Please add harder or more varied dungeons other than deep dungeon

I understand that Deep Dungeon is supposed to be our difficult 4-man content, but that is not what I want at all. I like running dungeons a lot - if we ignore issues of difficulty I certainly enjoy them more than raids or trials. Deep dungeon is a completely different thing.

The reason we always given about there being no savage 4-man content is that it puts too much strain on the healer. Well, as a healer that is what I am asking for. I would like content that tests my ability to heal on my own, rather than in a team. Note I'm not asking for ultimate difficulty here, but rather something closer to the first two fights of savage, i.e. challenging content that you need to learn to beat but that is still reasonably accessible to many players.

If that's not possible, I would still like to see them have a greater variety to dungeons, with dungeons that involve more exploration, branching areas or other things that aren't trash-trash-boss-trash-trash-boss in a long corridor.

I think the best way to handle this kind of content is to make it 5-8 man content.

I understand that you want strain as a healer, but that's not what is being said. It's not that difficult 4 man content puts too much strain on a healer, its that the stress of playing a healer in this kind of content is massively disproportionate to that of tank or DPS, meaning that the content would always consist of long queues of people waiting for a healer, as everyone will queue as the easier roles.

The 8 man system works, and I would love an 8 man dungeon (like castrum/praetorium) as our difficult dungeon content.

They have mentioned harder 4 man dungeons in either the live letter or some interview if i recall

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Originally Posted by Lambdafish

It's not that difficult 4 man content puts too much strain on a healer, ...

The 8 man system works, and I would love an 8 man dungeon (like castrum/praetorium) as our difficult dungeon content.

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I didn't really think of it this way, but that's an interesting point. I'm not sure how this would be so different from the fact that we have fewer tanks at the moment. I'm also not sure that they couldn't design the encounters with this in mind and balance things to avoid this.

I do think that 8-man dungeons would be interesting as well. Potentially having 1 tank and 5 dps to ease the queue times a bit.

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Originally Posted by Maero

They have mentioned harder 4 man dungeons in either the live letter or some interview if i recall

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I'm quite sure they said they would add hard 4-man content other than dungeons, and then announced that the later floors of deep dungeon were meant for this in the live letter.

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Originally Posted by number473

I'm quite sure they said they would add hard 4-man content other than dungeons, and then announced that the later floors of deep dungeon were meant for this in the live letter.

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They were indeed talking about harder dungeons in a live letter. They said that they design the dungeons hard and then nerf some mechanics, so more casual players could get through easier. One example they brought was Saint Mocianne's Arboretum where the first boss had the adds also circle around in the first design. But if was to hard for casual players, so they nerfed the adds.
I would like to have these hard dungeons get even harder (savage/ex difficulty) so 4-men groups could also have some high-end content.

People wanted harder dungeon. They did it once in 2.X, people complain it was too hard and tank/healer drop immediately when they get it in roulette. They said they will never do that again. Blame the players, not the developers.

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Originally Posted by ImDingDing

People wanted harder dungeon. They did it once in 2.X, people complain it was too hard and tank/healer drop immediately when they get it in roulette. They said they will never do that again. Blame the players, not the developers.

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That just sounds like current year Aurum Vale.

I'm going to play Devil's Advocate a bit with 2 points.

1. Remember Pharos Sirius back in 2.1? The dungeon was harder than either of the other dungeons released so far. People had to follow mechanics. Healers really had to heal, especially the last boss. Unfortunately, most parties couldn't clear the dungeon back then. So they ended up doing Copperbell Mines (Hard) and Haukke Manor (Hard) more often. When Pharos got nerfed, all 3 dungeons eventually exposed the limitations of many players moreso than any other dungeon to date.

Also doesn't help that dungeons like Aurum Vale and The Vault still challenges the average healer nowadays.

2. Remember the dungeons that have alternate paths to lead to chests with items and extra enemies for experience? Many players ignore them and forego the extra rewards. Other player complained about skipping them. As a result, all dungeons are linear corridors now.

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Originally Posted by RokkuEkkusu

2. Remember the dungeons that have alternate paths to lead to chests with items and extra enemies for experience? Many players ignore them and forego the extra rewards. Other player complained about skipping them. As a result, all dungeons are linear corridors now.

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I think a lot of that comes from one thing: People not actually communicating.

Whether it be because they play on PS4 don't have a keyboard(if you haven't tried using it, trust me, typing with the on-screen one is a pain), or because nobody actually says anything in 90% of any dungeon runs(some new players will say they are new, and welcome tips, while many more don't say anything). I tend to just follow the tank if I'm not the one tanking, and do whatever needs doing on my part to get through the dungeon with as little trouble as possible.

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Originally Posted by RokkuEkkusu

2. Remember the dungeons that have alternate paths to lead to chests with items and extra enemies for experience? Many players ignore them and forego the extra rewards. Other player complained about skipping them. As a result, all dungeons are linear corridors now.

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Most people would rather speed through the dungeons as quickly as possible and it's pretty telling that the developers aren't keen on that as literally all the level 70 dungeons have some kind of wall between pulls to keep you from pulling all the way to the first boss.

Sure they are, "walls" happen after 3 trash packs unless it's a big pull, most groups couldn't handle more than that at once.

Current expert dungeons have walls after one pack. Large pulls depending on how one defines those don't happen until like halfway through.

And neither of those dungeons are particularly difficult which makes one wonder why they're classified as "expert."

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Originally Posted by Lambdafish

I think the best way to handle this kind of content is to make it 5-8 man content.

I understand that you want strain as a healer, but that's not what is being said. It's not that difficult 4 man content puts too much strain on a healer, its that the stress of playing a healer in this kind of content is massively disproportionate to that of tank or DPS, meaning that the content would always consist of long queues of people waiting for a healer, as everyone will queue as the easier roles.

The 8 man system works, and I would love an 8 man dungeon (like castrum/praetorium) as our difficult dungeon content.

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You're missing the point. 8 man content has to be designed entirely differently than 4man. An 8man dungeon would basically just be another raid.

OP I agree. Personally I despise PoTD. It's boring.

I don't want monsters with ridiculously high stats with swapped movesets, repetitive textures and maps. I want cohesive design, interesting themes and unique mechanics designed specifically for 4 players.

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Originally Posted by Luin

I don't want monsters with ridiculously high stats with swapped movesets, repetitive textures and maps.

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Truth be told, I think that it's this notion where the whole "strain on the healer" idea comes from.

You can make completely brutal and unforgiving content where a healer isn't even needed, much less pressured. Easily in fact, by simply bombarding people with insta-wipe mechanics that either kill everyone or deal no damage at all - As a bonus, in a standard group, the healer is exempt from them all. An extreme example, naturally, but it's meant to emphasize one simple fact:

The strain put on someone is proportional to the impact they have.

In the above example, there is nothing to heal, nor res, so heals and res are virtually powerless and healers don't even participate in the mechanics, so they have a very low impact on the fight as a whole. They're just a bit of bonus DPS and can do whatever they like. As a consequence, there's little to no pressure on them.
The other party members however have a huge impact on the fight, because they have the power to prevent an instant group wipe. And they need to use it, every time, without fail. Each of them has a large impact on the group, which puts a large amount of pressure on them. And even if you include healers in the mechanics, the pressure on them would never exceed that of the other party members.

As such, it doesn't necessarily follow that the stress on a healer is automatically disproportionate to that of other party members. It is entirely dependent on how much impact on the outcome you are giving the jobs and roles. If one has no power and no impact, they can do whatever they like, it doesn't have any effect and therefore pressure is low. If one person dwarfs everyone in power and impact, every decision they do weighs heavy and the pressure is high.

Simply upping the damage people take (as they do in PotD) makes the power of heals more impactful, as less of it becomes wasteful overheal. As a result, strain on the healer goes up. By limiting the impact heals (and res) can have however, you also limit the pressure on healers. And the same goes for all other roles - The higher their impact, the higher their strain. Look no further than enrages, which makes DPS far more impactful (it suddenly impacts whether you clear at all, not just when), thereby increasing the pressure on DPS. And if the healer has a disproportionate strain on them, that just means you gave them a disproportionate amount of impact.

So... you can simply design the content to match. It "is" pretty hard to do with healers nowadays simply because they have such truckloads of power in their spells and limiting their impact usually comes at the cost of highly frustrating mechanics. Bad design begets bad design. But it's quite possible if you go out of your way.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

Truth be told, I think that it's this notion where the whole "strain on the healer" idea comes from.

You can make completely brutal and unforgiving content where a healer isn't even needed, much less pressured. Easily in fact, by simply bombarding people with insta-wipe mechanics that either kill everyone or deal no damage at all - As a bonus, in a standard group, the healer is exempt from them all. An extreme example, naturally, but it's meant to emphasize one simple fact:

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Personally I wasn't complaining about healing, I was complaining about PoTD. And raid content isn't designed like that either.

In my opinion the subject is not so much about "healer strain" as it is actual content. I cant remember any dungeons that had real mechanics that had to be done properly or you wipe. Why are dungeons not held to the same standard as normal mode raids, let alone EX primals or even Savage? Why are dungeons mindless facerolls? We don't need every single dungeon to be roulette fodder for weeklies. We can deal with a few high difficulty ones with persistent mechanics.

It's not fair to say something is a highly frustrating mechanic? That's the point. AoEs aren't mechanics (AoE and nothing else, I mean). We've had mechanics like Allagan Rot, Conflagration, Double Drill and Ferrofluid for years. Why aren't these mechanics being used in dungeons? Are they too hard? That's the point. If players never practice them then they will always be too hard. Dungeons are perfect low stress environment for this purpose. Throw all of that in a dungeon, spread it out between the first 2 bosses, then have the last boss do all of it, then add a mindjack and remove the walls. There's your boss and it's harder than 90% of dungeons in the game. I bet I could write an entire encounter based on this, I bet anybody could, with the current standard of dungeon quality. So why aren't we getting actual content in dungeons? Why is it 9/10 times a tank and spank, no different than just going into a FATE and killing a bunch of enemies over and over, just with a change of scenery and music? Am I asking for raid content in dungeons? No, not at all. But I would like to be held to some standard in dungeons. Imo it's not acceptable that a party could spam flash, cure, and heavy thrust and make it through every dungeon.

FFXIV has a dungeon design that means a healer is either going to be severely overtaxed or... AFKing the healer side of their abilities.

The problem in my opinion... is in the design of the mechanics that effect tanks. They use some tank buster gimmicks that a tank needs a cooldown for, and then a steady stream of incoming damage based around 'slightly above the minimum iLevel expected for the level of the place'.
- A tank is either going to be taking way too much damage from regular attacks, or be near immune to them all.

I'm not exactly sure how this splits up...
I have seen tanks use all their mitigation but still be getting chewed alive way too fast...

I see other tanks fail to use them and basically stand in the fire roasting marshmallows... and putting a hand in a boss's face with a "talk to the hand" moment of immune impunity.

SOMETHING is wrong in that design... Somewhere in there numbers there's a moment where regular damage goes from "OMG, IT BURNS!" to "have we started yet... what is this dragon looking poodle doing on my leg?"

It's not that they need harder dungeons... it's that they need to find that 'moment' where it flips... and smooth things out so that if we do eventually outgear dungeons, it doesn't happen so completely and so suddenly.

Maybe the issue is in how downscaling works when you scale into a lower level dungeon... but it is also present in max level dungeons of a prior patch / lower iLevel...

All of this is basically a very good argument for horizontal progression like that seen in Elder Scrolls or Guild Wars 2. But more so Elder Scrolls - an example of doing it right, as opposed to Guild Wars 2 which is an example of doing it wrong. Elder Scrolls dungeons retain a larger portions of their original challenge as people gear up - so you don't see as many complaints about dungeons being too easy. By contrast Guild Wars 2 used 'gimmicks' to solve for a lack of gear progression, and people just learned the gimmicks and came right back to complaints about no challenge...

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Originally Posted by number473

If that's not possible, I would still like to see them have a greater variety to dungeons, with dungeons that involve more exploration, branching areas or other things that aren't trash-trash-boss-trash-trash-boss in a long corridor.

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Most of the classic World of Warcraft dungeons in their original versions would fit what you are asking for.

- Varied paths to take even when going for the same objective.
- Vastly larger and more complex than most groups would run them for. Different groups might have entirely different ideas about what to visit in going to them.
- Multiple different tactics needed for not just bosses but also trash pulls.
- No clear 'final boss'.
- No clear 'first boss'.
- Very few tricks to use to rush through the place.

WoW did away with this when it added the 'looking for dungeon' tool, which is what the FFXIV Duty Finder is based on. In time they went back and cut apart these old dungeons. Splitting them into multiple dungeons in the 'LFD' tools, closing off some paths, or even removing the whole dungeon entirely as 'too complex for the modern player'.

As much as I and other lament that change...

Back when those dungeons were in their original formats it got increasingly harder to form groups for them as time went on. "Casual" players learned to avoid them. "Raiders" learned to avoid them (why spend 6 hours in a 5-person dungeon when you can spend that in your raid or farming for your raid). And we 'dungeon runners' found out we were an extreme minority of the game's population.

Most people don't want a dungeon for the challenging fun of the experience... they are there because they have been trained to go on a gear grinding pony ride by vertical progression schemes.

Wildstar failed as an MMO because it launched in 2013 with 2005 style complex dungeons (albeit on linear paths...).

Even Elder Scrolls and Guild Wars suffer from players approaching their dungeons looking to farm gear... that isn't even there... because too many players are coming there from WoW, FFXIV, and other vertical progression games...

MMO developers are not likely to ever give us those 'fun challenging dungeons' again...because the player base that wants them is too small. Just like all the failed MMOs from 2008-2013 showed that an MMO based around 'extreme world PvP' was not viable to western players (whereas it is the defacto norm in eastern MMOs)... an MMO based around 'dungeoneering' was last viable in 2005 when World of Warcraft was the final MMO to succeed at it... but only managed to STAY around because it retrained those players into the 'vertical progression' mindset instead...

Just be thankful they are even still giving us dungeons at all... Most players don't like Dungeons... Guild Wars 2 turned it's almost failure around by firing it's entire Dungeon development team and only doing open world 'event style' gaming... Players there last got a new dungeon when the game launched... (some temporary ones have come and gone since... but not since the Dungeon team was layed off).

As Guild Wars 2 has proven; SE could one day wake up and realize they could pull out all the dungeons and put everything we get in them into FATE grinds... and the vast majority of players would be happier for it... must as it might disgust me and others...

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Originally Posted by TaiyoShikasu

Most people would rather speed through the dungeons as quickly as possible and it's pretty telling that the developers aren't keen on that as literally all the level 70 dungeons have some kind of wall between pulls to keep you from pulling all the way to the first boss.

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The linearity and the walls have been in dungeons ever since the 2.4 patch with Snowcloak, Sastasha (Hard), and The Sunken Temple of Qarn (Hard).

If they don't want to make actual challenging dungeons and essentially gate such content behind an absolutely abhorrent grind like the first hundred floors of Palace of the Dead or something (I don't really know how that works, tried once and was bored to death before the tenth floor), do something with what currently exists like a minimum ilevel roulette.

People already do that sort of thing for the challenge, so why not make it an actual thing? Just so long as the reward isn't tomes that could be gotten from other less strenuous content.

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Originally Posted by ImDingDing

People wanted harder dungeon. They did it once in 2.X, people complain it was too hard and tank/healer drop immediately when they get it in roulette. They said they will never do that again. Blame the players, not the developers.

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2.1 and Pharos Sirius specifically. Despite being nerfed, it's still pretty tricky if you have minimal ilevel checked (especially on healers).
But yeah, because of people complaining about Pharos Sirius being too hard, dungeons have never really been challenging (though I do have to admit that SE have at least been giving bosses more mechanics). The fact that it dropped what used to be in Amdapor Keep (i60 gear) didn't help, either.