More to dungeons :o

[Heybunny]

I remember SWToR implementing certain puzzle bosses. Specifically the first puzzle boss they had implemented in their EV raid. People made an app to solve the puzzle which everyone used, lol. Static puzzles will be memorized, random puzzles with be circumvented by third party apps.

I'm not sure which I find more pathetic - the fact an app was made, or my lack of surprise at the discovery of this. :P

[Kaurie]

Static puzzles will be memorized

I don't really see how this is different than memorizing the pull order and your optimal rotation to kill them the quickest. Basically, once you have done a dungeon enough times, you'll be going by memory. It's not exactly unexpected.

[Nalien]

What the hell happened to Winebaud's Riddles? Weren't we meant to get more quests like that? I mean I guess we got the broom quests with Matoya, but that's still nothing...

Crazy idea, but you know how we sometimes get solo instances in the story? With 3.1 for instance, we had a little duty in the Vault to deal with. Well... Do that with puzzles...

Rather than taking AntiTower, and giving it some obnoxious Anti-Gravity puzzle (has any game ever pulled that off? I really hope the 'Anti' in AntiTower stands for Anti-Freeze, and we're going there to solve Coerthas' ice problem...), instead have the crappy repeatable dungeon and have a separate duty using it, entirely solo as part of some side-quest content (or even MSQ, because lord knows those quests could use something new...), which involves puzzles.

As for dungeons themselves... Well, I'd like to see more ways to tackle them at the very least... The arguments against puzzles in them I get, but that doesn't mean dungeons have to be entirely linear... Heck, you can even put puzzles in a non-linear dungeon with minimal impact; Make two routes to the boss, more or less equal in how long they take. The first route is the "smart" route, you have one shot at a puzzle, succeed and you go down this path and are perhaps rewarded with an extra chest. The second route is the "dumb" route, you failed the puzzle and thus take this equal path to the boss. Then slap in a third route for an entirely optional boss, just because some of us want to enjoy the game, rather than race through it... I'd also love to see Hunts and Treasure Maps enter dungeons... Anything to break up the monotony... Then there are a few Job specific things they could do, or rather Ninja specific things, because I don't think any other Job has a mechanic like Hide (granted, Hide does nothing these days). Something like Tam-Tara, where you get to the final barrier and have to go to a little side room to get the rosary to disable it (ignore the fact that you need to kill the mobs to pick up the rosary for a minute...), take that concept and apply it to more stuff; The time it takes to clear out the mobs and pick up the thing for the barrier, and the time it takes for a Ninja to sneak off there and pick it up can be balanced as equal. Suddenly the same room can be tackled in a new way. Could slap in a few new skills (yay skill bloat!) to have this apply to other Jobs as well, Float for example.

The age of discovery ended awhile ago.

Nah, the people who use guides always used guides, they just don't have to physically buy them with the advent of the interweb... Plenty of people still do blind runs and discover everything without resorting to guides, the fact that the developers seemingly do not care to cater to these people is a real shame... Honestly the main issue with anything like this is the Duty Finder, which IMO should have been phased out looooooong ago. Call me old fashioned, but people should have to communicate to do some of the stuff, the Duty Finder has been toxic since day one. Sure it's nice and convenient, but I think it might be too convenient... You can burn through plenty of dungeons in a day, so the devs make us grind lots of them to get stuff done. No matter what you can always get a group for most content, so nobody really needs to make friends. Slapping speed runners together with first timers (who may want to enjoy the damn content) was never going to end well. Had the game progressed from "Convenience" to "Go make friends", I can't quite see the same issues happening with a group of people who talked it out before entering, let alone a group of friends... Perhaps I'm just being idealistic, though. I'd just much rather work to even get into the content, and have it be much more rewarding and interesting as a result, than have something I can queue up for 100 times a day, need to repeat ad nauseum, and has utterly no nuance because people will argue over it...

[Zabuza]

I don't really see how this is different than memorizing the pull order and your optimal rotation to kill them the quickest. Basically, once you have done a dungeon enough times, you'll be going by memory. It's not exactly unexpected.

I suppose. To be honest, I would love dungeons that were Zeldalike in that they would have puzzles scattered throughout, but people would just look at guides to figure out the answers. Same with fights I suppose. The age of discovery ended awhile ago.

[Hanayumi]

Think dungeons can just use some mechanic other then just running threw and killing things, not necessary puzzles. Different paths to one area, having to split party up, guess they could always bring some fate mechanics in there too, guarding npc through trash, or defending stuff from mobs for a certain time, having some of the party dealing with trash while other members deal with some puzzle/mechanic, not seeing a whole lot like that in dungeons anymore, any interesting mechanics are just left to the bosses and most if it can just be ran threw with brute force.

[Kaurie]

I think another thing that could be added to make dungeons more interesting, is having two paths with 1 team in each. This would mean 8 players need to queue in, but I think it would be fun. Basically, in order for you to progress, the other team needs to do something and vice versa. An example, you're storming a castle and 1 team is fighting along the walls while one team is in the courtyard. The team on the walls needs to make their way over to open the gate for the courtyard team to make it through. While the team is fighting along the walls, the team down below fights infinite waves until the door is opened. (and so on, with an eventual meet up on the final boss)

I once played something like this in Guild Wars Factions, during one of the earliest missions. There was 1 team of people who brought their characters over from the original campaign and one team made up on Factions players. They each followed their own story to get there, so arriving together in that way made sense. It was a merger of missions between these two http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Mayhem_in_the_Market and http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Welcome_to_Cantha

I know this isn't adding puzzles, but I thought it fit under the "more to dungeons" topic

[Zabuza]

Nah, the people who use guides always used guides, they just don't have to physically buy them with the advent of the interweb... Plenty of people still do blind runs and discover everything without resorting to guides, the fact that the developers seemingly do not care to cater to these people is a real shame... Honestly the main issue with anything like this is the Duty Finder, which IMO should have been phased out looooooong ago. Call me old fashioned, but people should have to communicate to do some of the stuff, the Duty Finder has been toxic since day one. Sure it's nice and convenient, but I think it might be too convenient... You can burn through plenty of dungeons in a day, so the devs make us grind lots of them to get stuff done. No matter what you can always get a group for most content, so nobody really needs to make friends. Slapping speed runners together with first timers (who may want to enjoy the damn content) was never going to end well. Had the game progressed from "Convenience" to "Go make friends", I can't quite see the same issues happening with a group of people who talked it out before entering, let alone a group of friends... Perhaps I'm just being idealistic, though. I'd just much rather work to even get into the content, and have it be much more rewarding and interesting as a result, than have something I can queue up for 100 times a day, need to repeat ad nauseum, and has utterly no nuance because people will argue over it...

Take away the duty finder and you'll lose quite a lot of subs at this point. A lot of people work and don't have the time to wait around looking for others everytime they need to do a dungeon.

[Sylve]

Unless the puzzles are short, along with the dungeon, people won't bother doing it since it's not speed run friendly.

And this is the reason MMOs are turning into lobby games.

The most fun i ever had in an MMO was crawling through a super long dungeon solving puzzles and fighting bosses while chatting with the party.
These days, people barely even greet each other, its all just "Im just here for the loot as fast as possible, shut up"

[Zabuza]

And this is the reason MMOs are turning into lobby games.

The most fun i ever had in an MMO was crawling through a super long dungeon solving puzzles and fighting bosses while chatting with the party.
These days, people barely even greet each other, its all just "Im just here for the loot as fast as possible, shut up"

The one downside of the DF, it kills any attempt at social bonding.

[Kalsoa]

I think puzzles would work better in story dungeons you maybe only do once or on a specific roulette like the Main Scenario roulette.