Something that I've seen played with in various media (anime/manga/light novels, etc) was the idea of a 'zone' or 'field' dungeons, where rather than traversing a series of linear passages (for all intents and purposes) and fighting packs of monsters, the dungeon was a larger open area, such as a tract of land surrounding a volcano, or a massive ghost ship, or a sand-sunken pyramid, giant cave structures, and so on.
generally "completing" the dungeon is tied to collecting a certain number of keys (such as qarn's stone tablets, most castrums' identification keys, etc ) to open the door to the final boss of the zone--generally by defeating region bosses, or as a reward for completing certain challenges in the dungeon like killing X monsters, pulling levers scattered around (to open gates or raise/lower water levels, etc), pressing switches simultaneously (such as in castrum lacus litore), or navigating a dangerous side-path to find them (platforming puzzles or similar)--where the players have more freedom to choose their path and (if they move carefully enough) potentially skip many smaller monster battles altogether.
monsters and bosses would be located in particular arenas or rooms of the zone, or might wander in a particular region.
usually there are more sources of keys than than required for the final door, to allow players to plan what path they want to take and which challenges to face to clear the dungeon with their party's roles and preferences (or take as much or as little time as they like), or to use extra keys to be spent on more rewards either throughout the dungeon or after the final boss.
for FF14's part, this seems less suited for a proper instanced dungeon (and therefore on the dungeon roulettes, because i could def see drama from people rolling that for a daily and not wanting to do it), but closer to a deep dungeon/heaven on high thing that you and a party specifically queue for, with one larger zone instead of a series of bite-sized floors. i'd say that eureka and bozja (particularly the latter) are too grind-/small-encounter-focused for this--and not to mention mechanically balanced for a far greater number of players--but are sort of steps in that direction?
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generally "completing" the dungeon is tied to collecting a certain number of keys (such as qarn's stone tablets, most castrums' identification keys, etc ) to open the door to the final boss of the zone--generally by defeating region bosses, or as a reward for completing certain challenges in the dungeon like killing X monsters, pulling levers scattered around (to open gates or raise/lower water levels, etc), pressing switches simultaneously (such as in castrum lacus litore), or navigating a dangerous side-path to find them (platforming puzzles or similar)--where the players have more freedom to choose their path and (if they move carefully enough) potentially skip many smaller monster battles altogether.
monsters and bosses would be located in particular arenas or rooms of the zone, or might wander in a particular region.
usually there are more sources of keys than than required for the final door, to allow players to plan what path they want to take and which challenges to face to clear the dungeon with their party's roles and preferences (or take as much or as little time as they like), or to use extra keys to be spent on more rewards either throughout the dungeon or after the final boss.
for FF14's part, this seems less suited for a proper instanced dungeon (and therefore on the dungeon roulettes, because i could def see drama from people rolling that for a daily and not wanting to do it), but closer to a deep dungeon/heaven on high thing that you and a party specifically queue for, with one larger zone instead of a series of bite-sized floors. i'd say that eureka and bozja (particularly the latter) are too grind-/small-encounter-focused for this--and not to mention mechanically balanced for a far greater number of players--but are sort of steps in that direction?
Continue reading...