Change the structure of the 4-dungeons, maybe?

[Molic]

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/pr/blo...na_officalblog

Kind of looks like more of the same dungeons. But who knows till release.

[RopeDrink]

God, all the mention of Maraudon... Think one of the first movies I ever made back in my tender keyturning-clicker-noob years of WoW was a Rogue solo of that place before TBC arrived, back on my potato.

However, places like that do not fit with the more 'instanced' feel of FFXIV. To pull off an FF-Maraudon, the dungeon would have to be pretty damn impressive in size (something that immediately puts off people - nobody likes the concept of staying overly long in ANY dungeon, even for specific rewards). You'd also have to incorporate alternate routes (seeing as there were numerous ways you could clear or travel through the place). Given the size, it also had an impressive number of bosses - that's definitely something I'd be more than happy to see, although it'd be a bit of work on SE's part if they keep trying to avoid copy/pasting like they do.

So, a method for an FF-Maraudon would be - have the overall dungeon size about 2.5 times bigger than your average FFXIV dungeon, except rather than needing to complete it all, either the players (or the dungeon) would decide one of X number of alternate routes per visit. Eg. You kill first boss then door A, B or C opens and throws you into a different area with their own branching paths after the 2nd boss. That way it keeps the instanced feel but makes up for it by having a near RNG'esque (assuming you don't go for the 'players choose' method) path each time.

If that was coupled with a random-boss generator per boss room, that'd be pretty damn sweet. Sure, not the most thrilling concept, but it'd be a damn sight more interesting than preset routes/paths/bosses that players will eventually do hundreds of times on repeat.

[Zojha]

God, all the mention of Maraudon...

And I'm just wondering how many people actually played it.

Purple and Orange route were both fairly linear (I don't count two ways around a pillar/pool as optional paths >_> ). I think purple had an optional chest at some point and orange a rare boss spawn (Razorlash, later mandatory), but that was it. Then they converged just before Celebras. After doing both purple and orange path, they could be skipped straight to earth song falls with the scepter (the most popular type of run on my server). Since you only needed to kill the last of the respective path bosses for the scepter, some groups jumped over to save themselves the need to go the entire other path. That was fairly linear gameplay, but it had some backtracking to Celebras involved after getting the second scepter piece, so I suppose it counts.

The latter part was fairly linear as well, if you ignore the routes whose purpose was to allow backtracking after you jumped down somewhere. You went straight ahead, left, then ever up to the giant golem (Optional, but people still cared about loot at the time - In FFXIV he would be skipped), then over the bridge to Theradras, jumped down for the croc and if the party was still going (Most stopped here), you went to the Tinker from there and were done, because you checked off all the bosses.

The whole thing was basically 3 dungeons crammed into one instance. And that's what they ended up doing when they introduced DF - make it 3 different dungeons to the finder.
So if SE were to design Maraudon, you'd have purple and orange path both as their individual dungeons with a quest for each scepter part associated with them, then after you did those you'd get another quest, a cutscene would play in which the NPC creates the portal and then you'd gain access to the third part. And that part would have no backtrack routes because invisible walls everywhere. They probably wouldn't even need to change anything else, because the rest is largely in line with their current dungeon design.

That said, I personally do not mind linearity. Once you have a goal in the dungeon, you beeline there either way and the nasty part in PUGs is that people might have different goals. One person might want an optional boss/route but the others not. See also: Silver Chests vs Speedrun, Gathering vs Battle in Diadem etc. I like that I don't have to first sit down for five minutes every time and discuss with the group which path we go, only for the healer to bail because he can't be arsed with an emperor run.

What irks me is that the dungeons feel very clinical. You can never jump down anywhere, the arenas feel artificial - Natural cavern systems shouldn't have perfectly round platform arenas all the time. I'd like the illusion that this was an actual place in the world, an area that technically belongs to the overworld but has been instanced for practical reasons, rather than completely disjointed.

And breaking the trash-boss-trash-boss pattern can be a part of that. Sometimes, I'd make more sense to deal with a trap filled corridor, run to safety from a falling ceiling after a boss fight, jump from stone to stone over lava or other things that make it seem a little more alive. Like a section where you ride the rails like in Alexander, except you have to jump and switch rails ever so often to avoid obstacles and dead ends. Or an Arena-style dungeon where you have nothing "but" boss fights coming at you in succession. Or the bad guy escapes after the second boss fight and you gotta chocobo race him for a section before the final battle. I'd gladly take that sort of variety over superficial path choices, truth be told.

[Chiramu]

Make the order of bosses not so linear. Like how some of the open area dungeons of WoW(I was thinking Legion, Eye of Azshara) where it is not clear which direction to go and you can skip bosses or do the bosses in a different order.

Lately the dungeons have all been treadmill like, first boss, second boss and third boss. They could make some new dungeons, third boss, first boss and then second boss in that order, or whichever order people would like to run it in.

Just an idea to make some interesting dungeons in FFXIV.

[Shurrikhan]

And I'm just wondering how many people actually played it.

I haven't been back since it split into wings, and I'd pretty well undermanned or underleveled it each time, so my experiences are pretty biased. I just enjoyed the range of mob pulls, given vanilla abilities, and the differences between the two paths during full runs + the centaur mini-spiral and the portal therein. It wasn't anything as interesting as that first lower-man instance that came out in Stranglethorn Vale, but it was the first dungeon to capture that RPG feel for me, where Deadmines, BFD, and Gnomeregon were fairly fun designs but hadn't yet hit on that... color-palette, honestly. I guess you could consider it like Brayflox normal in that regard. /nostalgia_excuses_over

That said, I personally do not mind linearity. Once you have a goal in the dungeon, you beeline there either way and the nasty part in PUGs is that people might have different goals. One person might want an optional boss/route but the others not. See also: Silver Chests vs Speedrun, Gathering vs Battle in Diadem etc. I like that I don't have to first sit down for five minutes every time and discuss with the group which path we go, only for the healer to bail because he can't be arsed with an emperor run.

What irks me is that the dungeons feel very clinical. You can never jump down anywhere, the arenas feel artificial - Natural cavern systems shouldn't have perfectly round platform arenas all the time. I'd like the illusion that this was an actual place in the world, an area that technically belongs to the overworld but has been instanced for practical reasons, rather than completely disjointed.

And breaking the trash-boss-trash-boss pattern can be a part of that. Sometimes, I'd make more sense to deal with a trap filled corridor, run to safety from a falling ceiling after a boss fight, jump from stone to stone over lava or other things that make it seem a little more alive. Like a section where you ride the rails like in Alexander, except you have to jump and switch rails ever so often to avoid obstacles and dead ends. Or an Arena-style dungeon where you have nothing "but" boss fights coming at you in succession. Or the bad guy escapes after the second boss fight and you gotta chocobo race him for a section before the final battle. I'd gladly take that sort of variety over superficial path choices, truth be told.

I feel about the same way. I don't mind trying to go from point A to B, without much by way of additional paths, shortcuts, etc., so long as it's an engaging, beeline process. I just want the dungeons across that area to be more interesting. One of my design fetishes is that the paths should seem practical — that is to say, to the inhabitants of the area — but I'd gladly bits of that just to have more interesting encounters along the way. Pull trash to door, kill, kill boss, and repeat, is predominantly... trash.

My hopes for path choices, though, are less an organic spatter of analog choices which eventually narrow down to a mere few at best as they are forced variations. Let's say you have an open-looking dungeon, which has different roving packs of mobs around different themed areas the placement of which are slightly randomized. Visualize a section of jungle/canyon ruins, for instance, overrun with tenuously aligned or combating factions. Depending on the day, the weather, or whatever else, those factions will have expanded over more or less area, changing different encounters. Some of those can be particularly troublesome in certain areas, such as birds that can channel knockbacks in an area full of painfully damaging geysers, or charging bipedal lizards that can knock you off cliff paths into swarms of... additional nastiness and potential death. The point, though, is the areas. As a player who's gone through the instanced zone multiple times, you will already be aware of what environmental dangers lie where, but you might not be aware of how effective different enemies can be in those areas for many more runs, or how to deal with them.

Now, let's say each of these factions has a sort of leader mob, the collection of which makes up the bosses of the dungeon, appearing in different areas. You won't necessarily know who's where off the bat, but you can come to guess where to find the bosses based on the factions' presence. But moreover, you can defeat the bosses in order to cause faction mobs to weaken or flee, opening up paths that may otherwise be at least as hard as the boss itself, or use different devices or mechanics throughout the map (one of them being to start slaughtering the last mobs of a given faction in order to force the boss to come to you) in order to reposition the bosses, adjusting those fights too. You might have a path open only by having the, say... bipedal lizard boss charge into a column, toppling it as to form a bridge, or subdue the bird boss in order to fly, as a group, to another location, avoiding traps. These allow you different variations of the original dungeon, but not under the vague hope that people won't cut down to a few given choices; instead, because the viability of each route is shuffled about each time, you're simply forced to experience multiple routes over time, even when aiming for the optimal speed.

[Nyxn607]

Personally, I would like to see every dungeon have the difficulty that AV did/does. When everyone is level 48 doing AV for the first time, that place is a nightmare, but fun at the same time because of the challenge. In order to bring this into new dungeons, my suggestion would be the following: Have each set of mobs you face before the boss get increasingly difficult. An example of such would be by allowing the mobs to place a de-buff on everyone in the group. Whether that be decreasing hp/mp/tp/str/dex/int/mnd that changes each time you enter the instance, so the de-buff you get is random. On top of the de-buff, have the group have a mini - enrage timer. Nothing uber of course, but maybe each mob gets a 5% damage increase for each other mob that dies .... or each mob of the group gets a 10% damage increase if they live longer than lets say .. 5 minutes. This would also make groups think twice before pulling 3-4 groups of mobs at once. A small change like this could see a rather significant change in the difficulty and add a new challenge to keep the instance from becoming dull.

*I am not a developer or know much about computer code* but these seem like a simple change to a filthy casual such as myself.

[Lodinn]

Randomizing the dungeon itself is what they did in potd. No, it doesn't make it too fun. They're not meant to be grinded to death. Some puzzles would be nice. Also, cc is somewhat lacking in ffxiv so you can't make trash very interactive. Making people have to fulfill their own specific roles is fun... in theory. What we'd get is people crying over getting newbs who don't know strat. Rip.