Minty Suggestions for Dungeon Design

[Sylvain]

Optional Routs:

As you pointed, the meta would pick apart the best route which goes against the whole "route system"

I can also see two main issue with such a system.
First: Unless you're the tank or party with a tank friend, you might never see, or very rarely see , the less effective route as player will always want to go for the best one. Assuming you do want to go the alternate path and say you won't go the main path, if you're the tank, you'll probably not be kicked, but if you're a dps it'll either be "follow the groupe or get kicked".
This could result in very toxic situation and it is very important to realise that it would happen.


Second: It would cost the devs a lot of developpement time depending on how significant the alternative route is. If it's a long route, then it's a lot of wasted developpement time, if it's 1-2 boss at most, then what's the point anyway?


A solution I see would be that there are various path but you have no control over which one you can go through. The said dungeon would have the main path diverge after the first boss death leading to path A or B with 3 unique bosses to each.
While there could be a better path, removing player's control would solve the issue and basically bring some randomness.

Skill based Options:

I'm not even sure the game can currently register your job level if you're not in the said job. Assuming they'd include the functionnality.
I don't really see the point. It would basically be "if you're unlucky enough to have no one in your group with max (or high) job skill, then you have to get through X annoying things", if you do, it's not here.

Very few players actually have crafting job maxed and if they do it's usually one one for the crafting trybe. If a maxed level isn't required then what's the point anyway? Leveling a crafting job until 60 is currently trivial and takes a couple of weeks of dailies. Only 60-70 will be hard as 50-60 was hard before the introduction of the moogle.
I don't believe the community would respond well to such a thing.

Environmental Hazards:

Well, this one could be interesting depending on how it is executed. But many dungeons already have, to some extent, such mechanics.

Parkour:

This is again a very Dangerous idea. If you have for instance to split your group into two and have them do different task than what they are usually meant to do, you better be sure everyone knows how to do it.
Also, from my small experience, I've noticed that player tend to be more annoyed than anything from bosses having immunity moment where you have to wait for an event or trigger Something specific to make the fight goes on. The problem with such things is that it tend to break the flow of the fight. Of course, I don't say by any mean that there's no way this could be well done. I see plenty of situation where it could be well done. But making players drifts from their primary role (tank dps heal) tend to be more annoying than anything else.

A good example would be Niddhog at the end of. I forgot the dungeon name XD, that lv 54 place. The healer has to keep the group AND Estinien alive, this was an interesting twist. Another fun one was in WoW Frozen Citadel, there was a boss that had to be healed. Basically, the "dps" were the healers. This could also be an interesting twist.

Hidden/Super Bosses:

This is definitely Something I'd like to see SE include. BUT
The problem with hidden is that they're optional, and you fall to the alternate path problem where if the tank doesn't want to go (or if most of the party doesn't care) you can't go. On the other hand, you can force them to go by giving great reward, but then, they're not really "hidden" and become mandatory.
The reward cannot only be an achievement as after 1-2 weeks no body will bother doing it again.

So if you want to really have a special boss granting good rewards, then my best bet would be to make them
1- require specific event to occure to unlock them
2- These boss have a limited amount of attemp

Assuming you give reward that will always make player want to down the boss and you want to keep the boss "hidden" then you must add a requirement.

Some specific requirement could be
1- Reaching the last boss in a specific amount of time
2- Having no one die during the course of the dungeon (put new player at risk from toxic players)
3- Preventing some bosses to trigger some event or destroy some element during their fight.

My favorite one would however be to simply make that the last boss, on the first try, can enter a second very powerful phase should you click on a mechanism before the fight (Like WoW Mimiron's Big Red Button). This mechanism could only be activated once giving the party only one shot.
Should your party wipe, you cannot attemp the special second phase again.
This would also be interesting in the sens that some fight tend to be Dangerous over the duration.
For instance, the magmacrab is Dangerous if your dps is very low, giving him a second phase, could make the whole fight dynamic very different as you'd need to manage the lava puddle for much longer (so you need to put them very well)