Purpose: Instanced or Public Dungeons or Raids with a primary focus on leveling up, but to also provide item-based rewards as drops from NM boss fights or treasure chests earned from clearing parts of the dungeon. Could also earn Grand Company points to exchange for specific rewards if successfully completed.

Benefits and improvements over current content:
A lot of the groundwork here is based on the R45 dungeon, however there's many problems with the dungeon that prevent it from being a viable leveling ground. Here's some of the pros of implementing a dungeon focused on leveling:
  • Provide party-based leveling with an expectation of a set amount of EXP gained in a finite amount of time. For example, a full clear run might result in roughly 30K EXP if you clear the entire dungeon within the 60 minute time frame. Speed of completion bonuses could be rewarded for faster parties.
  • Provide more challenging fights with a purpose, in this case various boss/NM encounters or groups of challenging monsters that drop useful gear for your class and level range.
  • Provide alternative means to open-world EXP grinding, quest-based leveling, or guild leves as a way to level up.
  • Provide an alternative means to obtain tiered equipment based on raid and level range. This would be an improvement over current methods of EXP that provide very little reward.
Implementation:
The dungeon/raid design and layout would be static, but the monsters contained within and the chest/loot locations would be randomized. This would prevent the current situation in the R45 dungeon of skipping as much content as possible to clear the dungeon as fast as possible. This would also reduce the repetitiveness of the dungeon as each room would hold a new surprise rather than becoming overly predictable. Boss or NM spawn conditions could also be randomized, or triggered after killing a set # of mobs. NM spawns and loot table could be static from a pool of NMs and gear, so you may fight the same 12-15 NMs over the course of 4-5 runs where you may encounter 2-3 NMs per run. Similarly for gear and loot, you may need to run the instance multiple times before you see all the loot the dungeon has to offer.

To start things off, 1 Dungeon per 10 levels with 5 tiers/dungeons total, with some scalability in difficulty using the "5 Star" system already implemented with guild leves to accomodate parties that are higher or lower within a level tier (Ex: 1 star for rank 35-40 groups, 5 star for rank 44-49 groups). Can add more dungeons as needed.

Bells and Whistles: Nice touches that are lower priority....
  • Easter eggs and secret loot, or super rare NMs/loot.
  • Statistics summary upon completion detailing minor accomplishments like most damage, highest dmg weapon skill, highest damage spell, etc. Similar to an RTS game summary page.
  • Achievements and titles for completion.
  • Bonuses (EXP, loot, titles) for "skill" exhibited during completion. Like boss incapacitations, boss kill speeds, "perfect" runs with no deaths etc.
Summary: The purpose and goal of this proposed content would be to add to and improve upon some of the ideas the new R45 instanced raids introduced to Eorzea. I can't count how many times I've heard "I wish we could EXP in the R45 dungeons" because the EXP that goes wasted on R50 characters is pretty phenomenal if you actually kill all the junk on the way.

However, fundamental design flaws in the game content and the dungeon itself make this proposition of leveling in the R45 dungeon unfriendly and counterproductive. Speed of completion and efficiency is an emphasis in the R45 dungeon for it to be considered a "success" and the changes to MP cost and AoE heals, along with lethal AoE attacks make it inefficient to take anything but ranged DPS and caster classes. Taking underleveled characters would only exacerbate the problems outlined here.

Making the changes proposed above would provide a more relaxed, completion focused approach to leveling that rewards party-based grouping for those that take the time to form a strong party composition, providing a fast-paced, non-stop gauntlet of content with fun and engaging party dynamics. These are many of the same fundamentals that made FFXI such a fun game while leveling, but would also provide an additional incentive and reward system with useful loot and boss encounters. It would also provide a finite and manageable time commitment for those with less time, but also allow more focused/hardcore groups to continue to run the instance without becoming bored too quickly due to the randomized monster encounters and loot tables.