What are you guys hoping for in the new "Criterion" dungeons?

[Shurrikhan]

With all of this in mind I don't think any incarnation of Mythic+ in FFXIV would be acceptable unless it only vaguely resembled the core concept of "Dungeons, but with scaling difficulty".

To be fair, I think that is how most people use the term outside the confines of WoW itself, except perhaps also with the idea that...

• its difficulty may involve altogether new gameplay concepts or considerations, such as by allowing for CC, greater apparent "intelligence" from mobs, greater and less scripted healing checks, more use of utility, etc., and/or
• it may have granular reward tiers able to compete or nearly compete with raid tiers at its highest difficulty levels (e.g., 5 under on Savage patch, to matching on Alliance Raid patch as the dungeon difficulty cap increases), for those who just don't much care for super-scripted 8-man content.

I have issues with these [aspects], personally.

• That the difficulties levels were particularly fine/granular.
• That there was a timer.
• That failing the timer dropped one's keystone to one level easier instead of throwing you again and again at the challenge you'd just failed.
• That the affixes rotated weekly.
• That there were seasonal affixes.
• That Tyrannical and Fortified affixes could sometimes overly swing the needle between either trash or bosses feeling like pushovers.
• That you could only enter the dungeons through keystones, forcing one to play more than just the fastest/easiest/most lucrative dungeons and slowing BiS acquisition.
• That certain specs were considered less meta and might be held to higher scrutiny in terms of achievement points or item level.

My own $0.02 in response:

• I'm not sure what's so bad about having finer / more granular difficulty tiers. It made progression far less frustrating, allowed people to find a "sweet spot" for what kind of challenge they wanted to take on, etc. What would have been improved if there had been only, say, 3 (rewarded) difficulty tiers instead of 15?
  
  
• I actually like there being a timer, so long as rewards are involved. It keeps players from feeling obliged to bash their heads against the same fights for 90 minutes in order to squeeze out that bit of extra ilvl. I feel like 25-45 minutes is the sweet spot for these experiences, and having that timer puts a just enough (however slight) a risk to challenging that upper extreme to keep the typical run less frustrating.
  
  
• Agreed on this one. At lot of times a failed run was no indicator that a keybearer lacked the skill to do that run (only that they'd taken on a poor hand). I'd much prefer that the keystone just stay at its earlier level, though able to be degraded at player choice (in addition to the dungeon rerolls for a given key). More that though, I'd prefer to get rid of the keystone system as a whole. It wasn't terrible, but I do think it gave a net negative experience compared to just allowing us to enter whatever dungeon we like at whatever difficult we like (or have some minimum achievement score for).
  
  
• I, too, would prefer to be able to control the affixes, rather than their being rotated weekly. I'd still take weekly rotations over their being randomized at entry, though, because those affixes sometimes took a fair bit of pre-planning.
  
  
• I actually liked the Seasonal affixes, on the whole, even if I'd liked to have tweaked how certain ones were handled (e.g., the ability to manually summon Pride at variable HP and buff duration on kill, as to take some pressure off the tank-as-leader). I could see why one wouldn't want them to be attached to each and every run above a certain difficulty level, though.
  
  
• Agreed. I had typically hated the Tyrannical/Fortified swing, too, though that swing has gradually lessened (and thus, imo, gotten better) and so I don't typically mind it much now.
  
  
• Same. Scrap keystones.
  
  
• I feel like XIV actually tends to exclude over much smaller performance gaps than WoW has ever done, and that this was often overblown (I had no issues getting groups as pre-buffs Holy Priest, Survival Hunter, or other as-far-from-meta-as-possible specs), but yeah, class/job/spec exclusion can suck.

Keystones at all, really. Instead of forcing people into certain dungeons in order to progress your key, put gear with different substats behind different dungeons.
As an example, Dungeon A drops Crit+Det earrings, helmet, and bracelets, but Ten/Pie/DH+SkS/SpS gloves and boots, while Dungeon B drops Crit+Det gloves, rings, and necklaces, etc.
This way if you want a full set with optimal stats, you'll naturally run each different dungeon because it has the loot you want, rather than because word of god demands that you will play X dungeon now if you want to keep progressing. Alternatively, the casual player that doesn't care as much for optimisation will be able to play whichever dungeons they like.

This seems a little odd, though. There's only really one job that gets stat choice in this game, BLM. For all others, by the end of the first Savage tier or so, Crit is king. Stat choice is a myth. If you then stick the best secondaries behind certain dungeons, those are the only dungeons you'd really reward.

I'd far rather (A) keep dungeons' drops at roughly the same value --apart from whatever might result from Gear Effects, if XIV were ever so bold as to add them-- and (B) just offer little challenge bonuses, such as lore tidbits or bonus quests that take you from one dungeon to another (perhaps even opening up a bonus boss) --and/or (C) something the likes of rotated Light bonuses-- in order to shake up what would otherwise be narrowly pursued BiS farms.