A request for Endwalker Dungeons (No more Undertuned)

[ItMe]

Because they aren't nice. They are cool exactly once and then a headache every other time thereafter. I do not understand this sentiment. What is so exciting about your tank getting lost and taking a wrong turn in totorak and your reward is... extra boring trash in one of the worst dungeons in the game? And practically, all those side paths may as well not exist because people will figure out the fastest means through a place and that trickles down pretty quick through the games playerbase. People had Qarn, Darkhold, Totorak and Cutters cry figured out by the end of the first month of ARR launch and you'd almost never blunder down one of those side routes anyway, at which point they don't serve any purpose.

Same deal with the Qarn puzzle. Like I think it's neat but the reality isn't 4 sprouts staring at the scales intently, trying to solve the puzzle, it's someone checking a wiki for the answer or someone that has already done it and knows the answer. The little mystique these things grant on first encountering them is not worth the tedium they produce on repeat encounters in the future.

Majority of people don't "explore" deep dungeons. They're just used as a leveling tool to get exp on DoW/DoM jobs. As such it's basically rush rush rush to get to the boss asap.

So what I'm getting from this whole conversation is: for content in FF14 to be capable of supporting quality exploration... it needs to both be decoupled from levelling and needs to (somehow) discourage players from running it repeatedly (thus reducing the desire for it to be streamlined).

What kind of content like this would they be able to make?

[RitsukoSonoda]

So what I'm getting from this whole conversation is: for content in FF14 to be capable of supporting quality exploration... it needs to both be decoupled from levelling and needs to (somehow) discourage players from running it repeatedly (thus reducing the desire for it to be streamlined).

What kind of content like this would they be able to make?

IMO the biggest deterrents to quality exploration are the over abundance of teleport locations in the overworld that eliminate most needs to actually travel to locations once the story puts you there the first time and the whole instanced duty system. MMO's I'd played in the past lacking these things I would typically find people exploring frequently since people were more prone to have various landmarks and things seen on a map catch their attention when they're actually travelling through the area and not stuck on duty timer with someone screaming "ESPORTS 420 SPEEDRUNZ"

[Roda]

No thanks. I am casual player and I don't want to get stuck in dugeon trying to complete MSQ
Not all of us live in this game. We got life outside.

"Casual" does not mean "person who plays at a less than average level of effectiveness."
"harder dungeons" does not mean you'll need to form a prog group to finish the dungeon. No one is asking for extreme+ level dungeons to replace story dungeons.

But when I can post on the forums between gcds and still call the run a speed run, we've got a problem here. I'd personally like it if dungeons could once again take my eyes off my second monitor for the duration.

And honestly, If they manage to have an ex level dungeon somehow, you have trusts. You will never be blocked from a dungeon complete.

But as someone who has been wanting to have something to casually do in the game when I have some surprise free-time, I'd really like it if my low-stakes instanced content had a bit of novelty to keep me awake and actually entice me to do it outside of extrinsic rewards.

Fair...
Also, those timers can get pretty spicy and exploring can be real dangerous in deep dungeons.

Yeah, and that's the other part of it. Risk can be fun!
But,
when you're doing exploration based content, you kind of want screwups to have less of a punishment to encourage experimentation. (It's a big problem I had with eureka)

IMO the biggest deterrents to quality exploration are the over abundance of teleport locations in the overworld that eliminate most needs to actually travel to locations once the story puts you there the first time and the whole instanced duty system. MMO's I'd played in the past lacking these things I would typically find people exploring frequently since people were more prone to have various landmarks and things seen on a map catch their attention when they're actually travelling through the area and not stuck on duty timer with someone screaming "ESPORTS 420 SPEEDRUNZ"

Honestly, I don't know about that. HW and onward have very few teleports per sq ft of map and how many people have taken the time to explore the tomb of king manfred? Found the hanging dragon in western coerthas? There are some secrets in the overworld, yes, but then what? There's no gameplay with exploration in this game. No secret quests. (or if they are secret, they are VERY well hidden) No environmental interactivity. Nothing. The overworld is just a backdrop for the MSQ, sidequests and fates.

I think SE did the game dirty when they slapped duty timers on eureka and bozja, and had them be instances you queued for. Big openworld content, at least in my eyes, is fun when you can just stumble into it while you're doing something else, or waiting for a queue. Eureka/bozja just will never scratch that itch 'cause they're about fate farming and only about fate farming (and like one siege).

I guess, let me put it this way. I had more of a sense of exploration when I found the magic pot, than I did looking for the magicite that krile told me was ~over there somewhere~ and then it was next to a conspicuously placed wrecked house.

Give me a broken tablet thrown on the ground next to an inconspicuous tree. Make the missing words reappear during a certain phase of the moon with certain weather. Have those words tell me to go to a spot and emote. Have that emote trigger an unmarked fate to spawn. Have the completion of the fate trigger an npc to send me (and all other participants) a mail. Have that mail tell me to meet that npc at a certain time in a certain location and do a emote to them (don't tell the name, give us a visual tell). Have that npc send me on some other random questy stuff, idk write a story, I'm not the critically acclaimed rpg here. Puzzles!

[ItMe]

Yeah, and that's the other part of it. Risk can be fun!
But,
when you're doing exploration based content, you kind of want screwups to have less of a punishment to encourage experimentation. (It's a big problem I had with eureka)

Hahaha especially when Deep Dungeon runs can take so loooong.
That's a very good point.

[Nikki]

"Casual" does not mean "person who plays at a less than average level of effectiveness."
"harder dungeons" does not mean you'll need to form a prog group to finish the dungeon. No one is asking for extreme+ level dungeons to replace story dungeons.

But when I can post on the forums between gcds and still call the run a speed run, we've got a problem here. I'd personally like it if dungeons could once again take my eyes off my second monitor for the duration.

My answer is still the same. No thanks to harder dungeons tied to MSQ.

[Arkdra]

So what I'm getting from this whole conversation is: for content in FF14 to be capable of supporting quality exploration... it needs to both be decoupled from levelling and needs to (somehow) discourage players from running it repeatedly (thus reducing the desire for it to be streamlined).

What kind of content like this would they be able to make?

It doesn't really need to be decoupled from levelling or discourage being ran repeatedly, but it doesn't make sense in a dungeon format because the playerbase for dungeons is a combination of people who don't want to do harder content, for whatever reason, and then people doing doing it for the rewards and in both cases, neither of them are really interested in wasted time in a dungeon scenario.

As for content that would reward exploration, the answer is honestly something along the lines of isle of thunder from WoW/any gw 2 map. Think a zone along the lines of say, anemos or pyros. Something with a lot of weird architecture and nooks and crannies. Fill it with random treasure chests that spawn out in the world, and also rare tough monsters that you probably need to get a group together for. Cram it full of jumping puzzles for no reason, disable flight. Put actual good stuff in the chests and off the rare spawns and there you go. People are incentivized to wander around constantly. Still sounds boring to me and just like in Eureka, I'd sit at the home base afk waiting for call outs, but there it is. Content for the wanderers out there.

If they really wanted to get fancy with it, and god help us they shouldn't because the coding that exists for this already aint great, they could have unique mounts with mobility actions that you'd need to use to get into places, kinda like how gw2 does mounts. So like a glider that you have to do a bit of platforming up a mountain to then be able to glide into a neighboring volcano for example. Or another mount that double jumps which allows it access to a few cave systems that are otherwise unreachable. Hell an underwater mount of some kind that is the only way to navigate currents into buried ruins or something. Make the actual act of exploring the central mechanic and not necessarily the combat you engage in.

They could still populate it with fates or whatever too honestly.

[ItMe]

It doesn't really need to be decoupled from levelling or discourage being ran repeatedly, but it doesn't make sense in a dungeon format because [...]

I don't think it's necessarily a matter of exploration vs. combat or leveling vs. level-cap content.

Heck, I might argue that all content needs just four things:
[...]

Perhaps you're right...
I just feel like if a player is in content for a reward (exp/tomes) that is acquired at the end, players won't NOT dash through it when their prize only exists at the end.

[Shurrikhan]

Perhaps you're right...
I just feel like if a player is in content for a reward (exp/tomes) that is acquired at the end, players won't NOT dash through it when their prize only exists at the end.

There will always be some degree of rush, but there are obviously resource structures that can optimize something which, or be anchored around what, doesn't feel much like a mad dash to that reward. Part of that has to do with denied control and perhaps even more with intrinsic enjoyment.

And (if I'm reading your tone here and elsewhere correctly), yes, it is of course better for a content to stand on its own merits (enjoyment from the play itself) than by virtue of its rewards (extrinsic reasons for enjoyment), but the thing is those two sources aren't at all mutually exclusive. All that particular matters is, again, that first criteria. If the content appeals to some via intrinsic value and to others only via extrinsic reasons and those would each encourage competing behaviors, then you have an issue.

[ItMe]

If the content appeals to some via intrinsic value and to others only via extrinsic reasons and those would each encourage competing behaviors, then you have an issue.

Maybe it has been done successfully elsewhere and I'd be more aware of potential solutions if I were more experienced with this genre, but I'm at a loss for how this issue can be avoided in an MMO.
(Not that the extreme streamline approach that FF14 has is necessarily a good substitute for a solution)

[Shurrikhan]

So what I'm getting from this whole conversation is: for content in FF14 to be capable of supporting quality exploration... it needs to both be decoupled from levelling and needs to (somehow) discourage players from running it repeatedly (thus reducing the desire for it to be streamlined).

What kind of content like this would they be able to make?

I don't think it's necessarily a matter of exploration vs. combat or leveling vs. level-cap content.

Heck, I might argue that all content needs just four things:

1. Minimally divergent behaviors among players doing the specific content.

   Such comes from both (A) internal factors such as in dungeon design and its different opportunities and (B) external factors such as player culture and the content's reward system and its adjacencies.
   
   The more ways of play and reasons to play the content differently, the more conflicts you're likely to have in that content. This is not to be confused with having internally consistent behaviors that are distinct from those common to other content types; such is often precisely what can make a piece of content feel particularly novel (a strong factor in enjoyment to many), so long as depth and breadth of attractors aren't thereby too reduced.

2. Relative sustainability of form.

   If something is meant to be centered on exploration, and yet is meant to be played through some dozen, it must still be centered on exploration even on that dozenth time, even if it trades some aspects thereof for others (such as optimization).
   
   For instance, if Haukke Manor's keys were meant to be an element in and of itself, rather than a sliver of extra flavor in an otherwise standard dungeon, they wouldn't likely drop in the same locations each time and, accordingly, the dungeon layout wouldn't be effectively linear outside of its single obligatory Return and they keys likely wouldn't be visible as directly named interactable. In its current design, that "exploratory" element isn't much even in its first run, and nonexistent thereafter. The same, of course, can be said for every side-room in any existing dungeon.

3. An enjoyable and applicable concept.

   This is the most straightforward. If there's nothing to the content's form people want to do, no particular itches it scratches, etc., the content will be useless unless forced (and arguably worse, even, if it is forced).

4. Commensurate rewards.

   Again, this much is obvious, but keep in mind the first criteria. However, it doesn't seem particularly obvious to XIV when we consider how roulettes rewards—and to a lesser extent, content rewards in general—have been handled. System-level changes (especially to the currently flat roulette rewards, which will tend to seemingly favor the shortest possible content available to a roulette since they skew rewards-per-minute in their favor, especially when the queues themselves are shorter) would help a lot, but the content, too, needs to consider the uniqueness and appeal of its rewards and the efficiency by which they are acquired relative to competing contents (especially those that do not have nearly the same, or far less total, intrinsic appeal).

But, we've seen quite a few ideas like this over the years. Sandpark's Frontiers, Shougun's Airships, alternate Exploratory Missions, dungeons with non-linear routes that can't nonetheless just be memorized and thereby optimized, some—frankly, far better—concepts of Rogue-like content, etc., all come to mind. ...I just wish I still had links to some.