Dungeons need some spice!

As a common DPS, surely the current dungeon structure is as good as it will ever be after 6 years and several power creeps due to multiple job redesigning and new jobs. Dungeons are boring and uninspired for me here’s why with some constructive criticism. Beauty of MMOs it can always improve

Remember Role Skills

Esuna, Leg Graze (Heavy)Foot Graze (Binds) Head Graze (Cast Stun) Leg sweep (Stun) and some other ones that are useful with skills like True North and Swift cast.

Sure Some are debatable useless or incredibly situational. What about stuns and Esuna? I don’t recall ever using them so far this expansion and all bosses are immune to Stuns or don’t use attacks that are able to be Head grazed. The point I’m making is we used to deal with ailments like poison, doom, that needed to be Esunaed, and Stunning bosses when they’re doing a critical attack meant life and death. The skills have no weight anymore because the Bosses and mobs don’t delivery said Weight. Speaking of Mobs

Trash Mobs

Since “Raids” no longer have mobs anymore...for better or for worse. Dungeons might as well go the same route. The mobs are beyond inconsequential and don’t pose any threat besides scare the healer and don’t use a buff or two or don’t use your aoe as a tank. As a DPS it’s a mind numbing cycle of using your aoe. Everyone seems to think trash mobs sole purpose is to bum rush the tank and that’s that until the boss fights. How is it that the interludes between have so little thought?

Their are many routes to go about this that have been done in past dungeons. Have the environment be treacherous ie Aurum Vale so you need to park your mobs very carefully, have the dungeon be a room rather than a line in order to navigate to pursue the best avenue without killing off you party and overwhelming your Healer ie Longstep, have mobs do massive select damage so DPS can prioritize mobs ie Sunken Temple Final Sting. Have mechanics go off like stackable or cleaves during the mob rush ie Ghmilyt Dark. Have a mob be immune to damage via teathers ie Ampdapor, have enrages! Possibilities are a plenty and aren’t new

Dungeons this Expansion

Dungeons can be described as boring with good boss fights since idk with one blatant exception due to story reasons and being a moderately difficult dungeon perhaps the hardest one we’ve gotten since The Burn imo. Considering we are getting so few this expansion would logically mean the few we are getting are great right? They all retain the same formula and aren’t interesting to play through. Makes matters worse due to roulettes and how few we are getting this expansion marking then a sleeping pill unless you rotate to Healer.

Dungeons are pretty routine, and at first, SE did want to make them spicy. The playerbase did not react well. The complaints was that if they have to grind dungeons to get weekly cap tomes, then the dungeons should be "streamlined" so that they aren't a time intensive chore. People still auto quit sometimes when they get Aurum Vale for leveling roulette. Pharos Sirius was the first dungeon that they made that had some spice, and it was nerfed within a few months, due to a large amount of people auto quitting if they got it for their roulette or if they didn't think the tank or healer was geared enough to take it on. Or if the composition lacked a DPS that could Silence Siren. She was stunnable too, but built stun resistance. A lot of the earlier hard mode/level 50 dungeons from ARR had neat mechanics. It'd be nice to see a return to form, but if it's too involved, most people will complain.


That's something else to consider too. Dungeons can't get too spicy, because entry requirements have to be kept accessible to the majority of players. Surely, they could make them more involved, but higher geared DPS would mostly overwrite the need to do mechanics anyway. If you pay attention in current trash pulls, there's always something to stun or silence that make your tank/healer's lives just a bit easier. Stunning the manticore tail AOE in Holminster Switch lets melees continue to DPS. Silencing the Fuath froggie in the pulls of Dohn Mheg makes sure the trash isn't buffed with ATK up. Not really any problem monsters of note that come to mind for Qitana Ravel. I guess you can stun the golems in Malikah's Well when they do their AOE, again mostly to spare melee DPS and tank from having to dodge/stop AOEing.
If you're ranged, you can always leg/foot graze a monster or two to keep them off the tank's back for a sec, till the pull concludes. Course this just means they'll still be alive when everything else in the pull is dead.

In general, dungeons are tuned so that you can do them without healers if you keep pulls small. You could even do dungeons with x4 DPS, depending on what bosses do. One way you can spice up dungeons for yourself is to form pre-mades of non-traditional compositions. I found myself doing that some during a patch lull in Stormblood and also back in ARR. Course, in the past you could have a SMN act as tank with Titan Egi. Since that's been scrapped, it's kind of sad times for non-standard dungeon fun.

I guess my TL; DR point would be, remember you can make your own fun in the game. It's not all up to the devs; there's only so much they can do with the restrictions and past positions they work off in relation to the playerbase.

They tried - people said no they don't want it.

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

They tried - people said no they don't want it.

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What "people"? This is the oldest excuse in book for any content creator.
Let's be honest. It is more demanding and time consuming to create "interesting" stuff and it doesn't sell nearly as well as new glams on Mogstation.

Look, I like many things about FFXIV, but normal dungeon design is incomparably weaker that what WoW or LotRO had 10+ years ago.

Friggin Scarlet Monastery in WoW or Barrow Downs in LoTRO had more challenge and atmosphere than the lifeless corridors of any FFXIV dungeon past lvl 50.
And those were very low level instances, no need to pull out heavyweights like BRD, Stratholme or some Mines of Moria dungeons.

It is one of the biggest weakspots of FFXIV (the other being atrocious MSQ cutscene direction/presentation in ARR).

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Originally Posted by RylaBee

What "people"? This is the oldest excuse in book for any content creator.
Let's be honest. It is more demanding and time consuming to create "interesting" stuff and it doesn't sell nearly as well as new glams on Mogstation.

Look, I like many things about FFXIV, but normal dungeon design is incomparably weaker that what WoW or LotRO had 10+ years ago.

Friggin Scarlet Monastery in WoW or Barrow Downs in LoTRO had more challenge and atmosphere than the lifeless corridors of any FFXIV dungeon past lvl 50.
And those were very low level instances, no need to pull out heavyweights like BRD, Stratholme or some Mines of Moria dungeons.

It is one of the biggest weakspots of FFXIV (the other being atrocious MSQ cutscene direction/presentation in ARR).

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Many of the people who populated this forum in its early days, some who still do. The reason these forums gained their reputation. Square did want dungeons to be challenging, and the playerbase got vocal about it to the point that they opted to keep dungeons easy. Mogstation and their penchant for producing so much content for it came later.

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Originally Posted by RylaBee

What "people"? This is the oldest excuse in book for any content creator.
Let's be honest. It is more demanding and time consuming to create "interesting" stuff and it doesn't sell nearly as well as new glams on Mogstation.

Look, I like many things about FFXIV, but normal dungeon design is incomparably weaker that what WoW or LotRO had 10+ years ago.

Friggin Scarlet Monastery in WoW or Barrow Downs in LoTRO had more challenge and atmosphere than the lifeless corridors of any FFXIV dungeon past lvl 50.
And those were very low level instances, no need to pull out heavyweights like BRD, Stratholme or some Mines of Moria dungeons.

It is one of the biggest weakspots of FFXIV (the other being atrocious MSQ cutscene direction/presentation in ARR).

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The kind of people who purposly didnt unlock the original Pharos to keep it out of their roulette (and the people who told new players to avoid unlocking said dungeon to keep it out of their roulettes) because it was deemed - for some erason - "difficult" until it got nerfed. If I remember correctly this was also the reason they changed expert roulette so that you have to have all dungeons for it unlocked - to prevent people from simply not playing by the roulette-rules.
I was always quite unhappy about it because I happen(d) to like that dungeon but getting in roulette back then was extremly rare and even if you got it you ended up with people leaving and/or complaining about it.

Its not that I dont agree with you - though seeing people in level 60+ content failing some very basic mechanics makes me question the desire for more difficult dungeons - but I've seen enough complaints by various people to know that its not gonna happen. If we're lucky we might end up with some 100% optional, difficult 4-man content (something like the later floors of PotD and HoH, just with less RNG and more skill), but normal dungeons are never gonna get difficult again.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

Many of the people who populated this forum in its early days, some who still do. The reason these forums gained their reputation. Square did want dungeons to be challenging, and the playerbase got vocal about it to the point that they opted to keep dungeons easy. Mogstation and their penchant for producing so much content for it came later.

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I really would like link to some old post with people screaming about dungeon stuff being hard.
It however can also be due to the fact, that they were doing these dungeons on MUCH lower itemlevel than you are entering it with today.

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

They tried - people said no they don't want it.

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Honestly, at this point I'd say suck it up, people. lol Sorry.

To me it feels like people got so complacent the moment you change the status quo you'll get flack from the vocal minority anyway. The dumbing down since 5.0 has gotten out of hand. For dungeons that has been the case even longer. I personally don't like doing roulettes for that reason.

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Originally Posted by Vidu

Snip..

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Thank you for the info.

One note thou: I'm assuming that the thing people were afraid of was wiping on bosses specifically.
That is not necessarily what I mean by interesting dungeon design.

What I mean, is giving the place sense of purpose, non-linearity and having actually difficult trash, that needs to be correctly pulled and crowd-controlled if necessary.
SE seem to be morbidly afraid of creating difficult trash, that would need any consideration beyond being time-sink on the road to next boss.
That is why many players just purposefully pull wall-to-wall to create at least bit of excitement.

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Originally Posted by RylaBee

I really would like link to some old post with people screaming about dungeon stuff being hard.
It however can also be due to the fact, that they were doing these dungeons on MUCH lower itemlevel than you are entering it with today.

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Every time they introduce anything even remotely difficult the forum explodes with people calling for a nerf. Often when the instance isnt even actually difficult too. From the last couple years i remember people raging about Shinryu(end of 4.0, not the extreme), every solo Zenos instance, Tsuko normal, the "Little Sun" instance with Y'shtola(both halves), the estinien solo instance, the alphy solo instance, the final boss in the burn, final steps of faith, titania normal, the solo thancred instance(both for length and difficulty), both ranjit fights, gimlit dark(mostly the last boss), every alliance raid since void ark, the solo instance with lakshmi, the solo instance with tataru and soroban... and im sure im forgetting a few. And those are mostly(RIP TG Cid) fights that never got nerfed. Amdapor, steps of faith, and i think pharos? all actually were made easier to appease the whiners.

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Originally Posted by RylaBee

Thank you for the info.

One note thou: I'm assuming that the thing people were afraid of was wiping on bosses specifically.
That is not necessarily what I mean by interesting dungeon design.

What I mean, is giving the place sense of purpose, non-linearity and having actually difficult trash, that needs to be correctly pulled and crowd-controlled if necessary.
SE seem to be morbidly afraid of creating difficult trash, that would need any consideration beyond being time-sink on the road to next boss.
That is why many players just purposefully pull wall-to-wall to create at least bit of excitement.

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Again, this was something they implemented in earlier dungeons, where if you did not stun or silence certain monsters in the trash pack, they could potentially be a wipe cause by confusing the healer. In Pharos Sirius there were several. The first were the uhh, 4 legged fish dog things around the first corner that spit vulnerability water on the tank eventually. In entry gear if you walled to wall, you ran into a pirate barber and two fish dogs. The barbers heal the entire pack and the fish dogs make the tank take more damage.

After the first boss if you wall to walled, you got multiple Corrupted Sprites, capable of casting Banishga III. If it went off, it dealt 3~4k damage to everyone in the group, depending on job(sorry original DRG with lower Mdef than Gatherers). This meant, a one shot for most DPS or healers if they were in bare minimum entry gear. If you wall to wall'd you also ran into another pirate barber on top of two of those sprites. Needless to say, if the sprites weren't stopped and the barber wasn't killed promptly, you were going to wipe on trash, and many people did.

Pharos Sirius also had side rooms with extra treasure. While still mostly linear, the dungeon spiraled up, because it is a lighthouse. You couldn't get map completion for it without visiting the siderooms. It also sported 4 bosses instead of the typical 3.

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Originally Posted by RylaBee

What "people"? This is the oldest excuse in book for any content creator.
Let's be honest. It is more demanding and time consuming to create "interesting" stuff and it doesn't sell nearly as well as new glams on Mogstation.

Look, I like many things about FFXIV, but normal dungeon design is incomparably weaker that what WoW or LotRO had 10+ years ago.

Friggin Scarlet Monastery in WoW or Barrow Downs in LoTRO had more challenge and atmosphere than the lifeless corridors of any FFXIV dungeon past lvl 50.
And those were very low level instances, no need to pull out heavyweights like BRD, Stratholme or some Mines of Moria dungeons.

It is one of the biggest weakspots of FFXIV (the other being atrocious MSQ cutscene direction/presentation in ARR).

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Just going to pull this quote out to make my point.

In this game, whenever there is non-savage and non-ultimate content released and it's not faceroll easy, the nerf it complaints come out in droves. S-E has tried time and time again, in different ways and means, to infuse challenge into dungeons and ... a lot of people whined about the difficulty, and when they looked at the analytics of wipes vs clears, whelp, that's when the nerfs came in.

Look, I've been playing MMOs for a long time, and I personally loved LOTRO's dungeons. They were long, not easy, and unique. It was great. But we are in a very, very different era right now. There are so many players who, as surprising as this may seem, do not want challenge. At all. Players today would rather quit the game than overcome the challenge. Sad but true. It's the current gaming landscape that we're in.

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Originally Posted by Eli85

Look, I've been playing MMOs for a long time, and I personally loved LOTRO's dungeons. They were long, not easy, and unique. It was great. But we are in a very, very different era right now. There are so many players who, as surprising as this may seem, do not want challenge. At all. Players today would rather quit the game than overcome the challenge. Sad but true. It's the current gaming landscape that we're in.

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This is where we could do with the Mythic+ system from WoW, an optional pre-made harder version of current dungeons with multiple levels of scaling difficulty and additional challenges. Those were hugely popular during their Legion expansion. It also means the base Normal mode can be easy for those who just want story.

Even the dungeons you mentioned, while good, aren't as interesting as they were back in 1.0.
They were challenging. They had multiple exits, optional bosses, speedrun rewards, gear worth bringing to endgame, you name it!

Dungeons have turned into less and less of a priority. With hunt trains, and various other methods of gaining tomestones you don't need to grind them out like we used to. On top of they we've gone from 3 dungeons a patch to maybe 1.
Honestly, nows a good a time than ever to make them more challenging content again. Sure they'd take up more time, and they probably won't reward us like they used to, but at least they could be engaging.

I realize it'll probably never happen. Cookie cutter dungeons are what we've had for years now and that probably won't change. All we can do is hope for a Baldesion Arsenal 2, it's the closest thing we've had.

they've flat out stated they're not interested in making a mythic+ system in XIV. they're too worried about if the healer dies and there's no way to continue if it's made too harsh for just what's seen for dungeons as "casual" content.

Dungeons need to be more interesting, end of the story. No point in wasting all the resources in making the nice graphics in them and just turn them into 20min mob AoE burn fests.

Most "content creators" are just elitist douches who all they care (obsessed) about is endgame crap and wouldn't know good game design if it slapped them in the face.

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Originally Posted by AncientCrystal

Dungeons need to be more interesting, end of the story. No point in wasting all the resources in making the nice graphics in them and just turn them into 20min mob AoE burn fests.

Most "content creators" are just elitist douches who all they care (obsessed) about is endgame crap and wouldn't know good game design if it slapped them in the face.

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For a lot of the playerbase they are more like 30 minute trudge fests where the players themselves, "Just want to take it easy." Since Trusts came out, a lot of people don't even bother to queue with other players for dungeon runs. They cite, "Too much animosity, too many players being dicks, too many players trying too hard."

There's no point in designing intricate, well tuned dungeons when it'll just be pearls before swine. They already reduced the resources they spend making dungeons, since we get 1/3rd the amount of dungeons that we used to get, at a lower frequency, with little/no mechanics.

It's less that they don't care about designing fights before the endgame, and more that they aren't allowed to bar out accessibility to people who don't want difficulty in any form.

I agree to some extent. In the end what’s the point if it’s just Data fodder in the game. Even in the patch 5.2 trailer they barley showed the dungeon off which reflects how little they car to do anything interesting with

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

They tried - people said no they don't want it.

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The issue with this agreement, is that very shallow cherry picking “this one time, a few people didn’t want hard dungeons”

It’s 5 years later and dungeons are so basic I’ve played Guildheists more complex than it...which the whole point was to teach you diverse mechanics you’ll never use in dungeons

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Originally Posted by Frizze

Every time they introduce anything even remotely difficult the forum explodes with people calling for a nerf. Often when the instance isnt even actually difficult too. From the last couple years i remember people raging about Shinryu(end of 4.0, not the extreme), every solo Zenos instance, Tsuko normal, the "Little Sun" instance with Y'shtola(both halves), the estinien solo instance, the alphy solo instance, the final boss in the burn, final steps of faith, titania normal, the solo thancred instance(both for length and difficulty), both ranjit fights, gimlit dark(mostly the last boss), every alliance raid since void ark, the solo instance with lakshmi, the solo instance with tataru and soroban... and im sure im forgetting a few. And those are mostly(RIP TG Cid) fights that never got nerfed. Amdapor, steps of faith, and i think pharos? all actually were made easier to appease the whiners.

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So link? Or ...are we supposed to take your word for it. That’s also in the past we’ve had 3 expansions 30+ trials, 70+ dungeons are we to expect the game flat line forever? A few mechs here and there between bosses wouldn’t shut down the game. I don’t understand the worst case scenario. You will not please everyone and givin how small the roulette will be this expansion, playing dungeons with no thought over and over won’t make it better

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Originally Posted by Canadane

Even the dungeons you mentioned, while good, aren't as interesting as they were back in 1.0.
They were challenging. They had multiple exits, optional bosses, speedrun rewards, gear worth bringing to endgame, you name it!

Dungeons have turned into less and less of a priority. With hunt trains, and various other methods of gaining tomestones you don't need to grind them out like we used to. On top of they we've gone from 3 dungeons a patch to maybe 1.
Honestly, nows a good a time than ever to make them more challenging content again. Sure they'd take up more time, and they probably won't reward us like they used to, but at least they could be engaging.

I realize it'll probably never happen. Cookie cutter dungeons are what we've had for years now and that probably won't change. All we can do is hope for a Baldesion Arsenal 2, it's the closest thing we've had.

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I’m down for Savage dungeons, careful planing, short and powerful bosses, meaningful loot, maybe do somthing like L4D where every encounter is randomizes for replay-ability it’s almost like a raid! I dream of that day maybe when FF14 gets a “Rapsodys Final” like ff11 did and they need to really think of how to keep subs happy, YoshiP and his team have the brains to do it but maybe their priories need to be realigned and maybe take a risk

They did for 2.0 after all

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

They tried - people said no they don't want it.

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And, at least here, as many have said they did and want those more challenging dungeons back.

Which official poll unbeknownst to most are you consulting here?

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

And, at least here, as many have said they did and want those more challenging dungeons back.

Which official poll unbeknownst to most are you consulting here?

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There's always vocal minorities here on the forums for both sides of the argument. But all we have to look at is how the devs have planned things out over the course of the game. They can see from their own data how people want things from what the results look like. We only have ourselves as the playerbase to blame for how things have turned out.

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

they've flat out stated they're not interested in making a mythic+ system in XIV. they're too worried about if the healer dies and there's no way to continue if it's made too harsh for just what's seen for dungeons as "casual" content.

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Which makes no sense. Just look at the healer forums, it's not a vocal minority there, we're all practically begging for something engaging to heal. I'd spend all day in there healing. It was never an issue in WoW, they have a formula that has been tested for them and proven to work and they just have to take it. But they stubbornly refuse. It's frustrating how little they understand healers this expansion.

Dungeons don't have to be casual only, in the same way casual raids have a Savage mode too.

They have no data because they haven't tried a Savage mode of dungeons separate from the roulette. People complained in the past because the hard dungeons were tied to MSQ or popped up when they queued for their daily tomes. What we're asking for is something separate, where the casual version is untouched.

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

There's always vocal minorities here on the forums for both sides of the argument. But all we have to look at is how the devs have planned things out over the course of the game. They can see from their own data how people want things from what the results look like. We only have ourselves as the playerbase to blame for how things have turned out.

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It's true that devs have their data but don't assume they know everything just because of that. They are still humans and not perfectly objective machines. They have their own view of how things should be and that may not always be what the majority agrees with.
If they did, things like the signifcant drop in healer mains with ShB wouldn't have happened. It's not just a vocal minority in the forum, it was and still is plain as day because healer queue times have never been shorter and they are often the last slot to fill in PF. No matter the hour.

And it has been critizied ever since they first got rid of somewhat challenging dungeons that this game lacks content that is the middle ground between casual content and endgame content.
A system similiar to M+ from WoW would offer precisely that. And it has pretty insane longevity for much smaller design costs than e.g. a savage tier.
Besides, while the first level would likely barely be more difficult than current dungeon iterations and thus easy enough to pass for random DF groups it's only at higher levels that there is a signifcant risk involved and mistakes get more severly punished the higher you get.
But you don't expect to queue via DF for a M+ 10 dungeon and clear it by rolling your cat over your keyboard. It's a smooth increase in difficulty not some insane jump from faceroll to savage like difficulty you seem to assume.
You could queue for lower levels via DF and likely clear it without much trouble as they are supposed to be your starting point and will switch to PF and mini statics for high levels.

It's not mutually exclusive with our current dungeons.
As Liam said, dungeons don't have to be casual only. Raids have a normal mode, dungeons can get a "savage" mode.
It can offer alternative way of gearing up, it offers challenge outside of ex and beyond and the best part is that you can always decide how far you want to take it in terms of difficulty.

except the way i see it is that people will see that a mythic + system is there and they'll step into it when they're clearly not supposed to be there (just like every ex/savage piece of content) and the wave of complaints will start to flood in. then since it's just dungeons people will demand that either it get nerfed or given special consideration, when the devs have clearly said they're more interested in creating new and different types of gameplay experiences rather than just retooling old things. I mean look at HoH. there's a reason we don't have yet another iteration of this in 5.x (and we're not getting one either). it's because while it it was a slap of paint on the PotD system it got old real fast. putting their resources into Baldesion Arsenal was much better for Stormblood.

And then there's the problem of rewards for a mythic plus system. Every time this topic comes up i never see a compelling reason to do so other than just "the challenge of it". every suggestion i've seen from people for a reward for doing mythic+ hasn't ever been something that would make me say, "hmm I would like something like that to be a reward".

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

And then there's the problem of rewards for a mythic plus system. Every time this topic comes up i never see a compelling reason to do so other than just "the challenge of it". every suggestion i've seen from people for a reward for doing mythic+ hasn't ever been something that would make me say, "hmm I would like something like that to be a reward".

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Savage dungeons, if added later into a patch cycle, could either drop savage ilv gear or even not at all. If a savage dungeon just dropped a title or a mount I would do it. They could also drop shiny gear like ultimates do for replayability

A very common complaint is that there's nothing to use your bis on; there's practically no purpose to getting it. Only when ultimates were added did bis have some significance, but even then there's not ultimates every raid cycle. Savage dungeons would give raiders something to do while the next patch comes around


Your "people will show up unprepared and cry about it" argument makes no sense. Simply slap the word (savage) or something similar to it's name and that will make people think it's more than just a regular casual dungeon. If you're that worried raise the min ilv

I close this off with “what do they possibly have to lose for making dungeons more complex” complaints? Their will always be complaints look at the games current state. It’s not a dark age of FF14 it’s not it’s hayday but complaints are always present

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

except the way i see it is that people will see that a mythic + system is there and they'll step into it when they're clearly not supposed to be there (just like every ex/savage piece of content)...

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Isn't part of the beauty of a Mythic + system largely that it can be easily configured not to permit access to a given difficulty level until you have finished the level immediately before it? Beyond that, the situation is identical to that of Savage.

For the very first Savage dungeon, your only safeties are the completion of Normal mode and a higher ilvl requirement. For each thereafter, it's completion of the difficult content immediately before it. In Savage, that means E5, 6, and 7 for access to 8, for instance; in "Mythic+" that means Savage, +1, +2, and +3 for access to +4.

We're free to add further restrictions, such as SSS output, ilvl, or prior level completions, beyond WoW's incredibly loose requirements (largely for the option to carry friends, especially since their levels scale up separately for each week, always starting from 0 and thus forcing the strongest players to briefly mix with the weaker participants).