Dungeon Changes

[Jeeqbit]

Really I don’t think these should change but they should add a mythic plus.

That is clearly the intention of criterion and criterion savage. The trash in criterion is more dangerous and can even wipe. Criterion savage simply makes the enemies more dangerous and adds a time limit and a need to restart the instance if you wipe. That is their version of mythic plus and it was aimed at people who wanted mythic plus.

Obviously, what many of us were asking of was the existing dungeons to simply be given scaled up, harder versions with things such as time limits and lack of telegraphs, but they decided to do it by making entirely new types of dungeons.

Really if they add branching paths without rewards those will get skipped.

That argument has been solved by SE already with variant dungeons. SE thought hard about how to make branching paths actually work and variant dungeons is how they have achieved it.

But it makes you wonder that perhaps they could just use the variant design for normal dungeons instead so they can invest the variant resources elsewhere.

[LilimoLimomo]

I think I'd be mostly happy with dungeons if they got rid of the trash entirely. 95% of trash pulls provide the exact same experience, so after this many expansions it just fees like pointless filler to pad out the experience. If there's a trash pull that isn't providing me with a unique challenge, it's wasting my time.

Which is a shame, because dungeon bosses can be so fun! I just don't want to wade through pointless trash to get to them. So I don't.

[SeverianLyonesse]

People don't hate dungeon design, they hate having to account for other players. It's like having to deal with traffic on the road; someone is so conditioned to just find it frustrating, even in a case where it isn't. Even the idea of players having differing goals in a dungeon sends people into "Well everyone will hate it! Nobody wants it!" chant, even if all people want is a breakaway from the [mob pack > wall > mob pack > boss > repeat x2] design that has become so frustratingly formulaic.

This is really the core of the problem. Dungeons, raids, and trials (and job designs) are so formulaic because most players have no patience for inefficiency and failure. This is a problem for all online games but is especially disappointing for MMOs, which at least give off the appearance of being more social and collaborative.

Unless and until the community fosters a culture of caring less about speed clears than it does about simply enjoying the game and growing alongside other players, this is going to remain the design. The low skill threshold is necessary for accessibility (which equates to lower wait times) and consistency (which equates to faster clears). And sorry stupid humans, but I just don't think that many of you are so altruistic.

I don't play pug content, including roulettes, unless I am fine failing and don't mind teaching people things. Not that I think the game will ever change, but if it did: the only solution is for players to take on the burden of creating consistency and clears through community pedagogy, instead of relying on the game's own willingness to remove complexity and challenge inherent to its design.

[Mayhemmer]

I do.

I want dungeon where I have to be a tank. Not a punching ball with a magic button which keep mobs focus on you and... That's it. Let me LOS, do intelligent pull, work on the mobs location so the melee can do their positionnal correctly.

I want dungeon where I have to stress heal because said pull didn't go right.

And I want dungeon where, as a dps, I have to kill something ASAP or it will be a disaster (and give us more utility buttons, please).

A lot of "I, ME, PERSONALLY". I know. But please don't use the "You don't know what you really want" argument.

I started playing around patch 3.2, and I still remember when tanks would priority mark every enemy in every trash pack, and when you didn't just wall-to-wall and facetank in every dungeon. I remember hearing dungeons would be "harder" in ShB and thinking maybe healers and casters would have to utilize sleep on dangerous enemies. Funny foolish me, hehe. Obviously I can't expect the game to not evolve over the years since then, but I still do miss a lot of it. Maybe it's nostalgia from an era where the game was new to me and I'm pining to experience all the things I didn't get to back in that era of the game, but I think I just want them to shake things up again in a way that's deeper than adding instant-kill mechanics on every other mob.

This is really the core of the problem. Dungeons, raids, and trials (and job designs) are so formulaic because most players have no patience for inefficiency and failure. This is a problem for all online games but is especially disappointing for MMOs, which at least give off the appearance of being more social and collaborative.

Unless and until the community fosters a culture of caring less about speed clears than it does about simply enjoying the game and growing alongside other players, this is going to remain the design. The low skill threshold is necessary for accessibility (which equates to lower wait times) and consistency (which equates to faster clears). And sorry stupid humans, but I just don't think that many of you are so altruistic.

I wish it could be so, but alas. The engrained impatience and reactionary hostility to perceived slights is, itself, a cultural thing, just exasperated by online anonymity. I'd love if the devs started to experiment with dungeon design that required, or at the very least encouraged, some patience and co-operative decision making, and looked the naysayers straight in the eyes and said "If you'd like the experience to tailor more to your desires, please use the trust system."

[yoshinoharu]

I agree with OP on this.

Dungeon design used to at least have some gimmicks to them, and it's not like we haven't had puzzles and player interaction in dungeons before.

Even in the very first dungeon, Sastasha, players could go and look at the piece of paper at the beginning of the dungeon to avoid fighting extra mobs by flipping the correct colored switch in the second section.

The Sunken Temple of Qarn had the side paths for extra rewards.

The Wanderer's Palace had you killing specific mobs for drops to grease up rusted contraptions while you had someone kiting the invincible Tonberry Stalker.

Even something as simple as having to find keys in the more open-floorplan of Haukke Manor.

Heck, even as recently as Shadowbringers with Saint Mocianne's Arboretum (Hard) you had the mud-covered enemies that you could shower with water to drop their damage resistance.

I totally agree, dungeon design is currently extremely lazy as we just move from set piece to set piece without anything extra for players to do. I do really hope that they take the designs from variant dungeons and make them the default experience for actual dungeons moving forward. The formula of pausing for story set-pieces without any player interaction is getting extremely stale.

Honestly, I think having the trust system in place make it challenging for them to design anything where you'd have to work together as a team, but they can still add some kind of puzzle aspect or something other than just pull pack, kill, pull pack, kill, boss, kill, rinse, repeat.

[EverQuest]

Variant didn’t really solve anything though. It’s hard to group unless planned before so you end up soloing it

It’s only completed because of a Mount at the end but yes I disliked all 12 routes. And really all those paths are the same minus text choices or some gimmick that you have to look up before hand anyways completely invalidating it.

Realistically if you want good dungeons you Ned wows gearing system and mythic plus. Variant and Crit are not good enough it may very well be squares answer it’s just a bad answer.