Player Drop Off and Accessibility/Diffculty

[AyumiCosplayGlam]

You just have to finish the "tutorial floors" so to speak and beat one boss with a grand total of two mechanics which boil down to run away, come close, run away. You can literally get it done in one evening and do it fully blind. It truly doesn't get any easier than this...

Its not about the difficulty, its the accessibility.
Lets start here: You have to be at the npc to enter the que usually in some very remote location, this is a dumb decision plain and simple. If its a que anyway, just put it on duty finder. This is not a Deep dungeon specific issue, but also true for Bozja Raids and Variant dungeons, except Variant is only hidden inside multiple menus instead of just 1 obvious place.
As far as im aware you still need to do PotD to unlock the rest of the deep dungeons which is something barely anyone does nowadays.
Then comes the dumb "save file" system, when you have to save your progress in the dungeon with specific people you will likely never meet again.

You know how this deep dungeon should have been handled?
- Unlock with quest
- No PotD requirement
- new tab in duty finder for deep dungeons
- que up for specific floor range
- when floor range is completed forced exit
- que up next floor range (give a choice for players to pick a few pomanders or whatever they are called as if they had it from previous floors)
- Profit

No dumb requirements, no save file bs, rng is restricted between every 10 floor.

[Supersnow845]

Its not about the difficulty, its the accessibility.
Lets start here: You have to be at the npc to enter the que usually in some very remote location, this is a dumb decision plain and simple. If its a que anyway, just put it on duty finder. This is not a Deep dungeon specific issue, but also true for Bozja Raids and Variant dungeons, except Variant is only hidden inside multiple menus instead of just 1 obvious place.
As far as im aware you still need to do PotD to unlock the rest of the deep dungeons which is something barely anyone does nowadays.
Then comes the dumb "save file" system, when you have to save your progress in the dungeon with specific people you will likely never meet again.

You know how this deep dungeon should have been handled?
- Unlock with quest
- No PotD requirement
- new tab in duty finder for deep dungeons
- que up for specific floor range
- when floor range is completed forced exit
- que up next floor range (give a choice for players to pick a few pomanders or whatever they are called as if they had it from previous floors)
- Profit

No dumb requirements, no save file bs, rng is restricted between every 10 floor.

There is an argument against that as well as a lot of people don’t always want to just load everything from limsa from menu’s

If it doing a deep dungeon in Ill mheg I’d like to actually be in ill mheg to get to it. This game already lacks way too much in the immersion department

[AyumiCosplayGlam]

There is an argument against that as well as a lot of people don’t always want to just load everything from limsa from menu’s

If it doing a deep dungeon in I’ll mheg I’d like to actually be in ill mheg to get to it. This game already lacks way too much in the immersion department

Let me put it this way, no need to protect immersion when there is none to begin with. Lets say i'll go to PoTD and it pops, what are the chances that someone in solution 9 glam, a bikini or a chocobo outfit will be in your team?

Aside from that, the vast majority of players who are eligible to do lets say Delubrum Reginae, will not go through multiple loading screens to talk to a random npc to que up for a dungeon and be jailed inside the camp.
But they would absolutely que up for it from Limsa and do whatever the hell they want while waiting. Its a huge QoL upgrade without any downsides, that is without a doubt would be the difference between a content being dead or not.
I would rather have a little immersion breaking, than having a delubrum where its becoming lore accurate in terms of "nobody has been here for years".

[Amarande]

All in all lets just stop the copium, its obvious that square wants to cater to the hardcore raiders and it is objectively, actively reducing the playerbase in dawntrail and overall interest in the game.

It's definitely gone in that direction and I'm not 100% sure why.

As I have noted before I tend to keep coming back to the thought that either it's because the Endwalker launch disaster has induced them to try to focus on a more specific audience (Stormblood was def an everyone's game, Shadowbringers started out that way but the evolution was stunted by Covid, Endwalker launch showed "oops servers can't really handle being everyone's game") or because Blizzard is more aggressively currying the casual endgame playerbase (especially with the simplification coming with Midnight through the revocation of combat addons etc) and for 20 years now the MMO industry lesson has been "don't go straight up head-to-head with WoW, just don't" (I mean look at how SWTOR and LOTRO have both faded into niche status, despite having two of the literally most iconic geekly licenses there are).

If the whole thing boils down to hardcore raiders getting content in patches that are usually more casual and the nonraiders are being left out with either nothing or a barely existing reward structure, then yeah they deserve every criticism and hate they can get.

That's actually my greatest fear with quantum. That they only take feedback from the raiding content creators and all we are left will be mini ultimates as the only noteworthy content out of it.

Not just raiding content creators, consider overall raiding community - while there are places like these forums and Reddit, "the community" tends to center around Discord and there are two things that one finds quickly in virtually all visible raiding Discords: Moderation is designed to actively marginalize the voice of anyone who isn't either hardcore or aspiring hardcore (others are labeled as either misinformed or "bad and don't want to improve" or other excuses to discredit and those who don't fall in line or quiet themselves are banned/muted), and forum format communities are actively dunked on with a "don't listen to them" admonition.

Often balanced in a such a way that you can completely skip it with enough dps. That means with a better team, that could handle the trickier parts perfectly well, never gets to see it. And a team that is already struggling, then gets hit with some even more tricky mechanics.

Giving better players the easy mode fight is not how content should be designed.

100%, this 100%. It's been the case in places since Shadowbringers actually and it's not just Alliance raids. Compare ShB Extremes and Savage to Stormblood ones for instance, in StB you almost always saw all the relevant mechanics by "halftime" (relative to enrage) and after was mainly repeats and remixes with often the final 30-60 seconds being simple raidwide spam allowing you to lock in for that last DPS push, while in ShB you got fun things like Cycles and Black Smokers to punish you for getting that far and make it far less likely you'd pull it out.

It's like they realized Skip Soar or Disband was bad when they made Stormblood and then backpedaled on it (and almost EVERYTHING that made Stormblood super chill and cool) in the later xpacs (even ShB and EW where we were still riding high and the rot was less front and center) ...

[Yeonhee]

Sorry but the 4 savage and 1 ultimate excuse dosn't fly anymore when hadcore raiders have been eating exceptionally good in dawntrail while everyone else had borderline 0 content until Occult Crescent.

They currently have 8 savage raid, 1 ultimate, 1 chaotic, 1 alliance raid (Forked Tower) and for some reason now we also have the Deep dungeon boss accessible by que with the difficulty cranked up to 11.
Meanwhile Casual players have: 8 normal raids, 2 alliance raids, Occult Crescent without an ending because of forked tower, ill be generous and say that the new deep dungeon is casual but its actually debateable due to requirement for entry aaaaaand thats it i guess.

I always laugh when YoshiP says in an interview that they want to make content for everyone from now on and thats why we have the new deep dungeon stuff shoehorned in, while forked tower and chaotic is still unplayable pieces of...content. Somehow the content for everyone means we also get a hard version of things, but for some reason i highly doubt the next ultimate will have a normal mode when you actually survive stuff and normal raids with the savage exclusive boss forms.

All in all lets just stop the copium, its obvious that square wants to cater to the hardcore raiders and it is objectively, actively reducing the playerbase in dawntrail and overall interest in the game.

I'm sorry but I disagree. While I agree about Forked Tower, Chaotic is imo unlikely to get any more of them since it's a nightmare to do, getting 24 people together that have the basic skill to run it and that aren't prog lying isn't an easy thing to do. Occult Cresent released in 7.25 and by that point there was already 8 normal raids and 1 alliance as well as Cosmic Exploration, so I'm not really sure how it has zero content until then.

And saying that the new Deep Dungeon is for hardcore raiders just because you have to do a bunch of easy PotD floors and one laughable boss to access it is just plain ridiculous. Being a casual doesn't mean you somehow are utterly unable to Google how to access new content.

Overall, hardcore raiders have been eating a tad bit better in Dawntrail but again they only have two more raid than usual to do. For a damn long time the devs were unable/unwilling to pump interesting content in good number, it has very little to do with the big evil hardcore raiders.

[FuturePastNow]

What I've come to dislike about FF difficulty in recent alliance raids, is how many fights have a tricky part near the end. Often balanced in a such a way that you can completely skip it with enough dps. That means with a better team, that could handle the trickier parts perfectly well, never gets to see it. And a team that is already struggling, then gets hit with some even more tricky mechanics.

Giving better players the easy mode fight is not how content should be designed.

The intent of that design is so people doing it when it's brand new get a bit more challenge, while players who get it in alliance roulette years from now will have a relatively painless experience (since a critical mass of players will know the fight and everyone's gear will be synced to well above the content's ilevel). I do wish the interesting mechanics happened earlier in the fights, and I think the FFXI raids have been trying to compromise on that, but yes they are spicier when players aren't as good.

I'm a weirdo who thinks alliance raids are the most fun when they turn into mass casualty events though

[aiqa]

The intent of that design is so people doing it when it's brand new get a bit more challenge, while players who get it in alliance roulette years from now will have a relatively painless experience (since a critical mass of players will know the fight and everyone's gear will be synced to well above the content's ilevel). I do wish the interesting mechanics happened earlier in the fights, and I think the FFXI raids have been trying to compromise on that, but yes they are spicier when players aren't as good.

I'm a weirdo who thinks alliance raids are the most fun when they turn into mass casualty events though

That might be the intent, but it doesn't work like that. If you have a bunch of savage geared players from the same time where the alliance raid was released, the team can already easily skip those mechanics. Or when people get one tier higher tome/crafted gear than when the alliance raid was released. Or even if you just have a group of mostly good players with contemporary tome gear/crafted gear.

If they want the most recent alliance raids to be a challenge, they need to restrict ilevel far tighter, and even then place the tricky mechanics a bit earlier in the fight. And they can loosen the ilevel cap when they want players to start skipping things in later patches.

[TaleraRistain]

This 100%. The rewards are not worth the tedious process imo; specially when they become obsolete by the next patch or two. If they were necessary for relic weapon progression, I'd be more inclined to do savage content.

That goes against the idea of relics, though. They're the non-raiding alternative.

[Hyperia]

I would wait for now given they have just introduced quantum and seem to genuinely want feedback on it.

I would love to comment on Quantum but it appears, from reading comments, that they have gated it badly behind multiple grinds.

1. Grind to floor 100
2. Grind aetherpool to max level to get to 100
3. Grind tokens to do the 100 fight at Quantum levels
4. Hardest of all, get a group to do all of the above

If they really wanted to get good feedback from the community as a whole, they should have made the Quantum fight unlock at the end of the story or even lower. As a result, their feedback is going to be very skewed to the hardcore players with some midcore players.

Though... while they said they want feedback, they have already strongly indicated that they are fully commited to Quantum for 8.0 regardless of the feedback they get.

I consider this more of a technology preview for the hardcore players in order to keep them around and not quit because they keep hearing we are getting "less content" because the fights are all merged due to Quantum.

[AyumiCosplayGlam]

I'm sorry but I disagree. While I agree about Forked Tower, Chaotic is imo unlikely to get any more of them since it's a nightmare to do, getting 24 people together that have the basic skill to run it and that aren't prog lying isn't an easy thing to do. Occult Cresent released in 7.25 and by that point there was already 8 normal raids and 1 alliance as well as Cosmic Exploration, so I'm not really sure how it has zero content until then.

And saying that the new Deep Dungeon is for hardcore raiders just because you have to do a bunch of easy PotD floors and one laughable boss to access it is just plain ridiculous. Being a casual doesn't mean you somehow are utterly unable to Google how to access new content.

Overall, hardcore raiders have been eating a tad bit better in Dawntrail but again they only have two more raid than usual to do. For a damn long time the devs were unable/unwilling to pump interesting content in good number, it has very little to do with the big evil hardcore raiders.

I really do hope you are right about chaotic, because another of those should never,ever see the light of day, all that development time wasted for a week of content for so few people.
Fun fact, it barely has a higher clear rate than Cruiserweight Savage. A 24 man fight has barely higher clear rate than an 8 man savage raid, that is rough.

Forked Tower is a travesty, they should have worked on a normal mode all hands on deck after the backlash... its currently sitting at a 3.7% completion rate on lalachievements. Ultimates have higher clear rate than that...which is beyond embarassing.

Like i said, deep dungeon is debateable, its not hardcore by any means but its definitely not casual either and not because of the difficulty, but the accessibility.
PoTD should not be a requirement for this, plain and simple. Imagine if Occult crestent would require you to complete Eureka and Bozja because it has the same structure, makes 0 sense. Its not hard to create a 5 level tutorial in the unlock quest to teach them how it works, instead they are sent out to PotD...nice one.

Aside from that dumb unlock requirement, it should be in the duty finder, because while at the moment we dont have a population problem with it and parties fill fast, this will not be the case a few weeks from now on and you will be unable to complete it in a reasonable time with the que system and fixed party will be your only option and content that NEEDS you to organize people and keep them around for a relatively long time, is by no means a casual content.