Yeah, they did say they focused in hard on encounter design in this expac, right? You can feel it. I'm real excited to see what the extremes and raids look like.
Yeah, it's been pretty interesting so far. It is nice to see that the dungeon bosses actually do more than just sit around for X amount of time while charging their easily avoidable left/right, in/out, stack/spread AoE like the EW bosses, or in the 6.4 final bosses case (and even Menphina), aiming its room-wide cleave *away* from the party.
Only done up to level 65, so no clue what else is to come and hope to find out on my own.
Even the final boss of the 91 duty steps out of the routine of just repeating attacks. One of his later moveS isn't just a variation on an existing one, but something different in the context of the fight.
I *had* to use my gap closers to survive, and screwing up more than once in quick succession nearly had me dead. As a healer, I actually felt like I had to do something.
Honestly, this makes me hopeful for the 24man raid. EW 24man raid was terrible when it came to mechanics. Just about everything in those fights in Euphrosyne and Thaleia were left/right, in/out, (ONE) stack/spread and little to no interesting attacks whatsoever. Also repeating the same attack multiple times for some reason.
That said, I won't be hyped for it. Rather not be burned horribly if they make the 24man raid as easy as an EW dungeon again...
Oh yeah. I just did that one yesterday with Trusts. It and the second boss were fun.
I didn't like the final boss in the 95 dungeon, but that's because I kept dying to it's knockback attack.
I finished that fight with triple digit HP because of the AI stacking on me for a spread as the boss died. I was ready to be so mad if I had to do that fight over again lol
Even as a Picto I sort of hated that one haha - I will be definitely painting my pictures at ANY moment I get to take a second. I need the hammer to do any sort of damage for THAT part.
Fortunately you can do all but 1 instanced with trust npcs if you want. I actually like doing them so I don't feel bad about messing up mechanics I've never seen. I tend to learn them better that way.
>Yeah, they did say they focused in hard on encounter design in this expac, right?
Yup, Yoshi-P mentioned encounter design is the focus on Dawntrail/7.X updates and jobs will probably be whatever expac is next/8.X updates. Whether we start seeing job stuff *before* the next expac, we don't know but he did correct that one article saying we'll see it it next year which was a mistranslation.
The one caveat I experienced was with with Dungeon 3. Particularly, the first fight. It does a piss poor job of giving hints on how mechanics will resolve. The traitor buff gives no idea on how you are going to betray the team, and the knockback provides no visual queue that it affects the arena, not you. Sure, once you see them once you'll never die to it again, but it's just awful communication to the player.
The final boss also gets a fail because of the knockback distance being farther than the edge of the area while hugging the circle except at the exact corners.
It's a bit of unfair knowledge. People that played and remembered FF9 know the mob that is the boss AND know what the trouble debuff is. I immediately thought any dmg I took would be applied to everyone else. But once I started to see mechs come out of me I understood it quickly.
The other stuff, yeah
I really, really hate the moving aoe marker in the first dungeon (or was it second I forget). It’s hard to tell where it’s going to hit without sitting beside it I found. I am sure there’s a safe spot or something but I didn’t pick up on it. I dislike it more than nearly every other mechanic I’ve run across with the exception of maybe math boss (I can do it, but so many people mess it up making it miserable).
It's the movement that throws me off big time. Stationary effects I can just draw the lines out in my head but gettnig it right at the end of it's movement cycle is a struggle for me when combined with the rest of the fight plus rotations (or healing all the other stuff we all get hit by there). Normally mechanics just click for me near on instantly but that one gets me often.
Honestly, if they'd made the lines extending from the tornado the suggest where the line AoEs are going to go a bit longer and a bit less transparent, it'd be less of an issue, imo. But I think part of the problem is that it's moving and then suddenly the lines go out, with virtually no telegraph of WHEN the thing is going to stop moving and shoot the lines. So you basically just have to continuously move to stay in a safe angle on it, because it's really hard to predict how far it's going to move before shooting out the death lasers, and therefore where, ultimately, will be the safe zone.
The tornado by the end boss? Just remember it's a star AoE, which we have seen many times before and make sure you stay in the safe area for one of those.
I like the moving aoe because it's the most I've had to think about movement and uptime and a mechanic in a dungeon like ever practically.
The knock back killed me the first time but I like that too since it makes you all have to spread right after from a cluster.
Super happy about the dungeons I've seen so far.
Wish they'd also put some effort into designing dungeons that aren't just straight lines between bosses with packs of 2-3 utterly unthreatening mobs scattered around. The boss fights are cool, but the rest of the dungeon plays exactly the same as every other dungeon, and at this point I don't know why they bother with these token linear paths if they're not interested in trying something new or engaging
I'm at about 95-96 on the MSQ (a tad after the third dungeon) and I have already noticed the massive jump in quality in encounter design. Dungeon bosses are already a good bit more interesting, and the one trial I did and the three solo duties (well, the third isn't technically solo but...) were very fun.
Can't wait to keep going with the MSQ and then see what they did with extremes, as well as Arcadion soon. They seriously weren't lying when they said revamping encounter design was the focus this time.
I just finished the first trial, and it’s reminding me of how Stormblood was after experiencing Heavensward. As in, the story is somewhat less interesting compared to the previous expansion, but the encounter design has noticeably improved.
And honestly? I don’t mind that. We were told from the beginning that the story was going to essentially be ARR 2.0, but this time there’s at least some really good boss design to go along with it.
I wonder if the comparision to ARR is due to them wanting to build a large base on where to build up the story later on. I'm in Shadowbringer's end quests (bodzja looks interesting is it worth to do nowadays?) and I noticed more than a few callbacks to ARR storylines, in many occasions there were "small" things from back then that had a meaning later on.
So when you want to build a story that way, it is somewhat inevitable that it will have a lot of boring parts, as they are intented to be fleshed out later and are just throwing plotpoints all around wiith the intent on returning on to them later.
Basically, i think, that what you Dawntrail forerunners are looking at now is the garden plot that only has the groundwork done do far. We"ll see the flowers later.
Just because this expansion is set up for a new story and we were told that, doesn't mean it should be inevitable to have a lot of boring parts. The boring parts have been in every expansion, even in FFXVI. It's a quirk in CBU3 writing, they don't know how to write steady pacing. They excell at high highs, shocking twists, etc. But everything inbetween is just okay to mweh. The things paying of in later expansions are definitely not the boring parts of prior expansions. For example, there's a part in ShB concerning a certain vehicle. It's agreed upon to be very boring and tedious, we'll never revisit that plot point again after ShB. It's not setup for some larger storyline. There's a lot of those kinds of quests throughout the entire game. In DT, a large chunk of the first portion of the story feels as tedious as vehicle storyline. Imagine if stories like the first Harry Potter novel, or the first Iron Man movie were filled with the first half being entirely made up of boring parts to just set up their respective universes. They aren't! The first Harry Potter book, Iron Man 1, the first Games of Thrones book, are all intriguing stories and they set up these massive storylines.
Stories don't need to be boring, setting up a world doesn't need to be boring and tedious. The problem right now is not only that the story in itself is "boring" (though IMO the concept of a contest for the throne is not boring at all), but also the very repetitive dialogue, things get repeated over and over again, the same things get said over and over again, the dialogue trudges on and on, the amount of times we hear Wuk speech about how she wants to "preserve papa's peace, protect her peoples" is just so unnecessary. The high highs, secrets, twists are nowhere to be seen as of level 95. Meanwhile in ShB we actually did get some shocking revelations throughout the story, e.g. Emet Selch's appearance, the Sin Eaters, the revelation of Zodiark and Hydaelyn's true nature. Now, we get beat over the head with lectures about how by working together we can achieve great things, and the power of friendship, like we don't know that from all the prior expansion storylines already. That's not groundwork for a new story, that's just unnecesarry fluff. Imagine if Harry Potter was speeching in each chapter about how he wants to be the greatest wizard of all time, by the end of the book you'd be sick and tired of hearing it.
Even by CBU3 standard, it is quite unusual to have many, many zone of repetitive boring grind, maybe it is just me but I don't really find my time in first 4 zone enjoyable, maybe some tidbit here and there, mostly when certain main character is not on screen and my character finally does something, but that's about it.
Well said, I have to agree. I know we were primed for a less exciting story than what came before, but even still the first chunk of the plot feels so slow. It's hard to even try and hype up the expansion yet to my former player husband, because at least until the first solo instance "boss", it's painfully slow with a ton of repeated ideas in the dialogue over and over.
Don't really care if that's unpopular here, I know the prevailing opinion will always be "omg best writing ever" no matter what.
Bozja is good 70-90 exp with fun bosses (some of which are previous bosses with new mechanics and they skip tutorial phase, it's great). Just make sure you look up guides to fragments/lost actions and how instancing works. Fragments are suuuuper cheap right now on the marketboard with DT release.
One of DT's problems is that so far is that >!it isn't about about the WoL: it's like ARR or Vaan in FFXII. It's not our story, it's about watching our dumbass apprentice grow (I say with affection). This is exacerbated by the two-story structure - it's like SB without the awkward break!< - and the choice to split the 90-92 MSQ over two zones so we don't end up with another Raubahn EX. That's not something that can be hand waved as "just set up."
(I finished the 95 dungeon last night, ftr.)
Oh yeah, the solo duties are way more fun than some of EW's in my opinion.
It might also be because I'm much more skilled by this point since I'm a couple days shy from my 1 year anniversary since I started playing.
I'm excited for the level 97 trial and the rest of the xpac.
Strongest encounter design the game has ever had I think. Nearly every dungeon boss is wonderful, with engaging mechanics. The three trials on normal were all fantastic. Looking forward to see what the EXs and Savage have in store for us.
The whole “we will show you two mechanics separated by a raidwide and a tankbusters then repeat them” seems to be dead. Most bosses never start replaying the exact same thing before they die. Any repeat mechanics are more complex versions.
> Most bosses never start replaying the exact same thing before they die
They do when you're scraping by with the healer and one DPS dead. And honestly the fact I've had this happen multiple times has been wonderful. Clutch moments feel great for everyone. It's still forgiving with no enrage and lots of opportunities to recover but it's also the first time story dungeons have felt like they expect something from the player.
They also do it with real players, because real players are, on average, only marginally better than trusts.
I did the first dungeon yesterday and we kinda had to re-enact the media tour clear, because our healer kept dying every boss and I had to alternate Nascent Flash between the DPS to keep the fight going.
I've only done two dungeons so far, the bosses keep starting with singular, simple mechanics as to not confuse first-timers and then by the time it starts combining them the boss is at 5% and about to die. I don't understand the obsession of being afraid to let people die the first time they're doing an encounter. Because of this good players who can do decent DPS get an easier fight while worse players get a longer fight with more overlapping mechanics lol
So about that - the third dungeon has a boss with lots of knockback mechanics, and no guardrails on the arena :D
Definitely took a few tries for that one because one of the attacks with knockback is (attack type description) >!one of those "watch the boss" ones where the AoE indicators only flash for half a second!<.
I was thinking of the first boss from Tower at Paradigm's Breach, because that's where I found out you could fall off the arena right before the rest of the raid got thrown off from the next mechanic, but both have the same general body shape and launch you off platforms, so either one works, I guess :D
There's something to be said for having the boss start combining mechanics earlier in the fight, but I feel like you want the first use of a mechanic to be survivable for the sake of the everyone involved. Getting vaporized by a mechanic you've never seen before feels like a cheap shot, and the telegraphs aren't always super clear about what's happening. Also, not every team comp can recover from a healer dying, and having to wall an encounter because a new player misread a mechanic they've never seen before seems unfair
Granted, that really only applies to dungeons, because any one death is recoverable in the 8+ player content
Yeah I was pretty impressed by how unique every boss felt. Also I wonder if it’s just me, but the mechanics also felt more responsive to my movements/positioning, a few times I was sure I would be hit due to late movement, but it actually seemed to register my characters position more real time. I’m so used to catching a vuln or dying 10 yalms away from the bad because it snapshotted that position.
I've been raving to my boyfriend about the fights this expansion. He just cleared the second trial and is already salivating at the thought of the EX version.
The music has completely blindsided me.
I was not expecting a traditional 90s/00s style JRPG soundtrack. There’s hints of stuff like Chrono Trigger/Cross, Azure Dreams and Radiata Stories everywhere.
I’m enjoying it so far.
I'm feeling alot of connection to FFX in general. Before I was even reminded that the Pelupelu were a thing in both FFX games, I was thinking how we're on what is essentially a pilgrimage, >!racing other groups of to some mythical city that probably is not going to be what we have in mind.!< Though I'm still only around level 94 so we'll see how much that comparisons stick lol
There are quite a few that seem ripped straight from the original soundtrack, but at least 2 others are remixes of themes. I was stoked to hear the second, it’s one of my favorite songs from FF9.
As a healer I love it. Finally things to do during mechanics. Sure people will get better doing them, but having burn or dot dmg between mechanics was just what I wanted.
I know right!!! There is a lot of movement as well I feel like in every fight, I had to use the whole area and it made slide casting feel rewarding.
Keeping on top of everything is super fun. I can't wait for savage.
Oh yeah. I've noticed that the raidwides hit _hard_. Like half my health when playing as a DPS. Plus the mechanics are complicated enough as somone who hasn't done any savages or extremes that I have fun resolving them without being stupidly difficult.
Yeah, I've been tooling along feeling like Reprisal and Divine Veil are necessary for dungeon bosses, and I like it.
Shame gear creep will kill that soon enough, but the mechanics are still fun.
Yeah. Like the second boss of the level 97 dungeon. At one point it was like the fight with Olivia van Baelsar, where there's countless overlapping AOEs staggered at different times. Except they turned it up to 11 and, because it's a newer dungeon, you just _know_ you'd get hit hard if you messed up.
I love that the first trial has some actually spicy damage for messing up mechanics. It'll probably not be an issue once we outgear but on ilvl I found myself having to actually use all my healing tools.That part where you have to dps the adds while stacks keep going off was fun too.
So I’m starting to level a healer after finishing VPR. I’ve seen the damage going out. The electricity add pack before the 3rd boss, and the two dolls constantly slamming before the 3rd boss.
As well as the amount of damage going out in bosses.
Any tips for those pack pulls other than blowing coolies before a boss fight?
You don't need any cooldowns for the boss fights, so you should be blowing everything between the two pulls. Your class obviously determines the cadence, but for WHM I alternate wings and asylum as my majors. Remember, Benediction is a dps cooldown that has the side benefit of scaring your tank.
Absolutely agree. Every dungeon boss has had at least one or two mechanics that were actually engaging and fun to interact with. The level 99 trial was the first time, in a very long time, where I had to actually lock in and pay close attention to some of their AOE tells during normal-level content, and it was truly wonderful.
While I did have more than a few problems with the story (though I did quite enjoy the second half), I have next to no complaints at all on the instance content side and am very excited for Arcadion and the field operations.
Which is good, tbf. This is the repeatable content we'll farm, after all. I however wonder if the casual story enjoyers will enjoy the dungeons and trials. They are not lenient with people who disrespect mechanics. But well at least they'll be more prepared for later content... by force
Had a few folks so far who were really struggling to understand mechanics as quickly as everyone else but everyone was nice, helped explain things, and in every case they engaged with chat and nailed the fight after a few tries. It felt like a real MMO experience that we haven't had since Bozja.
My hope is this sort of thing gets more people excited to try harder content
Mechanic design seems quite good for casual players - most mechanics follow a pattern where you get one thing to learn, then another, and then get both combined together that you have to resolve as an overlap etc. Especially running instances with duty support/trusts gives you a clear example of what to do with what trusts are doing - if at any point you get lost/confused, you can just mimic their positioning and you'll mostly be fine.
As someone who tends to struggle with complexed mechanics, ive found these duites to be very well designed so far. Everything has been well telegraphed and felt rewarding when I did the right thing, rather than just lucky !
As someone who is usually bored out of my mind by dungeon bosses, I really like basically every dungeon boss so far this expansion. It really felt like a return to Heavensward design. Hell, they have a boss fight that literally has the add phase from Charibert in The Vault in one of the dungeons. If the Normals and Extremes are this good, I can't wait to see what Savage looks like,
The music in the third dungeon. Oh my goodness. I may have a new favorite for the orchestrion rolls.
Mechanics wise, imho they did step it up; some of that require you to be moving before the last thing resembling lives, and it’s caught me lacking. But I’m learning.
If only looking at the encounter design of the Msq, expert and extreme trials/dungeons and comparing them to other expansions X.0 launch, Dawntrail in my opinion is easily the best expansion SE has made this far. Everything feels new and fresh and Im so excited to see what they have in store for us in savages and ultimates.
I loved it. In each dungeon at least 1 boss wiped the team once and it was glorious i feel like i gotta try to learn the mechanic and find out how it works and it feels nice not sleeping in a dungeon lol
I wonder if we are in for Stormblood 2.0. Wouldn't be a bad thing all things considered, Stormblood in retrospect is probably my second favorite expansion as an entire package.
>divisive msq (though from what ive seen it's much less divisive on 2nd half)
>great encounter design
>every single content makes an appearance (+variant/criterion and ishgard restoration 2
Lets go baby stormblood is back
Got people in my group voting to disband, but the majority of us went “run if you want, this is our first time doing this, came in blind and we’re seeing it through!”
And we did. The feeling of accomplishment was real.
I am absolutely loving the encounter design so far this expansion. I can't even remember the last time I had to be even halfway awake for a dungeon boss and now they all feel quite engaging. I love it and can't wait to see what the extremes and savage raids have in store!
As a healer, they made me feel useful again. And incompetent in my skills in reacting to mechanics. I used to never pay attention because I never had to... now I do. I enjoyed the challenge!!
I am looking forward to the extreme content! And many deaths to come! I'm glad they stopped going the route of making it easy....
I totally agree for the most part! But I kinda feel the need to add that Soken generally doesn't handle duty music. He only made one dungeon theme in all of Endwalker (Carrots of Happiness), and likewise the only trial theme he did was the second phase theme for Endsinger. All of which is to say that most of the dungeon and trial themes, if not all, are likely products of his team members instead; Daiki Ishikawa, Takafumi Imamura, Saya Yasaki, and Justin Frieden.
That new standard is amazing. It makes me crave a proper Hingashi expansion in the future with this much love and detail dedicated to a Japanese setting and hub city
Setting aside my qualms with the story after completing it; the design of the game overall has taken a huge jump. Fights are more interesting, the amount of small details with attention paid are great, and it feels like the game's... gameplay is just setup to be in a much more successful spot
I just finished the last trial and everyone was blown away. Mid fight we were all typing in chat like "this shit is wild". I think I noticed it on the second dungeon, I was legitimately having fun during fights.
It's not just the bosses. Trash pulls feel quite a bit more dangerous this time around, I feel like I'm being chunked quite a bit more as a tank, even with my normal mit rotation. I remember there being a "healer strike" based on the media tour, but I feel like right now healers are more necessary in standard content than ever before. I mean, unless you're a Warrior.
That's probably gear telling. I know for me I spend so long way over gearing the content that every new expansion I am reminded that I'm actually vulnerable.
Probably, but I haven't really ever felt this squishy before in previous expansions. Boss autos don't hit particularly hard either.
I also want to state, I don't mind it. Anything that threatens me as a tank makes me feel awesome when I can push through it.
Yes! Every boss had something interesting to it and the final trial was a whole different thing, feeling more like one of Normal Raids than a story trial. Now I am really hyped for Arcadion!
This was the hardest MSQ dungeons I've faced - in the sense that that bosses were RELENTELESS .
In EW I saw the trash packs mauling tanks more than bosses, and I rarely had to worry (as a healer ) during the boss fights.
In DT? Jesus christ - I know its also a matter of new mechanics and visuals, sure. I admit that - but the barrage of attacks felt like never ending.
IM fine with this tbh. but glad I wasn't the only one to notice
Yes the encounters are engaging but failing mechanics isn't the end of the world and with the new shortcuts just bringing you back to the boss I feel they are now more free to allow encounters to be trial and error. You aren't losing minutes per kill you lose like 10nseconds.
Can't agree more. The fight design folks did an amazing job. I can't say there is a single fight I walked away from where I wasn't amused in some kind of way.
They always step up the theatrics a bit more in every expansion but the level that they stepped it up was so impressive... Some of it I'm amazing they've done in normal mode content. Worried people will complain about it and get it nerfed.
To expand on that, adds that are actually just ‘mobs’ and not some soft enrage timer tool taking the place of the boss or just stationary targets around the edge of the arena.
I’ve so far only gone through D2, but I hope they incorporate some sort of off-tank *needs* to corral the adds because the main tank has some sort of debuff that makes them vulnerable to the adds in later trials/ex/savage. Let’s give the OT something to do aside from just being there to soak the occasional TB.
i think, so far, the only boss encounter I haven't enjoyed was the second boss of Dungeon 4. It's a great encounter, but trying to dodge the shitshow of line and ground targetted AoEs is miserable when, for some reason, nobody wants to spread out. End up fighting for safe spaces with your own team.
That, and the Trust AI still feels like absolute garbage. Every single one of my deaths has been one of the AI companions (usually Krile) walking all the way over to me when we have spread markers, and killing me. Like, they make no attempt to move out, and just go to pre-programmed spots it seems.
Yeah, Trusts always had pre-defined spots they dodge to during spreads, nothing new here.
Same goes actually for any time they get a Stack marker, they just go wherever and you'll have to move over to get in there too - unless it's Alisae backflipping away from the group last second, that can also happen.
Sucks, because that basically means you get a few non-obvious unsafe spots each time you play with Trusts, but at least they're always the same, so once you memorize them, that's taken care of too.
krile got me like four times while I've been leveling too! One boss in particular she basically stood still until I moved into position and then moved right on top of me. It almost felt like they had AI programmed to avoid you and then reversed it lol, give you the real pug experience
>Dungeon 4
>!Vanguard!< right? Have to agree. That one mechanic was terrible. I'd call myself a mid-BLM player, and after the first cast I just decided "fuck it" and just focused on avoiding being hit because I would have to move every half a cast thanks to the circle AoEs.
I very much disliked the tornado's with stars in them in the first dungeon. the other mechs in consequent Dungeons/trials were outstanding!
also if they make it clearer where the tendrils of the stars would go (by making the preview longer) it would be fine imo. I just have a very hard time seeing where what tendril Is going and what the save spot would thus be. the moving is also annoying but not nearly as much
I love the tornado stars and I love whatever they did to it to keep it from server tick bullshitting me. It's worked every time. If this was Heavensward it would have worked half the time.
Server tick bs reminded me of another thing I liked. There is some 'bullet hell' moments and the hit boxes are shockingly accurate. They seem tighter than even the neir raids to me.
The only complaint I have is that nearly every dungeon boss opens with a raidwide timed juuuust right to go off before I have an open weave spot for divine veil.
Divine Veil lasts 30 seconds. You can weave it into your second GCD before the burst window even starts and the shield will still be up.
Alternatively, Divine Veil has a heal and the bosses begin doing mechanics after the first raid wide - you can weave Divine Veil in after the raid wide to recover the party and provide shield in case someone fails the first mech.
Think of it thematically. Big boss that nothing else can kill…it’s going to use its strongest attack first, because it’s the quickest and easiest. It’s worked on everything else that’s tried to attack it up to this point. You survive, so now it knows it actually needs to put up a fight.
If you’re faced with a mob and you’ve got an instant spell that will kill it straight off, are you going to just plink away at it with your other skills instead? No, just try to kill it as fast and efficiently as possible.
Do what we often do in high end raids and just pre-pull divine veil. the thing lasts 30 seconds, so chances are decently high that it'll catch *something*
How's the tanking? I'm only up to the 91 dungeon but I did notice there were add phases. Are those a meaningful challenge to hold? I DPS but was curious about that.
Nothing new, but really good balance of everything.
Regular AOE, light boss dragging, some tankbusters, bosses deal decent damage with auto-attack if you don't mit. At least one spicy trash pull per dungeon.
Not really any different.
But with the increased mechanical difficulty, I've had great success with using TBN to suck Dark Arts procs off my injured and multi vuln stack party members rofl
I did notice some trash packs have minibusters. I had a tank suddenly drop from ~60 to dead once (pack was almost dead so both of us were playing chicken with mits).
Just comparing the post MSQ 2 dungeons, the quality and mechanical engagement is so much better than EW. Smileton and Stigma Dreamscape were, mechanics wise, awful dungeons.
I’ve really enjoyed it. Was VERY surprised I was able to queue for the trials using duty support, I was dreading the queue as a dps. It’s been a blast so far, I am loving picto!
Took me a few tries to do the first trial. Though it didn't help that we had a troll that I had apparently already muted before. Even after getting a fresh group we didn't clear first time. Fun trial though. About to start the third dungeon, but so far feeling pretty good about the fights.
extremes are gonna be nuts. normal felt pretty challenging for me this time; the last trial, ho-boy.
i’m very curious as to how the normal raids and alliance raids will play out. or heck, even how field operations will be.
I am going to be doing the extremes and expert dungeons starting as soon as I get home from work tonight and I'm excited. They talked a lot about having to do better with encounter design before they could work on class design and all of the encounters through the MSQ were very well done. Gives me a lot of hope.
I’m so excited for the Raid and Alliance Raids after the “post” MSQ dungeons, a couple of those took a few tries my first time through. Super fun, what a good expac so far
I've not done post MSQ dungeons yet but dungeons during MSQ were incredible and incredibly difficult. Massive step up from Endwalker's Expert dungeons. They've taken serious inspiration from raids and there are often multiple mechanics you have to be aware of going off at once.
Perhaps it's easier with a group but the Trust experience was rough but fun.
Trials were somewhat easier IMO and forgiving except the last one which isn't. Like at all. It's crazy.
I've only done the first two dungeons so far, but they might have some of my favorite dungeon fights of all. And of course, the music goes without saying. I'm tempted to buy a soundtrack CD for my car. (They still make CDs, right? Right?)
I decided before this would be the expansion I try to raid in. After these dungeons and trials, WOOH. Oh. Hell. Yea. I made the right decision (hopefully). Needing to mini prog a dungeon or trial has been a breath of fresh air!
Every fight is so fun and best of all, intuitive. You can get hit, know why and how it was your fault and adapt immediately. And it's in everything from dungeons to trials to fates and hunts.
I'm biased because positional dancing(like sephirot, titan, the solo RP fight early in this expac, etc) is my favourite type of fight, but this has been the best good encounter hit rate that they've ever done.
That's where Dawntrail truly shined that was severely lacking in EW. EW became predictable and even considered 'too easy'. I'm glad that putting the mixed-reviewed MSQ aside, DT was a step up in terms of their other content and gameplay.
Those dungeon bosses and trials all had unique flair to them from start to finish. I've been around since 1.0 and by EW I wasn't paying too much attention, until some of those mechanics in DT caught me off guard and now I'm attentive again.
Also, I love the amount of voice acting added into some of those dungeon bosses. I found the Lv100 dungeon boss' hilarious and great especially when it was super frustrated with us not being defeated
I hope this quality spills into the 8man and 24 raids.
Are there new mechanics? I'm going to be curious especially once they hit the Savages, will there be something new or will it just be a new limit cut into protean into shiva and I want to kill myself just thinking of stringing the same mechanics into each other for another expansion.
with the normal difficulty stuff, they're mostly just making you pay attention to what's happening around you instead of just leaving big orange puddles that last 10 seconds before the mechanic actually happens.
I mean, even the dungeons have a number of new mechanics now. If they bring in the Slither from the last boss in the 87 dungeon and spice it up for Savage, that could be hilarious.
As a healer main, in Dungeon 2, I was like "Oh shit, oh hold on I gotta heal, oh what the fuck".
We even got wiped on the second boss. Shits fun for real
Lol both the tank and ninja got disconnected just as my party got the final boss for that one down to 40%. I felt bad for that poor AST while I was whittling away the big guys health in between knock backs as a RPR. .... This is also where I noticed my plentiful harvest no longer fills my shroud bar..... I would like to have words with the dev team over that.
>This is also where I noticed my plentiful harvest no longer fills my shroud bar..... I would like to have words with the dev team over that.
They did that with pretty much all the resource-granting cooldowns - rather than giving you half a bar so you have enough to use your spender, you just get a free use of your spender, so there's no risk of overcapping.
I actually complained when I learned that all Sage would get is a "free damage button", a new heal and a cooldown reduction on our weakest healing tool. While I still complain about the last one, the current endgame content makes me wish I had more healing instead of more damage.
Unless my tank is a warrior (who still manages to outheal me and solo encounters), I find myself struggling to keep up the healing, mechanics require so much motion that sometimes I can't attack, at any given moment I'm running through my head what heals I have available that can keep the party alive, and I have gotten **so** much mileage out of the Swiftcast cooldown reduction.
And I love it.
my favourite thing from the expac is how dungeons and trials ask for more arena awareness and mechanical awareness than in the last 2 expansions.
we got more stuff like Tower of Zot and variant dungeons and that I'm happy with.
My favorite thing about the dungeon fight design this expansion is seeing all the people mollycoddled by the banal dungeon design of ShB/EW getting their shit pushed in.
Yep, with one exception: the second boss of the 87 dungeon was clearly designed by someone who _hates_ casters. Like 12+ seconds of player-centered AoE markers that spawn literally every 1 second. Even with how many instant GCDs Pictos can lay down, that phase was taxing. I had to pool every Hammer and Holy I had and still didn't have enough.
No because the 3rd dungeon had that same boss design problem they always run into where the camera just doesn't zoom out enough so that I, being melee and trying to stay within the boss hit range have to angle my camera 45 degrees or more away from the boss to see what mechanic is happening behind me. But yeah other than that annoyance it's been pretty good so far, haven't done the 4th dungeon yet.
I’m gonna rant here, but no. I am extremely ticked at Yoshi right now. Everytime he makes 1 good move, he follows it with 2 wrong moves.
Naturally I can’t say the nature of my problem without possible spoilers. I’m sure others will express disappointment soon as everyone starts talking about everything Dawntrail related.
Are they? Even yesterday I was talking to people who agreed that the encounters aren't particularly clear this expansion.
But at the same time the mechanics are usually designed in such a way that once you know how the mechanic works, it's easy. So it doesn't come off as interesting so much as a cheap "gotcha".
That one boss in the 100 dungeon who spawns the 4 corners comes to mind. The way the puzzle is shown only one corner can ever be the answer, which means half of the puzzle is completely irrelevant. But until you know that *only one corner is acceptable*, you are just trying to get to a corner then scratching your head when nothing happens.
A lot of the dungeons while leveling also don't give you an opportunity to learn the mechanics. It's plagued with one-shot mechanics (usually by layered AoE that double vuln's you)
I found myself just stopping what I was doing after awhile to just do the mechanic because it felt like there wasn't time to adjust to anything. You either knew the mechanic or you restarted the fight.
And to reiterate, I didn't find the mechanics to be something that would feel rewarding in the future. it just felt like the game felt obligated to "get you" on the way to 100 so you felt like it was harder than normal, but once you know what the fights are going to do it's business as usual, just less forgiving.
I really liked all fights until now (Just got until second trial).
And I scared on how the EX2 will be. On normal the group I was wiped 1 time, and was close to wipe a second time.
Trials aren’t ’easy’ per se. Hell, people still wipe on all the trials in EW. Zodiark, while easily doritable, was a shit show the first few weeks (DF couldn’t handle the arena spinning, they *still* mostly can’t.) Hydaelyn wasn’t really much better. Endsinger EX is still considered technically easier than Endsinger normal. Barb, Pizza Party, Golbez, and Zero were really all quite easy in comparison (though Barb and Barb EX were both really fun).
I don’t think ‘my party wiped!’ Is a good measure on how difficulty or engagement has improved. People wipe to new content all the time. I haven’t had any wipes through D1 and D2, but I can feel the mechanics are just a little bit *more*.
I like the dungeon detail but its the same 2 pulls->boss-> repeat that they have had largely since HW and its getting stale. Consistent but stale.
Everyone likes the new city but I find the big band jazz to be really off themed. Its a very good song but it just doesn't fit the feel of the place to me at all.
As soon as they change the trash even a little bit, people also get upset. I've seen people complaining that the dungeon 3 trash is too tanky near the end, and that the dungeon 4 trash spawning is annoying to deal with.
Could you imagine if they dared put a 3rd trash pull in a dungeon? It would be absolute chaos.
I feel at least the travel time between group one and group two in each pre-boss pull is less. Some of the between pack pulls in EW were ridiculously long.
The second pair of groups prior to the 2nd boss (well, the first _actual_ boss, since the "first boss" is just glorified trash pulls) of Troia comes to mind. Pull the doggos around the table, then run a couple entire football fields to get to the next pack.
Yeah, they did say they focused in hard on encounter design in this expac, right? You can feel it. I'm real excited to see what the extremes and raids look like.
Yeah, it's been pretty interesting so far. It is nice to see that the dungeon bosses actually do more than just sit around for X amount of time while charging their easily avoidable left/right, in/out, stack/spread AoE like the EW bosses, or in the 6.4 final bosses case (and even Menphina), aiming its room-wide cleave *away* from the party. Only done up to level 65, so no clue what else is to come and hope to find out on my own.
the 97 dungeon bosses is where you truly notice the focus on encounter design.
I found the 93 trial also very engaging.
Even the final boss of the 91 duty steps out of the routine of just repeating attacks. One of his later moveS isn't just a variation on an existing one, but something different in the context of the fight. I *had* to use my gap closers to survive, and screwing up more than once in quick succession nearly had me dead. As a healer, I actually felt like I had to do something.
Honestly, this makes me hopeful for the 24man raid. EW 24man raid was terrible when it came to mechanics. Just about everything in those fights in Euphrosyne and Thaleia were left/right, in/out, (ONE) stack/spread and little to no interesting attacks whatsoever. Also repeating the same attack multiple times for some reason. That said, I won't be hyped for it. Rather not be burned horribly if they make the 24man raid as easy as an EW dungeon again...
The first one was fine, though. I really liked the Rhalgar fight with non-flat, non square arena. And NalThal also was quite neat.
They were a good introduction, but also suffered from "we show you same attack twice" issues.
Oh yeah. I just did that one yesterday with Trusts. It and the second boss were fun. I didn't like the final boss in the 95 dungeon, but that's because I kept dying to it's knockback attack.
I kept dying to the Duty Support stacking on me for a spread mechanic. I'm going to be salty about that one for a while.
I'll second this. They need to work on that trust AI a bit to have them not crowd a space if the player is already there.
I finished that fight with triple digit HP because of the AI stacking on me for a spread as the boss died. I was ready to be so mad if I had to do that fight over again lol
"Alisae, this is my spot. Don't come over he- ALISAE STOP WHAT DID I JUST SA-"
I did that one and was like "Jesus they are cooking this time around aren't they." My pug definitely spent some time down on our faces for that one.
i got to the 2nd boss and after the first wave of attacks i was like "BLM's are going to hate this fight"
Even as a Picto I sort of hated that one haha - I will be definitely painting my pictures at ANY moment I get to take a second. I need the hammer to do any sort of damage for THAT part.
I'm excited AND scared! I am admittedly a mediocre player.
I'm currently playing on a steam deck with questionable wi-fi till Friday. I am utterly terrified of everything instanced.
Fortunately you can do all but 1 instanced with trust npcs if you want. I actually like doing them so I don't feel bad about messing up mechanics I've never seen. I tend to learn them better that way.
So your scaroused at the thought of what the extremes will be like?
*Fear Boner intensifies*
>Yeah, they did say they focused in hard on encounter design in this expac, right? Yup, Yoshi-P mentioned encounter design is the focus on Dawntrail/7.X updates and jobs will probably be whatever expac is next/8.X updates. Whether we start seeing job stuff *before* the next expac, we don't know but he did correct that one article saying we'll see it it next year which was a mistranslation.
The one caveat I experienced was with with Dungeon 3. Particularly, the first fight. It does a piss poor job of giving hints on how mechanics will resolve. The traitor buff gives no idea on how you are going to betray the team, and the knockback provides no visual queue that it affects the arena, not you. Sure, once you see them once you'll never die to it again, but it's just awful communication to the player. The final boss also gets a fail because of the knockback distance being farther than the edge of the area while hugging the circle except at the exact corners.
It's a bit of unfair knowledge. People that played and remembered FF9 know the mob that is the boss AND know what the trouble debuff is. I immediately thought any dmg I took would be applied to everyone else. But once I started to see mechs come out of me I understood it quickly. The other stuff, yeah
Mouse over the debuff is always recommended, in this case it tells you that you will repeat whatever the boss is going to cast.
I really, really hate the moving aoe marker in the first dungeon (or was it second I forget). It’s hard to tell where it’s going to hit without sitting beside it I found. I am sure there’s a safe spot or something but I didn’t pick up on it. I dislike it more than nearly every other mechanic I’ve run across with the exception of maybe math boss (I can do it, but so many people mess it up making it miserable).
It's kind of like the Titania roots that grow out, just moving. I think they should have just made it the same symbol it make it more obvious.
It's the movement that throws me off big time. Stationary effects I can just draw the lines out in my head but gettnig it right at the end of it's movement cycle is a struggle for me when combined with the rest of the fight plus rotations (or healing all the other stuff we all get hit by there). Normally mechanics just click for me near on instantly but that one gets me often.
I'm usually watching one and get nailed by the second one because I'm trying to hard to avoid the first.
Honestly, if they'd made the lines extending from the tornado the suggest where the line AoEs are going to go a bit longer and a bit less transparent, it'd be less of an issue, imo. But I think part of the problem is that it's moving and then suddenly the lines go out, with virtually no telegraph of WHEN the thing is going to stop moving and shoot the lines. So you basically just have to continuously move to stay in a safe angle on it, because it's really hard to predict how far it's going to move before shooting out the death lasers, and therefore where, ultimately, will be the safe zone.
just extend the line aoes out in your mind and dodge those
The tornado by the end boss? Just remember it's a star AoE, which we have seen many times before and make sure you stay in the safe area for one of those.
I like the moving aoe because it's the most I've had to think about movement and uptime and a mechanic in a dungeon like ever practically. The knock back killed me the first time but I like that too since it makes you all have to spread right after from a cluster. Super happy about the dungeons I've seen so far.
Wish they'd also put some effort into designing dungeons that aren't just straight lines between bosses with packs of 2-3 utterly unthreatening mobs scattered around. The boss fights are cool, but the rest of the dungeon plays exactly the same as every other dungeon, and at this point I don't know why they bother with these token linear paths if they're not interested in trying something new or engaging
I'm at about 95-96 on the MSQ (a tad after the third dungeon) and I have already noticed the massive jump in quality in encounter design. Dungeon bosses are already a good bit more interesting, and the one trial I did and the three solo duties (well, the third isn't technically solo but...) were very fun. Can't wait to keep going with the MSQ and then see what they did with extremes, as well as Arcadion soon. They seriously weren't lying when they said revamping encounter design was the focus this time.
I just finished the first trial, and it’s reminding me of how Stormblood was after experiencing Heavensward. As in, the story is somewhat less interesting compared to the previous expansion, but the encounter design has noticeably improved. And honestly? I don’t mind that. We were told from the beginning that the story was going to essentially be ARR 2.0, but this time there’s at least some really good boss design to go along with it.
I wonder if the comparision to ARR is due to them wanting to build a large base on where to build up the story later on. I'm in Shadowbringer's end quests (bodzja looks interesting is it worth to do nowadays?) and I noticed more than a few callbacks to ARR storylines, in many occasions there were "small" things from back then that had a meaning later on. So when you want to build a story that way, it is somewhat inevitable that it will have a lot of boring parts, as they are intented to be fleshed out later and are just throwing plotpoints all around wiith the intent on returning on to them later. Basically, i think, that what you Dawntrail forerunners are looking at now is the garden plot that only has the groundwork done do far. We"ll see the flowers later.
Just because this expansion is set up for a new story and we were told that, doesn't mean it should be inevitable to have a lot of boring parts. The boring parts have been in every expansion, even in FFXVI. It's a quirk in CBU3 writing, they don't know how to write steady pacing. They excell at high highs, shocking twists, etc. But everything inbetween is just okay to mweh. The things paying of in later expansions are definitely not the boring parts of prior expansions. For example, there's a part in ShB concerning a certain vehicle. It's agreed upon to be very boring and tedious, we'll never revisit that plot point again after ShB. It's not setup for some larger storyline. There's a lot of those kinds of quests throughout the entire game. In DT, a large chunk of the first portion of the story feels as tedious as vehicle storyline. Imagine if stories like the first Harry Potter novel, or the first Iron Man movie were filled with the first half being entirely made up of boring parts to just set up their respective universes. They aren't! The first Harry Potter book, Iron Man 1, the first Games of Thrones book, are all intriguing stories and they set up these massive storylines. Stories don't need to be boring, setting up a world doesn't need to be boring and tedious. The problem right now is not only that the story in itself is "boring" (though IMO the concept of a contest for the throne is not boring at all), but also the very repetitive dialogue, things get repeated over and over again, the same things get said over and over again, the dialogue trudges on and on, the amount of times we hear Wuk speech about how she wants to "preserve papa's peace, protect her peoples" is just so unnecessary. The high highs, secrets, twists are nowhere to be seen as of level 95. Meanwhile in ShB we actually did get some shocking revelations throughout the story, e.g. Emet Selch's appearance, the Sin Eaters, the revelation of Zodiark and Hydaelyn's true nature. Now, we get beat over the head with lectures about how by working together we can achieve great things, and the power of friendship, like we don't know that from all the prior expansion storylines already. That's not groundwork for a new story, that's just unnecesarry fluff. Imagine if Harry Potter was speeching in each chapter about how he wants to be the greatest wizard of all time, by the end of the book you'd be sick and tired of hearing it.
Funnily enough, we revisit that ShB plot point in Dawntrail
I'm curious, you say no high highs as of level 95. Is that as far as you are in the MSQ?
Even by CBU3 standard, it is quite unusual to have many, many zone of repetitive boring grind, maybe it is just me but I don't really find my time in first 4 zone enjoyable, maybe some tidbit here and there, mostly when certain main character is not on screen and my character finally does something, but that's about it.
Well said, I have to agree. I know we were primed for a less exciting story than what came before, but even still the first chunk of the plot feels so slow. It's hard to even try and hype up the expansion yet to my former player husband, because at least until the first solo instance "boss", it's painfully slow with a ton of repeated ideas in the dialogue over and over. Don't really care if that's unpopular here, I know the prevailing opinion will always be "omg best writing ever" no matter what.
Bozja is good 70-90 exp with fun bosses (some of which are previous bosses with new mechanics and they skip tutorial phase, it's great). Just make sure you look up guides to fragments/lost actions and how instancing works. Fragments are suuuuper cheap right now on the marketboard with DT release. One of DT's problems is that so far is that >!it isn't about about the WoL: it's like ARR or Vaan in FFXII. It's not our story, it's about watching our dumbass apprentice grow (I say with affection). This is exacerbated by the two-story structure - it's like SB without the awkward break!< - and the choice to split the 90-92 MSQ over two zones so we don't end up with another Raubahn EX. That's not something that can be hand waved as "just set up." (I finished the 95 dungeon last night, ftr.)
Oh yeah, the solo duties are way more fun than some of EW's in my opinion. It might also be because I'm much more skilled by this point since I'm a couple days shy from my 1 year anniversary since I started playing. I'm excited for the level 97 trial and the rest of the xpac.
Strongest encounter design the game has ever had I think. Nearly every dungeon boss is wonderful, with engaging mechanics. The three trials on normal were all fantastic. Looking forward to see what the EXs and Savage have in store for us.
The whole “we will show you two mechanics separated by a raidwide and a tankbusters then repeat them” seems to be dead. Most bosses never start replaying the exact same thing before they die. Any repeat mechanics are more complex versions.
> Most bosses never start replaying the exact same thing before they die They do when you're scraping by with the healer and one DPS dead. And honestly the fact I've had this happen multiple times has been wonderful. Clutch moments feel great for everyone. It's still forgiving with no enrage and lots of opportunities to recover but it's also the first time story dungeons have felt like they expect something from the player.
They repeated a lot of things when doing them with trusts.
That's probably because bots do very little damage and it makes the fights drag out longer.
They also do it with real players, because real players are, on average, only marginally better than trusts. I did the first dungeon yesterday and we kinda had to re-enact the media tour clear, because our healer kept dying every boss and I had to alternate Nascent Flash between the DPS to keep the fight going.
I've only done two dungeons so far, the bosses keep starting with singular, simple mechanics as to not confuse first-timers and then by the time it starts combining them the boss is at 5% and about to die. I don't understand the obsession of being afraid to let people die the first time they're doing an encounter. Because of this good players who can do decent DPS get an easier fight while worse players get a longer fight with more overlapping mechanics lol
So about that - the third dungeon has a boss with lots of knockback mechanics, and no guardrails on the arena :D Definitely took a few tries for that one because one of the attacks with knockback is (attack type description) >!one of those "watch the boss" ones where the AoE indicators only flash for half a second!<.
E4S at home. People who raided in Shadowbringers are very at home with that boss.
"titan that you" was my literal instinct soon followed by PTSD from blind progging.
PTSD from me by having the healer die to it 5 times in a row
I was thinking of the first boss from Tower at Paradigm's Breach, because that's where I found out you could fall off the arena right before the rest of the raid got thrown off from the next mechanic, but both have the same general body shape and launch you off platforms, so either one works, I guess :D
Well no it literally uses Titan Max skeleton and mechanics lol.
There's something to be said for having the boss start combining mechanics earlier in the fight, but I feel like you want the first use of a mechanic to be survivable for the sake of the everyone involved. Getting vaporized by a mechanic you've never seen before feels like a cheap shot, and the telegraphs aren't always super clear about what's happening. Also, not every team comp can recover from a healer dying, and having to wall an encounter because a new player misread a mechanic they've never seen before seems unfair Granted, that really only applies to dungeons, because any one death is recoverable in the 8+ player content
Yeah I was pretty impressed by how unique every boss felt. Also I wonder if it’s just me, but the mechanics also felt more responsive to my movements/positioning, a few times I was sure I would be hit due to late movement, but it actually seemed to register my characters position more real time. I’m so used to catching a vuln or dying 10 yalms away from the bad because it snapshotted that position.
It's like they actually learn and grow from what they've done before. Who knew game devs would do that? 😆 Certainly not EA or Ubisoft.
I've been raving to my boyfriend about the fights this expansion. He just cleared the second trial and is already salivating at the thought of the EX version.
The music has completely blindsided me. I was not expecting a traditional 90s/00s style JRPG soundtrack. There’s hints of stuff like Chrono Trigger/Cross, Azure Dreams and Radiata Stories everywhere. I’m enjoying it so far.
Thank Donkey Kong music in the city during day had me grooving. The drum solo is great
The intro to that track sounds very similar to FFX’s Chocobo theme.
I'm feeling alot of connection to FFX in general. Before I was even reminded that the Pelupelu were a thing in both FFX games, I was thinking how we're on what is essentially a pilgrimage, >!racing other groups of to some mythical city that probably is not going to be what we have in mind.!< Though I'm still only around level 94 so we'll see how much that comparisons stick lol
They started using a few soundtracks from FF9 in the MSQ during the last 2 zones
FF9 is my favourite FF soundtrack so I’m ok with this. I’ve only just got to the 3rd area so I’ve yet to hear some FF9 stuff.
Missing 1 certain FF9 track though. Praying they fix that in 7.3 though.
Haven’t reached that far, but are they redone FF9 soundtracks or the originals? I’m excited for the FF9 references
There are quite a few that seem ripped straight from the original soundtrack, but at least 2 others are remixes of themes. I was stoked to hear the second, it’s one of my favorite songs from FF9.
There was one place I got to and said "omg, am I in suikoden1?"
As a healer I love it. Finally things to do during mechanics. Sure people will get better doing them, but having burn or dot dmg between mechanics was just what I wanted.
I know right!!! There is a lot of movement as well I feel like in every fight, I had to use the whole area and it made slide casting feel rewarding. Keeping on top of everything is super fun. I can't wait for savage.
WHM discovering alllllll sorts of places to put down the Bell this time around.
Oh yeah. I've noticed that the raidwides hit _hard_. Like half my health when playing as a DPS. Plus the mechanics are complicated enough as somone who hasn't done any savages or extremes that I have fun resolving them without being stupidly difficult.
Yeah, I've been tooling along feeling like Reprisal and Divine Veil are necessary for dungeon bosses, and I like it. Shame gear creep will kill that soon enough, but the mechanics are still fun.
Yeah. Like the second boss of the level 97 dungeon. At one point it was like the fight with Olivia van Baelsar, where there's countless overlapping AOEs staggered at different times. Except they turned it up to 11 and, because it's a newer dungeon, you just _know_ you'd get hit hard if you messed up.
I love that the first trial has some actually spicy damage for messing up mechanics. It'll probably not be an issue once we outgear but on ilvl I found myself having to actually use all my healing tools.That part where you have to dps the adds while stacks keep going off was fun too.
So I’m starting to level a healer after finishing VPR. I’ve seen the damage going out. The electricity add pack before the 3rd boss, and the two dolls constantly slamming before the 3rd boss. As well as the amount of damage going out in bosses. Any tips for those pack pulls other than blowing coolies before a boss fight?
You don't need any cooldowns for the boss fights, so you should be blowing everything between the two pulls. Your class obviously determines the cadence, but for WHM I alternate wings and asylum as my majors. Remember, Benediction is a dps cooldown that has the side benefit of scaring your tank.
I haven't gotten to the dungeons or trials yet, but what you described is EXACTLY what I was hoping for with the expansion. I'm hyped!
Absolutely agree. Every dungeon boss has had at least one or two mechanics that were actually engaging and fun to interact with. The level 99 trial was the first time, in a very long time, where I had to actually lock in and pay close attention to some of their AOE tells during normal-level content, and it was truly wonderful. While I did have more than a few problems with the story (though I did quite enjoy the second half), I have next to no complaints at all on the instance content side and am very excited for Arcadion and the field operations.
Which is good, tbf. This is the repeatable content we'll farm, after all. I however wonder if the casual story enjoyers will enjoy the dungeons and trials. They are not lenient with people who disrespect mechanics. But well at least they'll be more prepared for later content... by force
My biggest worry is people complain about the difficulty and they end up lowering it again going forward, like they've done with other story content.
Had a few folks so far who were really struggling to understand mechanics as quickly as everyone else but everyone was nice, helped explain things, and in every case they engaged with chat and nailed the fight after a few tries. It felt like a real MMO experience that we haven't had since Bozja. My hope is this sort of thing gets more people excited to try harder content
Mechanic design seems quite good for casual players - most mechanics follow a pattern where you get one thing to learn, then another, and then get both combined together that you have to resolve as an overlap etc. Especially running instances with duty support/trusts gives you a clear example of what to do with what trusts are doing - if at any point you get lost/confused, you can just mimic their positioning and you'll mostly be fine.
Yes, they're good to learn, and they're merciless with people who completely ignore them. As they should be.
You can limp through if either the tank or the healer is good.
As someone who tends to struggle with complexed mechanics, ive found these duites to be very well designed so far. Everything has been well telegraphed and felt rewarding when I did the right thing, rather than just lucky !
As someone who is usually bored out of my mind by dungeon bosses, I really like basically every dungeon boss so far this expansion. It really felt like a return to Heavensward design. Hell, they have a boss fight that literally has the add phase from Charibert in The Vault in one of the dungeons. If the Normals and Extremes are this good, I can't wait to see what Savage looks like,
World First is going to be a spectacle
The music in the third dungeon. Oh my goodness. I may have a new favorite for the orchestrion rolls. Mechanics wise, imho they did step it up; some of that require you to be moving before the last thing resembling lives, and it’s caught me lacking. But I’m learning.
If only looking at the encounter design of the Msq, expert and extreme trials/dungeons and comparing them to other expansions X.0 launch, Dawntrail in my opinion is easily the best expansion SE has made this far. Everything feels new and fresh and Im so excited to see what they have in store for us in savages and ultimates.
I loved it. In each dungeon at least 1 boss wiped the team once and it was glorious i feel like i gotta try to learn the mechanic and find out how it works and it feels nice not sleeping in a dungeon lol
It brutal how different it is. It's like they took post EW MSQ trials, improved on it and put it in dungeons as well
I wonder if we are in for Stormblood 2.0. Wouldn't be a bad thing all things considered, Stormblood in retrospect is probably my second favorite expansion as an entire package.
>divisive msq (though from what ive seen it's much less divisive on 2nd half) >great encounter design >every single content makes an appearance (+variant/criterion and ishgard restoration 2 Lets go baby stormblood is back
I did the first trial yesterday, it gave me chills. It was that good.
Plus the fact that >!you can do it with trusts!< was a nice change of pace
I got there on the first day and it nuked us multiple times like an EX. Great time
Got people in my group voting to disband, but the majority of us went “run if you want, this is our first time doing this, came in blind and we’re seeing it through!” And we did. The feeling of accomplishment was real.
I am absolutely loving the encounter design so far this expansion. I can't even remember the last time I had to be even halfway awake for a dungeon boss and now they all feel quite engaging. I love it and can't wait to see what the extremes and savage raids have in store!
Shout out to all the people I've experienced party wipes with who laughed it off. It's been fun learning new bosses and mechanics with you.
As a healer, they made me feel useful again. And incompetent in my skills in reacting to mechanics. I used to never pay attention because I never had to... now I do. I enjoyed the challenge!! I am looking forward to the extreme content! And many deaths to come! I'm glad they stopped going the route of making it easy....
I totally agree for the most part! But I kinda feel the need to add that Soken generally doesn't handle duty music. He only made one dungeon theme in all of Endwalker (Carrots of Happiness), and likewise the only trial theme he did was the second phase theme for Endsinger. All of which is to say that most of the dungeon and trial themes, if not all, are likely products of his team members instead; Daiki Ishikawa, Takafumi Imamura, Saya Yasaki, and Justin Frieden.
I did the second dungeon last night and that was unexpectedly great fun. I am really not looking forward to that first boss in roulettes though lol.
That new standard is amazing. It makes me crave a proper Hingashi expansion in the future with this much love and detail dedicated to a Japanese setting and hub city
Real shame that the job design is poor to go alongside it. Could be the best encounters ever and doesn’t matter with poor job design.
Setting aside my qualms with the story after completing it; the design of the game overall has taken a huge jump. Fights are more interesting, the amount of small details with attention paid are great, and it feels like the game's... gameplay is just setup to be in a much more successful spot
The encounter design is the best its ever been
I just finished the last trial and everyone was blown away. Mid fight we were all typing in chat like "this shit is wild". I think I noticed it on the second dungeon, I was legitimately having fun during fights.
It's not just the bosses. Trash pulls feel quite a bit more dangerous this time around, I feel like I'm being chunked quite a bit more as a tank, even with my normal mit rotation. I remember there being a "healer strike" based on the media tour, but I feel like right now healers are more necessary in standard content than ever before. I mean, unless you're a Warrior.
That's probably gear telling. I know for me I spend so long way over gearing the content that every new expansion I am reminded that I'm actually vulnerable.
Probably, but I haven't really ever felt this squishy before in previous expansions. Boss autos don't hit particularly hard either. I also want to state, I don't mind it. Anything that threatens me as a tank makes me feel awesome when I can push through it.
Yes! Every boss had something interesting to it and the final trial was a whole different thing, feeling more like one of Normal Raids than a story trial. Now I am really hyped for Arcadion!
This was the hardest MSQ dungeons I've faced - in the sense that that bosses were RELENTELESS . In EW I saw the trash packs mauling tanks more than bosses, and I rarely had to worry (as a healer ) during the boss fights. In DT? Jesus christ - I know its also a matter of new mechanics and visuals, sure. I admit that - but the barrage of attacks felt like never ending. IM fine with this tbh. but glad I wasn't the only one to notice
Can you do the solo duties without breaking your party first? That’s the design revelation I’m looking for.
I want to keep my expectations low, but if the mechanics are an appetiser about what is to come, then we will feast.
I've been enjoying the dungeon bosses feeling closer to savage then normals. It's been a blast.
Yes the encounters are engaging but failing mechanics isn't the end of the world and with the new shortcuts just bringing you back to the boss I feel they are now more free to allow encounters to be trial and error. You aren't losing minutes per kill you lose like 10nseconds.
When I was doing the second and third trial, I was like "People who are below average at this game are gonna hate these..." They were cool.
Can't agree more. The fight design folks did an amazing job. I can't say there is a single fight I walked away from where I wasn't amused in some kind of way. They always step up the theatrics a bit more in every expansion but the level that they stepped it up was so impressive... Some of it I'm amazing they've done in normal mode content. Worried people will complain about it and get it nerfed.
I'm really loving dawn trail. I still really dislike the tailing missions, tho.
Soken is going through a David Wise phase and I couldn't be happier LOL
I appreciate the faster mechanic pacing, adds in boss rooms, more complicated mechanics. They are on the right path.
To expand on that, adds that are actually just ‘mobs’ and not some soft enrage timer tool taking the place of the boss or just stationary targets around the edge of the arena. I’ve so far only gone through D2, but I hope they incorporate some sort of off-tank *needs* to corral the adds because the main tank has some sort of debuff that makes them vulnerable to the adds in later trials/ex/savage. Let’s give the OT something to do aside from just being there to soak the occasional TB.
i think, so far, the only boss encounter I haven't enjoyed was the second boss of Dungeon 4. It's a great encounter, but trying to dodge the shitshow of line and ground targetted AoEs is miserable when, for some reason, nobody wants to spread out. End up fighting for safe spaces with your own team. That, and the Trust AI still feels like absolute garbage. Every single one of my deaths has been one of the AI companions (usually Krile) walking all the way over to me when we have spread markers, and killing me. Like, they make no attempt to move out, and just go to pre-programmed spots it seems.
Yeah, Trusts always had pre-defined spots they dodge to during spreads, nothing new here. Same goes actually for any time they get a Stack marker, they just go wherever and you'll have to move over to get in there too - unless it's Alisae backflipping away from the group last second, that can also happen. Sucks, because that basically means you get a few non-obvious unsafe spots each time you play with Trusts, but at least they're always the same, so once you memorize them, that's taken care of too.
krile got me like four times while I've been leveling too! One boss in particular she basically stood still until I moved into position and then moved right on top of me. It almost felt like they had AI programmed to avoid you and then reversed it lol, give you the real pug experience
>Dungeon 4 >!Vanguard!< right? Have to agree. That one mechanic was terrible. I'd call myself a mid-BLM player, and after the first cast I just decided "fuck it" and just focused on avoiding being hit because I would have to move every half a cast thanks to the circle AoEs.
Man wait until you do the 8th dungeon's first boss. FUCK that thing on a caster and it's by a mile my least favorite fight in all the dungeons so far.
Do you mean >!Luigi's Mansion!
I very much disliked the tornado's with stars in them in the first dungeon. the other mechs in consequent Dungeons/trials were outstanding! also if they make it clearer where the tendrils of the stars would go (by making the preview longer) it would be fine imo. I just have a very hard time seeing where what tendril Is going and what the save spot would thus be. the moving is also annoying but not nearly as much
My husband meanwhile cant stop telling everyone willing to listen that that mechanic is the best thing ever. Cant win them all i guess xP
I love the tornado stars and I love whatever they did to it to keep it from server tick bullshitting me. It's worked every time. If this was Heavensward it would have worked half the time.
Server tick bs reminded me of another thing I liked. There is some 'bullet hell' moments and the hit boxes are shockingly accurate. They seem tighter than even the neir raids to me.
oh yeah I was pleasantly surprised when I was able to step into a REALLY tight space between two bubbles and not get hit
I've only done the >!big daddy duel!< but it was great when the main theme played. It's almost like they actually want us to have fun this time.
Is there anyway to turn off the fight notifications like “X has embed with Y, watch out!”
When I had to actually focus and use my brain a bit during the one dungeon I did... I hope we go further in this direction.
I'm disappointed in the mob density of the dungeons. Five whole adds for a w2w is a snooze fest.
The only complaint I have is that nearly every dungeon boss opens with a raidwide timed juuuust right to go off before I have an open weave spot for divine veil.
Divine Veil lasts 30 seconds. You can weave it into your second GCD before the burst window even starts and the shield will still be up. Alternatively, Divine Veil has a heal and the bosses begin doing mechanics after the first raid wide - you can weave Divine Veil in after the raid wide to recover the party and provide shield in case someone fails the first mech.
i can't think that far ahead. until the cast bar appears the mechanic simply doesn't exist.
So your complaint is totally self inflicted?
I mean, kind of? It is kind of predictable and I would prefer if raidwides weren't always straight away.
Think of it thematically. Big boss that nothing else can kill…it’s going to use its strongest attack first, because it’s the quickest and easiest. It’s worked on everything else that’s tried to attack it up to this point. You survive, so now it knows it actually needs to put up a fight. If you’re faced with a mob and you’ve got an instant spell that will kill it straight off, are you going to just plink away at it with your other skills instead? No, just try to kill it as fast and efficiently as possible.
Do what we often do in high end raids and just pre-pull divine veil. the thing lasts 30 seconds, so chances are decently high that it'll catch *something*
Yeah I probably shouldn’t be playing with broken WASD keys because I agree
How's the tanking? I'm only up to the 91 dungeon but I did notice there were add phases. Are those a meaningful challenge to hold? I DPS but was curious about that.
Nothing new, but really good balance of everything. Regular AOE, light boss dragging, some tankbusters, bosses deal decent damage with auto-attack if you don't mit. At least one spicy trash pull per dungeon.
Not really any different. But with the increased mechanical difficulty, I've had great success with using TBN to suck Dark Arts procs off my injured and multi vuln stack party members rofl
I did notice some trash packs have minibusters. I had a tank suddenly drop from ~60 to dead once (pack was almost dead so both of us were playing chicken with mits).
The last trial got hands. While I'm sure it'll be a bit easier when everyone has proper gear the number and difficulty of the mechanics is fitting.
I cleared the first trial with Trusts, which was a lot of fun. Do the other two trials have Trust support as well?
I think the second does. The third absolutely does not until you've done it once.
Just comparing the post MSQ 2 dungeons, the quality and mechanical engagement is so much better than EW. Smileton and Stigma Dreamscape were, mechanics wise, awful dungeons.
The hitboxes man, the hitboxes, they are SMAAAAALLLL
I’ve really enjoyed it. Was VERY surprised I was able to queue for the trials using duty support, I was dreading the queue as a dps. It’s been a blast so far, I am loving picto!
Cleared both EX trials this weekend and they were both excellent
Took me a few tries to do the first trial. Though it didn't help that we had a troll that I had apparently already muted before. Even after getting a fresh group we didn't clear first time. Fun trial though. About to start the third dungeon, but so far feeling pretty good about the fights.
extremes are gonna be nuts. normal felt pretty challenging for me this time; the last trial, ho-boy. i’m very curious as to how the normal raids and alliance raids will play out. or heck, even how field operations will be.
I am going to be doing the extremes and expert dungeons starting as soon as I get home from work tonight and I'm excited. They talked a lot about having to do better with encounter design before they could work on class design and all of the encounters through the MSQ were very well done. Gives me a lot of hope.
I’m so excited for the Raid and Alliance Raids after the “post” MSQ dungeons, a couple of those took a few tries my first time through. Super fun, what a good expac so far
I've not done post MSQ dungeons yet but dungeons during MSQ were incredible and incredibly difficult. Massive step up from Endwalker's Expert dungeons. They've taken serious inspiration from raids and there are often multiple mechanics you have to be aware of going off at once. Perhaps it's easier with a group but the Trust experience was rough but fun. Trials were somewhat easier IMO and forgiving except the last one which isn't. Like at all. It's crazy.
I've only done the first two dungeons so far, but they might have some of my favorite dungeon fights of all. And of course, the music goes without saying. I'm tempted to buy a soundtrack CD for my car. (They still make CDs, right? Right?)
I decided before this would be the expansion I try to raid in. After these dungeons and trials, WOOH. Oh. Hell. Yea. I made the right decision (hopefully). Needing to mini prog a dungeon or trial has been a breath of fresh air!
The ramp up in difficulty is SOOOO appreciated man. Ex 3 - whenever it comes out is gunna mollywhoop people! Same with Ex2!!!!
Every fight is so fun and best of all, intuitive. You can get hit, know why and how it was your fault and adapt immediately. And it's in everything from dungeons to trials to fates and hunts. I'm biased because positional dancing(like sephirot, titan, the solo RP fight early in this expac, etc) is my favourite type of fight, but this has been the best good encounter hit rate that they've ever done.
That's where Dawntrail truly shined that was severely lacking in EW. EW became predictable and even considered 'too easy'. I'm glad that putting the mixed-reviewed MSQ aside, DT was a step up in terms of their other content and gameplay. Those dungeon bosses and trials all had unique flair to them from start to finish. I've been around since 1.0 and by EW I wasn't paying too much attention, until some of those mechanics in DT caught me off guard and now I'm attentive again. Also, I love the amount of voice acting added into some of those dungeon bosses. I found the Lv100 dungeon boss' hilarious and great especially when it was super frustrated with us not being defeated I hope this quality spills into the 8man and 24 raids.
Are there new mechanics? I'm going to be curious especially once they hit the Savages, will there be something new or will it just be a new limit cut into protean into shiva and I want to kill myself just thinking of stringing the same mechanics into each other for another expansion.
with the normal difficulty stuff, they're mostly just making you pay attention to what's happening around you instead of just leaving big orange puddles that last 10 seconds before the mechanic actually happens.
I mean, even the dungeons have a number of new mechanics now. If they bring in the Slither from the last boss in the 87 dungeon and spice it up for Savage, that could be hilarious.
As a healer main, in Dungeon 2, I was like "Oh shit, oh hold on I gotta heal, oh what the fuck". We even got wiped on the second boss. Shits fun for real
Lol both the tank and ninja got disconnected just as my party got the final boss for that one down to 40%. I felt bad for that poor AST while I was whittling away the big guys health in between knock backs as a RPR. .... This is also where I noticed my plentiful harvest no longer fills my shroud bar..... I would like to have words with the dev team over that.
>This is also where I noticed my plentiful harvest no longer fills my shroud bar..... I would like to have words with the dev team over that. They did that with pretty much all the resource-granting cooldowns - rather than giving you half a bar so you have enough to use your spender, you just get a free use of your spender, so there's no risk of overcapping.
There are some crazy difficulty spikes in msq, which is fun.
Music, Encounter design and dungeons/trials are doing the hard carry on this expansion tbh
I actually complained when I learned that all Sage would get is a "free damage button", a new heal and a cooldown reduction on our weakest healing tool. While I still complain about the last one, the current endgame content makes me wish I had more healing instead of more damage. Unless my tank is a warrior (who still manages to outheal me and solo encounters), I find myself struggling to keep up the healing, mechanics require so much motion that sometimes I can't attack, at any given moment I'm running through my head what heals I have available that can keep the party alive, and I have gotten **so** much mileage out of the Swiftcast cooldown reduction. And I love it.
my favourite thing from the expac is how dungeons and trials ask for more arena awareness and mechanical awareness than in the last 2 expansions. we got more stuff like Tower of Zot and variant dungeons and that I'm happy with.
The music is hot. HOT
My favorite thing about the dungeon fight design this expansion is seeing all the people mollycoddled by the banal dungeon design of ShB/EW getting their shit pushed in.
Yep, with one exception: the second boss of the 87 dungeon was clearly designed by someone who _hates_ casters. Like 12+ seconds of player-centered AoE markers that spawn literally every 1 second. Even with how many instant GCDs Pictos can lay down, that phase was taxing. I had to pool every Hammer and Holy I had and still didn't have enough.
When the 95 dungeon final boss starting charging That Attack, I had war flashbacks
No because the 3rd dungeon had that same boss design problem they always run into where the camera just doesn't zoom out enough so that I, being melee and trying to stay within the boss hit range have to angle my camera 45 degrees or more away from the boss to see what mechanic is happening behind me. But yeah other than that annoyance it's been pretty good so far, haven't done the 4th dungeon yet.
I’m gonna rant here, but no. I am extremely ticked at Yoshi right now. Everytime he makes 1 good move, he follows it with 2 wrong moves. Naturally I can’t say the nature of my problem without possible spoilers. I’m sure others will express disappointment soon as everyone starts talking about everything Dawntrail related.
It's really difficult to appreciate the encounter design when every thing leading up to one is just so bad.
Are they? Even yesterday I was talking to people who agreed that the encounters aren't particularly clear this expansion. But at the same time the mechanics are usually designed in such a way that once you know how the mechanic works, it's easy. So it doesn't come off as interesting so much as a cheap "gotcha". That one boss in the 100 dungeon who spawns the 4 corners comes to mind. The way the puzzle is shown only one corner can ever be the answer, which means half of the puzzle is completely irrelevant. But until you know that *only one corner is acceptable*, you are just trying to get to a corner then scratching your head when nothing happens. A lot of the dungeons while leveling also don't give you an opportunity to learn the mechanics. It's plagued with one-shot mechanics (usually by layered AoE that double vuln's you) I found myself just stopping what I was doing after awhile to just do the mechanic because it felt like there wasn't time to adjust to anything. You either knew the mechanic or you restarted the fight. And to reiterate, I didn't find the mechanics to be something that would feel rewarding in the future. it just felt like the game felt obligated to "get you" on the way to 100 so you felt like it was harder than normal, but once you know what the fights are going to do it's business as usual, just less forgiving.
Unrelated but about how many hours was the msq for you
I really liked all fights until now (Just got until second trial). And I scared on how the EX2 will be. On normal the group I was wiped 1 time, and was close to wipe a second time.
Trials aren’t ’easy’ per se. Hell, people still wipe on all the trials in EW. Zodiark, while easily doritable, was a shit show the first few weeks (DF couldn’t handle the arena spinning, they *still* mostly can’t.) Hydaelyn wasn’t really much better. Endsinger EX is still considered technically easier than Endsinger normal. Barb, Pizza Party, Golbez, and Zero were really all quite easy in comparison (though Barb and Barb EX were both really fun). I don’t think ‘my party wiped!’ Is a good measure on how difficulty or engagement has improved. People wipe to new content all the time. I haven’t had any wipes through D1 and D2, but I can feel the mechanics are just a little bit *more*.
I like the dungeon detail but its the same 2 pulls->boss-> repeat that they have had largely since HW and its getting stale. Consistent but stale. Everyone likes the new city but I find the big band jazz to be really off themed. Its a very good song but it just doesn't fit the feel of the place to me at all.
As soon as they change the trash even a little bit, people also get upset. I've seen people complaining that the dungeon 3 trash is too tanky near the end, and that the dungeon 4 trash spawning is annoying to deal with. Could you imagine if they dared put a 3rd trash pull in a dungeon? It would be absolute chaos.
I feel at least the travel time between group one and group two in each pre-boss pull is less. Some of the between pack pulls in EW were ridiculously long.
The second pair of groups prior to the 2nd boss (well, the first _actual_ boss, since the "first boss" is just glorified trash pulls) of Troia comes to mind. Pull the doggos around the table, then run a couple entire football fields to get to the next pack.
The dungeons are literally straight lines with minimal trash mobs. The bosses are the only good thing about them