Please add harder or more varied dungeons other than deep dungeon

[number473]

I understand that Deep Dungeon is supposed to be our difficult 4-man content, but that is not what I want at all. I like running dungeons a lot - if we ignore issues of difficulty I certainly enjoy them more than raids or trials. Deep dungeon is a completely different thing.

The reason we always given about there being no savage 4-man content is that it puts too much strain on the healer. Well, as a healer that is what I am asking for. I would like content that tests my ability to heal on my own, rather than in a team. Note I'm not asking for ultimate difficulty here, but rather something closer to the first two fights of savage, i.e. challenging content that you need to learn to beat but that is still reasonably accessible to many players.

If that's not possible, I would still like to see them have a greater variety to dungeons, with dungeons that involve more exploration, branching areas or other things that aren't trash-trash-boss-trash-trash-boss in a long corridor.

[Lambdafish]

I think the best way to handle this kind of content is to make it 5-8 man content.

I understand that you want strain as a healer, but that's not what is being said. It's not that difficult 4 man content puts too much strain on a healer, its that the stress of playing a healer in this kind of content is massively disproportionate to that of tank or DPS, meaning that the content would always consist of long queues of people waiting for a healer, as everyone will queue as the easier roles.

The 8 man system works, and I would love an 8 man dungeon (like castrum/praetorium) as our difficult dungeon content.

[number473]

It's not that difficult 4 man content puts too much strain on a healer, ...

The 8 man system works, and I would love an 8 man dungeon (like castrum/praetorium) as our difficult dungeon content.

I didn't really think of it this way, but that's an interesting point. I'm not sure how this would be so different from the fact that we have fewer tanks at the moment. I'm also not sure that they couldn't design the encounters with this in mind and balance things to avoid this.

I do think that 8-man dungeons would be interesting as well. Potentially having 1 tank and 5 dps to ease the queue times a bit.

They have mentioned harder 4 man dungeons in either the live letter or some interview if i recall

I'm quite sure they said they would add hard 4-man content other than dungeons, and then announced that the later floors of deep dungeon were meant for this in the live letter.

[cynical_baby]

I'm quite sure they said they would add hard 4-man content other than dungeons, and then announced that the later floors of deep dungeon were meant for this in the live letter.

They were indeed talking about harder dungeons in a live letter. They said that they design the dungeons hard and then nerf some mechanics, so more casual players could get through easier. One example they brought was Saint Mocianne's Arboretum where the first boss had the adds also circle around in the first design. But if was to hard for casual players, so they nerfed the adds.
I would like to have these hard dungeons get even harder (savage/ex difficulty) so 4-men groups could also have some high-end content.

[Luin]

I think the best way to handle this kind of content is to make it 5-8 man content.

I understand that you want strain as a healer, but that's not what is being said. It's not that difficult 4 man content puts too much strain on a healer, its that the stress of playing a healer in this kind of content is massively disproportionate to that of tank or DPS, meaning that the content would always consist of long queues of people waiting for a healer, as everyone will queue as the easier roles.

The 8 man system works, and I would love an 8 man dungeon (like castrum/praetorium) as our difficult dungeon content.

You're missing the point. 8 man content has to be designed entirely differently than 4man. An 8man dungeon would basically just be another raid.

OP I agree. Personally I despise PoTD. It's boring.

I don't want monsters with ridiculously high stats with swapped movesets, repetitive textures and maps. I want cohesive design, interesting themes and unique mechanics designed specifically for 4 players.

[Zojha]

I don't want monsters with ridiculously high stats with swapped movesets, repetitive textures and maps.

Truth be told, I think that it's this notion where the whole "strain on the healer" idea comes from.

You can make completely brutal and unforgiving content where a healer isn't even needed, much less pressured. Easily in fact, by simply bombarding people with insta-wipe mechanics that either kill everyone or deal no damage at all - As a bonus, in a standard group, the healer is exempt from them all. An extreme example, naturally, but it's meant to emphasize one simple fact:

The strain put on someone is proportional to the impact they have.

In the above example, there is nothing to heal, nor res, so heals and res are virtually powerless and healers don't even participate in the mechanics, so they have a very low impact on the fight as a whole. They're just a bit of bonus DPS and can do whatever they like. As a consequence, there's little to no pressure on them.
The other party members however have a huge impact on the fight, because they have the power to prevent an instant group wipe. And they need to use it, every time, without fail. Each of them has a large impact on the group, which puts a large amount of pressure on them. And even if you include healers in the mechanics, the pressure on them would never exceed that of the other party members.

As such, it doesn't necessarily follow that the stress on a healer is automatically disproportionate to that of other party members. It is entirely dependent on how much impact on the outcome you are giving the jobs and roles. If one has no power and no impact, they can do whatever they like, it doesn't have any effect and therefore pressure is low. If one person dwarfs everyone in power and impact, every decision they do weighs heavy and the pressure is high.

Simply upping the damage people take (as they do in PotD) makes the power of heals more impactful, as less of it becomes wasteful overheal. As a result, strain on the healer goes up. By limiting the impact heals (and res) can have however, you also limit the pressure on healers. And the same goes for all other roles - The higher their impact, the higher their strain. Look no further than enrages, which makes DPS far more impactful (it suddenly impacts whether you clear at all, not just when), thereby increasing the pressure on DPS. And if the healer has a disproportionate strain on them, that just means you gave them a disproportionate amount of impact.

So... you can simply design the content to match. It "is" pretty hard to do with healers nowadays simply because they have such truckloads of power in their spells and limiting their impact usually comes at the cost of highly frustrating mechanics. Bad design begets bad design. But it's quite possible if you go out of your way.

[Luin]

Truth be told, I think that it's this notion where the whole "strain on the healer" idea comes from.

You can make completely brutal and unforgiving content where a healer isn't even needed, much less pressured. Easily in fact, by simply bombarding people with insta-wipe mechanics that either kill everyone or deal no damage at all - As a bonus, in a standard group, the healer is exempt from them all. An extreme example, naturally, but it's meant to emphasize one simple fact:

Personally I wasn't complaining about healing, I was complaining about PoTD. And raid content isn't designed like that either.

In my opinion the subject is not so much about "healer strain" as it is actual content. I cant remember any dungeons that had real mechanics that had to be done properly or you wipe. Why are dungeons not held to the same standard as normal mode raids, let alone EX primals or even Savage? Why are dungeons mindless facerolls? We don't need every single dungeon to be roulette fodder for weeklies. We can deal with a few high difficulty ones with persistent mechanics.

It's not fair to say something is a highly frustrating mechanic? That's the point. AoEs aren't mechanics (AoE and nothing else, I mean). We've had mechanics like Allagan Rot, Conflagration, Double Drill and Ferrofluid for years. Why aren't these mechanics being used in dungeons? Are they too hard? That's the point. If players never practice them then they will always be too hard. Dungeons are perfect low stress environment for this purpose. Throw all of that in a dungeon, spread it out between the first 2 bosses, then have the last boss do all of it, then add a mindjack and remove the walls. There's your boss and it's harder than 90% of dungeons in the game. I bet I could write an entire encounter based on this, I bet anybody could, with the current standard of dungeon quality. So why aren't we getting actual content in dungeons? Why is it 9/10 times a tank and spank, no different than just going into a FATE and killing a bunch of enemies over and over, just with a change of scenery and music? Am I asking for raid content in dungeons? No, not at all. But I would like to be held to some standard in dungeons. Imo it's not acceptable that a party could spam flash, cure, and heavy thrust and make it through every dungeon.

[Maero]

They have mentioned harder 4 man dungeons in either the live letter or some interview if i recall

[ImDingDing]

People wanted harder dungeon. They did it once in 2.X, people complain it was too hard and tank/healer drop immediately when they get it in roulette. They said they will never do that again. Blame the players, not the developers.

[TaiyoShikasu]

People wanted harder dungeon. They did it once in 2.X, people complain it was too hard and tank/healer drop immediately when they get it in roulette. They said they will never do that again. Blame the players, not the developers.

That just sounds like current year Aurum Vale.