Puzzles, objectives, anything innovative for dungeons/raids

i've been playing since 2.0 and it still amazes me how all level 50/60 dungeons are about the same. They're alike in a sense of you kill trash, bosses and that's it. Dungeon completed.

Imagine having actual dungeons with puzzles, objectives you have to clear before you're able to go on to the next boss. Like you could scatter notes containing a code randomly in the dungeon, having to enter the code to open a gate. This would not only be a change of the usual trash, boss, trash, boss thing we're seeing for years now, but it would also encourage people to actually cooperate with eachother. Right now when i enter duty finder the only words that are spoken are hi, bye and thanks. In order to compensate time spent in the dungeon you could put less trash mobs inside, this assuming the average player still wants their dungeons done in a somewhat quick phase. Puzzles are definitely something that should be easily implementable with some thought.

Imagine being in a huge room with your party, having no mini map and it's pitch black, there's only this tiny field of view around your character. You can't see monsters unless they're inside your field of view. In order to get to the boss you'd have to find embers scattered in the dark (RNG locations) to light up the room and open the gate. Simple objectives could make a dungeon a lot more fun.

To make it more clear what i'm talking about, imagine this kind of view in the dungeon:
http://i.imgur.com/nSzxS30.png

Find the embers and return to the starting point, to light the torch with the embers.
http://i.imgur.com/ApshK5s.png

http://i.imgur.com/RFMkb1F.png

To counter the linear dungeons you could even make a labyrinth-like dungeon. For example you could spawn somewhere random in the dungeon and take different paths, searching your way towards the final boss, no minimap. Everytime you enter a room you have to kill whatever's in there in order to advance. You could even make a prerequisite for it. Like having to search and kill mini bosses in the labyrinth before you're able to challenge the final boss. Instead of normal trash you could even use stuff like the last boss of stone vigil HM. put like 3 of those in a room dealing quite some damage and people will actually have to react to trash. You could make the party spawning location in the labyrinth rng, or you could make the boss rooms to be in different places everytime. This way the dungeon would be interesting to do considering it's different every time you'd do it.
http://i.imgur.com/BPEhFvl.png

Then for bosses i feel like there's a lot of room for improvement as well. Why not split up the party at a boss for instance? Bosses could be a lot more interesting. Imagine a two floor boss fight with 3 people fighting the actual boss and 1 person's on the other floor. Depending on the situation on the floor with the actual boss, the person upstairs would have to react to it. Like having to drop weights on a boss from the 2nd floor in order to be able to damage it. You could also make this more dynamic. Imagine the person on the 2nd floor having to press buttons whenever something turns up on the 1st floor. Like electricity appearing on the floor, person upstairs has to press a blue button, fire starts covering the floor, person upstairs presses the red button etc. Ofcourse you can't be pressing buttons all fight long so you could even add stuff to protect on the second floor.
http://i.imgur.com/xi4G6QZ.png

So there you have it, there's a lot that could make dungeons or even raids more enjoyable. Not only you'd have dungeons that aren't the same everytime, but you'd actually have to communicate with people instead of entering and leaving without a word said. This is a MMORPG, but sometimes i feel like i'm playing a single player game. A simple change from the usual thing could make a huge difference.

TLDR; Simple things as adding puzzles, objectives, anything that makes a dungeon less linear or even separating the party at a boss could make the dungeon/raiding experience a lot more fun. This would also encourage jolly cooperation with your fellow players.

EDIT: Note that these are just examples. There's a lot of things out there that could make dungeons more interesting, even simple stuff.
Even sastasha NM/The sunken temple of Qarn NM are more original in this way than ANY level 50/60 dungeon. Sastasha having a note with a "riddle" on it. Qarn having the little stones and having to kill the statues on the platforms.

Personally, I would enjoy more logical challenges and such in dungeons rather than a straight forward run and burn. However given the vocal majority (not so much those who actually may enjoy but never speak up or visit forums) will end up not wanting to do it simply because its to involved when compared to other dungeons. I want more physical challenges or goals, make us all do a giant jumping section over a chasm that shoots you back to the beginning (with a switch at the end to turn it off and make a linear platform) or something to change up the norm.

This all sounds fun in theory, but when you have to do it all hundreds of times with 3 or more other people with varying skill and care levels, it just won't work.

Unfortunately, if SE tried to think outside the box with their content, the playerbase would freak out, screaming for nerfs and complaining that they cant press 1-2-3 while chatting about their glamour in /FC. Case in point: Steps of Faith.

FFXIV was meant to be harder than other MMORPGs and thats the reason why I was start playing it. I mean, I m so proud to clear hard content, before it gets to easy after so many nerfs.

I really agree with Sayori and I got so many ideas for myself. I m also wondering, why isnt there a boss-fight where you have beat a giant boss with several stages (Hand, Body and Head)? Why not do a boss-fight, where you have to do damage as a healer by healing the boss, while the DPS are kiting some adds around? Or what about some kind of aerial fight with entire new mechanics? Or what about a boss who do his attacks by random?

You all know that SE stated, they bring new mechanics into the Alexander Raid? Well, I didnt saw anything new. Kite Adds, Dodge AoEs, DPS Check.

Seriously, there should be a forum for new ideas directly from the community base. We are now at a point, where the community is much more creative, than the developers right now.

Did no one remembered the good old days where you have to dodge so much to beat Titan HM? And then came Titan Ex and its still so awesome!

This sounds fun, but it probably wouldn't fly if it was implemented as duty finder content sadly.
However maybe something like this would work in Diadem (Hard)? Y'know, find a cave, go inside, do the thing. That way you'd have a coordinated party and add actual exploration to the voyages.
Or just cut that off just make it pre-made only content. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be too difficult to get a light party together for a little puzzle dungeon...r-right?

I would love this, as dungeon in ff11 was alot like this. Beaucidine citidel had a 4 player trigger switch to get deeper in, temple of upp (the tonberry dungeon) had alot of puzzeles like getting the paintbrush to fight levi, the quest to reset toberry hate gettinbg the flame of rancor to fight the tonberry king. Heck even sky had puzzles. A few dungeons here have puzzles but people perfer to just zerg stuff down.

Like The wanderers palace has trapped chests the tonberry stalker triggered doorways and ppl speed through it. Ignore the chests etc.

People hated the original pharos siris cuz 1 boss had a trick to it.

People ignore the bonus chest in halatali that spanws the phanton pieste. Heck most ppl forget satashas choral color @ the bloody memo.

then you got DD ppl skip most the bonus side rooms with triggers. Then u had the steps of faith, which just simply required teamwork and was nerfed to hell -_-;; There are puzzles and stuff just ppl choose to ignore them for the sake of "must do fast to requeue fast"

heck story mode copper bell mines has puzzles and ppl groan because again "must go fast"

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Originally Posted by Azazua_azura

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I understand people want to finish their dungeon quick, but maybe that's also because of the kind of dungeons we got right now. It's literally walking a straight path, get to the end and start over again. You could make people try out new stuff by adding additional rewards, even optional bosses which could drop a specific glamour set, anything. Anything out of the box would be nice.

@pushin_tin, you're right. The community does put down a lot of content, but is it their fault really? Steps of faith is definitely not a bad trial, it's a great idea in fact. However it's original difficulty didn't exactly live up to "MSQ difficulty", and thus it caused problems for the "casual" group (really, what can be considered a casual nowadays anyway). I think there's a lot of things SE could do to make dungeons and even raids more interesting, i just wish they tried something new.

I honestly can get behind this idea. They would definitely have to increase the rewards for doing it to make it worth doing compared to spamming a dungeon cause its "faster." The fast pace mindset people have on this game is rather disappointing honestly. Instead of enjoying the game, it's all about "how fast can I get this done and what can I do to make it get done faster?" and it's pretty disheartening.

While I don't see this being a functional idea over time, due to the constantly desire SE has to force us to run dungeons 500 times for no reason other than not including enough good content, I do think it would be nice to have other options in this game than the current ones.

I support this but complete randomization would have to be involved or people would always find the quickest and easiest route and the dungeons would end up as repetitive as they currently are.

I wouldn't mind more content to challenge my brain.

Still need to get around to doing that clue searching quest that starts in western thanalan...

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Originally Posted by Veerne

This all sounds fun in theory, but when you have to do it all hundreds of times with 3 or more other people with varying skill and care levels, it just won't work.

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They're just examples. My point is that they should try something new instead of having us brainlessly slap mobs like we've been doing the past 2 years. Puzzles or objectives in order to clear dungeons are very possible with any skill/care level.

It would work, as an open world dungeon that is.

I would love to see a 12 man raid (3 teams of 4) similar to kefka's tower in ff6. Like team A can't progress untill team B fulfills a certain objective/ hits a switch, etc.

You have to remember that a lot of dungeon runs are with PUGs so... Yeah, no. Having MORE mechanics is not always a good thing.

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Originally Posted by Caitlyn

FFXIV was meant to be harder than other MMORPGs and thats the reason why I was start playing it. I mean, I m so proud to clear hard content, before it gets to easy after so many nerfs.

I really agree with Sayori and I got so many ideas for myself. I m also wondering, why isnt there a boss-fight where you have beat a giant boss with several stages (Hand, Body and Head)? Why not do a boss-fight, where you have to do damage as a healer by healing the boss, while the DPS are kiting some adds around? Or what about some kind of aerial fight with entire new mechanics? Or what about a boss who do his attacks by random?

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PFT! That's all been done before, it's not fun doing the same stuff that other games have done. Randomization is not fun because they have to tune it so low or no one will beat it so it's too easy overall. Aerial Fights are too hard, people can't even dodge on normal ground let alone a 360 degree radius. Healers can't deal damage with heals, too confusing, and also mobs can't be targeted with heals.

T2 was already done, where you beat different sections of the ADS module - old news. Same with Hulbreaker Island - old.

Puzzles - Diablo Boss in Amdapor - was a lot of fun with the doors, but even more fun just to burn the boss and ignore them.

T2 ADS - the ROT mechanic was fun to coordinate, but coordinating Medica II with another healer to ignore the entire boss was even more fun.

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You really want fun and innovative fights in FFXIV? Try enjoying the current ones first instead of sending a big FU to the Dev team.

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Originally Posted by VanilleFang

You have to remember that a lot of dungeon runs are with PUGs so... Yeah, no. Having MORE mechanics is not always a good thing.

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I never stated that there should be more mechanics. It would be nice to have new mechanics, however.

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Originally Posted by Veerne

This all sounds fun in theory, but when you have to do it all hundreds of times with 3 or more other people with varying skill and care levels, it just won't work.

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because doing dungeon hundreds of times isn't boring actually? I don't really see your argument.

Anyway, FFXIV isn't really creative and will never be.

I don't see hard mechanics in this thread, it's just some things to do other than just kill mob and run. Qarn is almost the only dungeon with new thing to do, even if it's still really bad.