Unpopular Opinion: Dungeon design has been bad for a long time

[Critical-Limit]

Trash can be interesting. And threatening. Look at IT monsters in FF11 open world dungeons. You have to enfeebled them, usually if you’re fighting two cuz Aggro, you could risk dying and it’s ideal to sleep the other one, or bind or gravity and kite. And while maintaining the battle with one, gotta keep up enfeebled, dispel OP moves away. Stun dangerous moves, re-sleep the monster about to wake up. Trash was interesting.
Not saying we should be like 11. But I think if ffxiv wanted to they could make dangerous trash. Think PotD difficulty.

[Hawklaser]

The people who say they want large massive dungeons like WoW. . .I will borrow a quote I keep seeing pop up on their forums (paraphrasing) 'You think you do but you don't'. Having went back to Legion after being given a week free of game time (and I think even Legion cause I guess they wanted people to come back), the dungeons were pretty but boring as hell in terms of navigating it (I honestly don't remember a lot of the bosses). They were huge with lots of side rooms, mobs, and areas to explore but guess what? No one cared.

Want to go explore an area that has nothing to do with getting to the boss or has extra mobs? Better do it on ya own or with people you are in a guild with because the moment one extra mob is pulled the rest of the group will explode on you for pulling more mobs than needed and not skipping them to get to the boss.

Sorry, but I do still want larger more massive dungeons. I loved having to navigate through Fei Yin, Davoi, Beadeaux, Castle Zhval, Castle Oztroja, Delkfut's Tower, and pretty much all of sky, sea, and promyvion stuff from XI. With and without using sneak/invis. A lot of the time in XI you had to explore those kinda places looking for some ??? mark located somewhere for a quest, that potentially would also spawn a boss strength mob.

Having the option to explore or take a different path in a dungeon isn't bad design. If anything, the gravitation to the most efficient path through a dungeon and lashing out at any who dare deviate is a community problem.

There are ways it could be done to encourage the optional paths and nooks to be explored more often, but as many pointed out you have to overcome the hurdles created by the super efficient instant gratification seeking crowd that seem to be the ones with the biggest influence on dungeon consumption habits and design.

[Barraind]

It doesn't even need to be pathing freedom though. Just including mobs that have to be interrupted or CC'd, or else things get hairy fast, would be appreciated.

They cant put more than one of those every so often, because they "cant require" you to have specific dps, so they can only count on you having a tank.

I don't see why optional 4-man content can't be made more involved.

The short answer is that they seem to want to greatly homogenize the roles while keeping a difference between 3 dps types. And since they have an aversion to making things mechanically disparate while not wanting to force people to make decisions on what classes/roles they take to group level content, they wont put encounters in that content that requires more than a basic "someone should press a button now" every so often.



Classic MMO group, dungeon and raid philosophy is dead, at least as far as 14 is concerned. Theres a whole lot of good we lost in that killing too.

The people who say they want large massive dungeons like WoW. . .I will borrow a quote I keep seeing pop up on their forums (paraphrasing) 'You think you do but you don't'. Having went back to Legion after being given a week free of game time (and I think even Legion cause I guess they wanted people to come back), the dungeons were pretty but boring as hell in terms of navigating it (I honestly don't remember a lot of the bosses). They were huge with lots of side rooms, mobs, and areas to explore but guess what? No one cared.

You can implement dungeon crawls without making pointless hallways with only unrewarding trash.

EQ has managed it for 20 years.

Have optional paths that lead to an area with a chance to fight a miniboss that can drop maps or grade 8 craft/gather materia. Or a chunk of tomes. Or rare craft materials. Or old instance-drop only orchestrion rolls, minions, or housing stuff. Not guaranteed to spawn, but sometimes hey, bonus for exploring.


The biggest problem with ARR's side rooms is that theres nothing there, or you get a chest with potions that were outdated back in ARR at the level they dropped. That era of chest loot was horrendous.

[Hezzlocks]

Huge sprawling dungeons are fun to explore, yes... but only for the first few times. Once you've explored it all and know where everything is, you just want to get what you want out of it and get out. I've also done the hours long Blackrock Depths full clear in vanilla. It was fun. But I only did it a couple of times, beyond that I'd just get a group and do the bosses the group wanted, no more.

Is it fair to the newer players who want to explore? No, no it isn't. But that's human nature for you, the path of least resistance will ALWAYS be the most favorable.

And FF14 tried this back in ARR. Look at how many dungeons in ARR have split paths and optional side rooms. The very first dungeon, Satasha, has several side rooms, most with treasure chests in them. Guess how many people clear those side rooms? None. Doesn't help those treasure chests have a lot of useless junk in em, but there was also flavorful world building in those rooms, including a large cell where the pirates kept their wenches.

I wanted to explore those rooms when I first played FF14, but of course i never did with a group. I came back later unsynced and alone, did my exploring, thought to myself "neat" then never cared about it again. Such content is a huge waste of time and resources, as a very large portion of the playerbase will never even see it.

Dungeon design could be changed up from time to time, like I loved the change of pace with Bardhams Mettle 2nd boss, but sprawling dungeons isn't the way. Find other ways. Just god no not WoWs M+, I despise the racing the clock design that promotes cheesing as much as you can so that you do the bare minimum and not a thing more. Suicide runs from boss 2 to boss 3 to skip all of the "unnecessary" trash should never be an optimal strategy

[Destati]

Honest question - how many people here actually have the "Mapping the Realm: Sastasha" achievement? I ask because it was actually a year or two after I started playing until I got it myself. As I was going through on an unsynced run trying to fill in the map I came across several rooms branching off the Dead Man's Drink area that I had never seen during my regular runs, and likely never would have had I not gone out of my way to unlock the achievement. Nobody really ventures off the beaten in there, and I can't imagine I'm the only one who was missing part of Sastasha's map, so I recommend you check to see if you have that achievement marked off.

That being said, as much as I hate the ARR dungeons for their mechanics coughcoughCopperhellandMyNeighborToto-rakcough, getting them in roulettes all the time coughTam-Taracough, and not having access to my whole kit, the one thing I can appreciate them for in retrospect is how nonlinear they were and the different paths and rooms they offered. It feels like you're really exploring a dungeon and going on an adventure, and sometimes I wish the newer dungeons were like that.

As I've said people will rarely go off the quickest path, but that doesn't mean there aren't people who do that from time to time. I've certainly had a few runs in Tam-tara and Toto-rak with sprouts who wanted to search every room.

[Kaethra]

I'm going to have to agree about the sprawling dungeon aspect.

They're wonderful the first time you do them AND if you are in a group who likewise are in their first run. But if any of those are not true, someone's experience is getting wacked. And ultimately much of the effort is wasted time and resources.

The dungeon design aesthetically in ShB IMO is well done. Though Qitana Ravel and Malikah's Well are a tad bit bland. But the pathing and pacing of the dungeons are fine. My biggest issue is the wall to wall pulling. I don't have a problem with the practice itself. I have a problem with the fact it is the go to on every section of every dungeon.

As I said before I would like to see the introduction of dangerous npcs that make wall to wall pulling.. well I won't say impossible. But lets just say it makes it risky. Mobs in each group that can inflict high damage periodically to their target or the group if not CC'd, interrupted, or burned down first. And pulling more than one could be disastrous. Or mobs that can CC members of the party meaning the risk of a healer getting sleeped and causing issues in a large pull could make it interesting.

Again you can still wall to wall in these situations. But you would want to coordinate group member abilities to make sure it works. Something like telling the dancer/bard/machinist to target a mob and AOE but keep that mob targeted so they can use their interrupt to make sure the healer doesn't get CC'd randomly. Or tell the DPS to burn down high damage targets first with ST abilities. Something a bit more than everyone hitting 2 buttons to AOE everything down. I want a challenge, I want strategy.

Maybe even have more mini-bosses. Boss like encounters that don't drop loot (maybe tomestones though, that'd be cool), but may offer alternate paths to groups of mobs or debuffs on the final boss.

[DonovanLifeweaver]

1. Dungeons include, but are not limited to, leveling content. What of level-cap dungeons?
2. Tutorials tend to add elements of difficulty cumulatively with the intent of expanding practical knowledge and means of engagement. Dungeons do not have cumulative difficulty, but instead regress and leap arbitrarily, with no provable accordant learning purpose over their course, only via select dungeons.

dont forget tot ake into account that modern mmo players = if i cant dps race it, its not fun.
they are level capped for a good reason.
i would have pitied you so much in velketors labyrinth, karnors castle or kitikhor woods ate night.....
and i agree with kaethra we need to see a masive return on crowd control, pullers and social monsters who flee to all for extra help, and a nerf into the dps race addicted players <3
and thats why semantic based complains are never taken into account.

[seraseth]

I'm going to have to agree about the sprawling dungeon aspect.
They're wonderful the first time you do them AND if you are in a group who likewise are in their first run. But if any of those are not true, someone's experience is getting wacked. And ultimately much of the effort is wasted time and resources.

That's why any 'sprawling' or exploratory dungeons should be their own thing and not in roulette. Leave roulette as the 'burn to boss, get your tomes and get out' runs for those who want that. And have the bigger, more randomized dungeons as their own unique thing. They can have their own rewards, could also have tomes, but have the tomes as a per boss thing, so if you skip half the side sections, you don't get all the tomes/shinies. Randomizing what hallways are open, as well as what's found at the end of them also prevents calculating the 'optimal' path. Different sections of the dungeons could use assets from different places to cut down on dev cost. Have the dungeon piece parts together like lego.

Some halls could lead to a normal boss for more tomes/rewards, some might lead to a superboss (that you might wanna skip, if your current party doesn't seem equipped for it), some might lead just to treasure (rare mats, minions, mounts, orchestrion, etc).

Not knowing how each run will play out would keep things fun, and as long as the rewards are worthwhile (and per boss, not for 'finishing' the dungeon, to encourage more exploration than zerging) I think it could keep people entertained for ages.

[Arazehl]

The way it used to work in Everquest and early World of Warcraft (prior to Lich King) is you would have static groups of mobs tactically placed in a way that meant pulling them was part of the challenge.

Aye I remember the early days of Everquest. You had to work to get to the final boss. We called it clearing trash. It was a skill to pull selected trash mobs, mainly done by a monk who could feign death, just to get a selected few mobs to bring back to the raid party. It was not a tanks job to pull. Each job of that raid had a purpose.

I also remember the long arduous task of prepping with buffs and potions before raids and the actual time it took to do that and complete a raid. You are talking 3 to 5 hours. That I "do not" miss. I do not miss the contested raids that were a daily occurrence because there was only one instance per boss, per server. Nor do I miss the long camps for these spawns. It turned me off to raiding all together. Then I played FFXIV and started to raid again.

Sorry if OP doesn't like the set up. Maybe when you get to end game in Shb it will be more of a challenge for you.

[MistakeNot]

Big sprawling dungeons with multiple paths and so on are not a bad thing by themselves - such dungeons can be quite fun.

However, that kind of dungeons do not mesh well with daily roulettes where people end up running the same dungeons umpteenth times. After the first couple of runs people just want to get through them as quickly as possible - they have outleveled the loot, and already seen it all.


So, complex dungeons or daily dungeon runs. Pick one, because they do not coexist very well.