So how about them new dungeons? (Layout and difficulty)

[Mykll]

There was a bit of forethought into your pulls of what needs to down first.

Completely agree, and we need more like that. But, that is also coming from an old EQ monk, bard, enchanter.... You know, pullers. Heck the only title I have used for a very long time now is The Strategist. But the problem with this, is we see just how much people hate having to give any thought to pulling the first room in AV.

[Khalithar]

Overall I like the designs of the new dungeons. The designs are interesting and I thought the bosses were interesting, especially with the mechanics that forces the party to be paying attention.

Ampador: Everyone has to pay attention for neurosquama, everyone has to pay attention to debuffs, everyone has to pay attention to stance and spell casts.

Antitower: Everyone has to pay attention for frog song, the targeting reticle for the shooting mechanic, and the dollhouse/gaze/parry mechanics.

Trash mobs are trash mobs, they're never too interesting in all the MMO's I played but I did like the dwarf references in antitower and the the FFXI references in ampador.

Visually the dungeons aren't too interesting, Antitower didn't do enough with the upside down concept, I would have liked the majority of it to take place in the upside down tower with a ton of different rooms, an upside garden, an upside down observatory where we could see the night sky beneath us, etc. Now THAT would have been really cool. Ampador reminded me of the first one, the final area with the white void and floating objects was cool, but the foggy quality of the area left me underwhelmed. Music in both dungeons is decent, but don't particularly stand out to me. I honestly expected more from the music, especially after we've gotten such great dungeon music like Pharos, Fractal, Alexander, etc.

[Yasuhiro]

Anti Tower is nice for fans of FFIX and IV but again it's literally just a corridor the whole way through with a few circular arenas it's short but it sucks
Amapador keep, what can I say about this place? I'm sick of this place, I'm sick of Ampador as a whole especially this dungeon I think this one goes on way too long and the gating what seems like every couple of steps pads out the dungeon. The sad thing is having multiple paths in a dungeon would not work because the playerbase would always choose the shortest route just to get out of the instance quicker.

I don't know what can be done to save this game and it's stagnating design philosophy.'

and the the FFXI references in ampador.

Those aren't references that's just Square Enix recycling anything and everything with a walking animation from the last 3 Final Fantasy games.

[Waliel]

I don't care how but if I saw a mob use "cover on a mob about to die" it would make us think twice about downing the most dangerous trash mob first and we might attack the weakest to bait cover to a less threatening mob.

Then you remember everything gets AoE'd down and the Cover just makes the pull last a couple of seconds longer. I feel like most of the trash mob mechanics would be ignored, unless you get synced down to minimum ilvl and the min ilvl was lowered by 30 from what it's now.

[BroodingFicus]

I'll agree that where as last patch with Arbor etc I definitely felt like I had to try and be more cautious until I was able to farm some new gear, this patch I came in already able to pretty much heal the whole dungeon with HoT's so long as everyone else is doing their job correctly. I think I was around item level 208 when they dropped and its only getting easier as I re-gear. I don't have a lot of issues with the bosses themselves its just nothing seems to hit hard enough to present a challenge and aside from a few rare things (stepping in the same circle as your debuff in the 2nd boss of lost city) nothing seems terribly punishing if you mess up. At best its inconvenient like when people don't face their clones at the wall and force you to dodge the cones. Even then, I got hit directly by two the other night that I couldn't get out of in time and still didn't die.

Also maybe this is just me but it officially bugs me that the areas between the 1st and 2nd boss in both dungeons are essentially the same: circular platforms with drawbridge like effects to prevent mass pulling. Its primarily just a difference of aesthetic and mobs but with a very similar layout and putting it at the same point in each dungeon only made it all the more obvious. And with Lost City it grates on me because the very next area is /also/ circular platforms. It just didn't do it for me. I did love the look of the upside down bits of Antitower but I wish they'd been, as others have said, more involved. Perhaps to get around some gates we could have used a jump pad to get onto the 'ceiling' and fight mobs there before jumping down on the other side again. Something.

[Kuwagami]

I just wish I could remember what the theme for the antitower reminds me of. Every time I'm like "gaah I know it calls back memories of something" but every time I faile at remembering what is was :'(

[BloodPact]

I can't say I didn't enjoy the OP's intro. Good stuff. Made me laugh.

[CrystalRainbow]

Personally I like the 2 new dungeons.
1st time in a while I liked the expert ones.

[Kaurie]

The main issue here is time spent in the dungeons and how quickly the novelty wears off. Make trash mobs have more gimmicks and people will complain that the runs will drag out. Having things like randomized mazes or forced puzzles will also garner similar results. Why? Because the only reason people want to run dungeons is either EXP or tomestones and forcing the player to slow down with random gimmicks that could vary how much time they spend inside will create friction between those that just want the nth run over with and those that want to see everything (sorta like what happened with the Castrum runs, eh?)

Now don't assume that I DON'T want more designed dungeons. I do want something like the single player Final Fantasy dungeons, but seeing the nature of this game and the players, I don't expect anything more and neither should anyone else. In fact, it seems the gimmicky fights/trials are being used in the MSQ, which I did happen to enjoy. With dungeons and trials that you have to run over and over for drops or tomes, things are going to be streamlined for the sake of making it simple to do when you need to obtain something.

Agreed, this is more or less what I was talking about in the second half of my post. That said, 'gimmicks' (I like the call them game-design) don't have to be things that drag things out. A randomized maze doesn't have to take forever. The maze could theoretically take 15 minutes or 45 minutes, depending on how good your team is (not unlike current dungeons). Further, people already complain the runs drag out, so the current method doesn't exclude this behaviour.

That said, I got into MMO's originally because I loved running dungeons. I currently only run them for exp or tomestones, because well, they suck here. If they made them interesting, I'd run them more for fun. --- Or, at least I'd have fun while I'm getting my tomes/exp.

I don't expect very much from this development team to be honest. My opinion in 2.4 would have been different. Throughout 2.x I always felt that the devs listened to player feedback and designed a great game. However, more recently every time Yoshi speaks to the public and addresses community concerns, I almost literally face-palm. I feel there is a huge disconnect between what players want and what Yoshi hears. So, even if they did read this board, I wouldn't expect them to put out a quality dungeon, but probably something unnecessarily complicated and frustrating.

As for your comments on dungeons and trials, I think the issue is difficulty. An interesting encounter does not HAVE to be difficult (even though I personally enjoy challenging content). It's just something different than the same ol. The devs would be showing players that players won't just be doing the same thing until they quit and showing players that the dev team actually has some creative talent outside of their writers.

Wouldn't the marked defeat the purpose of exploring a dungeon? Adventure is not adventure without mistery.

This is precisely something out of Bravely Default. I personally quite enjoyed it. The message was there and gave you a sense to explore (as someone who loves exploring, i loved this). You approached the path area and a pop up came up saying there are 3 paths and described the inverse relationship between length and difficulty. I was excited to pick a path and see what it had in store.

It's strange. I thought the two dungeons were so opposite from one another.

One dungeon, the lost Temple, was insanely easy... Especially its last boss. I don't even know how you lose to it. As a healer I don't even know if I'm needed in the fight other then pretending to be a black Mage. I will say though the dungeon looked good. Boring run through, but good looking.

Then there's our new upside down tower. It trolls you with spending the majority of the time outside the dumb thing, then you go down a few halls and bam, boss. But at least the bosses were interesting and mechanics could actually kill you.

I'd rather them just spent the time to make one super dungeon then this.

It may have been your groups, or your playstyle, but both dungeons are incredibly easy. As a SCH, Eos/Selene is powerful enough to heal the entire dungeon with the exception of the bosses where I throw up a few adlos/succors and physicks. It feels very much like I am already 30-50 ilvls over what I need to be.

[RiceisNice]

Agreed, this is more or less what I was talking about in the second half of my post. That said, 'gimmicks' (I like the call them game-design) don't have to be things that drag things out. A randomized maze doesn't have to take forever. The maze could theoretically take 15 minutes or 45 minutes, depending on how good your team is (not unlike current dungeons). Further, people already complain the runs drag out, so the current method doesn't exclude this behaviour.

Taking an example from Blade And Soul, the game rewards the players with speed runs if they know the dungeon layout and how to safely transverse the area with the game's windwalking, gliding and wall running. You can skip trash mobs and sections of the maps if you're knowledgeable enough to know which routes are safe, and how to maneuver that you don't aggro the gunners (which more or less one shots you). Sure you can say "people will always go for the fastest route." It's not a good excuse to withhold game design if that was the case, espesically when said fastest route has a bit of a gate behind it and isn't immediately accessible (compared to below) unless you had prior knowledge of the game/dungeon already.


Here, you speed run a dungeon by doing mass pulls, which isn't allowed by dungeon design, but the fact that most players are overgeared for the dungeon by the time it's already release and how undertuned tank damage is (espesically if healers are able to stand idle or dps). There's no sense of exploration for extra treasures; Compare Sastasha or Corn normal to Anti-hallway, the former has multiple dead ends that contains some potions or damaged gear for crafting (which are relatively strong for that level), the later has chests that are literally on a linear path and contains gear.