I am no expert in designing dungeons, but as someone who has to experience them I don’t like the current state of them. This was intended to be a short rant, but as I started writing it kind of grew.
I’ve done quite a lot of dungeons and a lot of them seem similar formula wise. Currently it feels like entire dungeons are composed of nothing but HP bars, you go through the HP bars of the trash mobs, the HP bars of the environment (gates for example), and the HP bars of the mini-bosses and bosses. Currently the harder dungeons don’t feel like they need more involvement, but rather more time. Explorable mode doesn’t even feel explorable, each dungeon has 3 different paths but they don’t feel different from one another. Yes there is some strategy involved but after the first and second run it all becomes second nature. Some dungeons don’t even require that, since you can figure it out by just following your other members.
I want dungeons that lets party members to split up up into different paths, and dungeons that can’t be done by just following your party. I want more dungeons like the dredge map with out all the dredge, I want switches that activate things, that move objects or terrain that may not be obvious in the first few few seconds after activating them. I want things to happen in the environment that if we miss we miss, and that if we catch it we may end up with a different ending dungeon. I want dungeons that require more effort instead of just time, and I want more explorations instead of chasing map objectives. Right now you path off from a dungeon you hit a wall or a dead end.
The other thing that bugs me is that you got rid of the ‘trinity’, but you haven’t replaced it. The bad thing about trinity was that it forced people into roles they may not have wanted, but the good thing about it is that it was forced involvement and punished people for not being involved (dungeon wipe etc). Now I can mindlessly play any dungeon and still complete a dungeon and be rewarded, maybe I die few more times but overall that is nothing. If we die we get a do over, even if you fail a dynamic event in PVE you don’t get a do over you get something else, but in dungeons we get as many do overs as we want. With the trinity if you lost any role, the dungeon would get a lot harder. Here you can 3 man most dungeons minus a lot of the new ones added in the fractals, the difficulty doesn’t really go up but amount of time spent does. The only dungeons that really get harder from being a man downed in this game, are ones that become impossible because they require a minimum number of players.
TL;DR I want dungeons that are more than just HP bars, dungeons that are actually explorable, dungeons that require a team but not to eat away at an HP bar faster. I want dungeons that if you fail a certain portion you fail it, and have to find another way around or if you find a certain portion you can ignore another part.