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

[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.

[AeraLure]

I feel like you are looking at the dev resources a little bit too simplistically. Part of the problem is not the amount of resources, but the inherent design of the game. FFXIV has shown that they have no problem pouring resources into making overly convoluted systems which would otherwise be a simple thing in other games (hall of the novice, SSS, Diadem, LoV etc.) They have the resources and the time, the issue is they have the design choice that their players will ultimately lower everything down to the lowest common demonstrator, so why create a more interesting/complex system that they'll tear apart anyway? In other words, the community will make it boring, so we'll just make it boring on release instead of wasting our time. It's a similar stance they have on anything that offers an "illusion of choice". Some people prefer it that way, I certainly don't, but that is the purposeful design that Square is taking. It has been successful, so why stop?

This, but I feel it's not just the players. Or rather, that it isn't the players at all. The players are adapting to playing the game as designed, and the use of tokens and tomes with nothing of actual use or interest in a dungeon makes for speed running and tunnel vision to be ideal. There is literally no reason to explore branched paths or do optional objectives. Waste of time. So yes, players will dumb down content, but that's because the game design is a bit dumbed down as well. Unfortunately.

[RiceisNice]

This, but I feel it's not just the players. Or rather, that it isn't the players at all. The players are adapting to playing the game as designed, and the use of tokens and tomes with nothing of actual use or interest in a dungeon makes for speed running and tunnel vision to be ideal. There is literally no reason to explore branched paths or do optional objectives. Waste of time. So yes, players will dumb down content, but that's because the game design is a bit dumbed down as well. Unfortunately.

There is also the side where not all players will go for that approach. I have no qualms doing my expert a day for 6 days (provided it's actually a roulette and not a goddamn coinflip, otherwise it just gets incredibly tedious) compared to capping my lore from farming EX primals for the pigeons or midas for token drops. The current design is incredibly bare bones and limited that you can't build upon it if you wanted to. Just having expert dungeons be level synced to the gear that it drops would already make the boss mechanics in general seem more meaningful because to this day, I do not know how you would remove the stacking debuff on the final boss of PS(HM)...if you can/need to remove it because the damage it gains from each stack is already dwarfed by the gear you have by the time you enter it.

[Noxifer]

They should just get rid of the hallways. Warp you into a singular circular room (has to be a circle) and then have mobs and bosses just spawn on top of us! it would take less dev time!

Okay I know you're joking but I would actually like to see one (1) dungeon like this. I am remembering Trial of the Champion and that was a pretty fun place in WoW (as was the raid-Trial of the Crusader).

*cough* T4 would like to say hello. Well, fair enough -- that was only the waves of trash, none of the bosses (unless you count dreadnoughts as bosses), but... the principle's the same? =D
But yeah, we have raids that drop you straight into the circular arena to fight a boss ^^; We don't need that 'quality' to invade dungeons as well.

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 was somewhere between i190-195 when they were released, and didn't have an issue with anything. Our healer was around there, too. So I agree that they're tuned quite a bit lower compared to the dungeons of previous patches (Never-bleeep- anyone?) ^^;

I do like them both better than the ones from the previous patch -- well, I did enjoy Arboretum, too, but not quite as much as these two. I can't quite put my finger on why I enjoy these three dungeons, but... Maybe it has something to do with the party needing to work together a lot more.

[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.