Why can't Dungeons be longer/harder, but more... piecework?

So, hear me out. As much as most anyone else, I want to be done with my tome-grinding for the week in, well, as little time as it takes now, and I like having content that I can do in under 30 minutes.

But... that greatly restricts what opportunities we have to make our dungeons entertaining for most players if we have to keep them easy and short enough for even the lowest-skilled players to almost always complete in... under 30 minutes.

I'd therefore like to open up what can be done with modern dungeon designs, as to be appealing to more than just a relatively small portion of the casual end of players, without losing the ability to experience them in bite-sized chunks. So here's the spitball idea:

Future dungeons, where likely to take a party of average skill, gear, and seriousness greatly more time to complete than dungeons thus far, may instead meet the requirement for a daily bonus roulette off a single wing (effectively, a boss) of a dungeon. Tome-rewarding weekly challenge logs may request these dungeon's completion, but never will you be required to undertake such lengthy content day-to-day.

Moreover, these dungeons will be scaled to your party size and role allotments (at least as base difficulty, if ever we add on harder reiterative modes), which can vary from 2 to 6 (allowing up to 4 DPS, 3 tanks, and 3 healers, though obviously not all at once). This is largely to allow for continued progress after more time-constrained (or irritable) players leave and to somewhat aid queue times. Finally, tomes (or Key Items, such as the readable books in Gobul Library or notes in Dusk Vigil, which would be automatically converted into tomes upon exit) are now dropped from the trash and bosses themselves, including first-timer bonuses; apart from the weekly challenge logs and perhaps some certain Relic paths among others or the like later on, there are no bonuses for full completion.

That's all. The idea is simply that we could, in the future, start to pull dungeons out of the stale rut they're in now, but still enjoy them as bite-sized content insofar as they affect day-to-day gameplay. Players can take on the content as a 60- to 90-minute run, or just take it a wing at a time.

Assume whatever applications of Echo, or boss prep via farming mobs that drop useful Key Items, or whatever else allows for time to be exchanged for ease so most players can finish the content eventually, but not easily. Think of it being somewhere between pre-nerf Amdapor Keep and pre-nerf Pharos Sirius, but with more ways to break through the hard walls to progress.

Edit:

While we're at it, if anyone has any fun ideas they'd like to see to augment or even fundamentally reshape the flow of dungeons as useful for midcore-ish content without being necessarily reiterative (for the most part, let's save that for the extent threads promoting something like a less bloated/pressured Mythic+), feel free to post them.

If we end up getting some fun ideas, and this thread somehow expands beyond a page, I'll quote them here for easy viewing and linking.


CONTENTS OF THE THREAD SO FAR:

1. Theoretical discussion on reward models and their impact on how players spend their time, be it in a way that better engages with or overly narrows the variety of content we may typically do.
2. Narrowing the above discussion to dungeons in particular, both insofar as what level of experimentation is desirable and what would be feasible.
3. General and specific gameplay loops people would like to see from more experimental dungeons.
4. Feasibility of more challenging and experimental content in general.
5. Complexities of appealing to the playerbase and of player perception/reception in general.
6. To what extent must the playerbase improve by broadening their views, taking more responsibility, and to an extent conforming to whatever expectations increase variety of playstyles that can be appealed to (such as by becoming more competent, so you can engage with more of the game) before we can really see further variety in content (especially midcore difficulty or a raised difficulty floor for everyone)?

KEY QUOTES:

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Originally Posted by Nalien

Give me dungeons that aren't a purely linear ordeal and I'll bother doing them again. The old cliche SE gave us when they started streamlining dungeons back in ARR was "Nobody did the optional stuff", to which I rebut; Of course they didn't, you put literally nothing worth doing behind those optional sections. Naturally players aren't going to bother with a side passage to obtain some worthless gear that's never even relevant, or worse something incredibly lame like an X-potion... A NQ X-potion...Bring back dungeons with optional side paths, puzzles, heck maybe even throw in some optional mini-bosses? Then simply slap worthwhile rewards behind them. Tie them into things like Relic quests, rather than just "Clear this dungeon" as an objective, you can make "Clear this optional boss/puzzle/whatever in this dungeon" as an objective.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

That's all. The idea is simply that we could, in the future, start to pull dungeons out of the stale rut they're in now, but still enjoy them as bite-sized content insofar as they affect day-to-day gameplay. Players can take on the content as a 60- to 90-minute run, or just take it a wing at a time.

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(bold mine)
For me, that's the problem preventing dungeons to be anything more than a tome-grinding instance. I think the devs want to keep them as straightforward as possible so that they would not be a chore to grind everyday. Now, we have less of them but they tend to look better (Swallow Compass, The Burn, Ghimlyt are great examples of dungeons doing a bit more on the immersion side). But immersion ends up conflicting with daily roulettes.

So if I'm being a bit creative, I would either keep the current pattern (5 leveling dungeons, and perhaps one level cap dungeon per patch or one every two patches). And then, we could have different dungeons that could be some kind of "mid-core" content, say something in between normal raids and EXT primals for instance? This could provide another "catch up" range of level cap gear for more casual players. And of course, this would be the occasion to re-think the dungeon concept, layout, utility and so on. I like your idea to break the traditional Light Party for instance.
Baldesion is a good example of how things could be worked around. Having one big instance that needs several sub groups to progress at the same time in different places... Writing this I realize that this is more "raid" than what we call Raids in FFXIV...

The only thing is that... well you have to consider gameplay there. Looking back at Eureka for instance, this content tried to change gameplay a bit but job kits simply did not match that idea. I'm not sure obnoxious amounts of tougher trash mobs would be interesting when AoE rotations for most jobs are bland and not engaging. Or focused GCD healing on a tank in a middle of a pack.
FFXIV needs something changed somehow somewhere to get out of its comfort zone IMO.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

While we're at it, if anyone has any fun ideas they'd like to see to augment or even fundamentally reshape the flow of dungeons as useful for midcore-ish, but not necessarily reiterative (for the most part, let's save that for the Mythic-like threads), content, feel free to post them.

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Give me dungeons that aren't a purely linear ordeal and I'll bother doing them again. The old cliche SE gave us when they started streamlining dungeons back in ARR was "Nobody did the optional stuff", to which I rebut; Of course they didn't, you put literally nothing worth doing behind those optional sections. Naturally players aren't going to bother with a side passage to obtain some worthless gear that's never even relevant, or worse something incredibly lame like an X-potion... A NQ X-potion...

Bring back dungeons with optional side paths, puzzles, heck maybe even throw in some optional mini-bosses? Then simply slap worthwhile rewards behind them. Tie them into things like Relic quests, rather than just "Clear this dungeon" as an objective, you can make "Clear this optional boss/puzzle/whatever in this dungeon" as an objective. Slap some new Treasure Map style content into dungeons, so a person can get the party some additional rewards for a quick detour. Get creative with it, rather than just copy/pasting literally the same layout of trash to boss every. single. dungeon. Just something to break up the monotony of these linear snorefests. Average Duty Finder group not going to do that stuff? Honestly I don't care. That's not an argument against adding something, IMHO. The average Duty Finder Black Mage exclusively uses Ice spells, should we remove Fire spells based on that?

Heck, with something like puzzles you don't even need a party... Just extend the amount of time we can remain in a dungeon after clearing. Everyone who hates fun can then leave, and the rest of us can stay and go clear the puzzles for additional rewards. Something like how the Nier Raid handled its content perhaps? Just with a bit more meat to it. So you run through the dungeon, clear it, then you get to explore it afterwards, with additional challenges/rewards/lore/whatever behind that.

I'm going to spitball some dungeon ideas.

> You're chased by a demonwall or some kind of boss the entire run. Various adds along the way. Doesn't have 3 boss structure.

> Vehicle sections in a dungeon like the magitek armor in praetorium. Could involve flight or underwater travel, such as mounting a submersible and firing torpedoes at obstacles.

> Dungeon where the floor collapses and you dodge things during the fall, like the byakko skydive fight.

> You set minimum item level, the tome and gil reward is increased. Gives a reason to do harder instead of faster.

Btw the Expert roulette could be reserved for dungeons that are actually harder than normal difficulty. For dungeons that are just new, they could go straight into a lv80 roulette. Make expert mean expert.

The reason we can't have a lot of innovative things is because,
1. Path of least resistance. This was explained with a dungeon that had multiple paths for multiple rewards and people went in the straight line to the finish.
2. Accessibility. People will complain if story or rewards are locked behind a wall they can't overcome. See Neo ExDeath. Yes it is supposed to be hard, but the fact remained that there was extra story behind it, and people were not happy.

I, personally, would like to see something like Eureka or Diadem, but not grindy or a one shot kill fest. A dungeon zone, but survivable. Give me open world chests, NPCs to find, sights to see and lore to be learned. I unsynced Coils just to see what the hubbub was about and I had that kind of feeling. This massive place with multiple paths, things to see and lore to be learned.

Then I got to Twintania and that was the end of that wonder.

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Originally Posted by Gula

The reason we can't have a lot of innovative things is because,
1. Path of least resistance. This was explained with a dungeon that had multiple paths for multiple rewards and people went in the straight line to the finish.
2. Accessibility. People will complain if story or rewards are locked behind a wall they can't overcome. See Neo ExDeath. Yes it is supposed to be hard, but the fact remained that there was extra story behind it, and people were not happy.

I, personally, would like to see something like Eureka or Diadem, but not grindy or a one shot kill fest. A dungeon zone, but survivable. Give me open world chests, NPCs to find, sights to see and lore to be learned. I unsynced Coils just to see what the hubbub was about and I had that kind of feeling. This massive place with multiple paths, things to see and lore to be learned.

Then I got to Twintania and that was the end of that wonder.

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I’ve always wondered this. The FFXIV community seems to complain a lot when content is locked behind grindy effort or something that requires a lot of time and energy. But other communities ive seen, they don’t seem to complain as much. I’m not trying to start any fighting, I just never really understood why that was.

Well, when the game becomes more of a Tinder fused with The Sims than an MMO you get this.

The 'community' has a 'set way of doing things' and wooooe-be-it-to-you if you dare to deviate from that. You mass pull, you burn it down, and if you don't do that you are bad and deserve to be kicked. You waste everyone's time otherwise. Git gud.

The 'community' doesn't want new things that require straight shot 'pull it all and burn' because that isn't fast-efficient-rewards-out that is the 'way it is'. Winding dungeons that you explore with side content and extra 'goodies aren't desired or wanted and will be complained about. Vets don't even let sprouts get full map completion on maps these days from what I have seen. When they tried something new like Eureka the backlash was immediate. The complaining was at an all-time-high, at least in this part of the forum.

Gaming has shifted a lot over the years and exploration dungeon-crawling is not as popular as fast-play instant gratification. Fast-paced gaming quick-play seems to be what everyone 'expects' and pushes everyone else to do, whether they want it or not. Don't get me wrong, personally I would absolutely LOVE to see longer more involved dungeons again... with time spent in them with purpose and story and exploration again. But being stuck in there with people who talk like a lot of PUGs do to each other? Not sure it is worth it.

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Originally Posted by Tsalmaveth

The 'community' has a 'set way of doing things' and wooooe-be-it-to-you if you dare to deviate from that. You mass pull, you burn it down, and if you don't do that you are bad and deserve to be kicked. You waste everyone's time otherwise. Git gud.

The 'community' doesn't want new things that require straight shot 'pull it all and burn' because that isn't fast-efficient-rewards-out that is the 'way it is'. Winding dungeons that you explore with side content and extra 'goodies aren't desired or wanted and will be complained about. Vets don't even let sprouts get full map completion on maps these days from what I have seen. When they tried something new like Eureka the backlash was immediate. The complaining was at an all-time-high, at least in this part of the forum.

Gaming has shifted a lot over the years and exploration dungeon-crawling is not as popular as fast-play instant gratification. Fast-paced gaming quick-play seems to be what everyone 'expects' and pushes everyone else to do, whether they want it or not. Don't get me wrong, personally I would absolutely LOVE to see longer more involved dungeons again... with time spent in them with purpose and story and exploration again. But being stuck in there with people who talk like a lot of PUGs do to each other? Not sure it is worth it.

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1. Players will do the optional stuff it the reward is worth it. The reason why nobody bothered with the optional sections of arr dungeons was because whatever could be obtained there was junk, plain and simple.

2. "New" does not equate "good". The first 2 Eureka zones were just bad content, that's why people complained (while giving a lot of suggestions to improve the formula). Pyros and Hydatos were much better, but at that point a good chunk of the community had already given up.

There are a lot of things they could do to make dungeons more interesting. One thing I'd love to see is optional zones where you can spawn optional (hard) bosses by meeting some conditions that reward you extra tomestones/gil/rare materials/rare minions. Of course, the reward must be proportionate to the time and effort required to kill it. 5 minutes boss=50 weekly capped tomestones + other random goodies.

What the devs should definitely avoid is creating a new kind of content that resets your level and requires you to mindlessly kill mobs with no mechanics until you reach a predetermined level. This is no longer acceptable and is just a worrisome lack of creativity on their part.

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

What the devs should definitely avoid is creating a new kind of content that resets your level and requires you to mindlessly kill mobs with no mechanics until you reach a predetermined level. This is no longer acceptable and is just a worrisome lack of creativity on their part.

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I didn't mind in PotD, because leveling was so fast and as long as you ran floors pertaining to your level, it wasn't that hard getting your Aetherpool to +99. But Eureka. Pass. I played it day 1 and dropped it day 1.

To simply put it. Effort.

I would love none linear dungeons again, harder content, limited deaths, but people do not want to put effort into the game as is. Believe it or not there are even people on the forums who feel ultimate and savage shouldnt be in the game.

Until the people in the game leave who can\'t handle a few extra mechanics and having pay attention in their runs. We won\'t get harder content like that. Sad really.

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Originally Posted by Nandrolone

I’ve always wondered this. The FFXIV community seems to complain a lot when content is locked behind grindy effort or something that requires a lot of time and energy. But other communities ive seen, they don’t seem to complain as much. I’m not trying to start any fighting, I just never really understood why that was.

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My guess would be that at least for the western community a lot of people dont come so much from other MMOs but from other FFs and they have more of an "This is a Final Fantasy game" than an "This is an MMO"-approach. This obviously effects their expectation of the game: FFs are story-heavy, story-driven games and while they can be very grindy at times, those grinds are usually tied to defeating some super-boss or just a meaningless item in your inventory. You can grind in some FFs, but if you choose not to you still gonna see most of the game and most important: Pretty much all of the story.
Most complaints about content being locked behind something that I see are in regards to story and lore being locked - sure, that glamour-thing is a nice extra-bit, but the main reason we got NMs for raids was because people who didnt want to raid were upset that they couldnt experience the coil-story-line.

Its just my personal guess ofc, but I believe that a large part of the FF-audience expects a story-heavy game and cares about having that story told to them - so they're not happy about potentially missing out on that story experience or they're more intrested in having said story told than following a mindless, potentially badly motivated grind.

The reason is simple. Like 98% of the player base shows that they don't want long, confusing dngs with gimmicks on how you progress or optional paths. With makes sense, this game has a hella-alot of dngs ... imagine each of them having some the paths and gimmicks you had to remember from the ARR dngs. People will be very annoyed if you ask them to remember the unique design and gimmick of all these dngs. I know this cause I acknowledge that I refuse to touch most older dngs for this very reason.

It's kind of a pie-in-the-sky idea to want them to release as many dngs as they do AND make them more complex than tunnel mobs -> boss. Not cause they can't do it but because most people will simply FORGET how to run them. Liiike ... sure, if there were only 20 dngs in this game I could see them being more creative. But I'm not jumping at the chance to get lost in 70+ unique set ups. Most people see dngs as a pretty looking chore you do for glam and tomes and the devs noticed this and reacted as such.

Want more complex dngs I think asking for more Eureka and HoH is your best bet.

First and foremost we need 2 different levels of dungeons.

Ones we have right now, that are not too hard to finish.
Second ones that are a lot harder with random mobs generated around the map and bosses tougher and with more skills.

The higher lvl difficulty dungeons should have more chests and allow us to buy BIS gear giving us tokens of whatever it takes to buy it from vendor.

And now we wont get any, because we have only 1 dungeon left and it must be tweaked so people could use trusts, therefore nothing will change. Glad that more people starting to see problem that happening right now with this game and what community desires from it.

Because some people will bitch about it, followed by the other bunch who love to do the same as the first few. I belive this is why 8-man "raids" turned into boss fights with slightly more mechanics

The fanbase did this to themselves when they cried for nerfs years ago. Hell gaming as a whole has suffered from this. Plus I'll be honest. I don't want it either. Not when we have a thread over 2k pages long cause people cant press buttons. Sorry.

I liked ARR’s dungeon pace. TWO dungeons per patch (one MSQ, one optional). They were still as immersive as the later ones mentioned earlier in this thread.

As far as optional parts to the dungeons, OF COURSE they are going to be skipped over by most people. The DUNGEON DROPS are generally skipped over by most people, let alone crafting gear that needs to be repaired or relic bits once one’s done with that relic. Make optional portions of the dungeon THAT DROP TOMESTONES and people will start to do them. Tomestones are the main reason people run the things after their first visit, after all. Right now, dungeon drops generally serve to pay retainers, and that’s all.

I for one would love to see a dungeon run give Tomestones per chest, and a few extra on the side path (enough that visiting it will give you an additional 15% of the tomestones). Give everyone in the dungeon a job-usable drop as an auto reward for beating the final boss, subject to the Unique tags on the gear. If and only if they have every single piece of taht gear set, then start giving out randomly selected pieces usable by other jobs. Drop the hit-or-miss content and go back to two dungeons per patch to ensure some variety when running the DR’s. Three every two patches is not enough, let alone one every patch. One every patch will do nothing but make people even more sick of each dungeon than they already are. That sickness existed in a much less vitriolic form with two dungeons per patch, and has only gotten worse each time the dungeons per patch have been reduced.

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Originally Posted by Tsalmaveth

The 'community' has a 'set way of doing things' and wooooe-be-it-to-you if you dare to deviate from that. You mass pull, you burn it down, and if you don't do that you are bad and deserve to be kicked. You waste everyone's time otherwise. Git gud.

The 'community' doesn't want new things that require straight shot 'pull it all and burn' because that isn't fast-efficient-rewards-out that is the 'way it is'.

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To be fair, though, that's not so much "mass pull or get gone" as "do the obviously two-to-three-times as efficient option or get gone". If you change the dungeon designs, you change the optimal choice. Heck, you might even be able to make two choice in tight balance of each other. After all, we still run more than just 8 jobs, so clearly "near-enough to optimal" has a place. A 30 to 60% efficiency loss is just a far cry from 1-3%.

Now, alternatives do not somehow have to be winding dungeons. A "straight-shot" dungeon can still amount to far more than "Sprint, tank AoEs pack 1 while running past, tank AoEs pack 2 while running past, tank reaches and AoEs pack 3, and we all AoE them down; boss; repeat."

There's a lot that's a mere easily manipulated consequence of tuning, mechanical scarcity, and spacing that we take as inseparable from the medium just because each dungeon thus far has so tightly imitated the ones before it. They're not. They're side-effects of something that could change with any new dungeon, possibly even without a sudden spike in general difficulty.

Put simply, players don't want to waste time, and many are playing under time constraints. If a winding 90-minute dungeon (including, say, a semi-weekly bonus) with side paths produced more reward per minute than our current ones (including the daily roulette bonus), players would probably use the 90-minute when possible, and then a few 30-minute ones if they can't manage a second 90-minute in that week. Imo, that's not a rut so much as common sense; it's just the choices that are forced upon them that are in a rut.

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Originally Posted by Roth_Trailfinder

I liked ARR’s dungeon pace. TWO dungeons per patch (one MSQ, one optional). They were still as immersive as the later ones mentioned earlier in this thread.

As far as optional parts to the dungeons, OF COURSE they are going to be skipped over by most people. The DUNGEON DROPS are generally skipped over by most people, let alone crafting gear that needs to be repaired or relic bits once one’s done with that relic. Make optional portions of the dungeon THAT DROP TOMESTONES and people will start to do them. Tomestones are the main reason people run the things after their first visit, after all. Right now, dungeon drops generally serve to pay retainers, and that’s all.

I for one would love to see a dungeon run give Tomestones per chest, and a few extra on the side path (enough that visiting it will give you an additional 15% of the tomestones). Give everyone in the dungeon a job-usable drop as an auto reward for beating the final boss, subject to the Unique tags on the gear. If and only if they have every single piece of that gear set, then start giving out randomly selected pieces usable by other jobs.

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I'm wondering what the full extent of that would look like under optimized practice, though? Does that just turn into players each splitting up into n groups, running into their respective side-paths, looting, and retreating into an AoE gather? I could imagine the novelty if we could still lock out mobs like back in Wanderer's Palace spams, but, again, while we can certainly make people actually do side-paths (at least those who won't cap off just the daily roulette bonus alone), what is that gameplay actually going to look like? Something new, different, is usually but not necessarily better, and not back-tracking does at least have some aesthetic advantages.

Just a bit more food for thought: Can we reward tomes for using (or preparing) different options? Let's say in a given dungeon we have to get past a chasm. We can do this via swinging across, which requires us a rope, or by lowering the drawbridge, which in old Wanderer's Palace fashion, requires lubricant on the lever assembly. There's a special section of your Key Items that is just for dungeon stuff. The more the party has collected while you've been there, the more tomes you get when you complete, quit out, or maybe even are kicked out of a dungeon. In that way, it works like the chests, but at least it doesn't always look like a chest, for a bit more variance and hopefully engagement.

Considering they have chosen to lessen the amount of dungeons made per patch, I do not think it's realistic to expect more complex dungeon designs unless it comes at the cost of normal MSQ dungeons, which might be problematic for some. I also think the devs are content with how dungeons are used in this game, and its current and future design would only be to ensure the continuation of its current usage, unless they see a benefit to change the status quo.

And on a personal note, I don't care for optional enemies/rooms regardless of the reward. I want to be forced to full clear the dungeon, regardless of difficulty.

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Originally Posted by linay

Considering they have chosen to lessen the amount of dungeons made per patch, I do not think it's realistic to expect more complex dungeon designs unless it comes at the cost of normal MSQ dungeons, which might be problematic for some. I also think the devs are content with how dungeons are used in this game, and its current and future design would only be to ensure the continuation of its current usage, unless they see a benefit to change the status quo.

And on a personal note, I don't care for optional enemies/rooms regardless of the reward. I want to be forced to full clear the dungeon, regardless of difficulty.

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Given that more complex dungeons would be bordering on experimental or otherwise non-standard content, doesn't that fit right in line with what we're supposed to be getting at the expense of the standard dungeoning (hallway speedrun) experience?

As for the latter point, that's fair, and I'm probably more on your side in that regard, if only due to not particularly caring to backtrack (except in particular unique designs) preferring not to have to decide upon a route (again in most circumstances) and how that it means that more of the development time is spent on things we see every time, instead of allowing for potential waste (though there are some exceptions where the rare variant is more noticeable than that little extra detail in the main product, so that has exceptions as well).

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Given that more complex dungeons would be bordering on experimental or otherwise non-standard content, doesn't that fit right in line with what we're supposed to be getting at the expense of the standard dungeoning (hallway speedrun) experience?

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That's why I'm not dismissing it entirely. I just think there will indeed be a cost somewhere, and the likelihood would be normal MSQ dungeons. And now that they're having one dungeon per patch, it is indeed the ideal time to experiment with dungeon.

But that's where my second point comes in: that the devs are likely content with how dungeons are used currently and would likely rather experiment with other types of content.

I don't understand the people who say they want optional/non-linear stuff in the dungeons because they are boring but also say they will just do the optional stuff if it grants them (in their opinion) high rewards as compensation for doing the extra stuff. So do they want more variety to make dungeons less boring/linear or just an easy way to get more rewards for very little more "effort"/time? Shouldn't the fact of more variety in dungeons be enough of a reward?

I would like to see the return of massive dungeons like old MMOs and early WoW had, but done in a way modern players could handle.

Take say... a massive 50-100 "room" dungeon and fill it some patrols and tougher enemies in spots.
- Tune everything to be a fight that can't be chain pulled but has to be handled where it is.
- Give every fight a 'reward' based on the time to finish it.

3 bosses of a current expert = 90 tomes.

So in this new design... every 'tougher' enemy is 10 tomes, and all the smaller fights between them are '1 tome per enemy taken out' - with an average of 20 enemies in between each.

Players could then progress in any direction desired, skip or take on what they desired, and maybe even each member of a group could have one 'floating save point' that they set during the run and they group can 'click to go to' in order to take a different path... and another one that they set that lasts for a week - allowing people to enter the 'dungeon' at different spots.

Now give that dungeon 5 'entry gates'...

And make about 10% of the 'filler mobs' patrols that can wander the whole map but won't move into the space of an ongoing 'tougher fight' once it's "gate" is up... and make half the tougher fight mobs and half the stationary mobs pull from a random encounter table when players get withing 'loading range' of them...

Finally put a timer on it that's 2x longer than a current dungeon.

- Obviously that's a radical departure from anything we have currently...

The idea would be a dungeon so large you'd never do it all in one run... And even doing a second run would lead to a slightly different dungeon...
- yet you could farm out all your tokens in there.

And over time if they made the map right, they could have wings swap in and out randomly...

To me... that'd be like our 'Deep Dungeons' only done more interestingly...

I don't expect to ever see it...

It's basically a variation on an old school 1970s era table-top RPG dungeon...

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Originally Posted by ACE135

Shouldn't the fact of more variety in dungeons be enough of a reward?

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Saddly, it's not. Not for most people in this community at least.

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Originally Posted by ACE135

I don't understand the people who say they want optional/non-linear stuff in the dungeons because they are boring but also say they will just do the optional stuff if it grants them (in their opinion) high rewards as compensation for doing the extra stuff. So do they want more variety to make dungeons less boring/linear or just an easy way to get more rewards for very little more "effort"/time? Shouldn't the fact of more variety in dungeons be enough of a reward?

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Depends what we're talking about.

Just adding branching paths? That requires no additional reward. Some people will always take the "meta" route for faster clears, others wont care. I'd assume each branch gives the same rewards and it's just a matter of taking the route you want to break up monotony.

If we're talking puzzles, entirely optional enemies, bosses, and treasure chests? Things that take much more time? That requires additional rewards, because otherwise what's the actual point in doing it? Can do it just for fun, sure, but there are plenty of other things I can do "just for fun" that also have rewards. I'll just do those instead and continue to ignore dungeons.

Honestly, I don't understand why anyone would be against additional rewards in dungeons... More reason to do them beyond the dull daily 90 tomestones isn't a bad thing, IMO. I'd also say it's perhaps a better means to reward things like Minions and music scrolls, than the existing RNG on final boss.

My favorite dungeon crawling happened to be wow's burning crusade heroics. Wildstar's to a lesser extent. Single packs, tactical chain cc, and dangerous mob mechanics to watch for.

I think most people these days see that as unneeded resistance instead of fun, though, despite my mechanical engagement bliss.

I would like to see lots of rewarding side content - alternate bosses or boss modes, and paths. The gotcha for pubs is not everyone is going to want to do the side stuff (especially if it's a repeat visit). It then becomes another point of party fracture as everyone has their own idea on just getting through it vs full clearing it.

You'd need a way to ensure players enjoy the mechanics and side content of dungeons enough to want to do it - and I'm just not sure how that can be accomplished anymore.

Maybe I'm just cynical?

WoW's got enough of a history to be a good example of why we don't have long, branching dungeon in modern MMOs.

Maraudon.

Temple of Atal'Hakkar (aka Sunken Temple).

Blackrock Depths.

It was very difficult to get a group of players able to stay the entire run and even harder to find replacements when someone had to leave. The number of completed runs compared to runs started was very low as a result, not because of difficulty but because of time.

The same dungeons are also a good example of why dungeons end up with linear routes instead of branching paths. Too many players would get lost and confused, unable to remember how to get to the next boss. I spent a lot of time in Sunken Temple because I knew how to navigate the place without getting lost (and knew the statue order for the summoned boss) so others were always asking me to run it with them. Groups that didn't have someone who knew how to get around in there inevitably fell apart, which became a source of frustration and discontent.

The Thousand Maws of Toto-rak here would be a similar example. I've heard nothing but horror stories and hate for the 1.0 version because of the maze it was. Even now players continue to complain about how long the dungeon takes to finish.

I can understand why the makers of modern MMOs aren't wasting development resources on that type of content, as much fun as I personally fine it. They want to be making content that a greater portion of the player base would enjoy.

Before you say "but Ultimate is only getting done by 1% of the player base", Ultimate is also primarily put together from reused assets and generates considerable publicity within the gaming community due to the difficulty. Long branching dungeons wouldn't.

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. Players will do the optional stuff it the reward is worth it. The reason why nobody bothered with the optional sections of arr dungeons was because whatever could be obtained there was junk, plain and simple.

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We had stuff like toto-raks original paths, where you could go one way and get 5 chests, or you could go the non-optimal way, get 4 chests and... a few chests that had consumables you already outleveled.

Then you look at wow's version of that, sunken temple, where the optional parts had quest mobs, relevant gear that didnt stop you from getting other gear, quest encounters, and some cool lore.


The 14 team has no clue how to incentivize peoples time in a way that isnt some mixture of: Tomestones to buy the gear you should be using and gear that is in every way worse than the tomestones you're earning for doing the dungeon.

Its a side effect of a designed 0 horizontal progression. They cant give us relevant things because they literally cant give us those things thanks to the reward structure they use. Its just more tomestones and tomestones and GC seal turnins.


14's dungeons are hallways because people wont do optional content for no reward, and they wont give correct rewards for doing them because everything is designed around a specific numerical reward of the only 2 currencies they will do anything with.

14's "raid dungeons" are just thematic trials, because again, they have no clue how to reward you with random drops or anything that isnt one of the two currencies they use (capped tomestones and normal_token or savage_token)

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Originally Posted by ACE135

Shouldn't the fact of more variety in dungeons be enough of a reward?

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Variety is a novelty. Its only necessarily good parts have an expiration date. The rest comes down to setting beneficial precedents, but you can't expect someone to appreciate those things each time on a daily basis (or however often they're running dungeons).

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Originally Posted by Frosthaven

You'd need a way to ensure players enjoy the mechanics and side content of dungeons enough to want to do it - and I'm just not sure how that can be accomplished anymore.

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For me, doing pre-nerf Pharos Sirius -- at least with more or less competent players without any significant attitude problems -- was intrinsically fun. It could have been better in a handful of different ways or an extra load of excitement or whatnot, but I quite enjoyed it. But that leaves two issues: I'm me, and may not be representative of most players, and that requires a group of "more or less competent players without any significant attitude problems".

So how do I, say, get access to a boss that finally stimulates my interests but doesn't create an effectively impassible or just heavily frustrating wall for the typical player? (For those performing far below the typical player, let us assume for now that the game might one day care about a reasonable difficulty curve, in-game teaching, and so on and thus raise the bottom tier as to no longer be either isolated from everyone else or pandered to at everyone else's expense.)

Now, the easy response would be that you can't and are forever doomed to one majority of the players... despite . It usually happens to be false, however. There are much smaller components that affect whether content attracts or repels us, and in what way, and to what degree, and to what overall effect. Most of those components can be more or less uniquely targeted. Even when you think they're inseparable, that's usually because of something else in your package you have yet to identify, or just a small mechanical issue you have yet to have your Eureka / feel-dumb-once-you-see-it moment to fix. Problem is, those corrections take time and what incredibly few things can't be feasibly separated excuse... nearly all design issues as a vain effort in compromise.

Let's consider some examples. Mechanical and gear-based difficulty are night and day from each other, despite falling under the same buzzword, and even within each there are things people like or do not like. Complexity (interlinking systems) and convolution (bloat and excessive codependence) both raise skill ceilings and knowledge requirements, but one tends to feel far worse because it devalues general intelligence in favor of counter-intuitive memorization. Even if we limit things down to "button-based engagement", so we're not looking at any feelings towards button bloat or the like, but just the results based on whether a player feels they do or do not have enough to press in any given moment, there are preferences for apm over time, minimum apm, maximum apm, and the frequency of apm spikes; more complex, there are going to differences based on whether one is using a controller or keyboard, and whether they toolkit lends itself well enough to an efficient layout for either to work as efficiently as possible. That's not to say that ever component will oblige a dive into an unknown depth of other factors so much as that simple, often seemingly trivial issues and inefficiencies are going to have cumulative effect on content, even if they normally fall outside of discussion and there are some ways of providing a given component (e.g. "difficulty not owed to memorization") that most players will agree is better, even if they disagree on how much of that component they want in the course of trying to achieve... some other component.

I'll spare you all the rant on examples of 'generally good' vs. 'noticeably flawed' design for now; I ask only that you trust that most of these so-called compromises aren't as clear-cut or zero-sum as they're made out to be. The challenge instead lies less in whom to target (and whom to leave out, by varying degree) as which processes are enjoyable and how can those processes be combined in such a way that more people feel like they've suffered little to no compromise in that content.

There is actually a way to keep those optional paths in a dungeon and not give it a path of least resistence.

Randomize what the actual goal is for each dungeon.

One time its the mini-boss or two on one branch... one time its a mass spam of mobs three times in a row... one time its getting 4 crystals in random parts of the dungeon to unlock to the door to the final boss.

So they can actually make optional or branching paths but make which one you need random or a combination of the above.

This would in essence never make it the same dungeon twice.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

WoW's got enough of a history to be a good example of why we don't have long, branching dungeon in modern MMOs.

Maraudon.

Temple of Atal'Hakkar (aka Sunken Temple).

Blackrock Depths.

It was very difficult to get a group of players able to stay the entire run and even harder to find replacements when someone had to leave. The number of completed runs compared to runs started was very low as a result, not because of difficulty but because of time.

The same dungeons are also a good example of why dungeons end up with linear routes instead of branching paths. Too many players would get lost and confused, unable to remember how to get to the next boss. I spent a lot of time in Sunken Temple because I knew how to navigate the place without getting lost (and knew the statue order for the summoned boss) so others were always asking me to run it with them. Groups that didn't have someone who knew how to get around in there inevitably fell apart, which became a source of frustration and discontent.

The Thousand Maws of Toto-rak here would be a similar example. I've heard nothing but horror stories and hate for the 1.0 version because of the maze it was. Even now players continue to complain about how long the dungeon takes to finish.

I can understand why the makers of modern MMOs aren't wasting development resources on that type of content, as much fun as I personally fine it. They want to be making content that a greater portion of the player base would enjoy.

Before you say "but Ultimate is only getting done by 1% of the player base", Ultimate is also primarily put together from reused assets and generates considerable publicity within the gaming community due to the difficulty. Long branching dungeons wouldn't.

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Sunken Temple was relatively fast, and for all its odd-ball design, fairly straight-forward. Across leveling 5 classes through there back in Vanilla, I don't think I've ever had a party break up in there. Even Gnomeragon would probably be a better example.

Maraudon likewise had 5 core bosses and 3 optionals, though because of the backtracking or easy exit after the 3 optionals, it was often split into "Purple" or "Green" runs for those with less time. It would have been a pretty much standard dungeon if not for that side-path being longer than usual. In terms of basic layout and time... it was a lot like RfC or BfD, just... higher level.

Blackrock Depths, on the other hand, had 20 bosses. It was quite simply a mega-dungeon, and you could work many different more reasonably timed paths to grab 6-12 if people didn't have the time to do the whole thing. And that was fine. There's nothing wrong with signing up to do just one wing or just the majority of BRD. At least, it's no more an issue than if someone signed up to do a Legion leveling dungeon (with no more bosses in total than BFD had in itself), and only did one of them. It's cool that you have more bosses and time available within the same art assets in case someone wants to do an extended run.

That's a simple efficiency-minded feature that provides a unique experience, more so than any overall failing. The only failing in that is that the less efficiently chartable bosses and wings for a quick run will be seen less often, and are therefore less deserving of development time unless the pay-off of that unique experience is sufficiently high. (Granted, given that BRD is still probably the most famous WoW dungeons, among veterans and non-WoWers alike... it probably was. But that's obviously have increasingly less novelty value with each dungeon to follow suit.) But it wasn't the size of BRD that most discouraged players. It was how far one had to travel just to get there, through zones that were considered among the least aesthetically interesting in the game (Searing Gorge and Burning Steppes) and were therefore hard to general (think "shout") chat a group out of players out of, pre-LFG chat.

And for the record, 1.0 Thousand Maws of Toto-rak was almost identical except in that it had a 30-minute time-limit (Aether poisoning or the like), it lacked the slime and diremite traps to forcibly slow you down, and had 2 optional bosses. However, though these optional bosses were removed, their rooms are identical; their loot-chests were simply replaced with... empty chests. Now, rather than being able to finish via any of the three diremite bosses, you could now leave only through Graffias's lair (one of the weaker two, but furthest away from the entrance), actually making the path to relative completion... less intuitive than before. The previous experience was that you burned through the first 2 bosses, got to where you could reach any of the diremites, and did as many diremite bosses as you could will still ensuring you had time to escape. Now, you... do a normal dungeon, but with lots of now-useless side-paths... and slime to slow you down. That's more an "even now" issue than a "because we explicitly changed it to make it slower and less rewarding" issue.

@Ultimate. Agreed. As few people as might go through Ultimate, we probably all benefited in some way from its existence, if only via the influx of subscribing players. Now we just need content that can allow us to keep subscribers between major patches without going the semi-recent WoW permagrind route.

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Originally Posted by Silverquick

There is actually a way to keep those optional paths in a dungeon and not give it a path of least resistence.

Randomize what the actual goal is for each dungeon.

One time its the mini-boss or two on one branch... one time its a mass spam of mobs three times in a row... one time its getting 4 crystals in random parts of the dungeon to unlock to the door to the final boss.

So they can actually make optional or branching paths but make which one you need random or a combination of the above.

This would in essence never make it the same dungeon twice.

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And that may be an efficient way to make more use of your art assets, lore, setup, and any unique systems for a dungeon, since it'd extend its novelty by a fair portion of what adding another dungeon would do, but with far less cost. We'd have to see it in practice, though to know just how much that little variation is going to feel augmentative, rather than just a gimmick.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

For me, doing pre-nerf Pharos Sirius -- at least with more or less competent players without any significant attitude problems -- was intrinsically fun. It could have been better in a handful of different ways or an extra load of excitement or whatnot, but I quite enjoyed it. But that leaves two issues: I'm me, and may not be representative of most players, and that requires a group of "more or less competent players without any significant attitude problems".

-snip-

I'll spare you all the rant on examples of 'generally good' vs. 'noticeably flawed' design for now; I ask only that you trust that most of these so-called compromises aren't as clear-cut or zero-sum as they're made out to be. The challenge instead lies less in whom to target (and whom to leave out, by varying degree) as which processes are enjoyable and how can those processes be combined in such a way that more people feel like they've suffered little to no compromise in that content.

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Well part of it is indeed my own cynicism from gaming for 30+ years. Over the years I've found myself more and more alone in what I consider fun, technical challenge.

I've seen MMOs die that I loved by trying to provide the kind of engagement I enjoyed. I've been in multiple cases where I'd proclaim to the skies "oh my now THIS is exhilarating!" only to see I'm one of 10 people that didn't hate the content a week later when heavy nerfs to it come out.

I don't need flashy rewards or anything, either. I play for the experience, engagement, and mastery.

I guess my point in all this is that I haven't "given up" so much as slowly accepted over the years that what I find fun is niche and I just have to adapt to what's popular since that is going to drive product decisions.

Gaming has kind of moved on without me in that regard, and I either adapt to it and take it for what it is or I really do "give up".

For what it's worth, it really lightened my mood to see this thread being made and I'll be following the discussion closely :)

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Originally Posted by Barraind

14's dungeons are hallways because people wont do optional content for no reward, and they wont give correct rewards for doing them because everything is designed around a specific numerical reward of the only 2 currencies they will do anything with.

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Well, that's the thing. It works for them. That's why I don't really see them messing with dungeons.

Whether it be for story quests, tomestones, clusters, tank mounts, mentor qualification, experience points, gears, old relic quests, minions, orchestrion rolls, wondrous tail, etc., people are running dungeons on a daily basis regardless of the people here saying they don't run dungeons because they're boring or give weaker gears (some people don't actually bother catching up with tomestone gears for one reason or another).

This wouldn't work. It might be alright for new dungeons, but new dungeons eventually become old dungeons and roulette fodder. This content needs to be able to be completed in reasonable chunks, not trap you in the same group for an hour minimum.

At the end of the day I think most players prefer the current setup, so I don't see it changing.

Coz dungeons are boring.

Make it fast, get tomes, end of story.

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Originally Posted by testname

Coz dungeons are boring.

Make it fast, get tomes, end of story.

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Then...

1. What about making dungeons... not boring?
   
   
2. Why do something so boring at all? Alternatively, why should that particular task be necessary, if there are more enjoyable ways we would otherwise be able to get those rewards? Why should something so dull be made the most efficient method of collecting tomes (which are initially necessary for progression)?
   
   
3. [Hypothetical] If one were to take issue with dungeons' being so dull, why would they then -- even if, admittedly, among many others -- conditioning development towards more of the same by requesting efficiency over enjoyment ('give me something unpleasant, but quick, so I can more quickly get to the thing I'll try to make as quick as possible, even if I make it proportionately more unpleasant in the process')?