Keeper of the Lake (A 4 player raid /sadface)

First let me say that the recently release trailer has me extremely hyped up for not only 2.5, but the expansion as well!

That being said, after seeing the Keeper of the Lake dungeon, while it does look really fun and epic, I can't help but feel a little disappointed to see that it was 4player dungeon.

Coming in from 1.0 and seeing the demolished Imperial Airship I've always wanted to go there and thought it be some kind of epic alliance based content, or at the very least a solid 8 man dungeon. After finishing the 2.0 main story I kind of hoped that the raid would be similar to The Praetorium in terms of scale. (After all, this is Midgardsormr we're talking about! Even if this is just a lesser powered rendition of him, If he could take on the Agrius, surely it would take more than just 4 players to slay him :p . Hopefully we see him again in 3.0)

Maybe it's just me, but I've grown very tired of 4 player dungeons. They were a little challenging in 2.0 and 2.1 but only because back then you didn't really posses the gear/stats/ilvl which alleviated some of the risk. But, after a while they kind of just lost their allure and became a grindfest/timesink with very little appeal. I know there's coil, and I was in a static that did first and second coil, but my rl schedule has changed to the point where I can no longer commit to multiple tier progression raiding.

I miss 8 player dungeons like the ones in 1.0. The Old Cutter's Cry, Aurum Veil, and Dhzmeal Darkhold were moderately challenging ( especially with the gear available to first time challengers), they had unique puzzles in certain rooms that you actually had to think about in order to gain the full benefit of completing dungeon, and rewards that were inside actually made players want to do them. (Who said all your BiS gear has to be from Poetics or Coil. Maybe even the augmenters could come from these kinds of dungons as well; like what they did in the Syrcus Tower. )

I hope that when Heavensward hits that we see more Dungeons like this. Although my schedule forces me to play on a casual basis, I'm a player that likes to be challenged. I like to play with family and friends in big groups. I love the bonuses that playing in a big group offers. I hope that full parties going onward wont be limited to tier raids like Coil and Alexander or primal battles. I like the prospect of going into a dungeon and having the possibility of not being able to clear all the rooms and bosses on the first attempt; not because the group is bad but because you actually had to take some time and study the layout of the dungeon and boss mechanics.

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Originally Posted by TAS

Maybe it's just me, but I've grown very tired of 4 player dungeons. They were a little challenging in 2.0 and 2.1 but only because back then you didn't really posses the gear/stats/ilvl which alleviated some of the risk. But, after a while they kind of just lost their allure and became a grindfest/timesink with very little appeal. I know there's coil, and I was in a static that did first and second coil, but my rl schedule has changed to the point where I can no longer commit to multiple tier progression raiding.

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Considering that most dungeons are 99% trash and 3 bosses, having 8 man parties would essentially be even faster versions of the speed runs we have now. You can't seriously think they should change how dungeons are because you don't have time to commit to progression raiding anymore.

. . .are you talking to yourself?

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Originally Posted by IcyPrinny

. . .are you talking to yourself?

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Just stating points to prevent ppl from stating the obvious lol. If you read my post I'm not saying I want a dungeon with trash mobs and 3 bosses. I said I want more of a puzzle element within dungeons that would get full parties to keep on there toes. Coming in from 1.0 I'd say Cutter's Cry and Aurum Veil were the best examples. Each had a challenging element that prevented balls to the wall speed running, you had to actually give the puzzles some thought, and for completionist there were certain things you had to execute to obtain the all the dungeon rewards.

Story related content will never have anything difficult. It's done this way on purpose so that players can enjoy the story and not be gated.

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

Story related content will never have anything difficult. It's done this way on purpose so that players can enjoy the story and not be gated.

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I would of liked Keeper of the Lake to be like The Praetorium if anything. What I want doesn't have to be connected to story but if we get three four player dungeons every patch, I'm just saying why not make one be a challenging full party dungeon? and since Heavensward is going to have a massive amount of content, why not have just a few of them :)

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Originally Posted by TAS

I would of liked Keeper of the Lake to be like The Praetorium if anything. What I want doesn't have to be connected to story but if we get three four player dungeons every patch, I'm just saying why not make one be a challenging full party dungeon? and since Heavensward is going to have a massive amount of content, why not have just a few of them :)

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But Praetorium wasn't challenging. I never knew of one group of fresh fifties who didn't clear it.

4 man dungeons are no longer challenging because the gear curve has far outstripped their release. Try the latest (Qarn/Sastasha/Snowcloak) without Poetics or Soldiery and see how they feel, at least numerically speaking they are more challenging even if the mechanics are not.

I'm not justifying SE's continued release of content that is basically outgeared and irrelevant at release, but the way they've decided to tier content along with the existence of tome gear basically makes it impossible for them to create a relevant placeholder for dungeon rewards (Niches filled by tomes/24 man raid/Coil) - and as a result they're basically vehicles for tomes instead of something meant to be challenged.

I would have liked an 8 person at some point, hadnt had one since prae really aside from coil

That's not my point Friend :/ I said I would like for it to be the same scale as Praetorium, not difficulty. I really hope this isn't the only time we challenge Midgardsormr because I believe he's worth more than a light party dungeon. I understand story based content isn't intended to be difficult which Is why I hope they would of went the Praetorium route for it because that would match the scale I feel it needs, but perhaps it would of allowed them to do what they did for the Ultima fight....

*Cough* *Cough* Wandering Minstrel *Cough* *Cough*

But as for future dungeons I would like to see some of what I stated in the op.

The main issue with it being an 8-person event, I'd figure, have to do with the logistics of party matching. Making it 4 players in practice makes it very easy for them to continue to insert it into currently existant roulettes, instead of needing to separate it off the way Castrum and Praetorium are. And I doubt the Castrum/Praetorium roulette as is would be enhanced by forcing people used to high level play to stomach "oh boy I have to pull noobs through this" - if anything, it'd aggravate the problems already present in Main Story Roulette's existence.

And as mentioned, for a full blown dungeon, >4 players starts becoming trickier to design content for in a meaningful way. There's a reason Coil, CT, etc. have very, very little trash.

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Originally Posted by Garlyle

And as mentioned, for a full blown dungeon, >4 players starts becoming trickier to design content for in a meaningful way. There's a reason Coil, CT, etc. have very, very little trash.

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Believe me when I say I don't think many would shed tears over trash mobs being removed from those types of instances. The bosses are the attractions, not the time filler.

Dungeons should really be more then just trash mobs and tank & spank bosses. I like what they did with dungeon bosses like Diabolos, but all of the light party dungeon bosses are just attack attack attack, get out of the aoe, and repeat.

I like the approaches with they took with CT in terms of Alliance content. There is still some room to grow, not just in difficulty but execution. Since we Alliance parties can now be preformed I would love to see more puzzles outside of the boss encounters. Like each group splits up into 3 different rooms with there own puzzles and mechanics that help the other groups progress and then they regroup for boss encounters. (I know, big leap but it doesn't hurt to pitch :) )

The dungeons have so much room to grow. They could contain more unique challenges that players can choose to do or not. they could have puzzles that could potentially lead to a secret area or secret boss. Alternate paths, that lead to different rewards or achievements. It could be so much more than (trash, trash, trash, Boss, trash, trash, trash, Boss, trash, trash, trash, Boss, Fanfare!)

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Originally Posted by TAS

I like the approaches with they took with CT in terms of Alliance content. There is still some room to grow, not just in difficulty but execution. Since we Alliance parties can now be preformed I would love to see more puzzles outside of the boss encounters. Like each group splits up into 3 different rooms with there own puzzles and mechanics that help the other groups progress and then they regroup for boss encounters. (I know, big leap but it doesn't hurt to pitch :) )

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24 mans won't grow because SE doesn't trust the playerbase to execute 24 man content with precision. It's why ST was a downgrade difficulty wise from CT, they want everything to be Duty Finder-able outside of the most recent EX Primals and Coil. Which means it has to be simple enough to do with a pick-up group at all times.

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Originally Posted by Prototype909

24 mans won't grow because SE doesn't trust the playerbase to execute 24 man content with precision. It's why ST was a downgrade difficulty wise from CT, they want everything to be Duty Finder-able outside of the most recent EX Primals and Coil. Which means it has to be simple enough to do with a pick-up group at all times.

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Ugh I know, that's what bums me out. I mean give us a little more credit, I think the player base has improved a bit, especially since launch. I feel the development team could stand to at least take some risk with some of the newer content. More aside from Coil and even possibly the Alexander raid, it all feels too safe.

They tried once before it was called pharos. People would drop right away if they got it. There were threads all the time on how it was too hard. You only have yourselves to blame.

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Originally Posted by Amiantos

They tried once before it was called pharos. People would drop right away if they got it. There were threads all the time on how it was too hard. You only have yourselves to blame.

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I never complained, I actually liked it :)

Now that I think about it, if one out of the three dungeons happens to be legitimately challenging, instead of nerfing the difficulty... Savage roulette anyone? :)

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Originally Posted by Amiantos

They tried once before it was called pharos. People would drop right away if they got it. There were threads all the time on how it was too hard. You only have yourselves to blame.

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Nobody cared that it was hard, but rather that it was hard with the same reward as exponentially easier dungeons at the time - which still dropped gear that was suboptimal.

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Originally Posted by TAS

Ugh I know, that's what bums me out. I mean give us a little more credit, I think the player base has improved a bit, especially since launch. I feel the development team could stand to at least take some risk with some of the newer content. More aside from Coil and even possibly the Alexander raid, it all feels too safe.

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This is kind of a known problem and the developers are talking about having and introducing more "Midcore" content come Heavensward.

The big thing is that, since 2.2, all High level and Expert 4 man dungeons have been designed for characters in gear 20 to 30 ilevels lower than what the average end game player starts the patch in and 40 to 50 ilevels lower than what they ended the patch in.

Many bosses have mechanics that players just burn through without learning how to beat the mechanics because they over gear them so much. For example, Lost City's first boss' devour mechanic can be stopped by standing in the area created by its sneeze.

I actually prefer 4 person content. I feel like you get a more epic experience with a smaller party as you get to participate more and you don't have as much distracting you from what's going on.

Edit:
I hope in 3.0 they give us some truly hardcore 4 person content. It makes me sad that all the challenging content is only for 8 person.

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Originally Posted by Cutie_McSnuggles

I actually prefer 4 person content. I feel like you get a more epic experience with a smaller party as you get to participate more and you don't have as much distracting you from what's going on.

Edit:
I hope in 3.0 they give us some truly hardcore 4 person content. It makes me sad that all the challenging content is only for 8 person.

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I would just like one solid 8 man dungeon each patch or even every other patch; outside of things like CT or Raids that are more static oriented. One thing that would be kind of interested if they had some 8 player dungeons and did what they did in 1.0 where after a while you could also que in as a 4 player party.

Well I do agree that we need more 8 man dungeons than the 2 we have had since launch.

And CM and Praetorium did offer a little bit of difficulty orginally, back when everyone that was doing it was still in AF gear and didn't even have relics. It wasn't impossible to beat, to be sure, but fights took a lot longer and party members were apt to die a few times (maybe many times if you went with a bad group).

What they need to do in general, is raise the difficulty of dungeons, at least a slight bit more than what we have now. With people hitting i120+ pretty much ever single piece of content in this game aside from FCoB has become rather trivialized. There's nothing hard, or thought provoking about any of it.

How about adding some puzzles within some new 8-man instances that require at least 4 of the party members to participate in (if not all of them). Oh, and running to a button to push it is not a puzzle. No more of that mindless simplicity please.

And for the love of god.. if you do make puzzles, don't make them like the riddles in the later part of that riddle series. Jeebus. I had to look those answers up online. Kudos to anyone that actually had to solve that mathematician stuff. The first few were doable by average people, but then we got that curveball. I tried, but then had no idea what I was suppose to do to get the right answer. At least it wasn't quite as dumb as the Sight Seeing Log.

But back to puzzles; moving blocks around to a specific sequence that might be hinted at in an earlier part of the dungeon, going through an actual maze, or maybe some light number-based games. Something to break up the monotony of the current trend of just: Trash Mobs > Mini Boss > Trash Mobs > Mini Boss > Trash Mobs > Boss, that normal dungeons offer.

I know some people want to just zoom through dungeons, specially with how the game currently fosters this mentality by making every dungeon run aside from the very first experience just there for the grind. People want to get grinds over with as fast as possible. Why? Because grinding gets old and boring, and is only done because there's no other way.

First times through a dungeon, preferably with other friends that are new to the dungeon, can be a generally fun experience if your group is cool with actually exploring or checking things out.

But yes, this game definitely needs more full party dungeons! Agreed.

I would like to see the option for 4-6-8 man dungeon runs...small dungeons for 4 players med sized ones for 6 players and huge ones for 8...and honestly I'm sick of seeing old dungeons rehashed with increased difficulty being labeled as new content...find a balance for the storyline dungeons and all the new stuff should get their own time to shine.

Make it happen SE :)