Revenge of the Round Arena!

Most of the dungeons nowadays are round arenas connected by short paths. These dungeons are becoming incredibly boring and repetitive, no matter what the visuals are outside of this ridiculous pattern. Hell, the dungeons don't even make sense anymore; the paths and arenas are completely disconnected from the dungeon at large, in some of them, as if the dungeon is just a visual theme for the paths and circular boss arenas.

Please, for the love of the twelve, bring back real dungeons. I don't know what your reasoning is behind what you're doing now, but it really really needs to stop. I ran through Stone Vigil and Dzmeal Darkhold the other day for the first time in a long time, and it was absolutely refreshing to be in dungeons that made sense. We need more of that, please.

Stone Vigil. So you'd rather have square arenas? I'm not sure I'd call that refreshing.

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Originally Posted by Zigabar

Stone Vigil. So you\\'d rather have square arenas? I\\'m not sure I\\'d call that refreshing.

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Hexagons ftw

Alexander Midas 6 was really daring
A corridor and then a mixture of circular and square arena's, the absolute mad man, how did the board room meeting go? Even the yes men didn't know whether to nod their heads.

I suspect they don't do more interesting arenas because the playerbase usually finds a way to exploit it. Like how at launch you could dodge Doom from Qarn's first boss by climbing on the rubble, or how players would drag the Relic Reborn chimera up the hill so ranged wouldn't have to move for Dragon's Voice, or how people would hide in a ditch in t5 to force Twintania to Divebomb from one direction and make it easier to dodge.
I don't see the circular arenas as a big deal myself but variety is always nice.

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Originally Posted by Zigabar

Stone Vigil. So you'd rather have square arenas? I'm not sure I'd call that refreshing.

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I was using Stone Vigil as more an example of a dungeon that actually made sense. It was a building. It felt like a building. The "square arenas" made sense.. because you were in a building. Most dungeons nowadays feel completely out of place. Seriously, I first noticed this trend in CT2, and it's only gotten worse as time went on.

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Originally Posted by Moomba33

I suspect they don't do more interesting arenas because the playerbase usually finds a way to exploit it. Like how at launch you could dodge Doom from Qarn's first boss by climbing on the rubble, or how players would drag the Relic Reborn chimera up the hill so ranged wouldn't have to move for Dragon's Voice, or how people would hide in a ditch in t5 to force Twintania to Divebomb from one direction and make it easier to dodge.
I don't see the circular arenas as a big deal myself but variety is always nice.

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All of these things are things they can plan for. Instead they don't and just make flat round arenas; it makes them look lazy.

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Originally Posted by TheRogueX

All of these things are things they can plan for. Instead they don't and just make flat round arenas; it makes them look lazy.

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While you're not wrong, they could have certainly planned the Chimera out better as well as T5, the reason why we don't get variety is more on part with how they decided the gameplay was going to be in early stages of development. Since they went with the trinity, almost everything has to be small enough for a tank to control. You can't really have anything else because every tank is going to take every group to a centralized location to fight, had this game not focused on the trinity, rather a more chaotic battle flow with AI that doesn't lock on to one specific player but the group as a whole, then we would see different layouts and designs.

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Originally Posted by cyborgmermaid

And while we're at it, a trial that isn't a completely flat playing field would be nice. SE, you added jumping to 2.0 despite so many people's outcry over it, make it actually flipping useful in a fight.

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I think there's a reason everything's flat now; in T5 you could trivialize certain mechanics because there were slopes.

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Originally Posted by Moomba33

I suspect they don't do more interesting arenas because the playerbase usually finds a way to exploit it. Like how at launch you could dodge Doom from Qarn's first boss by climbing on the rubble, or how players would drag the Relic Reborn chimera up the hill so ranged wouldn't have to move for Dragon's Voice, or how people would hide in a ditch in t5 to force Twintania to Divebomb from one direction and make it easier to dodge.
I don't see the circular arenas as a big deal myself but variety is always nice.

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I don't really see a problem with out-of-the-box strategies like that.

Stone Vigil is one of my dearest dungeons ever. I really liked the design of the corridors and the difficulty it had. It made it very interesting. I think they make the boss rooms circular in order for players to have more space for dodging. I remember they stated this in some interview some time ago. I do agree that the circular areas in many cases do not seem to fit at all with the surroundings.
There are plenty of ideas for boss areas/rooms.
We can fight a boss in a forest like area where we have to hide behind trees to dodge aoes, or in plains like/valley where the enemy flies and dives towards us, or a mountain path near a cliff, a beach area etc. There can still be "invisible" walls but at least visually the place can feel more open. I do agree that the circular areas became too much repetitive and boring. I'm still waiting for more dungeon like the Vault where enemies running towards you and not waiting to be killed like statues. Please dev team take a not note on this.

i had even heard, or been told, at one point the south tree in ak normals first boss could be climbed to ignore the golems aoe attack, which used to be fatal. I remember the qarn spot, that was the ranged dps/healers hideout to avoid doom

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Originally Posted by Ronove

I think there's a reason everything's flat now; in T5 you could trivialize certain mechanics because there were slopes.

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I think they actually had to even out the terrain in T5 because it was killing players who were doing the mechanics right. Moving up or down a slope makes escaping a pillar AoE take longer and uneven terrain can cause sphere aoe's to require more distance to escape than their radius if they end up in a bad spot.

You know there is point in time where asking for originality becomes unoriginal. Having a duty take place atop individual burning dragons while in the slip space time stream dodging AOE's threatening to drop your character in to perma death only sounds epic. Once something original gets thought it still has to fit the game engine. Expecting for a full course meal from a person with a box of crayons is just asking to be let down.

We need X/Y/Z axis trials again, like Kill a Raven during 1.23
Climb the stairs and shoot down the meteors before they hit the gound.

Sure, the place was still a circle, but it had stairs

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Originally Posted by Alacran

You know there is point in time where asking for originality becomes unoriginal. Having a duty take place atop individual burning dragons while in the slip space time stream dodging AOE's threatening to drop your character in to perma death only sounds epic.

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I'm not asking for super crazy epic originality, just dungeons that make sense and feel like actual structures or environments.

I'm not going to lie, I would like to see more asymetrical boss rooms.... The perfectly symetrical shapes really don't seem natural. It might take a little extra testing to make sure you can't cheese certain mechanics but w/e.

The comments when Steps of Faith first released probably still leaves the dev team salty. They experimented with combining mechanics and cooperation only to have the fans condemn the fight. I would wager this is why we are stuck with circles and squares.

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Originally Posted by Khanscott

The comments when Steps of Faith first released probably still leaves the dev team salty. They experimented with combining mechanics and cooperation only to have the fans condemn the fight. I would wager this is why we are stuck with circles and squares.

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It's not so much the shape of the maps, but rather players being too dense to learn from their mistakes or raging too quickly when things go wrong.

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Originally Posted by Khanscott

The comments when Steps of Faith first released probably still leaves the dev team salty. They experimented with combining mechanics and cooperation only to have the fans condemn the fight. I would wager this is why we are stuck with circles and squares.

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I'd like a story boss to be hard again, like how in other FF games they'd be roadblocks when you get to a hard fight. I know single player is different to multiplayer but I really hate it when people want instant gratification. Steps of Faith before nerf is my greatest achievement cause it was a good experience when I had a party co-operating rather than going full YOLO and then going on the internet to complain that it's too hard.

and I bet some of these people probably don't even play anymore after steps despite whining

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Originally Posted by Yasuhiro

I'd like a story boss to be hard again, like how in other FF games they'd be roadblocks when you get to a hard fight. I know single player is different to multiplayer but I really hate it when people want instant gratification. Steps of Faith before nerf is my greatest achievement cause it was a good experience when I had a party co-operating rather than going full YOLO and then going on the internet to complain that it's too hard.

and I bet some of these people probably don't even play anymore after steps despite whining

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Well there's also the fact that no clear meant you were denied access to an expansion pack you paid for. That would be a disaster on SE waiting to happen.

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Originally Posted by TheRogueX

I ran through Stone Vigil and Dzmeal Darkhold the other day for the first time in a long time, and it was absolutely refreshing to be in dungeons that made sense. We need more of that, please.

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I think, and I could be wrong here, but I think both of those are 1.0 dungeons that the 2.0 team kept. I have noticed that dungeons like Cutter's Cry (another 1.0 dungeon I think) are more "open" and have a lot more optional, branching paths, but they take longer to run. So I think the 2.0 team's philosophy is to try to imitate that open environment, because if you think like in Cutter's and Dzmeal Darkhold, people usually just run the content in a straight line anyways, without the optional rooms. So I think the dev team decided "Well, let's make it look like there's an optional path here, but not actually add one, because who is going to walk down that path anyways?"

The mindset is great for the efficiency-minded gamer, but I agree that it does take away some of the polish and life of the environment of a dungeon. I would like to see some dungeon branching inspired by T2; you may kill the first dungeon boss, and then have to choose between two for the second boss, and your decision changes the final leg of the dungeon and final boss. Also I don't think it would hurt to add back in the little flavor bits like in Cutter's, traveling via sand pits, or the random dragons swooping down in SV, or heck even just the doors from DD. Just like something that feels like the dungeon is interacting with you, and you're interacting with it, instead of just the sterile feeling of being a chess piece on a board.

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Originally Posted by Khanscott

The comments when Steps of Faith first released probably still leaves the dev team salty. They experimented with combining mechanics and cooperation only to have the fans condemn the fight. I would wager this is why we are stuck with circles and squares.

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All the actually skilled players I've spoken with said they absolutely loved that fight pre-nerf.

The problem with Steps was that it took longer than everything else in trial roulette. Coupled with the high chance of failing with new people in the party it meant that veterans would abandon it instantly when they got it in roulette so new players wouldn't even get a chance to try.
I wonder if it would have done better in MS roulette since it'd be more comparable time wise...though then we'd run into a problem where it's likely that not a lot of people geared enough to get into Steps ran MS roulette at the time.

I liked the fight myself. Even post nerf it's at least something really different compared to most trials in the game.

I doubt we'll ever see a truly difficult main story boss in XIV. With the single players games you are free to try things as many times as you like without worrying about others getting frustrated and leaving. And as turned based games they're more about setup and strategy with less skill needed on execution.

Pre nerf steps was pretty refreshing, it really felt like a big dragon you couldnt just flail a metal toothpick(sword) and kill, but i ca sympathize with people that couldnt clear it or had a hard time(took me a couple days in df not straight just a few tries a day)

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Originally Posted by ADVSS

Pre nerf steps was pretty refreshing, it really felt like a big dragon you couldnt just flail a metal toothpick(sword) and kill, but i ca sympathize with people that couldnt clear it or had a hard time(took me a couple days in df not straight just a few tries a day)

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It wasn't a hard fight, the main reason I've come to believe why it was so far as it required 8 people to do more than just the basics of their job. With the whole needing to use the environment to dish out the major damage in prenerf, most people likely came into the fight thinking it was like all the others. Instead they were to a whole new type of fight where communication really took up more presence than skill.

That's not to say people shouldn't have struggled, it just points out that the games communities as a whole had gotten comfortable with the games boss developments up until that point. Had something similar to steps been added earlier in a different patch cycle, steps wouldn't have been as hard because we would have had a reference point to a similar type of existing content.

I agree. Dungeons are becoming a bit too linear and simple.

Now a days it's walk ahead, fight a boss in a circular area, and repeat 2 more times.

I miss open areas and branching pathways (like cutters cry) that are more similar to classic FF dungeons. And what happened to the puzzles? The scale / stone tablets puzzle from sunken temple is one of my favorites.
We need more things than make you think instead of just run ahead and kill stuff.

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Originally Posted by nexas506

I agree. Dungeons are becoming a bit too linear and simple.

Now a days it's walk ahead, fight a boss in a circular area, and repeat 2 more times.

I miss open areas and branching pathways (like cutters cry) that are more similar to classic FF dungeons. And what happened to the puzzles? The scale / stone tablets puzzle from sunken temple is one of my favorites.
We need more things than make you think instead of just run ahead and kill stuff.

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As fun as puzzles are, doing them for the billionth time the same way ain't much of a puzzle.

I agree with you OP.

Older dungeons gave me the feeling that you are truly in a temple for example. Having some puzzles in them was nice too.

At first I hoped that "antitower" also means that we explore a tower but most of the time we are fighting outside of it against bosses on round platforms again. We barely see anything from the inside of the tower.

What (imo) would have been better: We start the dungeon by going through that strange random wooden door and find a teleporter behind it. (All of this would still be in a cutscene) We would arrive ingame where we arrive now and we land directly at the first boss who would be the true gatekeeper. After that we would directly go into the castle and fight our way down.

This would make it a little different from all those adds-> boss runs and we would be able to see more of this castle which would give me the feeling that we are truly fighting through it. They could have used some funny mechanics where we are running upside down and need to activate a switch to stand right again. (This would be outside of fighting). Maybe they could have left some notes on desks explaining the results of the scholars in this place. I always liked those.

But in the end we got a really good looking but boring dungeon with round platforms again. (It would already be nice if each boss platform changes a little to add a theme that fits the boss, like a music note as a platform for the frog boss)

About puzzles: Yes they might loose their charm after a lot of runs but nothing will remain fun if you run it a lot of times. For me its better to have something in it that will only excite me the first few runs than nothing at all. And even if it means that people will find the best way to speedrun such puzzle dungeons or dungeons with more than one path it would still be way more fun the first times that we run them (at least for me ;)) than having one straight path with only trash mobs and bosses. Really the 3.2 dungeons were already boring after running them one time..thats really bad design for me.

People would just whine that the puzzles are "too time consuming" until the devs forego them next patch. This is why we will never have nice things.