More difficult content is better, but you are forgetting about

[AnimalsALot]

Creativity.

Yoshi P told Famitsu that:

"On the other hand, we have received a lot of feedback from both inside and outside of Japan that this is fun, so we would like to continue in this direction for a while".

https://www.famitsu.com/article/202409/16065

This is a step in the right direction but difficulty isn't the only thing that casual content needs for FF14 to get past its rut.

Just go back in time to the age of ARR and HW. Think about the dungeons back then. Most were also hallway simulators but quite a few had an extra dose of flair to make them memorable and interesting when you get them in your roulette. These also gave you a chance for skill expression as you do the dungeon optimally and make people's lives easier.

Qarn NM: The tank needs to drag the stone faces onto the glowing platform. As an added opti trick, on a healer or DPS you can also grab one yourself off the tank to the other platform, opening up both doors.

Qarn HM: When the final boss locks onto someone, you can stun it to interrupt the mechanic and prevent someone from being zombified.

Qarn HM, Xelphatol: Dragging mobs onto spikes or under falling rocks damage them or give them vuln up.

Wanderer's NM: A Tonberry will constantly chase you in the dungeon, while you have to turn on valves and defeat enemies doing so.

Wanderer's HM: Totems on the ground buff up the enemies that you have to drag trash mobs out of.

A6: A gauntlet! Where timing your CCs (only really necessary in A6S admittedly) can make a difference on how smooth it goes.

Sohm Al (pre-change): Sleeping dragons will wake if players are too close. Avoiding them saves you a lot of time.

Dusk Vigil, Snowcloak: Blizzards damage your health over time. Drag those mobs out of the blizzards.

They might seem inconsequential but little quirks like these make the dungeon experience more interesting and give experienced players a chance to express their skill and knowledge. We need these back in normal content.

[Jeeqbit]

Good examples. I liked all of these things as well.

But it felt like I was one of the few people who even knew all of these things sometimes so I can sort of see why SE tried to make everything "super obvious" to new/casual players.

Even now I do dungeons like Xelphatol or Sohm Al HM or Halitali HM and don't see tanks drag them to the vulns. I feel like it would be satisfying if we were playing a game where a lot of players had a mindset where they looked out for stuff like this, looked at status effects, casts, observed their surroundings and made guesses, read things, but it's always just gone over the head of most dungeon players that I've seen, particularly in older dungeons, because there is a huge abundance of people with other interests like glam, RP, social interaction, hanging out, story, that don't necessarily involve optimizing things or trying to make smart decisions.

I can throw some other examples though:

• Saint Mocianne's Arboretum HM has water that you can turn on and drag them into. Plus mob AoEs that turn you into a plant.
• Shadowbringers dungeons have various interruptable casts on trash - which of course, players ignore giving more work to healers.
• Aetherochemical Research Facility has healers that used to be really annoying, and casters that could turn you to stone, so you could decide which of these things was most annoying and prioritize one.
• Neverreap, much like Qarn normal, has bees that do Final Sting so you can make them priority, kill them first via a single pull, stun (or time Holy) or time invuln or have faith in your party DPS.
• Pharos Sirius has a way to get lost that gave you vulns whereas you can optimize by knowing where to go, reduce the chance of wipes by your decisions with the mists and knowing how hard certain packs hit, things in the HM explode so you can optimize by getting in front of it faster, there is a giant breaking down a wall that you can pull or not, etc.
• Lost City HM I recall we focus the light elements first and some of them had gazes that of course most players just look at and get debuffed.
• Hullbreaker normal has traps you can get caught in and get a deadly DoT, the HM has a mob drop puddles and if you stand in it you (at least used) to be close to dead, the enemies at the end had various gimmicks and status effects so you could choose who was priority or your strat.
• Baelsar's Wall had NPCs that tether to you, and one that applies DoTs (such as to the tank or healer I recall). So you could make this priority. Some of the garlean machines all do their AoEs at once, so you could reduce the healer burden by stunning one.
• Mini-boss mobs in Sirensong Sea that you can interrupt to make them easier, and one of them you have to choose the right cast or interrupt is wasted.
• Bardam's Mettle there is a bird that applies a devastating DoT. It always helped healers to anticipate this DoT, either with mit, stuns, or whatever other strat you had for it, and made the big pull safer.
• Dzaemael Darkhold where the frogs are where we got knocked off in the past, one of them still applies a vuln to the tank. That vuln instantly makes you die to damage unless you invuln or it gets Esuna'd. The tanks that don't know either die or get saved by good DPS or a good healer that Esuna's. You can also do a gigantic pull from start to first boss, because the purple area mitigates so much that you don't even need a healer (literally did it without a healer on WAR), and that's due to the gimmick of the dungeon that many players aren't aware they can do.
• Dungeons with morbols that cast Bad Breath (stunable). Especially Aurum Vale! The positioning of them or how to tackle them can affect, well, if you are all sitting in debuffs.

[Hyperia]

I feel that most of the dungeons have been streamlined for those who are complaining that their expert takes too long. They want their 15 minute get it done already dungeon and move on. You can’t make those people happy so don’t bother. They should cater to the people who want to have fun in a dungeon rather to those who think it’s a chore.

Every expert dungeon is nearly the same with hardly any variations.

[Kes13a]

I feel that most of the dungeons have been streamlined for those who are complaining that their expert takes too long. They want their 15 minute get it done already dungeon and move on. You can’t make those people happy so don’t bother. They should cater to the people who want to have fun in a dungeon rather to those who think it’s a chore.

Every expert dungeon is nearly the same with hardly any variations.

its like Aurum Vale used to be a nice little dungeon that taught you to watch out for things, be aware of mobs and pay attention.

they nerfed it so a toddler can run through it.

they havent done them or their players any favours with this current direction. now its all just to run as fast as possible with no speedbumps.... makes things boring as hell.

[Garolymar]

XIVs biggest problem is how formulaic it is for sure. Every dungeon is basically the same thing with a new coat of paint. It extends to the classes as well where I think the biggest offender being that all 4 tanks are basically the same job with different SFX. We're probably not gonna see any big changes in DT but damn man I hope we get some interesting gameplay features in 8.0. Show me a dungeon I'd be surprised by instead of the usual hallway we've gotten a 100 times over.

[Jeeqbit]

I feel that most of the dungeons have been streamlined for those who are complaining that their expert takes too long.

Expert has taken me 16 minutes since I got to doing endgame stuff in Heavensward and learned to do big pulls and started doing raid content. I would time expert dungeons through my years playing and they were always 16 minutes, to the point I could queue 16 minutes before reset and clear a few seconds before reset in almost every case. The amount of times I cleared with that 1 minute left and got my daily bonus is crazy!

...now they are more like 11-14 minutes in recent times. Starting to get as quick as you can make some of the ARR dungeons. I'm not sure why this is. Maybe it's because tank AoE is better than it used to be (ie. PLD didn't even used to have any once upon a time or had a mere 100 potency whereas now they have this giant blade of faith burst). So now as a tank, I don't have to endure people single targeting enemies for an eternity and can just aoe them myself in seconds. Maybe all tanks having gap closers helps speed it up too?

Every expert dungeon is nearly the same with hardly any variations.

To be fair, their answer to that was variant dungeons. Just nobody values them as a solution to this and even if they are, they aren't part of the mainstream roulette.

[Supersnow845]

Expert has taken me 16 minutes since I got to doing endgame stuff in Heavensward and learned to do big pulls and started doing raid content. I would time expert dungeons through my years playing and they were always 16 minutes, to the point I could queue 16 minutes before reset and clear a few seconds before reset in almost every case. The amount of times I cleared with that 1 minute left and got my daily bonus is crazy!

...now they are more like 11-14 minutes in recent times. Starting to get as quick as you can make some of the ARR dungeons. I'm not sure why this is. Maybe it's because tank AoE is better than it used to be (ie. PLD didn't even used to have any once upon a time or had a mere 100 potency whereas now they have this giant blade of faith burst). So now as a tank, I don't have to endure people single targeting enemies for an eternity and can just aoe them myself in seconds. Maybe all tanks having gap closers helps speed it up too?

To be fair, their answer to that was variant dungeons. Just nobody values them as a solution to this and even if they are, they aren't part of the mainstream roulette.

The variant dungeons aren’t any different either, they are basically 3 routes that all share the same first boss and have a different second boss with boring trash in between but occasionally you press a rock or something

The core of variant dungeons is still boring trash between unimaginative bosses