I think SE needs to focus on making players feel important again.

[Ath192]

I was thinking just now why Endwalker feels so awful to play and it dawned on me that it’s because the game design is so bland I don’t feel like I or anyone matters anymore. It’s completely nihilistic and stale gameplay.

I am talking about normal content. As most of the game is normal content. For example our tank disconnected in Aerherfont, an expert dungeon and I tanked it as BLM while a very poorly geared SCH kept me alive. How poorly geared? Well he hasn’t played since he finished EW and only bought enough pieces in the market board to get his ilvl high enough. Did not meld them either.

So… people don’t needs tanks, they don’t need healers, and they sure don’t need DPS, then all we have is depression as a player. You don’t make a difference. Not really. And this is sad.

I know most of these elements were implemented because people felt too much pressure as a healer or tank, or didn’t want to fail or whatever. They tried to make it so people feel safe. But safety isn’t fun. By doing this the developers also took away the chance for players to shine and pull through. For people to notice and recognize who’s good at their job. None of this exists now. Everyone is indifferent to everyone.

In a quest to avoid conflict in their game at all costs they did not create happiness or success. They created silence and indifference. Before, in dungeons like the burn sure if a player wasn’t able to clear after several wipes people would get mad, or at orbonne monastery, but they also knew joy when things were completed. This is because people recognized that things took effort and well… they made a difference. People were important.

[KageTokage]

The difficulty curve in normal modes feels almost completely static from basically level 50 to 90 and that really shouldn't be the case especially when healers/tanks keep getting expanded kits that oft end up feeling like unneeded fluff outside of extreme and higher content.

You don't even need to burn all of your CDs to do wall to wall pulls while maintaining 100% uptime on DPS nowdays.

[Ath192]

The difficulty curve in normal modes feels almost completely static from basically level 50 to 90 and that really shouldn't be the case especially when healers/tanks keep getting expanded kits that oft end up feeling like unneeded fluff outside of extreme and higher content.

You don't even need to burn all of your CDs to do wall to wall pulls while maintaining 100% uptime on DPS nowdays.

It actually feels awful to use lilybell or panhaima in a dungeon. It’s so overkill I actually feel like I wasted a hugely powerful ability…. That will never be needed for most of the game…

I know this is different in savage and ultimate, of course, but it’s getting to the point where you actually feel terrible using them elsewhere.

[PercibelTheren]

It actually feels awful to use lilybell or panhaima in a dungeon. It’s so overkill I actually feel like I wasted a hugely powerful ability…. That will never be needed for most of the game…

I know this is different in savage and ultimate, of course, but it’s getting to the point where you actually feel terrible using them elsewhere.

I can't speak to Ultimate as I've never done those, but you absolutely don't need your whole kit in Savage unless something is going HORRIBLY wrong and at that point, it's a wipe anyway because fights no longer allow you to recover. There are so many body checks that you will wipe the moment people start dropping. Raidwide attacks in Savage are timed in a way that ensures either healer can just slap down an OGCD heal and not even think about it. It's kinda sad. Between little thought required and the fact that body checks have made rezing useless outside of prog, it makes me wonder why healers are even a role at this point.

[Supersnow845]

The difficulty curve in normal modes feels almost completely static from basically level 50 to 90 and that really shouldn't be the case especially when healers/tanks keep getting expanded kits that oft end up feeling like unneeded fluff outside of extreme and higher content.

You don't even need to burn all of your CDs to do wall to wall pulls while maintaining 100% uptime on DPS nowdays.

If anything the difficulty curve goes down especially on the support classes when they are flooded with tools they don’t need when they hit level 90

You can’t tell me you use seraph every time she comes off CD and also don’t overcap your fey gauge and also have to use every aetherflow on CD, like why do I have even half those heals let alone the fact I can keep the tank alive spamming adlo if I really want

[GoatOfWar]

If anything the difficulty curve goes down especially on the support classes when they are flooded with tools they don’t need when they hit level 90

You can’t tell me you use seraph every time she comes off CD and also don’t overcap your fey gauge and also have to use every aetherflow on CD, like why do I have even half those heals let alone the fact I can keep the tank alive spamming adlo if I really want

Don't worry mister healer, i will just press Equilibrium and Blood whetting so you don't have to heal me. And i will use shake it off so you don't have to heal the rest of the group. Not like there's any downsides to my medic tank to counterbalance the ridiculous sustain that i bring because that would be unfair.

[Mayhemmer]

The difficulty curve in normal modes feels almost completely static from basically level 50 to 90 and that really shouldn't be the case especially when healers/tanks keep getting expanded kits that oft end up feeling like unneeded fluff outside of extreme and higher content.

Some of the issue also stems from dungeon design being more or less standardized from 50 and onward. It's where the "dungeons are too formulaic" complaint comes from. When dungeons become too formulaic, how the player engages with them too becomes formulaic, and it becomes a routine. You just know what to expect for all of them moving forward, so you never really need to adapt to anything different. It's a big reason why I want the team to reconsider dungeon design in DT, or at the very least, make trash packs more engaging, by more frequently adding mobs that use mechanics that require some degree of awareness and are harsher on complacent players. Not to an unforgiving degree, but enough to give a hefty slap to players who aren't paying attention at the right times.

[Kreyd]

The difficulty curve in normal modes feels almost completely static from basically level 50 to 90 and that really shouldn't be the case especially when healers/tanks keep getting expanded kits that oft end up feeling like unneeded fluff outside of extreme and higher content.

You don't even need to burn all of your CDs to do wall to wall pulls while maintaining 100% uptime on DPS nowdays.

It actually feels like difficulty gets down once you've hit 50/60 dungeons. I wipe more often in old content than I ever would in 90 dungeons. 90 dungeons are just wall to wall pulls, where I throw my endgame rotation like a maniac at trash that has the size of an ARR boss, but still dies in 20 seconds max.

Does anyone remember how hard simple trash mobs in 50-60 dungeons could hit? Do you remember stuff like the wasps in Temple of Qarn or the poison in Aurum Vale? Hells, do you remember Diablos in Amdapor?! What happened to stuff like that???

[Jeeqbit]

Does anyone remember how hard simple trash mobs in 50-60 dungeons could hit?

They still hit that hard in leveling dungeons. It has a lot to do with the fact our gear is far better than the dungeons we are doing. Only the most casual players, who only ever equip dungeon loot, experience a high amount of damage coming in from patch dungeons. But our tools to deal with it are also better than in ARR (for example a PLD wouldn't have Holy Sheltron, a regen and constant healing from Requiescat attacks.

Do you remember stuff like the wasps in Temple of Qarn or the poison in Aurum Vale?

We did have interruptable mobs in Shadowbringers that, if not interrupted, significantly buffed their damage output or did strong raid-wide aoes that could almost wipe depending on the healer. But obviously healers and tanks have so many tools to handle even this that many of them push through it despite tanks not knowing what interrupts and stuns are.

Heavensward wasn't perfect but it was the game's first expansion so players were understandably willing to give the development team more room for error.

It was also the case that they listened more and expressed they were willing to. 1% of 300,000 players was 3,000. Now 1% is 12,000. The minorities have become louder and the division has clouded everything, so none of the minorities can be ignored. Instead they confuse everything for the developers so that they don't really know what to do or what to listen to.

Although things weren't great then, it was off the back of the failure that was 1.0, this extremely convenient version of an MMORPG (with /teleport and quests that only ask you to kill 3 enemies), the subsequent great story, a feeling that the story kept getting better and better, and that the visual and acoustic design got better with every patch with dungeons like Sohm Al and The Vault. When we got Final Steps, I was like wow! Then Xelphatol's visual detail just amazed me to look at it. Then Baelsar's Wall topped it. Then we got Stormblood's Sirensong Sea, Ala Mhigo with all the busy fighting going on in the background, The Swallow's Compass, The Burn completely topped everything for me and then we got Ghimlyt Dark which topped that.

At that point, the next dungeons like Holminster Switch were amazing, but that's really where it started to hit diminishing returns. They made dungeons as good as they could, visually and I'm sure it's not that they aren't making improvements, they just sort of reached the peak, so the "constantly impressed with how they keep making dungeons look better" became one of "this is just normal, it's always this good".

By this point the development team should have realised what is needed and what isn't for an expansion to have longevity. That's why Endwalker is more harshly criticised than Heavensward.

Yes, because staying power obviously hasn't been their goal. That was true in Shadowbringers to a degree, but WoW refugees would constantly talk highly of a quote from Yoshi-P saying he was alright with people taking breaks to play other games. With such overwhelming support for the concept of games not trying to keep you for long, is it any wonder that they double-downed on it in Endwalker?

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

It actually feels like difficulty gets down once you've hit 50/60 dungeons. I wipe more often in old content than I ever would in 90 dungeons. 90 dungeons are just wall to wall pulls, where I throw my endgame rotation like a maniac at trash that has the size of an ARR boss, but still dies in 20 seconds max.

Does anyone remember how hard simple trash mobs in 50-60 dungeons could hit? Do you remember stuff like the wasps in Temple of Qarn or the poison in Aurum Vale? Hells, do you remember Diablos in Amdapor?! What happened to stuff like that???

Most groups I was in could cheese the diabolos fight.

As for leveling content in 2.0, part of the reason it was harder was because ilvl sync worked differently back then. Originally it synced you to nq gear stats, not hq gear stats. Which means you were nerfed going in over the level of the dungeon. When they changed that stuff magically got way easier.