Dungeons are becoming style over substance.

[Shurrikhan]

I don't foresee major changes to dungeons in terms of them being 'shallow'. The fact is, they're accepted as regular, rotatable content for years now with only a small levels of complaint focused in places like these.

And in-game. In either case, we've seen that vein of complaint since the Demon Wall nerfs and again after the Pharos Sirius nerfs. That vein's been a long-historied one in this game.

[RaphaelDDL]

Remember the slime which you need to pop a bomb and then make it explode near the slime so it can split until is killable?

[Xaruko_Nexume]

As I have read through the rest of this thread, it is obvious there are many here who would likely enjoy more difficult end game content in another popular MMORPG that is more tailored to that.

One of the main reasons you are seeing such an exodus *from* that other gam right now, is because that other game stopped catering to it's casual player base offering less and less in the way of meaningful rewards in less and less casual content, overemphasizing difficult 1% player base content.

Please don't make this game WoW. It's why so many of us came here recently. WoW has no equivalent to "hanging out in Limsa" with Bards, and dancers, a robust emote system, beautiful glamours etc.

The easy PvE content is the very reason for this games explosion in popularity as of late. I will take style over speed runs any day.

[Hyrist]

And in-game. In either case, we've seen that vein of complaint since the Demon Wall nerfs and again after the Pharos Sirius nerfs. That vein's been a long-historied one in this game.

Yes. However what's not be mentioned here is that that vein of complaint can usually be traced to the same people who complained back then. And also since then, content like Deep Dungeon, Heaven on High, Eureka, and Bozja have been implemented to attempt to accommodate more exploration based content. In the last two, the additions of Content-Based Raids existed that were very much the in-depth dungeons that were asked of, but of a larger personal scale. All have been reduced to the same level of grind and repetition as all other content has been, and its complexity eventually hampers its longevity.

There will always be those who desire something that's not there. I'm not opposed, at all for it to be accommodated, but making it more than what it actually is does not help its cause. This is a lingering desire, not a system-wide problem. It does not surprise me at all that the same people who were critical of this in ARR's launch are still critical of it, and that there are others who agree. The point is that in spite of that complaint, the system is quite successful as a whole. Therefore, I strongly suggest that the answer should be outside that system.

As the Devils Advocate here: "Don't go wasting my time with needlessly complex dungeons in my roulettes." Is the overall counterpoint. Not that those more complex dungeons shouldn't exist. We have plenty of existing options for anyone looking to progress now. So long as we don't put a substantial dent in those I see no reason why we can't give the area designers some room to stretch their skills in making fun designs. As far as the difficulty complaint? Eh, that's always adjustable and nobody here has any real say so on how that plays out so I'm not concerned with that conversation. It usually just boils down to ego, and I don't have time for it.

[Xaruko_Nexume]

Imagine quitting a genre over a completely optional challenge content.

Even if those dungeons were literally optional, they would not feel that way. At the very least keep them off of any sort of progression path to keep them from feeling so mandatory. Even then, I don't want it, because it would take away resources from development of other things.

The thought of XIV players not realizing just how good they've got it and wanting to WoWify the game is horrifying.

[Shurrikhan]

Yes. However what's not be mentioned here is that that vein of complaint can usually be traced to the same people who complained back then.

I think you both overestimate player retention and underestimate just how dull the pull-to-gate-AoE-pull-to-gate-AoE-boss-pull-to-gate-AoE-pull-to-gate-AoE-boss-pull-to-gate-AoE-pull-to-gate-AoE-boss hallway sprint simulator can be even to new players...

And also since then, content like Deep Dungeon, Heaven on High, Eureka, and Bozja have been implemented to attempt to accommodate more exploration based content.

To the same sense that providing powdered eggs attempts to accommodate a 5-star breakfast, perhaps. But note also that a lack of "exploration" alone, or even primarily, does not come anywhere close to encapsulating the complaints towards dungeons being a shallow and/or stale experience.

In the last two, the additions of Content-Based Raids existed that were very much the in-depth dungeons that were asked of, but of a larger personal scale.

And gated behind long grinds that those who've complained about the unvaried dungeon experience are in many cases the very players most likely to find mind-numbing.

There will always be those who desire something that's not there.

Yes, until it's there. There was a desire for PvP. Your blasé philosophizing would have been just as appropriate were anyone in 2.0 to have asked for PvP to be added.

This is a lingering desire, not a system-wide problem.

Yes, that's how unfulfilled desires work. And, like most unfulfilled desires, there are system-level intersections. The most notable here is flat daily bonuses on roulettes which incentivize players towards the shortest possible dungeon path for max efficiency; even if the rewards for doing each optional element in a dungeon were slightly overtuned, as long as you're getting a flat daily bonus equal or nearly equal to the whole base run's worth of reward, that balance of rewards within the dungeon itself will just be overpowered by the daily bonuses, causing conflicts between those doing the roulette or any content on it for the first time that day and those who are going for a second or further time.

As the Devils Advocate here: "Don't go wasting my time with needlessly complex dungeons in my roulettes."

Then, a further counterpoint: Why would you limit fun to what is convenient to a singular, barebone 8-year-old reward loop and its enticements, rather than designing your reward loops and enticements around what is fun?

We have plenty of existing options for anyone looking to progress now.

While I agree with your larger message that immediately follows (regarding to what extent designers stretching their skills would be harmless), a brief note:

We have a handful of content types; the problem is when the individual pieces of content within any given type feels largely interchangeable, or only a small portion is included in the enticed content flow (i.e., in the game's efficient reward loops). And here, too, the point in case is dungeons.

As far as the difficulty complaint? Eh, that's always adjustable and nobody here has any real say so on how that plays out so I'm not concerned with that conversation.

We can't both have "adjustable" difficulty and have no "real say" on how that plays out. If the "adjustable" difficulty you speak of is purely from the devs end -- to nerf (historically, always) or reinvigorate (historically, never) content as they see fit -- that still rings false, so long as the requests are made for a reduction in difficulty (see Keep, Pharos, Steps, etc.).

[Shurrikhan]

Imagine quitting a genre over a completely optional challenge content.

• Costs next to nothing to implement compared to its at-level gear and difficulty progression provided (more efficient, even, than the content obviously meant to optimize hours played per dev hours spent like Diadem, Eureka, and Bozja).
• Provides incredibly granular difficulty to progress at one's own pace, between gearing out more comprehensively before progressing forward or pushing forward on skill and a dream alone.
• Doesn't allow for players to be replaced mid-dungeon, thus reducing mid-run drama, but provides for well-contextualized at-a-glance information as to potential party members' experience as to also reduce the chance of getting a horribly underprepared player.
• Timers convenience players playing on a schedule by setting a particular expectation (e.g. of a ~35 minute run -- more likely ~25 minutes here in XIV's simpler dungeons) so that players have a more unified approach to the content and are less incentivized to bash their head against walls for well over an hour, while still barely punishing failure in terms of loot quality lost (from 236 to 233, or about a 1.2% loss, at the current ilvl cap) and thus allowing for intentionally longer runs (albeit in a manner specified in party formation, as it's not normalized by the system itself).
• Variance even within the same dungeon via additive components ("affixes").

What's not to hate, honestly? /s

Granted, If I'd the choice, I'd get rid of the keystones and just let us go into whatever dungeon we want at whatever level we feel is worth our time and effort. And if we were talking XIV, there's no way I'd port M+ over directly. XIV deserves its own spin on things, so long as it doesn't continue to find its style in what is simply "both less functional and more convoluted" as per so many other of its other technical systems (much like WoW's reward/progression systems when compared to XIV's, outside of the latter's roulettes), such as our beloved glamour dresser...

[Payadopa]

FF13 is fantastic and is easily one of the best FF to date. First game was meant to be a prologue and they spent a lot of money making the graphics look good. If you look at any other Japanese games (maybe except Kojima and Sony), they don’t look as good as FF13 still does. Textures are clean, everything is bright and shiny, etc

The game had a linear structure because it was a prologue to the entire universe. It’s not like FF XII where XII Was the main portrayal of Ivalice. XIII is essentially three games and they planned even more to expand it.

I am one of the few people who liked the story, but let's face it, the story made no sense, the battles had almost no strategy and all you had to do was push a single button to win. The first dozen of hours were a giant tutorial and extremely boring out of maybe a few boss fights. And AFAIK, the sequels were green lit after sales projections were in so those came after the fact. XIII-2 also starts with redconning parts of XIII.

[Roda]

As I have read through the rest of this thread, it is obvious there are many here who would likely enjoy more difficult end game content in another popular MMORPG that is more tailored to that.

One of the main reasons you are seeing such an exodus *from* that other gam right now, is because that other game stopped catering to it's casual player base offering less and less in the way of meaningful rewards in less and less casual content, overemphasizing difficult 1% player base content.

Please don't make this game WoW. It's why so many of us came here recently. WoW has no equivalent to "hanging out in Limsa" with Bards, and dancers, a robust emote system, beautiful glamours etc.

The easy PvE content is the very reason for this games explosion in popularity as of late. I will take style over speed runs any day.

Alright screw it, I'll bite the bait.
What's going on with WoW is far more nuanced than "The game's instanced content requires more than two functioning braincells to complete" Wow absolutely has the equivalent of hanging out in cities with bards. In fact, I'd say that game has a lot more draw to casual players with its pet battle systems, archeology (even though it's been abandoned there's still a lot of lore to go around and collect), heaps of daily open world activities that can reward mounts and such. Meanwhile XIV really has most of its rewards locked behind instanced content.


Stop insulting casual players by assuming they can only participate in content that's only requirement is for the group to press the forward button while doing something resembling a rotation.

I have personally coached newbies and career casuals, young and old, into raiding for years over multiple games, and for the ones actually interested in playing the game, their lack of ability to commit more time to the game did not get in the way of their ability to enjoy more complex encounters once they were able to grasp the games' systems, and their newfound masteries over those systems did not stop them from still being casuals. "Casually playing a game" does not mean "Being unable to play the game well"

And I'm asking for more interesting dungeon content precisely because I'm tired of speedrunning. But with dungeons that are only a hazard free straight line of AoE trash to a boss in a circle or square repeat x2, that's the ONLY thing we can do with them. There's no sense of adventure because the only place to go is forward. The area isn't dangerous so why not just pull everything? I don't really have to think about anything in the dungeon, so why not think about the only question the content presents me with? "How do I get this over with faster?" Do the dungeon once for story, it's cool. Have to do it multiple times for tomestones, and now it's a repetitive chore. Because, save for VERY few exceptions, every dungeon made since HW has been fundamentally the same with minor variations on boss mechanics.

Give me, not a miniboss, but a logic puzzle to open a door and that'll slow me down and let me smell the roses. Especially if it's requiring environmental hints and interactions. (And it would make a LOT more sense to have one of those instead of these weird load-bearing trash mobs in front of a wall that just disintegrates once it gets lonely.)
Give me a sprawling map of twisted corridors or a large area of a forest with secrets and loot hidden around, maybe even puzzles to reveal them, and I'll take the time (probably after the final boss) to go around hunting for them.
Give me environmental hazards and enemies that can push or pull and that'll slow down the big pulls as it becomes way too risky to get constantly manhandled around by the monsters.
Give me a roaming boss (in a dungeon that isn't a straight line because, well that's not much of a place to roam now is it?) that can be encountered anywhere and if you defeat it, it'll raise the chances of dropping (or even proc it to drop multiple of) the Rare Item of the dungeon (mount/minion).

Some of the ARR dungeons were really good STARTS to developing interesting dungeon experiences, but unfortunately instead of building on mechanics like the keys in Haukke, or the pads in Qarn, they've optimized the fun out of the dungeons following that era.


Just, SE give me something to do other than holding forward and doing my rotation I am bored of this same-dungeon-different-skin dance after 8 years.

[Dragonblanco]

Thousand Maws is detested because it's slow. The whole green slime at the end accomplishes nothing but to slow you down; there are no big pulls, especially due to our low level, and none of the added corridors lead to anything. In general, this is the problem with this argument. You can't expect people to care about branching paths if all you do is toss a snippet of lore text on the floor or a coffer with mostly useless gear. There needs to be a reason for players to branch off, but the dev team doesn't want to think of one.

I think SE is gravely wrong about turning dungeons into a pure vehicle for delivering the story, rather than an interesting encounter in and of itself

That's where FFXI and WoW did pretty good actually. While FFXI didn't have instanced dungeons, we did have zones that were used like one to farm mobs. Then WoW with instanced. In both cases, they had quests which brought you to areas within these dangerous locations to complete a quest. OR they would have rare mobs that might occasionally spawn that dropped OP gear or some really awesome transmog/glam type of stuff. Plus both had some things with very interesting mechanics, particularly in WoW. I remember like in Cataclysm having dungeon introduced where you would fly on dragons and have to try to kill mobs with fireballs. If you didn't, then your progression in that dungeon would be harder as you had tons of elite things to kill. But if targeted and attacked while, you had a quick and easy run.

That said, the player base over the years has pulled away from this stuff. Those in my age group who played things like WoW, Everquest, Age of Camelot, FFXI, etc since their launch all have grown to have families and jobs. Within that group there is a subset that gripe because as much as they like the old content, they feel like it works against them and they want it more fair. They don't have the time to do all the stuff necessary.

Then you have the younger generation in their 20s or below. They grew up without knowing what a truly difficult and limiting MMO is like. By time they joined, they know nothing of the social aspect of MMO and the events we had. They haven't actually gotten to see GM playing with us like they did in the past. So many get jaded, but what makes it worse is the mindset I often see appear. That mindset is you can't be unique, you have to follow exact specs and rotations that are shown on a website by someone who claims to be an expert and mathematically found what works best. If you don't, then you're a loser and shouldn't play. Leveling shouldn't take long, it needs to be instant. The best gear needs to be easily obtained by them but if too many others get it, that's not right! Essentially, they want to turn all MMO into WoW, CoD, etc. Where you can rush through content and then it's just killing each other and/or maybe hopping into raids. Neither really allows themselves to enjoy the grind and meet other players. It's all queue system and even then, majority won't talk and will ditch the group right away without even giving out commendations.

The two start to combine in the idea that neither wants content that takes long. Both want to be able to play casually but make good progression. Both got sucked into games like WoW and became addicted to AddOns, so now they lack player skill. The reason I say lack skill is that those players got used to using AddOns that tracked aggro and let you click to taunt, it had things like HealBot which made it simple click to heal instead of targeting the person and then hitting your keybind, it alerted you to timers for bosses, and so much more. All of these things which became "necessary" diminished the player's ability to actually learn fights and pay attention to what's going on around them. And over the years, with how players have added things and used 3rd party, the consensus is everyone likes linear dungeons with simple mechanics. They also want to feel OP, so if they can't churn out high damage and kill fast enough, they complain that changes need to be done.

There's a lot of ridiculousness to it all. And I could almost write a book on it. I just tried to narrow down some main points. Forgive me if a little off on things, as I'm extremely tired but wanted to answer on it.