungeon design, and viability for leveling.

I'd just like dungeons to steer a bit away from the [hallway with two trash packs > wall > boss > hallway trash x2 > wall > boss >] formula. I don't think I need to elaborate, it's been parroted to death at this point.

As for leveling, dungeons, or rather roulettes, still remain the fastest way, and if you don't have any more roulettes, you just spam your highest dungeon. I'd like to have alternatives in Dawntrail that are ACTUAL alternatives, from the start. Not 3 months after launch. You say WoW's leveling process is dull, but to me, XIV's is just as dull when leveling other jobs. I've recently been playing WoW, and going through Legion and BFA campaigns on two separate characters, and while the storylines may not be the fastest way to level, it's a breath of fresh air to actually have overworld content be a means of leveling. Comparatively, I'm just about out of patience for XIV's approach to MSQ questing when leveling.

If XIV's overworld sidequests actually felt worth doing for experience, and weren't so SLOW, then I'd be happy to do them. I've grown to hate quest pacing in general in XIV, so WoW not throwing a hand in my face while side characters exposition their life stories at me while I stand there with cement boots feels wonderful.