Longer dungeons or longer boss fights?

Playing through various MMO's there was always something that stood out between FFXI and others: Longer boss fights.

I think this was something I enjoyed greatly about the game. I really liked long difficult NM fights. I don't mean Pandy or AV taking 12+ hours. I mean a 1 hour long battle with a dragon.

I much prefer them over spending an hour going through an endgame dungeon with the majority of that time being spent on killing trash mobs or mini-bosses that go down in 4 minutes, just to be finished by a 10 minute end-boss fight.

So, this is a request that you stick with the trend of your NM battles, and occasionally expand on it into longer fights. While I would enjoy an occasional dungeon similar to Limbus or Salvage that finishes with a 10 minute boss fight, I would prefer the longer battles. It's a trend that has been through the FF series. Give us a Hell Wyrm, an Omega Weapon......maybe even a Yiazmat. Only one though.

Those monsters wouldnt be a bad idea... For when we are R70's or so :P. Redhorn Ogres are hard enough as it is

I think making an entertaining dungeon, including enemies in them and level design is just as important as the fight at the end. I dont think that the hour long boss fight is the answer though, while i do want a challenging boss fight, length of fight has little to do with the challenge. I do think that some bosses might be thematically appropriate with a long battle though, basically i think it should be decided by the type of boss and its theme, and i think thats the most important thing really

A baby hellworm, and a baby behemoth :)

I think a good balance would be nice. My idea for a truly fun dungeon/ancient ruins would include some puzzle solving, platforming, few "trash mobs" more for atmosphere(lets face it there should be some dangerous wildlife that has made it's home here or dragon kin if thats the boss that's waiting for you), maybe a mini boss or two, and the boss at the end (have an idea that would be cool for guild type dungeons that possibly wouldn't have a boss at all. You find a large artifact that benefits your entire guild and have to excavate it and have an airship come and haul it away to your guild/company.) The whole experience should take 1-3 hours (because I find that to be within most peoples tolerance). Over all you should feel like your exploring ancient caves and ruins with a lot of lore to learn about the world as your going along and not a chore.

in before a dungeon long as a full-extended dynamis with boss at the very end

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Originally Posted by yukikaze_yanagi

in before a dungeon long as a full-extended dynamis with boss at the very end

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No thanks. I vomited just a bit.

As long as you are actually encouraged to fight your way to the bottom. The one thing I didnt like about traversing XI dungeons in a full party was that you had to sneak by almost everything most of time.

Yes please...fight my way through a dungeon, and then fight a boss. Varying time commitments of the two...with both shorter and longer dungeons available and repeatable.

Also, multi-stage dungeons. Where you have to finish one level before unlocking the next level deeper. Mini-bosses on intermediate levels so that all content has value in repeating. (cough....I think I just described Diablo, but I've got no issues with SE stealing dungeon ideas from that game). Have low drop rates so that there is value in me repeating the dungeons, etc...Make it so that bosses can drop multiple interesting things - some more frequently and some rarely

Dungeons that are divided up into smaller sections so that you can do short or long runs, and interesting boss fights. Kind of like Dol Guldur in LotRO, to make a comparison.

I would like longer dungeons with various difficulty mobs in there - for example, vary it based on very easily disposable monsters, to some difficult mobs, to a couple mini bosses and then the final boss.

I like SE's boss fights in general. They have years and years of experience, and it shows. My only complaint is that in some games (specifically FFXI and XII) they take waaay too long. I'm all for challenging boss fights, and it's always satisfying to finally beat a boss after a few tries to figure out strategy. However, having to retry when dying after fighting for 50 minutes is maddening, and you're generally more likely to die near the end when the boss gets desperate, rather than the beginning, unless your group really needs work.

Besides that, I've had more than a few cases where the tank (well, I'm usually the tank) or healer d/cs or has something urgent come up in real life and disappears with no notice. The likelihood of that happening mid-fight obviously increases with longer fights. I'd rather have decent length dungeons, with sections if they're much longer than an hour so you don't have to rush through, in order to accommodate people who don't have Dynamis kind of time to spend in one sitting but still want to play the hardcore content. After all, many of us have been hardcore gamers for decades but have homework, jobs and/or kids to worry about, and that's not the same as being "casual."

I've said it before many times to my ls members in ffxi and I'll say it again here, taking a long time =/= difficulty. Take the Snoll Czar fight in CoP, very short fight but quite hard when it came out. I'm looking forward to the dungeons with excitement, though.

A good balance of both although I don't want to spend half the time in a dungeon killing trash mobs like many of WoWs dungeon. I prefer the trash we do kill to be fairly intimidating and have purpose and strategy of its own not just mindless numbers of fodder.