Duty Support has now killed every required ARR to SB dungeon

[TheMightyMollusk]

Keeper of the Lake's last boss was always boring. It was the same AoE patterns that people always complain about, plus a couple of adds.

And "all" isn't entirely true anyway. I still maintain that Copperbell's much better now that the bosses actually do things. But most dungeons are lateral moves at best.

[Shurrikhan]

But most dungeons are lateral moves at best.

Aye. Some good, some bad, but mostly just sad in that they double down on "Dungeons should only ever be hallways with interchangeable trash and largely the same basic DDR mechanics on bosses."

Just imagine if they had instead gone the other way, fleshing out those dungeons' currently lackluster unique aspects instead of axing them outright. Imagine if Copperbell went the other way, with significant use of Duty Actions, or if Totorak actually used its unlock mechanic to allow for multiple paths through the dungeon and some (pseudo-randomly placed) trash packs were hard enough to encourage unlocking more ways around them, or if Brayflox actually allowed you to build up a small squad of saved Gobbies so that you could challenge otherwise overly difficult optional bosses, etc., etc.

Just the fact that nothing of that sort has even really been attempted since ARR Hard Mode dungeons and now the outlying elements are taking their purposeful disuse as excuse to be pruned is... pretty disappointing, to say the least.

[Striker44]

Aye. Some good, some bad, but mostly just sad in that they double down on "Dungeons should only ever be hallways with interchangeable trash and largely the same basic DDR mechanics on bosses."

Just imagine if they had instead gone the other way, fleshing out those dungeons' currently lackluster unique aspects instead of axing them outright. Imagine if Copperbell went the other way, with significant use of Duty Actions, or if Totorak actually used its unlock mechanic to allow for multiple paths through the dungeon and some (pseudo-randomly placed) trash packs were hard enough to encourage unlocking more ways around them, or if Brayflox actually allowed you to build up a small squad of saved Gobbies so that you could challenge otherwise overly difficult optional bosses, etc., etc.

Just the fact that nothing of that sort has even really been attempted since ARR Hard Mode dungeons and now the outlying elements are taking their purposeful disuse as excuse to be pruned is... pretty disappointing, to say the least.

Well, the "hallway" approach is largely because of us (the players). They made dungeons with various branches, side paths, etc., and what did we do? Ignore all of the side paths and choose whichever branch was fastest.

Remember that the dungeons we're talking about here are now introductory ones, too. Having "significant use of Duty Actions" in one of the very first dungeons a new player will ever encounter probably ends up being very bad design. Low-level dungeons should be simple and about getting people used to playing in a party. It felt strange seeing what used to be a sensible progression of difficulty become odd ebbs and flows between expansions now that we go from 1-90 instead of just 1-50. Things that were designed as "endgame" before with more mechanics in mind are now very much "early game" instead and were adjusted accordingly.

[Shurrikhan]

Well, the "hallway" approach is largely because of us (the players).

Step 1: Give "options".
Step 2: Purposely deny "option" even remotely proportionate reward, such that even its gil value is dead after week 2.
Step 3: Note how few people use the neutered option. "Well, they must not like the gameplay!" / "They must despise variance!"
Step 4: Remove options.

Yeah... that's definitely wholly on the community... /s

[Mikey_R]

Step 1: Give "options".
Step 2: Purposely deny "option" even remotely proportionate reward, such that even its gil value is dead after week 2.
Step 3: Note how few people use the neutered option. "Well, they must not like the gameplay!" / "They must despise variance!"
Step 4: Remove options.

Yeah... that's definitely wholly on the community... /s

What reward would keep the optional route favourable to do? Bear in mind, this is a dungeon setting, so you have 4 people to satisfy, all of which could have different wants and needs.

[Shurrikhan]

What reward would keep the optional route favourable to do? Bear in mind, this is a dungeon setting, so you have 4 people to satisfy, all of which could have different wants and needs.

What I was replying to was the variety/explorability in earlier dungeons that Striker claimed the community wanted dead and gone as if out of dislike for variety / explorability (rather than, say, their exact implementation which tended to be especially low-effort and disproportionately low-reward, with the devs conflating the latter with the prior per their iconic way of twisting around data and selectively hearing criticism to suit whatever conclusion demands the least thought, effort, nuance, etc.).

But for a roulette that offers a new form of content, the answer is the same as for any other roulette that offers only a single type of content: Give it reward at least roughly balanced for per-minute efficiency. That much isn't complicated.

Call the more varied alternate option to dungeon settings whatever you will. Delves? Forrays? Expeditions? It matters not. Call it, "<Content Type Name> Roulette". Give it actual, proportionate rewards. With that, you're 98% of the way there.

Finer details: You may wish to initially tune it around taking greater than your theoretically or dev-tested expected time as players will still be figuring out the new content type and a small degree of bribery is useful to new content; later, rein it back faintly as needed once you have more data on the average actual clear times. Use proportionate, rather than flat, rewards if you want the lengths to vary significantly within that same content type.

[Mikey_R]

What I was replying to was the variety/explorability in earlier dungeons that Striker claimed the community wanted dead and gone as if out of dislike for variety / explorability (rather than, say, their exact implementation which tended to be especially low-effort and disproportionately low-reward, with the devs conflating the latter with the prior per their iconic way of twisting around data and selectively hearing criticism to suit whatever conclusion demands the least thought, effort, nuance, etc.).

But for a roulette that offers a new form of content, the answer is the same as for any other roulette that offers only a single type of content: Give it reward at least roughly balanced for per-minute efficiency. That much isn't complicated.

Call the more varied alternate option to dungeon settings whatever you will. Delves? Forrays? Expeditions? It matters not. Call it, "<Content Type Name> Roulette". Give it actual, proportionate rewards. With that, you're 98% of the way there.

Finer details: You may wish to initially tune it around taking greater than your theoretically or dev-tested expected time as players will still be figuring out the new content type and a small degree of bribery is useful to new content; later, rein it back faintly as needed once you have more data on the average actual clear times. Use proportionate, rather than flat, rewards if you want the lengths to vary significantly within that same content type.

Yes, people do not care for it, noone runs through those optional areas for the rewards that they give. If noone explores that part, what is the point of adding it in the first place? This is why, whenever someone says, just add a reward, the question needs to be asked what reward do you think would entice people over there? For an added question, when was the last time you went to get the treasure chest at the start of AK that contains a minion just before the first boss? Or do you skip it every time? This is the sort of thing that is being mentioned. Noone wants to do the optional route because the reward is not there. So, what reward would entice everyone there when everyone has different wants and needs?

As for extra content, that wasn't in the initial quote train, that was posted as a separate post so it is likely no comment was made on it, however, if you want to add content into a roulette that is more exploratory based, it will still be speed ran. It might take a while, but eventually the most optimal route will be found. There is also the case of proportional rewards based on time create a conflict between someone wanting to go fast and someone wanting to go slower, especially if it is more time more (proportional) reward (assuming by this you mean, it doesn't matter if it takes 20 minutes or 40 minutes, it is the same tome per minute average). However, really, you have just made a non linear dungeon, where, once the ideal route has been mapped out, just becomes a linear dungeon and don't pretend that that isn't what is going to happen either. Which, again, negates all side areas you might have added, unless there is a reward in those side areas, of which the question is again, what is the reward that will keep players going to that side area.

[AurumEnjoyer]

Introductory dungeons don't have to be a snoozefest, especially with how many times vets are forced to run them. Considering we have no midcore content between normal and savage, they should ramp up the difficulty to give a smaller gap.
Make the branches interesting and rewarding (aka stop treating your players as braindead), and people will play them. Hell, make it so you retain your abilities and just get potency downscaled along with ilevel so I don't feel like deleting the game after every roulette run I do.

[Mikey_R]

Hell, make it so you retain your abilities and just get potency downscaled along with ilevel so I don't feel like deleting the game after every roulette run I do.

This has been talked about to death in the past and is something that is just not feasible.

I think it's just more reasons for SE to have much tighter ilvl requirements I guess. In DF I really missed the old mechanics.

I mean, just having an ilevel cap would be a start in general. It is weird the only content that has a cap is dungeons after all.

[AurumEnjoyer]

This has been talked about to death in the past and is something that is just not feasible.

Says who? Other games have done it just fine. The difficulty is turning potency scaling for levelling brackets, but that's it. Newbies get better potency on less abilities and vets get downscales accordingly, esp considering how homogenised classes have gotten it should be more easily transferrable.