Remove the middle barrier in dungeons.

All modern dungeons are built like this: 2 packs, barrier, 2 packs, boss, repeat 3 times.
I think you should remove the middle barrier, let us pull all 4 packs until the boss instead, the middle barrier serves no real purpose.

I do miss wall-to-wall pulling in older dungeons.

They probably won't get rid of the wall, though--SE has made it perfectly clear that they'd rather be the ones railroading people, rather than have impatient party members doing it.

This will create more threads about how bad it is that healers have to work SO HARD to deal with the mobs AND the boss simultaneously.

No. No I don't think I want this. I just don't care for the consequences being more common than the runs that go perfectly fine.

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Originally Posted by UNDEAD10000

If they remove all barriers and allow pull all enemies until the boss area then lazy healers would whine for being forced to use healing skills, when there days it's very common to see healers that rather spam single DPS skill then heal party members.

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“Rather spam single DPS skill than heal party members”

Yeah because 2 packs put out SO MUCH damage

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

“Rather spam single DPS skill than heal party members”

Yeah because 2 packs put out SO MUCH damage

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They actually do, it's just tanks are gods. Yes, even Dark Knight. This is why they make Raid bosses auto attacks do +160k damage (reduced to roughly 60-70k per auto due to intrinsic passive mitigation every tank has which is 37% from armor and another 20% from Tank mastery trait)

Actually, it does serve a purpose.

Back in ARR, everything hit a lot harder. Tanks required the healer and the healer needed to be pretty good. It took way longer to kill enemies than it does now, and some jobs had no AoE (ie. Paladin), or it wasn't very high potency.

There weren't any of these walls, so you could actually pull all the way to the next boss. As a result, you had tanks sprint up to the boss, pulling as many packs as they could. Then they would immediately die. Then they would exit the dungeon without a word.

The dungeon I saw this with most was Snowcloak. Tanks just pulled it all, died, then left. You can try to argue that maybe a healer could have kept them alive, but the speed with which their HP bar dropped meant the majority of healers were unlikely to achieve this (I actually saw no healers achieve it). When doing a dungeon you rather need to aim at the "average healer", not the exceptional one.

This of course leads to toxicity when it goes wrong. "Tankxiety" is a very common thing people still experience (for some reason), but it made that anxiety worse because a tank had to decide how many to pull, and what if they decide wrong (which was often the case)? So it added extra anxiety on top of all the other things they were worried about.

That's why you suddenly see barriers added towards the end of ARR.

I do agree that an "average tank" could handle more packs now, at level 100, due to things like Bloodwhetting, but I don't think it's necessarily the solution. Making packs more fun would be better achieved by balancing the holy trinity out again so tanks rely more on the healer, and scaling the dungeon sync to feel as challenging as leveling dungeons ie. 91-99 dungeons. In those, at least there are pulls where a tank can actually die. It would also be better achieved by giving the packs interesting mechanics and things for the tank to interrupt.

Dungeons would be crazy easy then. We could go back to ye ol' face pulling tactic that was 1 dps pulls all mobs with sprint > party follows but does nothing to get emnity > dps dies in front of boss chamber > mobs deaggro, healer raises > boss x3 and done!

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Originally Posted by BlisteringFrost

They actually do, it's just tanks are gods. Yes, even Dark Knight. This is why they make Raid bosses auto attacks do +160k damage (reduced to roughly 60-70k per auto due to intrinsic passive mitigation every tank has which is 37% from armor and another 20% from Tank mastery trait)

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That doesn’t do anything to change the point

Whether 2 packs do enough damage but tanks ignore half it and heal the other half or 2 packs don’t do enough damage the point remains that you can’t really blame healers for being disengaged and spamming one button when their rotation puts them to sleep and the tank is doing their job for them

Would this change make healers have to heal; well outside of scaling healing on tanks that has gotten ridiculous yes it would. Is that remotely a bad thing; absolutely not, healers should be encouraged to heal

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Originally Posted by MicahZerrshia

Dungeons would be crazy easy then. We could go back to ye ol' face pulling tactic that was 1 dps pulls all mobs with sprint > party follows but does nothing to get emnity > dps dies in front of boss chamber > mobs deaggro, healer raises > boss x3 and done!

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You're missing the point, I only want the middle barrier removed, not the barrier to the boss room. You'd still have to clear the mobs before the boss room opens.

Agreed. People should be expected to mitigate, heal and DPS properly after running dungeons for a few hundred times. If a dungeon stays in Expert Roulette for 10 months, I see no reason for those invisible walls, especially when most parties have enough gear to powercreep everything. They can keep the walls for leveling dungeons.

Remove all barriers, go crazy, pull the entire dungeon

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Originally Posted by UNDEAD10000

Same problem is in boss fights too when as DPS i die quite often on bosses unavoidable AoE attacks due to healers simply won't heal party members most of the time and only focus on spamming single DPS skill.

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Again shocking the game that asks so little from healers you can clear all required content with a “press one macro” leads to disillusioned healers

You can’t solve the problem of disengagement by making the role redundant, that’s exactly the situation we are in right now

The boss shortcut thing really doesn't get along with no barriers. What's stopping me from doing most ARR dungeons where I pull all the mobs into the boss, die, let my entire party die- and then use the shortcut?

They suddenly had just let us do that in this expansion.

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Originally Posted by SalamanderIX

The boss shortcut thing really doesn't get along with no barriers. What's stopping me from doing most ARR dungeons where I pull all the mobs into the boss, die, let my entire party die- and then use the shortcut?

They suddenly had just let us do that in this expansion.

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If they added it, they can remove it.

Besides, I prefer to let people find their own fun. The Barriers are an example of wanting to curate a specific experience, but the thing is, that the specific experience is part of whats making it boring.
I have fond memories of the weird A Realm Reborn Dungeons, and the different ways we'd use the cross class skills to tackle obstacles. Like Variant dungeons are a good idea in concept, but in how they actually played it was rather disappointing.

I'd love it if Dungeons became places to explore, not just pick a b or c path.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

I'm reminded why I stick to NPCs these days, I just don't get the obsession over wall-to-wall pulls.

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tbh the desire to wall to wall is just a symptom, in my opinion. I think its probably that people are looking for excitement in the game. The Theme park style dungeons face the same problem that Theme-parks have with regulars : Ride Fatigue. People get used to the rides and they lose their novelty. Innovation might be expensive but the complaints at least show that there is some discomfort with the status quo. The older XIV had less of this issue because of the degree of options that players had, it used to be that you could choose which stats to put points in, which cross class skills to bring to a dungeon. The way one expressed their skill prevented things from getting stale, but the modern dungeon design has been the same at least since Shadowbringers, which is now at least two expansions ago.

allowing wall to wall pulls would allow some level of skill expression and I do think it would alleviate some of negativity.

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Originally Posted by SalamanderIX

The boss shortcut thing really doesn't get along with no barriers. What's stopping me from doing most ARR dungeons where I pull all the mobs into the boss, die, let my entire party die- and then use the shortcut?

They suddenly had just let us do that in this expansion.

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Two things:

- The shortcut only appears once the boss is dead. So the situation you're describing isn't realistic unless you did mean to kill the boss as well. In which case, why would you waste time dying? Just continue on as normal.

- You could make it so engaging the boss also pulls aggro from all leftover mobs in previous rooms. This could lead to a wipe depending on how spicy they wanna make it, or it can make it really fun for the supports suddenly having to scramble to grab aggro, deal with the incoming damage, DPS juggling killing the adds and dodging mechs, etc. (This could also become an intentional mechanic for some bosses, where they call enemies you previously saw out of reach). So people can handle dungeons in two ways: You run it normally and the boss won't be able to call on any/many mobs or you speedrun your way to the boss room and do one big, very spicy pull.

Incorrect. They changed the shortcut so it spawns as you pull the boss.

I don't think anybody is asking to remove the walls before the bosses themselves.
But yes since that recent change all those sub lvl50 ARR dungeons can suddenly be run exactly like you describe.

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Originally Posted by 0blivion

Incorrect. They changed the shortcut so it spawns as you pull the boss.

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Are we talking about the forced teleport into the arena, or literally a shortcut that spawns you after the boss is dead so, if you die, you don't have to do the walk of shame across the continent to get to the rest of the party?
If they changed it, why....????

Probably because people complained it was annoying to have to run through the whole segment before the boss they wiped at?

Don't even put a wall up at the boss. Let us run it all straight into the boss room if we want to.
It's bizarre that tanking at lower levels requires more balls than at the higher levels.

but then people would have to learn to judge for themselves how much they can pull.
and some people are very learn resistent xD.


but i agree. two packs are boring, remove some of the barriers.
this game is too much on tracks anyway, give us more power to decide for overselves, to be flexible again.

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Originally Posted by Avoidy

Don't even put a wall up at the boss. Let us run it all straight into the boss room if we want to.
It's bizarre that tanking at lower levels requires more balls than at the higher levels.

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This reminded me of that one sprout WAR in Cutter’s Cry from a week ago who dragged wall pulls into first boss & 3rd boss rooms. I’d like to think that they’re a legitimate sprout at tanking (no other tanks levels in search info). I was fairly surprised as the AST but nevertheless I accommodated their antics & we pulled through just fine.

Meanwhile the DNC spent more time typing “Oh boy…” ; “Noo please stop pulling mobs into boss room” ; and other flavor of discouragement to the behavior. I told them it’s fine, we pulled through anyway. Nobody died, we can carry on. They insisted “Well that’s not what most people do” while eating Chimera mechanics as they type their replies. I didn’t felt like arguing with inflexible minds so I just let it drop and thank the sprout for doing that, who later apologized because they did not read the chatbox when that was all happening.

These kind of inflexibilities to adapt accordingly, ISTG…

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

This reminded me of that one sprout WAR in Cutter’s Cry from a week ago who dragged wall pulls into first boss & 3rd boss rooms. I’d like to think that they’re a legitimate sprout at tanking (no other tanks levels in search info). I was fairly surprised as the AST but nevertheless I accommodated their antics & we pulled through just fine.

Meanwhile the DNC spent more time typing “Oh boy…” ; “Noo please stop pulling mobs into boss room” ; and other flavor of discouragement to the behavior. I told them it’s fine, we pulled through anyway. Nobody died, we can carry on. They insisted “Well that’s not what most people do” while eating Chimera mechanics as they type their replies. I didn’t felt like arguing with inflexible minds so I just let it drop and thank the sprout for doing that, who later apologized because she did not read the chatbox when that was all happening.

These kind of inflexibilities to adapt accordingly, ISTG…

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"Do it this way because it's the way everybody does it!!" is a violation of TOS.

"Hey, the way you're doing this is making me uncomfortable, could you adjust for me please?" is not a violation of the TOS.

That Dancer was the problem. Not the tank. (I'm just elaborating)

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Originally Posted by Avoidy

Don't even put a wall up at the boss. Let us run it all straight into the boss room if we want to.
It's bizarre that tanking at lower levels requires more balls than at the higher levels.

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I don't disagree in spirit, but that's the problem since it encourages people to pull everything to the boss, wipe, then teleport back to the boss. That's what you can currently do in sub lvl50 dungeons.

To fix this they'd probably need to make the mobs not return to their point of spawn and just stay there I guess :D

Dungeons are already overly streamlined, we don't need to make the problem worse.

Hot take, but mass pulling mobs, and blendering them with AOE attacks is not an interesting strategy, and dungeon being designed around this strategy is why they've become so stale. They're not being designed to foster fun gameplay, they're being designed to be completed as fast as as possible. If you really want to make trash interesting, look at what Variant/Criterion dungeons or even some alliance raid do with their trash.

Can we please just keep copying WoW, Yoshida?

People love running dungeons and raids in WoW.

People do not love running dungeons and raids in FF14. Maybe some people love the raids. But it's a vocal minority. Most of the playerbase in WoW raids. Most of the playerbase in FF14 does not.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

Hot take, but mass pulling mobs, and blendering them with AOE attacks is not an interesting strategy, and dungeon being designed around this strategy is why they've become so stale. They're not being designed to foster fun gameplay, they're being designed to be completed as fast as as possible. If you really want to make trash interesting, look at what Variant/Criterion dungeons or even some alliance raid do with their trash.

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Wall or no wall, pulling packs of mobs and blendering them is what every dungeon is. So I agree we need other types of encounters in dungeons, and in my opinion it should involve rewarding Exploration because thats kind of what made the idea of dungeons exciting in the early days of MMOs. tbh the modern dungeon isn't even really a dungeon usually, its more like... a series of encounters. Having TRUE dungeons that reward exploration as side content would be great.

I hate dungeons, but I like the raids... (most of the time)
I did like the variant dungeon trash mobs though, so I would probably be more inclined to do a dungeon with trash like that rather than running with my eyes closed mashing aoe aoe aoe while holding w until we reach a boss. Well, I guess at least dungeons are smooth or so streamlined that people can get in and out of there ASAP with as minimal friction as possible in some cases.

It's a "every time we've done something different, players just find the simplest and fastest method around the differences or outright avoid them, so we just made it simple for them."

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Originally Posted by mallleable

Hot take, but mass pulling mobs, and blendering them with AOE attacks is not an interesting strategy, and dungeon being designed around this strategy is why they've become so stale. They're not being designed to foster fun gameplay, they're being designed to be completed as fast as as possible. If you really want to make trash interesting, look at what Variant/Criterion dungeons or even some alliance raid do with their trash.

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It's a strategy that made more sense back when the game had systems others than dodge the bad and parties couldn't self heal through it by pressing a single button every 25s, because damage mitigation, aggro, positioning, pulling, gear and party resources actually mattered. If anything mob packs are a relic of the past.

But, if you want pretty creative and great examples of what they can do with mob packs look no further than criterions. And unlike the bosses that are ex/savage+ level, those packs are definitely manageable casually, even though the model would probably still need to be made easier for story level dungeons.

They'd be absolutely TERRIFIED of asking tank players to actually press buttons in dungeons, so its not going to happen even if it would be more fun.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

Hot take, but mass pulling mobs, and blendering them with AOE attacks is not an interesting strategy, and dungeon being designed around this strategy is why they've become so stale. They're not being designed to foster fun gameplay, they're being designed to be completed as fast as as possible. If you really want to make trash interesting, look at what Variant/Criterion dungeons or even some alliance raid do with their trash.

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This is literally what I mean. Turning dungeons into a meat grinder is the result of players just naturally falling into efficiency. Look at the VERY FIRST DUNGEON of the game. Sastasha has all sorts of side rooms, multiple mini-bosses, requires you to wander to deal with gimmicks. And what does everyone do once we see it? Skip 50% of the dungeon and just run through to the end. Then we did that same sequence every 2.0 base dungeon.

The devs could add all sorts of new quirks to dungeons again, but in a week the player base will either ignore it for a faster completion or complain that it's annoying.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Probably because people complained it was annoying to have to run through the whole segment before the boss they wiped at?

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Yeah, I understand that, but I always saw the teleport as the reward for killing the boss. As in, you're securing the dungeon as you go and obviously, the boss room with the boss still alive in there isn't a particularly secure spot to set up a teleport/aether current/whatever lore flavor they'd like to give it.

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Originally Posted by RedLolly

This is literally what I mean. Turning dungeons into a meat grinder is the result of players just naturally falling into efficiency. Look at the VERY FIRST DUNGEON of the game. Sastasha has all sorts of side rooms, multiple mini-bosses, requires you to wander to deal with gimmicks. And what does everyone do once we see it? Skip 50% of the dungeon and just run through to the end. Then we did that same sequence every 2.0 base dungeon.

The devs could add all sorts of new quirks to dungeons again, but in a week the player base will either ignore it for a faster completion or complain that it's annoying.

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OK, we need to stop laying blame at the feet of players for this. There is no reason to go through them and that lays completely on SE, not the players. There is no loot that is worth it nor do enemies yield exp anymore and those were the only 2 things dungeons used to have going for them. If SE would actually try to be creative and give us incentive to in these off areas, we wouldn't have these issues. We don't need "quirks" we need incentive. There has never been a reason to go into the side rooms of sastasha, and that is no ones fault but the ppl behind the desks at SE because they should have, on day 1, asked themselve "but why would the players want to go into these rooms?"

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

I'm reminded why I stick to NPCs these days, I just don't get the obsession over wall-to-wall pulls.

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Because the dungeons are incredibly mind numbingly boring easy and we want them done as fast as possible for the daily tomestones
if they made dungeons interesting maybe that would change

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

I'm reminded why I stick to NPCs these days, I just don't get the obsession over wall-to-wall pulls.

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Because no one likes like playing with characters that take forever to kill shit and for some dumb reason doesn't use AOE on mobs.

My main problem with dungeons in FF14 is how formulaic and same-y they are. Sure, they may be visually diverse and pleasing to look at, and the boss fights are usually fun and diverse, but the core gameplay loop is always:

* Clear trash to first barrier
* Clear trash to first boss
* Kill first boss
* Clear trash to second barrier
* Clear trash to second boss
* Kill second boss
* Clear trash to third barrier
* Clear trash to third boss
* Kill third boss

Contrast that with the dungeons in WoW, which have far more diversity in their gameplay. Layouts are far more varied, and require you to be strategic in how you approach them. Even the trash has special mechanics that you have to handle, and more fun and interesting to deal with.

Full disclosure, I am an active mythic+ dungeon player in WoW, and I have timed +10 keys in all dungeons in the current season.

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Originally Posted by MicahZerrshia

OK, we need to stop laying blame at the feet of players for this. There is no reason to go through them and that lays completely on SE, not the players. There is no loot that is worth it nor do enemies yield exp anymore and those were the only 2 things dungeons used to have going for them. If SE would actually try to be creative and give us incentive to in these off areas, we wouldn't have these issues. We don't need "quirks" we need incentive. There has never been a reason to go into the side rooms of sastasha, and that is no ones fault but the ppl behind the desks at SE because they should have, on day 1, asked themselve "but why would the players want to go into these rooms?"

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Yes, although there used to be a reason to go to side room which was mob xp. This conflicted with roulette players that were potentially running very low level dungeons comparatively to their true job level, and only the roulette rewards made said dungeons worthwhile. This meant that the only objective for roulette players was completion in the fastest time possible, unlike for someone running said dungeon at their actual job level that would greatly benefit from additional mob xp from side rooms.

In their usual fashion SE decided in ShB to remove all mob xp and condense it behind bosses and checkpoints instead of actually addressing the issue: they could perfectly have had the leveling roulette also make up for individual mob xp rewards by adding a multiplier, much like it already does for the roulette completion. Now of course all those additional rooms have been made truly worthless, and are just there to taunt first timers that might run into them by mistake.