Feedback: Dawntrail MSQ dungeon difficulty

[Xurias]

I am posting in agreement to the original poster. I play this game as something to enjoy/relax after work, but starting with the first Trial (Valigarmande I think it was called) and onward anything involving a group has been more frustrating than enjoyable. I've had points where I failed multiple times trying to just get through to enjoy the story. I understand there was an extremely vocal minority that was complaining it was "too easy." I call them a vocal minority because from my experience if you queue up for trials / raids for anything that is Stormblood or later you will see a good number of people wiping to supposedly "too-easy" mechanics, which is an indicator to me difficulty was already high enough. This is not me trying to invalidate the opinion of those who did ask for higher difficulty, but merely using observation from my experiences to determine logical incorrectness in their statement of "too easy."

"Get good" does not always work and is not a valid response in all cases, there are literally past mechanics from older expansions I continue to have problems with even after encountering them at least 20 times, and I don't foresee practice making any difference on these. These are some examples of mechanics I will never be able to "get good" at:

1. Zodiark "Astral Eclipse" from Endwalker.
2. The Neir raid fight with the black and white blocks
3. Ultima the high seraph has some weird off-screen mechanic that kills me and I never see where it comes from.
4. Tower of Zot's Sanduruva, specifically Manusya Confuse. I'm on the autism spectrum, and have some difficulty picking up body language and facial expressions. The differences in the poses are too subtle for me to pick up and process this mechanic. To me they all just look the same. I'm unable to do this mechanic on my own, and have to follow the trust NPC's or follow a player and hope they run to the right spot.

What I ponder is since they seem to have caved into the demand for more difficulty, how much bigger is this red list going to get?

If the difficulty of a dungeon or raid is too easy then at best the "hurt me more" folks go into autopilot mode, and at worst they find it boring and won't like doing that particular raid or dungeon. If the difficulty is too high on the other hand then the "chill" folks will find it makes the game frustrating at best, or if it's an MSQ piece and required it becomes a brick wall at worst and makes the game feel unbeatable, to a point they feel they may as well quit since they cannot progress. The difference here is that in the case of too easy the "hurt me more" folks can finish it and be done with it then eventually move onto their extremes/ultimates where they will be hurt more from mechanics and difficulty. But the "chill" folks hitting a brick wall in MSQ trials/dungeons literally aren't going to complete the game, and quit.

[Zehrylin]

4. Tower of Zot's Sanduruva, specifically Manusya Confuse. I'm on the autism spectrum, and have some difficulty picking up body language and facial expressions. The differences in the poses are too subtle for me to pick up and process this mechanic. To me they all just look the same. I'm unable to do this mechanic on my own, and have to follow the trust NPC's or follow a player and hope they run to the right spot.

Unless they've changed the way it works, I can help you with this one. If you look at the quest list, at the top should be the Duty tasks and it should have the boss name with a health bar. If you click on that, it should target the real boss out of all the fakes, and you can run to safety. That's how I have to do it, because otherwise it's the same for me, I'm too slow at seeing which one isn't doing some sort of emote. It takes my brain too long to process them all.

[HelSpites]

4. Tower of Zot's Sanduruva, specifically Manusya Confuse. I'm on the autism spectrum, and have some difficulty picking up body language and facial expressions. The differences in the poses are too subtle for me to pick up and process this mechanic. To me they all just look the same. I'm unable to do this mechanic on my own, and have to follow the trust NPC's or follow a player and hope they run to the right spot.

Someone's already gone ahead and given you the solution to this one, but I'm curious; not being able to read expressions is one thing, but for this mechanic, all the clones are moving and the real one is standing absolutely still. Are you saying that you can't differentiate between movement and no movement? Like, if there are two people in front of you and one is standing ramrod straight and still and the other is flapping their arms, you can't tell any difference between them? Do they both look the same to you?

[ArielTimeshrine]

"Get good" does not always work and is not a valid response in all cases, there are literally past mechanics from older expansions I continue to have problems with even after encountering them at least 20 times, and I don't foresee practice making any difference on these. These are some examples of mechanics I will never be able to "get good" at:

1. Zodiark "Astral Eclipse" from Endwalker.
2. The Neir raid fight with the black and white blocks
3. Ultima the high seraph has some weird off-screen mechanic that kills me and I never see where it comes from.
4. Tower of Zot's Sanduruva, specifically Manusya Confuse. I'm on the autism spectrum, and have some difficulty picking up body language and facial expressions. The differences in the poses are too subtle for me to pick up and process this mechanic. To me they all just look the same. I'm unable to do this mechanic on my own, and have to follow the trust NPC's or follow a player and hope they run to the right spot.

1. Astral Eclipse is consistent, actually, and can always be dodged the same way.
2. I'll give you Nier. Nier is hard even if you're actually good.
3. Have you ever tried, y'know, paying attention to how the crystals get moved and blast you with cross AoEs?
4. Have you ever tried, y'know, looking for DoT ticks that very definitely don't immediately give the real boss away?

[Medbread]

1. Zodiark "Astral Eclipse" from Endwalker.
2. The Neir raid fight with the black and white blocks
3. Ultima the high seraph has some weird off-screen mechanic that kills me and I never see where it comes from.
4. Tower of Zot's Sanduruva, specifically Manusya Confuse. I'm on the autism spectrum, and have some difficulty picking up body language and facial expressions. The differences in the poses are too subtle for me to pick up and process this mechanic. To me they all just look the same. I'm unable to do this mechanic on my own, and have to follow the trust NPC's or follow a player and hope they run to the right spot.[/COLOR]

I can kind of understand 1 and 2 if you have a disability.
I can't even remember 3 because I think every time I hit the Orbonne Monastery in Roulettes, I shut my brain off and come out of it having cleared it.
4 though, I can try to offer a bit of advice; Stop trying to look for minute details with the poses. When they drop, every single one will be moving, the safe one stands completely still. Like, it doesn't even do an idle animation, it's literally I-posing. I don't know how your autism affects you, so this might not be possible for you, but once I see "Manusya Confuse" on the castbar, I usually zoom all the way out (I always am fully zoomed out in combat anyways) and then DON'T focus on any particular one. The one that isn't moving will usually catch my attention and stand out.

[Conando]

I finally did them (I took my time) and I think, for the most part, they are just fine in terms of "keeping you awake" and engaged. Leonogg is obnoxious and they probably have to do something about those add hitboxes or how long the beheaded status lasts.

[dullneedles]

I'm still beating my head against Vanguard. I've got gimpy hands from a stroke and I've gotten a little better at remembering that the trust members will run out of an AoE at the last possible second which will squash you if you're a step behind but haven't gotten past the second boss before getting booted from the instance. And they're programmed to screw up and just eat the hit in multiple places, so sitting on top of them just kills you immediately

[Raziek91]

Difficulty in this expac has been fantastic. I want to see more of the same, or even harder dungeons. It's about time we treated players like they should know how mechanics work.