I Hate Trash

Trash pulls, specifically. They're all so boring. It's needless grindy filler designed purely to slow the party down.

That's why I like Void Ark. Even its "trash rooms" (outside of the first couple pulls but those are mercifully fast) act as a miniboss challenge with actual things to do.

Wouldn't it be great if all future dungeons replaced trash pulls and were instead a gauntlet of 6-8 bosses/minibosses, perhaps with some terrain-based challenges to navigate in between? It would balance out to about the same clear times, but it would be so much more exciting to play.


As for the bosses themselves, I'd love to see an increase in bosses who are fought in different ways like Biggy from Copperbell Hard, or the Yeti from Snowcloak. Perhaps some bosses based mainly around dodging while working together/waiting for an opening to make the boss vulnerable to attack. This type of boss would have rather low health, and focus mostly on the mechanics with only a tiny amount of DPS on each "hit." Too many current bosses are just the DPS bashing their faces against a wall until it breaks, with dodging and other mechanics as a distraction rather than the main substance of the fight.


What do you think? Do you want more interesting and dynamic combat to make the game more fun? What kinds of bosses would you like to fight?

Seriously, everyone hates trash. Wait...

http://cdn.makeagif.com/media/6-28-2015/mZt7Qb.gif
I LOVE TRASH

Sorry, I had to. Your idea is good.

I think most players feel the same which is why Alexander dungeons only has a few trash pulls before the boss

They are even more boring as a PLD, shield lob, flash, flash and combos.....bornig

I hate to be the harbinger of the "good ol' days" but in FFXI every mob in a dungeon felt like a mini boss, and I would love to see more of that, at least in the expert dungeons. Sure it would make speed runs extinct, then again just double the tomes each expert gives and I'm sure you'd please both parties.

i would prefer the dungeons be made via procedural generation with random encounters, so that no run is the same.

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Originally Posted by saber_alter

i would prefer the dungeons be made via procedural generation with random encounters, so that no run is the same.

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This. We can dream right?

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Originally Posted by Iagainsti

I hate to be the harbinger of the "good ol' days" but in FFXI every mob in a dungeon felt like a mini boss, and I would love to see more of that, at least in the expert dungeons. Sure it would make speed runs extinct, then again just double the tomes each expert gives and I'm sure you'd please both parties.

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At the same time, you got 1 decent attack every several minutes, leveling was hard to impossible, and the game was made specifically so soloplay was impossible with out mercilessly painful deaths.

If you had dammage output and survivability like in FF14 back in FF11 how would the difficulty compair?

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Originally Posted by saber_alter

i would prefer the dungeons be made via procedural generation with random encounters, so that no run is the same.

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Current dungeons use static layouts and couldn't be adapted to this. You want a tile-based system for future dungeons. While that would make the expert roulette less repetitive, it doesn't really solve the problem.

The problem is this game's combat system. Trash can be fun in other games. Even static dungeon trash can be a TON of fun when the combat system is good and allows actual interaction with them. It creates a good dynamic when contrasted with the bosses which need to be fought in very different ways compared to normal mobs. In XIV bosses and mobs behave the same, with the only difference being bosses getting more health and special attacks. Everything in this game is built out of super armor: players, mobs, bosses, everything. Adding to that, nearly everything we can do is point-and-click, single target attacks have no splash (bosses sometimes do but I mean players). All of the interaction has been sucked out of the experience. Which is fine in a single player game where you need to rely on strategy to work around the inevitable punch to the grill the boss is going to do, and manage an entire party to do so, but in an MMO where you control only one single character, you're just standing there pushing buttons. Bosses in this game dress it up, and hide the boring combat behind a bunch of mechanics (sometimes. Often not much), but trash leaves it out in the open. They hit you right in the face with the reality of how boring the combat really is.

This is actually one thing I really loved about TSW. Very little trash, mostly boss fights. Sometimes with the evil guy taunting you as you work your way through the dungeon to him.

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Originally Posted by saber_alter

i would prefer the dungeons be made via procedural generation with random encounters, so that no run is the same.

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SE's philosophy is for very high controlled content/experience that is exactly repeatable. Even if they changed this philosophy I doubt the engine and game they've built could support it. Here's to hoping Starbound hits 1.0 in 2016?

Personally, I'd hate dungeons if they were simply bosses. Void Ark is pretty damn boring and gives no sense of exploration or adventure.

I'd rather they add various ways of doing dungeons, like:


- Have a dungeon designed for two teams to queue in and 'race' to the ending down separate paths
- Have a maze where you and 3 others separate out and race to the ending (yes I like races! - but not Chocobo racing :\)
- Have a dungeon where you are stationary on a moving platform and fending off waves of enemies (like on a train, with baddies climbing up the sides)
- Have a dungeon that encourages stealth by creating distractions
- Have a dungeon with multiple paths where one is mostly very hard bosses but is quick to finish, another is slow and long with lots of trash but more tomestones and one which is the medium/normal/default option.
- Make "trash" not "trash" by actually giving them meaningful drops (crafting materials, random eq drops, more gil etc)


However, if they started making every dungeon just boss encounters, I feel I may get quite bored.

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Originally Posted by Kaurie

Personally, I'd hate dungeons if they were simply bosses. Void Ark is pretty damn boring and gives no sense of exploration or adventure.

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And dungeon's... aren't boring? Do give you a sense of exploration? O.o

If i noticed right the trash in the espert dungeons doesn't drop gil anymore.
In this conslusion they are just fillers to give the dungeon "life" and damage the equipment of the party.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

And dungeon's... aren't boring? Do give you a sense of exploration? O.o

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That depends on the dungeon. I am not a fan of the new ones. The Aetherochemical Research Facility is an example of one that I do like and feels like an adventure when I go through it. Other than that, the Heavensward dungeons have been pretty lackluster. Neverreap and The Vault weren't too bad though.

Other great dungeons (in my opinion of course):
Haukke Manor (both regular and hard)
Brayflox (both regular and hard)
Tam-Tara Deepcroft (Hard)
Hullbreaker Isle

In general, dungeons give a sense of exploration and of being an adventurer. Sometimes, raids can do this - for example Syrcus Tower and Labyrinth of the Ancients were both great (LotA remains my favourite).

Neither raids or dungeons give the feel of exploration beyond the first run. They're all glorified FF13 hallways.

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

Neither raids or dungeons give the feel of exploration beyond the first run. They're all glorified FF13 hallways.

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Which isn't the fault of the developers. Whenever they try to make things more engaging a very vocal portion of players complain - because they've long since been indoctrinated into focusing on misguided 'efficiency' at the cost of everything else. Even if dungeons were randomly generated they'd be complaining because they couldn't find the quickest route with the least amount of effort.

Having played Black Mage for a long time I always get giddy when I can really let loose with my AoE abilities. And as a tank there is just something innately fun about tanking 10+ mobs at a time. I like current dungeon design.

My only issue with dungeons is that Expert Roulette is where you're going to spend most of your time endgame and right now you've got two random choices that'll pop up. That's no fun. I get you can't exactly pull content out of thin air to make that problem magically go away but I'd like to just see Expert filled with more choices.

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Originally Posted by Demoskinos

Having played Black Mage for a long time I always get giddy when I can really let loose with my AoE abilities. And as a tank there is just something innately fun about tanking 10+ mobs at a time. I like current dungeon design.

My only issue with dungeons is that Expert Roulette is where you're going to spend most of your time endgame and right now you've got two random choices that'll pop up. That's no fun. I get you can't exactly pull content out of thin air to make that problem magically go away but I'd like to just see Expert filled with more choices.

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It was annoying when it was one of three but now it's literally a 50/50 shot.

Would.love it if expert had about 5-6 dungeons but at the very least lut it back to three.

6 dungeons with the same rewards? I'd be just as bored as I am now with two and you'd get people all wanting to run one or two specific dungeons for the sake of beating them faster.

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

6 dungeons with the same rewards? I'd be just as bored as I am now with two and you'd get people all wanting to run one or two specific dungeons for the sake of beating them faster.

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Like I said, at least bump it back up to 3 per roulette.

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

Neither raids or dungeons give the feel of exploration beyond the first run. They're all glorified FF13 hallways.

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Yes they are, because players are mostly just stupid.
Look at the 1.x FF 14 Dungeons, where you had multiple paths. What happend? Players just run the fastest route.
Look at the 3.1 Diadem, a wide open area to Explore...meanwhile all players are gathering at one isle.

Reality is: 99% of all players just want linear, straight up Content.
If Diadem was a test, if multipath Dungeons would be a thing, the answer at SE HQ will be...no!

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

6 dungeons with the same rewards? I'd be just as bored as I am now with two and you'd get people all wanting to run one or two specific dungeons for the sake of beating them faster.

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One person being bored shouldn't be reason to not do something if other people would enjoy it. For example, I find crafting boring, but I do not advocate they abolish the crafting system.

Some people wanting to run one or two specific dungeons because they are faster shouldn't be reason to not have other dungeons. Otherwise, there would be no point in adding new dungeons all together. We may as well have Sastasha normal mode unsynced as our only dungeon with the same rewards as our max tier dungeon, that way we can finish it faster.

Adding more options decreases the rate at which people will become bored, as the rate at which a person becomes bored is correlated to the number of times they redo the same thing.

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Originally Posted by Cheraa

Reality is: 99% of all players just want linear, straight up Content.
If Diadem was a test, if multipath Dungeons would be a thing, the answer at SE HQ will be...no!

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Diadem failing has nothing to do with adding multiple paths, and I hope that is not the conclusion SE has come from it. It was just a horribly executed idea, and it's failures come from the sum of many things and not the design of one element. Further, I'd hardly say that the Diadem offers any paths, nevermind multiple paths.

Right, Diadem don't offers any paths. It is completly open. And what does the playerbase? Just camp one Spot of the complete zone. The MMO Comunity will always move the easiest way. And there will always be one. Be it easier Trash, ways to ignore some trash, easier bosses and so on.

And the idea behind Diadem is well executed. It is, that the parties are spread around the isles and just gather for Star Ranks. The playerbase made it a brainless zergfest and just showed that multiple path Dungeons would just be wasted development time.

I completely disagree on both regards. Diadem is horribly executed, it was my first thought when there and I still hold that. It's an 'exploratory mission' that doesn't encourage exploration in the slightest. They could simply not having a bunch of floating islands, so you're encouraged to not just skip everything and fly to one spot. They could have it that mobs don't just respawn over and over in 1 location and that killing easier guys loads higher level guys. etc etc.. It is just horribly executed and most people widely agree on this.

As for people choosing the shortest path being an argument for not adding variation, well I can see your point but I don't think it's very good reasoning. People ultimately play to have fun, so I don't think designing content to be fun is wasted development time. I think designing content to be the lowest common denominator is. If it's better for a dungeon to be short so you can get tomes faster, then it's better for there to be no dungeon at all and tomes to automatically fill to max every second. It's not though, and that is because core game play is actually an important element. What needs to be done is the design and development team needs to consider and balance what they add, so that there is not a significant difference.

For example, there are differences in speeds between the various dungeons we have. That said, there is a much bigger difference in speeds due to group composition and skill level. Two months ago, I'd do Neverreap in anywhere from 14 minutes to 45 minutes based on my group (and if I chose to bring my AoE SMN or my SCH for faster queues etc). The fastest I've personally run both Neverreap and Fractals is actually the same (14 minutes), even though I believe most people consider Fractals faster. Beyond that, most people I meet seem to find runs with me to be quite fast even when I am finding it slow.

In my opinion, it feels like you think I am saying that adding variation = longer runs, when that is simply not the case. I don't think a run needs to be longer or shorter in order to vary from the current. I just would like to not have to do the exact same thing over and over. More importantly, I'd like the Dev team to take risks and try things new. Diadem is a great example; however, I'd say that the reason for it's failure is they did not take a big enough risk and tried to keep it to what they know while trying something new. In other words, they only dipped their toes in the water instead of jumping straight in.

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Originally Posted by Cheraa

Yes they are, because players are mostly just stupid.
Look at the 1.x FF 14 Dungeons, where you had multiple paths. What happend? Players just run the fastest route.
Look at the 3.1 Diadem, a wide open area to Explore...meanwhile all players are gathering at one isle.

Reality is: 99% of all players just want linear, straight up Content.
If Diadem was a test, if multipath Dungeons would be a thing, the answer at SE HQ will be...no!

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That doesn't mean players want linear content. It means they want to get that content over with as quickly as efficiently as possible because the content itself is NOT FUN. Players are using it as a means to an end. The content itself is in no way enjoyable, so why waste your time taking longer than necessary?

make dungeons any harder/random, than you have yourself another Steps of Faith chaos huehuehue

I wish they would spoon feed us xp and while we do nothing at all. Just pay them 14.99 and get all our levels and gear when we log on. Never have to work for a thing.

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Originally Posted by RuleofThree

I wish they would spoon feed us xp and while we do nothing at all. Just pay them 14.99 and get all our levels and gear when we log on. Never have to work for a thing.

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I ask them to turn dungeons into a full boss rush to make them a fun challenge instead of a brainless slog, and somehow you get "spoonfed" out of that?

Simply opening up the dungeons will not change anything, and multiple paths will only result in people choosing the one with least resistance, as is human to do. What is needed beside that is a reason for players to take the long way around, a reason to not skip mobs, a reason to not take the shortest and fastest way through the dungeon.
Creating a dungeon which forces people to do time consuming things is doomed to fail as none like to be forced to do something they deem boring in a game, instead they need to compel us to do these things by making them interesting and challanging to do, adding things like hidden secrets, traps, objectives to complete, perhaps an npc which sells special items that has to be freed, or even a hidden boss sitting on a pile of loot from which all players get a piece of material. The list of possible things is longer but it all would mean the same thing, that SE needs to start thinking outside their box, since as it is now all new dungeons are same shit different texture and boss mechanics.

I do, actually. To break down the previous poster's idea:

Hidden secrets - Wouldn't matter. People will just ignore and get to the end. Speedrunning is king.
Traps - Might work for people geared for the dungeon, but those with the equipment will just power through it.
Objectives to complete - Are in the game now, are just powered through.
NPC that sells shit - People won't care after their first few runs. Will ignore it. Already done with optional chests. No one wants 'em, even if it has potential to drop loot. I.E chest next to sleeping dragon in the aery.
Hidden Boss - Only example I know of this is the biast in Halatali...which is ignored. Will likely follow same trend if repeated.

People don't want to do anything, they want their reward, and they want it as fast as humanly possible with no effort. Even if they did make every single fight a miniboss, people would find a way to power it down as fast as possible, and then complain about how the mini-bosses are trash mobs.