For all those complaining about stale dungeons: from a beta player perspective

[TeresaFortell]

Frankly, I care less about the hallway thing and more about the lack of engaging trash. Also, I hate that nothing truly punishes you. A lot of bosses you can just stand still and win.

It's really a part of a bigger issue in DT. Many elements were streamlined for a better gameplay experience, but this had the opposite effect, and it alienated many players as a result.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

I miss toto-rak and i fear for the next duty support expansion every time

Everytime they mention “duty support added” or “revamping X dungeon”, all I could think of was “Another one bites the dust, so to speak!”

[Kennar]

Speed runners might have had something to with dungeon design a long time ago, but that doesn't adequately cover the current problems. Good players will economize everything, especially if it's something done repeatedly. Dungeons, and combat in general, feel so stale due to a decade of streamlining jobs, pruning abilities, and, to be frank, catering to the casual player. Tanking is too hard, so they took away enmity management. Healing is too hard, so they gave tanks too much self-sustain. Resource management is too difficult, so they removed TP, made MP a non-issue, and made every job as braindead as "press button when it lights up." Then there is whole "being around people makes me uncomfortable/anxious" crowd, so they removed the "multiplayer" from MMORPG with the Trust/Duty Support system.

I'm going to cut to the chase here, I feel that Trusts/Duty Support has been one of the most damaging features implemented in this game, and it only exists to cater to the people who can't (or won't) learn to play with others. Because of this, every fight is so heavily scripted that the only challenge is anticipating when AoEs will go out so you can move without being snapshotted. We've come to the point that the system is so broken that when some of us ask for a little more difficulty or complexity, the only thing they can do is restrict the arena with more AoEs because it's far easier to program bots to "Move to Position A" if "AoE Pattern X" materializes, than it is to make them handle unexpected situations. There is no spontaneity, no need for real strategy, and only one way to complete every objective. A "job rework" in 8.0 isn't likely to change much, unless the entire combat system is revamped.

[Kaurhz]

I think how they are is a result of how players engaged with the dungeons.

But I think it's ridiculous that their approach was "Let's remove", over "Let's improve"

[Mawlzy]

Speed runners might have had something to with dungeon design a long time ago, but that doesn't adequately cover the current problems. Good players will economize everything, especially if it's something done repeatedly. Dungeons, and combat in general, feel so stale due to a decade of streamlining jobs, pruning abilities, and, to be frank, catering to the casual player. Tanking is too hard, so they took away enmity management. Healing is too hard, so they gave tanks too much self-sustain. Resource management is too difficult, so they removed TP, made MP a non-issue, and made every job as braindead as "press button when it lights up." Then there is whole "being around people makes me uncomfortable/anxious" crowd, so they removed the "multiplayer" from MMORPG with the Trust/Duty Support system.

I'm going to cut to the chase here, I feel that Trusts/Duty Support has been one of the most damaging features implemented in this game, and it only exists to cater to the people who can't (or won't) learn to play with others. Because of this, every fight is so heavily scripted that the only challenge is anticipating when AoEs will go out so you can move without being snapshotted. We've come to the point that the system is so broken that when some of us ask for a little more difficulty or complexity, the only thing they can do is restrict the arena with more AoEs because it's far easier to program bots to move to "Position to A" if "AoE Pattern X" materializes, than it is to make them handle unexpected situations. There is no spontaneity, no need for real strategy, and only one way to complete every objective. A "job rework" in 8.0 isn't likely to change much, unless the entire combat system is revamped.

The use of NPCs in DS/trusts has the potential to make fights more interesting. They are not the reason for streamlining. That is SE laziness.

There's this silly idea floating around that dungeon NPCs are "AI" and because that AI isn't very bright, the dungeons have to be simplified. It's completely false.

[ovIm]

I think how they are is a result of how players engaged with the dungeons.

Its a bit of a hen-egg problem, if we are being honest. Part of the reason players "optimized" the dungeons was because the side-objectives were barely worth doing most of the time.
In a similar vein, bigger pulls allowed for tanks and healers to have a more engaging gameplay, actually making them use more of their kit. It was like an invisible difficulty slider - could you pull that much, or would smaller pulls result in a faster dungeon because you would not wipe?

Of course players will try and map out the optimal approach to anything, but that is why game designers exist - to create an engaging experience that factors in these things.

But I think it's ridiculous that their approach was "Let's remove", over "Let's improve"

Its sad to see that a lot of this game seemingly has fallen victim to this mentality.

[Bitmoar]

I miss toto-rak and i fear for the next duty support expansion every time

Yeah, this is the most egregious example of the dungeons they've redone for duty support. The most literal "boring hallway" in the game now. They didn't even bother making it nice to look at.

[KitiaraIornsight]

At some point, I think you just need to bite the bullet and accept that you can't have an interesting multiplayer game without potentially allowing for disagreements to happen. If the choices are "allow for players to potentially get chewed out for making mistakes" or "idiot-proof everything to the point that the game is no longer enjoyable to play", I'll take the first option every time. Is it really that big a deal if someone rage quits a dungeon? Sure, it's not ideal, but neither is lobotomising the game.

AV is probably my favourite dungeon in the game, though. I think it does a lot of things right.

• You can get through the first room pulling only 5 mobs by hugging the left wall and dodging the toads.
• You can skip the whole room before the 2nd boss if you know how to path through the middle of the group of scorpions blocking the entrance without clipping their line of sight.
• You can skip everything in the room after the 2nd boss if you hug the left wall and dodge the mobs in the middle of the room, then pull everything right up to the morbol room, then once you're in there you can break all the plants to avoid the seedlings spawning.
• The first and last boss both have the unique fruit mechanic that gives you the autonomy to choose whether you want to play safer and take less damage, or take more damage but also deal more damage to the boss.

It's obviously very power crept now and the bosses are a bit of a sleeper since they added telegraphs to everything but a lot of the ideas in AV are great. It's sad how much dungeon design has regressed.



Explorer Mode exists. This isn't an issue.

How many people actually use explorer mode? And new players are genuinely blissfully unaware such mode is there early in the game. Claiming they should use a feature that's not used often, not really explained HOW to use to get a mapping achievement defeats the purpose of people who don't want to speed run and want to explore. Again which reinforces my point. They cut the side stuff since no one was willing to do the side areas and explore. They added the "gates" to stop speed runners over pulling on casual healers who couldn't keep up. Their whole format was born of not wasting resources on making assets and maps that were being ignored.

[IcarusAvery]

Everytime they mention “duty support added” or “revamping X dungeon”, all I could think of was “Another one bites the dust, so to speak!”

They didn't change anything about the actual dungeon mechanics of Halatali or Qarn, they only made changes to the bosses and those were pretty much universally well-received.

[Shurrikhan]

So why on earth would they change the dungeon format and formula AT ALL when speed runners always dictate the path, pace and course of the dungeon runs?

"Speedrunners" dictated one and only one path because one and only one path was meaningfully incentivized, especially for reuse.

"Speedrunners" dictated one and only one pace because there's no challenge available by which to make any other pace remotely worthwhile.

And outside of the path taken, there is no "course" of any dungeon beyond whatever gets you to the different bosses to then kill the bosses... because that and only that is how any dungeon has been created, (worthless) side-path treasure chests or no.

* Note also here that "speedrunners" is, for all intents and purposes, equal simply to anyone who does a given dungeon more than just a couple times.

All these problems are ones that initial design and narrow reactions to feedback caused.

You promote what your design incentivizes. You increasingly create the situation you give precedent to.

Given that the community would have to specifically rail against what was incentivized in order not to end up there and would have to be held accountable for every Monkey's Paw interpretation of their feedback when protesting the direction that trend was taking, it doesn't seem reasonable to lay blame for how things ended up primarily on the community.

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If the developers wanted players to use the side-paths, they should have made the rewards they give worthwhile to all runners of said dungeon (not just crafters attempting to do unnecessary old recipes just for the completionism of it). If they wanted people not to use the same path all the time, they should have offered something to randomize things. If they wanted dungeons to be more than just a matter of taking the minimum path between static objectives, they should have made the objectives or the areas between them less static.

Instead, they took the "We don't like how wasteful the explorables of each dungeon have become and how singularly 'go go go' each dungeon's pace has turned" by ensuring there were no explorables at all and that there would never be a situation for which one couldn't maximally 'go go go' (by setting up walls at intervals that'd prevent any real danger in pull size). ...That hardly seems a result you can blame player feedback for.