I think SE needs to focus on making players feel important again.

[Gemina]

Nier had problems with justifying its existence within the worlds lore but damn did they get the concept of an “alliance raid” absolutely perfect compared to the beige nothingness that is myths. Myths makes itself even worse in that the raids from most to least interesting is inverse to their release order so the most interesting raid gets absolutely murdered by ILVL creep while the most boring is relatively untouched (which is funny considering it’s still a joke)

The contrast of the two raid series is interesting, isn't it? We have out of place Nier, but quite possibly the best 24-man content in existence. Then we have Myths, which takes place completely within the world of FFXIV that is arguably the worst this game has to offer.

This isn't even factoring how these raids played on their release, which only widens the gap of enjoyment. I still love the Nier raids. All three of them, and I bounce for glee anytime I get them in the AR roulette. Myths right now are about as fun to run as CT, and this should be seen as a complete failure by this dev team. However, if the idea of Myths was that the twelve aren't actively trying to kill you and have an end goal of being returned to the star, the dev team certainly accomplished it.

I will admit that Ivalice was a bit overtuned for casual players. The full wipes that took place during SB was a bit disheartening. Nier found the sweet spot, and only the power creep takes away from how fun they are, but not to the extent as a CT.

[Jeeqbit]

The difficulty of Aurum Vale was debatable

A lot of the difficulty of Aurum Vale was:

1. Too many enemies in the first area, leading to wipes if too many attacked unprepared players.
2. Tanks did actually have less mitigation at that level in the past (Arm's Length, aoe Reprisal weren't there, 30% mits were longer cooldown, stance mit wasn't a trait). They don't all have invulns at that level either.
3. The first boss could give trouble if people didn't know to click fruits or if healers were undergeared or couldn't perservere, but mostly it wasn't hard with a competent group through most of the game's life.
4. The second boss was only hard for people who didn't know cyclops mechanics, who'd get clipped by random glowers and donut aoes but it was still always a joke tbh.
5. The pull immediately after this was more likely to wipe people. It was one of the tests of what Hall of the Novice teaches you - how to pull one mob pack without pulling the other. If you pulled both, there was a strong chance of wiping unless the tank and healer were good at their jobs.
6. The pack right before the last boss could really hurt a tank without their 30% mit.

All of these things aren't really the case anymore, but I still never found them a significant issue, just everyone loved to abandon it without giving it a chance.

the environment wasn’t the prettiest to look at

To me, that was the real reason, that made me sort of want to abandon it. The color was an eyesore.

I would argue it at least made people feel something. Even if it was negative, it had a personality. What we have right now is so flavorless no one has any opinions about it anymore, and to me that is worse. No one is going to dell stories about Lapis Manalis or any endwalker dungeon because nothing is memorable anymore.

I agree with the sentiment in that dungeons having real consequence and difficulty is good and makes them memorable and makes it feel like teamwork.

Even when I do, for example, the big pulls in Saint Mocianne's Arboretum (normal), it feels like teamwork between myself and the sprout healer. Because you need the healer's help a lot more at that level. Doing giant pulls there is putting a lot of trust in these new healers and in turn they are putting their trust in me. When we overcome the giant pulls, it actually feels good, unlike the ones I can do without a healer at level 90.

But for the record, I do have memories of Lapis Manalis. When a healer died and I just finished the run anyway by healing everyone as a Warrior, or soloing the second phase. But really, those are the only sort of memories I usually get these days. Ones where I am left soloing things or doubling as a healer when I'm a tank.

carried over to XVI

One of the poor decisions that game made, in my opinion, is hiding the hard mode behind completion of the easy mode. Who can be bothered to do things twice, especially without skipping cutscenes? Then they put the actual hard fights as a sort of "savage unlock quest" that syncs you to MINE (in a FF16 context).

I mean, just give people the option of easy and hard at the beginning of the game and stick with it.

[Atelier-Bagur]

I’d suggest going back to good old ARR formula and start from there, despite ARR dungeons being low lvl and pale, they’re actually interesting, in fact my favourite dungeon in the entire game is Huakke Manor, you can literally pull everything and have a party in the boss room, tank and healer die from sweat and DPS are just enjoying loads of numbers on screen while boss music is playing, But that’s just me.

i think the Criterion formula is way better. 1-2 threatening mobs are way more interesting than a whole braindead mobs constantly cast AoEs.

I also wish Potions have some use in dungeons, just like Bozja (well not buffs and stuff i meant like actual JRPG potions.. Antidote and stuff) and maybe some traps like Dalriada

Also shortening mid bosses/final boss cast time for mechanics. It’s not like every boss is Burns Mist Dragon or Lost City’s Diabolos. I think that’ll make it more engaging and memorable.

That’s all i think of on top of my head rn

All good changes, but Im gonna keep fighting tooth and nail for this take but the biggest change I want to see is them stop doing the wall2wall + 3 boss narrow hallway dungeon design that has persisted ever since HW. ARR design was slightly better but none of those older dungeons compared a candle to the flexibility and open feel of WoW's dungeons. I want these instances to be more systematically memorable than just pure visual spectacle. They can even shorten the run time for some of them too depending on how mechanically/gimmick heavy they can be.

You know what really impressed me with Dragonflight? And I know they've done this before in WoW but the dungeon that really opened my eyes to how good a dungeon can be is the Nokhud Offensive. They basically took an entire zone and converted it into a dungeon instance and the cool part was getting on your dragon mounts and fly to each bosses's locations! It feel neat and unique!

SERIOUSLY, why is SE is so creatively bankrupt with the current dungeons? Theyre almost all just the same dungeon layout just with different coat of paint and I'm sick and tired of it. And I guarantee you that plays a big factor to why so many people like us feel bored with dungeons in FFXIV. I want them to first get rid of their own design limitations and start making unique instances; have some mob gimmicks that can be slightly punishing if you're not careful, have some dungeons have more than 3 bosses or even less (just make their encounters much bigger and slightly more mech wise to counter the smaller boss size), have some that have multiple routes with differing bosses (a thing they can take from current Variant/Criterion) and for the love of glob get rid of any invisible walls in the instance! Allow tanks to figure out how much they can pull mobs.

[Hycinthus]

Yeah, for normal dungeons, I actually think a simple solution can go a long way. We don’t need major revamps.

Basically, just introduce more branching pathways, optional mobs that lead to coffers, and maybe occassionally more than 3 bosses in a dungeon, or you know like a unique boss fight like on Bardam’s mettle.

Less formulaic. I don’t understand why everything has to be in a rigid strict formula anyway. Basically nowadays its just ( 2x wall to wall + boss) x 3. Thats it. It doesn’t have to be like this.

[Mayhemmer]

The difficulty curve in normal modes feels almost completely static from basically level 50 to 90 and that really shouldn't be the case especially when healers/tanks keep getting expanded kits that oft end up feeling like unneeded fluff outside of extreme and higher content.

Some of the issue also stems from dungeon design being more or less standardized from 50 and onward. It's where the "dungeons are too formulaic" complaint comes from. When dungeons become too formulaic, how the player engages with them too becomes formulaic, and it becomes a routine. You just know what to expect for all of them moving forward, so you never really need to adapt to anything different. It's a big reason why I want the team to reconsider dungeon design in DT, or at the very least, make trash packs more engaging, by more frequently adding mobs that use mechanics that require some degree of awareness and are harsher on complacent players. Not to an unforgiving degree, but enough to give a hefty slap to players who aren't paying attention at the right times.

[Jeeqbit]

just introduce more branching pathways

Do you think this has been successful in variant dungeons?

They could just extend the variant dungeon concept to normal dungeons, but I also find it a bit boring redoing the dungeon over and over slightly differently just to see different outcomes.

optional mobs that lead to coffers

We definitely had this for ARR. I would say that more than 99% of the time, these were skipped and still are.

[NekoMataMata]

Do you think this has been successful in variant dungeons?

They could just extend the variant dungeon concept to normal dungeons, but I also find it a bit boring redoing the dungeon over and over slightly differently just to see different outcomes.

We definitely had this for ARR. I would say that more than 99% of the time, these were skipped and still are.

The thing about Variant Dungeons is that there's achievements + a mount attached to going through each path and going through each set of options.

Most of the ARR dungeons have branching paths with optional coffers holding even crafting mats, and we skip those. I can't remember the last time anyone has opened the Qarn bonus rooms. Even with dungeon mapping achievements existing, new branching dungeons after a single expansion would simply have people taking the fastest route.

Which is why I would propose something different. Instead of coffers for items that may go out of date, why not create a variable dungeon where you get stat bonuses for taking certain routes. Sort of similar to how the NPC at the start of variant makes a suggestion on paths, but with actual benefits. Make these choices pop up throughout the dungeon but maybe add some puzzles to it so that people who are really paying attention can get through even faster.

[Turtledeluxe]

Well, I definitely see people die in The Lunar Subterrane regularly. Usually it is to the spider boss or the last boss. I often try to save or protect them with flash if they get a vuln since other mechanics are coming up.

Difficulty should be increased and parties that wipe two times should get the Echo imo.

Branching pathways sounds cool in theory but it would have to be some kind of limited content. There's no way it would be worth it to implement in something as casual as a roulette dungeon where so many people are looking to get in and out. I feel like people won't care avout branching paths in dungeons once we have an exploratory zone back anyway now that those have reached a bigger level of awareness among players. I'm pretty confident the new one will be quite popular and satisfy people for way longer than EW patches did.

The only way branching paths might work is if they are occasional and gave something to use with a relic or gear grind. Relic would be a bit better because gear hits a wall obviously and becomes dead content.

[Gemina]

Less formulaic. I don’t understand why everything has to be in a rigid strict formula anyway. Basically nowadays its just ( 2x wall to wall + boss) x 3. Thats it. It doesn’t have to be like this.

On the contrary, dungeons not being all that fun isn't because they are formulaic. It's because the formula they use doesn't work. In order to establish and sustain the replay factor, which is going to exist with dungeons whether you like it or not, there is a formula that has to be followed. However, this formula is more a methodology than the mechanics involved with developing content like dungeons. For any content in FFXIV that you don't mind running multiple times, opposed to dread having to rerun it at all, is an example of the dev team getting this formula correct.

Examples of what needs to go into dungeons to increase their replay value are: set up, music, suspense, stakes, reward. Allow me to elaborate a bit.

Ever notice how leveling dungeons are more fun than lv cap dungeons despite not having full access to your skills? This is because they have an advantage over capped dungeons specifically because of the things I mentioned, but also because they are tied to the initial MSQ of an expansion. There is set up that brings forth the music adding to the suspense, which increases the stakes, that pays off in the end. Let's take Vanasapti as an example:

• Everything has gone to crap. The end of days has come to Thavnair, and you are literally the catalyst having put an end to Zodiark. Beloved citizens to Vrtra are dying left and right, including his own right hand. The music kicks in before the dungeon even unlocks.
  
• The music is fantastic. It's a harmonious blend of upbeat Egyptian melodies and theatrical suspense that fits the theme of the dungeon. It pumps you up, and as an adventurer you live for moments when the stakes are high.
  
• Failure is not an option. We know we must prevail. Even the trash mobs are introduced in a way that makes them feel more threatening, adding to the suspense. As a leveling dungeon we know that the challenge has been tuned specifically for the duty. There is no ilv bloat here. We do not have full access to our skills, but we may have access to a new skill or trait that we can put to practice.
  
• The rewards does not come by way of loot awarded in treasure coffers. It's the boss fights themselves. They are actually engaging and fun to do. You don't want to reset and have the feeling of being the last hope taken away, right? And at the conclusion we get a little more to the story. The next piece to the puzzle.

Leveling dungeons continue to have a replay factor because they bring us back to those moments. The linear design and boss fight set up isn't much different from capped dungeons, but there is something different about them. It's not the dungeon design itself, but rather that capped dungeons are missing one or more things from the formula that is used for leveling dungeons. They may have an improper set up, the music might lack the required tempo, trash mobs are monotonous instead of feeling like they are alive and part of the duty. The stakes are not there, or they feel low. There is little to no reward. The bosses feel like striking dummies that hit back, but pose no real threat outside of that. The cutscenes that take place afterward are forgettable.

What all this means in my view is that capped dungeons are lackluster content. They cannot provide the same feel to leveling dungeons, and as such fall short time and time again. They are nigh useless other than to provide a whetstone for your job of choice, and even this falls short when they make jobs like WAR totally OP for a capped dungeon.

Players who have made their way to level cap have earned and deserve much more than this. They deserve to be challenged. What they do with dungeons doesn't matter in the slightest if they are not going to provide an engaging obstacle to overcome. Capped dungeons suck because there is no challenge, no threat, and elevator tunes for music. If we are supposed to look to 8-man content to continue to seek out what we feel in leveling dungeons, then what is even the point of capped dungeons? Total waste of time and resources.

[Hycinthus]

What all this means in my view is that capped dungeons are lackluster content. They cannot provide the same feel to leveling dungeons, and as such fall short time and time again. They are nigh useless other than to provide a whetstone for your job of choice, and even this falls short when they make jobs like WAR totally OP for a capped dungeon.

I agree with you that levelling dungeons do feel more engaging because there is more at stake, so completely agree with how I feel replaying Vanaspati.

However, not every dungeon can be made to have a "world-ending" stakes though, can it?

In my opinion, SE set up the capped dungeons with proper lore and set-up already, so how much more can they change if it still feels monotonous and formulaic?
For example:
- Fell Court of Troia - this is properly looped in into the MSQ, and it's part of the lore.
- Lapis Manalis - Cagnazzo was there, this was properly set up by the MSQ
- Aetherfront - This was also properly set up by MSQ.

When I meant properly set up, I meant that there are valid points for our party to be going to that specific dungeon, as set up by the story. It's not just wandering for wandering's sake.

Not every dungeon can be set up to have a life or death stakes.

So if this is the case, then what more can SE do? Even with all of these proper set-ups, they still feel monotonous and boring.