Will we ever see group content that isn't a dungeon on rails?

[fortuona]

any kind of system where different sized groups could tackle content as they saw fit instead of being lead down a corridor with trash packs then a boss over and over?

how about a dungeon-type area with many different objectives, some that could be done with small groups or even solo for incremental progress, larger encounters for bigger groups, exploration and pathing decisions, etc.

as it is now, you get that one first experience of a new dungeon/primal/raid, but the areas are all completely homogenous and the background is merely pretty decoration. i'd settle for much blander environment with more engaging content within any day.

[Adventica6]

fates and hunts want to say hello to you.

[Felis]

How about a dungeon builded up as a maze. With secret chambers and moving stairs.

[Altijacek]

I craft and gather with a partner, a million times easier and more fun and pleasant and calm. Not having group content isn't excuse to not group up and do content.

[Shurrikhan]

fates and hunts want to say hello to you.

Really doubt these are a solution for the above problem unless the OP is actively seeking similar forms of disappointment. That said, the FATE concept, not in its current implementation, could probably answer the second line in part...

The closest idea I can think of to what you're asking is to be released into a middle of a 'dungeon area' rather than a dungeon itself, in which there a numerous mini-zones, each with related gauntlets/timed encounters or runs/boss fights that slightly interconnect through a mixture of consistent (say, having a boss charge into a tower at the edge of his arena gives you a shortcut to another zone as it falls onto a nearby wall - though perhaps you can only aim his near-death enrage charge at one such structure) and random triggers (bosses give one of several buffs upon kill, each exceptional against another certain fight or set of fights, making a single completion path unreliable)? Perhaps instanced, perhaps not, perhaps even a mixture - though it would take a while to hammer out all issues with mixed- or non-instancing.

[Colt47]

How about a dungeon builded up as a maze. With secret chambers and moving stairs.

The reason they moved away from this is due to the expectation of what a dungeon is. World of Warcraft used to have Mauradon, which had multiple entrances into different sections that were all connected to a central hub. Directionally challenged players had a very "fun" time finding their way to where they needed to be and I know one elderly Guild Leader I had could never find his way around.

I know I'd like to see group oriented zones again like in Final Fantasy XI, if not for simply allowing gatherers and combat jobs to work together for once to gather goods and get cool treasure, but that just doesn't seem like a direction the development team is going to take anytime soon.

[Fated]

Everytime I see one of these topics, I'm reminded of what people wanted out of the original FFXIV and what they were given.

[Khalithar]

I highly doubt we'll see any sort of unstructured instanced content, it doesn't really seem a part of their design philosophy. The closest I could think to one in FF was back in FFXI, there was a dungeon called the Sacrarium that you had to navigate and every in game day the walls would shift, forcing you to change the route you took each time, fortunately you only ever needed to go through there once.

[Alipoprocks]

OP, that's what the game was like in 1.23 and until ARR.

[Sylve]

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Blackrock Depths was my favorite, waaay back in the day. Large open plan Dungeon with trash packs that required crowd control (or an amazing tank) and intelligent pulling.
Very few PuG parties ever managed to clear the whole thing. When i got my first clear (6 levels above intended) it felt amazing, i still have the screenshot of the group i did it with.

The problem is, the Devs are perfectly capable of making a dungeon like that.
But the Players wont let them.

What do i mean? Simple, Players want the biggest reward for the least time invested. Hence the speedrunning and the general view that trash mobs are pure wastes of time (even when they give great XP).
Players these days want to get in, get their loot/currency and get out so they can go back in and get more loot/currency.
Generally speaking, Players don't want long Dungeons unless the reward for doing it is significantly better than any of the shorter Dungeons. But even then, Players will math out the most efficient dungeon for xp per hour and everyone will do that.

I love dungeon crawls. Fighting my way through a Dungeon packed to the gills with nasties, trying to find my way through the labyrinth of corridors and tunnels and even just attempting to locate the boss is all fun to me.
But whats fun for me is the most boring drudgery you could ever inflict upon certain others.

I made a post a while back, several i think, about making a kind of randomly generated dungeon (layout, tileset, monster types even bosses on utilizing completely random mechanics from other bosses) whose difficulty in ilvl scaled higher per "floor" you clear.
I know i would spend all day in such a thing, as my would my FC mates. But unless you put some raid quality gear in there, not many others would be interested because "it takes too long for too little reward"

TLD;DR, Devs can make better dungeons, but players dont want them. They want short, sharp highly rewarding runs they can blast through.