Concrete Examples of "Good" Dungeon Design

[ssunny2008]

I don´t think i can follow your rules that way, but let´s start:

Examples from other games:

Black Talon or the Esseles from SWTOR

Both dungeons are the first in the game. One is in the story line of the Sith Empire, the other from the Old Republic. There are a lot of well thought things in them.

- With Kotor on its back, of course this game is about decision-making and good / dark side. In both dungeons you´ve an early option to choose, either if you try to enter a ship, or if you just want to blow it up, whatever. This changes the whole dungeon for the rest of the time. Exactly said, you´ve like 2 dungeons in one. Both ways offer different bossfights and those bosses drop different rewards.
E.g. if you choose the good option, you fight an enter team of 4 republic soldiers. One of them is a healer, one a tank and 2 DPS. You need to focus down the healer first of course. At the end you get some legs with a high rarity as reward.
If you chose the dark side, you´ll fight a big droid instead. He´s a bunch of aoe explosions, hits hard and has a little DPS check. If you killed him, you got a chest.
(Don´t know about the exact loot, but if you wanted the complete "Black Talon" or "Esseles" gear, you´d to beat both ways.)

Away from the "choose" option, the rest is pretty much any dungeon in SWTOR

- The environment was well done. You´d more than just "wall to wall". Of course some little pathes had been a thing, but they always connected big hangars, controll centers or something like that. You were even able to use the environment to kill some add-packs or to open secret pathes. Either it was like an explosive barrel or overloaded electricity to activate, or some crafter jobs were able to activate something. You might have repaired a little droid which assist you with damage or healing for example.

- Addpacks were well placed. It wasn´t just 2 in front of you. You´d some adds who build a straight line to defend some point yes, but those had always elite / champion adds, you needed to CC, sleep or interupt. After killing them, you came into a controll center and the adds came out of elevators or ran downstairs to give the player some visual feedback like "Oh, they´re alerted and ready to fight."
In a big hangar on the other hand, you were able to choose your path, to sneak around to avoid massive fights.

- All adds "had a meaning". They rewarded the player with loot. Of course you got XP, but you got credits (gil) and either stuff to sell or some crafting materils. You had to loot them on your own. Of course it sounds bad and autoloot is QoL at its best. But it was again some feedback. You killed them, you looted them, you got something for your efford. It´s not really exciting to either get nothing or to open your inventory afterwards to be like "Oh i got....".

- They had sidequests. Those sidequests gave additional XP, achievements and 1 of them spawned an additional boss. This boss was either on the level of the endboss or stronger, but he gave rare loot. This could´ve be exclusive gear, a pet, a mount or maybe even a crafting recipe. E.g. A world - raidboss, not a standard worldboss, was the only guy in the game who gave the players the recipe to craft pink lightsaber crystals.

- As i said above, crafter were able to activate different things to assist the player in different ways. On the other hand gatherer were able to loot special things within the dungeons. So it wasn´t only a matter which "fighting - job" you play, even crafter and gatherer jobs brought some meaning into dungeons.

- Boss encounters have always been different. If you´d multiple bosses, the other ones changed their behavior based on which you killed first. Solo bosses hitted hard, you sometimes needed the terrain to survive or to get ride of a shield on him, whatever.

Under the line, players had more possibilities and the rewarding and visual feedback was well done. If you wanted a fast run, you´ve sneaked around to bypass some adds. If you wanted to farm, you took everything with you. If you wanted a challenge, you´ve done the sidequest and beat the bonus boss. Bosses haven´t been "stack / spread" only. They´ve mostly been unique, got well representated and had different ways to beat them.


Balder´s Temple from TERA

This dungeon has actually 2 great things.

- After beating the first boss, you move through a real labyrinth. Based on the path you choose, you´ve slightly different rooms / adds for the rest of the dungeon.

- The final boss has a great design in some way. It´s not too hard, but it´s cool. While the boss has different skills like aoe smashes, tb´s or roundhousekicks, a random players will get a dark screen. Someone else has to turn around mirrors to give the other player his vision back. Then you´ve a big cannon at the entrance the boss can destroy, you need to hold him away from it. You can activate the cannon twice if i remember correctly. This will blast the boss away for some seconds, so you can do free DPS. When the boss hit the 30% mark, a hard DPS check starts. The screen from everyone will get darker and darker within the time. At the moment everyone has a black screen, the fight is over. You need to kill the boss before it appears of course. While the gameplay is something different anyway, the mechanic is decent one and much more than "stack spread".


Let´s come to FF14 now.

Aurum Vale

I don´t get why so many are like "ühhh hard, annoying, whatever". It´s simple, because the mechanics in the boss fights are not well thought to the end. Adds and loot is irrelevant too and will become worse with Endwalker.

Let´s pick the first and last boss with the debuffs. Why do the plants respawn? It would be way better and more challenging if the plants would be limited. If you would have big DPS players, you won´t need them all. If you don´t have them, you´ve to take the plants a bit more strategically and the healers needs to put more efford in his job. Maybe even 3 stacks could cause an insta-death? This would atleast be a little hidden DPS check.


Ramuh EX

Not a dungeon, but a good bossfight for the beginning. Everyone has to work together. There is no way around that, noone can carry this solo. Tankbuster hits hard meanwhile tanks don´t have options to heal the whole fight solo as they´ve now. You need to free ppl, otherwise they´ll die or / and you´ll lose a bunch of DPS you need in the DPS check called "adds". The tether must be taken with a bit thoughts. When 2 ppl start to run to collect the orbs, you might collect too much of them, so the next tether will be either pain or a tank will die.
It´s not overfilled with mechanics and it´s not "moving from A to B". This fight shows how MMO´s should work. You´ve random encounter which could hit everyone. You´ve a DPS check and the best aspect, you need to work together. All current fights aren´t really "you need to work together". They´re like "If you fail, it´s a wipe and ppl gonna hate you!".


The Fractal Continuum (Hard)

This would be a perfect dungeon were SE could bring different pathes / bosses into. Let´s say we collect a codes from the beginning of the dungeon. Those codes are always different. At the end you could have 3 of them, if you found them all. Then you´ve a terminal where you put 1 code in and of course 1 of 3 bosses will appear. It´ll be somehow random, but you´ve a choice.
Maybe you could even have 4 codes. The first will cause a random encounter, the others are connected to one of the bosses. The codes are different, so noone can be like "i know the codes". But next to the codes you´ll have a little inscription which tells you something about the boss. The bosses could drop different rewards in the end, maybe everyone can drop a rare mat and all 3 combined will grant the player with a new mount.
It´s not much, but it´s some kind of reward and brings some replay-ability with it.

They could use something similar in Qarn with the stoneplates.


Bardam´s Mettle

The 2nd "boss" is really well done. Such mini-games are highly welcome. But it´s still way too easy. It would be cool if you would still fight some adds / a boss meanwhile or that the encounters drop faster. In it´s current form , it´s more like a new tutorial late in the game.


Overall dungeons in FF14 needs more variation and the player should be able to have more options to play around adds or different boss mechanics. The game has become only about "damage" and nothing else.

- Bosses and adds need to hit harder.
- TB should cause a dead tank when he don´t use a def.
- More debuffs, which you´ve to cleanse are needed.
- DPS checks are needed.
- We need little puzzles and rewards, which make exploration worth. Not only in dungeons, in the overworld too.
- We need optional challenges with rewards. Rewards which could be some special crafting recipes or that better gear which might be BiS for future savages.
- We need more visual feedback of a threat, not random adds running in circles to be there for whatever reason.

Man the whole dungeon and encounter design needs a complete revamp.


At the end, i would like to presentate something special:


Tam-Tara Advanced

Yes it´s implemented version is a good idea, but bad implemented. What if the whole dungeon would´ve randomized pathes? Atleast with 10 different patterns? What if you´ve always like 3 pathes with different bosses?

Let´s say, you start and choose a path. After you´ve choosed one, you can´t go back. Then you encounter different adds which tells something about the next boss. After beating the boss, you´re free to continue on your path or one of the 2 others. Either it continues to be a mystery or some little papers could tell you something about the ongoing path aswell. Atleast about one of the 3, the other 2 could stay hidden.
All of them will have 3 different bosses, so you would´ve 9 bosses in total. None of the bosses is "always the first / always the last". They´re completely random, so you can have like 504 different scenarios in each run. (I hope i did math correctly.)

For those who don´t understand what i mean, it would look like this:

1st boss, 2nd boss, 3rd boss or 1st boss, 5th boss, 9th boss or 456 or 527 or 983 or 124 or 125 etc..., while one of the 3 x 3 pathes will always give you a hint about the boss inside there.

Imagine, 1 Dungeon and 504 different ways you could encounter it. And you´ve some kind of choice.

On top...

- Bosses could change a bit, based on being "the first, the second or the last one". This means boss 1 in the first room would´ve like 3 mechanics. But if he appears in the last room, he´ll be advanced with 6 different mechanics.
- Based on the room where the boss is, they could offer different loot.
- There could be a long-time achievement to beat every possibility, granting every boss as little pet and finally a mount or something.

Yes it would get stale after while probably too. But with its variations, different loot and decision-making, the whole dungeon could even surprise any player after its 100 run. For those who wants a challenge, the dungeon could offer some voting in the beginning like "normal, hard, expert" difficulty too.

EDIT: Maybe you´ll even get some tokens each run. With 10 tokens you could buy a map to activate once. This will show you all boss rooms in your next run. (Just for those who wants to finish that achievement without hoping for tons of RNG factors.)

Just a brainstorming idea, but i´m pretty sure, that it would fit well into FF14 and it´s not so poor implemented like the 200 level of i can´t remember the name right now.


I would like to see, that SE brings some ideas from games like SWTOR or TERA into FF14. And of course i would like to see some random encounters with a bunch of loot, different bosses and challenges like i´ve mentioned in my last idea. Pretty much everything would be better than the current wall to wall bang followed by "i can ignore any mechanic" - bosses. Thx for reading.