I know that this suggestion might not be welcomed by the community, but I think that dungeons could use a bit of a revamp to bring more content into the game and increase dungeon replayability. Right now, most dungeons are centered around either spamming them for levels or just to grind out roulettes. Most of this content is trivial to players who have cleared the dungeon already, and the only real exciting moments is when someone messes up, doesn’t dodge a mechanic, or simply stands in the wrong place and takes some additional damage. What if there was a system in place that allowed a group of four seasoned players to be challenged by dungeon content where the dungeon increased in difficulty (mob HP, damage taken, dungeon timer shortened, etc.) in order to push players who were looking for a challenge?
Expert Dungeons - Take the dungeons already in place and just add “expert” versions of these dungeons. Players, from the Group Finder Menu, could select to run the dungeon in whatever difficulty mode they would desire ranging in difficulty from 1-25 (or more). Levels 1-5 would be available to them, and clearing lvl5 would open up higher ranks of selectable difficulty, and so on. Mobs have higher HP amounts, do more damage, and may require the group to pull mobs in certain order or at a certain pace to ensure survivability. The dungeon timer would be reduced in order to “push” players to finish the dungeon within time. Of course, these limitations would be enhanced the higher you pushed you pushed the dungeon difficulty.
Linking to Story - It would be important to bring a story element to the dungeons, so tying this type of content in with Cid and some sort of newly discovered Allag technology where the Warrior of Light could train to improve their own skills to overcome upcoming events.
Rewards - Rewarding players for pushing this type of content would also need to be provided, outside of just tomestones. The suggested rewards I had in mind were centered around dyes, glamour pieces (specialized to running this type of content), materia, gil, cards, mounts (for achieving higher levels of difficulty), housing items, and other types of non-marketable items. I do not like the idea of adding in gear that scales with dungeon difficulty because I feel that would trivialize other aspects of the game and create a situation where the Devs would be having to scale content based upon this gear. Likewise, adding scaling gear from these dungeons would make the concept mandatory for other players and center the entire game around running these dungeons for increasingly higher ilvls of equipment to make other content easier. However, the rewards need to be incentivizing enough to make the content desirable to run and repeat without disrupting all other forms of content.
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Expert Dungeons - Take the dungeons already in place and just add “expert” versions of these dungeons. Players, from the Group Finder Menu, could select to run the dungeon in whatever difficulty mode they would desire ranging in difficulty from 1-25 (or more). Levels 1-5 would be available to them, and clearing lvl5 would open up higher ranks of selectable difficulty, and so on. Mobs have higher HP amounts, do more damage, and may require the group to pull mobs in certain order or at a certain pace to ensure survivability. The dungeon timer would be reduced in order to “push” players to finish the dungeon within time. Of course, these limitations would be enhanced the higher you pushed you pushed the dungeon difficulty.
Linking to Story - It would be important to bring a story element to the dungeons, so tying this type of content in with Cid and some sort of newly discovered Allag technology where the Warrior of Light could train to improve their own skills to overcome upcoming events.
Rewards - Rewarding players for pushing this type of content would also need to be provided, outside of just tomestones. The suggested rewards I had in mind were centered around dyes, glamour pieces (specialized to running this type of content), materia, gil, cards, mounts (for achieving higher levels of difficulty), housing items, and other types of non-marketable items. I do not like the idea of adding in gear that scales with dungeon difficulty because I feel that would trivialize other aspects of the game and create a situation where the Devs would be having to scale content based upon this gear. Likewise, adding scaling gear from these dungeons would make the concept mandatory for other players and center the entire game around running these dungeons for increasingly higher ilvls of equipment to make other content easier. However, the rewards need to be incentivizing enough to make the content desirable to run and repeat without disrupting all other forms of content.
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