Suggestion - (Optional) - High difficulty, High rewards Dungeons

[Rockette]

I think it's a good idea. A new challenge with a small party would be fun. The upper floors of HoH and PotD do this but the grind to get there make it pretty unattractive.

[seraseth]

We had that before. It was called pre-nerf Pharos Sirius. People would literally not run it because they were so afraid of actually doing mechanics.

As Cidel said it wasn't so much that people couldn't handle Pharos, it's that the other dungeons were the exact same reward faster/easier and with less risk(of a bad party messing up the run), why would people be happy about pulling the 'penalty' card out of the roulette.

If it was it's own roulette
a) it's not blocking msg progress
b) all the dungeons are around the same difficulty/reward, it's not just 'bad luck' to get those dungeons
c) people know what they're signing up for, and (hopefully) are there because they *want* to do this more challenging content, and will have more patience with it

[Acidblood]

This type of content* would be great to see... sadly with the simplification in 5.0 there are almost no job interactions left to add meaningful depth to combat encounters (i.e. BLM is now the only DPS job with CC). I fear all we would get are the same dungeons we have now just with extra annoying mechanics and hard enrage timers

* PotD / HoH does not count, as at the very least they require hours of tedious grinding before you get to the challenging part.

[Zfz]

Very long time ago, in 2.0, we actually needed crowd control in the form of THM's Sleep or CNJ's Repose in leveling dungeons because of the incoming damage. People accepted it because that's just the way it is.

Dungeons being an AOE fest is something that started with the Darklight wall-to-wall pulls of Wonderer's Palace, from where it spread to every other dungeon and people justified it by saying, "you just want to get it over and done with by the 100th time."

In response, the devs did not raise the rewards to fit the time and effort required, but started to design all dungeons for wall-to-wall pulls and provided the tools to all jobs for AOE fests.

The gradual increase to player power during leveling as a result of end-game tuning is the primary reason we don't need any cc now in leveling dungeons.

I think the multiple recent threads about risk and reward is essentially a call to return to the slower paced crowd-controlled dungeon gameplay. Personally I don't mind it. I actually like it a lot more than the brain-dead AOE-fest we have now, coming from a WoW pre-2.5 Warlock background, joggling Fear, Seduction and kiting a third mob all at the same time.

But we have to be careful about what we're really asking: are you prepared to have FFXIV turn into a game where each dungeon is expected to take around 30 minutes for the very skilled premade veteran parties, with 40-50 minutes being the normal pugging speed and 70-80 minutes for the mediocre party with newbies and less skilled players?

Yes, 10 minute AOE-fest brain-dead runs are boring, but they're also convenient, and the vast majority of current players have formed their habits and play schedules around this. It is also a proven success formula. If the high risk high reward format had the potential to be more successful in a multi-player environment where most failures are due to other people and you just have to keep wasting time with them, then we wouldn't be where we are now anyways. FFXIV would have gone down that route already.

And if we try to have it implemented as optional content, then we have to ask ourselves: isn't that design effort and developer resource much better invested in improving the current state of brain-dead leveling dungeon trash? I mean at this point, even just inserting some common boss mechanics into the trash would improve the boredom a lot.

[Avraym]

Yes please.

Deep dungeon is great and all - but the unnecessary grinding to reach end game makes the whole thing feel like more of a time-sink exercise than challenging content.

Pomanders & Random Status effects also arguably have too much power.

But new difficult dungeons that offered high scaling gear would be lovely.

[Nora_of_Mira]

A challenging environment to level up my new classes or lower levels disciples of war and magic.

My problem is right here.

In a common scenario, I've leveled up my main DPS to 80. I have my alt Tank to 80. Now I want to level a new role, do I really want to go through challenging content to get my ignored classes to 80? In this scenario, my main is progging Savage, my alt is just there for fast queues into Expert roulette. If i wanna level a 3rd job or more, I honestly wouldnt bother with a more challenging option bc I'm pretty worn out from my other weekly activities.

Also, most of your ideas are in Eureka / Baldesion Arsenal.

[Seraphor]

I think this should be along the lines of Baldesion Arsenal, and 54 was biting off way too much to chew for them, basically making it unplayable now.
8 Man hard dungeons would be an awesome endgame content.

[technole]

YoshiP gave an interesting answer when people liked Rathalos Extreme being a four-man trial, and would like challenging dungeons. Something to consider, but I'm glad they tried something different because the amount of end-game four-man content had been disappearing from the game.

I hope we get the content at some point, they love to experiment like they did with Baldeson Arsenal, raid Eureka style, limited-deaths dungeon.

[miraidensetsu]

We got those. They're called Dungeon (Hard).

Why not Dungeon (Extreme) or even Dungeon (Savage)? You do have Trial (Hard), Trial (Extreme) and Trial (Savage).

[Kyux]

My problem is right here.

In a common scenario, I've leveled up my main DPS to 80. I have my alt Tank to 80. Now I want to level a new role, do I really want to go through challenging content to get my ignored classes to 80? In this scenario, my main is progging Savage, my alt is just there for fast queues into Expert roulette. If i wanna level a 3rd job or more, I honestly wouldnt bother with a more challenging option bc I'm pretty worn out from my other weekly activities.

Also, most of your ideas are in Eureka / Baldesion Arsenal.

Well the point of it would simply to have old dungeons reworked abit as harder versions to have the "option" to play them. Forcing people who likes the easy way of leveling would be bad as well imo. It would mostly be for people who are looking for an extra challenge/reward while leveling up, and help them understand the classes better as well as the potential that they can bring to the team/party before the endgame.