Pipedreams for the Bored: What would PotD and HoH look like if they were less basic?

[Shurrikhan]

Have at it.

What kind of content, vibes, mechanics, styling, etc., would you have liked to see from our Deep Dungeons, if you had been allowed significant resources (say, up to enough to make your own ~$30 indie game with solid production value)?

[ItMe]

. . . Are there mystery dungeons that aren't basic?

Like, Shiren the Wanderer, Izuna, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, Torneko, Dark Cloud, etc...
Maybe it's just a weird coincidence between all the ones I've played, but myatery dungeons all have different ways your character gets built up, but mystery dungeons themselves are always real simple and have had nearly the same bag of tricks forever.

Not saying "they've always been basic so let's keep it that way." But because they've been simple forever I'm having a hard time understanding your meaning.
What do you mean when you say "less basic?"

[Shurrikhan]

Not saying "they've always been basic so let's keep it that way." But because they've been simple forever I'm having a hard time understanding your meaning.
What do you mean when you say "less basic?"

For instance, let's say they were allowed more mechanics merely than 4 types of traps (explosive, pacifying/silencing, transforming, and lure), equally sized squares with random count and placement, pomanders/magicite, and a boss every 10th floor. Drop those constraints. Add what you want. Do what you want.

[ItMe]

Step 1: secret passages.

[Illmaeran]

Ever since seeing Danmachi, I've wanted a procedurally generated, near infinite, large-floor dungeon where each floor or group of floors has/have its own look, inhabitants, and floor boss. Something like floors 1-5 using Black Shroud assets while floor 6-10 use Thanalan assets. At this point we've got enough world (hunt), dungeon, raid, and trial bosses that they can easily populate many, many floors.

Scaling would be a must; scaling to the party's level and number would be very important. It wouldn't be be cool to put a raid-level boss into an instance with four players and vice versa for a 24 player group. It would be pretty awesome to have the majority of floors be 4 player, with 8 player group bosses (floors 1-10 etc), and 24 player bosses every 20 levels or so.

PoTD and HoH are good proofs of concept/starts, but the floors are generally small and basic in their layout. Having floors that are 1/4-1/2 the size of a zone with a real sense of sandbox exploration with challenging monsters would be awesome!

I'm not sure if this is practical or doable, but since this is a pipe dream thread, you've got my pipe dream.

[ItMe]

There are many kinds of characters they could have us interact with in deep dungeons, and it's a bit of a shame that right now it's all mobs. Some you avoid, some you approach with different strategies, but they're all just mobs.
But, how about encountering non-combat NPCs in deep dungeons?


Some could be friendly and sell you things, briefly join you, bestow a boon, etc. (Or be evil in disguise and inflict you with pox or a debuff).


Some should be avoided or they will (Legend of Zelda Wallmaster style) drag the party back a floor (or two?) in your current set of 10.


Some could block a path to a side area (not containing the exit) unless you do something. Like:
-- exchange a specific pomander
-- give up some of your aetherpool levels (I like this one)
-- complete a simple challenge or a riddle
-- kill enough monsters to unlock the exit. Someone is guarding it and they'll let you through when "it's safe" (or whatever) and now you have a potential decision to save time and take the exit out, or check out this previously blocked off area with nice stuff inside.
-- could be blocked by a cave in (for example) and if you can find a bomb elsewhere on that floor and bring it you can clear the way (or you could have a locked door needing a key, a Demon wall missing their Demon brick buddy, etc.)
-- etc


Maybe you could find a fairy (or whatever) being harassed by a group of strong (for the area) monsters. If you can clear the pack the NPC unlocks the way forward, or maybe even teleports you a floor (or two?) ahead.


How about an NPC that is there to fight the boss, but you encounter them on, like, floor 55 and if you can escort them through they can help weaken the boss.
Maybe they fight other enemies along the way (potentially complicating things, getting into combat you were trying to avoid, and making you question wether you can save them or should ditch them), or maybe they don't partake in combat, or maybe the monsters know this NPC is here, and they're looking for them, so there are more wandering mobs/patrols than normal so keeping them with you is dangerous now but pays off later.


Etc.
Just some NPCs you can find that shake things up a bit.

[Risvertasashi]

This is the problem procedural content nearly always has. Just about any game that focuses on it will have complaints of "mile wide, inch deep" or "gets repetitive and feels generic once you've seen a certain number of variations."

But in all honesty I don't think potd/hoh are that terrible. There's a fair amount of subtleties to it. These become a lot more apparent when soloing too. And keep in mind, even if SE didn't want to make it solo-possible, to accommodate all party comps (even within a 1 healer, 1 tank, 2 dps restriction), there's limits to how tightly they can tune it.

But the amount of content and repeatability it gives, considering it's not even updated, I think is OK. Some entire games base themselves on a dungeon loop like this.

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But now that that's out of the way, what would I like to see personally?

Well, I hinted at it above. I'd just like to see updated. We got nothing this expansion. And I'm not sure the approach of adding a new one each expansion as it seemed was going to happen in Stormblood is a good idea either.

Rather than a new Deep Dungeon, I'd prefer if they added on to PotD. Bring the level cap up to 90. Add more content. Don't gate it behind the latest expansion (IMO HoH should have been an add-on), so it stays active and doesn't split the playerbase. But, really, just any kind of additions, even small ones, without a 2 or 4 year gap, would be grand.

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Oh, a small change I'd like to see that could be done with a few minutes of dev effort? Increase the timer so more jobs have the potential to solo to the end.