Unpopular Opinion: Dungeon design has been bad for a long time

[CazzT]

Why can't a dungeon be designed from the perspective that it might only be ran a handful of times by any one individual? Why do they have to be designed with the intent of being glorified hamster wheels that occasionally give us loot to keep us running on the hamster wheel? Give me one reason for the hamster wheel's continued existence other than to slow down content consumption. Just one.

I would be fine with a dungeon designed this way. However, as a business, this is a bad investment of resources into the product. I wish the business side didn't have to be a factor, but it is a factor and thus dictates that resources be spent in the most beneficial and efficient way. So, in short, the one reason is: Money. You can disagree all you want, but it's still reality.

You mention you have to have an open mind to find creative ways to keep people engaged in the linear repetitive dungeons, aka the beloved hamster wheels, you also need an open mind to find the creative ways to encourage people to get away from the hamster wheels that so many MMO's have conditioned people to crave as well.

And they have. But this discussion is about dungeons.

Going back to the RPG roots of pen and paper, one of the first things any GM/DM learns is players will do something you won't expect and never even thought to plan for. When that happens, one of two things happens... the GM/DM essentially crashes ending the session/hard vetos the player's choice, or they roll with it. The ones that roll with it, also tend to be the ones that are fun to play with as they can handle people going off script. The other ones, good luck as unless things go how they planned it... things can get dicey for everyone quickly. But you also have to think about what beyond just wacky unexpected player choices let them do this kind of stuff. Its all the tools they have available to them.

This is not a pen and paper RPG, though. Our choices as players are limited by what is allowed in the coding. I want to join the Ascians with my WoL. I cannot. Why? Because it's not programmed/written to allow for that. In a P&P session, however, I could, because it's not constrained by what is coded. Even the most open, most freedom-allowing video game RPG still has limits due to the limitations of coding. It's a limitation the gaming industry has been trying to break free from since the first RPG was coded.

[Hawklaser]

This is not a pen and paper RPG, though. Our choices as players are limited by what is allowed in the coding. I want to join the Ascians with my WoL. I cannot. Why? Because it's not programmed/written to allow for that. In a P&P session, however, I could, because it's not constrained by what is coded. Even the most open, most freedom-allowing video game RPG still has limits due to the limitations of coding. It's a limitation the gaming industry has been trying to break free from since the first RPG was coded.

You might have missed the point. Instead of rolling with us, the players, doing something the Devs didn't expect, they decided to restrict our options instead. Players coordinate their CC to manage a difficult boss or encounter in an unexpected way? Mass CC immunites and gradual resistance buildup popped up shortly after. Players started skipping mobs via unusual ways such as tanks sacrifice pulling or just flat out skillfully avoiding agro? We got doors and walls thrown up to block progress until mobs are dead. In short, removed problem solving tools to force us to do the dungeons their way.

A bad GM/DM will forbid players from having some of the miscellaneous tools like a rope and grappling hook if players keep using them to break their script. A good one finds a way to use those tendencies. So instead of finding ways to take advantage of players tendencies to cooperate and coordinate their skills in effective and unusual ways, it was chosen to make it not worth the players time to do so. So instead of trying to find ways to take advantage of players tendencies to try and find ways to potentially avoid mobs that might not have to be fought, it was chosen to force us to fight them instead.

There were other choices that could have been made instead of taking away tools from the players problem solving toolkit.

[CazzT]

You might have missed the point. Instead of rolling with us, the players, doing something the Devs didn't expect, they decided to restrict our options instead. Players coordinate their CC to manage a difficult boss or encounter in an unexpected way? Mass CC immunites and gradual resistance buildup popped up shortly after. Players started skipping mobs via unusual ways such as tanks sacrifice pulling or just flat out skillfully avoiding agro? We got doors and walls thrown up to block progress until mobs are dead. In short, removed problem solving tools to force us to do the dungeons their way.

A bad GM/DM will forbid players from having some of the miscellaneous tools like a rope and grappling hook if players keep using them to break their script. A good one finds a way to use those tendencies. So instead of finding ways to take advantage of players tendencies to cooperate and coordinate their skills in effective and unusual ways, it was chosen to make it not worth the players time to do so. So instead of trying to find ways to take advantage of players tendencies to try and find ways to potentially avoid mobs that might not have to be fought, it was chosen to force us to fight them instead.

There were other choices that could have been made instead of taking away tools from the players problem solving toolkit.

Ah, I see what you're saying now. I agree that countering players' creative solutions is bad. As long as they aren't flat out breaking the encounter or using blatant exploits, I don't think it should be "fixed". A good example of this is Blizzard banning two guys who duo'd an encounter in Ulduar (the WotLK raid) against the first boss on the hardest difficulty. They didn't break any rules, they just simply understood the mechanics of the fight and used them in a creative way. They didn't exploit, they didn't cheat. Doing this to players is wrong. I also think it's poor form to counter players' creative solutions just because you (the devs) didn't see the creative solution.

[Barraind]

I guess Repose doesn't count as CC anymore. All healers have that. Tanks have two. A stun and an interrupt. Melee DPS all have a Stun. Ranged DPS all have a Bind and an Interrupt. BLM has an AoE sleep. Only ones left out are RDM and SMN, but those also have the added utility of being able to back up heal and raise instead which are just as valuable.

Of those, only the interrupts actually work on an overwhelming majority of current targets.

Since the role skill adjustment, theres a significant amount of stuff that is not interrupted or affected by sleeps or stun landing during casts/combat.

Its one of the reasons behind adding a giant orange glowing box to denote 'YOU CAN USE AN INTERRUPT SKILL TO INTERRUPT THIS'.


And raise isnt anywhere close to being on the same level as a functional CC in dungeons, nor is summoner healing.

[Kirajah]

While the aesthetics of the dungeons is wonderful, every single one boils down to the exact same formula.

Long hallway, aoe pull / open area, long hall way, aoe pull / open area, boss. Repeat 3 - 4x.

That's it. There's no variation, no patrols, no choices. I get SO bored doing dungeons after the first few times.

I made a thread last month about the lack of challenge in this game, and dungeons are another example of that. If my only challenge is Savage raids, that's just piss poor design. I want to get behind my character and feel the impact of their level growth, but getting new dungeon gear and levels is almost meaningless now.

Why can't we have leveling content that has SOME level of challenge?

its hard to change from that and remain accessible to everyone.

Look at wow, for example. You have vanilla dungeons like Black Rock Depths, Wailing Caverns, etc. How many people enjoy those? run them? go "YES" in chat when they get it in dungeon finder? None, zip, nada.
You used to run Black Rock about 5 times, hating it more each run until you can finally queue for burning crusade dungeons, and hellfire citadel is very refreshing.

You can have pats, but they are more of an annoyance than anything. You can have different paths, but people will choose the most efficient paths. Look at Gnomereggan, for example. You have what? 8? optional bosses. People literally kill 2 because they are on the way to the main boss. It is more worth your time to jump down 3 times, and skip 90% of the dungeon, than it is to run the whole thing because it is SO long, with SO many side paths, and SO boring. If you trimmed Gnomerregan to actually make the skip path the legit one, no one would notice, and no one would miss it.

I would rather the trash and bosses be more interesting than adding "fluff" (1 or 2 wings no one wants to do because you want to give them "choices")

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Maybe towards the end of the Game they Might take these bigger Risks. As somebody mentioned, they'll want to keep it simple and easy enough to pass MSQ.
But once the MSQ is done and Done and they make their Final Endgame Content they will have All the time in the world to take risks and make super challenging stuff. Because now it won't effect MSQ progression.

That might be...another 5-6 years though. If the World map is anything to go off on, we'll have Garlameld next, and then somewhere at the worlds edge/end.

[AnakhaSilver]

Because they tried to make branching paths and interesting dungeons and the community very quickly found thee fastest way through, on a singular optimal path. So they finally decided to not bother wasting resources when we'd ignore it anyway.

[Wanzzo]

To be fair, even when they gave us choices the community ended up settling for the 'right way' to do things. Toto-Rak comes to mind as a dungeon with a couple paths and places to explore, but if you so much as go the 'wrong way' in there it can lead to a fight. If they're going to allow us more freedom with dungeons they're going to have to ensure that the choices are all of equal merit - but even then people will doubtless decide that one route is better.

I remember a Letter from the producer back then reffering to something like that.
Sastasha have a big room with 5 smaller rooms that NO ONE nowadays enter. Because it's "the wrong way". All the five expands the immersion by adding people kidnapped by pirates and sahagins, two groups of pirates fighting each other for some ale, idle pirates waiting for duties, etc. These elements don't matter when all people want is the xp from the roulette.

I think the best way do to dungeons in this game is with a fixed group of friends with same pace and goals (which is rare as crystals of Light).

So, the way for them to fix the problem is by adding variety inside new dungeons to come. Maybe some interactions during combat, like pressing some switches at the same time, more complexity in the AI behavior of the mobs, patrols, traps and other ways to reach the same place.

But I agree. All dungeons seems repeting the same formulae and build despite the gourgeousness of the environment :3

[ApolloGenX]

Aye I remember the early days of Everquest. You had to work to get to the final boss. We called it clearing trash. It was a skill to pull selected trash mobs, mainly done by a monk who could feign death, just to get a selected few mobs to bring back to the raid party. It was not a tanks job to pull. Each job of that raid had a purpose.

I also remember the long arduous task of prepping with buffs and potions before raids and the actual time it took to do that and complete a raid. You are talking 3 to 5 hours. That I "do not" miss. I do not miss the contested raids that were a daily occurrence because there was only one instance per boss, per server. Nor do I miss the long camps for these spawns. It turned me off to raiding all together. Then I played FFXIV and started to raid again.

Sorry if OP doesn't like the set up. Maybe when you get to end game in Shb it will be more of a challenge for you.

To be fair, dungeons in EQ were a LOT more dangerous, had loot that was useful...was generally part of large quests..and at the appropriate level was VERY hard to get to the end... and respawned.

Nothing in this game is anything like that...that was total sandbox dungeon crawling... sometimes even raiding. This is theme park design.

[Hazama999]

As much as I agree with the first post, I'm not so sure they'll change the formula. Their design philosophy with dungeons is that they are made to look pretty and be devoured as fast as humanly possible. To introduce even the slightest of roadbumps would elicit untold rage from a good chunk of players, I imagine.

And to be clear, yes, I'm all for a dungeon re-design to make them perhaps longer, perhaps harder, perhaps more mechanically interesting. I just don't think it's happening anytime soon.



This slide, or some variation thereof (thrilling/exciting etc...) always worms its way into keynotes and never fails to get a chuckle out of me.