Dungeons need some spice!

[Jirah]

As a common DPS, surely the current dungeon structure is as good as it will ever be after 6 years and several power creeps due to multiple job redesigning and new jobs. Dungeons are boring and uninspired for me here’s why with some constructive criticism. Beauty of MMOs it can always improve

Remember Role Skills

Esuna, Leg Graze (Heavy)Foot Graze (Binds) Head Graze (Cast Stun) Leg sweep (Stun) and some other ones that are useful with skills like True North and Swift cast.

Sure Some are debatable useless or incredibly situational. What about stuns and Esuna? I don’t recall ever using them so far this expansion and all bosses are immune to Stuns or don’t use attacks that are able to be Head grazed. The point I’m making is we used to deal with ailments like poison, doom, that needed to be Esunaed, and Stunning bosses when they’re doing a critical attack meant life and death. The skills have no weight anymore because the Bosses and mobs don’t delivery said Weight. Speaking of Mobs

Trash Mobs

Since “Raids” no longer have mobs anymore...for better or for worse. Dungeons might as well go the same route. The mobs are beyond inconsequential and don’t pose any threat besides scare the healer and don’t use a buff or two or don’t use your aoe as a tank. As a DPS it’s a mind numbing cycle of using your aoe. Everyone seems to think trash mobs sole purpose is to bum rush the tank and that’s that until the boss fights. How is it that the interludes between have so little thought?

Their are many routes to go about this that have been done in past dungeons. Have the environment be treacherous ie Aurum Vale so you need to park your mobs very carefully, have the dungeon be a room rather than a line in order to navigate to pursue the best avenue without killing off you party and overwhelming your Healer ie Longstep, have mobs do massive select damage so DPS can prioritize mobs ie Sunken Temple Final Sting. Have mechanics go off like stackable or cleaves during the mob rush ie Ghmilyt Dark. Have a mob be immune to damage via teathers ie Ampdapor, have enrages! Possibilities are a plenty and aren’t new

Dungeons this Expansion

Dungeons can be described as boring with good boss fights since idk with one blatant exception due to story reasons and being a moderately difficult dungeon perhaps the hardest one we’ve gotten since The Burn imo. Considering we are getting so few this expansion would logically mean the few we are getting are great right? They all retain the same formula and aren’t interesting to play through. Makes matters worse due to roulettes and how few we are getting this expansion marking then a sleeping pill unless you rotate to Healer.

[Vyrerus]

Dungeons are pretty routine, and at first, SE did want to make them spicy. The playerbase did not react well. The complaints was that if they have to grind dungeons to get weekly cap tomes, then the dungeons should be "streamlined" so that they aren't a time intensive chore. People still auto quit sometimes when they get Aurum Vale for leveling roulette. Pharos Sirius was the first dungeon that they made that had some spice, and it was nerfed within a few months, due to a large amount of people auto quitting if they got it for their roulette or if they didn't think the tank or healer was geared enough to take it on. Or if the composition lacked a DPS that could Silence Siren. She was stunnable too, but built stun resistance. A lot of the earlier hard mode/level 50 dungeons from ARR had neat mechanics. It'd be nice to see a return to form, but if it's too involved, most people will complain.


That's something else to consider too. Dungeons can't get too spicy, because entry requirements have to be kept accessible to the majority of players. Surely, they could make them more involved, but higher geared DPS would mostly overwrite the need to do mechanics anyway. If you pay attention in current trash pulls, there's always something to stun or silence that make your tank/healer's lives just a bit easier. Stunning the manticore tail AOE in Holminster Switch lets melees continue to DPS. Silencing the Fuath froggie in the pulls of Dohn Mheg makes sure the trash isn't buffed with ATK up. Not really any problem monsters of note that come to mind for Qitana Ravel. I guess you can stun the golems in Malikah's Well when they do their AOE, again mostly to spare melee DPS and tank from having to dodge/stop AOEing.
If you're ranged, you can always leg/foot graze a monster or two to keep them off the tank's back for a sec, till the pull concludes. Course this just means they'll still be alive when everything else in the pull is dead.

In general, dungeons are tuned so that you can do them without healers if you keep pulls small. You could even do dungeons with x4 DPS, depending on what bosses do. One way you can spice up dungeons for yourself is to form pre-mades of non-traditional compositions. I found myself doing that some during a patch lull in Stormblood and also back in ARR. Course, in the past you could have a SMN act as tank with Titan Egi. Since that's been scrapped, it's kind of sad times for non-standard dungeon fun.

I guess my TL; DR point would be, remember you can make your own fun in the game. It's not all up to the devs; there's only so much they can do with the restrictions and past positions they work off in relation to the playerbase.

[DrWho2010]

They tried - people said no they don't want it.

[RylaBee]

They tried - people said no they don't want it.

What "people"? This is the oldest excuse in book for any content creator.
Let's be honest. It is more demanding and time consuming to create "interesting" stuff and it doesn't sell nearly as well as new glams on Mogstation.

Look, I like many things about FFXIV, but normal dungeon design is incomparably weaker that what WoW or LotRO had 10+ years ago.

Friggin Scarlet Monastery in WoW or Barrow Downs in LoTRO had more challenge and atmosphere than the lifeless corridors of any FFXIV dungeon past lvl 50.
And those were very low level instances, no need to pull out heavyweights like BRD, Stratholme or some Mines of Moria dungeons.

It is one of the biggest weakspots of FFXIV (the other being atrocious MSQ cutscene direction/presentation in ARR).

[Vyrerus]

What "people"? This is the oldest excuse in book for any content creator.
Let's be honest. It is more demanding and time consuming to create "interesting" stuff and it doesn't sell nearly as well as new glams on Mogstation.

Look, I like many things about FFXIV, but normal dungeon design is incomparably weaker that what WoW or LotRO had 10+ years ago.

Friggin Scarlet Monastery in WoW or Barrow Downs in LoTRO had more challenge and atmosphere than the lifeless corridors of any FFXIV dungeon past lvl 50.
And those were very low level instances, no need to pull out heavyweights like BRD, Stratholme or some Mines of Moria dungeons.

It is one of the biggest weakspots of FFXIV (the other being atrocious MSQ cutscene direction/presentation in ARR).

Many of the people who populated this forum in its early days, some who still do. The reason these forums gained their reputation. Square did want dungeons to be challenging, and the playerbase got vocal about it to the point that they opted to keep dungeons easy. Mogstation and their penchant for producing so much content for it came later.

[RylaBee]

Many of the people who populated this forum in its early days, some who still do. The reason these forums gained their reputation. Square did want dungeons to be challenging, and the playerbase got vocal about it to the point that they opted to keep dungeons easy. Mogstation and their penchant for producing so much content for it came later.

I really would like link to some old post with people screaming about dungeon stuff being hard.
It however can also be due to the fact, that they were doing these dungeons on MUCH lower itemlevel than you are entering it with today.

[Frizze]

I really would like link to some old post with people screaming about dungeon stuff being hard.
It however can also be due to the fact, that they were doing these dungeons on MUCH lower itemlevel than you are entering it with today.

Every time they introduce anything even remotely difficult the forum explodes with people calling for a nerf. Often when the instance isnt even actually difficult too. From the last couple years i remember people raging about Shinryu(end of 4.0, not the extreme), every solo Zenos instance, Tsuko normal, the "Little Sun" instance with Y'shtola(both halves), the estinien solo instance, the alphy solo instance, the final boss in the burn, final steps of faith, titania normal, the solo thancred instance(both for length and difficulty), both ranjit fights, gimlit dark(mostly the last boss), every alliance raid since void ark, the solo instance with lakshmi, the solo instance with tataru and soroban... and im sure im forgetting a few. And those are mostly(RIP TG Cid) fights that never got nerfed. Amdapor, steps of faith, and i think pharos? all actually were made easier to appease the whiners.

[Vidu]

What "people"? This is the oldest excuse in book for any content creator.
Let's be honest. It is more demanding and time consuming to create "interesting" stuff and it doesn't sell nearly as well as new glams on Mogstation.

Look, I like many things about FFXIV, but normal dungeon design is incomparably weaker that what WoW or LotRO had 10+ years ago.

Friggin Scarlet Monastery in WoW or Barrow Downs in LoTRO had more challenge and atmosphere than the lifeless corridors of any FFXIV dungeon past lvl 50.
And those were very low level instances, no need to pull out heavyweights like BRD, Stratholme or some Mines of Moria dungeons.

It is one of the biggest weakspots of FFXIV (the other being atrocious MSQ cutscene direction/presentation in ARR).

The kind of people who purposly didnt unlock the original Pharos to keep it out of their roulette (and the people who told new players to avoid unlocking said dungeon to keep it out of their roulettes) because it was deemed - for some erason - "difficult" until it got nerfed. If I remember correctly this was also the reason they changed expert roulette so that you have to have all dungeons for it unlocked - to prevent people from simply not playing by the roulette-rules.
I was always quite unhappy about it because I happen(d) to like that dungeon but getting in roulette back then was extremly rare and even if you got it you ended up with people leaving and/or complaining about it.

Its not that I dont agree with you - though seeing people in level 60+ content failing some very basic mechanics makes me question the desire for more difficult dungeons - but I've seen enough complaints by various people to know that its not gonna happen. If we're lucky we might end up with some 100% optional, difficult 4-man content (something like the later floors of PotD and HoH, just with less RNG and more skill), but normal dungeons are never gonna get difficult again.

[RylaBee]

Snip..

Thank you for the info.

One note thou: I'm assuming that the thing people were afraid of was wiping on bosses specifically.
That is not necessarily what I mean by interesting dungeon design.

What I mean, is giving the place sense of purpose, non-linearity and having actually difficult trash, that needs to be correctly pulled and crowd-controlled if necessary.
SE seem to be morbidly afraid of creating difficult trash, that would need any consideration beyond being time-sink on the road to next boss.
That is why many players just purposefully pull wall-to-wall to create at least bit of excitement.

[Vyrerus]

Thank you for the info.

One note thou: I'm assuming that the thing people were afraid of was wiping on bosses specifically.
That is not necessarily what I mean by interesting dungeon design.

What I mean, is giving the place sense of purpose, non-linearity and having actually difficult trash, that needs to be correctly pulled and crowd-controlled if necessary.
SE seem to be morbidly afraid of creating difficult trash, that would need any consideration beyond being time-sink on the road to next boss.
That is why many players just purposefully pull wall-to-wall to create at least bit of excitement.

Again, this was something they implemented in earlier dungeons, where if you did not stun or silence certain monsters in the trash pack, they could potentially be a wipe cause by confusing the healer. In Pharos Sirius there were several. The first were the uhh, 4 legged fish dog things around the first corner that spit vulnerability water on the tank eventually. In entry gear if you walled to wall, you ran into a pirate barber and two fish dogs. The barbers heal the entire pack and the fish dogs make the tank take more damage.

After the first boss if you wall to walled, you got multiple Corrupted Sprites, capable of casting Banishga III. If it went off, it dealt 3~4k damage to everyone in the group, depending on job(sorry original DRG with lower Mdef than Gatherers). This meant, a one shot for most DPS or healers if they were in bare minimum entry gear. If you wall to wall'd you also ran into another pirate barber on top of two of those sprites. Needless to say, if the sprites weren't stopped and the barber wasn't killed promptly, you were going to wipe on trash, and many people did.

Pharos Sirius also had side rooms with extra treasure. While still mostly linear, the dungeon spiraled up, because it is a lighthouse. You couldn't get map completion for it without visiting the siderooms. It also sported 4 bosses instead of the typical 3.