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

[Zazay]

IMO I feel like a large contributing factor of the issue is that when gamers realized that developers could now change things in game through updates or patches, too many of them stopped trying to improve as a gamer and instead switched to crying and complaining to the developer to just make it easier for them. Games in general feel like they're just they're shifting further down the road to being dumbed down to the point of making the slowest person feel good about themselves at the expense of everyone else. And many of the ones that didn't need the game simplified are turning into the gamer equivalent of those people on the spaceship in Wall-e...

I think you might be right with that (unfortunately).

[Curisu]

I've not read everything but did anyone mentioned the eureka hydatos BA?
It's a huge dungeon were 1 monster pulled by a DPS can cause chaos and death.

I guess the next BA like dungeon was already confirmed.

[Connor]

So from my understanding of this thread:

We don’t want dungeons to have decision making, or difficult enemies, or enemies that require specific strategies to defeat, or enemy abilities that have an effect beyond ‘deals direct damage’, and we don’t want access to any sort of skill that might impede the enemy in some way?

I mean, I’m not claiming these are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ wants; if that’s what people want then it’s not my place to try and suggest otherwise. Personally I would like to see generic dungeons be more engaging in general though. That doesn’t mean they have to have super difficult enemies or tons of branching paths, but I’d like to see them be a bit less simplistic in terms of going through them. I feel like dungeons currently are tuned to the absolute bottom limit of effort, which is fine, but I’d like to at least have to put in a modicum of effort when playing a video game (otherwise it’s like, ‘this game may as well be playing itself automatically’).

I mean, logically isn’t player input redundant anyway? It would be faster and more efficient if it was entirely automated, since all it technically does is give an illusion of choice anyway. So the question ends up being ‘where is the limit?’ with how ‘efficient’ we want the game to be. At what point do things go from being ‘simplistic’ to just being ‘boring’? And at what point do we continue/stop removing ‘pointless’ mechanics like crowd control, healing, non-DPS party buffs, enemy abilities, etc etc?

[Reynhart]

We don’t want dungeons to have decision making, or difficult enemies, or enemies that require specific strategies to defeat, or enemy abilities that have an effect beyond ‘deals direct damage’, and we don’t want access to any sort of skill that might impede the enemy in some way?

And yet, we blame SE for the extreme streamlining of the game

[Lersayil]

So from my understanding of this thread:

We don’t want dungeons to have decision making, or difficult enemies, or enemies that require specific strategies to defeat, or enemy abilities that have an effect beyond ‘deals direct damage’, and we don’t want access to any sort of skill that might impede the enemy in some way?

I mean, I’m not claiming these are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ wants; if that’s what people want then it’s not my place to try and suggest otherwise. Personally I would like to see generic dungeons be more engaging in general though. That doesn’t mean they have to have super difficult enemies or tons of branching paths, but I’d like to see them be a bit less simplistic in terms of going through them. I feel like dungeons currently are tuned to the absolute bottom limit of effort, which is fine, but I’d like to at least have to put in a modicum of effort when playing a video game (otherwise it’s like, ‘this game may as well be playing itself automatically’

Basically yes. Daily dungeons and content run ad nauseam isn't a great place for complex trash mechanics, exploration or decision making (unless we're talking boss mechanics, but even those can push their welcomeness). The first few times might be interesting. Then it becomes boring and a pain in the butt. Meta forms, optimal paths get discovered, choices become meaningless. We might as well lean into it instead of trying to avoid it.

We still have (and will have) content that has these aspects. But these are not places on the daily checklist, biut in randomly generated and / or more open and non scripted places.

EDIT: and just for reference, we've had CC in the past. Nobody used it. Developers chose to remove them instead of forcing the issue. I think they've made their choice on that matter.

[Valic]

Then it becomes boring and a pain in the butt. Meta forms, optimal paths get discovered, choices become meaningless. We might as well lean into it instead of trying to avoid it.
.

the biggest issue in every post I see is this sentence here. Everyone assumes the choices and decision making has to be as simple as "party picks this boss for easier time". You can do things that alter decision making such as having dungeons play mini games like the gold saucer event mini game swapping cups all around and have people guess which one's correct in a similar fashion to the choice making made in the treasure hunts. You can have dps determine how fast a certain thing dies determine what boss comes up next. You can even simply have RNG traps that require the player to view a map posted on a wall ahead of time. No one's asking for choices like you'd find in a regular single player game where "you pick these, you'll get the good ending every time" type deals. They're wanting choices more akin to RNG factor that can make things interesting, easier or harder doesn't even have to matter. Just different experiences is the main gripe istead of the same linear path with 3 bosses in it.

[Vulcann]

So from my understanding of this thread:

We don’t want dungeons to have decision making, or difficult enemies, or enemies that require specific strategies to defeat, or enemy abilities that have an effect beyond ‘deals direct damage’, and we don’t want access to any sort of skill that might impede the enemy in some way?

/facepalm

i know i know you think you are being clever with the "lulz gamerz r lazy and don't want to think" post. but the reality is that after the optimal way is found (and yes there will always be an optimal way found) toxicity will run rampant if anyone deviates from the optimal path.

as i said it makes me wonder if you all just play in static groups only or if you are newer to the genre. because if you ever tried to deviate from the expected route in a game like WoW that did have big dungeons with many different paths, hell it had dungeons that you could exploit the terrain in order to bypass encounters.

and guess what if you didn't know (especially as the tank) the fastest way to go or how to exploit the terrain you were yelled at and usually kicked from the group. how do i know? well a couple times i decided to actually tank for a LFG group in WoW i went into a dungeon that i didn't know the fastest path. i didn't know there was a place you could jump over some terrain and i generally got a little lost(it was early in my wow "career")

i was called just about every name in the book and then booted "becuz noob"

[SieyaM]

I would love to have dungeons with branching paths and different ways to complete, but as has been stated in here, the paths would have to either all take roughly the same amount of time to complete or the would have to offer better rewards for taking longer paths. And it would have to be enough of an incentive to warrant spending the extra time. The latter is pretty well impossible because it appears that most of the population only runs the roulettes out of a necessity and they despise every minute they ever spend in a dungeon. So we are left with the former which is to make all paths the same length of time. Maybe one could be more of a series of boss type enemies and another could be more of a horde or swarm of enemies. I would say there could be more puzzles involved but that kind of content is generally disliked by FFXIV players.

[Rasikko]

In a game ruled by damaging AOEs, enfeebles like Sleep are useless. AOE paralyze, etc would be fun to use though.