Dungeons, what we have, what I would like

Hey there,

So, I was wondering if the new dungeons in heavensward will be as boring as those we already have ?
I mean, boss pattern can be fun, they are mostly beautiful, but they are way too linears.
While it might be fun the first time (or the few first times) it gets boring very quickly.

Once upon a time, there was MMORPG filled with immersive dungeons (both instanced and not).
difficult, labyrinthine dungeons, with optionnal bosses, secret passages, with groupe/raid quests, sometimes hidden or random.
Mobs used to link with each others, there were patrols, you actually had to watch your step most of the time, gauging the strengh of the mobs, talk with your groups about whether or not you could manage this boss...
The goal wasn't to rush to the end quickly to get your tomestones and forget about it, but to actually have fun in it.

EQ(2) had those king of dungeons, DAoC, FFXI, Aion...Even WoW vanilla had some too (remember Blackrock Depths ?)


Instead in ARR, we get more or less the same instance over and over again :
Couple of pack of mobs > first boss > few more packs > second boss > some more packs > final boss. E-ve-ry-ti-me. And it's too damn linear, always.
I'd rather cap my tomestone with something else (even monster bashing), and get real, fun dungeons instead.


So I guess my question is : Will we get something like that in heavensward ?


(sorry for my english, not my first language. I tried to do my best)

Since FFxiv is the only mmo i've played... indulge me and tell me more about this "fun" idea you've been talking about.

I want to see some platforming like stuff similar to cliffhanger FATE in GS would be so fun if there was a dungeon that used
"Manual jumping" as a feature.

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Originally Posted by Yumi_umi

I want to see some platforming like stuff similar to cliffhanger FATE in GS would be so fun if there was a dungeon that used
"Manual jumping" as a feature.

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That would be fun.. But I think SE already spoiled the player base with easy dungeons, look back at what happened with steps of faith, I don't think the player base would be very receptive to any dungeon that's not a tank and spank or some memorization of mechanics.

That's not to say tank and spank is bad, I actually like a good tank and spank.. Like the second boss in AV, the cyclops, simple and fun.
I also found DD bosses to be enjoyable, the one with dodgeball, and the final boss in DD was also fun.

What I dislike is the ohko mechanics that make you rely on 7 other people to do their part right and flawlessly.. For a party of 4, it's more doable but the bigger your party becomes, more chances that there will be that one person who's eating lunch or watching tv.. or just plain bad, that's why WoW doesn't have 40men raids anymore, as much fun as AQ40 was, it was the most annoying thing to wipe/disband because 1 person was not pulling their weight or it was past his bedtime.

I hope HW introduces more boss battles that involves constant, UNSCRIPTED movement/positioning and less of the memorization game, or even mix it up a bit.. same order, by same exact intervals? when I do Tex now, I don't feel like I've gotten any better, instead, I feel like I've developed a spider sense.. I just get a feeling "hmmm, I feel like something ought to happen now" and that gives me the cue to get moving, it's just not very fun. T5 was okay but that was also the same repetitive phases over and over.. Which I feel is fine for end-game raids, end-game raids SHOULD require some studying, but for the more casual stuff, just make it tank and spank with positioning requirements, complex mechanics don't make challenging content, just makes an annoying one.

Those all sounds like neat ideas that people would run through once, never bother with again because the effort isn't comparable to the rewards, and then moan like hell until it gets nerfed into oblivion.

Personally, not a fan of those things.

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Originally Posted by JimboTCB

never bother with again because the effort isn't comparable to the rewards

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Change rewards, then? o.O

and imagine you have to do that daily. Pain in the ass, don't you think ?

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Originally Posted by Umo

Change rewards, then? o.O

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how will you change it ?

Yes please, because dungeons in FFXIV = Let brain rest while you kill trash mobs because there's forced gates, till you eventually reach a boss with a somewhat challenging mechanic. I've yet to see actual dungeon crawl and exploration happen in ARR.
Occasionally, when doing a dungeon with friends, in a more relaxed party, you'll get to pay attention to all the detail they designers put into it. You'll notice blocked paths that lead nowhere, blank signboards and discarded tomes, curious buildings in the distance... or in other words, a lot of unused potential. If dungeons were made more engaging like the OP suggests, they'd need to scale the rewards accordingly, to make the time spent in them worth it (of course).

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Originally Posted by Shneibel

and imagine you have to do that daily. Pain in the ass, don't you think ?



how will you change it ?

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If the rewards were changed (increased tomestone gain, for example) then perhaps you wouldn't have to do it daily but maybe 2-3 times a week as opposed to 7. They could also add some dungeon specific vanity gear/furniture (or just mats for them as regular chest drops have majorly lame loot as it is), increase drop rates for Relic weapon step, pieces of lore tied to the specific dungeon (where's our lore book/compendium already?) that give further non-game breaking rewards etc.

Actually i do dungeons for clears and to help people, because they are boring, i just don't care about the rewards. Make this kind of dungeon and you won't see me again in my FC house, even if the rewards were just a fraction of the normal dungeons ones, i would still run them.

What we need is simple, a year ago in the E3 i think, Yoshi talked about an idea to implement open world dungeons, making them semi instanced, allowing free entrance until the cap is reached, then the next player or party would go to the next instance, or "channel." they just have to apply this idea to current dungeons making a bigger version of them with more routes, rooms and bosses that could work as forced spawn, a la treasure hunt.

Can we have please dungeons with this paths design again?

Old Nanawa Mine
http://chrysaliswiki.wdfiles.com/loc...mines_ff14.jpg

Mun-Tuy-Cellars
http://chrysaliswiki.wdfiles.com/loc...llars_ff14.jpg


It can be subterrain open-world dungeons again, with FATE bosses that drop keys for the chests there (would need the gold medal from the FATE to get a chance for the key drop. Maybe double chance than Atma?). Also with Aetherite for leves, of course ^^

The great thing about those dungeons were also the worst things about those dungeons. They were loooooooong.

Also:

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Originally Posted by Yzuna

While it might be fun the first time (or the few first times) it gets boring very quickly.

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Originally Posted by Chambers

The great thing about those dungeons were also the worst things about those dungeons. They were loooooooong.

Also to quote you:

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They were, but you didn't had to clear them all in once.
Sometimes to had to go there retrieve an item for a quest, sometimes to get/do another kind of quest. Or to do a particuliar boss that might drop something you want.
The upside of those kind of dungeons, instanced or not, is that clearing it wasn't a requirement to actually get something. Sure if you find friends who, like you, had 5-6 hours to spend in there to clear it entirely, you could. But it wasn't considered a failure to just do a couple of quest, wings and/or bosses and call it a day.
And, since it was actually challenging, that you had to be carefull, prepare yourself, communicate with your fellow group members, and that it has a lots of things to do, it was rarely boring. Or at least, not for a while.

FFXIV dungeons are boring, mostly because it's straightforward, easy and repetitive.

I actually had more fun in MMO where death was (kind of) punishing. Because you don't want to die, you do everything you can to avoid that. Prepare yourself, communicate even if you know the content. In FFXIV, you don't care at all about dying. Who eats food in FFXIV ? Not a lot of players I bet. Is it because it's useless ? No it gives you a nice boost. But because no-one cares about dying and retry. In FFXI, foods was almost mandatory for mid-lvl/HL content. Because you didn't want to die and loose 2k XP.

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Originally Posted by Yzuna

Who eats food in FFXIV ? Not a lot of players I bet. Is it because it's useless ? No it gives you a nice boost. But because no-one cares about dying and retry. In FFXI, foods was almost mandatory for mid-lvl/HL content. Because you didn't want to die and loose 2k XP.

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outside raids no1 , other than low lvl food for 3% exp boost :P

i would love traps , and bosses that arent put in a random CIRCLE again , tired of fighting in "arenas"

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Originally Posted by Warlyx

i would love traps , and bosses that arent put in a random CIRCLE again , tired of fighting in "arenas"

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Would love that too. And/or stuff like puzzle, puzzle jumps would be fun to have too. (maybe not in instanced stuff, because doing them over and over again would not be fun.

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Originally Posted by Felis

Can we have please dungeons with this paths design again?

Old Nanawa Mine
http://chrysaliswiki.wdfiles.com/loc...mines_ff14.jpg

Mun-Tuy-Cellars
http://chrysaliswiki.wdfiles.com/loc...llars_ff14.jpg


It can be subterrain open-world dungeons again, with FATE bosses that drop keys for the chests there (would need the gold medal from the FATE to get a chance for the key drop. Maybe double chance than Atma?). Also with Aetherite for leves, of course ^^

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Ew, that looks boring beyond belief. I can see where the "every place looks the same" came from when 1.0 had its issues listed.

I get they want to "discourage" speedruns in dungeons, but maybe they can go about it in another way. Having gates every one or two packs of mobs, in all honesty, makes the dungeon feel dull. All the new dungeons are more or less the same. Maybe use the gates in one or two of the new dungeons but not all of them. I'm sure the team can come up with something else.

One problem I have with gates is they make ilvs completely pointless. You could go into any of the new dungeons in ilv70 and be fine because you take on very little mobs at a time. Another is they're repetitive and they make all the dungeons feel the same. If we say... had to pick up wood, rope, etc and "build" our own bridge a few times it would have been more interesting. But every dungeon is pretty much just...get to the gate, kill the mobs, gate drops... They could also make trash mobs hard. Not extremely hard, but hard enough that you CANNOT pull more than one pack at a time...or something. I really, really liked tam tara HM, and was hoping the same amount of creativity would be utilized.

I'd like to see them take a page out of FFXI's book and have much tougher normal mobs. Does anyone care what the regular mob is you're fighting? They all die so quickly, especially when AoEs are involved. Give us fewer mobs but make them tougher, almost like minibosses. Make me pay attention to what I'm doing because of actual risk.

And while they're at it, they could really stand to make the enemies more distinctive from each other. It feels like most of them just might as well be palette swaps for all the lack of a difference in how you engage them. The only thing that comes even close is the marborol enemies. There's nothing remotely as threatening as fighting a mandragora in XI who could AoE sleep your healer if they were too close, goblins using Bomb Toss early, and there's certainly nothing as exciting and dangerous as exping in Ifrit's Cauldron as a Beastmaster.

I read somewhere recently where Yoshi replied to a question where someone had asked about this very thing. Yoshi said that they would love to do larger dungeons with more to it, less linear, more bosses, etc, but it isn't possible with the rate they release content. There just isn't enough time between patches to do so, and he said he thinks players would prefer content released at a frequent rate rather than a longer wait between patches, so they would stick to how dungeons and raids are currently done for the time being.

Yoshi and them also once said there are many things they would like to do, but cannot do until they drop PS3 support. The PS3 already has trouble handling the game. They were going to drop PS3 support by the first expansion, but apparently they decided to keep supporting it through Heavensward.

I support any kind of more challenging small group content. I enjoy small groups a lot more than 8 man content to begin with, the fact that it's currently too easy and the rewards aren't anything exciting is the biggest drawback to small group content, so I'd love to see that addressed.

I'd like them to change their formula for dungeons, too. Some things I think might be fun:

-Add branching paths with optional/additional rewards
-Split the party up to complete separate objectives that alter/increase rewards
-Add optional objectives for the party that alter/increase the dungeon rewards
-Utilize jumping mechanics and puzzles

Just a few ideas. The "trash-boss x3" design is getting a little old after over a year.

I think one of the issues is that they designed the game so that we need to do the same dungeons over and over (until we puke) in order to get rewards not directly linked to the dungeon itself (weekly tomes, exp, relic quests, etc). The rewards you get from the actual dungeons are mostly only useful for vanity-purposes. In that respect, people want something they can be quickly done with, without much effort made and without having to communicate with their party members. And that's what we've been given.

I would love for them to add something like four-man raids. Harder dungeons with more useful loot that require more time and skill than normal dungeons. That way we'd have a bit of both worlds.

i would be more inclined towards proceduraly based dungeons. non-static trash positions, random events, random bosses. lots of fun.

"Ain't going to happen"

Signed,

Square Enix

I want them to change Treasure Maps into quick dungeon crawls.

Remember the final Scholar quest? Where you actually enter Wanderer's Palace for the quest? I want something like that. You get a Treasure Map, it points you in the direction of a dungeon, you enter the dungeon and find the treasure.

Use existing dungeon assets. Alternate the monster variety/placement somewhat. Stick a boss at the end with the reward. Would be the perfect way to implement challenging dungeons since it would be tied to something you can't Duty Finder; You'd get your group together to challenge it, and the contents difficulty would reflect that, rather than existing dungeons which are designed to be completed by four random people with zero communication. Throw in some optional pathways and bosses for if your group is good enough and I would consider it one of the best additions to the game.

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Originally Posted by Natashio

"Ain't going to happen"

Signed,

Square Enix

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kappa.


they've changed things before because of demand.

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Originally Posted by h0tNstilettos

I read somewhere recently where Yoshi replied to a question where someone had asked about this very thing. Yoshi said that they would love to do larger dungeons with more to it, less linear, more bosses, etc, but it isn't possible with the rate they release content. There just isn't enough time between patches to do so, and he said he thinks players would prefer content released at a frequent rate rather than a longer wait between patches, so they would stick to how dungeons and raids are currently done for the time being.

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i would prefer a huge dungeon that is randomized somehow or that is so huge can do it 10 times and still dont see it fully, that the actual dungeons , the art mechanics are cool but once u have done it 1 or 2 u are "meh" , and SR it...or dont even touch it again , the last dungeons are like that :/ , i dont need the tomes anymore and only did it x2-3...feels like wasted of resources :( (same goes for some Trials , ppl do it once and never touch it again)

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Originally Posted by Nalien

I want them to change Treasure Maps into quick dungeon crawls.

Remember the final Scholar quest? Where you actually enter Wanderer's Palace for the quest? I want something like that. You get a Treasure Map, it points you in the direction of a dungeon, you enter the dungeon and find the treasure.

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awesome idea :D

Another things I'd like to see, is HL content where we can (or have to) actually use some of our enfeebling skills.

I mean, BLM's Sleep is useless, or any skill that Bind. Same goes for PLD's Pacification. We hardly ever use Silence too now.

Right now in dungeons or raid, it's like : avoid stuff, split and/or stack up and random dps check.

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Originally Posted by Yzuna

Another things I'd like to see, is HL content where we can (or have to) actually use some of our enfeebling skills.

I mean, BLM's Sleep is useless, or any skill that Bind. Same goes for PLD's Pacification. We hardly ever use Silence too now.

Right now in dungeons or raid, it's like : avoid stuff, split and/or stack up and random dps check.

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Don't forget Hidden. Good for getting a free Trick Attack off, but for actually sneaking past anything these days? Utterly worthless. Quite enjoyed using Ninja to sneak past enemies for treasure without bothering with the enemies while leveling, kind of sad to see that's just not possible anymore. Dungeons are mostly streamlined so there are no side passages to sneak down, and even if there were all enemies seem to see right through Hide.

Use Steps of Faith as an example of something that requires people to communicate and work together. It won't work too well.

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Originally Posted by Elim

I get they want to "discourage" speedruns in dungeons, but maybe they can go about it in another way. Having gates every one or two packs of mobs, in all honesty, makes the dungeon feel dull..

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100% agree..
Speed runs can be fun if we were allowed to control the pace completely instead of being blocked by the gates..

Speed run with tank and spank boss battles can still be entertaining and reward player skills/effort because it makes the dungeon go that much faster. That's how WoW dungeons were mostly modeled after, mechanics were simple, dozing off could still get you killed but not likely.. So everyone just resorted to speed runs and started competing against themselves instead of against the mobs.. It gives the dungeon crawling another aspect of challenge (to go faster than last time) and that was enough to keep people running the same dungeons over and over. Of course, itemization of mats in dungeons also need to be worked in for FF14 to give a monetary reward.

you can only do so much with 4 ppl. You can not really do challenging content, it just does not work. You can not have tank swap mechanics or things that take a healer out of a fight. Or big dps races. Not to mention when people do dungeons with randoms they want to get in and get out. Gone are the days where people are willing to slog through a 2 hour dungeon. I am sorry but those days are the past. Maybe some dungeons with a few more branching paths with an optional boss or 2, but you will never see any maze type dungeons.

Shared Dungeons

The most amazing content that can ever be added to an MMO, PvPvE =D

All dungeons will be linear. unless they are shared.

Even dungeons with multiple paths become boring, especially because of the story involved with those paths - see SWTOR.

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Originally Posted by Nektulos-Tuor

Shared Dungeons

The most amazing content that can ever be added to an MMO, PvPvE =D

All dungeons will be linear. unless they are shared.

Even dungeons with multiple paths become boring, especially because of the story involved with those paths - see SWTOR.

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What is PvPvE?

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Originally Posted by Cakekizy

What is PvPvE?

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Darkness Falls from Dark Age of Camelot. Which they could do with the 3 free companies.