Afterthoughts:Level Capped Dungeons

So I'm home with a fever. But figured I'd knock out my roulettes.

I got Saint Mocianne's Arboretum. And it was absolutely unenjoyable. The group rushed and our tank moaned about every pull. Despite the gearnof the dps (myself included, I'm not a high ilvl BLM I'm trying to get the PlagueBringer Gloves.)

After we finished a friend of mine asked how it went.
He ranted to me about how he does not want to spend all day in a dungeon, how trash is a waste of time.
For the sake of argument I asked:
"What if they removed Trash from dungeons? What if Dungeons were just bosses? Aka: Boss Rush"
He then replied:
"Then it would be like LFR on WOW. That sucks. I'd leave"
Me:
"But you hate trash pulls, hate trash, feel trash is pointless, and you resent non-mass pull groups because they take all day. You want to be in & out so why not just have it be bosses?"
Him:
"Dungeons aren't endgame. They shouldn't take as long as they do. They are a waste of time. Thats why I want to be done with them so fast."
Me:
"For players like me they are endgame. Also I find them fun when everyone isn't trying to lightspeed through them. You must hate games like Diablo then?"
Him:
"Just bosses is boring. But I don't want puzzles either. This game is full of bads. Last thing we need is puzzles."
Me:
"So you don't want trash, you don't want puzzles, but you often say you want sprawling dungeons, yet you don't want dungeons to take all day, and you dislikenonly having bosses. What do you want? You rush through dungeons then stand around in a city all day complaining about be being bored. But any suggestion to lengthen or shorten dungeons is wrong."

I WISH I had screenshot the conversation. Hindsight of 20/20...
Anyways what are your thoughts?
Should dungeons be free of trash mobs so they can be done and over with quicker?
Should puzzles replace trash mobs?
Maybe dungeons should just become solo dungeons like in Elder Scrolls Online so players can complete them at their own pace & not hinder those who rush/be rushed by the group?

It feels like the vast majority of players want to just be done with the dungeons. So would dungeons only having bosses be fun? They would be quicker.
Should dungeons go away and just be trials?
Or...on the flip side...
Should new measures be taken to slow down dungeons?
Perhaps enemies get a "Strength in numbers" buff when you pull too many. Allowing the monsters to overwhelm players with ease.
Or gates that cannot be attacked until the trash is slain. (Honeycombs...)

Ideas? Thoughts?

Bonus topic:
Cause he said this and it bothers me SEVERELY...
Are Extreme Primals the "REAL" canon fights?!
Cause I seem to recall the MSQ fights being considered the "canonical" fights.

Dungeons do feel kinda pointless in this game tbh especially at endgame. They never provide a challenge, the gear is replace in a few months, the gear is never as good as "raid" gear, and they are always extremely short for mmo standards. They really only serve 2 points, in my opinion. Glamour gear and tomes and I haven't capped since November....

I like the dungeons. I love doing dungeons.

I do wish there was a bit more variety- for example, more paths to choose from, a bit more exploration, etc. Maybe even more puzzles.
Of course that's "too hard" for people; they can't rush through and get their tomes that way. Ugh.

The reason people feel inclined to just rush through dungeons is because they don't offer anything of worth beyond tomes. On top of that, the dungeons themselves tend to not be challenging, or on release end up being at a level where the majority of players doing them are already overgeared for it. The trash mobs themselves don't really pose a great challenge or really force players to approach them differently. Group them up, AOE them down, done. Rinse and repeat.

As for the Primals, I believe both are canon. Extremes are what the Primals become when you use more crystals to summon them (plus a sacrifice of the person summoning it, I believe). Or alternatively you could say the Extremes are how the Primals really are but for the purposes of DF they have to make the fights easier, hence nerf the level of their damage/skills in the MSQ.

It's a difficult thing, really.

On a nice, saturday noon, just after finishing my meal, I'd love to go and explore a bigger dungeon with a few people. I am sated, have the rest of the day off and can spend a good amount of time puzzling and crawling around in a dungeon.
On a busy monday evening, I'd rather just rush through one in 20 minutes and be done. I don't have time nor nerves and want my tomes ASAP. If there's no trash on the way all the better.

A bit arbitrary examples, but you get the idea. It's not a fixed preference. What kind of dungeon I want to do depends on my mood and budget.

Dungeons are fine they way they are, not everyone is max level and out geared for them. There are plenty of new players leveling that need the gear from them. I enjoy doing dungeons even maxed out. I do my daily roulettes and have fun with it.

I do not want puzzles added to the dungeons, I hate dungeons that do this. I want a straightforward path, like they are now.

I do hate tanks who want to pull everything at once, I prefer a slower pace. I play the game to relax and enjoy myself not rush through everything and light speed.

SE isn't going to do this because it will take longer time to develop but dungeons should have multiple paths and multiple objectives.

paths that have more trash mobs for AOE pulls.
paths that have big trash mobs where AOE pulls don't make sense (like 3x malboros).
paths that have an extra mini-boss.

players are going to flip out in DF because people will want to go different ways.

puzzles are not a good idea unless it's single player stuff like what happen at the end of the 3.1 MSQ. those should be longer and you should be able to replay those for like 1/3 the tomes of a normal dungeon daily.

I wouldn't mind something like a Boss Rush mode for dungeons, but otherwise they're one of the main avenues of the game where AoE damage is relevant, so removing trash would really make a large chunk of each class's toolkit largely worthless. And seriously, tons of the AoE skills in this game are great fun (Deathflare, Flare, Elixir Field, and so on).

Overall, they're still the content where I have the most fun. I just wish we were still getting three per patch instead of two per patch because the content we've gotten in the trade-off hasn't been worth it so far.

I'll be honest here, it sounds to me like your friend just likes to have things to bitch about.

He's the type that'll never be happy no matter what SE does.

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Originally Posted by Defias

Bonus topic:
Cause he said this and it bothers me SEVERELY...
Are Extreme Primals the "REAL" canon fights?!
Cause I seem to recall the MSQ fights being considered the "canonical" fights.

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If I remember correctly, all three difficulties are canon (where applicable, after the first three primals we've only ever had two difficuties for each one). Story mode is the original summoning, then later (post-Praetorium) they are resummoned using more crystals, and after that they are resummoned again using more crystals and some pretty grisly sacrifices to create ritual focus items (which were token turn-ins for the old weekly quest Primal Focus that can still be found in Mor Dhona).

Yoshi made it clear we won't see anything unique about dungeons. After the original Amdapor Keep and Pharos Sirius dungeons were a snooze fest. It's kinda shame really it's like anything that requires thought or mixes up the norm is shunned upon. What they should do is make all these instance dungeons actual open world areas at the same time and have unique themes to them, while also having the instance form working the way they are now.

I think that would be a pretty cool feature and would make the open world a bit more lively.

They could just make a ilvl sync to the ilvl which drops in the dungeon and it wouldn't be overgeared at release and would keep challenging in some way.

I think they need to do something, a lot of people arent having that much fun in the dungeons imo. I think a lot of it is because they so easy that your mind just goes into autopilot w/o really much thought required. This isn't good since the dungeons is one of the major content in the game. We need more dungeons that are like aurum vale and dzemel darkhold so people have to pay attention to what they are doing and aren't falling asleep during dungeon runs.

This problem is only going to get worse in 3.2 when they bump the maximum ilvl up another 30 ilvls and we are still running dungeons that are ilvl 150 or 170 (Level 60 roulltette).

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Originally Posted by Defias

After we finished a friend of mine asked how it went.
He ranted to me about how he does not want to spend all day in a dungeon, how trash is a waste of time.
For the sake of argument I asked:
"What if they removed Trash from dungeons? What if Dungeons were just bosses? Aka: Boss Rush"
He then replied:
"Then it would be like LFR on WOW. That sucks. I'd leave"**snip**

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You have just posted a great post about the complete contradiction posed by a great many burned out and/or bored end-game players.

They don't like trash, don't want puzzled, don't wantdungeons to take time, and don't want just a boss fight. But they do want big dungeons (presumably that can be sprinted through while avoiding all alternate paths, puzzles and trash which would slow them down), they want harder fights, but not fights tha take too long, and the drops must be good enough to entice them to run harder boss fights...etc... It's a complete contradiction, and i my view players such as this should not be playing this game because they really don't like the core gameplay and encounter - aka Dungeons.

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Originally Posted by Defias

Bonus topic:
Cause he said this and it bothers me SEVERELY...
Are Extreme Primals the "REAL" canon fights?!
Cause I seem to recall the MSQ fights being considered the "canonical" fights.

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They are, but you encountered the revisionist, some might say elitist, point of view that says that the MSQ events are just there for bads, and the raids and EX primals are the only real fights in the game, MSQ mode is just easy mode for noobs and bads. Of course, it's not true, the MSQ is 'canon' everything else is an optional challenge for those who want a challenge unless it's too hard (such as Alex Savage), or doesn't drop extra phat loot to make it worth running. Otherwise why not just idle in Idylllshire....?

;)

I don't expect my post will be well received by many. Ah well...

Personally, I like dungeons and would like larger dungeons with alternate paths, roaming mobs, respawning mobs and puzzles, but then I though that was kind of the point of adventuring, not just rushing the boss. boiling everything down to a boss rush makes it completely one dimensional and boring. I loathe speed runs, and completely dislike the fact that for level 50 dungeons the ilvl/level sync is so weak that we can essentially ignore most mechanics. Mechanics are what make Boss fights fun, because you employ the strategy needed to overcome the mechanic. Not so any more, now we just burn them down, and over-gear/heal through what were once party wipe mechanics. Perhaps I come from another age when people played games for fun, and now we only play them to cap tomes. Well, I saw we, but I don't cap anything, ever, I'm too busy playing and having fun.

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Originally Posted by Legion88

They could just make a ilvl sync to the ilvl which drops in the dungeon and it wouldn't be overgeared at release and would keep challenging in some way.

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I agree completely. Previously this suggestion has been shouted down by players who whined that doing this would make it harder for them to speed run content to farm light for their Relic..or to cap their Tomes. The result is content so mind numbingly easy that the same players complain bitterly about the game being too easy, but suggest making dungeons sync more strongly to preserve difficult and those same folks will shout from the highest peaks how that will ruin the game for them. I really wish that SE would stop listening to those voices, they hurt the game more than they help it.

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Originally Posted by bass9020

Yoshi made it clear we won't see anything unique about dungeons. After the original Amdapor Keep and Pharos Sirius dungeons were a snooze fest. It's kinda shame really it's like anything that requires thought or mixes up the norm is shunned upon.

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You must have played different versions of AK or PS. Pre-nerf PS required actual thought and strategy, but since most groups didn't want to do that, PS in particular became the poster child for dungeon content that was 'too hard'. AK with the original Demon wall was similarly chided over difficulty. I remember running them both, long before I hit ilvl 90. AK requires some thought and strategy, even the trash pulls had to be approached correctly, and the demon wall absolutely requires teamwork and strategy. Pharos was a great dungeon, but it wasn't so great if the DPS didn't understand and/or play the mechanics right. Ultimately both were nerfed and powercreep resulted in them becoming what you described. Original AK and original PS were not snooze fests, assuming of course that you actually wanted to be there instead of standing in More Donuts.

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Originally Posted by FeliAiko

The reason people feel inclined to just rush through dungeons is because they don't offer anything of worth beyond tomes.

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You're meant to have fun, running them with friends....that's meant to be a reward too.

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Originally Posted by FeliAiko

On top of that, the dungeons themselves tend to not be challenging, or on release end up being at a level where the majority of players doing them are already overgeared for it.

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The original ARR dungeons were not like this, and the level 50 ones were not entirely like that either. If ilvl sync forced gear to the level of that which drops in the dungeon, all those overly easy dungeons would suddenly become challenging again. Perhaps too challenging for some. So we'd probably have to give a 20-ilvl margin in Sync...

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Originally Posted by FeliAiko

The trash mobs themselves don't really pose a great challenge or really force players to approach them differently. Group them up, AOE them down, done. Rinse and repeat.

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Overgear is a terrible thing, but like the OP said players don't want challenging trash. So even if level sync was tighter and you had to actually play the trash, people would just complain about the time taken and the effort required and that their uber-gear was nerfed by Sync...

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Originally Posted by Zojha

A bit arbitrary examples, but you get the idea. It's not a fixed preference. What kind of dungeon I want to do depends on my mood and budget.

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Basically this. And not just this. Everyone is different and wants different things. I would assume more variety in what we can do would be the best answer. It would focus more on "Everyone" and less on a specific audience. Most people probably wont want to sacrifice for the better of the game/community by dividing the content though. So i doubt any change actually happens. I would love it though if it did happen though. Honestly we need a poll and way for the community to discuss things without the fighting and trolling taking over the threads. :P Cant really troll a list of check boxes.

A dungeon is 15 minutes. How is that long?

@Kosmos992k

I agree with alot of your points. I have no anger or malice either.
Maybe SE needs to the reduce the tome grind?
Maybe gear should last for 2 or 3 patches?

I feel like if Dungeons rewarded full clears, and etc players would welcome the "sprawling" labyrinth dungeons so many claim to yearn for.

I just dislike speed runs I feel. I enjoy group gameplay but I dislike spamming AOEs.
I feel like maybe trash mobs need to be more Morbol like.
Something where we once again need to be careful.
I admit the idea to ilvl sync players that was mentioned seemed like a good start.
Folks want challenge but not enough challenge to "slow" them down.
But honestly why are we rushing? To afk in town?

As for our Bonus Topic:
I too feel my friend is the proper definition of elitist. But he thinks he is not. He states that grouping with a casual/solo player like me for the occassional roulette versus doing them with his FC/Raid group as a reason why he isn't Elitist.
Yet he turns around and tells me I don't play any real content.
Gold Saucer, Dungeons, Hardmodes, Beastmen, Hunts, don't count. Only "real endgame" such as Ex Primals & Raids do.

I do not mind dungeons but i would not consider them to be end game
It can get annoying at times i can see that about the mass pull, let's do this in such and such a time, even if i don't mind that
AS for the comment about telling you you do not play real content, that is kind of heresay no? Some players do not like to raid and just play the game for the social aspect, story, etc..

Why are we rushing?

Well as someone pointed out earlier during the week when people are strapped for time (coming home from work/Uni etc) they want to get the dungeons over with as soon as possible so then they get more time to do other things in-game before they have to log off. Others simply because once you've done something repeatedly enough times, it just becomes more efficient to shorten the process as much as possible. Or even in some cases, people feel more challenged by mass pulls where everyone has to be on point for success.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

You must have played different versions of AK or PS. Pre-nerf PS required actual thought and strategy, but since most groups didn't want to do that, PS in particular became the poster child for dungeon content that was 'too hard'. AK with the original Demon wall was similarly chided over difficulty. I remember running them both, long before I hit ilvl 90. AK requires some thought and strategy, even the trash pulls had to be approached correctly, and the demon wall absolutely requires teamwork and strategy. Pharos was a great dungeon, but it wasn't so great if the DPS didn't understand and/or play the mechanics right. Ultimately both were nerfed and powercreep resulted in them becoming what you described. Original AK and original PS were not snooze fests, assuming of course that you actually wanted to be there instead of standing in More Donuts.

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Thats what I meant I think my wording was off with that sentence. Pre nerf they were great dungeons, people may not agree but I loved them. Now dungeons are bland and uninteresting. The only thing trash pulls offer now are gates that block you from doing full speed runs.

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Originally Posted by FeliAiko

The reason people feel inclined to just rush through dungeons is because they don't offer anything of worth beyond tomes.

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This pretty much. You're really there for the tomes, not anything in the dungeon, save the first week or two they are out and maybe you want a glamour piece. It's a problem I have with the game, as opposed to something like PSO where I put thousands of hours into even fewer areas because there were lots of difficult to obtain things to be had in each instance and it was exciting that a rare monster or rare part or weapon with stats better than you had would drop. You wanted to be in the instance, as opposed to here where you want to be done asap, and I think that contributes a lot to DPS races, player arguments, rushing, impatience with newer players, boredom. If they address anything going forward as far as core design concepts in the game, I hope this is one.

Really, running dungeons in this game is best with friends. For me that's where the fun comes in.

I would love the level cap dungeons, if I didn't get the same ones for roulette... pretty much every day. I'm looking at YOU Arboretum.

The solution would be to reverse the paradigm. Make tome gear the catch up gear, and make the dungeon drops the good gear. IE - the current two level 60 dungeons dropping i170 gear while the Law buys i160. The two "expert" dungeons drop i200 gear while the Esoterics buy the i185 gear.

I don't see SE going in that direction though. Mainly because the cap on the higher tome limits the rate at which people can gear up, something that repeated dungeon runs would not (unless they go for a "one loot per week" a la the 24 man dungeon runs, which would NOT be well received).

All boss would maybe be ok. TSW does like 8 bosses as a dungeon and it's a lot less boring than XIV's.

Trash is ok in Diablo because the combat is satisfying. XIV's combat is not. I would scrap the game entirely like they did with 1.0 and make a new 3.0 with a better style, closer to FFE.

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Originally Posted by Aileesan

I would love the level cap dungeons, if I didn't get the same ones for roulette... pretty much every day. I'm looking at YOU Arboretum.

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I use to love Arboretum but grinding it and Sirius every day makes me almost empathize with the OP's friend.
With how the devs designed the system, you have to grind the same content over and over again, it get's old really quick, especially with only two end-game dungeons. It turns those dungeons into chores that you just want to get over with quickly.

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Originally Posted by bass9020

Thats what I meant I think my wording was off with that sentence. Pre nerf they were great dungeons, people may not agree but I loved them. Now dungeons are bland and uninteresting. The only thing trash pulls offer now are gates that block you from doing full speed runs.

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Agreed. Sadly my first experience of Pharos Sirius (pre nerf)included a DPS who swore he knew the mechanics and had done it before. We wiped to the first Boss so many times, my wife (our healer) almost quit from frustration. Instead of playing themechanics, or listening to the tank(me), our know it all dps proceeded to dps the hell out of the boss, and bitched at our healer for not healing. She was too busy running from the adds, after numerous wipes we somehow got through. This was long before any real overgearing was involved, there was no way to burn the boss,you had to play the adds. Similar fail on the next boss - failed mechanics and can't burn the boss, and the fool ran ahead to drag trash packs to us on the stairs..not the safe landings. I never ran another dungeon with that person again... LOL

The thing was, depsite that, it was still fun, because it was not brain dead easy.

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

I use to love Arboretum but grinding it and Sirius every day makes me almost empathize with the OP's friend.
With how the devs designed the system, you have to grind the same content over and over again, it get's old really quick, especially with only two end-game dungeons. It turns those dungeons into chores that you just want to get over with quickly.

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That is partially tied to problems with Alex Gordias (both Normal and Savage), Frontlines(Seize) and Diadem. They were intended to be pretty good (alternate/augmented) sources of Eso tomes, but design errors caused players to get sick of them really quick.

AlexNM's original token reward system caused players to burn out incredibly fast. Even after the reward system was changed players were sick of it and didn't want to go back. An average of 5 runs (which should have given a player a token) of each floor would have given 200 Eso.

AlexSavage's similarity to AlexNM (which many players were already sick of) along with the problematic difficulty caused serious problems. Hardcore players would have been getting about 20% to 25% of their Eso each week from Savage once they started clearing.

Frontlines(Seize) suffers heavily from extremely long queues caused by GC imbalances. It is a really good and interesting source of Eso when you are in one of the low pop GCs getting 10 min queue times, but sucks when you are in the high pop GC with a 2 hour queue time.

Diadem suffers greatly from disparate player goals, anti-poopsocking measures, and imbalanced rewards. 20 ESO for a 90 min duty is not very rewarding compared to 75 for a 15/20 minute one. Once many people got their mounts they just stopped doing Daidem.

There is a lot of variety, the problem is that doing daily expert roulette 5 times each week is just so much easier, faster and less draining than other sources.

I remember the old days of playing 60 WoW doing Stratholme and Scholomance where it'd take you hours to clear that place there was no speed running it was get in, clear the ziggurats, kill the bosses, kill the final boss with a time limit. For Scholomance you had to make flasks in there and it was pretty tough and couldn't speed run it. Again both places took 2 hours to clear sometimes 3 if you pulled too many and wiped a lot it took a lot of teamwork and was really enjoyable. I know FF XIV and WoW are different but the mentality now is "I need to meet my cap this week, these dungeons are boring" the caps not going anywhere, I myself like to speed run but with my FC buddies because of our synergy I can literally pop LD with a whole first room pull and my FC buddy benes me while walking dead has 3 seconds left you won't get that in a PUG.

As for what dungeons could be is more puzzles, keep the trash because I actually like trash it's harder than the bosses lol, I do like the dungeons in this game a lot aside from 2 (Alwaysreap and Snowcloak) other than that I love Aurum Vale, Sohm Al, The Aery, etc I could go on. There's only so much you can do with dungeons it has to have a Beginning and an End having stuff inbetween depending on the choices we made would be really awesome but not everyone agrees which I don't expect anyone to jump on new things as people are reluctant.

Tldr; people will always choose the most efficient way of farming tomes, items, gear, over fun because it's the most optimal way of doing it in the least amount of time.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

Agreed. Sadly my first experience of Pharos Sirius (pre nerf)included a DPS who swore he knew the mechanics and had done it before. We wiped to the first Boss so many times, my wife (our healer) almost quit from frustration. Instead of playing themechanics, or listening to the tank(me), our know it all dps proceeded to dps the hell out of the boss, and bitched at our healer for not healing. She was too busy running from the adds, after numerous wipes we somehow got through. This was long before any real overgearing was involved, there was no way to burn the boss,you had to play the adds. Similar fail on the next boss - failed mechanics and can't burn the boss, and the fool ran ahead to drag trash packs to us on the stairs..not the safe landings. I never ran another dungeon with that person again... LOL

The thing was, depsite that, it was still fun, because it was not brain dead easy.

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Yep exactly people tend to skip or try to skip whatever they can but sometimes it just doesnt work and now we no longer have things like that in dungeon. :/ I feel like if they added these places to the open world as an optional thing it would make it a little more interesting. Leave the easy speed run no brain tactics to the Duty Finder and add puzzles and unique gating to the open world versions.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

Beautiful words

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Pretty much all the posts I've seen you do lately, I've agreed with completely, just thought I'd point that out

I don't see the point in you wanting dungeons lvl capped. If dungeons are your endgame why even bother gearing up if you are just going to cap yourself down. Plus i think it's fun as your gear gets better and better the dungeon goes faster and faster. Either way there's still going to be people that aren't as effective on their class making the dungeon slower, at least with better gear it's not as painful

I like everything about dungeons. I just don't like getting paired with terrible people who significantly slow down the time it takes to clear in df. I can understand the lower level dungeons if new players aren't doing that great, but I find it absolutely ridiculous when I consistently outdps dps classes who have better gear than me on my tank or healer. I once got a bard who had one 200 ring, and everything else was all 210, eso and relic. His dps was lower than what my tank could do...at level 50. >.>

For me it depends on why I'm running the dungeon

If I'm running because I want to run a dungeon or got bored then I enjoy a slower pace

However most of the time I am running to get my tomes so I can do the things I would like, (Crafting/ gathering/ leveling the rest of my jobs)
in this case I want a speed run since I'm only running the dungeon to stay up to par for when I do want to play endgame content.

Just wish I could get tomes for my leveling roulette on non 60 characters so I could both get my tomes and work on leveling another job, at this point I'm wasting my roulette just to get my capped tomes for the week, so sad.

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Originally Posted by bass9020

Yoshi made it clear we won't see anything unique about dungeons. After the original Amdapor Keep and Pharos Sirius dungeons were a snooze fest. It's kinda shame really it's like anything that requires thought or mixes up the norm is shunned upon. What they should do is make all these instance dungeons actual open world areas at the same time and have unique themes to them, while also having the instance form working the way they are now.

I think that would be a pretty cool feature and would make the open world a bit more lively.

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Then he's going to bleed out subs. This happens in every game that dumbs down it's content because people are not engaged. Right now everyone is still in love with the game but when they realize how empty the content really is, like getting out of a bad relationship, they'll just take their money elsewhere.

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Originally Posted by hellmach

Then he's going to bleed out subs. This happens in every game that dumbs down it's content because people are not engaged. Right now everyone is still in love with the game but when they realize how empty the content really is, like getting out of a bad relationship, they'll just take their money elsewhere.

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I really hope he figures that out before it's too late.

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Originally Posted by Defias

I too feel my friend is the proper definition of elitist. But he thinks he is not. He states that grouping with a casual/solo player like me for the occassional roulette versus doing them with his FC/Raid group as a reason why he isn't Elitist.
Yet he turns around and tells me I don't play any real content.
Gold Saucer, Dungeons, Hardmodes, Beastmen, Hunts, don't count. Only "real endgame" such as Ex Primals & Raids do.

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That has me wondering if the term has degraded into a mere buzzword by the playerbase?

That strength in numbers thing is a nice idea, I've never heard something like that before. I dont think dungeons without trash would be good... I mean, that's what most raids are, where would be the difference then except in the number of people? I wonder if harder dungeons would work if they put a written explanation of the dungeons mechanics in the DF description, would people read it then and understand mechanics better (the ones who want to do it blind don't have to read it)?
I would like jumping puzzles, one person has to make it to the other side and activate a bridge for those who didn't make it, I would love to see that sh*itstorm of rage. Although I really actually like jumping stuff like GW2.