A small concern with dungeon designs

[viola_vilgrantz]

The way I personally see it, the way they used to be with branching paths and mechanics people had to figure out to explore it, was actually pretty nice. Now, I know on the other hand that most players who are returning to a dungeon don't want to waste their time, and that left a lot of newbies with an incomplete experience of said dungeons.

However, I have to be honest and say, as pretty and visually interesting looking the dungeons are nowadays by Shadowbringers, and as much as the bosses offer some interesting gameplay, the fact they're just long hallways with the occasional progression lock behind enemy mobs is a bit underwhelming.

A (possible) way to fix that issue in my opinion, would be to make it more like Tam-Tara Deepcroft (Hard) (I believe?) where instead of a long hallway, you smaller hallways with branching sectors, be with mobs or puzzles, and those branching sectors are necessary to open the path in the main hallways. Now, as far as that is concerned, I'm not even saying that to increase the length and time of dungeons, but more so saying that it'd be the same length as your usual hallway dungeon, just broken up in sections to make it more interesting looking, and to have more objectives than "walk forward".

[DPZ2]

Aside from Toto-Rak, I don't remember any particular dungeon with branching paths that was built to be 'figured out' or 'explored'. They are quaint reminders of the 2.0 team's attempt to bring the visual assets of 1.0 into A Realm Reborn.

If you want to relive the heyday of Toto-Rak, may I suggest typing 'ffxiv 1.0 toto-rak' into the youtube search engine? Watching the first 14 minutes of gameplay in that oh-so-explorable dungeon instance is both enlightening and boring. See the wonderful way the team of four adventurers stumbles around looking for the 4th item to open up the rest of the dungeon, which, by the by, does not include branching paths built to be figured out and explored.

As for branching sectors, I'll refer you to the pains of Haukke Manor where you need to go to the basement before you can go upstairs, requiring one to use Return because, frankly, at least 1/3 of the mobs are skipped when getting to the basement and running is sooooooo inconvenient.

[Jirah]

Plenty of other topics like this exist, and for years I’ve been bouncing around both camps. But ultimately agree the dungeons are such a after thought, with SHB being the lowest point for them. To the point where even the bosses are starting to be boring and lacking. But I’ll disagree that we need more dungeons like tam taru unless they overhaul the design.

What dungeons lack is the link between bosses, the trash mobs. And dungeons being incredibly lenient toward the casual audience these will never amount to anything but aoes, cuz god forbid you have content you think about. I say save the juicer ideas for new content like Deep dungeons or Labyrinths or some such if Dungeons need to bend over backwards for people that don’t wanna play the game.

[viola_vilgrantz]

I wasn't personally speaking for Toto-Rak or saying I want to relive it at all, I was more trying to make a point that instead of being long corridors, the dungeons could be broken up more going forward. Let me give you an example.
Let's say a normal dungeon is this:

| Boss
| [M]
| Boss
| [M]
| Boss
| [M]
| [M]

It could instead look a little more like this:

Boss |_ [M]
[M] _| Boss
Boss |_ [M]
[M] |

The very same length, just not one straight road, and while yes, you have to solve the branches to move forward, it's no different in length to the previous design in technical terms.

You have examples from ARR, and yes, I was referring to ARR dungeons in general when I said they used to not be just a long corridor, where now they (the more current dungeons) 100% are, despite still having some cool looking things in it.

[Jojoya]

The way I personally see it, the way they used to be with branching paths and mechanics people had to figure out to explore it, was actually pretty nice. Now, I know on the other hand that most players who are returning to a dungeon don't want to waste their time, and that left a lot of newbies with an incomplete experience of said dungeons.

However, I have to be honest and say, as pretty and visually interesting looking the dungeons are nowadays by Shadowbringers, and as much as the bosses offer some interesting gameplay, the fact they're just long hallways with the occasional progression lock behind enemy mobs is a bit underwhelming.

A (possible) way to fix that issue in my opinion, would be to make it more like Tam-Tara Deepcroft (Hard) (I believe?) where instead of a long hallway, you smaller hallways with branching sectors, be with mobs or puzzles, and those branching sectors are necessary to open the path in the main hallways. Now, as far as that is concerned, I'm not even saying that to increase the length and time of dungeons, but more so saying that it'd be the same length as your usual hallway dungeon, just broken up in sections to make it more interesting looking, and to have more objectives than "walk forward".

AS you said, unfortunately most players aren't interested in dungeons with exploration features. They want to get through the bosses and out as fast as possible. That's why MMO dungeons are now generally designed with linear paths. It's be no means an issue limited to just this game.

With your idea, most players would end up bashing developers for wasting their time going back and forth between rooms they had already visited. What's more interesting to you would be more annoying to them.

Players who like to explore are better off doing Palace of the Dead since many of the floors are randomized each time you enter. That forces them to seek the way forward and look for coffers to get pomanders and the like.

[Karshan]

What could be done, would be :
- have leveling dungeons of new expansions more exploratory type to make them more impactful on 1st time and fun to replay (and add more pexing ways like Bozja right at start of expansion, for those who want to power level and really couldn't care less about exploratory dungeons)
- have the endgame dungeons added at max level straightforward (you will need to farm them for tomestones or relic, so you want speed and not some guy gallivanting around the place).

[ItMe]

What could be done, would be :
- have leveling dungeons of new expansions more exploratory type to make them more impactful on 1st time and fun to replay (and add more pexing ways like Bozja right at start of expansion, for those who want to power level and really couldn't care less about exploratory dungeons)
- have the endgame dungeons added at max level straightforward (you will need to farm them for tomestones or relic, so you want speed and not some guy gallivanting around the place).

Maybe that should be the other way around, if only so the more elaborate dungeons aren't the ones ending up in the Levelling Roulette.

[KaerisKlyne]

The MMO market of today largely favors a design approach that respects the players' time. Most are students, employees, parents, none of whom have the time to devote to MMOs as if the game was a part-time job anymore. Content design for the most accessible parts of the game integral to the progression will reflect this to be doable in a short amount of time.

Not a single thing that comes from dungeons makes an impact in the (only kind of) less accessible savage raiding scene, so the dungeon design is catered even more to a quick experience because leveling happens so fast, the gear is replaced so quickly, AND the current design doesn't take away from the core gameplay experience of exploring a location for short-lived loot and a story enganing enough to make an impression (which is also wildly subjective).

Dungeons aren't going to change because the market demands they don't. SE is a business that doesn't make design decisions in a vacuum. Dungeons are never gonna be broken in a way that needs fixing because there's other content in the game that DOES offer the things that people often asking for more want.

[Lauren]

Even during ARR, people wanted to rush through the "mini-exploratory" dungeons. There's literally no benefit apart from a kind of crappy treasure chest at the end.

I think the current format + more interesting mechanics for getting from A to B and bosses would be nice

[ReynTime]

The problem isn't even necessarily lack of branching paths.
It's that in ARR there was clearly a lot more care into making the dungeons feel distinct beyond what they looked like or what the flashy shallow set-pieces were. A lot of Lv50 ARR dungeons are very linear too, but they still had some kind of unique twist that wasn't just aesthetic to make them unique.
And they abandoned that once Heavensward came out.