new dungeons vs old dungeons

it kinda feels like they had an idea of making dungeons with all kinds of extra offshoot rooms on the sides to hide treasures or just mobs and then they sorta abandoned the idea and made the dungeons very linear all of a sudden... when you look at some of the early dungeon like sastasha nm and copperbell mines nm they are way more interesting than some of the later linear dungeons like antitower, hullbreaker hm ect.. anybody else feel like SE kinda just gave up on dungeon design?

I really don't think they gave up on the design at all if not improved it.
At least for hw, they did a great job in implementing the general dragon-ish, knight-ish theme on dungeons and also to fit the story line. I enjoyed almost every hw dungeon from dusk vigil to sohm-al hard except arf due to the lore farm but in terms of design all of them were great...

I suspect they stopped bothering with optional rooms because their data showed that most groups were skipping them.
Haukke Manor HM is the best example I can think of. There's an optional room at the end that has two equipment containing treasure chests. It's not guarded by enemies so it's basically free company seals.
I haven't seen a group for for those chests in years. Whenever I go to the dungeon I run back and grab them once everyone else has left.

Its prob because most people turn out just wantting to speed run all dungeons

its kinda sad that people dont take the time to really appreciate the dungeons... think imma start dungeon walking tours where people can go in actually look around at all the little details...

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Originally Posted by Moomba33

I suspect they stopped bothering with optional rooms because their data showed that most groups were skipping them.
Haukke Manor HM is the best example I can think of. There's an optional room at the end that has two equipment containing treasure chests. It's not guarded by enemies so it's basically free company seals.
I haven't seen a group for for those chests in years. Whenever I go to the dungeon I run back and grab them once everyone else has left.

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I sure as heck hope they forget the chest rooms in Haukke so I can go back and get that manor wax/varnish, if the RNG is generous. :D

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Originally Posted by Okamimaru

its kinda sad that people dont take the time to really appreciate the dungeons...

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Well, taking time to appreciate the dungeons once is nice and dandy! Maybe even twice or thrice.

But once you've done it 20 times or more, you usually just want to get your reward and be done with the thing ASAP. And MMOs are built on massive repetition of content.

there has to be something worth in the optional rooms. like others have said the crafting materials in haukke. in amdapor there was a minion (demon brick) and another crafting mat.

they could also implement a bonus when you cleared the whole dungeon. get a few extra tomes, or whatever... a special chest with extra loot at the end, or a door into the aquapolis... a special boss could spawn maybe? but yeah, nobody has time to play this game, so dungeons have to be able to be finished within 20 mins so we can do... what again was it...?

when the reward at the end is always the same, and there is nothing worthwhile in the optinal rooms, of course people will skip them. but dungeons don't have to be like that trash-trash-trash-boss hallway setup.

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Haukke Manor HM is the best example I can think of.

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COUGH - Brayflox Longstop - COUGH.

They certainly haven't given up on the idea, just limited it to chests being visibly a walk away - enough for a stray player to pick them up while their tank is being all 'must zerg and pick up three packs'. In comparison, places like Brayflox encourage the light exploration, seeing as saving goblins (essentially a sub-task) provides chests, while others are very well hidden in their own side-rooms that you are highly unlikely to go to during a clear. Decided to solo it about 8 times to gather the Battlemage Set for an alt (as well as re-do a Hunting log after a GC transfer) and it seems that you can save 3 Goblins (3 Chests + 1 for the first drake you kill after first boss), along with (can't remember if it's two or three) extra chests at the lake, and one (with a hidden Coerl that is tougher than the average trash) guarding a chest at the end which provides class-specific green-rings.

That's 3 guaranteed dungeon drops, 1 ring chest, and 6-7 regular chests (which have a chance of becoming silver chests). I have 1200'ish hours in this game and it was only at the weekend I noticed this, because every group during my levelling days were just chomping at the bit to complete it ASAP. Undersized, you can rush from A to B in about 6.40/7.20mins and snag quite a lot of 31-32 gear for alts (or just piledrive them into your Seal collection), and barely anyone made any effort to capitalize on this back in my day. Some of the later ones have optional rooms or hidden alcoves and crevices that hold chests, but the 9/10 liklihood is they'll be skipped. Don't get me wrong, when it comes to the lower dungeons, I don't want to spend all day max-clearing it, but adding some appeal (extra XP would be an example incentive for, say, mapping a dungeon per visit [preferably without 20 tonnes of trash in the way]) could be good for actual levellers, seeing as chests are largely ignored.

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Originally Posted by RopeDrink

COUGH - Brayflox Longstop - COUGH.

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When ARR launched most groups did do the optional content in Brayflox (and other dungeons)... but then most people were still levelling at that point, so the extra XP, and chance at good gear (few players had good crafters back then), was welcome.

The problem now is that levelling is so fast (with the biggest reward coming from finishing the dungeon) that taking the time to get a bit of extra XP per run, or a slight upgrade on gear (which is now easy to buy / craft), is rarely worth it.

And when it comes to the new 'expert' dungeons, no one needs XP (level capped), and the iLvl of the gear is already 2 patches old (at best it is OK for less played jobs, or seals), so is it really any wonder that everyone takes the path of least resistance to the only thing of any real value (i.e. tomes). If the optional content was rewarding for the time spent (i.e. better tomes per hour, a chance at relevant iLvl gear, etc.), with a difficultly level to match, then you would see a lot more groups at least attempting it.

I agree. Going forward I hope they'd consider making dungeons have side rooms and maybe even optional bosses. As a tank main, running in a straight line until you can't go any further, waiting for the mobs to die(rinse and repeat)started to get really boring early on in Heavensward. I'm hopping they start to add variety and cool offshoots or things to explore or interact with.

I understand that offshoots need to be rewarding by providing optional loot, currency, or some other reward meaningful enough for players to care about doing them. Otherwise it'll just be a race to the end regardless of how many optional things there are to explore. It's a balancing act, but going into the game's second expansion players are eventually going to get tired of the same dungeon design and demand something different, even just slightly, so that things stay fresh. In terms of optional bosses, the FF series is the king at providing them, so this shouldn't really be against their design philosophy.

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Originally Posted by Tint

there has to be something worth in the optional rooms.

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This is the main hurdle. If there's only a chest that is in all likeliness is going to give glamour prisms or some inventory space -1 potion, the vast majority won't care; and so far that's all they've been willing to stick in most chests. Yeah, sometimes there's an accessory, but again, most players don't seem to need them and probably entered with a higher ilvl anyway.

If the devs stick some things in chests that the playerbase really wanted, like I dunno, the whole reason they're probably there, (tomestones), dungeon vouchers for some random item like PotD's or straight-up materia, then maybe then side corridors and optional areas would see frequent activity.

Back in 1.2x, the dungeons dropped several chests after the boss pending what prerequisites your group achieved. If I remember correctly, one chest only appeared if you opened every side-chest in the dungeon. There's an idea right there.

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Originally Posted by bswpayton

Its prob because most people turn out just wantting to speed run all dungeons

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You can speed run all dungeons with huge open dungeons, the only difference is open dungeons don't feel linear. I would prefer if the new dungeons will not follow the standard formula and that they made them different; little rooms off the path is not making them bigger.
The dev team have looked at WoW, I hope they will take some inspiration and make some big open dungeons like you can find in WoW. Yeah, WoW has it's linear dungeons too, but they have the open ones too. ATM FFXIV only has linear maps, bosses in specific order and no loot upgrades for your main class.

ppl want out of them as soon as possible so its hard to justify the extra "rooms" look at how tam tara was during alpha and people were mad it was a dungeon that took 30 ish mins XD (and was mildly challenging)

Open dungeons in wow tend to still result in "linear" progression and are also more prone to toxic behavior though, I used to like zul farrak and its event like design though, but i can't even tell you how much of that is just nostalgia. During legion there is that one dungeon that has the water boss at end and you have to run around an open area to get to the bosses, but that one I see alot of rage quitting when there are new people involved. (or I should say used to see, havent played legion in like 5 months now)

I've been running the 50 and under dungeons solo lately, not for loots but just to wander around and look at all the details they put into the dungeons... compared to the ARR dungeons places like Antitower feel like they kinda just decided that because people just speed run things that dungeon design matters less...

I think the question is this:

Are the rewards from the chests in optional rooms worth it?

If not, might as well keep things simple and keep the dungeon design the way it is in Heavensward to appease the majority who like to speed run the dungeons and get them cleared as soon as possible.

Dungeons certainly do not feel like they used to, while they of course increase in scale i would love more exploring, but alas the community has it so that we do not :(
Hidden rooms with optional bosses would be great

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Originally Posted by Gumbercules

ppl want out of them as soon as possible [...]

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me too, because they are too easy, boring, way to linear and there is nothing exciting to loot.

but i guess the normal dungeons will stay like they are. however, i really hope they will improve the deep dungeons. especially keep the speedrunners out of them by removing the exp or tie the exp gain to a full clear bonus.

Tam Tara Deepcroft and Toto Rak.. never again. Unless I get tomes.

The problem with non-linear dungeons is the fact that sooner or later, the players themselves will figure out an optimal route and will no longer deviate from that route.

Non-linear dungeons sound like a good idea on paper. More exploration, rewards for your exploration, being able to take in the dungeon's unique aesthetics, all that good stuff. However, the big problem is that in MMO's people will have to grind the same places for extended periods of time. Like a few others have said before me, you might enjoy exploring the dungeon the first two or three times, but after twenty runs you just want to get the dungeon over with to get your rewards.

So why should SE bother with making non-linear dungeons if the majority of players don't want to explore them? It would seem like a much better idea to just keep the dungeons linear, and make aesthetic stuff to explore in the overworld so people can explore them at their own leisure.

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Originally Posted by Okamimaru

it kinda feels like they had an idea of making dungeons with all kinds of extra offshoot rooms on the sides to hide treasures or just mobs and then they sorta abandoned the idea and made the dungeons very linear all of a sudden... when you look at some of the early dungeon like sastasha nm and copperbell mines nm they are way more interesting than some of the later linear dungeons like antitower, hullbreaker hm ect.. anybody else feel like SE kinda just gave up on dungeon design?

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After running my first level 60 dungeon the day before the server move, I am going to have to fully disagree, sir. I still need to run a lot more lv60 dungeons though to compare them to some of my favorite 2.x dungeons.

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Originally Posted by Cidel

If the devs stick some things in chests that the playerbase really wanted, like I dunno, the whole reason they're probably there, (tomestones), dungeon vouchers for some random item like PotD's or straight-up materia, then maybe then side corridors and optional areas would see frequent activity.

Back in 1.2x, the dungeons dropped several chests after the boss pending what prerequisites your group achieved. If I remember correctly, one chest only appeared if you opened every side-chest in the dungeon. There's an idea right there.

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I admit,

This would go a long ways towards that. I did check out the videos for the old dungeons and how they worked and I cannot deny that concept of bonus chests depending on how many optional objectives you achieved, along with the appropriate number of tomestones for those optional encounters would go a long ways to helping this matter.

I mean when you can gain an extra 50 tomestones in a dungeon that normally only gives 70 for just going the main route, you can expect a lot more deviation and reasons for people to explore the side areas.

it is true the dungeons are basically a line now i'd like to see basically enemies from trash doing more things except being vanilla trash idk about added off shoot paths as most players just want to rush but maybe forks going different ways with different enemies but leading to the same outcome or perhaps different outcomes with mid boss being different or you choose your boss order to me overall i adore arr early design decisions and love the early dungeons there after 2.3 ish you fell into that sense of copy paste motif that's been around since then

If the dungeon layout was random each time (with a few pieces of the dungeon always in certain places as needed), like say the Diablo series, then that might work. I'm not sure if that is feasible for an MMO, but it would be cool if it was. Or at least one dungeon like that designed specially that way.