The past few final dungeons…

[whoopdeedew]

I didn’t know if I should post this in the Lore or Dungeons forums so I just decided to go here. So the past few final dungeons for these expansions, EW and ShB, and maybe even counting Lunar Subterrene or however you spell it… thematically, they are very cool and all, but in the end they are just visions. Our Warriors of Light aren’t actually DOING anything. The final bosses are just showing us visions of stuff that already happened and we have no chance to make any impact. Compare that to the Aetherochemical Research facility in HW and Ala Mhigo. The ACRF is still one of my favorite dungeons, and you are literally fighting your way through Garleans and freeing the city as you progress in AM. They feel like a natural lead-up to the final bosses instead of just the boss going “oh here uh lemme show you visions of the past just cuz”. It’s kinda disappointing to fight through just some visions at the climax of an expansion. Am I the only one who feels this way?

[Tsiron]

Well, they had to put that lore somewhere, it's not like they had all of 6.X at their disposal- oh, wait...

[MikkoAkure]

I don’t see it as a problem because the dungeon isn’t the last boss or the climax.


In ShB and EW’s cases, the last dungeon of X.0 is the prelude to fighting Hades/Endsinger and is basically a playable villain monologue before you face off against them properly.

Lunar Subterrane is also a playable explanation of “Golbez” before we fight Zeromus, which was the real climax of the void arc.

ARR and HW gave us longer dungeons as the climax, but ARR’s was so long that it’s separate from other dungeons and then got overhauled. ACRF wasn’t as long but I remember people complaining about getting it in roulettes back when it was current content because it was longer than a normal dungeon and the last fight was more involved than other mindless roulette dungeons.

[Cilia]

Lunar Subterrane is also a playable explanation of “Golbez” before we fight Zeromus, which was the real climax of the void arc.

ARR and HW gave us longer dungeons as the climax, but ARR’s was so long that it’s separate from other dungeons and then got overhauled. ACRF wasn’t as long but I remember people complaining about getting it in roulettes back when it was current content because it was longer than a normal dungeon and the last fight was more involved than other mindless roulette dungeons.

Respectfully, I believe the climax of the Void Arc was the fight with "Golbez" himself; the story builds it up much more and it's much more personal, not to mention more difficult. The Lunar Subterrane and dealing with Zeromus are more denouement than anything else.

The problem with Castrum Meridianum and the Praetorium wasn't their length, it was the fact they had oodles of cutscenes repeat players would skip and leave newbies in the dust. Just one of those "we didn't quite think this through" moments that ruins the experience for both newbies and veterans.

The problem with the Aetherochemical Research Facility was that it provided more tomestones than anything else, and prior to Stormblood relic weapons typically required grinding out an absolute crapton of said tomestones; ergo, people ran it to death to get one of the steps done ASAP and then were sick of the place and said "No more!" The final boss being a modicum more difficult than standard didn't have much to do with it, at least not in my experience.

[MikkoAkure]

The problem with the Aetherochemical Research Facility was that it provided more tomestones than anything else, and prior to Stormblood relic weapons typically required grinding out an absolute crapton of said tomestones; ergo, people ran it to death to get one of the steps done ASAP and then were sick of the place and said "No more!" The final boss being a modicum more difficult than standard didn't have much to do with it, at least not in my experience.

I took a break from the game after 3.1 and didn’t come back until 2 months before Stormblood. Luckily I missed the relic hunt but among me and my friends in 3.0-3.1 we hated it for its length and the last boss tripping up new players. Its length is probably why it was worth more tomestones.

Either way the game has moved on from longer dungeons, probably due to player feedback which was my point. Pharos Sirius at release was also a doozy and was atypical, with its 3 mini-bosses instead of the standard two.

[Cleretic]

It's interesting to see these dungeons as essentially a playable form of the Villainous Infodump Monologue. It's a bit disappointing that they've gone to the well three times, but I think it works fairly well in terms of merging storytelling and gameplay.

I think the Lunar Subterrane does it best, in part because there's actual sort of 'mechanical' reason it's happening (it's Real Golbez's crystal acting up), and partly because it actually does have a physical presence outside of the vision so we did actually Do A Thing, but also because it's much more sparing about narration. The bad part of endgame dungeons being like this isn't that they're visions, it's that they're going to be a near-daily experience for a lot of players, and when that experience involves a very rote speech then it starts to get tedious. It's like if Gaius' monologue played during his boss fight.

[Vyrerus]

Just visions

Well, no.

The ending dungeons for 5.0 and 6.0 were more than just visions. They were recreations of the final boss's eye witness total recall of events. Memories made manifest. More or less magical danger room scenarios that were trying to kill us.

While I also prefer physical confrontations with true individuals and not just their ghosts remade out of Aether or Dynamis, these dungeons were a change of pace.

Amaurot, the 5.0 dungeon, frankly has some of the best voice acting delivery in the entire game, too.

I do hope it goes back to 4.0 and prior though, as the 6.0 dungeon essentially gave us three distinct cultures without their full context, just Meteion's perception of them. Would like to not have hiccups surrounding that sort of thing in the future, and would also like a return to a coherent in world setting.

Looking at the .55 dungeons, this only really happened in 6.55's and only for 2/3rds of it due to Golbez's crystal.

The prior .55 dungeons were Keeper of The Lake, Baelsar's Wall, The Ghimlyt Dark, and Pagltha'an. These were all very real, full set pieces with real big events after them. KoTL had the WoL lose The Blessing. Baelsar's Wall resulted in Ilberd's death, Papalymo's demise, and the summoning of Shinryu. Ghimlyt Dark saw Alisaie called, and direct conflict with The Emperor's legion. Pagltha'an saw the demise of Lunar Bahamut, but the rise of Lunar Ifrit and all of the other towers that sat in the world for the year leading up to EW in addition to the maiming of Arenvald.

I guess I could see why you have a distaste for the "visions" dungeons when I think about the prior .55 dungeons. The visions dungeons all have the common thread of tying up only their immediate story arch, if they tie it up at all, while the old .55 ones all started new major ones. Here's to hoping Dawntrail breaks the mold.

[Iscah]

They're not "just visions". They're sufficiently real to kill us if we don't fight back.

That said, while Amaurot was fantastic as a finale dungeon, the Dead Ends just felt disjointed. I feel like the story might have flowed better if we progressed straight to the final trial with no dungeon at all, and had an extra optional dungeon instead – even the same dungeon in a different context if they wanted to get those stories in there.

My general dissatisfaction with the "every civilisation is single-minded and will self-destruct in pursuit of happiness" premise doesn't help me to like it much, either.

[Vallavia]

It's interesting to see these dungeons as essentially a playable form of the Villainous Infodump Monologue. It's a bit disappointing that they've gone to the well three times, but I think it works fairly well in terms of merging storytelling and gameplay.

I think the Lunar Subterrane does it best, in part because there's actual sort of 'mechanical' reason it's happening (it's Real Golbez's crystal acting up), and partly because it actually does have a physical presence outside of the vision so we did actually Do A Thing, but also because it's much more sparing about narration. The bad part of endgame dungeons being like this isn't that they're visions, it's that they're going to be a near-daily experience for a lot of players, and when that experience involves a very rote speech then it starts to get tedious. It's like if Gaius' monologue played during his boss fight.

I liked it well enough the first time, but I do think there are far more interesting ways to integrate narrative and gameplay than falling back on the post-mortem monologue again even if it has been competently done in the past. I really liked the new Cape Westwind, Lahabrea, and Steps of Faith instances which actually managed to expand the principal characters of each (and the Scions!) by making them more involved with mechanically and visually appealing encounters, but those pesky time-consuming mechanics too would become tiresome day after day in a roulette with two encounters in it.

This is just my personal preference, but my favorite dungeons will always be the ones that involve a lot of set pieces and prominent NPCs: the Ghimlyt Dark, Heroes' Gauntlet, and Tower of Babil are my top 3 favorite dungeons solely for those reasons.

[Cleretic]

That said, while Amaurot was fantastic as a finale dungeon, the Dead Ends just felt disjointed. I feel like the story might have flowed better if we progressed straight to the final trial with no dungeon at all, and had an extra optional dungeon instead – even the same dungeon in a different context if they wanted to get those stories in there.

Thinking about the Dead Ends, I actually feel like the Nibirun are the only part of it that really chafes from the limitations. The Grebuloffs and Karellians ultimately tell very simple and understandable stories (with the Grebuloffs in particular benefitting form releasing in late 2021); the Karellians in particular would like and can use more spotlight than they got, which helps them be a highlight of the Omicron quests, but they get across their point in a small space. But the Nibirun have a fairly heady concept that just can't be entirely conveyed in the space of one third of a dungeon; even the Omicron and allied tribe quests, which I think give them enough space to be the strongest part of both, relegates what I think are really important parts of their whole concept to implication and side dialog.

If I were to try to fix that with edits I feel like there might be something in swapping the Nibirun and the Ea, since they both reached that state of 'the only thing to look forward to is death', but I suspect that might create more problems than it solves.

I liked it well enough the first time, but I do think there are far more interesting ways to integrate narrative and gameplay than falling back on the post-mortem monologue again even if it has been competently done in the past. I really liked the new Cape Westwind, Lahabrea, and Steps of Faith instances which actually managed to expand the principal characters of each (and the Scions!) by making them more involved with mechanically and visually appealing encounters, but those pesky time-consuming mechanics too would become tiresome day after day in a roulette with two encounters in it.

Solo duties are fantastic at doing storytelling through gameplay, probably because they both have less restrictions on what they can do and can't really get dragged down by replays. That said, I do feel like group content does have to find a way to do storytelling through gameplay too, lest it feel like all the gameplay itself is skippable.

I still think the best use of it is Tsukuyomi's phase transition, but again, that shows that a big struggle is the fact people will repeat the content a lot; normal-difficulty trials actually aren't repeated ad nauseum, and Extremes cut out those parts; contrast with E12, which also has a story-heavy phase transition, but is terrible for it because it was a weekly for months.