Bring back crowd control. Bring back branching dungeons. Bring back ADVENTURE.

[Reynhart]

Because modern mmo players are very impatient, and the dungeons need to be able to be hurried through.

They are like that only because you allow them to. As long as the game would keep a fair reward system, people would still play it if they like the gameplay, world, etc...

[TheGrimace]

I would love more intricate dungeons, but as long as Duty Roulettes exist and people continue wanting to face roll content for the fastest method to reach the end of their random dungeon, it's not gonna go over well.

Not if the dungeon is part of the same roulettes as all the others, anyway. Make intricate dungeons with multiple objectives and make them disconnected from other content while also making them worth running. Do this and you will find several conclusions:

1. Diadem, content with semi related but also free roaming options that promote exploration. While the idea sounds enticing, the first and second iterations of Diadem were so bad that they were removed from the game. I think it was because you had to have a party to get anywhere outside of gathering. Make a zone like Diadem that can be done without alliances or even full 8-man parties and you may have something.
2. Eureka. A step closer in the right direction, but still too grindy and punishing for its own good. The exploration becomes a chore, rather than the joy.
3. Baldesion Arsenal. While this was locked away behind all of Eureka and was still linear, I think this dungeon may be the closest thing we have to what people suggest. Difficult but rewarding boss fights and mechanics, and the dungeon itself takes much strategy to maneuver.

But if Baldesion Arsenal were tweaked to work for smaller parties, the danger would be less potent and the rewards would not be as tantalizing. It's a very difficult balancing act. Maybe it could be remedied by making drops in chests far more rare, or introducing more random elements.

I think it would be interesting to see more varied dungeons in the game, but I also think it would be really hard to implement in a way that the majority finds enjoyable. Dungeons as they currently exist may be linear, but they are also fun exercises and so that's why they persist. We're already down to 3 cumulative linear dungeons every 2 patches since Stormblood, as opposed to the 3 we would get per patch back in ARR. Dungeons are some of my favorite content in the game, so I hate to see them so limited now. I am fine with them trying more new and different approaches to content as long as it doesn't further detract from how thin the dungeons have become. It's a greasy road they have yet to maneuver after looking at their previous attempts, and that's where my concern arises.

[RitsukoSonoda]

IMO I feel like a large contributing factor of the issue is that when gamers realized that developers could now change things in game through updates or patches, too many of them stopped trying to improve as a gamer and instead switched to crying and complaining to the developer to just make it easier for them. Games in general feel like they're just they're shifting further down the road to being dumbed down to the point of making the slowest person feel good about themselves at the expense of everyone else. And many of the ones that didn't need the game simplified are turning into the gamer equivalent of those people on the spaceship in Wall-e...

[battleshadow66]

No thanks. While I'd like harder content that does not "speed run everything. Crowd control is a bad way to go. It will end with more fustration then anything.

Maybe CC on boss fights, but id like trash mobs to not be a nightmare.

[monk-dps]

You say you want branching dungeons but the ones we do have everyone just B-lines to the fastest path possible. Branching paths in dungeons sounds nice until the player base finds the fastest, easiest route to take and suddenly the branching paths are moot. The playerbase at large does NOT want this. Look at how we treat the dungeons now. You'll have better chances asking for SE to make everything harder and even that is a pipe dream with how the players at large handles it.

[Lord_Umbra]

lol, nothing in this game gets harder. The numbers get bigger and there might be a new* mechanic to deal with, but nothing is hard.

Even the "hardest" content in the game is just memorizing where to stand and how to push buttons in a proper order; It is high school marching band in a video game.



I played Ultima Online, but that game was so wonky that it's not really applicable to the modern MMO genre. But then I also played games like Anarchy Online, Lineage II, original WoW, and other late 90s/early 2000s MMOs and yeah, while the games were rather primitive compared to now, the challenges were greater and the players were better. There used to be such a thing as horizontal progressions, racial differences, and different builds for the same character class. There used to be more than one way to do most things in these games. FFXIV has completely abandoned that for the "Huge-DPS-or-Bust" crowd. Even things like Enrage mechanics come from the 'we don't want to spend too much time here so if we can't get this done in x minutes cheat kill us to force us to start over' attitude of modern gamers. My first real experience with raids was Antharas in Lineage II.. raids in this are a joke.

Well of course all content is just memorising Fixed figtht patterns, rotations doesn't allow for much randomisation outside of having two set strict patterns otherwise peoples output would be quite low due to random mechanics messing up rotations every couple seconds. To get random mechanics we'd have to ditch Rotations & move to more Action based combat like BDO or Single player stuff like Dark Souls style combat play. Stuff were you wouldn't be heavily punished for missing a rotation click dropping your combo.

As for topic Players no matter the generation always went for most optimal build & most optimal path through content, exploring was & has always been frowned upon in MMOs old & new people want in & out as quickly as possible second content was a day old people would more like Kick you from party if tried to explore the non fastest path even in old MMOs. No one or most don't want to spend a full lockout in a dungeon checking alternative paths.
Raids have gotten more streamlined cause the player base has grown up, most can't afford MMOs the time they could in so called Glory days when all you had going was School.

[Hasrat]

Proposal for "branching" paths:

Include special mobs that will dictate what path gets taken based on certain criteria. If mob casts Skill A, Path A is opened. If mob casts Skill B, Path B opens instead. Or make it time dependent. If mob dies within time limit, Path A. Exceed time limit, Path B. Maybe it can check the role of the player dealing killing blow, or presence of other mobs at time of death or during fight, etc.

Important requirement that both/all paths be balanced still, for time/exp. As long as it remains fairly close, there's no real benefit to optimizing one over the other.

But, I think it would still turn out to be forks more than branches. Should still meet back up at bosses. Not sure I'd agree so readily to adding extra dev work designing extra boss fights. They're already on a schedule as it is, trying to push branching paths exceeds expected workload already. Adding in entire boss fights is probably a bit much as a first step.

[Reynhart]

No one or most don't want to spend a full lockout in a dungeon checking alternative paths.

In what world a full run of Sastasha, Toto-Rak or Temple of Qarn would ever come close to take "a full lockout" ?
If you had a bonus reward (including roulette reward) as low as 20% for killing everyone in those dungeons, you'd still have a better reward/time ratio.

What should be done, however, is to redistribute dungeon Xp so that finishing the dungeon would give the main part of xp gain.

Also, dungeons should have secondary objectives bonuses to encourage skill. (No death, don't let any bee use final sting, interrupt at least x casts, etc...)

[Zazay]

IMO I feel like a large contributing factor of the issue is that when gamers realized that developers could now change things in game through updates or patches, too many of them stopped trying to improve as a gamer and instead switched to crying and complaining to the developer to just make it easier for them. Games in general feel like they're just they're shifting further down the road to being dumbed down to the point of making the slowest person feel good about themselves at the expense of everyone else. And many of the ones that didn't need the game simplified are turning into the gamer equivalent of those people on the spaceship in Wall-e...

I think you might be right with that (unfortunately).

[Granyala]

"Give us back branching dungeons so people will find the most expedient route through them and berate you if you want to go explore the other way!" >.>

This. WoW has proven time and time again that optional stuff and alternate routes in dungeons only work for groups of friends. With randoms, there is always drama because one wants the extra stuff, the other one just wants to be done etc.

As for CC: CC was never part of this game, at least not in the extend it was in the WoW of eld, where a broken sheep could equal a wipe. CC just doesn't last long enough here for it to matter much.

For the record: I'd love savage dungeons but not via the DF tool. Again. WoW tried in Cataclysm. Fun in Guild groups, horrible in random groups. Ended up with people insta quitting stuff like Grim Batol, because 90% of the randoms were to incompetent to kill the last boss. Same would apply here.