Hey everyone, long time FFXIV player here who started in ARR and played actively through ARR, most of SB and alls of Shb. I'd really love to hear some comments from the community and maybe also tips and insights how you find fun in 4-man dungeons and especially the "Expert" dungeons.
Back when i played in ARR i really loved gearing up my character. With the two possibilities of current Savage content (back then it was Coil) and weekly capping in high end tomestones, one usually tended to do both in order to be efficient and this principle still applies today. The "Expert" dungeon roullette was added in 2.2 (i think) so this has also pretty much been here forever and stayed the most time-efficient way to farm to cap. However, recently (especially in Shb, but started in SB) i do not find fun in obatining current gear especially by tomestone capping and i think the reason is mainly the dungeon design and the lack of variability.
Elaborating on this, dungeons were designed (what i feel) in a fundamentally different way in ARR and i will have to explain this on two examples:
1. Wanderers Palace: This dungeon allowed a multitude of different tactics including:
- Lockouts of enemies from the Bossroom in order to skip mobs.
- Skipping of mobs by sneaking past them.
- Different ways of opening doors especially while handeling the big unkillable tomberry in the middle section.
- Huge pulls with many small enemies, which required tanks to utilize movement tactics to avoid some hits.
Dungeons generally forced tank and group movement through the sheer amount of enemies which were all pretty small and and therefore swarmed the tank fast, while hitting hard enough to actually pose a problem. Teleporters allowed skips for coordinated groups. Sometimes there used to be alternate ways to clear areas and there were pulls which just could not be done, had to be split in half or (at best) felt like they could not be done but were possible at higher gear levels (thus creating actual purpose for the dungeon). Some enemies were ranged and forced you to use terrain in order to get them into your mob. Terrain in general could be abused (corners, pillars etc) to control enemies.
At those times i could not wait to logon on Tuesdays in order to get a up-to-date geared 4-man party from my guild together and farm the shit out of those dungeons. I used to ommit roulettes entirely since the very fast clears and no qeue times allowed to farm to cap time efficiently even without the daily bonus. When all these tactics were combined, experienced players could improve their routes for the dungeons and get clears roughly in half of the time compared to random groups.
Unfortunately for me, this has largely changed. In general modern "Expert" dungeons are a lot different design wise. They are mostly very beautiful, strongly tied into the story and feature more interesting boss fights. On the downside though, they play extremely streamlined with almost no variety and potential for improvement. I am gonna list some of the things that i dislike here:
- Some portions of dungeons which disallow any activities besides tank and spank of utterly lame enemy groups in a set time frame. Most prominent example is the beginning of Anamnesis. Surely this part looks nice, feels cool at the first time and tells the story nicely. But unfortunately we have to do this every second day so it wears off super fast and becomes annoying. Additionally this removes all room for improvement in clear times for this section.
- Mobs are almost exclusively 2-4 groups in front of a wall which can be pulled, tanked and killed by even the most inexperienced parties, even largely undergeared.
- The idea of parties getting better and more used to the dungeons (also gear up) in order to clear faster and smoother was completely removed -> Basically no speedrun potential. Some of the old feeling pops up before the second boss (i think) of Anamnesis, where many small sahagin-like enemies can be pulled. Unfortunately they hang in some stupid gating mechanic which kinda dumbs down the pull since usually they are not spawned at the same time and therefore do not have to be handled collectively.
- Pulls are spiced up by mechanics (mostly AoE telegraph or kickable cast), mostly introduced to larger enemies (for example in Twinning). They force movement in a very direct way or require some reaction and i generally appreciate this. Unfortunately the introduction of huge hitboxes can also sort of dumb down the movement requirements, as you can use them as a shield against others. Anyway this is not entirely bad and i liked it in the Twinning.
- Almost no free roamable areas or map mechanics at all. Sometimes there is some area denial (mostly dropping meteors, shooting cannons, other round AoE telegraphs), but this seriously could be sooo much better and more complicated and interesting.
- Focus in general is on the bosses, even though everyone knows, that the bosses are not the hard part in the dungeon. So why are dungeons still designed around it? There are tons of amazing boss fights in this game but there is only very limited content in which many small enemies need to be handled (thats dungeons and now Bozjan).
All of this makes me dislike cap farming nowadays and thus i basically stopped doing it. For me personally this also leads to reluctance to do current savage tiers (while i cleared usually before odd patches in the past).
In parts i do understand (still not like) the choices which were made and discussions of this type usually come down to the following:
In order to allow absolute casuals some sort of progression system and for them to take part in the "tiers" of gearing, the dungeon system is a necessity. To keep the system 100% accessible, the dungeons must be easy. Dungeons need to be accessible to all classes, surely WHM is the best healer in dungeons, but AST and SCH must be playable as well. Also, the dungeons are nowadays tied into the story and there is only one per patch, so there are some restrictions to the dungeon design wise.
I argue though, that it does not necessarily have to be this way. Some ways dungeons could be improved:
- Content, which is anyway there to be repeated almost daily does not necessarily have to be story related at all. If this is the only way to gear, casuals will still be able to unlock it and run it, surely. Absolute casuals might even forget about it entirely, but they are not interested in savage anyway. So why even get gear in the first place? Its cool if it is story related, but please leave roadblocks/text etc out. That's only interesting the first 1-5 times you do the dungeon.
- Dungeons do not have to be streamlined in order to be accessible. For example they could have two ways (or even better two areas clearable at your own pace) one with enemies that die faster, but hit hard and one with enemies that take longer but can be easily handled.
- Pulls which can not be handled at once should be reintroduced. This would also remove the strict wall-to-wall dogma and people might have to start thinking again.
- In order to keep it accessible for different classes, just be creative. Introduce Stun resistance at a certain enemy and at once WHM sucks. Introduce map mechanics which disfavour particular classes. Or forget about it completely, since for the highest tier of play, there will always be a meta.
- Introduce a bit of randomness. Wanderers Palace huge Tomberry? Have this spawn at a random position and parties will have to figure out ways to avoid it and still clear up map mechanics. Have enemies attack random players from time to time to spice it up for healers. There is surely more to this, but i am not super creative atm.
- Also the easiest approach to make dungeons at least somewhat interesting again: Put more dungeons into Expert roulette. Expert is the most time efficient, surely by far most used way to cap tomes. Who would come up with the idea to have almost no variety in this? Why not reintroduce all 50/60/70 and 80 dungeons into the roulette and let people play them with ilvl/lvl sync (not max cap, but enough to smoothly clear). 50/60/70 can still stay as it is, just remove ilvl sync there. If even this is too much effort, have us at least play all former expert dungeons with ilvl sync.
Dungeons are currently necessary to gear up if you can't do / don't want savage and i think there is a considerable portion of the playerbase could possibly be interested in improvements of the dungeons or the underlying system. Let me all know what you think, maybe i am just stupid, to not acknowledge the greatness of the modern dungeon experience.
tl;dr: Dungeons are boring because they feature no variety and the design is lackluster. They were much better and more fun in ARR, when they featured actual challenges even if only speedrun potential. There should be improvements to content, which is meant to be played on a daily basis.
submitted by /u/Shinlos
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Continue reading...
Back when i played in ARR i really loved gearing up my character. With the two possibilities of current Savage content (back then it was Coil) and weekly capping in high end tomestones, one usually tended to do both in order to be efficient and this principle still applies today. The "Expert" dungeon roullette was added in 2.2 (i think) so this has also pretty much been here forever and stayed the most time-efficient way to farm to cap. However, recently (especially in Shb, but started in SB) i do not find fun in obatining current gear especially by tomestone capping and i think the reason is mainly the dungeon design and the lack of variability.
Elaborating on this, dungeons were designed (what i feel) in a fundamentally different way in ARR and i will have to explain this on two examples:
1. Wanderers Palace: This dungeon allowed a multitude of different tactics including:
- Lockouts of enemies from the Bossroom in order to skip mobs.
- Skipping of mobs by sneaking past them.
- Different ways of opening doors especially while handeling the big unkillable tomberry in the middle section.
- Huge pulls with many small enemies, which required tanks to utilize movement tactics to avoid some hits.
- Brayflox (Hard): This was basically the go-to dungeon one Tier later and had:
- Very large possible pulls with small enemies, partially ranged.
- Potential for a Boss cheese in the end
- Generally very high speedrun potential
Dungeons generally forced tank and group movement through the sheer amount of enemies which were all pretty small and and therefore swarmed the tank fast, while hitting hard enough to actually pose a problem. Teleporters allowed skips for coordinated groups. Sometimes there used to be alternate ways to clear areas and there were pulls which just could not be done, had to be split in half or (at best) felt like they could not be done but were possible at higher gear levels (thus creating actual purpose for the dungeon). Some enemies were ranged and forced you to use terrain in order to get them into your mob. Terrain in general could be abused (corners, pillars etc) to control enemies.
At those times i could not wait to logon on Tuesdays in order to get a up-to-date geared 4-man party from my guild together and farm the shit out of those dungeons. I used to ommit roulettes entirely since the very fast clears and no qeue times allowed to farm to cap time efficiently even without the daily bonus. When all these tactics were combined, experienced players could improve their routes for the dungeons and get clears roughly in half of the time compared to random groups.
Unfortunately for me, this has largely changed. In general modern "Expert" dungeons are a lot different design wise. They are mostly very beautiful, strongly tied into the story and feature more interesting boss fights. On the downside though, they play extremely streamlined with almost no variety and potential for improvement. I am gonna list some of the things that i dislike here:
- Some portions of dungeons which disallow any activities besides tank and spank of utterly lame enemy groups in a set time frame. Most prominent example is the beginning of Anamnesis. Surely this part looks nice, feels cool at the first time and tells the story nicely. But unfortunately we have to do this every second day so it wears off super fast and becomes annoying. Additionally this removes all room for improvement in clear times for this section.
- Mobs are almost exclusively 2-4 groups in front of a wall which can be pulled, tanked and killed by even the most inexperienced parties, even largely undergeared.
- The idea of parties getting better and more used to the dungeons (also gear up) in order to clear faster and smoother was completely removed -> Basically no speedrun potential. Some of the old feeling pops up before the second boss (i think) of Anamnesis, where many small sahagin-like enemies can be pulled. Unfortunately they hang in some stupid gating mechanic which kinda dumbs down the pull since usually they are not spawned at the same time and therefore do not have to be handled collectively.
- Pulls are spiced up by mechanics (mostly AoE telegraph or kickable cast), mostly introduced to larger enemies (for example in Twinning). They force movement in a very direct way or require some reaction and i generally appreciate this. Unfortunately the introduction of huge hitboxes can also sort of dumb down the movement requirements, as you can use them as a shield against others. Anyway this is not entirely bad and i liked it in the Twinning.
- Almost no free roamable areas or map mechanics at all. Sometimes there is some area denial (mostly dropping meteors, shooting cannons, other round AoE telegraphs), but this seriously could be sooo much better and more complicated and interesting.
- Focus in general is on the bosses, even though everyone knows, that the bosses are not the hard part in the dungeon. So why are dungeons still designed around it? There are tons of amazing boss fights in this game but there is only very limited content in which many small enemies need to be handled (thats dungeons and now Bozjan).
All of this makes me dislike cap farming nowadays and thus i basically stopped doing it. For me personally this also leads to reluctance to do current savage tiers (while i cleared usually before odd patches in the past).
In parts i do understand (still not like) the choices which were made and discussions of this type usually come down to the following:
In order to allow absolute casuals some sort of progression system and for them to take part in the "tiers" of gearing, the dungeon system is a necessity. To keep the system 100% accessible, the dungeons must be easy. Dungeons need to be accessible to all classes, surely WHM is the best healer in dungeons, but AST and SCH must be playable as well. Also, the dungeons are nowadays tied into the story and there is only one per patch, so there are some restrictions to the dungeon design wise.
I argue though, that it does not necessarily have to be this way. Some ways dungeons could be improved:
- Content, which is anyway there to be repeated almost daily does not necessarily have to be story related at all. If this is the only way to gear, casuals will still be able to unlock it and run it, surely. Absolute casuals might even forget about it entirely, but they are not interested in savage anyway. So why even get gear in the first place? Its cool if it is story related, but please leave roadblocks/text etc out. That's only interesting the first 1-5 times you do the dungeon.
- Dungeons do not have to be streamlined in order to be accessible. For example they could have two ways (or even better two areas clearable at your own pace) one with enemies that die faster, but hit hard and one with enemies that take longer but can be easily handled.
- Pulls which can not be handled at once should be reintroduced. This would also remove the strict wall-to-wall dogma and people might have to start thinking again.
- In order to keep it accessible for different classes, just be creative. Introduce Stun resistance at a certain enemy and at once WHM sucks. Introduce map mechanics which disfavour particular classes. Or forget about it completely, since for the highest tier of play, there will always be a meta.
- Introduce a bit of randomness. Wanderers Palace huge Tomberry? Have this spawn at a random position and parties will have to figure out ways to avoid it and still clear up map mechanics. Have enemies attack random players from time to time to spice it up for healers. There is surely more to this, but i am not super creative atm.
- Also the easiest approach to make dungeons at least somewhat interesting again: Put more dungeons into Expert roulette. Expert is the most time efficient, surely by far most used way to cap tomes. Who would come up with the idea to have almost no variety in this? Why not reintroduce all 50/60/70 and 80 dungeons into the roulette and let people play them with ilvl/lvl sync (not max cap, but enough to smoothly clear). 50/60/70 can still stay as it is, just remove ilvl sync there. If even this is too much effort, have us at least play all former expert dungeons with ilvl sync.
Dungeons are currently necessary to gear up if you can't do / don't want savage and i think there is a considerable portion of the playerbase could possibly be interested in improvements of the dungeons or the underlying system. Let me all know what you think, maybe i am just stupid, to not acknowledge the greatness of the modern dungeon experience.
tl;dr: Dungeons are boring because they feature no variety and the design is lackluster. They were much better and more fun in ARR, when they featured actual challenges even if only speedrun potential. There should be improvements to content, which is meant to be played on a daily basis.
submitted by /u/Shinlos
[link] [comments]
Continue reading...