SUMMARY
I think we can see, from a number of other posts, that the Undaunted Event had its share of disappointments; mostly revolving around a QoL issue arising from a serious design flaw in the Dungeon Finder. As we shall see, the issue revolves around a failure to identify player experience objectives and consequent failure to assign players to teams with common player experience objectives. A secondary issue is the assumption that the ideal squad composition is always healer/tank/damage/damage when some mobs (e.g. Rogerain the Sly) require either four damage dealers, four hybrids (two specialties each) or four versatiles (balanced across all three of healer/tank/damage specialties) because Rogerain the Sly can win just by singling out the healer and wiping the rest of the team (and if that's not already scripted for this NPC, then it should be considered a bug for a character with Rogerain's capabilities).

INTRODUCTION
I've gotten to know a few group dungeons, in solo mode and the good news is that I can't complete most of these solo on a level 30-40 character - although if I worked on refining a variety of solo roles, maybe I'd find something with the right fit for some of those. There are some that I can solo (Wayrest Sewers I) and that one made a great control test which I could use to check other things like ticket drops and residual drop checks (post-event) - and it was a good baseline against which to compare other group dungeons. I was very pleasantly surprised by the variety; particularly in the variety of ways key bosses could rip apart a conventional team and the potential for them to succumb to teams with an alternative team composition.

Initially, the lack of choice of team composition (provided by the Dungeon Finder) looked like a recipe for disaster in the face of some of the bosses, however, the Dungeon Finder has a much bigger problem.

Before we think about roles or, especially, team composition; what we need to be thinking about is whether our character goals are in line with those of the other characters on the team. Anyone can pitch in as a healer or a tank; maybe not a very good healer or tank but better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick. But ... what if there is no healer or tank because the healer and tank decided that they wanted to exterminate every last mob in the dungeon (no matter how insignificant) and were still not 50 yards from the entrance when both damage dealers arrived at the pivotal boss (not the final boss but a blocker, used in many but not all group dungeons, to prevent soloists and non-cohesive teams from progressing further e.g. Ulguna Soul-Reaver)?

OBSERVATIONS
Little things like this led to a situation where materiel-farmers and speed-runners would leave behind other players and either get caught by a pivot boss (learning from this to bail out of "difficult" dungeons and leave teams queued while waiting on replacements) or kill the final boss and conclude the activity before the other team members had been able to tag the final boss and benefit from the "completion" of the "activity". This, in turn, has led to considerable acrimony between players who don't care to see it + just want to get it done and players who want to see the sights, take in the dungeon, maybe kill ALL the beasties along the way and, ultimately, "consume" the "content".

ANALYSIS
It's the fault of neither of these broad groups that players with incompatible player experience objectives get lumped in together. That is a fault in the Dungeon Finder's design.

As I see it, there are a number of groups which will want to take things at a slower pace:

1. Pathfinders: Players who haven't seen the dungeon before
2. Explorers: Players who want to discover every last secret in the dungeon
3. Exterminators: Player characters looking to eradicate every last mob in the dungeon

And there are also players who will want to complete the dungeon as fast as possible for a variety of reasons:

• Speedrunners: Players looking to be on the team which finds and kills the final boss in the fastest time possible
• Farmers: Players who are farming either gear, resources, tickets, gold, trophies or other items and want to cycle multiple dungeons, a dungeon, a location within the dungeon, or a particular boss as fast as possible in order to scoop up whatever they are farming in the shortest possible time because grinding is work, not play (which is why grinding is a good indication of design flaws - usually oversimplification of game mechanics)

At this juncture, I need to point out that play, not work, is the point of gameplay. That's why it's called gameplay, not gamework.

OK, so, in the event a player experience objective system is implemented): What if; in order to shorten wait times in a queue, a player decides to misidentify his or her player experience objectives? The consequences are already there for Pathfinders, Explorers and Exterminators (see above) but it could ruin the experience for these players if Speedrunners or Farmers were to misidentify themselves and where are the consequences? Well, one of the things I noticed, along the way, was all the mobs scrambling back to their start positions once they got too far away. This is a great mechanic for speedrunners and Farmers but is terrible for for players who are there to "consume" the "content" because it strips away the "seriousness" of the "ground" (to used Sun Tsu's turn of phrase) by taking away the consequence of the choice to leave enemies behind. There is a very simple fix. Simply turn off the aggro reset in spawns for Pathfinder, Explorer and Exterminator teams. You could also make this a 'hardcore' option for speedrunners because there's nothing quite like being jumped from behind by chickens coming home to roost. I say option because not all speedrunners are going to want this.

The distinction between seemingly closely aligned team types such Pathfinders, Explorers and Exterminators is also key because exterminators will want to move on once they run out of mobs whereas pathfinders may want to hang around and get to know the environment better while explorers may be searching for real or imagined secrets long after either of the other team type is finished with the dungeon. The same can be said of speedrunners and farmers. Farmers will be moving fast but to different objectives with mobs and bosses merely a nuisance or a means to an end along the way while speedrunners won't necessarily want to stop for heavy containers (sacks and crates) along the way and will be more focussed on a key boss or select group of bosses. Keeping the player on the same team as other players with sufficiently similar goals is key to keeping player character behaviour sufficiently aligned for everyone to have a good experience of the activity.

CONCLUSION
Although there may not currently be enough participation in Group Dungeons to justify offering the player a choice of team type (i.e. Pathfinders, Explorers, Exterminators, speedrunners, Farmers); simply offering this choice will improve the experience enough to make it worth the wait and, in time, improve participation in group dungeon activities well beyond the point where offering this choice is justified. That means a better player experience and better player experience means more referrals and more referrals means more of the kind of sales which result in the committed, long-term customer relationships which provide the valuable ongoing income after the initial sales have long-since passed.

And if you want this game to appeal to players who prefer team activities, then getting players onto teams who share their objectives is a good place to start.