Remove the middle barrier in dungeons.

[RedLolly]

It's a "every time we've done something different, players just find the simplest and fastest method around the differences or outright avoid them, so we just made it simple for them."

[Valence]

Hot take, but mass pulling mobs, and blendering them with AOE attacks is not an interesting strategy, and dungeon being designed around this strategy is why they've become so stale. They're not being designed to foster fun gameplay, they're being designed to be completed as fast as as possible. If you really want to make trash interesting, look at what Variant/Criterion dungeons or even some alliance raid do with their trash.

It's a strategy that made more sense back when the game had systems others than dodge the bad and parties couldn't self heal through it by pressing a single button every 25s, because damage mitigation, aggro, positioning, pulling, gear and party resources actually mattered. If anything mob packs are a relic of the past.

But, if you want pretty creative and great examples of what they can do with mob packs look no further than criterions. And unlike the bosses that are ex/savage+ level, those packs are definitely manageable casually, even though the model would probably still need to be made easier for story level dungeons.

[Oizen]

They'd be absolutely TERRIFIED of asking tank players to actually press buttons in dungeons, so its not going to happen even if it would be more fun.

[RedLolly]

Hot take, but mass pulling mobs, and blendering them with AOE attacks is not an interesting strategy, and dungeon being designed around this strategy is why they've become so stale. They're not being designed to foster fun gameplay, they're being designed to be completed as fast as as possible. If you really want to make trash interesting, look at what Variant/Criterion dungeons or even some alliance raid do with their trash.

This is literally what I mean. Turning dungeons into a meat grinder is the result of players just naturally falling into efficiency. Look at the VERY FIRST DUNGEON of the game. Sastasha has all sorts of side rooms, multiple mini-bosses, requires you to wander to deal with gimmicks. And what does everyone do once we see it? Skip 50% of the dungeon and just run through to the end. Then we did that same sequence every 2.0 base dungeon.

The devs could add all sorts of new quirks to dungeons again, but in a week the player base will either ignore it for a faster completion or complain that it's annoying.

[Shistar]

Probably because people complained it was annoying to have to run through the whole segment before the boss they wiped at?

Yeah, I understand that, but I always saw the teleport as the reward for killing the boss. As in, you're securing the dungeon as you go and obviously, the boss room with the boss still alive in there isn't a particularly secure spot to set up a teleport/aether current/whatever lore flavor they'd like to give it.

[MicahZerrshia]

This is literally what I mean. Turning dungeons into a meat grinder is the result of players just naturally falling into efficiency. Look at the VERY FIRST DUNGEON of the game. Sastasha has all sorts of side rooms, multiple mini-bosses, requires you to wander to deal with gimmicks. And what does everyone do once we see it? Skip 50% of the dungeon and just run through to the end. Then we did that same sequence every 2.0 base dungeon.

The devs could add all sorts of new quirks to dungeons again, but in a week the player base will either ignore it for a faster completion or complain that it's annoying.

OK, we need to stop laying blame at the feet of players for this. There is no reason to go through them and that lays completely on SE, not the players. There is no loot that is worth it nor do enemies yield exp anymore and those were the only 2 things dungeons used to have going for them. If SE would actually try to be creative and give us incentive to in these off areas, we wouldn't have these issues. We don't need "quirks" we need incentive. There has never been a reason to go into the side rooms of sastasha, and that is no ones fault but the ppl behind the desks at SE because they should have, on day 1, asked themselve "but why would the players want to go into these rooms?"

[Reimmi]

I'm reminded why I stick to NPCs these days, I just don't get the obsession over wall-to-wall pulls.

Because the dungeons are incredibly mind numbingly boring easy and we want them done as fast as possible for the daily tomestones
if they made dungeons interesting maybe that would change

[Grimforth]

I'm reminded why I stick to NPCs these days, I just don't get the obsession over wall-to-wall pulls.

Because no one likes like playing with characters that take forever to kill shit and for some dumb reason doesn't use AOE on mobs.

[Feronar]

My main problem with dungeons in FF14 is how formulaic and same-y they are. Sure, they may be visually diverse and pleasing to look at, and the boss fights are usually fun and diverse, but the core gameplay loop is always:

* Clear trash to first barrier
* Clear trash to first boss
* Kill first boss
* Clear trash to second barrier
* Clear trash to second boss
* Kill second boss
* Clear trash to third barrier
* Clear trash to third boss
* Kill third boss

Contrast that with the dungeons in WoW, which have far more diversity in their gameplay. Layouts are far more varied, and require you to be strategic in how you approach them. Even the trash has special mechanics that you have to handle, and more fun and interesting to deal with.

Full disclosure, I am an active mythic+ dungeon player in WoW, and I have timed +10 keys in all dungeons in the current season.

[Valence]

OK, we need to stop laying blame at the feet of players for this. There is no reason to go through them and that lays completely on SE, not the players. There is no loot that is worth it nor do enemies yield exp anymore and those were the only 2 things dungeons used to have going for them. If SE would actually try to be creative and give us incentive to in these off areas, we wouldn't have these issues. We don't need "quirks" we need incentive. There has never been a reason to go into the side rooms of sastasha, and that is no ones fault but the ppl behind the desks at SE because they should have, on day 1, asked themselve "but why would the players want to go into these rooms?"

Yes, although there used to be a reason to go to side room which was mob xp. This conflicted with roulette players that were potentially running very low level dungeons comparatively to their true job level, and only the roulette rewards made said dungeons worthwhile. This meant that the only objective for roulette players was completion in the fastest time possible, unlike for someone running said dungeon at their actual job level that would greatly benefit from additional mob xp from side rooms.

In their usual fashion SE decided in ShB to remove all mob xp and condense it behind bosses and checkpoints instead of actually addressing the issue: they could perfectly have had the leveling roulette also make up for individual mob xp rewards by adding a multiplier, much like it already does for the roulette completion. Now of course all those additional rooms have been made truly worthless, and are just there to taunt first timers that might run into them by mistake.