Deep Dungeons & Variants: Making them Evergreen? (beyond just adding more)

Basically, I was contemplating content I enjoy a bit though don't touch much lately. When SE wants to bring more attention to these aspects of the game, they simply 'add more of them', be it deep dungeon or variants.

Which is all well and good, but (and FATES fall into this too), I think it'd be more exciting if it was evergreen. Rewards could be added to a pool, perhaps, earnable by currency you earn from doing these dungeons.

They could be added on a regular basis; a system like PvP, where they do (well... on occasion, moreso lately which is fun) add to the vendor consistently to buy things for crystals, or do their seasons where you PvP quite a bit until eventually getting a reward (of which in the far future will be added to the vendor, but you get it much earlier). I know PotD got some additional rewards at some point, but that was specifically for itself and not very common/has been added to since.

Stuff like that could be a lot of fun and make there be a point to going back to doing these things even if you've already collected all the rewards.

Say you really like HoH (like me XD) but aren't really interested in the rewards. If it had a currency like crystals or general 'deep dungeon' seasons (and this could be for variants or combined with them too!) you could go do HoH for it, it'd be content you could choose from a variety of those options.

Anyway, just a random thought, I'm someone who is excited when rewards are added to content I already enjoy but expected never to get updated.

(doing this for FATES or similar would be nice too, I wish FATES got a bit of a rework, at least the older ones that there's little point to doing)

The issue is really that they design content with a shelf-life in the first place.

It is possible to design content that is simply fun to do, so you keep doing it because you just enjoy it. In almost any multiplayer game, PvP is an example of this - it's different everytime, therefore you can keep doing it. That's because PvP is the easiest way to make it different every time. But any content that involves interacting with other players can be like this. If the content is not designed to involve other players from the ground up, in a way to modifies the experience every time, then it will be the same every time - which is the problem in FFXIV.

To give an, crafting can be fun if you can't sell some of it on the market board, so players have to come up and ask for your help to craft it. If you have to put in effort to obtain the materials, such as slaying dangerous enemies on your own and navigating to dangerous areas to gather, where your Sneak ability doesn't work and you have to actually watch enemy patrols to gather.

Chocobo Racing and Triple Triad (against other players) are examples of really fun gamemodes. I've been able to to enjoy Verminion against other players as well, but obviously nobody does that.

Beast master could be fun it has any depth (and this is a big if). Maybe you could raise beasts for other players, and there you go, another piece of content that involves interacting with other players.

That's fair; I do like doing this content with friends, even with one or two is nice as compared to needing more for the bigger raids. In PvP they do have currency and incentive to keep doing it, beyond it just being fun. I dunno, I'm a big 'rewards' person, but the things I do a lot that don't technically have any tangible 'reward' other than fun are RP, house design, and gposing. The content I do love to do just doesn't have anything that rewarding (imo), and since they keep adding new instances of it, I figured there had to be a group that does enjoy doing it somewhat frequently.

As for Beast Master, yeah I don't know what to expect, I hope it's something like you say. That could be a bit fun, combining it as group play with individual. I really hope Beast Master is something special, as I love that sort of thing to death. But with very very little information... urgh. I wish we had more of an idea of what's coming on that end. It's one of my all time favorite class specs from WoW, where you could go out into the world and tame a companion to fight with you, and your rotation depended upon that.

With this being a limited job...who knows, and I don't know much about BM in the FF franchise.

I think the level 90 variant dungeons should give more exp or a lot of both tomes when running at level cap.

Same problem with treasure dungeons. You can't unsync them, people rarely ever want to run them as-is outside of the latest one somewhat. You CAN solo them on some jobs extremely slowly with the same horrible success rate on doors as a full PT.

Something like this would benefit Chaotic as well. If they added Jet Black Dye as a possible drop from Cloud of Darkness it would keep people interested indefinitely, since people are always going to want Jet Black Dye. Maybe there could be "seasons" where special drops like this are added for a limited time to focus players into said content and make it easier to find parties.

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Originally Posted by Doki

Same problem with treasure dungeons. You can't unsync them, people rarely ever want to run them as-is outside of the latest one somewhat. You CAN solo them on some jobs extremely slowly with the same horrible success rate on doors as a full PT.

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Unsyncing treasure dungeons would make their shelf life worse by devaluing the rewards and allowing people to easily solo them.

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Originally Posted by Underscore

Something like this would benefit Chaotic as well. If they added Jet Black Dye as a possible drop from Cloud of Darkness it would keep people interested indefinitely, since people are always going to want Jet Black Dye. Maybe there could be "seasons" where special drops like this are added for a limited time to focus players into said content and make it easier to find parties.



Unsyncing treasure dungeons would make their shelf life worse by devaluing the rewards and allowing people to easily solo them.

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I don't mind them being synced since it gives blue mage somthing to do with basic instinct but I do think they and all content should give a ton of tomes. Tomes are way to slow and restrictive to farm with how many i need to gear my off jobs.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

The issue is really that they design content with a shelf-life in the first place.

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It's a massive problem, and one that has somehow attached itself to the concept of MMO's. So many are presented as living breathing immersive worlds and then offer amusement park ride content.

I'm a broken record at this point but more variety and uncertainty in encounters would improve content significantly.

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Originally Posted by PyurBlue

I'm a broken record at this point but more variety and uncertainty in encounters would improve content significantly.

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You're absolutely right

As a lover of Deep Dungeons, I'd love if they had more longevity (except Eureka Orthos, Raha needs to clean out his own basement, preferably with a nuke). I like the idea of them periodically adding something to buy with potsherds or other DD currencies a lot.

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Originally Posted by PyurBlue

It's a massive problem, and one that has somehow attached itself to the concept of MMO's. So many are presented as living breathing immersive worlds and then offer amusement park ride content.

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It's because MMO players are by their nature motive-driven. The initial Variant Savage were seen as bad content not because of anything they did as instances, but because their rewards were seen as poor, it didn't matter how they actually played, even if they had been the most innovative and fun content in the game, they would still have been seen as failures due to the lack of rewards, and this is what prevents content from ever being evergreen, the moment their rewards fall off, the content falls off.

The only content that has been immune to that effect in the game are Relic grinds, where the main reward is ultimately the look of a flashy weapon, and Ultimates, whose reward is seen more as the prestige and experience... and also a flashy weapon glam, so any time the reward is too material in nature, usually bigger damage number, in any game whatsoever not just limited to MMOs, that content falls off, and other than a handful of evangelists that keep the content some degree of alive, most everyone moves on.

Even I am not immune to that effect, the reason I don't care about most Ultimates is because I think the reward weapons are gaudy and ugly, so they feel like they will be a huge effort for no payoff to me.

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Originally Posted by VeyaAkemi

It's because MMO players are by their nature motive-driven. The initial Variant Savage were seen as bad content not because of anything they did as instances, but because their rewards were seen as poor, it didn't matter how they actually played, even if they had been the most innovative and fun content in the game, they would still have been seen as failures due to the lack of rewards, and this is what prevents content from ever being evergreen, the moment their rewards fall off, the content falls off.

The only content that has been immune to that effect in the game are Relic grinds, where the main reward is ultimately the look of a flashy weapon, and Ultimates, whose reward is seen more as the prestige and experience... and also a flashy weapon glam, so any time the reward is too material in nature, usually bigger damage number, in any game whatsoever not just limited to MMOs, that content falls off, and other than a handful of evangelists that keep the content some degree of alive, most everyone moves on.

Even I am not immune to that effect, the reason I don't care about most Ultimates is because I think the reward weapons are gaudy and ugly, so they feel like they will be a huge effort for no payoff to me.

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I mean, Criterion Savage didn't just fail because of the missing rewards but also because it was completely unneeded.
People wanted normal mode -> Hard -> Savage (I still remember the comments before the very first Variant dungeon came out), especially at the time of the EW dungeons, but instead we got Normal -> Savage -> Ultimate.
The missing rewards simply resulted in the extremely small bubble of customers for it shrinking even more, no amount of reward could have saved it to a noticeable extent.
No matter how much some people like to build up Ultimate as that big thing that gets millions to Twitch, the highest difficulty content will always be a niche in any game but somehow the casual MMO had forgotten that until 7.2 (with the stain of Forked Tower) and ignored large part of it's playerbase until then.

Reics were evergreen before EW brought in the anti grinders and changed the usual casual grind content into a semi one, resulting in it's identity crisis it has now.
Unless they accept that Relics by nature were content for those who liked grinds, they will never again be evergreen.

It's ironic, they intend to fix it and give an intermediate hard (advanced) difficulty for criterions, but removed all trash. The only dungeon trash that was remotely interesting in the whole game.

What a sick joke.

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Originally Posted by Underscore

Unsyncing treasure dungeons would make their shelf life worse by devaluing the rewards and allowing people to easily solo them.

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As opposed to nobody doing them, I think giving the option would actually be an improvement.