The kind of randomness I think is important

I think there are enough dungeons, they do really well at putting out that kind of content, above anything else. The problem is you don't get enough mileage out of them, you don't get enough hours which are fun rather than forced grind, because they are exactly the same every time you play, with the same enemies organised into the same group formations.

With this approach, the player quickly becomes fatigued with even the latest dungeons that were added. The game wants you to play them many hundreds of times over to achieve certain goals such as fully gearing your character and upgrading relic weapons. Even if you take your time in doing this casually, it still amounts to far too many identical dungeon runs, a routine like being a factory worker.

At the very least, I would like to see dungeons designed with a few different possibilities when it comes to enemy numbers, locations and formations, so that you don't know for sure what is coming around the next corner, it could be a pack of dogs, it could be the skeletons this time, nobody knows. This element of randomness will encourage thinking instead of following the same routine over and over.

I think this kind of change is very important to maintain player engagement especially when instanced dungeons and raids are the main focus of the game. Mixing up enemy numbers and positions is a simple change to make, while the current offering of just one version of each dungeon is quite wasteful when they could get more mileage out of these nice locations they've designed.

For additional excitement they could add some wildcards such as larger enemies that do not appear every time and offer additional rewards for slaying them, or rare alternate color versions of enemies that usually appear which have altered behavior in some way.

In summary I would like to see simple changes which make dungeons more dynamic and fun, to make players enjoy replaying them many times. I would prioritise this over adding more dungeons, for I feel it is not sustainable to keep adding locations in which the player has seen everything that can ever occur there in just one playthrough - that kind of design does not stay interesting enough to keep people engaged from patch to patch.

Randomizing the trash mobs will not really change how a dungeon plays out. How much does Halatali NM change when you get bombs versus getting lightning sprites versus getting chests after pulling a chain?

The following mobs are pretty much the only ones that change how trash fights go:

Summoners (Manor Claviger in Haukke HM, Illuminati Footman)
Crowd Controllers with hard to dodge aoe that inflict Stone/Terror/Sleep (Manor Claviger)
Bombs

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Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur

Randomizing the trash mobs will not really change how a dungeon plays out. How much does Halatali NM change when you get bombs versus getting lightning sprites versus getting chests after pulling a chain?

The following mobs are pretty much the only ones that change how trash fights go:

Summoners (Manor Claviger in Haukke HM, Illuminati Footman)
Crowd Controllers with hard to dodge aoe that inflict Stone/Terror/Sleep (Manor Claviger)
Bombs

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While this is relevant to a point, imagine writing out the number 1 for 10 years, 8 hours a day...... would you ever ..... I dunno .... try a different style for a change? Make it challenging or different somehow, by either drawing a straight line in a different angle, starting from the bottom instead of the top, or add the serifs? I think the opinion of the OP is that running the same predictable dungeon over and over gets to be more than a little routine. Rewards be damned sometimes, maybe a new visual is all we need once in a while.

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Originally Posted by ruinedmirage

While this is relevant to a point, imagine writing out the number 1 for 10 years, 8 hours a day...... would you ever ..... I dunno .... try a different style for a change? Make it challenging or different somehow, by either drawing a straight line in a different angle, starting from the bottom instead of the top, or add the serifs? I think the opinion of the OP is that running the same predictable dungeon over and over gets to be more than a little routine. Rewards be damned sometimes, maybe a new visual is all we need once in a while.

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Not arguing with that. I was just trying to point out that randomization would not change things as much as the OP hopes that it would and only a limited selection of opponents can apply a meaningful difference. Changing the drapes and throw pillows only works so many times when the majority of the furniture is still the same.

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Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur

Not arguing with that. I was just trying to point out that randomization would not change things as much as the OP hopes that it would and only a limited selection of opponents can apply a meaningful difference. Changing the drapes and throw pillows only works so many times when the majority of the furniture is still the same.

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I think OP wants less Left 4 Dead 1 and more Left 4 Dead 2.

You know, like, different path each time (such as the one in Toto-Rak, only everytime you enter one of the paths will be blocked permanently), maybe there are surprise monsters at the bosses, or during the whole dungeon run, where it can spawn anywhere anytime, make it do something interesting when it does, things like that.

It's boring to see the exact same pattern every single time. You know, looking at Amdapor Keep the first 5 times is great, but 125 times later I'd kill a moogle to just get it over with.

In some ways, the Devs are forced to design dungeons like the current ones because that is what players have come to expect. Besides the lore and UI, many current MMOs are incredibly similar due to that fact. While I agree with the OP To a certain extent, I dont think those changes go far enough in my opinion.

This game is still in a very early stage of development and discussions like this one can help it evolve over time into something unique and different, given the right guidance from Devs. It could stay as it is and be a success, or it could become the next blockbuster that others copy.

So DF is your friend. Randomize your party members instead of your enemies....^^;
I think the last thing to do in a dungeon will be just time attack it with different party setup.

They really do need to spice up the dungeons. I can't even understand anyone who could argue with how static they are. As a tank it's literally the same thing each time in pulls even if I'm speeding it up a bit. I mean hell, Ampador City has mimics, but they are ALWAYS in the same chests. Just randomizing where they pop up would go a long way to making the dungeons a little more interesting than feeling like I'm starring in Groundhog's Day.

Didn't a recent letter from the producer talk about how one of the upcoming dungeons would have more random elements and the team was looking forward to feedback on it?

I've been searching but I can't seem to find it... does anyone have a link?

If you are talking about randomization, I'd love to not see the mobs on the way
but randomly spawn next to party and randomly targetting party member until somebody get higher aggro.

Density of the mob spawn can be different in each area in dungeon (may be one mob spawn every ? sec)
and of course there should be maximum number of mobs on field at a time.

You need to fight your way through the dungeon until safe area i.e. before boss room (familiar to normal FF feeling now?).

Found it!

"Q: There are a lot of battles that require the memorization of patterns in order to win, but in the future will there be any battles with more random elements?"


"A: We’ve been receiving questions about this even here at the Full Active Time Event in NAGOYA, but we don't have any plans to implement something like this. For really close end-game battles, in particular, random elements would make these encounters very luck-based. To give an extreme example, in one phase of Titan extreme there are four abilities he uses, and if you remember the pattern, it’s easy. However, if every time the pattern changes, or the number of times he uses a certain ability is different, what’s going to happen then? It’s really not difficult for us to do, but it would make it difficult for us to do anything about game balance. Another example is of two free companies racing to beat the Second Coil of Bahamut turn 4. While one group easily cleared it because nothing but easy abilities were used in succession, the other group ate nothing but the worst of the abilities and was unable to beat it. I believe it would become extremely frustrating due to a feeling of unfairness. However, there are some random elements in content already such as what party member is going to be targeted by an ability or which enemy is going to use an ability.

But as they as say, “experience is everything,” and since we’ve received a lot of feedback on this, one of the three new dungeons will have a boss that has a high degree of randomness. Everyone’s average item level is quite high so if you really push it you’ll probably be able to get past it, but we’d like you to challenge it without pushing it too hard and hear your feedback. Our policy isn’t such that we definitely won’t add random elements, but we want to create battles that offer players a fair chance of clearing.

Also, we haven’t announced this yet, but we’re thinking to try something else new in patch 2.3. We’re considering preparing a ridiculously high difficulty encounter where the reward would only be a title. This would be at a level that the development team might not even be able to beat, and we’re interested to see what kind of players will rise to the challenge. We’re preparing “Something-Something Extreme,” but it may not be ready in time. The rewards will be the same that you would normally receive, except for the special title."

Letter from the Producer Live Part XIV 6/04/2014

While I can understand how excruciating it can be to grind for hours upon end in the same dungeon with the same formations, randomizing will probably not help that much. I recently finished playing Final Fantasy III, and the monster group formations changed as well with the type of monsters used, but the game was still a heavy grind-fest, and did get a tad boring after a while. Eventually, you just turn into a zombie with how often and how repetitive the game can get, but isn't that how all MMORPGs are?


Despite my negative opinion above, I still support this. Randomizing CAN go a long way for some people, and for others it will just be more to learn for a short period of time.