Why can't Dungeons be longer/harder, but more... piecework?

[Tsalmaveth]

The 'community' has a 'set way of doing things' and wooooe-be-it-to-you if you dare to deviate from that. You mass pull, you burn it down, and if you don't do that you are bad and deserve to be kicked. You waste everyone's time otherwise. Git gud.

The 'community' doesn't want new things that require straight shot 'pull it all and burn' because that isn't fast-efficient-rewards-out that is the 'way it is'. Winding dungeons that you explore with side content and extra 'goodies aren't desired or wanted and will be complained about. Vets don't even let sprouts get full map completion on maps these days from what I have seen. When they tried something new like Eureka the backlash was immediate. The complaining was at an all-time-high, at least in this part of the forum.

Gaming has shifted a lot over the years and exploration dungeon-crawling is not as popular as fast-play instant gratification. Fast-paced gaming quick-play seems to be what everyone 'expects' and pushes everyone else to do, whether they want it or not. Don't get me wrong, personally I would absolutely LOVE to see longer more involved dungeons again... with time spent in them with purpose and story and exploration again. But being stuck in there with people who talk like a lot of PUGs do to each other? Not sure it is worth it.

[Lastelli]

The 'community' has a 'set way of doing things' and wooooe-be-it-to-you if you dare to deviate from that. You mass pull, you burn it down, and if you don't do that you are bad and deserve to be kicked. You waste everyone's time otherwise. Git gud.

The 'community' doesn't want new things that require straight shot 'pull it all and burn' because that isn't fast-efficient-rewards-out that is the 'way it is'. Winding dungeons that you explore with side content and extra 'goodies aren't desired or wanted and will be complained about. Vets don't even let sprouts get full map completion on maps these days from what I have seen. When they tried something new like Eureka the backlash was immediate. The complaining was at an all-time-high, at least in this part of the forum.

Gaming has shifted a lot over the years and exploration dungeon-crawling is not as popular as fast-play instant gratification. Fast-paced gaming quick-play seems to be what everyone 'expects' and pushes everyone else to do, whether they want it or not. Don't get me wrong, personally I would absolutely LOVE to see longer more involved dungeons again... with time spent in them with purpose and story and exploration again. But being stuck in there with people who talk like a lot of PUGs do to each other? Not sure it is worth it.

1. Players will do the optional stuff it the reward is worth it. The reason why nobody bothered with the optional sections of arr dungeons was because whatever could be obtained there was junk, plain and simple.

2. "New" does not equate "good". The first 2 Eureka zones were just bad content, that's why people complained (while giving a lot of suggestions to improve the formula). Pyros and Hydatos were much better, but at that point a good chunk of the community had already given up.

There are a lot of things they could do to make dungeons more interesting. One thing I'd love to see is optional zones where you can spawn optional (hard) bosses by meeting some conditions that reward you extra tomestones/gil/rare materials/rare minions. Of course, the reward must be proportionate to the time and effort required to kill it. 5 minutes boss=50 weekly capped tomestones + other random goodies.

What the devs should definitely avoid is creating a new kind of content that resets your level and requires you to mindlessly kill mobs with no mechanics until you reach a predetermined level. This is no longer acceptable and is just a worrisome lack of creativity on their part.

[Gula]

What the devs should definitely avoid is creating a new kind of content that resets your level and requires you to mindlessly kill mobs with no mechanics until you reach a predetermined level. This is no longer acceptable and is just a worrisome lack of creativity on their part.

I didn't mind in PotD, because leveling was so fast and as long as you ran floors pertaining to your level, it wasn't that hard getting your Aetherpool to +99. But Eureka. Pass. I played it day 1 and dropped it day 1.

[Shurrikhan]

The 'community' has a 'set way of doing things' and wooooe-be-it-to-you if you dare to deviate from that. You mass pull, you burn it down, and if you don't do that you are bad and deserve to be kicked. You waste everyone's time otherwise. Git gud.

The 'community' doesn't want new things that require straight shot 'pull it all and burn' because that isn't fast-efficient-rewards-out that is the 'way it is'.

To be fair, though, that's not so much "mass pull or get gone" as "do the obviously two-to-three-times as efficient option or get gone". If you change the dungeon designs, you change the optimal choice. Heck, you might even be able to make two choice in tight balance of each other. After all, we still run more than just 8 jobs, so clearly "near-enough to optimal" has a place. A 30 to 60% efficiency loss is just a far cry from 1-3%.

Now, alternatives do not somehow have to be winding dungeons. A "straight-shot" dungeon can still amount to far more than "Sprint, tank AoEs pack 1 while running past, tank AoEs pack 2 while running past, tank reaches and AoEs pack 3, and we all AoE them down; boss; repeat."

There's a lot that's a mere easily manipulated consequence of tuning, mechanical scarcity, and spacing that we take as inseparable from the medium just because each dungeon thus far has so tightly imitated the ones before it. They're not. They're side-effects of something that could change with any new dungeon, possibly even without a sudden spike in general difficulty.

Put simply, players don't want to waste time, and many are playing under time constraints. If a winding 90-minute dungeon (including, say, a semi-weekly bonus) with side paths produced more reward per minute than our current ones (including the daily roulette bonus), players would probably use the 90-minute when possible, and then a few 30-minute ones if they can't manage a second 90-minute in that week. Imo, that's not a rut so much as common sense; it's just the choices that are forced upon them that are in a rut.

[linay]

Considering they have chosen to lessen the amount of dungeons made per patch, I do not think it's realistic to expect more complex dungeon designs unless it comes at the cost of normal MSQ dungeons, which might be problematic for some. I also think the devs are content with how dungeons are used in this game, and its current and future design would only be to ensure the continuation of its current usage, unless they see a benefit to change the status quo.

And on a personal note, I don't care for optional enemies/rooms regardless of the reward. I want to be forced to full clear the dungeon, regardless of difficulty.

[Shurrikhan]

Considering they have chosen to lessen the amount of dungeons made per patch, I do not think it's realistic to expect more complex dungeon designs unless it comes at the cost of normal MSQ dungeons, which might be problematic for some. I also think the devs are content with how dungeons are used in this game, and its current and future design would only be to ensure the continuation of its current usage, unless they see a benefit to change the status quo.

And on a personal note, I don't care for optional enemies/rooms regardless of the reward. I want to be forced to full clear the dungeon, regardless of difficulty.

Given that more complex dungeons would be bordering on experimental or otherwise non-standard content, doesn't that fit right in line with what we're supposed to be getting at the expense of the standard dungeoning (hallway speedrun) experience?

As for the latter point, that's fair, and I'm probably more on your side in that regard, if only due to not particularly caring to backtrack (except in particular unique designs) preferring not to have to decide upon a route (again in most circumstances) and how that it means that more of the development time is spent on things we see every time, instead of allowing for potential waste (though there are some exceptions where the rare variant is more noticeable than that little extra detail in the main product, so that has exceptions as well).

[linay]

Given that more complex dungeons would be bordering on experimental or otherwise non-standard content, doesn't that fit right in line with what we're supposed to be getting at the expense of the standard dungeoning (hallway speedrun) experience?

That's why I'm not dismissing it entirely. I just think there will indeed be a cost somewhere, and the likelihood would be normal MSQ dungeons. And now that they're having one dungeon per patch, it is indeed the ideal time to experiment with dungeon.

But that's where my second point comes in: that the devs are likely content with how dungeons are used currently and would likely rather experiment with other types of content.

[Malmstrom]

It all sounds well and good until you actually put it to practice.

Wildstar tanked partly because the dungeons in that game were brutal when the game came out.

[frostmagemari]

It all sounds well and good until you actually put it to practice.
Wildstar tanked partly because the dungeons in that game were brutal when the game came out.

The difficulty of Wildstar wasn't what tanked it; When i played i was regularly able to find people early on to do the dungeons.
What killed Wildstar was nearly zero support for the game, the idea that they should fix bugs/etc that impacted large amounts of players in patches every 3-4mo instead of hotfixing issues that needed fixing, along with a very finicky mod-scene where no one could get their UI mods (etc) to work right with the game; and all of this was in addition to a lot of systems (aside from housing) being user unfriendly.
So, i can agree that you're right in that it was partly the reason.. but it was hardly one of the larger reasons. If they actually fixed the issues that caused people daily frustration, people wouldn't have left the way they did.