Will we ever see group content that isn't a dungeon on rails?

[Unaki]

I know we got Hamlet Defense in 1.0 but that was just...poop. I want something like Besieged or Pankration.

[Colt47]

Everytime I see one of these topics, I'm reminded of what people wanted out of the original FFXIV and what they were given.

Like how every time I read your quote on the bottom of your post I come to the realization we need to take what is officially stated with a bit of skepticism?

[Dotsusama]

What you want exists in several single-player games, and you say you want this now until you get caught in Duty Finder with a player who absolutely does not want to go the route you want to go in and then you have to wait 5 minutes to be able to vote them out.

[Hundred]

How about a dungeon builded up as a maze. With secret chambers and moving stairs.

Unless its randomly generated the moment the path is found out everyone will be expected to follow that path or que bm.

[Fendred]

Blackrock Depths was dope. It was a dungeon that gave you the sense of a fully articulated city. It even had a central hub in the form of the bar. You could end up getting into trouble if you attacked one of the neutral customers, but it was otherwise safe until you activated the golem to go deeper. It was a very flexible setup.

[Vejjiegirl]

I would love to see a return of Hamlet Defense Battle content for both DoH/DoL/DoM/ and DoW!

Like for example what if we need to survive a dragon assault on ishgard or one of the vigil, and then not only have to repair the defenses but fight on the front line as well against a hoard of some kind!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gkbm3VrAnKA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHSi5tHwosU

[Scruffyx]

I truly believe the game Yoshi P has in his head is not the game we are playing. He has to cater to too many complainers so he can't make the game he wants to make. If we would just shut up and let him make the game he wants to make I bet we would have a lot of this cool stuff.

[fortuona]

The problem is, the Devs are perfectly capable of making a dungeon like that.
But the Players wont let them.

What do i mean? Simple, Players want the biggest reward for the least time invested. Hence the speedrunning and the general view that trash mobs are pure wastes of time (even when they give great XP).
Players these days want to get in, get their loot/currency and get out so they can go back in and get more loot/currency.
Generally speaking, Players don't want long Dungeons unless the reward for doing it is significantly better than any of the shorter Dungeons. But even then, Players will math out the most efficient dungeon for xp per hour and everyone will do that.

TLD;DR, Devs can make better dungeons, but players dont want them. They want short, sharp highly rewarding runs they can blast through.

it saddens me greatly that you might be entirely right about this. why bother if people are satisfied with the same generic routine.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Directionally challenged players had a very "fun" time finding their way to where they needed to be and I know one elderly Guild Leader I had could never find his way around.

This reminds me of the developer commentary for Half Life 2: Episode 2 where they told the story of a play tester literally going in circles for 30 minutes inside a cave. Valve decided to make areas more linear because of it and both Left 4 Dead games are all about running down a linear path every time.

[Murakami7]

Blackrock Depths was my favorite, waaay back in the day. Large open plan Dungeon with trash packs that required crowd control (or an amazing tank) and intelligent pulling.
Very few PuG parties ever managed to clear the whole thing. When i got my first clear (6 levels above intended) it felt amazing, i still have the screenshot of the group i did it with.

The problem is, the Devs are perfectly capable of making a dungeon like that.
But the Players wont let them.

What do i mean? Simple, Players want the biggest reward for the least time invested. Hence the speedrunning and the general view that trash mobs are pure wastes of time (even when they give great XP).
Players these days want to get in, get their loot/currency and get out so they can go back in and get more loot/currency.
Generally speaking, Players don't want long Dungeons unless the reward for doing it is significantly better than any of the shorter Dungeons. But even then, Players will math out the most efficient dungeon for xp per hour and everyone will do that.

I love dungeon crawls. Fighting my way through a Dungeon packed to the gills with nasties, trying to find my way through the labyrinth of corridors and tunnels and even just attempting to locate the boss is all fun to me.
But whats fun for me is the most boring drudgery you could ever inflict upon certain others.

I made a post a while back, several i think, about making a kind of randomly generated dungeon (layout, tileset, monster types even bosses on utilizing completely random mechanics from other bosses) whose difficulty in ilvl scaled higher per "floor" you clear.
I know i would spend all day in such a thing, as my would my FC mates. But unless you put some raid quality gear in there, not many others would be interested because "it takes too long for too little reward"

TLD;DR, Devs can make better dungeons, but players dont want them. They want short, sharp highly rewarding runs they can blast through.

The players ruin everything. Screw the players. :P

The Dev team has to cater to so many different play styles if they want to retain players and recruit new ones. We only just got endgame raiding that caters to casual and hardcore players in the form of Alexander Story / Savage.

Maybe as time goes we will start to see new dungeons added that take a little longer, are a little more challenging but the rewards are increased. Then dungeons would be catered to those who only have time for a quick 20 minute dungeon run for their daily tomes and those can spare a bit more time. With how knowledgeable Yoshi-P is about gaming and the mmo genre in general, I'm sure he has a ton of ideas for the game. Implementing them in the right way is the hard part. Let's see what 3.1 brings us.