4 man dungeons: Are they fun?

[Parz3val]

Dungeons are too steam roll/hack n slash.

If I wanted a hack n slash experience, I wouldn't be playing an MMO.

Give us optional, more mechanical complex (perhaps ilvl synced too) "Savage Dungeons".

[Tauu]

You mentioned Diablo I mentioned L4D. Both games implement randomness to keep it interesting. Trash mobs that may overwhelm you, patrol or that you can sneak by. They can have much stronger CC. A pacify to tank that lasts 15 sec is going to make that trash fight a bit more interesting, silence on healer, sleep whatever.

That reminds me of leveling in FFXI. Party camps typically had some level of danger to them, especially pre-mpk patch. Unexpected things happened. Pulls were sometimes tricky. Certain mobs appeared at night or aggroed from far away when a player had low HP. You had to be aware of your surroundings.

Fun stuff.

[Amused]

5 mans have always been my favorite activity in games. I like the dungeons here as well, but I don't run them nearly as often as I did in WoW\Rift. Part of it is queue time - adding one more DPS to parties would help (why the decision on 4 man? Just so it's not like that "other" game?).

Final Fantasy is traditionally a party of 4. It has deviated from that in previous iterations but the original party was 4.

[Kazumac]

I get your point but these dungeons don't have to be either uber challenging or braindead simple. There has to be a middle ground, especially for dungeons which are labelled expert. We have plenty of dungeons that are easy now, they're piling up. Lets have three for every patch that are a bit more interesting.

Plus primals and coil are mainly focused on boss fight. A dungeon is about going from start to finish. The only way to make them fun even by repplaying them over and over again is the element of surprise. Random placement for trash. You mentioned Diablo I mentioned L4D. Both games implement randomness to keep it interesting. Trash mobs that may overwhelm you, patrol or that you can sneak by. They can have much stronger CC. A pacify to tank that lasts 15 sec is going to make that trash fight a bit more interesting, silence on healer, sleep whatever.

I don't disagree at all and would like more in depth 4 man content. And I'm not saying they did hack and slash effectively as compared to other games that have perfected it but I do know people who enjoy those 4 man dungeons and the mindless ease that they are. Those players need a few each patch to keep up a change in scenery and I think that is the target audience for those dungeons. And to keep that audience they will continue to invest resources there.

I would personally like more challenge in smaller group content and cross my fingers that the devs will invest in that too... Someday... But I also don't think I'm the target audience for those 4 mans as they stand today.

[Viridiana]

I definitely miss trash with actual mechanics, like we have in Qarn. The faces have to be killed in certain spots, or the bees have to be burned fast. . .stuff like that. Lost City and TT HM feel like they're trying something similar with the invulnerable mobs, but I don't really count that. I don't consider a kill order to be mechanics.

I think there's an audience out there for a 4-man dungeon with trash complexity equal to or maybe above Qarn's, and boss difficulty like AV. . .

[skaterger]

The traps at the start of hullbreaker is a good example of how easy and inconsequential everything is in dungeons. They immobilize you for 5 seconds and puts a fairly insignificant dot that does not really do that much. Instead, if they stunned and incapacitated you for the entirety of that trash pull and dealing 1.5k dmg per tick , perhaps players would be more wary of stepping into one and instead of "heck I'll just let me healer heal me up" and eat the 5 sec debuff. Some of the ideas are good but none punishing enough to make a group not be able to brute force and AOE down everything.

[Seraphe]

No. They offer no challenge.

[Giantbane]

I definitely miss trash with actual mechanics, like we have in Qarn. The faces have to be killed in certain spots, or the bees have to be burned fast. . .stuff like that. Lost City and TT HM feel like they're trying something similar with the invulnerable mobs, but I don't really count that. I don't consider a kill order to be mechanics.

I think there's an audience out there for a 4-man dungeon with trash complexity equal to or maybe above Qarn's, and boss difficulty like AV. . .

There are bees in Hullbreaker, but they don't have the power to 1 shot a tank wearing i100 gear.

Honestly, low end dungeons are tough because they're level sync'd. The "problem" with high end dungeons is that you can waltz around in them with gear 40 ilvls over what it was designed for. If they started ilvl syncing the high end dungeons as strictly as they do with the low level dungeons, it wouldn't be as much of a cake walk.

[Divine_Intervention]

They were fun enough first run through. Maybe even the following ten or twenty run throughs while grinding levels. Returning to them while working on Animus broke me. So dull.

Personally, I love 8 man content. 4 man is dull, exceedingly long and pretty damn pointless once you're overgeared/past that point in game. 24-man raids are easily some of the most fun boss fights, but are a total social trollfest.

8 mans provide great challenge, interesting mechanics, and in the case of 2BCOB, can only be done with either a group of friends, or people from your server, and you make more friends that way. More of this please.

[Fynlar]

There are bees in Hullbreaker, but they don't have the power to 1 shot a tank wearing i100 gear.

Final Sting I'm pretty sure deals something like 75-80% of the target's maximum HP, because it seems about as equally devastating to a tank as it is to anyone else (and I have eaten my fair share of Final Stings as a healer/DPS), and I have never seen a single Final Sting take down anyone that was at full health.

If that is the case, how well you can take a Final Sting isn't really based on how well geared up you are (although it would still have a factor in how well you could survive any other mobs that happen to still be attacking you)