People that say dungeons are too easy...

[Lium]

This is mostly accurate. I can't think any mechanic in any dungeon that one-shots you, and mechanics that used to do this have had their fights adjusted so they don't anymore. What I have noticed with dungeons is that they try to combine unavoidable damage with mechanics to dodge so that one or the other will kill the player if they are hit by both of them without healer attention.

I think what I was referring to by one-shot mechanics can more accurately be described as mechanics that overlap.

Like in the final boss fight in the most recent dungeon. There are circle AOEs that appear all around the arena where if you do them incorrectly, they won't kill you but can take off a chunk of your life and give you a vuln stack. Later in the fight, the circle AOEs are accompanied by a spread marker, that you have to time with the circle AOEs. If you do this incorrectly, you will die. At least I did .

So, I think it's overlapping mechanics that can one-shot you, and not one single mechanic if done incorrectly. But taking a couple stacks of vuln means you'll likely die if you do something else wrong.

Also, completely off-topic, but I like your sig. It reminds me of this image of Artemis:

[Renathras]

I think the issue is high end players grind them for things (tomestones, mostly), and feel bored in them. If it's once for MSQ, most people are fine since they're more focused on the spectacle and the story being presented (especially in story heavy ones) the first time. But the daily Expert grind is where players that do Ultimates run into the people that do MSQ only, in MSQ content, and get annoyed that the content is "too easy". (There ARE some cases where they feel this the first time doing things, but I think generally most people are willing to accept one "boring" run of something brand new they've never experienced before).

Now, some people think dungeons need to be "teaching people how to play the game", but true "MSQ heroes" (that is, people who only do MSQ) don't really need a higher level of skill. And you aren't going to get people up to Savage level doing even ARR Hard dungeons. Aurum Vale was a COMPLETELY different kind of "hard" than Pandaemonium, so while "hard", it wouldn't really teach people how to be good Savage raiders in P9-12S. Not to mention lots of players don't want to, and never will, do Savage anyway. This is really more an argument there needs to be a better gradient/learning curve of midcore content to bridge the gap than it is an argument for making MSQ encounters harder.

So with that out of the way, the real problem isn't dungeons are too easy.

The real problem is people who want to do harder things have to do them over and over again (especially Expert dungeons) for tomestones.

The solution, imo, is to make an alternate tomestone grind that's about the same rate of return (e.g. if an Expert takes 10 mins and gets you 90 tomes for the daily and 40 more for each non-daily roulette run, then a Criterion roulette that took 20 mins should give 180 for the first and 80 for subsequent runs that day), so that they feel they have an option to do something more their speed but still be as efficient at gaining tomes by doing so instead of a step DOWN in efficiency.

Some people would still complain, some people would do Experts "because it's more reliable/easier", then complain how they're bored. But they'd be bringing that on themselves so have no room to complain, imo. Just as there are people who complain SMN is too easy...then play SMN in Savage/Ultimates because it's "more reliable" than BLM (because it's easier). In my book, you cannot choose an easier thing then complain that it's easier since you had a choice to do something harder and chose not to yourself. That's on you at that point, not the game/devs/casuals/etc.

I think the solution is to give people the choice, then let them go as they want. And tell them, if they complain, it's their own damn fault because they had an option of something harder to do but chose the easier thing completely on their own and thus have no room to complain about what they inflicted on themselves.

[Gemina]

It's not a bad dungeon, but I've been through clears with no healers without losing DPS to bosses since week one. It still seems a little low risk for the Expert category.

Sure enough. However, I will always stress the no healers and no healing is not the same thing. WARs bloodwhetting and melee DPS bloodbath on trash is not only healing, it is also excessively so. This isn't a testament to dungeons being easy so much as it is to unbalanced job design. You take this away, and the risk factor of expert dungeons increases beyond what it currently is without question.

[SargeTheSeagull]

And there's the contrast: XIV has no difficulty levels beyond the normals. It's less of a steamroll than WoW's normals (minus the occasional over-/better-tuned Timewalking while leveling), but there's no other options.

This should be the end of the discussion. 14 needs dungeons that have difficulty between normal and criterion.

[Gemina]

I think what I was referring to by one-shot mechanics can more accurately be described as mechanics that overlap.

Like in the final boss fight in the most recent dungeon. There are circle AOEs that appear all around the arena where if you do them incorrectly, they won't kill you but can take off a chunk of your life and give you a vuln stack. Later in the fight, the circle AOEs are accompanied by a spread marker, that you have to time with the circle AOEs. If you do this incorrectly, you will die. At least I did .

So, I think it's overlapping mechanics that can one-shot you, and not one single mechanic if done incorrectly. But taking a couple stacks of vuln means you'll likely die if you do something else wrong.

I gotcha. Thanks for the clarification. I love the Antlion boss of this dungeon. He is what Scarmiglione should have been in terms of threat level and abilities. His main mechanic with the pathway memorization charges and falling pillars is on par with some EX trials, and the mechanic also puts the healer on an increased alert level. You will also deal with it at least once, if not twice each encounter.
In contrast, the Shark boss in the Aetherfont dungeon toughest mechanic is when he makes the small AoEs and the large AoEs go off in succession, which makes finding the correct spot to stand more difficult. The issue with this mechanic is he will die before this even has a chance to go off with a high DPS group, and the large AoEs should quite honestly one-shot you because the mechanic can essentially be ignored simply by standing somewhere that avoids getting double clipped by the large AoEs. But I have seen this mechanic even drop tanks who eat all the damage without mitigation.

Also, completely off-topic, but I like your sig. It reminds me of this image of Artemis:

Thank you! I am an absolutely enamored with Greek mythology and the sig is inspired by Persephone prior to her abduction by Hades, which lead to what we know as the four seasons of Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. The picture you linked is wonderful, and something I would love to display in my home!

[Bad_Luck]

If dungeons are to easy then why are people still dying in them? Dungeons should be entry-level content. So anybody could come in and run them without to much trouble. People who want high difficulty can seek that out if they want it. It shouldn't be the default. This is not Dark Souls. This is a subscription model MMO, it needs players to stay alive.

But change things to make the grind more interesting? Hell yes, please please please. The grind sucks.

[Akonyl]

I'm not really looking for hard challenges from dungeons, but as a DPS player I do wanna have to use my brain a bit. It seems like for the most part, doing wall-to-wall depends on the tank+healer, and not so much the dps. The dps has to kill the stuff quick enough, but unless it's super egregiously bad dps, if the party wipes because the tank ran out of CDs when the fight dragged too long, the blame's probably going onto the tank or healer.

Bosses are largely fine, they have actual mechanics to do. They're not tough, but they're there.

I'd just like more trash pulls that require people to acknowledge what's going on beyond avoiding orange circles. For example:
-Add an interruptable ice spikes mechanic to a certain mob in a group. If the DPS ignores it and keeps on aoeing, they eat ice spikes + either die, or get a damage down, or something. They gotta look at the enemy list, interrupt it when it starts, and then go back to AoEing.
-One mob that tethers/covers another mob, and that mob starts casting a big spell. You gotta focus the covering mob, so you can kill it before the other guy gets off his big spell. The spell probably gives damage down if it goes off.
-Players get a buff that makes it so only they can attack a spooky ghost enemy, or something
-enemies that hit softly, but give stacking vulns to the player they hit, so that the tank explicitly has to let the dps/healer tank it
-enemies that explode with decent unavoidable damage/stacking debuff when they die, requiring them to be killed single-target (like cochmas in sephirot ex) to avoid stacking the damage/debuffs too high
Not all of these at once, mind you, just put one in each pack or something.

Really, they just need to put in mechanics that you need to acknowledge, and which give damage downs as a mark of shame when you mess up. Especially in a roulette, DD stacks are a great way to show people they're messing up, and incentivize them not to, without just making it actually a lot more strain on the tank/healer who have to heal them more/etc. I'm not looking for roulette dungeons to have mechanics that need raidplans, I just want stuff that isn't so easily brute-forceable that SE had to implement more actual walls in dungeons to keep people from trying to bruteforce dungeons so hard.

[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.

[Jojoya]

But change things to make the grind more interesting? Hell yes, please please please. The grind sucks.

Which grind are you referring to?

It's hard to improve things if you're not specific about what you see as a problem. "The grind" is too generic of a term.

[Rithy255]

I think theirs serval issues with current dungeons, but the solutions may make some upset. I think for one damage spikes in wall to wall pulls should come back, and or even stopping tanks from being walled off (until boss) so more experienced tanks can large pull again, at least more ways to actually have more impact as tank/healer without feeling gate kept every other mob pack... funnily how strong your defensives are at 90, but the higher the level you are the amount of pulls get less with each expansion.

Add Damage downs as a punishment for failing mechs, tanks especially can just eat vun stacks, honestly sometimes its ideal to stand in a AOE just because the vun stack literally does nothing and all tanks can just kind of ignore it in normal content without taking away from healer gcds (I guess i like the esuna if you failmechs at least).

Personally I'd like harder modes of dungeons (not expert/savage level). Maybe even scaling dungeons that drop better gear/tomes, only issue would be the queue times.. so that "scaling" would have to be limited to a set amount, we've seen that if the reward isn't good enough then theirs no point doing so, I'd like increased Tomes and better level loot drops (Not on savage level, maybe can be slightly better then crafted levels on non-crafted patches). Hard/scaled modes would basically be the same dungeon just more damaged and mechs would be harder, I wouldn't see it take up much more time as a addition... I think the current savage dungeons wasn't what I wanted when I wanted more "midcore" dungeons, as those are just savage level content.