Every dungeon should be a Variant Dungeon

[TaleraRistain]

I disagree on this heavily. Castrums problem is that the rewards are incorrectly imbalanced vs Prae. So it has nothing to do with its variability. If all paths are tuned to within a few minutes of completion time with the same reward this would not happen. So I don't think the scenario is comparative at all.

Its actually interesting we clearly see people dip on Castrum to get the longer Prae for a better reward. So they choose the most tedious path because its worth it. Finally, even when I do get Castrum and see people dip out, I have never seen a Castrum run completely dissolve and it always refills and the duty gets complete.

Prae isn't really that long anymore. They're much more comparable than they were and people still dip.

[Avoidy]

Slow baby pull trashpacks and an npc loitering about for half the duration of the dungeon? You can miss me with that.

Lot of truth in this. The first boss being the same model with a minor mechanical variation doesn't help much either. Saying this as someone who actually enjoyed the final bosses in these variants and would like to see more of this content. The forced single pulling and npc handholding is the part I hate the most. If that were removed though, I'd say hell yeah just make all the dungeons like this going forward.
In general, I wish we just had dungeons with mechanics that actually meant something. It's kind of dumb imo that we can wait 4-5 months for these things to come out and then people can do them without a healer on their first try with 0 deaths or whatever. I get that they want to make all the story content really easy for people who bought an MMO for the story, but maybe just give these people a cutscene dungeon or something, where they can just watch their character running through the dungeon for the story, and then give the rest of us an actually engaging dungeon.

[Ath192]

Prae isn't really that long anymore. They're much more comparable than they were and people still dip.

The rewards aren’t the same, and all dungeons in the roulette are different as well. You don’t see people dip when they don’t get something they’d prefer in leveling roulette for example, they just go with it. Small exemption with aurum vale and totorak pre-nerf, but now that they are retuned people run them just fine as well.

So unfortunately I don’t get the argument you are trying to make by comparing them. We are talking similar length stuff with variations and identical exp/gil rewards vs static renditions of the same dungeon over and over.

Your point is cautionary tale about creating disparate rewards and lengths per instance on the same roulette, which imo is a mistake for sure.

[Ath192]

Lot of truth in this. The first boss being the same model with a minor mechanical variation doesn't help much either. Saying this as someone who actually enjoyed the final bosses in these variants and would like to see more of this content. The forced single pulling and npc handholding is the part I hate the most. If that were removed though, I'd say hell yeah just make all the dungeons like this going forward.
In general, I wish we just had dungeons with mechanics that actually meant something. It's kind of dumb imo that we can wait 4-5 months for these things to come out and then people can do them without a healer on their first try with 0 deaths or whatever. I get that they want to make all the story content really easy for people who bought an MMO for the story, but maybe just give these people a cutscene dungeon or something, where they can just watch their character running through the dungeon for the story, and then give the rest of us an actually engaging dungeon.

You know what I think would work for this? Maybe make the game actually harder and give story focused players those accessories that they gave out in 16, the timely accessories that auto dodge and heal you like Makoto Dodges in Delubrum, that way people can cheese stuff for first time clears and story play but instances are standard harder difficulty. Just a thought.

An accessory could also simply apply a DOT that does a moderate amount of damage for people who don’t want to learn rotations, none of these would be equipable for raids or extremes. So normal 8 man raids, alliance raids, and extremes and savage would have them banned.

Maybe it’s a way to not split the population and have both groups get more enjoyment.