Critque and hope for the future of Dungeon Design.

I'll try and keep this one short and sweet due to word count limits.
Playing FFXIV since ARR Beta2 I have seen so many cool and interesting dungeons that come with each patch, designs that are incredible to traverse through, and places that stay within my memories for years after, such as the times I went through Coils 6 (2nd coil part 1) and a lot of 50+ dungeons from ARR.

And even though I adore the boss fights and creature designs, I have noticed a trend in the design of dungeons since around Stormblood? maybe even earlier? (and you can see it in a lot of dungeons) of the typical way, the party progresses through the dungeon with the typical 2-4 groups of mobs and pulling them "wall to wall". Going through the dungeons in the past expansion and what we currently have, has left me yearning for more approaches to how we handle going through content, even to something as simple as a direction change. I felt like before we had a bit more verticality in the dungeon pathing, in comparison to the past year of dungeon content.

What would I recommend? I'm not going to say "this is a perfect idea and must be followed through verbatim!" but something I would be interested in seeing is different non-combat mechanics to tackle dungeons (nothing too complex) or maybe even a variety in the number of people who go into an instanced dungeon. For example, one dungeon can have 8 party members, maybe in 2 separate parties within the instance, who have to start off together and eventually split off to tackle separate halves of a dungeon.
Maybe even have a strange 6 man dungeon (with a static amount of how many of each role is needed) and maybe have them take on even bigger baddies!
A lot of what I would consider interesting to see in dungeon content comes from my time doing the ARR coils and HW raid fights (both normal and savage).

My final thoughts are, that I would rather see new and interesting ways of spicing up the way we run dungeons, even if every once in a while we get a stinker, rather than having a safe repeated method of doing the content.

I feel like I've seen this word for word somewhere else like a month ago.

Not gonna work OP. They have already planned in years advance that the dungeons and raids will be generic cheap bulk content without any kind of variation since that slows down the development or requires designers with some imagination and pride for their work

Everything changed for a reason.

In ARR, there were no walls so we could pull too much. This is still a problem in some of them such as Amdapor Keep where, unless you have an extremely good tank and healer, pulling wall-to-wall will probably get you killed. The chances are that either the tank or the healer is new to their role or the DPS is low. We got walls and although wall-to-wall pulls can still be challenging now, new healers can manage it with a good tank.

Coils are not dungeons, so everything before the boss is regarded as raid trash which SE stopped doing. We had two dungeons with 8 people in, Castrum Meridianum and Praetorium and it made players impatient enough to speedrun while cutscenes were being watched, which wouldn't happen with only 4 players. With them having just been reduced to 4, I doubt the idea will be revisited. We are getting criterion dungeons where I think we can adjust the amount of players like we do with deep dungeons.

Parties split off to do separate objectives in alliance raids, but it would be interesting if that was in a dungeon. Non-combat mechanics could work, but I wonder if they would interfere with speedruns.

Yea I know they do a lot in advance, they probably are close to done designing for 7.x series, but you miss all the shots you don't take lol

Lol I can assure you I've never seen it, I don't browse here frequently enough

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Everything changed for a reason.

In ARR, there were no walls so we could pull too much. This is still a problem in some of them such as Amdapor Keep where, unless you have an extremely good tank and healer, pulling wall-to-wall will probably get you killed. The chances are that either the tank or the healer is new to their role or the DPS is low. We got walls and although wall-to-wall pulls can still be challenging now, new healers can manage it with a good tank.

Coils are not dungeons, so everything before the boss is regarded as raid trash which SE stopped doing. We had two dungeons with 8 people in, Castrum Meridianum and Praetorium and it made players impatient enough to speedrun while cutscenes were being watched, which wouldn't happen with only 4 players. With them having just been reduced to 4, I doubt the idea will be revisited. We are getting criterion dungeons where I think we can adjust the amount of players like we do with deep dungeons.

Parties split off to do separate objectives in alliance raids, but it would be interesting if that was in a dungeon. Non-combat mechanics could work, but I wonder if they would interfere with speedruns.

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If anything, the players are a big part of the reason why dungeons became streamlined like they are. It just also coincidentally falls in line with being easier to make these streamlined dungeons too.

Yea things do change for a reason, ARR has these open ended pull paths, and besides adding a barrier to the boss, the way dungeons have been pulled haven't really changed.

I was referring to coils content in regards to ideas that could be implemented towards dungeon design to keep the "trash" part out of raids and move it to dungeons (even though my opinion is that the newer raids with just boss fight is boring but it's whatever)

And I will disagree with the prae dungeons, people spedran those because SE goofed up in putting multiple important cutscenes mid dungeon, which regardless of 4 or 8 would cause anyone to become impatient. Since they learned that, I believe the team can attempt another one that follows the no mid way cutscene mentality.

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Originally Posted by Xanfer

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My final thoughts are, that I would rather see new and interesting ways of spicing up the way we run dungeons, even if every once in a while we get a stinker, rather than having a safe repeated method of doing the content.

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This thread topic is in the section called Dungeons on this forum btw. Many agree the Dungeons are trending towards Final Fantasy 13 corridor style gaming territory and dont like it. Hell you can argue FF7 Remake has a bit of corridor'itis to.. Yoshi P in his interview on FF16 made it sound like the game would be more like that as well.. I dont get why they keep trying force this style of game down peoples throats. If I want a on rails action adventure full of set pieces I can go play Uncharted or something. Not saying this type of game is bad but when you think Final Fantasy you think traveling on an open world map etc and being able to explore.

They claimed they had some metrics that people only take the quickest path to finish each dungeon which is 100% true when they are on farm for tombstones but what about the initial experience of the first few runs. You used to need to throw some levers or oil some gears or go down different paths or floors in the ARR dungeons for example. Thats unique flavor that sticks with you. Slamming your head against an invisible wall as you hold the "W" key with set piece mobs flying in from off screen doesn't. Dungeons are almost as boring currently as putting a pile of mobs in a purple circle with no mechanics (Fates) and calling it leveling content.

The longer the game goes on the simpler it becomes. Dungeons are simpler, classes are more homogenized,. The game is objectively getting worse as they try to make it more for the main stream and this happens time and time again with MMOs.

This goes back to at least Snowcloak in ARR. Wish people would stop pretending it's new.

After all this years, maybe the simple concept of dungeon has become obsolete, that being said wildstar had an interesting idea : While you do a dungeon you'll be given mutltiple critical choices that result in different encounter and different area to go through (most of the time 3 choices).

The choices were done through votes of the party members. (could be randomized in FF14 if the votes are equal)

But yeah overall dungeon concept is in dire need of renewal.

Those aren't bad suggestions, but dungeons are the way they are right now because of the players. Players shunned the more intricate or complicated dungeons. Speedrunning has killed the ability for the devs to be creative in the general dungeons.

I'm hoping Criterion Dungeons incorporate some new ideas. It's a lot easier to have something like non-combat mechanics if it's solo or small group and there aren't people in the party going "go go go go go"

We have to remember that dungeons need to work for trusts now, but the new criterion dungeons will probably not be part of the MSQ so trusts shouldn't get in the way of their design.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

We have to remember that dungeons need to work for trusts now, but the new criterion dungeons will probably not be part of the MSQ so trusts shouldn't get in the way of their design.

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MSQ need to but optional don't. But players shunned the optional dungeons that they couldn't speedrun through. People complain about the crystal mechanic in a place like Dzemael because it slows the run down, but that's exactly the sort of creativity and thinking outside the box that the OP wants to see.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

MSQ need to but optional don't.

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Optional dungeons are not produced very often anymore. Hard Mode dungeons were effectively discontinued with the decision to only produce 1 dungeon per patch. We get 2 optional dungeons at an expansion release and we had examples of all the dungeons in a patch being optional in Stormblood, but this is very rare now and hasn't happened since trusts came out.

that has to do with bland job design and unrewarding dungeon spelunking you almost had no reason to actually explore those open areas or side paths/zones

GW2 has a great dungeon system allowing you to choose seperate routes in each dungeon so you can at least mix it up a little each time you go in. plus it can have random bonus events pop up while you're going about which also adds to making each run more unique. in terms of job design it feels good being able to use group invis and sneak by an entire huge pack of enemies. or being able to use your terrain to your advantage to avuse line of sight or funnel enemies something which our jobs and combat just aren't capable of doing in it's current state

there are plenty of ways to make dungeons rewarding or even easier on teh final boss here's an example i brought up in anohter post (it was thought up in like minutes so it's not extrmely well thought out be aware)

now imagine if you will we take a page from binding coil of bahamut and make a dungeon (i'm thinking kinda like we go back to garlemald and there's an abomination in their towers/castle jail area and so we go and clear it out) with 6 mini bosses and then the final boss split the mini bosses into 3 groups of two (human bosses, mechanical creatures/systems, and abominations) now for those who want to speedrun they will have a straight shot to the boss all they gotta do is turn around and hit a switch to unlock a path straight to the boss but they will have a far harder time than those who choose to deal with the mini bosses

now let's say for example if you choose path 1 the humanoid path by defeating the first mini boss you prevent your ranged DPS from having to kill the reinforcements the boss abomintion summons on walkways above the arena that will cast healing spells on the boss. the second mini boss prevents the summoning of suicide bombers to the arena that will move even while they're about to explode (not liek the necro bombers who stop before they explode.

if you choose path 2 the mechanical path by defeating the first mini boss you stop the anti intruder system from releasing poison gas into the area at random points, if you kill the next boss you stop the machine from unleashing the flame turrets on your party. (now the flame turrets will have to be destroyed once summoned unlike the poison dispenser)

if you take path 3 the abomination path killing the first boss stops the main abomination from absorbing it halfway through the fight augmenting it's skills to a harder variant. killing the second boss in this path would prevent the main abomination from calling upon it at random points to drop jail cages that if you get caught under immobilize you and your party has to break you out similar to titan.

now after every mini boss you can reach a jail cell that has a "secret tunnel" back to the starting zone so if you wanted to you could kill all 6 mini bosses before the main boss or for example only kill the first boss of each path go back hit the switch and go straight to boss.

yes people will speedrun or find the optimal bosses to kill but thats not the point if they choose to straight speedrun they are still challenged by an extremely hectic and difficult boss fight if they find the optimal bosses to kill they still ahve to interact with the dungeon to do it altogether there's alot of combinations you could try to make the boss as easy or hard as you want.