People that say dungeons are too easy...

[Lium]

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.

I guess it's all relative. Everyone on the WoW forums disses their leveling and praises FFXIV's leveling, though some may be trolls. Grass is always greener.

[mallleable]

This might be a hot take, and I say this as someone who can heal, and tank some of the spicier pulls in like Bardam's Mettle or Mt. Gulg, but I feel like wall to wall pulls are not good gameplay. It is a hyper-efficient, but lazy strategy that has lead to stale dungeon design. And it's frustrating because CBU3 knows how to design engaging trash between bosses like in certain alliance raids, in large scale exploration zone raids, and in variant/criterion dungeons. I don't think dungeons should be incredibly difficult, they need to be approachable by everyone, but that is not an excuse for them to provide lazy gameplay. It really feels like dungeons are designed for players who only care about getting easy currency as opposed to those who want an adventure. The customer is always right, I guess...

[Avoidy]

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.

God I wish this were the case. You can get hit by sooooooooooo much and live through it. The punishment only feels real after you have a few vuln stacks and even then a healer can just top you off with like 1 tap. In expert dungeons it's ironically worse because after you see a mechanic once, it's so telegraphed and scripted that you'll know exactly where to be to never ever get hit by it again. And if you don't know where to be, odds are the other people in your party will, so you can just follow them and be fine. I don't even want some hardcore crazy stuff, but legit if dungeons were actually the way you described them I'd be happier. You can ignore so much right now. You can straight up burn bosses down before they even do a main mechanic sometimes. Been helping a friend level his tank lately while I'm on my healer, and it feels like after ARR the dungeons actually got easier because there were less opportunities to do a beefy wall to wall pull and the job kits are fleshed out more and can deal with things.

Heck, you say that stuff about expert dungeons, but it's hella common to just run expert with 3 DPS and 1 WAR because the mechanics are a joke, the pulls barely hurt, and having more dps is actually safer than having a healer because you can skip mechanics that might actually get people killed. idk how they can rework it but I hope they do because I'm sick of these hallway simulators, man. They're boring as hell.

[Mayhemmer]

I guess it's all relative. Everyone on the WoW forums disses their leveling and praises FFXIV's leveling, though some may be trolls. Grass is always greener.

Yeah. I'd just like some variety in leveling in XIV is all, but by the time that variety is implemented on-content, I've already leveled all of the other jobs I want. By the time Eureka Orthos was released, I didn't need to level any jobs, so it just became a thing I ran for rewards, and this may be a weird take, but that diminished my enjoyment of the content a good bit. I really think my main issue is that, in almost every regard, XIV is just outright slower than WoW, and that hurts my enjoyment of side-content.

I feel a lot of people would be less harsh on dungeons if they weren't the singular go-to method of leveling or grinding tomes.

[PyurBlue]

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?

First off in needs to be said that dungeon difficult itself is variable, though in a way that doesn't make much sense to me. Leveling dungeons are often harder than Expert ones, which I feel is backwards. Even within each category there is inconsistency. I'd like to see the difficulties evened out and for Expert dungeons in particular to have more challenging elements. Part of that would be incorporating more dynamic combat. Ideally you wouldn't be able to memorize your way through a dungeon. That alone would make it more difficult and more interesting since you'd need to pay attention. In addition damage needs to be tuned such that healers can't just ignore the tank. There have been cases where I'm so accustomed to the low damage in dunegeons that I forget to even check tank HP as a healer going into a pull. Mobs should also be more interesting to DPS and do more than just sit there and wait to die. I'm just throwing out random ideas, but mobs that may ignore aggro occasionally, or cast buffs (some that can't can interrupt but others that they can't so DPS need to focus on them).

Boss fights can be tweaked as well. The Sigma expert dungeon is final boss is interesting as a healer when you don't do it correctly because that's the only time you have anything to heal. I think the concept can be adjusted so that there are multiple ways to tackle a boss, some with more risk than others. That way less skilled healers can stick to the safe way while more skilled ones can give the rest of the party the OK to go the risky route.

[Anienai]

I want cataclysm type difficulty in dungeons.

Jin'do the Pugbreaker..

[Remember_The_Name]

Compare that to FFXIV dungeons where everything past level 50 has myriad one-shot mechanics

What?

You are constantly tap dancing and doing the Hokey Pokey to avoid instant death. Especially in Expert dungeons.

What...? Really?

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!

Are we playing different dungeons? Because so far, most of my roulettes, I have to pay extremely little attention to what actually happens on my screen, because even failed mechanics barely do anything to a player except rewarding them with a "badge of honor".

No, seriously, the dungeons difficulty actually starts to regress after 50, because eventually tanks gets their self-healing, healers gets their oGCDs so they can keep 11111 spam without interrupting to heal (which is a super exciting gameplay, thank you YoshiP!) and overall players get more ways to mitigate/avoid/heal the damage.

And lots of mechanics/small things that made dungeons challenging were neutered with Duty Support "reworking" them.

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?

I want dungeons to sometimes be something different than bland:
"2 trash packs | wall | 2 trash packs | boss -> repeat 2 times".

Or:
"A strictly scripted order of mechanics with 10 seconds of NOTHING between them"

I am okay with keeping them easy, but, please, let us have some semblance of randomness and add more mechanics that require unique interactions with players toolkit:

Binding/slowing/sleeping enemy; Interrupting the enemy (wasn't Endwalker last interruptable dungeon boss mechanic on level 87, lmao?); Esuna a detrimental debuff that is not a boring DOOM; mobs that ignore enmity list...

...and so on and so forth. I wish FFXIV dungeons were just like you described in your post, but, in reality, I can intentionally fail mechanics for fun and said "badges of honor" and get away with it (as a healer, of all roles)

[MsQi]

No, I said they are too linier.

[CidHeiral]

I have no problem with the current level of normal dungeon difficulty. It seems about right for the average player skill level. What I would like to see them do is just mix the formula up a little more. Every dungeon is just AOE pack, AOE another pack, boss arena, repeat. Add a puzzle you have to solve or some unique way you need to beat the trash mobs, or anything to break up the monotony. Those two mobs at the start of Qitana Ravel where you have to dodge the laser walls is a good example. The mob itself isn't interesting but the room requires you to use your brain a little bit while you fight it which is nice.

[kayll]

I want cataclysm type difficulty in dungeons.

Jin'do the Pugbreaker..

Wild times, set up CC on 5/6 targets in a trash pull or prepare to wipe lmao