Remove the middle barrier in dungeons.

[Dulcia]

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.

Wall or no wall, pulling packs of mobs and blendering them is what every dungeon is. So I agree we need other types of encounters in dungeons, and in my opinion it should involve rewarding Exploration because thats kind of what made the idea of dungeons exciting in the early days of MMOs. tbh the modern dungeon isn't even really a dungeon usually, its more like... a series of encounters. Having TRUE dungeons that reward exploration as side content would be great.

[Sunhwapark]

I hate dungeons, but I like the raids... (most of the time)
I did like the variant dungeon trash mobs though, so I would probably be more inclined to do a dungeon with trash like that rather than running with my eyes closed mashing aoe aoe aoe while holding w until we reach a boss. Well, I guess at least dungeons are smooth or so streamlined that people can get in and out of there ASAP with as minimal friction as possible in some cases.

[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.