Deep Dungeon wishlist in anticipation for Dawntrail edition

[ThurinTurambar]

Given that we already know that deep dungeon 4 is in development, probably for patch 7.35, here are some things i would like to see introduced or changed, both from solo and party perspective.

Party perspective:

1. Finding party for deep dungeon can take a lot of time, and often when what happens is people joining without reading the pf description (for example demanding certain aetherpool levels) and party leader has no way to enforce that till they actually see it inside instance, which wastes a lot of time going through party finder again. Adjust item level requirement to aetherpool level instead.
   
   
2. A party save slot cannot be continued if one player decides to leave and not show up for continuation. It is especially bad when the party was supposed to farm accursed hoard on high floors to get good loot. I believe providing a vote kick tool for the others in party would be very helpful for such situations.

Now here is the bigger part, closer to my heart, the solo perspective:

1. Sustaining potions and potsherds are in a very bad spot currently. It is a consensus among solo runners that its high time those got a change. Farming potsherds/aetherpool fragments is annoying, time consuming and overall tedious.
   Here are some possible solutions that would fix this issue:
   1. Make sustaining potions and its counterparts tradable so we could buy them from others on marketboard
   2. Make the potions a duty action, similar to what you see in for example The Great Hunt Trial. Giving 120 such potions would cover 1h of regen uptime, however if provided a way to obtain them inside the duty, it would be fine to have less than that
   3. Another option is to create a similar thing to accursed hoard, but instead of treasure it would provide the whole party with a potsherd. Would also give another use of pomander of intuition to solo runners whose objective is highest score instead of loot.
2. Clear tokens: firecrest, glass pumpkin, empyrean reliquary, orthos tomestone - they have no use after you buy out the cosmetic prizes. It would be very nice to be able to use them to spend on something consumable - maybe sustaining potions, or something you could sell on marketboard?
   
   
3. The bane of solo running is losing your attempts to disconnect. Imagine how disheartening is a disconnect on last floor of Palace of the Dead, after you have invested 10+ hours into the run. Moreover, disconnecting can be used maliciously to reset the save file to get better luck (not logging in for 24h after a disconnect has a chance of reseting your save to previous checkpoint, the chance is bigger the higher player congestion is)
   So to address both problems, some sort of disconnect protection would be most welcome! Give the player 5 minutes to log back in after disconnect and place them back in their instance. Terminate instance that have been disconnected longer than that.

[ThurinTurambar]

And regarding deep dungeon 4 itself, here are some things that would make it stand out:
- More puzzle/exploration mechanics
- Enviroment playing role for both benefit and detriment of the player. Simple stuff like poison puddles or maybe crystals like in Dzemael Darkhold?
- Rare spawns - dread beasts of EO had potential, but ultimately they were too easy to avoid.
- unobvious hidden interactions for the community to discover


probably bit late for that, but i think something like pomander of frenzy making mobs fight each other would be cool

[Valence]

Less DDR and more old school battle interactions like in Palace of the Dead as well please. Eureka Orthos was frankly tedious and boring because of this, it removed most of the fun Palace had.

[Tint]

Return to 200 floors.

Having 100 easier floors is much more fun than spamming the same 10 floors over and over in duty finder. Also the 1-100 solo achievment is much more approachable but still kind of a challenge for the average player.

Let people start at floor 100 to play the tougher floors.

Also there should be a way to reward exploring the floors and opening chests with exp so people don't fight each other over getting gear upgrades and leveling jobs. In duty finder everyone should have the same objective.

[ThurinTurambar]

@Tint
I would not agree that 200 floors is good for general playerbase, despite me being a palace enjoyer. 100 floors makes it much more approachable in party scenario to do in one go. Split runs that happen in palace bear a big risk of someone not showing up for continuation, meanwhile hoh is a nice 3 hour stroll.

Bringing back halfway point solo achievement is an interesting idea, but just instead of making the dungeon 200 floors, make the achievement be obtained on floor 50. Palace's design was also more suitable for halfway point achievement, since first 100 are story floors, meanwhile for example EO has story elements to the very end.

With matched party i feel there is a bit of different problem that is causing the issue. For a new person its rather not obvious how to behave in deep dungeon, what are mob aggro types etc. So for the purpose of getting aetherpool they will stray away from party and take much longer time pulling what wasnt needed to be pulled. Its a communication problem. One that is solved by talking to the party, i cant see a good solution that could be implemented from game's side. Tell your party your purpose and make a party finder if you are not prepared for compromises.
And when such new player tells you that they want to farm aetherpool, you can tell them that they dont have to kill everything and show how to efficiently get the chests.

[Valence]

What I do miss as a casual player is the actual progression we had in PotD on the story parts of it. It wasn't a done deal in one go or two with merely 30 floors to complete. It wasn't that huge undertaking either, but at least you could work a little bit toward it before completing it, and we also had 2 story checkpoints with quests and story instead of one with not much meat to it as well.

I don't know how the challenging section should be and how many floors it should have, but 30 floors for story is just lame. But I guess my problem with current deep dungeons is how binary they are. There isn't ultimately that much progression and things to work toward, it's either you clear, or you don't for the good rewards.

[Mawlzy]

What I do miss as a casual player is the actual progression we had in PotD on the story parts of it. It wasn't a done deal in one go or two with merely 30 floors to complete. It wasn't that huge undertaking either, but at least you could work a little bit toward it before completing it, and we also had 2 story checkpoints with quests and story instead of one with not much meat to it as well.

I don't know how the challenging section should be and how many floors it should have, but 30 floors for story is just lame. But I guess my problem with current deep dungeons is how binary they are. There isn't ultimately that much progression and things to work toward, it's either you clear, or you don't for the good rewards.

Agreed, PotD was really fun content and the leveling system made you feel you were getting somewhere. Plus many of the floors are visually interesting and simply something a little different.

[ThurinTurambar]

Another solution to sustaining potion problem i believe would be good is adding potsherds and their counterparts into accursed hoard loot pool. Like seriously, do we really need materia in the loot pool when its already available to be bought with the potsherds? Transfer all the materia chance to potsherd chance and let us buy what we want.