More complex dungeons

[Kurogaea]

May be a lttle late for the HW expansion, but we didn't see the dungeons yet so maybe this is already done. Doing all the dungeons up ill now I realized something that no one seems to mention at all, and I guess no one cares too much and might totally disagree on me anyway due to dungeon farming for relic pieces. The dungeons are too linear. As much as I love the look of the dungeons I never needed a reason to go back and find something or press a switch to trigger a mechanism to open a pathway that was not directly in front of me or in plain sight.

[Kurogaea]

Some dungeons have stuff like that, like Sunken Temple HM at the end where we press 3 switches which seemed kinda....um...boring. They were all next to each other and I thought it would've been more complex like the first Sunken Temple with the plates and pictures. Sastasha HM had just about no puzzles or mechanisms in it when the first one had the message at the beginning of the dungeon with a REALLY easy hint of what switch to press during the Coearl fight.

[Kurogaea]

Not sure how the dungeons suppose to be in ff14, rollercoaster ride or an adventure, but I'd love to see a dungeon that takes some thinking, maybe a little bit of first person view time, a few backtracks and maybe time to solve a randomized paper or NPC's riddle. One other thing I'd like to see is more backstory of the dungeons within the dungeons. I'd walk through Tam Tara nm and see jail cells, just makes you wonder what happened to the prisoners, or if there were any at all. I just hope going through the dungeons in HW would be just as fun as exploring the big overworld we will have.

[Atlaworks]

Hi! You can edit your posts to keep from back-to-back posting like this- It bypasses the silly character limit per post. I know it's counterintuitive, but what can you do?

Also while I agree and would love an adventurey type dungeon, they're designed knowing that most players will run them a million times in an expert roulette of at least one patch cycle. If you can't sanic your way through a dungeon, I imagine it would come to be viewed as "Aw crap I got X on my roulette" very quickly by people tome grinding and the like. There would need to be some compromise; I think this sort of thing would be amazing for a 24 man dungeon, CT style- where instead of 3 parties fighting one big beefy dude at the same time, the majority of the dungeon has the parties separate and accomplishing goals to help the other parties, like killing a boss in alliance A puts a debuff on a boss in alliance B or opens a door to a loot cache for alliance C.

[PotatoWafflez]

The problem with "complex dungeons" is that as soon as someone figures it out it becomes linear, with the sastasha example if you took it further and added to it, you will still end up turning into something like:

Go to A Find out what you need to press at B
Go to B press what you need to press
Go to Boss
Kill Boss
Get loot

Or

Go to A find part of the puzzle
Go to B find another part of the puzzle
Go to C find the mob that drops final part of the puzzle
Kill Mob
Complete puzzle
Go to Boss
Kill Boss
Get loot

Add any more complexity and you are asking for complaints or people will just pull everything in the dungeon to ensure the "key drops" or will just brute force the negative aspect of getting the puzzle wrong.

Multiple paths? Soon as you've done it once and figured out the correct path you will ignore the paths that aren't the right one. People already avoid trash when they can same kind of principle "this path is the best path to take"

I suppose you could make the boss spawn in three locations and randomise that and have each area add different mechanics but you still end up with a fairly linear dungeon just with a bit of annoying backtracking if you chose wrong first time. If they added a hint like to its location that run, then you'll just go there first and ignore the backtrack entirely.

Adding things like blocked paths or bonuses from one 8 man's contribution in 24 man content will just yield more abuse than there already is about how Alliance "A/B/C" sucks and needs to "L2P" They could have a boss that has 3 "bodies" that shares HP like the last Trash in WoD only with more mechanics however.

Going back to dungeons people will also make guides that have all the answers and people will expect you to know all the answers or to have the guide to hand so people will complain if you mess something up for "their run" they already do and we don't have complex dungeons to worry about.

Adding things like these to Raid content is probably the better idea because you aren't dealing with random people and raid groups actually communicate and know each other which makes a big difference to attitude.

[MXMoondoggie]

Yeaaah as I've said before when people bring this up jumping through hoops just doesn't really work in an MMO. People are looking to do runs as quick as possible to maximize a farming session this is not like a single player Final Fantasy where they can shove loads of puzzles in knowing you won't be completing the same content over and over again daily. I've played games where they added these sorts of things to dungeons and as mentioned above once people know what to do it just becomes easy and a chore to do. Like in Tera there was a boss that had these coloured totems that in the hard mode were invisible except the first one so made it harder but once people posted the solution to the puzzle everyone know each order for each starting colour so it became simple. Same with all the other puzzles in the dungeon like killing two bosses at the same time and jumping platforms to find switches.

Do you want to do that every day for a 3-4 month patch cycle? No. Maybe that sort of content would work for a long raid with multiple bosses where the challenge is not just kill bosses and trash but to navigate traps and pathways to find loot but i wouldn't want it in basic farming content and roulettes.

[Anty]

Yeaaah as I've said before when people bring this up jumping through hoops just doesn't really work in an MMO. People are looking to do runs as quick as possible to maximize a farming session this is not like a single player Final Fantasy where they can shove loads of puzzles in knowing you won't be completing the same content over and over again daily.

you are right but... for me that is mainly because of the dullness of the content. There isnt even a surprise if you run it the first time (maybe one at the last boss or so but lately the "new 3 dungeons" all had same patterns coming with them, making them even less interesting to play - also not for the first time).
When i did WP HM the first time with ls mates.... half way we all were "damn that is extremely boring" . long hallways with mindless trash etc. etc...

If contnet is more varied, harder and more challenging, then it will not be on "farming mode" on day one.

[MXMoondoggie]

If contnet is more varied, harder and more challenging, then it will not be on "farming mode" on day one.

Which will lead to lots of complaints and whining. People want things to be on farming mode because for the majority of players this is not their only game. They want to be able to get a new set of gear and then play something else until the next update happens or even in between farming heavily to reach caps in a few days. An MMO just works differently to most games for the majority in players in what they want from it. When you over complicate things and only pander to 10% of players by making everything super difficult or overly complicated you lose your audience.

I do agree they could do better within what they have though there is too much simple tank and spank in the game and that does bother me. Amusingly enough in the last EXDR update there were a lot of whiners early on complaining that it was too complicated lol. KotL i recall got most of the complaints especially the final boss but it wasn't like they were asking that much of players.

What i really think they should do is improve raid content beyond go into a circle and kill a boss or some trash mobs. Make raids epic with various difficulty levels and make them drop more rare loot the higher difficulty you complete. Make them into epic excursions where you encounter varied paths leading to different encounters and puzzles. With an entry level setting and more advanced you give newer players an access point to learn while allowing more experienced players the chance to really challenge themselves.

[ShaneDawn]

This same discussion has been through over and over again. Whil personally I would like more complex and/or challenging 4-man stuff, most of the players want it to be ez faceroll league. A lot of people already quit at the sight of good ol' Aurum Vale.

Personally I think of they made these complex/difficult dungeons, they could keep then outside the roulette. That way it would be perfectly optional to do them and no speedrunner could go nuts about having his day ruined by a bad roulette roll. Whether SE wants to dedicate any resources for this, I don't know. They'll probably keep on doing the same concept we've seen already as it keeps the majority of the playerbase happy.

[Amelia_Pond_Behemoth]

I think this is why Haukke NM is probably one of my favorites. 1. It's less linear than the other dungeons. 2. It feels like a breath of fresh air after snoozefests that are Halatai and Thousand Yawns of Toto-Rak.