Playing an expansion as current content has been a lacklustre MMO experience

[Shurrikhan]

Right, it really comes down to HOW they designed those paths and rooms. Part of the problem was the room design was usually just 1 separated room with 1-2 mobs and a note? Ignore.

Instead, it should have been a fork with a decision of 2 big creatures, 10 little melee creatures, deadly traps and 2 range creatures. So you make decisions based on your comp and tank, and this encourages discussion.

Would also allow for more diverse encounters without jobs being too forced on a dungeon-by-dungeons basis.

I imagine that discussion would very quickly turn tacit (or, replaced by automatic expectations for this or that comp or tank that one is expected to know by their third run or so), but having more choices in route allows the dungeons to soften the differences between meta comp picks and the rest without requiring homogeneity of jobs or content, and that is already a huge boon.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Would also allow for more diverse encounters without jobs being too forced on a dungeon-by-dungeons basis.

I imagine that discussion would very quickly turn tacit (or, replaced by automatic expectations for this or that comp or tank that one is expected to know by their third run or so), but having more choices in route allows the dungeons to soften the differences between meta comp picks and the rest without requiring homogeneity of jobs or content, and that is already a huge boon.

Designing alternate paths wouldnt really solve the job homogeny because every mob encounter is literally dealt with the same role comp. No job is going to have any advantage over the other because mobs dont have any sort of weaknesses or tactics like in other rpgs. Literally we'd just be choosing "do we want to take this room with more mobs or less mobs?" Also the lack of gaining exp even makes this extremely moot.

I would instead like to make alternate paths to find hidden extra treasure (that you cant backtrack) or heck maybe even giving alternate bosses. Now this is the reason why we have variant dungeons existing but we'll have to wait till future expansions to see how much progress that content plays out.

[Absurdity]

Designing alternate paths wouldnt really solve the job homogeny because every mob encounter is literally dealt with the same role comp. No job is going to have any advantage over the other because mobs dont have any sort of weaknesses or tactics like in other rpgs. Literally we'd just be choosing "do we want to take this room with more mobs or less mobs?" Also the lack of gaining exp even makes this extremely moot.

Obviously it wouldn't fix the job design, we're dealing with 2 separate problems here, boring job design and incredibly boring dungeon design, both stacking up in for example expert roulette to give a rather unsatisfying gameplay experience.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Obviously it wouldn't fix the job design, we're dealing with 2 separate problems here, boring job design and incredibly boring dungeon design, both stacking up in for example expert roulette to give a rather unsatisfying gameplay experience.

I understand but the solutions provided are still faulty. The only way they could keep it more engaging is to either revamp the combat system to be more akin to what it was before, back when weaknesses, and debuffs and TP judged your playstyle or to go with a more rogue-like experience for dungeons. The problem with these two is that both options wouldnt sit well with the majority of players; with more engaging and complex combat making some of the combat potentially more frustrating for casuals (as it was in the past back when we still had those old systems) or with dungeons having more paths to explore but with the optimized playerbase always going for the most optimal route, those choices wont matter (as seen with old Toto-rak despite being a maze, people always went the optimal way anyway).

[Shurrikhan]

Designing alternate paths wouldnt really solve the job homogeny because every mob encounter is literally dealt with the same role comp.

I didn't say it would solve job homogeneity. But if you have content homogeneity w/o job homogeneity, you're going to have 1-5 jobs outperforming the rest and becoming go-to picks not just sometimes... but nearly all the time. And if you have both content and job homogeneity, imbalances are that much more sensitive to changes, since the jobs generally less favorable for underperforming in raw throughput over time, etc., can neither possess nor utilize any redeeming features.

No, content diversity won't solve job homogeneity. Content diversity merely reduces the likelihood of job design excusing itself deeper and deeper towards homogeneity because it offers new and different levers for diversity in job design to pull differently.

The problem then, though, becomes that without truly stellar design and/or many iterations of polish so that nearly every job can offer to a fight advantages that are distinct but roughly equal in value, you end up then with go-to picks on a fight-by-fight basis. While more diverting and offering objectively more to experience within the game, that can also be more annoying, given the time the game milks from (or to be a) multileveler(s).

You can still get a greater sum of diversity and parity in the meantime, though, by just making it so a given instance isn't as likely to pedestal or dumpster a given job by offering more choices by which that instance can be run, as per R041's example of multiple paths. That's something specific to dungeons, while the likes of trials and raids would need more sophisticated solutions, but we were discussing dungeons, after all.

Tl;dr:
If you want jobs not to play the same, there needs to be a playground in which for them to play differently. There's only so much distinction one can get out of {Pull All Trash and Just AoE it Down x2, Bossx1, Repeat}. Job diversity and content diversity pretty much have to be taken as a leap together.

[Atelier-Bagur]

I didn't say it would solve job homogeneity. But if you have content homogeneity w/o job homogeneity, you're going to have 1-5 jobs outperforming the rest and becoming go-to picks not just sometimes... but nearly all the time. And if you have both content and job homogeneity, imbalances are that much more sensitive to changes, since the jobs generally less favorable for underperforming in raw throughput over time, etc., can neither possess nor utilize any redeeming features.

No, content diversity won't solve job homogeneity. Content diversity merely reduces the likelihood of job design excusing itself deeper and deeper towards homogeneity because it offers new and different levers for diversity in job design to pull differently.

The problem then, though, becomes that without truly stellar design and/or many iterations of polish so that nearly every job can offer to a fight advantages that are distinct but roughly equal in value, you end up then with go-to picks on a fight-by-fight basis. While more diverting and offering objectively more to experience within the game, that can also be more annoying, given the time the game milks from (or to be a) multileveler(s).

You can still get a greater sum of diversity and parity in the meantime, though, by just making it so a given instance isn't as likely to pedestal or dumpster a given job by offering more choices by which that instance can be run, as per R041's example of multiple paths. That's something specific to dungeons, while the likes of trials and raids would need more sophisticated solutions, but we were discussing dungeons, after all.

Tl;dr:
If you want jobs not to play the same, there needs to be a playground in which for them to play differently. There's only so much distinction one can get out of {Pull All Trash and Just AoE it Down x2, Bossx1, Repeat}. Job diversity and content diversity pretty much have to be taken as a leap together.

Im saying in regards to the design that we have now. Changing encounters needs to also involve changing jobs themselves to be less homogenized so yeah I agree. Because the only real difference jobs have with current combat design is just all about damage and buffs. For the jobs to be truly unique they need to offer actual different strategies for a fight like in FFXI. But because encounter design lacks any actual strategy in the standards of rpg depth such as weaknesses, buffs, debuffs, resistances etc then you'll get what we have now where we live with the whole every class is a dps meme. The encounter design cant be changed for the better without needing to change the combat itself.

So yeah I thiiiiink I get what you're trying to say.