Dungeons are in dire need of redesign

[Jirah]

Listen, if you make it optional corridors, people will straight up ignore everything but the most optimal route. Because people don't want puzzle dungeons, which are novel the first time and then annoying after. They want to get done with the dungeon.

So the point of dungeons is filler? Why even play a game where the majority of its content is to “get done with it”

[Hasrat]

So the point of dungeons is filler? Why even play a game where the majority of its content is to “get done with it”

Skinner box.

Partly true. But also, the whole point of, "Ok, I enjoyed this once, maybe a few times already, now I'm just trying to grind for levels, the novelty has worn off, this is just a chore now."

Novelty is great. When it's novel. But eventually, the novelty wears off. And this is an MMORPG. Some amount of grinding is necessary, for whatever your goal. Given the option of making that grind be either a chore or a breeze, bit of a no-brainer what most would pick.

[Blanchimont]

Part of the reason why full clears are no longer a thing is because people used to farm early sections of dungeons for experience repeatedly and ignore the rest of it. To fix this, they concentrated the experience into bosses and since then, people have stopped full clearing because neither the loot nor the mobs were worth it. The Aurum Vale was subject to this and some people still do it with Doma Castle once in a while.

[RoyalBeef]

Obviously no one is going to want to mess around in a leveling roulette for 45 mins completing puzzles,....

The main cause for many game design problems these days is people wanting to play an MMO without actually playing an MMO. Whining about this and that taking 5 minutes later. Honestly, if you log on and queue up for a roulette despite only having like 20 minutes of time, that's your personal problem ^^

[Mimilu]

If I'm remembering correctly, someone asked about this during one of recent Fanfests' Q&A.
They said that, while they would like to make more interesting dungeons, dungeons are where they send new battle-design devs to learn the ropes before sending them off to other battles, like raids and trials.

[KohakuTribal]

Yeah puzzles can get annoying, but it's still possible to do things differently to breath some life into the dungeons. Qarn is a great example. It has personality! And bonus points for FFXII nostalgia. Bardam's Mettle 2nd boss is another great example. It's still a boss on the corridor chain, but far from the traditional tank-n-spank. It's fun! 2.0 dungeons seemed to have more environmental interaction boss fights that were challenging and fun. Aurum Vale and picking up the item to drop debuff stacks. Hiding behind statues to drop tethers. Interact with lanterns to stop the AOE. Load up the rockets to pummel the boss. Drag the mobs beneath the spike ball to damage and debuff. Maybe I'm wrong here, but newer stuff seems like a lot of tank-n-spank with a lot of dodge and stack mechanics. The most interesting thing I can think of off the top of my head is the tightrope part of a final boss in 5.0 stuff (don't wanna drop any spoilers).

I know some people think puzzles and boss fights with gimmicks are annoying, but I think they're more fun than "burn it all as fast as humanly possible." I'm always sad when older content becomes so easy that you can burn through every mechanic. Behemoth in CT for example. It's a joke now. New players aren't getting the full experience of that content unless they queue with ONLY other newbies. It also makes me sad for the developers who spent so much time designing the encounters. It's fine if older content gets easier to clear over time, but like.....so much so that core mechanics are skippable or ignorable altogether?

I am bummed that current dungeon mobs are just zerg and AOE. It's so boring and brainless. It'd be more interesting if there were more enemy types that had burn priority. So much so that killing that one mob in the pack is more important than AOEing the group all at once. Bees with Final Sting comes to mind, but that's pretty tired by now. Even swapping packs of mobs out for single, strong enemies would be a nice change now and then.

[CaptainLagbeard]

3-8 trash mobs- - - Boss - - - 3-8 trash mobs- - - - Boss - - - 3-8 trash mobs- - - Boss

Shadowbringers Dungeon design in a nutshell
4 Trash pulls, then a Boss, repeated 3 times. No exceptions.

Trashmobs are more damage sponges than anything, and the bosses all have pretty much just 3 attacks that they just repeat in order.

[Avenger]

Nobody likes Toto-rak, but it is one of the few dungeons in the game with more than one path...

[Rongway]

Qarn is actually a decent example. Not only with those block enemies but also gathering up the masks to unlock additional rooms/boss room.

Qarn is a great example of why we don't have more interesting dungeons.

Once people figured out it's faster to skip the two groups guarding tablets and just deal with the one group of extra ghosts at the end, a lot of people stopped taking the time to pick up tablets.

[Acesfool]

I've yet to play any MMO that the dungeons weren't linear paths to the bosses. Yeah, sometimes they come up with something a little different. I remember WoW having the dungeon that was like an arena and you could end up with different bosses each time you ran it. Except I believe the final boss was always the same. But overall they're pretty much the same. One idea I think would be doable would be to have a chance for an NPC to appear who assists the boss in some way. Maybe provides some healing or shielding for the boss. Nothing too extreme but enough to require some extra effort. This would grant an extra piece of loot and/or exp.