Minty Suggestions for Dungeon Design

[Mint_tea]

I've been kicking these ideas around in my head for a bit and I've noticed similar thoughts crop up in various social media and conversation I've had with other players. So I thought now might be a good time to put them in print. I don't really have a structure for this so I'm just gonna list my thoughts.

Optional Routs: This can be diversified in multiple ways and can be as simple as choosing between door A or B. Obviously the meta-game will pick apart this system so there will always be a "best rout". But at least having an option would provide some welcome variance to instances many of us grind daily. A good example of this in game is Thousand Maws of Toto Rak.

Skill based Options: Provide optional content unlocked by players who posses the correct skill. For example, poison gas blocks a hallway to an optional boss. Any player possessing 1 level or higher in Alchemist can quickly access plants or maybe a work station in the area that activates a buff for the party which negates the gas so they can enter and fight the boss. Another example could be a breakable wall that any party member possessing a level in Miner can activate to open a hidden optional rout.

Environmental Hazards: Rock slides, cliffs, pit traps, pools of acid/lava/etc.. make them deadly and make them interactive. I'll use the rock slide as my example. The party can target and damage the trigger to set off the trap to avoid it or lure mobs into the hazard zone and use the rock slide to their advantage. This should hopefully inspire tactical thinking and reward clever players.

Parkour: Climbing stuff might not be that interesting in and of itself but adding verticality in combination with other elements would bring dungeons to a whole new level within FFXIV (pardon the pun). Imagine having to fight a boss on two floors where a transition phase floods the lower level with water and drowns anyone unable to escape. Or perhaps players need to climb to a second story to trigger special environmental hazards that can inflict massive damage. Parkour could be something that is rewarded on its own like having jumping puzzles to hidden loot or optional routs and bosses.

Alternative Modes of Navigation: Keeping things confined to just the player inside an environment there are still a lot of ways to get from point A to B. Stormblood will add swimming and I would love to see this implemented into dungeons in some way. Other localized modes of travel could include swinging over a chasm on ropes or vines. A great example in game is the Weeping City were the player dives into rapids that throw them over a waterfall.

Hidden/Super Bosses: A special optional challenge at high difficulty that could reward something other than dungeon loot. Maybe cosmetic items, achievements, bonus tomes, or titles.

Okay, I think that's it for now. Hopefully it wasn't too hard to read.. I tried not to ramble. So, thank you for reading if you've got this far and maybe add ideas of your own.

[Sylvain]

Optional Routs:

As you pointed, the meta would pick apart the best route which goes against the whole "route system"

I can also see two main issue with such a system.
First: Unless you're the tank or party with a tank friend, you might never see, or very rarely see , the less effective route as player will always want to go for the best one. Assuming you do want to go the alternate path and say you won't go the main path, if you're the tank, you'll probably not be kicked, but if you're a dps it'll either be "follow the groupe or get kicked".
This could result in very toxic situation and it is very important to realise that it would happen.


Second: It would cost the devs a lot of developpement time depending on how significant the alternative route is. If it's a long route, then it's a lot of wasted developpement time, if it's 1-2 boss at most, then what's the point anyway?


A solution I see would be that there are various path but you have no control over which one you can go through. The said dungeon would have the main path diverge after the first boss death leading to path A or B with 3 unique bosses to each.
While there could be a better path, removing player's control would solve the issue and basically bring some randomness.

Skill based Options:

I'm not even sure the game can currently register your job level if you're not in the said job. Assuming they'd include the functionnality.
I don't really see the point. It would basically be "if you're unlucky enough to have no one in your group with max (or high) job skill, then you have to get through X annoying things", if you do, it's not here.

Very few players actually have crafting job maxed and if they do it's usually one one for the crafting trybe. If a maxed level isn't required then what's the point anyway? Leveling a crafting job until 60 is currently trivial and takes a couple of weeks of dailies. Only 60-70 will be hard as 50-60 was hard before the introduction of the moogle.
I don't believe the community would respond well to such a thing.

Environmental Hazards:

Well, this one could be interesting depending on how it is executed. But many dungeons already have, to some extent, such mechanics.

Parkour:

This is again a very Dangerous idea. If you have for instance to split your group into two and have them do different task than what they are usually meant to do, you better be sure everyone knows how to do it.
Also, from my small experience, I've noticed that player tend to be more annoyed than anything from bosses having immunity moment where you have to wait for an event or trigger Something specific to make the fight goes on. The problem with such things is that it tend to break the flow of the fight. Of course, I don't say by any mean that there's no way this could be well done. I see plenty of situation where it could be well done. But making players drifts from their primary role (tank dps heal) tend to be more annoying than anything else.

A good example would be Niddhog at the end of. I forgot the dungeon name XD, that lv 54 place. The healer has to keep the group AND Estinien alive, this was an interesting twist. Another fun one was in WoW Frozen Citadel, there was a boss that had to be healed. Basically, the "dps" were the healers. This could also be an interesting twist.

Hidden/Super Bosses:

This is definitely Something I'd like to see SE include. BUT
The problem with hidden is that they're optional, and you fall to the alternate path problem where if the tank doesn't want to go (or if most of the party doesn't care) you can't go. On the other hand, you can force them to go by giving great reward, but then, they're not really "hidden" and become mandatory.
The reward cannot only be an achievement as after 1-2 weeks no body will bother doing it again.

So if you want to really have a special boss granting good rewards, then my best bet would be to make them
1- require specific event to occure to unlock them
2- These boss have a limited amount of attemp

Assuming you give reward that will always make player want to down the boss and you want to keep the boss "hidden" then you must add a requirement.

Some specific requirement could be
1- Reaching the last boss in a specific amount of time
2- Having no one die during the course of the dungeon (put new player at risk from toxic players)
3- Preventing some bosses to trigger some event or destroy some element during their fight.

My favorite one would however be to simply make that the last boss, on the first try, can enter a second very powerful phase should you click on a mechanism before the fight (Like WoW Mimiron's Big Red Button). This mechanism could only be activated once giving the party only one shot.
Should your party wipe, you cannot attemp the special second phase again.
This would also be interesting in the sens that some fight tend to be Dangerous over the duration.
For instance, the magmacrab is Dangerous if your dps is very low, giving him a second phase, could make the whole fight dynamic very different as you'd need to manage the lava puddle for much longer (so you need to put them very well)

[Mint_tea]

Thanks for your insight and ideas, Sylvain. I especially like your thoughts on hidden bosses.

I wasn't aware of the Duty Finder not loading your character data. That's the first I've heard of it. But if that's true then I guess it would be a lot more work. NPCs recognizing your accomplishments such as the DRG and Coil references in Heavensward dialogue were fairly well received. So maybe achievements would be less difficult to do? I believe adding small events that can be effected by player achievements would create fun and rewarding experiences. Yes, there will still be the meta and players who don't care and trolls and so on. But you shouldn't let that ruin an opportunity to explore new things (new for SE cuz most of this stuff is in other games).

Star Wars the Old Republic has a small number of dungeons that use player crafting and gathering skills as a catalyst for events. You're not actively gathering or crafting in the dungeon so I don't think your level/skill is important. Instead, simply having the skill lets you interact with certain things? For example, you're attacking a mine and there's a cart with explosives. A player with the right skills can arm the cart and blow up part of a wall which opens a passage to shorten the dungeon - bypassing some trash mobs. SE doesn't have to copy SWTOR but just taking that idea to use in their own style could create some interesting events. Plus its rewarding the player for having the right skill which I believe has a lot of value.

[Rongway]

I'm not even sure the game can currently register your job level if you're not in the said job.

I'm not sure why anyone would have the impression that the game doesn't know all your levels at any given time. See materia melding, gear repair, supply/provisioning/collectable deliveries as the wrong class, and your character sheet.

I mostly agree with the rest of your responses (and especially like the idea of optionally extending a boss via a pre-accessed Big Red Button), but as for whether profession-based dungeon mechanics could be a thing, I do think some interesting, albethey small, things could be done in that vein, e.g., skipping two trash groups (1/3 to 1/2 the mobs between two minibosses) or opening the way to a chest that contains an ingredient for a piece of glamour gear. Making it as simple has "possessing 1 level or higher" would be too easy though -- since the character would be improvising a solution on the spot, maybe it should require a specialist soul, or level at least (dungeon level - 10).

[Acidblood]

A few comments...

Optional Routes: As Sylvain said, making them 'alternative' routes, where the players have no choice over which way to go, would be better than 'optional' routes. But even then, it could be hard to make them feel different enough to matter… which then raises the question of whether dev time should be spent on making 1 dungeon with 3 routes, vs. spending that time on an extra new dungeon (or other content).

Skill based Options: This would be hard to do well, especially since you can learn any and all skills in FFXIV with a single character... i.e. instead of being a 'cool extra' for having a certain skill as it may be in games like WOW / SWTOR / etc. where you are limited in the number of extra skills you can learn, in FFXIV it would be more the expected norm; i.e. not being able to do the shortcut / extra content would be a disappointment.

Maybe it could be limited by specialist crafts… but since you can switch those relatively easily, again, it is more likely to be perceived as an impediment for not having the required skills, than a bonus for having them.

Environmental Hazards: A lot of dungeons already have stuff like this (i.e. falling rocks at the start of Sohm Al hard)... it's rarely interactive though, so it would be nice to see a few more things like this where player interaction is required.

Parkour: Not a good idea as described, and most people will only find it annoying once the initial 'cool' factor has worn off. It is also very likely to lead to arguments between those who can do it 'easily' and those who have more trouble.

Theocratically you could add elements like jumping puzzles to side areas, e.g. to get to an optional chest, but even then, it's likely to trigger arguments over having to wait for someone to get the optional chest (especially if they die in the attempt).

Alternative Modes of Navigation: This is one thing I would love to see more of, as the existing moments of 'alternative navigation' are pretty cool and a nice break from simply running. As for swimming, it would be nice to see it in at least one dungeon, with swimming as a means to move between areas (or avoid a boss mechanic; everyone in the water!), but it should be used sparingly.

Hidden/Super Bosses: Not sure about the hidden part (it's the internet; hidden quickly turns into 'annoying to get to / trigger'), but I would love to see challenging side bosses added to dungeons (and other content like PotD).

As for how they should be done, I think the two most important things are:
That groups should only get a single chance at them per run (wipe and you're locked out). This way a ‘quick’ dungeon run doesn’t dissolve into an hour+ long wipe fest, with groups able to move on and complete the dungeon without argument regardless of the outcome of the optional fight(s).

That the rewards be kept simple and common (extra tomes being a good example), and in proportion to the time it takes to do the extra boss compared to the overall dungeon. The reason for this is that if the reward is unique (even something as simple as a minion), then you are going to create conflict with some players only doing the dungeon for the extra reward, while others don’t care, or already have the reward and don’t want to ‘waste time’ on the optional boss.


Finally, while I would love to see a lot of these ideas added to dungeons (and / or other content), I also feel that at their heart dungeons need to keep their predictable 20-minute run format. Which is not to say that these ideas can’t fit into FFXIV, just that, in my mind, something like the Diadem would be (and should have been) a much better fit for the random, evolving, non-combat challenging and unpredictable content that FFXIV currently lacks.

[Gumbercules]

I still feel the "first" thing should be a diminishing return in any ilvl past the dungeon's "recommended". As an example a "gain" at most of dungeon ilvl + 1% per 10ilvl over with like a 5-10% cap. If we are being honest it is incredibly "rare" to ever arrive at a new patch cycle at the minimum ilvl for a new dungeon. I like the hidden boss idea, and it would "fit" with the ilvl normalization. They could even take some cue's from 1.0 (where opening all chests etc rewarded an extra chest, but now it rewards an extra boss). An example could be something along the lines of letting all the seeds in AV spawn to "enrage" the father malboro too and have that result in either another last boss, or a modification to the current last fight.

on alternate routes and parkour, that one is a bit trickier since "min-maxers" will find the optimal route, that said those two elements combined could result in a need to compromise, for example "do you trust your current setup/team" to succesfully navigate a road marred with falling blocks or are you better off going the "long way"" Though I also can't help but remember wow circumstances like "frogger" or the thaddius jump, both mechanics in Naxxramas that made you facepalm hard every single damn raid lol.

(in all honesty I would also like a system that could modify the "dungeon" appropriately for 3 dps and tank or healer setups though :P)

Acid's idea on 1 wipeout = lockout sounds good too. In my example it would just "revert" the last boss to normal.

[Holy-chan]

I can also see two main issue with such a system.
First: Unless you're the tank or party with a tank friend, you might never see, or very rarely see , the less effective route as player will always want to go for the best one. Assuming you do want to go the alternate path and say you won't go the main path, if you're the tank, you'll probably not be kicked, but if you're a dps it'll either be "follow the groupe or get kicked".
This could result in very toxic situation and it is very important to realise that it would happen.

I believe that you are grossly exaggerating it. I have been playing FF14 for over three years, and I have not seen anyone complain about the route choice leading to the first boss of Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak. That being said, the mentioned alternative of making multiple routes that are out of the control of the player, is actually something I agree with! That is definitely less monotonous when you end up doing the same dungeon every day or every other day of a new patch.

Having multiple routes, even if the difference is minimal between each of them, is certainly a bit more interesting than the usual straightforwardness. So long as they are made roughly equal that it doesn't matter which route is taken, I'm all for some variety.

[Okamimaru]

A interesting combination would be: first boss has a interactive environment that can help kill the boss much easier(like the rockslide idea) but doing so would change the path ahead (blocking one route while opening another), each path leading to a different second boss (again same environmental path split but leading to the same final boss) final boss has environment with one releasing a 4th super boss with a minion or mount possible or leading to exit...