Next Exploration Area

[Ardeth]

It just stinks it's going to be more of the same. It's so boring.

With Eureka, I hated having to spam kill mobs to spawn the FATEs. Having to level up some arbitrary elemental level. Having to spin the wheel for bonuses and resistances. Having to farm items to make buffs. The buffs themselves were great, but the gambling aspect of it was terrible. Also, level loss and experience loss in general. It's terrible, and I don't care if it was meant to replicate 11. 11 sucked. There I said it.

In Bozja, it was fixed mostly. The experience loss was still there and the arbitrary leveling and the gamble buffs, but most of the annoyances were fixed, and yet it still sucked. It was bland and boring. The instanced dungeons were toxic as hell.

I just don't want more.

[ReynTime]

I just want it to look and feel like an actual land to explore and less like an artificial ugly battlefield.

[Ardeth]

I just want it to look and feel like an actual land to explore and less like an artificial ugly battlefield.

That as well. It always feels like a punishing bland hell scape. At least Eureka looked different.

[AmiableApkallu]

rogue lite randomized systems to keep things fresh and interesting

PotD gives me new floor layouts and whatnot every time I run it. That doesn't make each run any more "fresh" or "interesting" than the last; it's still the same, basic experience.

CLL and Dalriada were new things.

CLL and Dalriada are mostly just the usual dungeon sequence of trash mobs and dodge-the-AoE bosses. Their only "new" schtick is making everyone split into parties at a few points in the run. (And it wouldn't surprise me if that's actually "new to FFXIV but old hat in other MMOs".)

[Jeeqbit]

I just want it to look and feel like an actual land to explore and less like an artificial ugly battlefield.

I really liked Anemos and Pagos for that reason. The terrain being complicated to navigate made it feel mysterious like there were lots of caves, routes, up and down areas, corners to look in to see what's there and risks you took due to the dragons.

But the community complained about how complicated Pagos was to navigate. They hated it and the complaints were everywhere, including on these forums. So they turned the terrain into what Hydatos is and made Bozja and Zadnor similarly flat.

Personally, I want it to be like Anemos and Pagos. I hope the community will agree with me so they can go back to that, but knowing the reaction to Pagos when it was current, I'm not sure if they will risk all the critics. I hope they will at least do what "makes sense" for the lore of the area.

[TheMightyMollusk]

CLL and Dalriada are mostly just the usual dungeon sequence of trash mobs and dodge-the-AoE bosses. Their only "new" schtick is making everyone split into parties at a few points in the run. (And it wouldn't surprise me if that's actually "new to FFXIV but old hat in other MMOs".)

That's not even really new here, since we had to do that in Labyrinth of the Ancients and World of Darkness for the Atomos encounters.

[Jeeqbit]

CLL and Dalriada are mostly just the usual dungeon sequence of trash mobs and dodge-the-AoE bosses. Their only "new" schtick is making everyone split into parties at a few points in the run. (And it wouldn't surprise me if that's actually "new to FFXIV but old hat in other MMOs".)

The "new" thing was they were actually threatening and capable of killing people, whilst still being cleared in 1-3 pulls on average so that they were seen as more fulfilling casual content than dungeons are.

Had wipes to all the bosses in CLL, especially the last two, on many occasions. Dalriada was usually a clear every time, but usually with only a few people alive at the last boss.

The other "new" thing was telegraphing mechanics the first time, but not subsequent times. So you had the "tutorial" cast of the mechanic, then you had to learn it and remember it. Of course, many people don't seem to learn or be very observant, so they just died to the subsequent casts, but I thought this was the perfect middle ground that made it good midcore content.

Telegraph things once, but never again - that's fair. What is more frustrating than telegraphing things with orange once is telegraphing them with orange every single time to make it absolutely braindead.

[AmiableApkallu]

The "new" thing was they were actually threatening and capable of killing people, whilst still being cleared in 1-3 pulls on average so that they were seen as more fulfilling casual content than dungeons are.

"Threatening and capable of killing people" is a meaningless characterization.

My very first dungeon pull, Sastasha, ended in a wipe. Thus, it's literally the case that dungeons that can threaten and kill people are present in this game starting with the very first one.

What makes CLL and Dalriada special here?

[Jeeqbit]

What makes CLL and Dalriada special here?

That on an average run, you would see bodies everywhere.

An average dungeon run, you... don't see bodies everywhere, unless it's a sprout/returner sometimes.

[Valence]

With Eureka, I hated having to spam kill mobs to spawn the FATEs. Having to level up some arbitrary elemental level. Having to spin the wheel for bonuses and resistances. Having to farm items to make buffs. The buffs themselves were great, but the gambling aspect of it was terrible. Also, level loss and experience loss in general. It's terrible, and I don't care if it was meant to replicate 11. 11 sucked. There I said it.

In Bozja, it was fixed mostly. The experience loss was still there and the arbitrary leveling and the gamble buffs, but most of the annoyances were fixed, and yet it still sucked. It was bland and boring. The instanced dungeons were toxic as hell.

I've been asking that question to myself for years between both eureka and bozja. Eureka had incredibly tedious and annoying systems to deal with, but still provided some sense of progression with elemental level and a serious lethal threat level that forced people to move in groups else you'd die, or you could actually move around on your own, express your skill that way, and try not to die stupidly. It truly put the v into Player versus Environment. But you couldn't progress with your friends well if they were a different level. Everything was tedious. Bozja on the other hand streamlined a lot of the tediousness but removed all progression feeling and most of the threat on the maps, which made everything boring and barely more interesting that normal maps on the overworld: you had mobs moving around, fates, and hunt mobs, just a little more dangerous. That was it. Both shared however the tedium of grinding mobs to spawn NMs/CEs. The only saving grace of Bozja was that we had actual story every levels, and it also had CLL and Dalriada. I'm purposely not counting Delubrum because Delubrum was not bad, but a lot more standard pve in comparison.

It's like SE is properly unable to make overworld content actually engaging, and if they want to introduce progression through an area they just utterly fail at it and have given up on the idea. It's been 4 exploratory areas since the beginning, and not a single one proved engaging beyond their endgame for eureka and bozja.

PotD gives me new floor layouts and whatnot every time I run it. That doesn't make each run any more "fresh" or "interesting" than the last; it's still the same, basic experience.

CLL and Dalriada are mostly just the usual dungeon sequence of trash mobs and dodge-the-AoE bosses. Their only "new" schtick is making everyone split into parties at a few points in the run. (And it wouldn't surprise me if that's actually "new to FFXIV but old hat in other MMOs".)

Because PotD only got half of the formula right: the mobs tend to be interesting, and some of their mechanics and counters have a good, solid base, but it doesn't push it far enough to make you feel good about countering them when they do matter, and they're too static and predictable beyond the few patrols. This combined to the fact that potd has no environment design to accompany this means that it's still very similar to what you have on the overworld of exploratory zones where it just boils down to dodging mobs or pressing two buttons to kill one that you couldn't dodge or have to kill. Orthos made it even more bland because they removed most of what made potd fun to replace it with modern mechanics with AoEs and shapes.

CLL and Dalriada had absolutely unusual environment layouts, trash mobs were varied, had actual unique profiles and mechanics, and different from each other, and the dungeons had actual objectives to complete, and some of them were semi randomized. The progression through certain sections and hallways like in Dalriada notably had to have multiple groups coordinate between each other and the amount of casualties this caused into the lazer corridors was absolutely humongous. If that's normal dungeon design to you, then I don't know what to tell you. Even some bosses had more things to do than just fighting them. However, if we want even more, sure, I'm down for it, far from me to disagree.