[Design Request] Adventurering the Dungeons

[Hioki]

This can best summed up with "You're dungeons are boring and too linear."

I was ok with your dungeon design in the early 20-30's, to be fair, it was exactly what I expected. Now though, you've repeated your dungeon design way to much. Yoshi-P, Honestly, I'm requesting that you have a sit down with your dungeon development team and have them try to create a more interesting dungeon experience. Many of the dungeons have been lined dashes to the end with fodder monsters in your way. There is no adventure in route from A to B. More so, you have all the systems already in place to make this happen.

Here are a few ideas to improve the dungeon experience

The scaling dungeon. Dungeons that become increasingly harder that extend beyond the item level entrance. These dungeons are based off performance or criteria met by the team as a whole.
- Time taken to reach a particular objective. "The path has been cut off due to flooding, find another route around,"(Different boss set, difficulty increased to avg ilvl 210.) "The enemy's bomb has destroyed the cave path, find another route around." (Different boss set, difficulty decreased to avg ilvl 170.)
- Paths that require a certain threshold of stats. "You need a cumulative total of 2000 strength to move this boulder/tree out of your path," You require a cumulative total of 1500 intelligence to solve this riddle." (Facing different bosses, physical vs magical, harder bosses)

The environmental dungeon. Dungeons directly affected by the current weather in the area that will reroute adventurers onto different paths. Weather is shared throughout all servers so this really isn't a far-fetched concept.
-Snow-storms/Blizzards: "Some paths have been cut off due to excessive snow and avalanches. You'll need to find other routes around." "Creatures bury themselves in the snow, take caution to not be taken by surprise"(hidden enemies, randomly placed ambushes, traps)
-Lightning/Thunderstorms: Random chances that lightning may strike trees or time based path cut offs. Dodging thunder strikes that may occur on the field. Locations become electrified after thunder strikes.
-Wind/Gales: Neverreap, In particular would be a dungeon that might greatly benefit from route changes based on what the wind is.

Night/Day Dungeons. Dungeons based off of what time you enter them. Easily implemented since all Eorzea time in on a universal level.
- Changes in patrol patterns.
- Changes in beasties
- Sleeping enemies

Bonus objective dungeons: Making dungeons easier or harder based on what objectives you are able to achieve.
-"Cutting off power sources weakened _______."(decreased damage, lower hp),
-"Your incessant meddling has infuriated the boss increasing his strength." (Increased damage, damage taken decreased).

Job shortcut bonuses: The addition of job based interactions.
-"If you only knew someone who could jump the chasm and flip the switch,"
-"If only you knew someone who could shoot down the ladder,"
-"I'm sure we could get these torches in the right order if we knew someone with fire spells,"
-"This spot echoes throughout the cave, if only you knew someone who could lullaby the enemies to sleep."

Trap based dungeons: The introduction of traps/riddles that adventurers may have to work through.
-"The floor has strange runes. Maybe you should only step on the glowing ones,"
-"The platforms move in a pattern, a well timed jump would get you across"

All of these would culminate into better rewards based on the challenge the adventurers choose. It would also break up some stagnation and allow you to create harder dungeons that could cover a variety of ilvls. Throw in a few dungeon achievements for facing off against particular bosses and you generally increase the overall replay value. These would get stagnate eventually but not on the level of, "great another neverreap..." tier. I'm just asking for more interaction in your dungeons as currently, you're dungeons are boring and too linear.

[FridgePanic]

It might be an adventure the first time, but it'd be a chore subsequent times.

[Hioki]

You just explained the current issue with dungeons and just about everything currently in the game. Things lack a significant replay value and become a chore. This is the exact reason they are due for a change. Besides, if we went with those thoughts why add anything at all. A chore today is a chore tomorrow and so on, if dungeons were a chore then we would be ok with running them for the next 2 years without any addition of new dungeons. They're just chores after all.

The current dungeons are equal to a day job. You know exactly what to expect and you literally go in to just 'put in your time'. A design request to add some form of replay value would alleviate some of chore/job of it. Really it just comes down to letting the dungeon leads go wild once in awhile, or telling them to put some imagination and fantasy into the game.

[Elizar_Naki]

While I personally think your idea has some merit, I can see at least 2 possible problems right off the bat:

1. the crowd that LIKES predictable content, that prefers that everyone "know the fights" ahead of time, would rebel against anything that makes it take longer for people to learn the fights, even if your idea WOULD make things more interesting. I can't speak for how big that crowd is in relation to the player base as a whole, but given how often I tend to run into people with this mindset, I'd expect more people to rebel against this idea than embrace it.
2. regarding the job-based shortcut idea, the devs would have to implement a way to make EVERY class/job useful in in SOME dungeon somewhere, or someone somewhere would cry fowl when their main job isn't given a way to shine (some might even complain if their job isn't given a way to be useful in EVERY dungeon). As an example, I main NIN, and the only way I can think of to implement a purely NIN-based shortcut would be to create some kind of interaction point that I'd need to use stealth to reach (anything based on my elemental Ninjutsu could also be done by BLM); not only would that be tedious given the movement speed restrictions, but if I screw the shortcut up, I'm now cut off from the group and will likely get killed, wasting even more time while I respawn and rejoin the rest of the group to either try again or proceed normally. Other shortcut ideas could also have similar problems if they aren't automatic successes, and given how some jobs operate, not all of them CAN be.

Don't get me wrong, I'd be all for this, if for no other reason than to see what the devs come up with to make things more interesting...but I seriously doubt the majority of the player base would support something like this.

[ruskie]

Since we are getting only 2 drex dungeons for now it would be worth for them to take time to develop extra dungeons like the one proposed and that others have(me included) suggested in the past as well. It could be just one extra such content each major patch but if it's done right it could last for a while. And the rewards they can set to be scaling like the island exploration stuff where rng can drop you stuff up to i210.

It could drop some tomes but primarily it should be there for those that want the adventure. The impatient crowd will still get 2 dungeons they can spam that are run through. But I want some content where I can go and spend time with friends exploring, figuring stuff out etc...

They call them island exploration I'd call them just explorations - and they could be anything really - basically instances you can explore in. Have them be challenging or easy or random. Co-operative or just soloable, light or full party. Mix it up. Ability to swap jobs and such.

[Aillith]

I want this so bad. The dungeons put me to sleep.
it's really hard to keep people alive when you are falling asleep at the controls...

[ruskie]

I want this so bad. The dungeons put me to sleep.
it's really hard to keep people alive when you are falling asleep at the controls...

I once nearly slept though the final boss of brayflox longstop(normal) on my ast. It was late true but I was like dozing and only the sound of the LB charging up got me to refocus and finish healing it.

[Nebero]

I see your proposal for bonus objectives that changes bosses behavior, dificulty and reward based on the party performance along the dungeon as viable. Back in Aion we had a dungeon named Dark Poeta in which the last boss was decided by how many point the group accumulated during a dungeon Clear (it was a mix between time and number of enemies killed with one or two optional quests thrown in). The bosses were increasingly difficult and dropped better stuff.
I can see FFXIV implementing something like that if only they made Dungeons a bit wider and less linear - allowing players to choose between killing or avoiding certain objectives and packs of mobs. The End boss could drop a variable quality and amount of currency depending on the party performance (going from small amounts of Law tomes to high amounts of Esoterics and, in the highest difficulties, even Alex normal / hive tokens or Tokens to Exchange for itens to enhance eso gear)

[Nebero]

As a side note: Dungeons nowadays lack any navigational skill requirement and that hurts the game a lot. The current design places groups of mobs as "encounters" and the layout of the maps forces you to experience the content as if on a track or race.

FFXIV Dungeons sorely needs larger rooms and corridors as well as patroling mobs with their own behavior and tactics. Using Crowd Control, being able to measure pulls and navigating around mobs or knowing which rooms to avoid is something integral to Dungeon experience in many MMOs and that stuff helps to create identity to the dungeon itself (think on how brayflox, stone vigil, Dzemael and Aurum valley stand out among the rest of the 2.0 content). Even "pseudo open paths" like the last segment of Fractal feels better then a long hallway filled with trash.

If I could ask the Devs something from 3.0 dungeons, it would be this: Let dungeons have personality beyond their aesthetics.

[Zeues]

I like the idea, it will add new thing to the game.