Shadowbringers starting to feel like a budget expansion

[SamRF]

They threw away that design for a reason. The first time may have been an adventure. Second time slightly less so. By the third time it is either a chore or just noise you skip. Repeat ad nauseam. Its just not possible to make our current dungeons an "adventure" every time, unless we're thinking random generation, which Deep Dungeons did. And even that system has its issues / limitations

In my opinion, current hallway simulators are much more of a chore. When I'm doing a dungeon I'm not just doing it for the reward to be done with it asap, although i guess most might be playing it that way.

There's also more room for error in those dungeons which is something I actually like, sloppy play was punished more severely and you can get in chaotic situations. I don't want my party members to play like NPCs which is much more the case in post ARR dungeons. I want people to sometimes mess up, get lost, show new players the way, have more tales to share on "tales from duty finder". That's imo the proper online RPG experience and results in much more fun "chaotic" gameplay from time to time.

(my) Problem I guess is that it does seem like many don't care about dungeons at all, are just there for the reward and want to be done with it asap and hate dungeons that get them in uncomfortable situations.

quote:

Those extra stuff in dungeons are ultimately meaningless, but there usually is lots of stuff that are essentially meaningless in an RPG but are there for immersion and giving you a (false) sense of freedom. It's all about how it feels and how you experience it.

Maybe it's just me but those dungeons felt more like "real" immersive dungeons, even when you play them on repeat (which I've done fairly much back in ARR and when leveling). I almost prefer just doing those dungeons right now with ability handicapping and even though I've done them much more than any other ones.

Recent example, had more fun and exciting experiences farming those irregular tomestones in Aurumn Vale than I've had in a loong time doing the newer dungeons.

[Theodric]

But just to clarify: I don't particularly like the current dungeon design, however I can't see any simple way to make them better either.

There's plenty of ways in which dungeons could be improved. One thing I miss about World of Warcraft is that boss fights were designed to have specific achievements tied to them, such as having every member of a party avoid being hit by a specific ability or to kill a boss in a certain amount of time. Each dungeon would have achievements along those lines and when every achievement for that 'tier' was completed, you'd earn a special mount.

In terms of exploration, adding special coffers that have a chance to drop valuable items would be a good start. The novelty of clearing out optional rooms became stale in large part due to the lack of rewards. Earning a potion for clearing an extra room of enemies isn't nearly as thrilling as earning a bag that contains a decent amount of gil and various other goodies such as crafting items and a very rare chance for a special minion/mount.

Another option is to tweak dungeons to have a harder version for those who like a challenge. Which is both more difficult and rewarding for players willing to indulge. Naturally the regular 'story mode' should still exist, though tweaking the same dungeon to be tougher is a pretty efficient use of assets compared to the current trend of dungeons being a 'one and done' thing.

[Lersayil]

In my opinion, current hallway simulators are much more of a chore. When I'm doing a dungeon I'm not just doing it for the reward to be done with it asap, although i guess most might be playing it that way.

There's also more room for error in those dungeons which is something I actually like, sloppy play was punished more severely and you can get in chaotic situations. I don't want my party members to play like NPCs which is much more the case in post ARR dungeons. I want people to sometimes mess up, get lost, show new players the way, have more tales to share on "tales from duty finder". That's imo the proper online RPG experience and results in much more fun "chaotic" gameplay from time to time.

(my) Problem I guess is that it does seem like many don't care about dungeons at all, are just there for the reward and want to be done with it asap and hate dungeons that get them in uncomfortable situations.

quote:


Maybe it's just me but those dungeons felt more like "real" immersive dungeons, even when you play them on repeat (which I've done fairly much back in ARR and when leveling). I almost prefer just doing those dungeons right now with ability handicapping and even though I've done them much more than any other ones.

Recent example, had more fun and exciting experiences farming those irregular tomestones in Aurumn Vale than I've had in a loong time doing the newer dungeons.

I kinda see your point. I can agree with some of the old dungeons feeling more alive, but that's really it. Once the patterns and optimal paths are figured out, its just window dressing. I can see why the developers decided that its not worth the extra time.

I also agree that dungeons are way too forgiving, however I am not sure they are that much easier than old ones. I struggle to recall any really troublesome mechanics, other than those damn Diabolos doors (probably getting senile)... I am guessing it just seemed harder then because every mechanic was new.

They probably decided that overly punishing mechanics in regular mandatory content alienate the casual player base? If the statistics support the decision I won't really argue with it. I can say however, that I wouldn't mind some low-midcore content either, even if not in regular dungeons.

There's plenty of ways in which dungeons could be improved. One thing I miss about World of Warcraft is that boss fights were designed to have specific achievements tied to them, such as having every member of a party avoid being hit by a specific ability or to kill a boss in a certain amount of time. Each dungeon would have achievements along those lines and when every achievement for that 'tier' was completed, you'd earn a special mount.

In terms of exploration, adding special coffers that have a chance to drop valuable items would be a good start. The novelty of clearing out optional rooms became stale in large part due to the lack of rewards. Earning a potion for clearing an extra room of enemies isn't nearly as thrilling as earning a bag that contains a decent amount of gil and various other goodies such as crafting items and a very rare chance for a special minion/mount.

Another option is to tweak dungeons to have a harder version for those who like a challenge. Which is both more difficult and rewarding for players willing to indulge. Naturally the regular 'story mode' should still exist, though tweaking the same dungeon to be tougher is a pretty efficient use of assets compared to the current trend of dungeons being a 'one and done' thing.

I have no strong feelings about the idea of achievements (one way or another), but I have the feeling thats not really a dungeon design change, just something on top of it?

Extra routes and bonus chests can go one of three ways:

• Rewards are good, they become mandatory. Why have branches?
• Rewards are bad, groups just skip them. Again, the choice is meaningless.
• Rewards are so-so okay.

All of these have the issue of the possibility of introducing conflict of interest into casual content.

Personally I am all for a harder mode of dungeons... but thats not really dealing with the current ones or the main roulettes.

[Kalise]

In my opinion, current hallway simulators are much more of a chore. When I'm doing a dungeon I'm not just doing it for the reward to be done with it asap, although i guess most might be playing it that way.

You'd be in the minority for this.

Most people are only doing dungeons for the Roulette bonuses. Either the raw experience or the tomestones.

Maybe the first time or even 2 they were interested in actually looking at the dungeon, but for most of the time it's just yet another roulette run in which the only thing that's relevant is the clear bonus and occasionally the rare minion from last boss.

This is just the nature of these types of "Duty Finder" systems that put in rewards for completion that mean people are running dungeons for the DF rewards rather than the dungeon itself.

Heck, this was true with WoW too. Vanilla and TBC dungeons were pretty good. Many of them were interesting, had extra paths, had a variety of quests (Back in the day, each vanilla dungeon had like 5-10 quests to pick up which often had requirements that made you run them differently. Such as killing extra Raptors in Wailing Caverns for their hide or fighting extra bosses you spawned with a quest item) and even had rare bosses that could spawn (Sometimes in multiple locations... I still remember every spawn location for all vanilla rare bosses)

Then with WotLK, dungeons ended up getting the LFD tool, with Valour Point rewards from completing random dungeons which could be used to buy epics that were better than anything that dropped from the dungeons (Sound familiar? That's literally XIV's tomestones... Only XIV also offers the premium tomestones from dungeons too, while back in WotLK you could only get the better Points from Raids)

As a result, dungeons ended up getting streamlined to facilitate the new playstyle of sitting in Stormwind/Orgrimmar/Ironforge/Dalaran and spamming LFD over and over...

There's also more room for error in those dungeons which is something I actually like, sloppy play was punished more severely and you can get in chaotic situations.

Really?

From my experience the only dungeons that could be in the least bit threatening are the StB ones, since mobs actually hit fairly hard in some of those.

Outside of that? Ehh...

Maybe in a group full of non-sync'd low level players in a place like Aurum Vale maybe? Where you can accidentally pull a bunch of packs in the first room and in the area before Coincounter?

There's plenty of ways in which dungeons could be improved. One thing I miss about World of Warcraft is that boss fights were designed to have specific achievements tied to them, such as having every member of a party avoid being hit by a specific ability or to kill a boss in a certain amount of time. Each dungeon would have achievements along those lines and when every achievement for that 'tier' was completed, you'd earn a special mount.

The issue with this, is whether the rewards were worth enough to not simply just go for the most efficient play. Like in WoW, where many of these achievements were either free (Because "Don't stand in the fire" is not really an achievement, that's simply basic game mechanics) or were only really done in specifically organized groups that were all aiming for that achievement.

There were so few achievements that were randomly done in PuG groups... I think the only ones I can think of off the top of my head were the ones in the Oculus to all use a single colour of Drake (But then again, actually having a PuG group run the Oculus and not insta-leave was something of a miracle in the first place...)

In terms of exploration, adding special coffers that have a chance to drop valuable items would be a good start. The novelty of clearing out optional rooms became stale in large part due to the lack of rewards. Earning a potion for clearing an extra room of enemies isn't nearly as thrilling as earning a bag that contains a decent amount of gil and various other goodies such as crafting items and a very rare chance for a special minion/mount.

The issue here is having a reward that is actually "Valuable".

Gil? Is worthless unless you're furnishing a house, but even then you'd need to be getting millions for it to really make a dent in most house users costs which seems unreasonable given nothing else in the game really offers more than a few hundred gil as a reward...

Crafting items? You mean like the unique items for crafting the weapons needed for ARR Relics being in chests in The Wanderer's Palace (As well as some other items needed to craft specific items being in places like Cutter's Cry and Dzemael Darkhold) or do you mean items that can literally be gathered by a DoL? The former might just annoy crafters whom don't want to have to farm dungeons in order to craft. The latter makes them worthless as DoL's will likely be able to farm out far higher quantities in far shorter time periods.

Rare chance for minion/mounts? Maybe. But then again, you might simply see again a thing where for standard Roulette runs, people skip it and it only gets looked at by dedicated groups looking to farm for it (Sort of like the EX Mount farm parties that often fill the Party Finder tool)

Another option is to tweak dungeons to have a harder version for those who like a challenge. Which is both more difficult and rewarding for players willing to indulge.

Again, the issue is, what would this offer?

Why would someone choose to run the harder difficulty one when they could simply do the easier one, faster and get their roulette bonus quicker?

Since, sure, a more challenging dungeon would be cool. But the core reason to run dungeons right now is purely for Roulette bonuses. Unless these challenging dungeons gave better rewards than what Tomestones can provide, at which point they become the new farmed content (Also, trying to balance that would be really awkward, given that tomestone gear is already not too far off Savage Raid loot... I.e. Currently Tome gear is 490 and Savage is 500 with a 505 weapon... What would you do make these dungeons give 495 loot?)

That's the primary issue with dungeons. They're supposed to be run in order to earn tomestones to purchase gear that's way better than what the dungeons themselves offer. Mostly, to offer incentive to have people populate the queues so that new players can finish their MSQ required dungeons.

So long as dungeons are designed in a way where you're rewarded for completing them en masse (This includes daily rewards that entice people to run a dungeon every day as opposed to running a dungeon because they want to run a dungeon), people will look at them in a way to make runs as fast as possible.

It's also one of the issues with PotD/HoH PuG's, since again, these are run often for the exp reward to level up jobs rather than to engage in the content. Hence why queues for levels beyond the high level one you can start on are far longer as its less efficient than spamming the easier one. Also why people just ignore most of the levels and just rush to the exit.

In order to allow for more interesting dungeon design, you have to make it so that the primary reason to run the dungeon... Is to actually run the dungeon. Which is completely against everything the DF tool and Roulettes are for.

[Sora_Oathkeeper]

This imo isn't true for dungeons before lvl 50 and some early lvl 50 ones as well.

All those dungeons either have optional rooms, skippable mobs, interaction with environment or irregular paths. This may seem negligible but it makes a big difference imo for immersion and enjoyment since it's not the same hallway simulator like all the later dungeons are. They have variety in structure.

Said this in other post:


Really wish they went back to early ARR dungeon design.

Sorry I should have elaborated that my point was mostly in regards to expansions such as HW and beyond. I 100% agree with you though. ARR dungeons felt like actual dungeons and it's ashame that the design philosophy was lost after pharos sirius was deemed too difficult.

[SamRF]

Most people are only doing dungeons for the Roulette bonuses. Either the raw experience or the tomestones.

Maybe the first time or even 2 they were interested in actually looking at the dungeon, but for most of the time it's just yet another roulette run in which the only thing that's relevant is the clear bonus and occasionally the rare minion from last boss.

This is just the nature of these types of "Duty Finder" systems that put in rewards for completion that mean people are running dungeons for the DF rewards rather than the dungeon itself.

You could kind of say that about all content, that people are doing it "just for the reward". There are many casuals playing this game that never do any content with a premade group and do everything with DF. Does that mean they don't enjoy the game and are just in it for the reward? Why even play the game then? Just so you can increase your item level or get better glams? Idk that seems silly to me but maybe it isn't. If you're only here for the story than there's really no need to do daily roulettes for good enough gear.

Doing DF dungeons etc may not be the main goal for playing this game but I won't understand how you go through all that when you see it as nothing but a chore you want to be done with asap. Does that mean you'd rather skip the dungeons and immediately get the reward? Perhaps understandable if you're only into high end raiding, but that's likely a minority of the player base.

From my experience the only dungeons that could be in the least bit threatening are the StB ones, since mobs actually hit fairly hard in some of those.
Outside of that? Ehh..

Being overgeared and with how sync makes you over powered in this game will of course limit it to some extend, but I certainly believe there is more room to induce chaos in ARR dungeons. To give a couple examples:

Brayflox Longstop: mobs seem to hit pretty hard, you have to position and pull carefull in that one big room with those tiny islands to avoid overpulling. Have had many chaotic runs there and many wipes with DF groups.

Stone Vigil: same here, some rooms in which you can overpull if not careful

Dzemael Darkhold: That notorious section after the first boss in which, unless very well geared, have to pull carefully to avoid overpulling, and also try not to fall to your doom while avoiding all those AoEs, had countless wipes here.

Aurumn Vale: that first room, boss fights also required people to know what they were doing.

Wanderer's Palace: That big room in which you need to fix some stuff, you'll get attacked by that invincible hard hitting giant tonberry if not careful

Pharos Sirius: this dungeon has been nerfed because of the "difficulty", or rather sloppy playing (IIRC it had to do with an add phase)


These aren't very difficult or challenging scenarios, but I hope you get what I'm saying with that they have less room for error (at least at some sections) and punish sloppy playing more severely.

[Kalise]

You could kind of say that about all content, that people are doing it "just for the reward".

One of the differences is that things like Raids the rewards come FROM the Raid. As opposed to being given to you irregardless of what actual Raid you were given from the random roulette.

Thus the result is you're doing Eden's Verse, to do Eden's Verse. You're not doing Eden's Verse just to get a Roulette reward after completing it.

Does that mean you'd rather skip the dungeons and immediately get the reward? Perhaps understandable if you're only into high end raiding, but that's likely a minority of the player base.

It's the catch 22 of people's thoughts regarding gear progression and XIV's lack of persistent casual combat content.

Most people would want to skip the "Chore" of having to do dungeons, but still advance their character by obtaining new gear.

However, obtaining gear, is largely irrelevant in this game due to how little there is that uses it (Especially since like 90% of all content is item level sync'd anyway...).

Even if you're into high end raiding, you can clear Savage fine with just Crafted gear that gets released alongside the new tier (Which in of itself, nullifies NM raid gear given that it's of equal item level but can be penta-melded making it stronger and it can be quicker to obtain provided you have/know a crafter especially given weekly lockouts on obtaining the tokens from NM...)

It all ends up seeming quite strange, that people sub so they can run dungeons they find boring to get gear they don't need to use in content that doesn't exist...

"Glamour is the real endgame" is a sad truth, the main reason to actually bother getting gear, is to look fabulous

No wonder I mostly only see people standing around in Limsa doing weird RP...

[Lersayil]

It all ends up seeming quite strange, that people sub so they can run dungeons they find boring to get gear they don't need to use in content that doesn't exist...

Damn, I feel called out. Also, I can sense some Freudian meta-commentary here on the never-ending meaningless treadmill of our lives

[Mansion]

Being overgeared and with how sync makes you over powered in this game will of course limit it to some extend, but I certainly believe there is more room to induce chaos in ARR dungeons. To give a couple examples:

Brayflox Longstop: mobs seem to hit pretty hard, you have to position and pull carefull in that one big room with those tiny islands to avoid overpulling. Have had many chaotic runs there and many wipes with DF groups.

Stone Vigil: same here, some rooms in which you can overpull if not careful

Dzemael Darkhold: That notorious section after the first boss in which, unless very well geared, have to pull carefully to avoid overpulling, and also try not to fall to your doom while avoiding all those AoEs, had countless wipes here.

Aurumn Vale: that first room, boss fights also required people to know what they were doing.

Wanderer's Palace: That big room in which you need to fix some stuff, you'll get attacked by that invincible hard hitting giant tonberry if not careful

Pharos Sirius: this dungeon has been nerfed because of the "difficulty", or rather sloppy playing (IIRC it had to do with an add phase)


These aren't very difficult or challenging scenarios, but I hope you get what I'm saying with that they have less room for error (at least at some sections) and punish sloppy playing more severely.

Actually that's a perfect list of examples of why I'm glad dungeons have been stramlined since. Those ARR dungeosn don't bring anything interesting in a gameplay point of view. That's just trying to make it longer with no attached gameplay or creativity. In the current state of the game, dungeons will always be (Trash into Boss) repeat 3 times. Adding an optional room or pack of mobs doesn't change the dungeon route. There is no compensation if the party does that optional stuff, and dungeons are already slow paced as they are.
I'm not trying to negate the interest some players have in dungeons, rather I'm saying they need to change the dungeon formula entirely if they want them to have a new interest gameplay wise.

[SamRF]

Actually that's a perfect list of examples of why I'm glad dungeons have been stramlined since. Those ARR dungeosn don't bring anything interesting in a gameplay point of view. That's just trying to make it longer with no attached gameplay or creativity. In the current state of the game, dungeons will always be (Trash into Boss) repeat 3 times. Adding an optional room or pack of mobs doesn't change the dungeon route. There is no compensation if the party does that optional stuff, and dungeons are already slow paced as they are.
I'm not trying to negate the interest some players have in dungeons, rather I'm saying they need to change the dungeon formula entirely if they want them to have a new interest gameplay wise.

As I've said earlier, it may seem pointless to have multiple routes for example cause you will always take 1, but it simply feels more immersive imo. The fact thar you do have to make a choice or make the right turn at a cross section for the fastest route, the (false) freedom of choice you have, as well as the freedom you have to mess up in those scenarios I've described in that list, makes those dungeons feel more real and immersive.

Another quote:
"Those extra stuff in dungeons are ultimately meaningless, but there usually is lots of stuff that are essentially meaningless in an RPG but are there for immersion and giving you a (false) sense of freedom. It's all about how it feels and how you experience it."

This imo stays valid even when you do the dungeon for the 100th time.

There's imo no freedom and very little variety (in interactions) or room to do anything wrong in the hallway dungeons we are currently getting, which makes them feel very stale compared to the ARR dungeons. Even having to just collect gunpowder like in Copperbell Mines or those orbs in Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak makes a big difference to me.

Idk how to describe it but post-ARR dungeons just kind of feel fake, or artifificial. I'm guessing it's lack of immersion and the predictability of pattern.

Of course people have different opinion on what they prefer and I get that, just thought I'd clarify my standpoint better.