Dungeons we need to talk dungeons

[Jirah]

I want to ask a very important question to all oppose, what would Dungeons lose if they added a few more mechanics and variables?

I’m gonna assume everyone here has cleared 80 content so I don’t understand this stubbornness of progression and so far all the arguments aren’t very well told.

“It’s not supposed to be hard” it’s not, but it is supposed to be fun, and unless your the healer it rarely feels engaging

“It’s MSQ progression nothing more” I think your describing solo instances but ok

“It would make Roulettes longer than they need to be” Reality check! Good content isn’t supposed to be rushed. As someone stated before, the best thing about content isn’t supposed to be finishing it. Also if tomes are that vital (which in all seriousness, it isn’t as MSQ gives you ilvl gear anyways so unless you plan on raiding you shouldn’t care?) you have about 7 other roulettes to do.

“Nothing is fun when doing it 50 times in a row” Agree to disagree, then stop doing it 50 times? As I said I’ve never done expert roulette because it’s boring but always cap out from trials and raid trials anyways.

“I don’t want to try” please tell me the devs are catering to this coffee stain of a demographic? I’m sure their are plenty of automated MMOs on iOS devices, try those if you don’t wanna do basic inputs. Also theirs always trusts

“I don’t play the game for the MMO, but for the narrative and don’t like cooperation”
Fair enough but again trusts, and also maybe try other games as I don’t think it’s healthy to force a multiplayer genre into catering solo players.

“Go play EX/Savage if you want difficulty”
No, hyperbole aside we don’t want 4 man savage as I’m sure it’ll be hard on the healer. And last I checked those are platform fights, dungeons you explore and have more environmental aspects which are absent in raids, and apparently dungeons too.

Your comments are valid but I just don’t see this argument as one sided. It’s not gonna kill you or the game to add a few touches to the content.

[Nishira]

Yeah exactly Illmaeran, I miss that too . I really enjoyed playing WoW Classic in that sense, I did a lot of dungeons. I redid a lot of dungeons too haha, I don’t find things boring even if it is the 50th time as long as it is with pleasant company. A good dungeon crawl remains fun the way I experience it.

It’s one of the reasons I’d rather not see it tied to the MSQ or rewarding a lot of tomestones, it would again try to combine people with very different motivations who effectively don’t mesh well. It doesn’t improve the experience for anyone then.

[Vrankyl]

I want to ask a very important question to all oppose, what would Dungeons lose if they added a few more mechanics and variables?

It depends on how far the mechanics and variables go. There is no easy way to answer this without seeing how far. If they return to ARR Hard difficulties you run the risk of making it that much harder for new people to complete because veterans will just skip that dungeon. It would only work if you give that treatment to all of them, but remember the MSQ dungeons have to be able to be completed with Trusts so you can't get too crazy.

So in turn this brings in a question of, what do the dungeons gain? What additional changes do you think would make it better? For everyone that answer is different. Some want alternate paths, which would be a waste of dev resources because the vast majority of the player base will figure out the optimal route and ignore all else. More trash? Trash with more mechanics? What does that give it other than the feeling that you are wasting time on mobs that give you nothing and are nothing more than HP sponges with more mechanics. Sure the healer and the tank might get more enjoyment but what do the DPS (who are by far the largest part of the playerbase) get? Or do you want harder bosses? Which a case could be made that they could tune the bosses better to reflect the actual ilvl, but that would have to be balanced out with the expected ilvl new players would have getting to that dungeon.

[RitsukoSonoda]

It depends on how far the mechanics and variables go. There is no easy way to answer this without seeing how far. If they return to ARR Hard difficulties you run the risk of making it that much harder for new people to complete because veterans will just skip that dungeon. It would only work if you give that treatment to all of them, but remember the MSQ dungeons have to be able to be completed with Trusts so you can't get too crazy.

So in turn this brings in a question of, what do the dungeons gain? What additional changes do you think would make it better? For everyone that answer is different. Some want alternate paths, which would be a waste of dev resources because the vast majority of the player base will figure out the optimal route and ignore all else. More trash? Trash with more mechanics? What does that give it other than the feeling that you are wasting time on mobs that give you nothing and are nothing more than HP sponges with more mechanics. Sure the healer and the tank might get more enjoyment but what do the DPS (who are by far the largest part of the playerbase) get? Or do you want harder bosses? Which a case could be made that they could tune the bosses better to reflect the actual ilvl, but that would have to be balanced out with the expected ilvl new players would have getting to that dungeon.

The main thing would be consistency. People only skip duties in a roulette if there isn't consistency in the experience. Generally the people bailing on roulette queues do it when they get a duty that requires more effort, time, or attention than the others in that roulette. The harder part I think though would likely be coming up with new mechanics and variables so the ones we have don't end up feeling overused.

[Jirah]

snip

I think the tired Aurgment of “wasting time” is a sinkhole they never ends. Why do healer use Mana its wasting time, why do stack markers exist? It’s wasting time ect ect. Let’s name some fantastic examples of what I desire. Final boss on Baelsars wall, DPS can’t mindlessly just burn down the boss they need to prioritize targets for the adds and the collar, tanks have a aggressive tank buster to seek out and healers have a barrage of aoes to heal thru, it’s the perfect combination and it’s non threatening.

Longstep Room #3 it’s a giant area with lots of mobs so the tank needs to navigate them so the healer doesn’t exhaust its mana, and dps need to pile on or else they risk attracting unwanted attention. Organic blend of all 3 roles

Wanderers palace dps checks, the giant tomberry will murder the party if your not pushing the mobs fast enough which requires dps prowess and tanks ability to mitigate.

Aurum Vale overall, hazardous room! Roaming mobs! open spaces! Dots that need to be cleansed on your own. Positioning for bad breathe and prioritizing for the mob spawns. If this were a 80s dungeon it would blow all the SHB dungeons away.

If your overly cynical about new or in this case “recycled” ideas and labeling it wasting your time for the effort involved....


Why are you playing a video game and what is justified as “worthy of your time” if that’s wasting your time I’d imagine your feelings to how undertuned and unthreatening the mobs are in dungeons are the same but I can feel opposition which makes no sense

[Steelbreaker25]

I want to ask a very important question to all oppose, what would Dungeons lose if they added a few more mechanics and variables?

I’m gonna assume everyone here has cleared 80 content so I don’t understand this stubbornness of progression and so far all the arguments aren’t very well told.

“It’s not supposed to be hard” it’s not, but it is supposed to be fun, and unless your the healer it rarely feels engaging

“It’s MSQ progression nothing more” I think your describing solo instances but ok

“It would make Roulettes longer than they need to be” Reality check! Good content isn’t supposed to be rushed. As someone stated before, the best thing about content isn’t supposed to be finishing it. Also if tomes are that vital (which in all seriousness, it isn’t as MSQ gives you ilvl gear anyways so unless you plan on raiding you shouldn’t care?) you have about 7 other roulettes to do.

“Nothing is fun when doing it 50 times in a row” Agree to disagree, then stop doing it 50 times? As I said I’ve never done expert roulette because it’s boring but always cap out from trials and raid trials anyways.

“I don’t want to try” please tell me the devs are catering to this coffee stain of a demographic? I’m sure their are plenty of automated MMOs on iOS devices, try those if you don’t wanna do basic inputs. Also theirs always trusts

“I don’t play the game for the MMO, but for the narrative and don’t like cooperation”
Fair enough but again trusts, and also maybe try other games as I don’t think it’s healthy to force a multiplayer genre into catering solo players.

“Go play EX/Savage if you want difficulty”
No, hyperbole aside we don’t want 4 man savage as I’m sure it’ll be hard on the healer. And last I checked those are platform fights, dungeons you explore and have more environmental aspects which are absent in raids, and apparently dungeons too.

Your comments are valid but I just don’t see this argument as one sided. It’s not gonna kill you or the game to add a few touches to the content.

What mechanics and variables? Specifically, what are you talking about them adding?

[Vrankyl]

snip

It does end though, there needs to be balance. Anything that makes the DPS feel good for blowing through is going to reduce the stress on the tanks or healers, by increasing that difficulty you are going to make it feel like the DPS aren't doing anything. There's only so much you can do with trash mobs. The final boss of Baelsar's Wall is a good show of mechanics that need to be done and can't be ignored, and we have had those too in ShB. All the final bosses of ShB dungeons have mechanics you have to watch for and do to ensure success or you /will/ wipe. Lunar Bahamut is on par with that boss. The main issue here, which I already admitted, is that these dungeons tend to be balanced around an ilvl that is lower than what most already have so we go into it over gearing it. If that is fixed than there should be no problem.

As for the add changes you mentioned. Everyone avoided Aurum Vale like the plague during ARR, trying to find a tank willing to do that place was a nightmare. And the Wanderer's Palace Tonberry thing was reduced to a minor annoyance at best by someone discovering the optimal route and everyone following it. If you didn't follow it, then you were generally kicked. This is the problems with doing stuff that isn't related to bosses. Unless it is done for ALL the dungeons in a similar way it will be avoided or shortened within a week by the player base. At which point... why should the devs bother if it isn't going to do what is being asked for?

[Nyxheart]

Toxicity and balance.

I want to ask a very important question

Whether we like it or not, dungeons are casual content. You have to do them to progress/unlock basically everything simply because they are in MSQ. Everyone, all types of players have to complete it so its casual. It's not just because "It's to hard for new players" it's because of the people that go "This is taking too long/these guys are idiots I'll criticize them rudely/I'll dip cause its a waste of time." They're doing it to minimize the chances toxicity and harassment will occur. Do I like the changes? No. Do I understand why? Unfortunately.

I agree dungeons are more than just progression. I like dungeons personally. Not nearly as much as I used to, but I do still enjoy running them. Yet, I do understand how someone could think that as some people only do dungeons when required.

Roulettes and rewards for said roulettes are also about ques. If you have a Leveling roulette that gives good rewards, new players are more likely going to be able to get into the dungeons quickly. Same thing for the other roulettes, it about being able to get into the dungeon without literal hours and hours of waiting. FFXIV HEAVILY rewards you to play old content so that if needed players can get into it. Yet more reason for it to be casual content.

Completely agree about if you don't like doing something 50 times find something else to do this game has a pleathra of ways to get what you want from it. Find one that works for you instead of getting board with 50+ runs.

“I don’t want to try” please tell me the devs are catering to this coffee stain of a demographic?

Again, I believe it has more to do with trying to keep the skill gap as close as possible to avoid some of the toxicity it can generate from wiping in overabundance.
Also, trusts only start at ShB. I agree that it isn't fair, but the devs can't control people, only work to create environments where there is less toxicity while still existing in the same place as other people.

“Go play EX/Savage if you want difficulty”
.... And last I checked those are platform fights, dungeons you explore and have more environmental aspects which are absent in raids, and apparently dungeons too.

Agreed, just agreed. Also why do I need to chose between easy and hard? I want tricky, but not... that difficult. I feel like its too big of a jump. I just want something more akin to the ARR style dungeons before they were nerfed and early gameplay became so sucky. Mech heavy but not brutal group content.

Honestly I do agree with the sentiment and I'm frustrated with the changes. I also think it needs talked about too. My problem is I see reasons why they're going in this direction and unless we think of why its changed this way, we'll never figure out how to convince them to compromise by giving back something similar.

[TaleraRistain]

I want to ask a very important question to all oppose, what would Dungeons lose if they added a few more mechanics and variables?

There's a very simple answer. People wouldn't do them. They would drop them instantly if they got them in a queue. If SE tried to keep them out of roulettes and you had to queue for them directly, then people still wouldn't do them because they're outside of the convenience of the roulette queue. We have optional ARR dungeons to this day that people bail on the second they see them.

I think it would be fine if SE wanted to do trickier things in non-MSQ dungeons, but they also want people to do their content. That's why Savage has gotten down to levels of being PUGable. Not enough people were doing it and SE noticed this. And this is just a guess, but they probably have some metric with shareholders/bosses who don't want them to waste development time on content that won't have wider appeal, with certain exceptions like Ultimate.

[Gemina]

I want to ask a very important question to all oppose, what would Dungeons lose if they added a few more mechanics and variables?

Time. The players lose time when things are added to dungeons. You can't add more mech and variables to dungeons without increasing the rewards they offer. You are overestimating the replay and novelty factors of dungeons.

Furthermore, most player's time can be split into doing the content they want to participate in, and content they have to do in order to participate in their preferred content. IOW, fun stuff, and choir stuff. Dungeons for the majority of players, fall into the latter category.

This does not mean that dungeons can't at least have some random elements added to them. It would be interesting if when you go into a dungeon, you are not sure what bosses you're going to get, or what mechanics they are going to use. Obviously, there are limits to that, but this alone would add to the fun and replay factors. I would rather get one dungeon every other patch that was designed in this fashion than get 3 dungeons in a single patch, that basically just reskin every other dungeon in existence since 4.0.