Bring back crowd control. Bring back branching dungeons. Bring back ADVENTURE.

[DinahDemiurge]

Please, SE. PLEASE...next xpac please get away from this linear zero-thought required gameplay. Please give us dungeons that are exciting and dangerous again. I have been leveling a new job recently and going through the 1-50 dungeons you can tell how much better designed they are compared to 3.x+ stuff...they have themes and unique objectives. Sure, they are super easy but later-levels you could make them more challenging and rewarding. Why not focus on this? Add another dose of challenge, and make crowd control useful again...The path that FFXIV is on cannot be sustained like this. We need DEPTH. "Expert" dungeons are a joke...4 man content needs re-evaluated ASAP.

[Rhus]

Brain input required. Too difficult, please nerf. Msq content should not be difficult to complete. Stop shutting me out the game with savage quality dungeons. What do you mean I need to use cooldowns? Heal? For real?

Hmm think that’s about it?

[Alucard135]

Brain input required. Too difficult, please nerf. Msq content should not be difficult to complete. Stop shutting me out the game with savage quality dungeons. What do you mean I need to use cooldowns? Heal? For real?

Hmm think that’s about it?

You forgot "I have 100 wives, 2000 kids, 420 jobs and I can only play for 3.141592653589793min so I don't have time for that!"

[CookiesNCreams]

Brain input required. Too difficult, please nerf. Msq content should not be difficult to complete. Stop shutting me out the game with savage quality dungeons. What do you mean I need to use cooldowns? Heal? For real?

Hmm think that’s about it?

Brilliant lol. Same could be said about people using the same excuse for wanting to spam macros during endgame crafting instead of using their brains. :P

[Lacan]

How am I supposed to handle complicated dungeons when I've got my screaming neglected children to take care of???

[Vaunhause]

I think a dungeon where there's multiple paths, which includes multiple ways to clear the dungeon would be cool. And depending on decisions through out the dungeon, it could change which path you have to take. Maybe a bit much for a normal dungeon, though. Maybe some sort of side content?

[Berteaux_Braumegain]

I think a dungeon where there's multiple paths, which includes multiple ways to clear the dungeon would be cool. And depending on decisions through out the dungeon, it could change which path you have to take. Maybe a bit much for a normal dungeon, though. Maybe some sort of side content?

That'd be neat, but I imagine that before long you'd have people complaining about you taking the "longer route" or choosing to deal with the "harder boss".

[Valic]

That'd be neat, but I imagine that before long you'd have people complaining about you taking the "longer route" or choosing to deal with the "harder boss".

Doesn't even have to be that simple. Could make it so that maybe your party has more ranged dealers than melee and the decisions you make in the dungeon can influence you to get a boss that's particularly easier to deal with as a caster or ranged job than a melee one. Using hints given through the dungeon or experience with it. Or create different trap patterns on the floor that the party has to look at the notes ahead of time to memorize where is safe to actually run through without dying. Instead of just "every run I've been here, this rile and this tile are always safe to run to, and it always will be" type deals.

[linay]

Doesn't even have to be that simple. Could make it so that maybe your party has more ranged dealers than melee and the decisions you make in the dungeon can influence you to get a boss that's particularly easier to deal with as a caster or ranged job than a melee one. Using hints given through the dungeon or experience with it. Or create different trap patterns on the floor that the party has to look at the notes ahead of time to memorize where is safe to actually run through without dying. Instead of just "every run I've been here, this rile and this tile are always safe to run to, and it always will be" type deals.

That wouldn't work as duties (with some notable exceptions) are meant to be trivialized over time with gear and level increase. Sooner or later those kinds of mechanics would just be ignored.

People would just always choose the quickest/easiest path and stick to it, regardless of the rewards. If people meet a disagreement, then someone is probably gonna get kicked.
So instead of multiple pathways leading to a different boss/reward, why not instead be different linear pathways per run. One run you go left, another run you go right. Clear times will always be the same (player skill excluded), but at least you'll be seeing more of a dungeon (maybe different bosses, too).

Kinda like Left 4 Dead 2, where the AI Director would close up some pathways and have you go down a different pathway (though the safe room would always be the same).

That would be the only way I agree to multiple branches in a dungeon, where the dungeon chooses the path for you each run and closes the other paths.

[Valic]

That wouldn't work as duties (with some notable exceptions) are meant to be trivialized over time with gear and level increase. Sooner or later those kinds of mechanics would just be ignored.

Even with gear and level, you can't ignore mechanics that can literally define you to die otherwise. The only point where mechanics should go ignored is when the content is dead/gone, meaning when it's able to be unsync'd. In my example, you could make a dungeon where the boss has a circular aoe around him in a large length that puts doom on the players that stand in it. However at a range, anyone can be outside of it and still deal damage, putting ranged/casters at more of an advantage rather than melee's having to dip in to dps then dip out just to avoid doom or rely fully on a healer ressing them until they're brink of death ridden. The other option being a boss that puts debuffs on players who out of range with doom, and a consistent debuff applied that causes heavy damage down and high vulnerability up, forcing most casters and ranged dealers to not be able to hold still or deal anywhere near as much damage as they normally do. Only removed when the player deals a melee based attack (kinda like how leviathan denies ranged or caster depending on the target). That way melee is preferred in the later half and ranged in the former... ultimately the party would decide which path would be more optimal and faster. As an example, say the party has a white mage, a dragoon, a black mage, and a paladin. 2 melee, 2 casters in a party of 4. Well, the white mage has some pretty nice gear and WHM's have really nice damage, the BLM is also really well geared and BLM's are known hard hitters. PLD's also have a lil bit more ranged than some tanks to boot and dragoons while not many still can range a bit more often than other melee jobs. So in that scenario, the ranged boss would be more optimal to face and more up-time to be faster.

Now let's say you have a party of a dark knight, a monk, a scholar, and a red mage. Well, this is obvious at this point... MNK and DRK don't have much ranged, SCH and RED do but RDM also offers some melee abilities/support and SCH has more shields than heals to cover any aoe's the boss does up close to melees. So perhaps the melee boss would be more optimal than the boss that would most of the group at bay. This type of mechanic would cause parties to actually communicate and discuss a strategy in how they would handle the boss, and actually give players a reason to ask why they should do what they should do. Not just mindless repeat of rotation or beat the boss by dodging the things like a simon says layout always does. This gives players a reason to understand their abilities functionality and make a plan together..... ALMOST LIKE A REAL ADVENTURE???? HRRRRM

After it's unsyncable, of course people will be able to do whatever and ignore it all, but as being a current dungeon for a whole year or two that can show up in roulettes too... It'd be a neat idea to force players to understand how to learn other roles than their own and decide as a group what would be the best way to deal with what they're given. Duties don't HAVE to be trivial grinds every single time.

Keep in mind, my example is a mild and a bit extremist idea of one way a dungeon's "pathing" could change so that the dungeon you run isn't just a straight line. Where your group can actually have a choice that impacts how quick the run is and what casualties you'll be able to afford in clearing certain portions of the dungeon. It's not a perfect idea for a set of mechanics and way to create differing paths/mechanics for a dungeon, but it is an idea of how it can be done. Personally, I'd prefer more dungeon content that actually requires you to read, put puzzles together, understand hints, and decipher meanings found in our lore. That's what creates an immersive experience and an interesting dungeon, something that isn't the common. It's partially why so many people loved the 2nd boss of Bardam's Mettle. Finally a boss fight that isn't just "burn it", but instead forces the players to understand how aoe's work and what patterns to take in order to survive and thus beat the boss. Not to mention while the mechanics are the same every time you run that boss, the positioning of some aoe's and how the players move won't always be the same... This makes a GOOD boss fight that depends on the coordination and different types of players/parties that have to also learn how to adapt on the fly based on the visual/audio cues given to them by the boss's mechanics.