End Game version of 4 man Dungeons(mid-core content)

I am honestly tired of the current way of doing things, expert/4 fights of savage/extreme primal/24-man raid.

My idea is to turn all the 4 man level 50 and 60 dungeons, and make 8 man "nightmare/heroic/savage" versions of them. To turn them into something you do for end game, but not have them INSANELY hard like the single fights are for coil/alexander, just have them balanced for high level play. Like if the ilvl cap for level 70 was 360 then these new Savage ver. of dungeons would be balanced for ilvl 345, similar to normal savage prob. but not as hard, just harder mobs and mechanics.

The way i see the lore and story of it is that its like a nightmare version of each dungeon, kinda like dynamis in ffxi was a parallel dimension/dreamworld. Have diablos or some other avatar be the controller of this realm.

It always felt like a waste with so much effort put into so many of these dungeons for boss ideas, and dungeons themes that they go to waste on what is essentially pushover content even on the expert level, i rather have a higher version which i can consider a part of endgame where i only need 1 weekly clear, instead of a daily roulette chore that's considerably easy, esp when players over gear for them. Here is the outline on how it would work:

1. Make trash mobs, not trash. Make the normal mobs more intimidating and have more mechanics associated with them with more dangerous moves. Make large pulls nearly impossible.(Like 2-4 of them AT MOST, and that is considering that it is 8 man now with 2 tanks tanking). This will effectively make pulls much more tense and exciting slowly making your way through the dungeon to make it a ACTUAL DUNGEON CRAWL and actually considering different strategies to take down mobs,and god forbid, using crowd control moves to help with the larger pulls you can't avoid when there is 6+ mobs being pulled no matter what. Save the non-strategy, mass pulling, aoe downing speed runs for expert. This is a part of end game.

2. Revamp bosses with new mechanics and new moves, making the hardest possible version of each boss. Less aoe indicators for moves and more group strategies, dps-check lite, and raid lite mechanics, not too demanding but don't make it 1-2 shot push over content. If you know the normal boss insides and out it will make fight alot easier, but still have new twists and unexpected things.

3. Add chests that increase timer for dungeon and add special buffs to group such as dmg up/dmg resist/treasure find up/etc. when defeating trash mobs, to make the dungeon slightly more forgiving for people who wipe a lot.

4. Make it so you get better quality chests on bosses based on:

1.How fast you killed the boss.
2.How many times you wiped to boss(not normal mobs).
3.How well you did mechanics/how many party members died even if you didn't wipe.

5. Have loot be based on weekly system allow 1 gear drop/1 crafting Material and 1 High level materia drop for the week.

High level crafting catalysts will be part of the loot pool for players to lot on but limited to 1 piece per week and rarity based on how far you get.

Gear will be comparable to weekly tomestone gear, but you can get only 1 piece a week, also since the dungeons will be relatively hard you may not get to the end of the before timer expires, so you may not be able to see things like chest piece/pants since you didn't get to final boss since loot is based on how far you get into the dungeon. 1st/2nd boss drops accessories last boss will drop chest/wep. etc.

High level materia will drop, and you can only loot one, maybe create new types of materia instead of having the same old boring stat ones, maybe have dual materia's for high quality chests/last boss chest, or Special materia that makes longer cool downs have seconds taken off of them 20 seconds less on benediction(can only use one of these) and have them super rare and have to get best chests to get them.

Diversifying the loot will make it relevant for end game always even after getting all your weekly tomestone/savage gear because of crafting materials/high level materia.

6. Make it random which dungeon you will get so you cannot just choose the easiest one everytime, use the larger pool of dungeons to keep things interesting.

7.Make random Nightmare Notorious monsters appear that drop very good loot. To make them optional make them appear in rooms and areas you already cleared if you fulfill certain requirements, like kill multiple bosses without dieing, or don't die on any normal mob pulls, or make good time etc. Reward high level play with a hard optional fights to spice up these dungeons and add some randomness to them. Have a message appear on screen to tell you they spawned to go look for them.

8. Add nightmare doors that randomly appear like nightmare notorious monsters that have unique boss fights that are unique to this content that would work like any other boss normally but its a wholly unique encounter to keeps things interesting also might be a chance to add unique characters/bosses from other games!

How it would work:

Go into nightmare door>Separate timer and mini-zone where you fight powerful normal mobs leading up to the optional boss. You have limited time to kill mobs and get to boss and defeat it before being ejected back into normal dungeon. Normal mobs can still drop chests to give you extra time and other buffs to complete this.

The balance i am trying to go for is harder than 24 man, but not as hard as savage level, i want something to do that end game where you can actually join a roulette for this, and even if you don't beat the dungeon, still make some decent progress with any party with a little communication, bring challenging fun back to random parties.

Overall i know its reusing older scenario's content, but i think if its done right even older players would have fun exploring some of these older areas again and see them in a new light considering the way you approach every encounter in these nightmare version would be completely different than 4 man. It also gives new players to fully appreciate all these unique bosses/encounters and actually have them be a challenge like when they were first released, and now slowly new dungeons are already over leveled and push over content on day 1 of their release.

Thank you for reading!

The problem with having anything depend on crowd control is that we don't really have abilities in this game. I would jump on an EQ enchanter-like class in a hot minute here, but it doesn't exist. BLM has sleep, WHM have Repose, BRD IIRC has some sort of root I never use and breaks on damage anyway. So I'm not quite sure outside of kiting how crowd control would really be handled.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

The problem with having anything depend on crowd control is that we don't really have abilities in this game. I would jump on an EQ enchanter-like class in a hot minute here, but it doesn't exist. BLM has sleep, WHM have Repose, BRD IIRC has some sort of root I never use and breaks on damage anyway. So I'm not quite sure outside of kiting how crowd control would really be handled.

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As you said we already have abilities like fluid aura, repose and sleep,etc.I think a enchanter style class would be cool, but defunct with how the rest of the game works, it would end up becoming more like summoner or something with it's enchanted animated armor pets with a lot of dots/debuffs and maybe only 2-3 CC at most since more than that would be unnncessary. Unless they added mechanics where mobs get resistant to CC and they needed their exclusive OGCD's to bypass them to keep them at bay, then i could see more CC's being added.

I think SE would use the new system where abilities are becoming role based rather than class base to replace some of the abilities like virus or eye to eye, and make them role based and use those empty slots for more abilities that represented CC like sleep II(Magic resist down/aoe/blm), or nightmare(AOE/sleep+dot/SMN),tornado(AOE/dot,holds in place/WHM) or whatever they can dream up. We dont need alot of CC just one for a group of enemies and 1 for single targets.

Blm=Sleep 1 and 2
WHM=Repose and Tornado
SMN=Sleep 1 for role abilities and Nightmare for Aoe/Dot sleep.

I don't really see much more need than 2, and still have it fit into the current system they are trying to build.

Or simply make the 4 man dungeons much harder? That is what i would like to see

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Originally Posted by Maero

Or simply make the 4 man dungeons much harder? That is what i would like to see

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I originally thought this as well, but without some kind of newness to it, without some kind of change i don't see it being as fun because it will just be the same old dungeons, but slightly longer/harder.8 Man will allow to add entirely new mechanics, cause if you really break down the mechanics of 4 man dungeons, they are just mostly dumbed down easier version of mechanics of higher tiered fights.

Also someone made an excellent point in a thread from a while back that 4 man content gaining much harder versions and keeping it 4 man....there is not a lot of high end strategy to 4 man content, and it will make harder for the healer the most and other classes wont notice much of a difference other than fights take slightly longer. The difficulty curve will come from all 8 members doing a good job instead of 4. Not saying harder 4 man content wouldn't be fun...but there will still be something to be desired from it even if they do it make it harder.

Ontop of everything else, i didn't even think 8 man versions, were simply enough, which is why i added the whole "nightmare/alternate dimension" aspect, so SE could add more creative licenses to add something original or new to shake up this older content even further.

I rather see them re-use all this great content from 4 man to make excellent 8 man dungeons, instead of just having alex savage which is very very VERY short dungeons or mini boss/boss or sometimes just a single boss in itself,having longer dungeons means it will allow the dungeon to be the right kind of balance for midcore content, cause everything in the dungeon will be alot harder, but not Alex Gordias savage hard.8 man ver. will also allow more people to participate in end game it will give some 8 man mid core content that people can farm together every week without many restrictions alex savage would come with on loot it can be seen as the same level of another 24 man raid...get your loot for the week and have some semi-challenging fun with close friends, and it will introduce more 8 man content into the game that's SORELY needed, because outside of coil or alexander, how many 8 man dungeons are there really?

Some of people's best memories come from running 8 man coil, which had more than just single bosses a good amount of the time, we need more of that i think ONTOP of expert be tuned to be more challenging for newer 4 man dungeons. The best of both of our ideas...they should do both make 8 man versions....AND make harder 4 man.Just my opinion tho.

Makes sense, i really hope they have more larger group content as well.

It just doesnt seem like most of the players in the game really care to do any hard content tho, it shows in raid clears and how few people do extreme primals

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Originally Posted by Deliciou5

Some of people's best memories come from running 8 man coil[...]

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Most of people's best memories come from nostalgia >_>

According to Yoshida, gordias normal had a clear rate of around 50% among the actively battle class playing 60s. A9S currently has roughly 22% clear rate among 60s. Let's say a 4th of the playerbase has a general interest in that sort of content. Realistically, I could see one such dungeon implemented in odd numbered patches under the current schedule (provided they re-use assets of existing dungeons), but honestly not more and it might come at the cost of an extreme trial.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

Most of people's best memories come from nostalgia >_>

According to Yoshida, gordias normal had a clear rate of around 50% among the actively battle class playing 60s. A9S currently has roughly 22% clear rate among 60s. Let's say a 4th of the playerbase has a general interest in that sort of content. Realistically, I could see one such dungeon implemented in odd numbered patches under the current schedule (provided they re-use assets of existing dungeons), but honestly not more and it might come at the cost of an extreme trial.

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The reason my idea is setup the way it is so that they could reuse assets from the dungeons themselves and put a new spin on them, allowing them to produce more for less, so i think we could get more content this way that we could still find fun, and they could do it at a decent rate. This content would fit alongside things like savage and extreme primals, not replace them when it comes to patches because this content while it will still need to be balanced, could still be made much easier than more original content such as the new savage fights or extreme primals.

Just removing telegraph and making everything more impactfull if failed would be more than enough to make 4man a good casual end game challenge.

Personally, I really love the concept of Mythical dungeon in WOW and, without necessarily making it an exact copy, it would be a great addition to the game.
http://www.wowhead.com/mythic-keysto...dungeons-guide (for info)
Just removing telegraph and making everything more impactfull if failed would be more than enough to make 4man a good casual end game challenge.

They could make those as some kind of weekly event. Every week having a dungeon boosted to "Savage" mode.
I really like the concept of difficulty level. Without using the same area of effect from WoW (even though these are great as they change the way you approach the dungen), I believe some aspect of FF could be used to increase the difficulty in unique ways.

For instance, let say there are only 5 difficulties level for the sake of simplicity. Every level obviously grant monster more HP and Dmg but, with something new on top of that

1- Simply more hp and dmg (biggest bonus) let say everything starts at 130% dmg and bonus
2- Telegraph are removed
3- Dodgable skill deal more 50% damage.
4- Monster get a new skill or revamped skill (something simple increasing difficulty without requiring costly coding). For instance, in the library, the mage casting the water explosion, the explosion would recast itself periodically over 30sec (like every 10sec
5- Bosses and Trash have enrage timer.

Stacking all of these over a steady hp+dmg buff on monster, would make 4man much of a challenge.
As patches go on, the hp and dmg buff would be increased accordingly making them always relevant. It is important to note that those would be end game content and not a new mean to gear up your character.
These would bring gear ranging from better than normal 4man to better than normal raid but worst than savage raid (for obvious reasons).
I stress the "the last difficulty, granting better than normal 8man gear" MUST be way harder than normal weekly 8man roulette

Example of rewards : let say the current high lv 4men grants 300 ilv gear and current normal raid grants 330 ilv
At the end of every level you pick between 2 bags

1a- Grant one 300 ilv equipment + gils
1b- Grant more gils, tombstone

2a- Grant two 300 ilv equipement + gils
2b - Grant more gils, tombe stone

3a- Grant one lv300 high quality (320 effective ilv) + gils
3b- Grant more gils, 1 random high lv materia, tombestone

4a- Grant two lv300 high qyality + gils
4b- Grant gils, 2materia, tombestone

5a- Grant one lv 340 piece of gear +gils
5b- Grant gils, 2materia, tombestone, random glamour stuff (pet, house stuff)

The gear could come in a form of a token, that can be traded at a vendor. (effectively 3token type), the gear would only be 5 pieces of set and weapon (no ring belt etc).

They could either go with an entire new set attire, or simply take the one from 5men, and do color variation with possible special glows on the lv 340 piece.