On why current dungeons and what can be done to improve them

[carbonx]

Recently, I've been garnering information in game and across other forums on the current state of the game. By and large, many of the people I've talked to have had a common complaint: the current dungeon meta is boring. In this thread, I'm going to explain the major complaints I've heard, and hope to inspire some brainstorming on what can be done to improve dungeons.

What is the current "dungeon meta"?

For those who do not realize, most dungeons follow the same layout: Trash > Boss 1 > Trash > Boss 2 > Trash > Final Boss. The only notable exceptions are the story dungeons, such as the Praetorium and Castrum Meridianum. This standard formula is a safe dungeon design, and one that has only the major criticism of being boring.

The other staple of the current dungeon meta is difficulty level. As dungeons are the major source for capping tomes, getting gear, and levelling, they are the bread and butter of PUG content. As such, the difficultly level is low, such that even upon the first entrance into the dungeon, you can usually oneshot or twoshot the fights, with some notable exceptions. Again, the major criticism is the uninspired, boring feeling of dungeons based on their faceroll mechanics and implementation.

You might think this is strictly the fault of the development team, but I am going to argue that the playerbase plays a huge role in the current meta of dungeons.

The exceptions to the dungeon meta, and why they failed

So the Praetorium and Castrum Meridianum failed in large part because of the long cutscenes placed between fights. The development team has learned from this mistake and the level 60 story dungeons only had one notably long cutscene, and only upon arriving at the final boss. However, ultimately, the cutscenes would not have been an issue if older players had not repeatedly left new players behind because they were rushing for the reward of Story Roulette. "You should use Party Finder" or other such arguments are given, often as an excuse for this behavior, instead of seeing that the reward tomes are for helping new players, not ruining their first experience in a dungeon. In short, this shows entitlement of veteran players and a hint of the "most reward for the least effort" attitude I'm going to mention later on.

The other exceptions to the dungeon meta would be dungeons that exceeded the normal level of difficulty. Easy examples would be Aurum Vale, which is probably my most often "queue in progress" leveling roulette dungeon, and Pharos Sirius (NM) prior to its nerf. Pharos Sirius (NM) is probably the most notorius difficult dungeon in its glory days, and it was because, as a dungeon, it required more party coordination, player awareness, dps control, and healer skill than the other dungeons released at the same time. Because this was part of the same roulette as Haukke and Copperbell HM, many players would drop Pharos upon entering because they knew wipes were likely occur that would mean leaving and re-queueing after the 30min penalty would actually save them time in the long run.

The unpopularity and protest to the dungeon ultimately led to its nerf, and probably sent the development team that: "we do not want difficult dungeon content; please stop making it". The reality is simply that, as a playerbase, we did not want to put in a greater effort to complete Pharos, when easier alternatives with equal reward were offered. This is the nail-on-the-head example of "most reward for the least effort" of our playerbase. If it makes our day-to-day routines in the game longer or harder, players get frustrated and dislike the content, crying out for nerfs.

How to innovate dungeon design in current conditions

So, keeping in mind the habits of our playerbase, in order to be innovative with dungeon design, the development team is between a rock and a hard place. It is very difficult to balance dungeon difficulty, even while following the same humdrum pattern of bosses separated by trash mobs.

Some of the best suggestions were to introduce premade party dungeons, with high levels of difficulty and unique rewards - glamour gear, relevant gear (equal to tome gear), minions, etc.. The other suggestions were easy content that followed a new layout - perhaps a series of boss fights without trash similar to the Praetorium, randomized areas in the dungeons, or longer and more intricate dungeons that are not necessarily within the Roulette dailies.

Improving the playerbase

By and large, it has probably been obvious that one of my greatest critiques in this post has not been about dungeons at all, but the general attitude of our playerbase in PUG situations. I think everyone should take responsibility to adjust their attitude in an ideal world, but the reality is, that is likely not going to happen.

What I suggest the development team can do to improve the environment of the game is offer players outlets to improve within the game. Right now, the biggest problem is the development team seems to be taking a very safe approach to handling player complaints. They make content easier through nerfs and things like the introduction of the Echo. Instead, I believe they need to go in the direction of player improvement. Unfortunately, there are little to no internal resources for which players can measure their performance. This leaves other players ultimately responsible for teaching, but no one is ever placed in a position where they have to improve to progress.

Introducing some sort of dps measure, even if it's personal and strictly compared to averages from players on the same class, or training hall, would go a long way to improvement of DPS players. Measures like "% of damage mitigated" or "% overheal" for tanks and healers respectively would be helpful for the other roles.

Closing statements

These are my thoughts on the subject of how and why dungeons could be improved. I'm not claiming they are the only option, and I would love to see some more feedback on what the community at large thinks.

[Legion88]

Nice essay. Congratulation.

I wont destroy your suggestion but i hope i can expand your ideas of inovating dungeons and improving the playerbase.

How to innovate dungeon design in current conditions

Separate the casual low level difficulty dungeons from the mid/high level difficulty dungeons. So you can make a separate roulette in the future for the new mid/high level difficulty dungeons. The new dungeons can give more tomstones or better and/or more gear drops as their counterparts of the "expert" dungeons but they are a lot more difficult to beat cause of mechanics (dungeon mechanics, boss mechanics, trash mechanics) or time needed for the clear (no ways of speedruns cause of hard gating or other hard punishing mechanics).
Every player can choose to grind the "expert" dungeons or the new type of dungeons. In the case of whining just l2p or git gud. Maybe introduce some dungeons for full parties.
There are some other models for duties in other games like the "Ancient Cave" in Lufia II, just for premades but you could include gathering and crafting to progress in there.
Perhaps there could be a huge dungeon, a real dungeon. Entrance = exit. 3 out of 10 possible bosses are spawned, two ore more can be spawned by dungeon mechanics or quest you can accept at the entrance. Quest in the dungeon you can accept in there and only can be completed within the run. Every boss and quest could give rewards like tomestones, good up to date gear.

Improving the playerbase

This is the primal point of the problems in duties.
But there is no way around a parsing tool to improve the players with the handling of there jobs. Some just don't know how good they perform so everyone should have his own parsing tool automaticaly adjusting to the job. But you will always find people who feels insulted by that.

[raela]

Helping people improve their DPS will not aid in success in difficult mechanics. Also, while a challenging 4-man dungeon would be fun, how would it fit in? If rewards are equal to tomes, people will just spam those endlessly until they have everything they want, then complain about being bored, and if the rewards are less, people will call them useless. I get the impression from forums and interactions with people in game that very few would do challenging content for the sake of it.

[carbonx]

Helping people improve their DPS will not aid in success in difficult mechanics.

The only way to improve success with difficult mechanics is through practice. Unfortunately, players often find it difficult to get into groups to experience truly difficult content - i.e., endgame raids or trials - giving them minimal exposure to hard mechanics that would punish them for subpar play. This is pretty easy to pin down why: weekly lockouts and player frustration. Early on, most groups are going to look for players that are already experts at their class, can handle difficult mechanics, and favor people with backgrounds in raiding because it's the most efficient way to go about obtaining loot with weekly lockouts. For new players who have not mastered the game, they are typically unwanted in endgame content until they can get limited experience through learning parties, extreme primals, what have you. In addition, endgame is missing a lot of what I would call "midcore" tier content, which could be vastly improved by installing a new type of dungeon.

By giving more varied forms of challenging content, especially content that is not gated by a weekly lockout mechanic - dungeons, I think, would be a great alternative to raids.

I gave a couple of other examples other than tomes of what could be rewarded in challenging dungeons, but I guess you missed them. I think people would be willing to participate for a chance at decent gear drops, glamour drops, unique minions, or even titles from specific instances. The only incentive for clearing the Second Coil of Bahamut (Savage), after all, is the title.

And while providing a DPS measure may not be the best way to improve player performance, it can have a "glass shattering" effect for players who are not aware of how suboptimally they are doing. I mentioned mitigation percentages for tanks, overheal for healers, or a general training hall. The idea is not to make it easier for low DPS players to be called out, but for people to be able to take action to improve themselves, which is why I suggest only showing personal DPS/mitigation/overheal compared to an average by class, versus displaying stats of the whole party to the whole party. If you can think of a better alternative, I'd love to hear it.

[Kaurie]

I like your overall post, but I'd argue the bigger problem is the development teams failure to properly interpret the data they have.

For example, I hate Aurum Vale with a passion, and that has nothing to do with it being difficult. I simply find it both boring and frustrating. The mechanics are not difficult to complete or coordinate, and I never found wiping to be a huge issue. However, I did find it to be far less enjoyable than other dungeons. The frustration was furthered when you're down leveled to 49 leaving level 50 skills (if you went in at 50 for whatever reason, i.e. relic).

I feel the same way with Steps of Faith. I applaud the team for trying something new, rather than the circle trials and adding in mechanics like dragon killers and cannons, but ultimately I found the fight boring. I one-shotted it from the get go and never found the fight all that difficult, but it did require a bit more coordination and thought than the average trial. It's need for coordination and skill were not factors in why I found the fight boring, but simply the mechanics of the fight were boring to complete. It felt long and repetitive. Being on a cannon sucks, cuz u just sit there pressing 1-1-1-1-3-1-1-1-1-3-1-1-1-1-1 etc. Being a tank luring mobs to the front was boring, because you weren't really doing any mechanics than flash, run to front, flash, run to front. Essentially, the fact that you were moving in the fight limited what you could actually do, and the mechanics actually felt dumbed down to me.

I get the impression I am not alone in these feelings, but it seems like the development team is only receiving that people don't like challenging content.


As for your 2nd post, I think that it would help with people trying difficult content if there was not a huge gate blocking it. i.e. If you could queue for Savage in duty finder, people might go in there more often. There would still be statics and party finders, but the DF would just let people go in without having to really promise anything beforehand. I really don't see why they don't have it. When I first started playing, it was great the first coil was already in the DF and I was able to experience it that way, otherwise I likely would never have entered the raiding scene.


Your main argument is that the player attitude is to blame, but I'd argue that player attitude is a product of game design. There are many core elements which require you to replay content over and over, which encourages people from wanting the easiest/fastest possible route, and when something slows that down there is negative feedback. There are 100s of ways this can be tackled, but as it's built so much in to the core, I doubt it will happen. Thus the best we can wish for is a bit more variety.

[raela]

I gave a couple of other examples other than tomes of what could be rewarded in challenging dungeons, but I guess you missed them. I think people would be willing to participate for a chance at decent gear drops, glamour drops, unique minions, or even titles from specific instances. The only incentive for clearing the Second Coil of Bahamut (Savage), after all, is the title.

If anything is sufficiently desireable, I feel like the suboptimal players would still be excluded.. though they could make groups amongst themselves..

Yes, I agree practice is needed to improve, but my pessimistic mindset is, is it worth the devs to put in the effort or something that might not even achieve the intended goal? They are putting together a beginner's hall (that should come out in the next 1-2 patches), so we can see if that changes up anything. I also wonder how many people who want to try harder content put forth the effort of making their own PFs. I'm guilty of it myself - I haven't cleared Thordan and do want to practice/learn the mechanics, but have no desire to actually organize a group..