For all those complaining about stale dungeons: from a beta player perspective

[Kennar]

Speed runners might have had something to with dungeon design a long time ago, but that doesn't adequately cover the current problems. Good players will economize everything, especially if it's something done repeatedly. Dungeons, and combat in general, feel so stale due to a decade of streamlining jobs, pruning abilities, and, to be frank, catering to the casual player. Tanking is too hard, so they took away enmity management. Healing is too hard, so they gave tanks too much self-sustain. Resource management is too difficult, so they removed TP, made MP a non-issue, and made every job as braindead as "press button when it lights up." Then there is whole "being around people makes me uncomfortable/anxious" crowd, so they removed the "multiplayer" from MMORPG with the Trust/Duty Support system.

I'm going to cut to the chase here, I feel that Trusts/Duty Support has been one of the most damaging features implemented in this game, and it only exists to cater to the people who can't (or won't) learn to play with others. Because of this, every fight is so heavily scripted that the only challenge is anticipating when AoEs will go out so you can move without being snapshotted. We've come to the point that the system is so broken that when some of us ask for a little more difficulty or complexity, the only thing they can do is restrict the arena with more AoEs because it's far easier to program bots to "Move to Position A" if "AoE Pattern X" materializes, than it is to make them handle unexpected situations. There is no spontaneity, no need for real strategy, and only one way to complete every objective. A "job rework" in 8.0 isn't likely to change much, unless the entire combat system is revamped.

[Mawlzy]

Speed runners might have had something to with dungeon design a long time ago, but that doesn't adequately cover the current problems. Good players will economize everything, especially if it's something done repeatedly. Dungeons, and combat in general, feel so stale due to a decade of streamlining jobs, pruning abilities, and, to be frank, catering to the casual player. Tanking is too hard, so they took away enmity management. Healing is too hard, so they gave tanks too much self-sustain. Resource management is too difficult, so they removed TP, made MP a non-issue, and made every job as braindead as "press button when it lights up." Then there is whole "being around people makes me uncomfortable/anxious" crowd, so they removed the "multiplayer" from MMORPG with the Trust/Duty Support system.

I'm going to cut to the chase here, I feel that Trusts/Duty Support has been one of the most damaging features implemented in this game, and it only exists to cater to the people who can't (or won't) learn to play with others. Because of this, every fight is so heavily scripted that the only challenge is anticipating when AoEs will go out so you can move without being snapshotted. We've come to the point that the system is so broken that when some of us ask for a little more difficulty or complexity, the only thing they can do is restrict the arena with more AoEs because it's far easier to program bots to move to "Position to A" if "AoE Pattern X" materializes, than it is to make them handle unexpected situations. There is no spontaneity, no need for real strategy, and only one way to complete every objective. A "job rework" in 8.0 isn't likely to change much, unless the entire combat system is revamped.

The use of NPCs in DS/trusts has the potential to make fights more interesting. They are not the reason for streamlining. That is SE laziness.

There's this silly idea floating around that dungeon NPCs are "AI" and because that AI isn't very bright, the dungeons have to be simplified. It's completely false.