Dungeons we need to talk dungeons

[Theodric]

I also love Aurum Vale.

It's a real shame that dungeons have become so linear and streamlined. For whatever reason, the development team appear convinced that the best way forward is to avoid any optional paths or objectives. I don't think it's true that players would only ever focus on the quickest, most efficient route to completion. It's just a matter of making it worthwhile to go off of the beaten track. Maybe that means a chance of a rare enemy appearing, or a treasure chest full of gil that disappears if a randomised puzzle isn't solved correctly. There's a lot of things that could be done, really - and many other MMO's have embraced such design choices.

[ReynTime]

They should just stop doing them, honestly, given by the responses dungeons complaints get from the average XIV player.

They just want to do their dailies in a hurry to cross off items from their chores checklist required to get weekly capped currencies for gear with item level they won't use. So let's just not even bother with adds and the atrocious hallway design, just have them be 3 bosses and with checkpoints between.

After all, adds don't matter. Dead-ends with chests don't matter. Dungeon mechanics are bad. And I just want to hurry up, get my glamour and gpose. The least amount I can dedicate to, eyuck, doing combat and exploration in a japanese RPG, the better.


All the pve content design issues XIV has is resulted from players feeling entitled to rewards they have objectively no need for and then the developers bending to their entitlement. Players mistaking rewards for a "right" rather than something you're supposed to earn by clearing optional challenges.

[SamsaraTrickstar]

They should just stop doing them, honestly, given by the responses dungeons complaints get from the average XIV player.

They just want to do their dailies in a hurry to cross off items from their chores checklist required to get weekly capped currencies for gear with item level they won't use. So let's just not even bother with adds and the atrocious hallway design, just have them be 3 bosses and with checkpoints between.

After all, adds don't matter. Dead-ends with chests don't matter. Dungeon mechanics are bad. And I just want to hurry up, get my glamour and gpose. The least amount I can dedicate to, eyuck, doing combat and exploration in a japanese RPG, the better.


All the pve content design issues XIV has is resulted from players feeling entitled to rewards they have objectively no need for and then the developers bending to their entitlement. Players mistaking rewards for a "right" rather than something you're supposed to earn by clearing optional challenges.

i think you got a great point to the root of the problem. i will add to it SE bands to the cry's of people that are not willing to do more that walk. 2.x to hard dungeons that was nerfed.

[DPZ2]

They just want to do their dailies in a hurry to cross off items from their chores checklist required to get weekly capped currencies for gear with item level they won't use..

Your attitude is perplexing. When you finally get Weathered gear at level 80, the iLevel is 430. In order to proceed to the next MSQ dungeon instance (post 80), one needs iLevel 430 gear, so no worries. The second MSQ dungeon instance requires iLevel 440. The next, iLevel 460. The one after that, iLevel 470. The final instance in 5.x requires iLevel 490.

If not through gearing up using capped currencies do you expect every player in the game to purchase crafted gear to meet the requirements for entering an MSQ dungeon instance?

For iLevel 490, one would have to run roulettes in order to obtain the Tomestones of Allegory necessary to buy the Crystarium tome gear.

So, where do you get off with the attitude "that they won't even use" the gear?

[SamsaraTrickstar]

Your attitude is perplexing. When you finally get Weathered gear at level 80, the iLevel is 430. In order to proceed to the next MSQ dungeon instance (post 80), one needs iLevel 430 gear, so no worries. The second MSQ dungeon instance requires iLevel 440. The next, iLevel 460. The one after that, iLevel 470. The final instance in 5.x requires iLevel 490.

If not through gearing up using capped currencies do you expect every player in the game to purchase crafted gear to meet the requirements for entering an MSQ dungeon instance?

For iLevel 490, one would have to run roulettes in order to obtain the Tomestones of Allegory necessary to buy the Crystarium tome gear.

So, where do you get off with the attitude "that they won't even use" the gear?

how it connected to the thing he say? if you play from patch to patch you never have this as a problem and if you join late you do what you need to do. i joined late so for my first job to 80 i did buy the crafted gear. i you don't want to then wait and grind as this dungeons are by far not the only place to get tomes.

Really?
Where did you hear this?
To my knowledge the devs haven't commented on this.

i think it was in one of the last letters but i can be wrong all.

[DPZ2]

how it connected to the thing he say?

For those without the gil, running roulettes for tomestones is the quickest way to gear up. To say that people are running such instances to buy gear they won't use is the ludicrous argument.

[Mikey_R]

I also love Aurum Vale.

It's a real shame that dungeons have become so linear and streamlined. For whatever reason, the development team appear convinced that the best way forward is to avoid any optional paths or objectives. I don't think it's true that players would only ever focus on the quickest, most efficient route to completion. It's just a matter of making it worthwhile to go off of the beaten track. Maybe that means a chance of a rare enemy appearing, or a treasure chest full of gil that disappears if a randomised puzzle isn't solved correctly. There's a lot of things that could be done, really - and many other MMO's have embraced such design choices.

How many times have you cleared out all the side rooms of Sastasha, Haukke Manor, taken both paths for Toto Rak, avoided as many enemies as possible in Aurum Vale etc.

People will just go in and out as quick as possible. Even if you add 'puzzles' to solve, look at Wanderer's Palace. People worked out which Tonberries held the oil, fast tracked to them to open the way forward, this was even at the start of 2.0 where the side chests had a material required to craft the base relic weapon. It didn't help that there was no roulettes at the time, so you had to run WP/AK 10 times a week just to cap tomes, however, the relics were still on par with the coil weapons and much easier to get.

However, dungeons should be harder, even just from a stat stand point. The levelling dungeons have a much smaller stat gap between minimum ilevel and max ilevel, which keeps them reasonably challenging, however, the stat gap between minimum ilevel level 80 dungeon and max ilevel 80 dungeon is so high, you are basically just overgearing it. The first thing they can easily do is make this stat gap smaller, so you overgear less. There are potential issues this could cause, but lets not let this get too long.

[FoxyAreku]

I think it's pretty unacceptable that we've been getting less and less dungeons each expansion and they aren't even any different. They still follow the same copy and paste formula, no alternate paths, no creativity at all in them. If you're gonna give us less and less, at least make the ones we do get unique.

[Roeshel]

I think it's pretty unacceptable that we've been getting less and less dungeons each expansion and they aren't even any different. They still follow the same copy and paste formula, no alternate paths, no creativity at all in them. If you're gonna give us less and less, at least make the ones we do get unique.

Mt. Gulg is the best dungeon with the largest pull possible in the entire game and it's awesome to do it with WAR. That is a quality upgrade for me.

Having different paths like in The Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak is awful. You just run across 1-2 mobs and some random chests. That's not creativity, it is waste of time.

The mechanics of the Shb dungeon bosses are far more interesting than those of the dungeons from previous expansions.