I thought the Deep Dungeon would be something new, but this is just Palace again...

[Underscore]

I'm not going crazy, am I?

When the new deep dungeon was first announced the slide said "New plans for Deep Dungeon", and it seemed like it would be something different to the usual DD format.

This sentiment was repeated in the previous live letter. After how Eureka Orthos went it seemed like CBU3 was acknowledging the format had become stale and that another copy-paste of Palace of the Dead wasn't going to work.

I was under the impression that maybe the devs were finally thinking outside the box and breaking the formula for once, and that the deep dungeon could actually be something different and interesting.
...

Fast forward to the live letter today, and they're saying it's different - but then they go on to show what appears to be yet another reskin of Palace/Heaven on High.

There are a couple of QoL changes like extra checkpoints and matched parties being allowed above floor 30, and a separate savage/ultimate trial which looks cool - but the deep dungeon itself is the same as always.

- Same 100 floors with a boss every 10 floors
- Same pomanders
- Same floor effects but repackaged as an optional interactable
- Same aetherpool progression (your actual gear from savage is useless again)
- Same chests, same potsherds luminous oil, and weapons you can get outside the dungeon

When I pointed this out, people told me it's completely different because it's "horizontal".

But in the stream there was no horizontal movement, just teleporting to the next instanced floor via the cairn of passage like every other DD. Maybe it's "canonically" horizontal? But that's just a buzzword that doesn't affect the actual gameplay, it's functionally the same as being "vertical". Literally nothing was changed in this regard.

Am I missing something here?

[Underscore]

The new trial does look interesting, and requiring items from the DD to enter the trial could be good for dungeon's player count - assuming the trial has good and repeatable rewards that is.

I'm just a little disappointed that the actual deep dungeon, which the majority of players will be doing, doesn't offer anything substantially different to past iterations of Deep Dungeon beyond the scenery.

[Jeeqbit]

Ultimately whether it's different is going to depend on what aspect you were expecting to be different.

I don't view the changes as QoL so much as a complete rethink about the approachability of the content and motivating people to do it in the first place, without needing to commit an entire day to it with a real life backpack of snacks.

I do think they could experiment a little more more with pomanders and floor effects to fit the theme of each DD. But that isn't really the only factor in DD since it depends on how they did the mob patrols and mechanics, as well as the boss mechanics.

I'm glad they went with the vertical idea, because I thought of that since we got DD, because mazes exist and they are usually horizontal. I personally find aesthetic differences valid, and the lore of traveling through it will be nice.

A lot of the innovation is at the end with the last boss, being less frustrating to get back up to it, being more rewarding and the quantum boss where you can modify mechanics and difficulty.

[Raikai]

Of course, I'd love a TOTAL new deep dungeon experience, but from what they showed, it feels more innovative than HoH was in relation to PotD compared to EO in relation to HoH, which seems like a big improvement without being what I really wanted to see.

In the end, the final verdict can only be relayed by actually playing it, so I'll wait. I swore EO would be okay-not-great but on practice was... meh.

[Bryson]

Palace didn't "cushion" how far back they send you if your party wipes
Palace didn't allow you to prog the last boss in a separate instance
Palace didn't have Quantum difficulty that allows players to decide amongst themselves how difficult they want the boss to be with "offerings."

So yeah.. you're missing something here.

[Pip_Chick]

I don't think it will be anything new, just the same old stuff. The harder difficulty sounds like those unkillable Orthos mobs but with extra steps.
FFXIV to all of a sudden do a 180 to more interesting content would mean they could have done it at any moment but couldn't be asked. But what I actually think will be is just another POTD dance dance revolution with a final raid boss taped on top.
I will need to play it to see for myself and try the system out, but I don't think it would be anything new. At this point in time I don't trust the devs. I was excited for OC but it was a let down. The only good thing that came out of it was the Weapon grind. I got all of mine in Tural zones FATEs before I knew they had a smaller chance of dropping lol. It was a fun week worth of casual farming after work.

[DoubleJustice]

I would also like them to shake up the gameplay experience of Deep Dungeon a bit more.

Systems changes were also much needed so I'm excited for those. I think this is an overall good step in the right direction

[Gwenkatsu]

I never bothered with PotD, so I could not enter HoH or... the third one whose name I cannot remember.
Was something said about entry requirements for the new one? Does it still require you to finish some age old content, or will it be open to all?

[Yodada]

I never bothered with PotD, so I could not enter HoH or... the third one whose name I cannot remember.
Was something said about entry requirements for the new one? Does it still require you to finish some age old content, or will it be open to all?

You can bet on that it will require a PotD Floor 50 clear for access.

[Kemiko]

It sounds like you were under the impression, for some very strange reason, that this new Deep Dungeon would somehow be so radically different from all three previous Deep Dungeons that it wouldn't even be called a Deep Dungeon. This expectation is probably the exact reason Yoshida decided to take the time to explain what a Deep Dungeon is before explaining what this one does that differs from the previous three. Yoshida could tell me that the team and him has "new plans" for the upcoming 7.4 Trial but I'll still be expecting an 8-man, 2 tanks, 2 healers, 4 dps arena battle with an oversized mob having us play out visually appealing DDR. Because it's still a trial.

Palace didn't "cushion" how far back they send you if your party wipes
Palace didn't allow you to prog the last boss in a separate instance
Palace didn't have Quantum difficulty that allows players to decide amongst themselves how difficult they want the boss to be with "offerings."

So yeah.. you're missing something here.

These, in my honest opinion, are great and are definitely new and different from all three previous Deep Dungeons. I'm happy to see these changes and hope that once it launches it receives positive feedback for them to continue in this direction.