ELI5: How are the current dungeons hard?

[Exani]

I dont get it.

The current set of "Expert roulette" dungeons feels the same as it has always been. Some mechanics might be hard-ish to dodge, but they are very rarely very punshing if you mess it up. As a DPS or healer its mostly no problem to mess up a mechanic 2-3 times during a fight, a tank can probably survive even more mess ups. And even if you should die you can revived and its usally no problem. There is no enrage, and very few mess ups are punshing for the entire party, a mess up will usally just affect yourself. Almost any mess up or subpar play from 1-2 party members is recoverable.

I have over 1500 hours in this game and I think I can count on one hand every time I've encountered someone complaining about subpar play in roulette/duty finder content. Most people dont care if you die 5 times during a dungeon run since the dungeon is still clearable without much issue.

This feels the same as it has always been. I dont get it.

[jdtuggey]

The difficulty feels the same, yeah, once you get used to the slightly faster pace, the feeling of "this is harder" disappears, the feeling of "this is more engaging" remains though.
Helps that the fights are more visually stimulating and creative too. :3

[Connor]

ELI5 version: more bad circles that kill you than before, sometimes the bad things aren’t even circles anymore!

Really though as the poster above said it’s simply that they’ve changed the pacing / frequency of when mechanics occur that have thrown people for a loop. I’m already seeing everyone who isn’t new fully adjusted to it though, so I rarely see anyone having difficulty with content anymore.

Also want to add that as someone playing since 2.0 release I’ve had the same experience with ‘complaints about subpar performance’. In that, they’re rarely ever made, at least in normal content. Like it doesn’t really matter how ‘bad’ anyone was (it’s me I’m the bad lol) people don’t normally start fighting with each other or throwing insults. And I mean, why would they in normal content? If you ask me I don’t really think it matters how well you do as long as you at least try. The only thing I won’t forgive is just being lazy. DPS spamming one attack and doing illlogical rotations (i.e ice mage), tanks not using mitigation, healers not bothering to use one of their billion dps-neutral healing oGCDs. Like, yeah normal content easy and boring, but that doesn’t give you the right to just phone it in lol

[Post]

Bosses do things more often, sometimes not respecting your precious 2 min windows.

Tells are more 'Chimera' or 'Coincounter', less 'FATE boss'.

Someone is more likely to wipe or die the first time they try, thus proclaimed 'difficult', nevermind still being able to succeed in a timely fashion.

Trash sometimes does 'something' rather than 'nothing'.

The speed of the encounters, from how often mechanics come to how quickly they combine (i.e. shorter 'tutorial' phases' is the single greatest thing to spill out of Criterion.

[Exani]

Really though as the poster above said it’s simply that they’ve changed the pacing / frequency of when mechanics occur that have thrown people for a loop.

I mean sure, but failing most of these mechanics are still not very punshing. Most mechanics are survivable with 1-2 vuln-stacks before you die, and even if you die you get revived. Max level dungeon bosses has always had some mechanics that are harder to dodge the first time you encounter them, but they are also always not very punishing when you mess it up. For me this is what defines "normal" content in FFXIV. You get to experience and learn mechanics without any punishing failure

[Connor]

I mean sure, but failing most of these mechanics are still not very punshing. Most mechanics are survivable with 1-2 vuln-stacks before you die, and even if you die you get revived. Max level dungeon bosses has always had some mechanics that are harder to dodge the first time you encounter them, but they are also always not very punishing when you mess it up. For me this is what defines "normal" content in FFXIV. You get to experience and learn mechanics without any punishing failure

I’m not suggesting failing them does carry more or equal punishment compared to other expansions, just that the pacing is slightly different which is causing people to mistake the mechanics as being ‘harder’ and not just ‘different’

[EiraWoqiso]

The common issues I see stem from people not recognizing "non-standard" tells. If there's not a circle/square AOE on the ground, they don't know it's an AOE. In these situations during normal content, the AOE only appears for a moment, and at that point it's too late because they aren't looking for boss position/cast name tells. Coupled with that, some of the mechanics do have a little more strict execution - nothing more difficult that like, Aglaia-tier difficulty, but still more strict than Endwalker was. Adding these two together, you get a situation where some people don't understand how they're messing up/blame lag, and are struggling to execute the ones that they DO see, so they eat a ton of vulns or other debuffs. They usually are the same people that only play with trusts, so that death is a full wipe instead of a raise/just keep killing the boss situation.

It's a combination of a few things - Endwalker lowering the skill floor below the basement, no ingame tutorial on how these low-intermediate mechanics work (to set the expectation that this is how the game is); and as much as I hate to say it, a skill issue.

[Exani]

They usually are the same people that only play with trusts, so that death is a full wipe instead of a raise/just keep killing the boss situation.

I actually did all the Dawntrail MSQ dungeons with Duty Support NPCs for the first time ever (since the DPS queue times were horrible). I found that running dungeons with the NPCs is a very nice way of learning mechanics. With no other players there is no lag and all the NPCs execute the mechanics "perfectly" so you can just pick one of them to follow around to find the safespot when you are unsure about a new mechanic. You also get to see more mechanics since their DPS is so bad.

[CidHeiral]

They aren't hard. You just have to actually be awake and pressing your buttons in more or less the right order which is a bridge too far for some people used to AFKing through everything in Endwalker.

[Zano]

Yeah, I didn't personally think they were too difficult. After reading a majority of the threads it seems like a majority of people that are struggling have issues like age, physical disabilities, or something like anxiety that is causing them to struggle with the slightly increased pace and the telegraphs that are a little bit more subtle. There are a few exceptions I've seen where people seem to not be taking advice from players trying to help them understand the mechanics, but that seems to be the minority of the minority.

I think that an easy way to fix this would be to include some sort of echo or boost on the first clear with story trusts to help players that are just flat struggling with getting through the content but want to experience the story. It helps with first clears for people that are struggling and doesn't nerf my enjoyment of the new dungeons.