8 man "nightmare" dungeons

[Shurrikhan]

Not sure if it's a good idea to discount a proper alternative end game reward like materia.

I don't mean to discount it generally; rather, I just don't think it's a good idea to make that unique to a piece of side-content, or even to have it be the first place in which we see that end-game reward. Were interesting materia already pervasive, I'd love to see perhaps some unique (and potentially even faintly, faintly more powerful than elsewhere) version of that thing, but I don't think we should feel compelled by rewards to play the content. Abnormally strong materia would be of consequence to everyone and the fact it's materia (i.e., has a high chance of being destroyed when moved) would add some less-than-fun considerations of hording and upkeep. More importantly, though, materia is iconic to the franchise. Making a single piece of side-content the sole way to acquire an iconic element would give vibes similar to Eureka being the only way to get (the dyable form of) ANY artifact gear (of any expansion, rather than just the dyable form of Stormblood's).

And to be honest, though I'm sure having skills slottable via Materia would warrant complaints as to "illusion of choice" or "adding to the time it takes to have a seemingly functional character", the idea of having a slightly more wind- or storm-centric WHM, and that naturally (i.e., in the course of nightmare dungeon progression) advancing to those materia taking on additional "nightmare" effects, etc., is intriguing to me. Such just has to fight against structural constraints, just as virtually all complex power-effecting progression does. It would suck, for instance, if we had to potentially destroy materia just to swap to a different ability more suited to our content. Hell, if we were to commonly alternate between content types with opposed BiS materia, it'd already be a hassle just to swap between them, however freely. Eventually, you could end up with the "perfect" solution, whereby materia is specific to job and content type and is swapped automatically, or you have Material Palettes (similar to Glamor Palettes) and you can swap out those automatically in accord with certain conditions, etc., etc. But it'd still be a lot of extra investment just to put that power or cool factor you want in an iconic form, rather than just offering it up as Duty Actions or the likes of Lost Actions.

But I digress; the materia idea is long replaced.

My original idea was maybe that you could get advanced materia such as having 2 stats on it instead of it one.

Last note: Perhaps I read too much into that, but consider: unless you would otherwise overcap your first-priority secondary stat, a single-stat materia of equal total stat gain will always be better than a half-and-half or equal-thirds or the like.

Making it so you can just click on nightmare for all current dungeons like you would min ilvl would actually fit in line with more of what i imagined of most of the best rewards being mostly mounts/aesthetics since you would just have access to all dungeons at once without it directly impacting end game too heavily. Each dungeon can have exclusive mounts/aesthetics you can unlock but also a larger pool to draw from as well that all dungeons would share.

Given the shift to 8-man, in place of 4-, I'm not sure that would be as possible to just click as an additional option as a simple "Undermanned" (or the aforementioned "Minimum Item Level") option would be. But, regardless, I'm not sure I conveyed my point clearly.

By early- and late-dungeon I wasn't referring to, say, ARR or HW vs. Stormblood or Shadowbringers. I was referring instead to when you first start into the dungeon vs. the time by/at which you'd be fighting the last boss. You mentioned before that you expect the difficulty of the dungeon to rise over time, if I recall correctly, and not just in consequence to pull size or the like. If so, the dungeon would get harder over time. The larger that gap, the wider an audience the extremes (the very beginning, or the very end of a speedrun) could appeal to, but the narrower the portion of the nightmare dungeon that would appeal to any given group would be.

My assumption (perhaps faulty) is that you wouldn't be able to just toss in a 'nightmare' mode into any old dungeon (due to its being 8-man), nor that you'd necessarily want to. That seems more the territory of far more simplistic concepts like "unreal dungeons", wherein they'd be synced up (rather than down) and beefed up to be of similar engagement given our skills acquired since the dungeon's original level. Nightmare dungeons seem far more a labor of love, the selection of which would be slowly added to: the likes of visiting an Diablos in an aetheric prison (in which we've trapped him to use as a conduit in whatever "fight fire with fire" plan against the Ascians or by which to discover the means of the end of worlds or whatnot), and then taking any of many portals or mirrors into a tormentuous dreamscape, each, for a selection of dungeons.

If we could have dungeons be both 4-man and 8-man, instead of just 8-or-less (Praetorium, CM) OR 4-or-less (everything else), then yes, a toggle would obviously be better. If not, though, you might want to consider specifically how you want to leverage a rotation of nightmare dungeons or the fact that their parties would basically have to be premades.

[Xuto-cxb]

I don't know that I really want a bunch of 8 man dungeon content, but man if the 4 player dungeons are just not challenging at all. And I get it that yoshi-p doesn't want to "strain the healer" but like...when I'm playing healer I'm bored to tears. Press-A-to-win gameplay just isn't exciting. I want to heal. I have this giant healing tool set that I am just BEGGING to be asked to use. I know it won't happen, because resources, but I really would love to see dungeons spiced up with an optional hard mode. And I don't mean the remixed "hard" versions of dungeons that exist now. Most dungeons are just not engaging on a mechanic or challenging level.

[Shurrikhan]

I don't know that I really want a bunch of 8 man dungeon content, but man if the 4 player dungeons are just not challenging at all. And I get it that yoshi-p doesn't want to "strain the healer" but like...when I'm playing healer I'm bored to tears. Press-A-to-win gameplay just isn't exciting. I want to heal. I have this giant healing tool set that I am just BEGGING to be asked to use. I know it won't happen, because resources, but I really would love to see dungeons spiced up with an optional hard mode.

To be fair, a mob damage scalar isn't exactly resource intensive.

[Xuto-cxb]

To be fair, a mob damage scalar isn't exactly resource intensive.

/whiteflag_val_1

[Jirah]

I want them to perfect the exploration zone content with Eureka and Bozja.

Bozja was superior to eureka because of the skirmishes being fun and varied.

Eureka was superior to Bozja because of its interesting world and hostile environment which replicated old style of mmos, partially.

What Bozja lacked was a interesting world, as it was just a fate zone, fun fates but still.

What eureka lacked was dungeon philosophy and as hostile as the world was it wasn’t very decorative , as decent as the Arsenal was it was a missed opportunity to not have any open ended dungeons. And also Bozja better reflected the games strengths where Eureka only did in the very last instance.

I would love to see them perfect that, if dungeons are only used to people that don’t wanna play the game

[Dewslam]

perfect the exploration zone content with Eureka and Bozja.

So the problem with that kind of content, in general, is that Bozja is (to some degree) already suffering from the same problem as Eureka and will suffer further once EW hits: as the playerbase finishes their grind and moves on the areas grow stagnant and empty and since they're designed around the concept of having a lot of people playing at once and doing the content, they become increasingly frustrating and tedious for the people still trying to do them and as fun as Bozja is - it's significantly less fun when you come into it in a period where you can spend your entire time limit there and see every single FATE fade away at 0% completion outside of the ones you, and maybe one or two other people, slowly push through and every CE get maybe ten people enter at best while everyone else just AFKs asking when the last CLL was and when the next one will be.

Anyway more directly on topic in response to OP: I gotta say I play FFXIV because I like that it feels like FFXIV. I really, really, don't want to see this game turn into WoW with a million systems designed to exclusively cater to the increasingly small percentage of hardcore players that shout the loudest. Savage raids already get their own tier of loot and unique mounts - usually the highest available at the time of release and often at the end of the expansion overall, as well as being the only way to access dyable versions of certain items (And it's always bothered me that there wasn't an alternate path to upgrade normal raid gear to the savage tiers - even if it was added later after those raids stopped being relevant content. I much prefer being able to upgrade an item I like over having to go grind out a new one solely because that's just what I, personally, enjoy. It's a huge factor in why I like the relic weapon quest lines so much.). Ultimate raids get some neat reskins of items with unique visual effects. PVP gets its own exclusive sets of loot as well. I've always liked that most content in XIV wasn't overly bogged down by exclusivity - and the more it does that the more I feel it's going to alienate large swathes of its userbase like myself. I do most of the game at my own pace. I don't do savage raids until years after they've launched when I can comfortably do them unsynched because I simply don't have the time or energy to invest in learning harder versions of raids - it's pretty rare I find savage tier mechanics fun or interesting and the cultures in savage raids have never really done it for me so I just don't do that content. But the more of the game that gets walled off behind an arbitrary wall of just not being allowed to do it unless I tryhard the less I'd want to keep subbing and playing.

Basically it comes down to the same thing that keeps popping up a lot: if you want to play wow, with wow's systems, wow's mechanics and wow's design ideals - then just go play wow.

[Shurrikhan]

Basically it comes down to the same thing that keeps popping up a lot: if you want to play wow, with wow's systems, wow's mechanics and wow's design ideals - then just go play wow.

Those occasions, too, stemmed from a lack of reading comprehension and/or familiarity with their point of comparison.

Again, the OP has not played WoW, and this is nowhere to be found (except in the very generic sense of dungeons that have a modicum of actual difficulty) in WoW. There are no 10-man "dungeons" in WoW, only raids. There is no system in WoW by which difficulty progressively increases over the run itself with one's success. There is nothing like this in WoW save in that it's (A) a dungeon and (B) doesn't have to be merely faceroll difficulty.

"I would like to see a dungeon with frequent environmental dangers, mobs that must be focus targeted, encounters that ask you to truly consider your rate of attack and perhaps even bank resources for burst phases, cleanse certain debuffs, kite certain mobs, has some seriously dangerous trash pulls, and is generally unlikely to be cleared fresh without at least one wipe."

"Eww! Sounds like WoW! Burn it! Burn it down!"

*The XIV dungeon Pharos Sirius has been critically nerfed.*

[ReynTime]

Back in 1.0 we had this.
AV back then would make people cry compared to how easy it is now.

I wouldn't mind them back, but I generally wouldn't mind more content in general.

1.0 dungeon systems were frankly a lot better than anything since Heavensward.

It's a shame the actual map layouts were atrocious.