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

[Martynek]

I have issues with these, 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?

But to elaborate on some of the particularly bad parts:

The timer would clash directly against XIV's instance design. XIV's instance timers are very forgiving, and there's no cost for failure but "wasted" time. You keep food buffs through death, cooldowns reset, etc - Everything about the game encourages you to keep on trying, keep on pushing til you get there. Making it 90% through a dungeon then getting kicked out or auto-failed due to the timer just doesn't fit.

In the same vein - Key bricking is an utterly repulsive idea. The idea that something actively discourages you from playing the game (Because you or someone in your group might play badly, and you'll be punished with a downgraded keystone) is baffling to me. Again, generally XIV's design is that you waste nothing but time (and a pittance of gil in repair costs) for failing, so you're always encouraged to keep trying.

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.

Grinding up your key level each week instead of just picking the difficulty you want to play is a needless waste of time.

Seasonal affixes artificially created FOMO. You can never go back and play BFA dungeons with BFA affixes. Hell you can never go back and do BFA M+ at all, but that's another topic. In a lesser sense the same is true of a weekly rotation of affixes, they should either be chosen as part of picking a difficulty level or randomised upon entry.

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".

[Illmaeran]

I hope for something challenging enough to get the majority of people decrying the game as too easy without sufficient amounts of challenging content options to be quiet.

[Laphicet]

I hope for something challenging enough to get the majority of people decrying the game as too easy without sufficient amounts of challenging content options to be quiet.

One dungeon won't fix the majority of content being shit for healers. Even if it is a special snowflake dungeon with a fancy name.

[Martynek]

One dungeon won't fix the majority of content being shit for healers. Even if it is a special snowflake dungeon with a fancy name.

Majority?
What is this mythical content that makes healers not suck?

[Corbeau]

Even if they were doing an M+, which they're not, I don't think these devs would implement M+ in any way resembling the absurdly player-hostile version in WoW. For one, I don't expect the rewards would include progression-quality gear. More likely tomestones and a cosmetic currency of some sort. For two, there's not a chance of a keystone system where group failure ruins your personal resource. Zero, zip, nada - they flat out would not do that. If there was any restriction on difficulty at all it'd be vastly more forgiving and likely based on permanent unlocks.

Just look at how much effort they put into the PvP rework to reduce ingame toxicity.

e: They'd also have to nuke Holy from orbit.

[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.

[Amenara]

I'm just hoping for actually difficult dungeons with unique mechanics and something that makes me go, wow that is fun I want to run it again.

What I expect: Easy 1-4 person dungeons (maybe generated akin to deep dungeons) that you do once a week/day for some item you need for gear/upgrades.

[Laphicet]

I hope they don't replace the exploratory zone. That's all I hope, really.

[Martynek]

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.

I'm well aware of "Crit is king", hence in my example full Crit+Det would require running a mixture of all the various dungeons on offer. Sorry if I was unclear and you interpreted it as "each dungeon drops a specific stat combination for all slots", I think I worded it badly.

[Shurrikhan]

I'm well aware of "Crit is king", hence in my example full Crit+Det would require running a mixture of all the various dungeons on offer. Sorry if I was unclear and you interpreted it as "each dungeon drops a specific stat combination for all slots", I think I worded it badly.

Ahhh, gotcha. Alrighty then.

And, no, no, while the latter was indeed how it seemed to me, I had perhaps over-assumed as well. My bad there.

Could I ask you to expound a little bit more, though, on your preference not to have finely selectable / granular difficulty levels? That, above all, still confuses me.