Please make future Dungeons LESS like hallways...

[Shistar]

I would really like if dungeons had slight variations each run, some forced on the players (in one run one path may be blocked by overgrown plants or debris, then it may be open in another run) and some that they can choose (similar to variant, how some choices lead to some mechanics happening - in exchange for more loot? or straight up swap the boss?). It'd made roulettes more fun for people helping newbies, while giving new players this sense of adventure as well? Winding paths that take you to unexpected places, levers and puzzles you can interact with, diverging paths that take you to different bosses...

Re: Flying
I love flying. The issue is that zones are really large and really sparse. It's a pain to walk through when you can't fly, and boring to see when you can. Making them smaller but more dense would help a ton imo. And I'd love the return of those interesting little details they had around the map in ARR and HW, like the hidden chained dragon that's still alive in the Western Highlands.

[MsQi]

Flying probably killed any interest in exploration.

Maybe for the small brains. Flying opens up new possibilities for exploration. The dev's don't seem have the hang of that (yet?)

Re: Flying
I love flying. The issue is that zones are really large and really sparse. It's a pain to walk through when you can't fly, and boring to see when you can. Making them smaller but more dense would help a ton imo. And I'd love the return of those interesting little details they had around the map in ARR and HW, like the hidden chained dragon that's still alive in the Western Highlands.

ARR maps are the best. There are some cool things you can now only get to by flying. Now it feels like "Well, we have this big square, we better use it."

[Shinku_Tachi]

When you phrase it like that, it just sounds more like the reason is because people don't communicate with each other at all in this mmo anymore.

The playerbase dictates a lot of how things are done in 14 (it was the same in 11, tbh). Basically, a vast majority players decided they wanted to wall-to-wall everything, down the quickest possible path, the path of least possible resistance, to finish as quickly as possible. So CBU3 started making dungeons to cater to that style of play from that point going forward. No alternate paths, no additional side rooms, and by all means, no meaningful treasure tucked away. Just zoom-zoom.

[Valence]

They can definitely improve dungeon design but being more creative with trash encounters, boss rooms, etc. It's not like they haven't done that in the past. You could have hordes of enemies in places, you could have mini gate bosses in some others, different environmental gimmicks. They could bring back patrols and ranged enemies as well. More crowd control instead of just DDR telegraphs everywhere to spice things up. Traps tentatively maybe too? Lots of possibilities.

Then on the layout itself, instead of hallways, go back to ARR design, and make the side rooms relevant. They used to not be relevant on loot, and only half relevant on xp because they pitted first timers or levelers with rouletters in that the people running those dungeons at level would actually benefit a lot from the side rooms xp, while the rouletters would just want to complete the dungeon as fast as possible: this could have been solved by making side rooms relevant for the rouletters too. One could also imagine some random objectives peppered in there, like on one run you get to sabotage a ceruleum pipe in a room because the enemy has set up a generator, but in the next one it's neutralizing a garrison in another room because this time it's about enemy reinforcements.

Saying that the hallway problem lies solely with the players at fault is a little flawed, because it's the design that pushed that kind of behavior or conflicts.

[Kemiko]

I don't know where this "interesting dungeon design" is because we've never had it. We had dungeons with dead ends or side hallways that were hallways leading to the same place but none of it was interesting dungeon design. There's no reward for these dungeons that CBU3 is willing to put there that will entice players do engage in anything that isn't clearing the dungeon faster. There never has been either.

We've had housing materials you could only get from dungeons that people would always skip. We've had crafting gear items you could only get from dungeons that people would always skip. Items needed for ARR's relic weapon base was in dungeons, also always skipped. Back when mobs gave exp rather than just bosses, if players were already max level, guess what? Skipped.

The return to form asked for here was skipped constantly. Let's go back to 2013 where wall to wall was at its most impossible to perform. People did wall to wall anyway, just with sacrifice. PLD hits that sprints, runs off, pulls everything in a straight line for the boss gate, no one hits anything PLD dies at the boss gate, all the mobs reset, healer rezzes PLD, fight boss. This was normal. Wall to wall in the sense of how we do them now become commonplace among the community as of Brayflox Longstop (Hard) in my experience (where DF would just do it unprompted) and that was all the way back in 2.2.

I think the issue here with dungeons not being explored is a lot of things:
1) It's designed to be repetitive content that you farm for currency unrelated to the content itself.
2) Players aren't given enough incentive to explore anything but the quickest path due to point 1, even if attempts are made to entice players to explore.
3) Any item incentives can't be too good to compete with anything endgame. Any materials for cosmetics, which includes housing, runs into the problem of number 1. Because of number 1, even if the incentives were good, due to number 1, players will eventually hit a point of "got mine" and devolve back into ignoring all of the incentives and treating it as a gotta go fast hallway, due to the currency unrelated to the dungeon itself.

This issue isn't unique to FFXIV either. A countermeasure would be for dungeons to be procedurally generated each time someone queues into it to reduce the likelihood of players knowing the correct path and being forced to explore just to get out. But unfortunately there doesn't exist an infinite number of possible ways to design a specific dungeon so players with any amount of pattern recognition due to point number 1 will eventually hit a point of knowing the hallway to take to get out asap. Plus procedurally generated dungeons are unlikely to be popular with a majority of the playerbase. Maybe if it's a one off every now and again, but for all dungeons? People would riot.

This brings us to where we are today.

[Larirawiel]

So yeah, maybe controversial, but I think we actually need to return to how dungeons used to have their own personalities.

Blackrock Depths for FFXIV? I like the idea.


Cheers

[BlisteringFrost]

Just make dungeons with paths that 50% or 33% randomize a branching path but all of them end up at the same point. There, now you have the illusion of it not being the same thing every single run.

[AmiableApkallu]

Dungeons are linear because they are multiplayer. They need to make sure all 4 players are on the same page, and have the same goal: clear the dungeon.

Deep Dungeons are non-linear, and yet, 4 randomly matched players still manage to clear them.

MSQ dungeons are linear because… well, there's just not that much to do in them except enjoy the scenery.

[Drimn]

They can definitely improve dungeon design but being more creative with trash encounters, boss rooms, etc. It's not like they haven't done that in the past. You could have hordes of enemies in places, you could have mini gate bosses in some others, different environmental gimmicks. They could bring back patrols and ranged enemies as well. More crowd control instead of just DDR telegraphs everywhere to spice things up. Traps tentatively maybe too? Lots of possibilities.

Then on the layout itself, instead of hallways, go back to ARR design, and make the side rooms relevant. They used to not be relevant on loot, and only half relevant on xp because they pitted first timers or levelers with rouletters in that the people running those dungeons at level would actually benefit a lot from the side rooms xp, while the rouletters would just want to complete the dungeon as fast as possible: this could have been solved by making side rooms relevant for the rouletters too. One could also imagine some random objectives peppered in there, like on one run you get to sabotage a ceruleum pipe in a room because the enemy has set up a generator, but in the next one it's neutralizing a garrison in another room because this time it's about enemy reinforcements.

Saying that the hallway problem lies solely with the players at fault is a little flawed, because it's the design that pushed that kind of behavior or conflicts.

Efficiency geeks will only do what's most efficient and rip anyone else wanting to do anything else. They'll see if that side room improves efficiency, and if it offers a drop that goes for 10k or whatever (which is a decent amount for a non-trivial portion of the player base that isn't into crafting and gathering) they'll ignore it and berate anyone that tries to do it. This is 100% the player base's fault for trying to streamline everything down to a literal cattle chute and attacking anyone that wants to deviate from their idea of the way the game was meant to be played. Those 30 seconds are SO valuable, you know.

While I do wish dungeons had more personality and felt more alive than the FFXIII corridor stomp we have now, I know there's a large portion of people in the game that wouldn't have it any other way. If I had to choose between how you get Fine Wax and the current approach, I hate to say it, but I'd take the current approach. It's less drama.

[Daralii]

Yes but it's CBU3's motto to abandon things if it doesn't work, not try to fix it.

They'll bring back things that they admit didn't work, like the Baldesion Arsenal entry method for FT, just without any real iteration to make them less terrible.