Updates to Dungeon Design you'd like to see?

[ItMe]

I’ve said in another thread I think Castrum Meridanium and Praetorium should be remade. There could be something cool to be done with 8 man dungeons and requiring the party to take divergent paths that allow each to group to advance to the next portion. This was somewhat done in Castrum LL in Bozja, but in being the type of content it is, the execution is a bit underwhelming.

7 Boss Dungeon, 3 low bosses for each party. Paths that constantly converge and diverge with many enemy swarms. Final boss is a Raid boss.

I’m kind of describing a raid, but in Dungeon format instead of being a series of Trials.

Sounds like the Bozja castrum, but on steroids.
I like the sound of this.

[Jirah]

I’ve made my case with a topic already have each role shine to put it simply

I do want MUCH more but I don’t want to alienate people and since dungeons are tied to MSQ so heavily these days I’m afraid we aren’t aloud to have clever content with them 8man or no deal

[Roda]

It's tough for me because I'm someone who likes more exploration, optional paths, side loot, etc. but I realize that that's just not the way that most players approach dungeons in this game. They want they quickest, easiest, most rewarding repeatable run.. and I can't really argue with that in long run either. As much as I may love a full explore dungeon I admit I'll be done with it after a couple of runs and will want the path of least resistance after that too.

So I guess the ideal for me would be some way to combine the two. Allow for a full explore option with commensurate rewards but also include a direct route option. Maybe even do it the same way they used to do Hard mode dungeons where the two are completely separate both in design and in the cue system. Same basic concept and story in both but you're choosing which version you want before you even cue up.

I too am absolutely sick of the hallway dungeons with two pack pulls until a wall, twice, then a boss. I want to actually adventure? Explore? Learn about the game's world through gameplay! Traversal puzzles like mazes / teleport labrynths / hazard gauntlets! Puzzles and riddles to test our wits and attaention to detail. I'd rather them drop the extra content like deep dungeons or "adventure expeditions" like Bozja and Eureka, and actually flex their game design muscles on something other than "how do we put a bunch of auto attacking + 1-2 telegraphing dummies in a box, hallway, or plane and have people think it's new content"

[Equitable_Remedy]

If they add different paths, people will find the shortest/fastest route and complain when anyone dares to take a different one.

If they make Dungeons harder, people will complain about story content Is being Gated behind It, and how awful SE Is for doing It; then they'll ask for said content to be nerfed to death.

This. The thing about designing a game meant to be played by a large number of people is that the opinion on changes of any individual player (or small, self-selecting group of players on GD/Reddit) probably isn't representative of any majority (or even particularly large plurality) of players.

[ReynTime]

I'll get a lot of hate or people flat out laughing for saying this... but I think the design of dungeons like Toto-Rak, Sunken Temple of Qarn (Normal), and Wanderer's Palace (Normal) are some of my favorites, aesthetics aside, of all light-party dungeons in the game. I'd like more of that design philosophy. I don't care how pretty and flashy the newer dungeons are, personally.

I'm personally only concerned for light party dungeons. It just sounds way more manageable in my head.

No comments on bosses since my problem with the game's combat is very isolated from the dungeon design.

It's pretty obvious the daily roulettes turn dungeons into chores. Most players want to speedrun the dungeons, and the shorter they are, the weaker the adds, the more linear the better. I can't think of any solution to this. Roulette light duties just can't be more time consuming than they are at this point.

The way I see it, the solution would be to design dungeons not meant to be part of the roulette. With their own systems apart from the average dungeon.
I wonder if saying anything positive about 1.X is still a taboo in this community, but I'll say it anyway. In spite of the poor execution, the dungeons in 1.X had a lot of potential. For those who don't know, they were pretty big, boss order wasn't fixed, and you received extra chests for achieving certain objectives within them. I know the main reason they were big was because they had very few instanced dungeons back then, and I'm not saying we should get dungeons THAT big. But having a separate type of 4~8-p dungeons that offer their own exclusive rewards and encouraged doing more than following a critical path to the final boss is something I really want regardless of how easy or difficult it'd end up being.
In 1.X there always was a chest awarded for speedrunning it, and that's something I really would want completely out.
Hell take that system and make the 3-4 chest locked behind random objectives from a list of possible ones that dungeon's pool has, so that the runs will not always be handled the same way. Maybe even have more optional boss/mini-boss than you actually need if you just want to clear it. Call them "Extended Dungeons" or something, I don't know!

I'm just saying, I'd like dungeons that actually feel more like proper RPG dungeons instead of linear battle gauntlets, even if that means making dungeons not designed to be part of the tomestone cap weekly race. But because this is a MMO you can't just toss in branched paths, optional bosses, a door-unlocking gimmick and call it a day. They'd need rewards to attract players to do them more than once, and I'd dare say even lock reward claiming behind a weekly quota.
At this point my post is just a bunch of nonsense that will never become real so I'm going to stop here. I was going crazy with suggestions for possible rewards, loot, etc... But this isn't the place. This idea has been stuck in my head for years though.

[van_arn]

Raise needs a rework. It costs too little, casts too fast (compounded by swiftcast), can be used by too many jobs, and is a simple matter of if dead then raise without much consideration to mp.

Raise is interesting when it’s something strategic that may need to be withheld as the situation requires, or even as a daring and risky strategy, but too many fights in Shadowbringers devolve into a near-limitless flood of raises as people die and get back up again over and over.

This was best seen on the launch night of e4. 30 deaths in my clear group; I didn’t die, but I never really found myself feeling triage required me to cut anyone off of a raise.

We need something to wipe an awful run. That could be more enrage mechanics in normal modes, or it could be a cap on raise (such as two deaths benches you until the next attempt), or making raise more scarce by bumping the cost or limiting the jobs that have access to it.

Something needs to be done to prevent me from raising an undead army for a cheap win, though.

[Vahlnir]

Raise needs a rework. It costs too little, casts too fast (compounded by swiftcast), can be used by too many jobs, and is a simple matter of if dead then raise without much consideration to mp.

Raise is interesting when it’s something strategic that may need to be withheld as the situation requires, or even as a daring and risky strategy, but too many fights in Shadowbringers devolve into a near-limitless flood of raises as people die and get back up again over and over.

This was best seen on the launch night of e4. 30 deaths in my clear group; I didn’t die, but I never really found myself feeling triage required me to cut anyone off of a raise.

We need something to wipe an awful run. That could be more enrage mechanics in normal modes, or it could be a cap on raise (such as two deaths benches you until the next attempt), or making raise more scarce by bumping the cost or limiting the jobs that have access to it.

Something needs to be done to prevent me from raising an undead army for a cheap win, though.

It's a bit of a complicated thing. On one hand...yeah, I hear you. I can appreciate a good challenge. On the other...this would make doing anything with random people way more stressful than it already is. If a portion of the player base can't handle what is already being thrown at them I doubt it would get any better with an implemented cap on raises. Some would rise to meet this new challenge, but others would not. Again, it's complicated.

[Kisshu]

It feels like half of the dungeon design is based on player mentality, wall to wall pulls. Looking back at 2.x series of dungeons, we can see the streamlining happened way back then and has just gotten refined to a formula now: 2 packs of mobs pulled to a wall, then another 2 packs to a second wall, in a rare case a third pack, and then the boss. Repeat till you hit the final boss.

The big problem is that it feels like a lot of players in dungeons are just there for the roulette bonus and want it done as quickly as possible. They see no incentive to explore optional areas, even if it contained a gear chest. Even when doing Deep Dungeons I see a lot of people focus on clearing the floors quickly, ignoring silver and hoard chests, just to get the exp quickly. They care less about what's in the dungeon and more about the reward for clearing it.

The only way I could see players be encouraged to explore was if the dungeon was something like a treasure dungeon, each path rewarding a chest similar to current treasure dungeons. No EXP or tomes, or make those dependent on number of chests opened. Ofcourse players would quickly learn pull patterns, so enemies should be randomized in type and placement so each run would be a bit different. Enemies would be similar strengths as later Deep Dungeon levels so they pose a risk for the party.

[Raikai]

Ok, I know I made a thread recently, but a common thing I saw being asked for is either more dungeons or changes to the current dungeon design that we've had. So what changes would you suggest the devs make to the dungeon design in future patches/expansions?

- Savage-like diffculty of dungeons with scalable ilvl so they would't be overgeared;
- More interesting dungeon designs. Non-linear dungeons.
- Interestingly though, sometimes I feel that boss design in dungeons are more interesting than the ones in raids, a.k.a. telegraph memorizer.
- Lesser though, but it would be cool if the NPCs in the dungeons were voice acted as well, because sometimes you're too focused in the action to read their text, and sometimes they do add nice details of information about the dungeon.

[Barwara]

Harder dungeons!
Instances where you have to actually solve a puzzle and and use your head.
Exploration mode! (I think that's a thing already?)
Solo-mode, where you could go in the dungeon and just go one-man army on it.

I totally understand people who speed run. Sometimes you just want the item or the exp. But that should be a search party requirement so you can be paired with like-minded people, and let everyone else go slower and enjoy themselves.