Dungeons need some spice!

[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.

[Eli85]

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).

Just going to pull this quote out to make my point.

In this game, whenever there is non-savage and non-ultimate content released and it's not faceroll easy, the nerf it complaints come out in droves. S-E has tried time and time again, in different ways and means, to infuse challenge into dungeons and ... a lot of people whined about the difficulty, and when they looked at the analytics of wipes vs clears, whelp, that's when the nerfs came in.

Look, I've been playing MMOs for a long time, and I personally loved LOTRO's dungeons. They were long, not easy, and unique. It was great. But we are in a very, very different era right now. There are so many players who, as surprising as this may seem, do not want challenge. At all. Players today would rather quit the game than overcome the challenge. Sad but true. It's the current gaming landscape that we're in.

[Liam_Harper]

Look, I've been playing MMOs for a long time, and I personally loved LOTRO's dungeons. They were long, not easy, and unique. It was great. But we are in a very, very different era right now. There are so many players who, as surprising as this may seem, do not want challenge. At all. Players today would rather quit the game than overcome the challenge. Sad but true. It's the current gaming landscape that we're in.

This is where we could do with the Mythic+ system from WoW, an optional pre-made harder version of current dungeons with multiple levels of scaling difficulty and additional challenges. Those were hugely popular during their Legion expansion. It also means the base Normal mode can be easy for those who just want story.

[Canadane]

Even the dungeons you mentioned, while good, aren't as interesting as they were back in 1.0.
They were challenging. They had multiple exits, optional bosses, speedrun rewards, gear worth bringing to endgame, you name it!

Dungeons have turned into less and less of a priority. With hunt trains, and various other methods of gaining tomestones you don't need to grind them out like we used to. On top of they we've gone from 3 dungeons a patch to maybe 1.
Honestly, nows a good a time than ever to make them more challenging content again. Sure they'd take up more time, and they probably won't reward us like they used to, but at least they could be engaging.

I realize it'll probably never happen. Cookie cutter dungeons are what we've had for years now and that probably won't change. All we can do is hope for a Baldesion Arsenal 2, it's the closest thing we've had.

[DrWho2010]

they've flat out stated they're not interested in making a mythic+ system in XIV. they're too worried about if the healer dies and there's no way to continue if it's made too harsh for just what's seen for dungeons as "casual" content.

[AncientCrystal]

Dungeons need to be more interesting, end of the story. No point in wasting all the resources in making the nice graphics in them and just turn them into 20min mob AoE burn fests.

Most "content creators" are just elitist douches who all they care (obsessed) about is endgame crap and wouldn't know good game design if it slapped them in the face.

[Vyrerus]

Dungeons need to be more interesting, end of the story. No point in wasting all the resources in making the nice graphics in them and just turn them into 20min mob AoE burn fests.

Most "content creators" are just elitist douches who all they care (obsessed) about is endgame crap and wouldn't know good game design if it slapped them in the face.

For a lot of the playerbase they are more like 30 minute trudge fests where the players themselves, "Just want to take it easy." Since Trusts came out, a lot of people don't even bother to queue with other players for dungeon runs. They cite, "Too much animosity, too many players being dicks, too many players trying too hard."

There's no point in designing intricate, well tuned dungeons when it'll just be pearls before swine. They already reduced the resources they spend making dungeons, since we get 1/3rd the amount of dungeons that we used to get, at a lower frequency, with little/no mechanics.

It's less that they don't care about designing fights before the endgame, and more that they aren't allowed to bar out accessibility to people who don't want difficulty in any form.

[Jirah]

I agree to some extent. In the end what’s the point if it’s just Data fodder in the game. Even in the patch 5.2 trailer they barley showed the dungeon off which reflects how little they car to do anything interesting with

[Jirah]

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

The issue with this agreement, is that very shallow cherry picking “this one time, a few people didn’t want hard dungeons”

It’s 5 years later and dungeons are so basic I’ve played Guildheists more complex than it...which the whole point was to teach you diverse mechanics you’ll never use in dungeons

[Jirah]

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.

So link? Or ...are we supposed to take your word for it. That’s also in the past we’ve had 3 expansions 30+ trials, 70+ dungeons are we to expect the game flat line forever? A few mechs here and there between bosses wouldn’t shut down the game. I don’t understand the worst case scenario. You will not please everyone and givin how small the roulette will be this expansion, playing dungeons with no thought over and over won’t make it better