Dungeon/Cave exploration. How I miss thee.

Even if future dungeons had multiple paths and such, people are still going to go for the fastest route possible and ignore everything else. Why else do you see people complaining about speed bumps in recent dungeons?

I think part of what is happening in the modern RPG and it is not just FFXIV is the RPG is slowly being removed from MMORPG. It is more about combat and shinny objects than RPG anymore. People dont sit and enjoy the universe or environment. It is more about combat than adventure and exploration.

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

Even if future dungeons had multiple paths and such, people are still going to go for the fastest route possible and ignore everything else. Why else do you see people complaining about speed bumps in recent dungeons?

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While I agree Because I think some people always will but not everyone would. I think speed runs are overdone do to several things. One we are forced to do a dungeon over and over and over. I just had to do one dungeon 29 times for the last relic phase not to mention the 20 plus times I did it in roulette for tomes. Well a dungeon is fun the first 1/2 a dozen times after that it starts to be come less interesting and you just want to get it over. Plus it is the whole cookie cutter thing and they are starting to feel alike. I do agree some always will try the fastest and shortest way but I could put together party that want to enjoy a run.

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

Even if future dungeons had multiple paths and such, people are still going to go for the fastest route possible and ignore everything else. Why else do you see people complaining about speed bumps in recent dungeons?

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Solution is stop putting the big shinny object at the end of the dungeon. Of course people will go the shortest route when a dungeon is only used for the newest tokens to get I120 gear.

IF they keep making dungeons only drop Ilvl stuff that is BIS -30, of course people are going to take the shortest route only. The dungeon is a waste of time more or less... people are doing it as a daily quest to get tokens.

The problem is the design and develop of dungeons. Think about it what would happen in dungeons if SE removed both Soldiery and Poetics from them... would as many ppl still run a dungeon at 50? If you answer no then there is something really wrong with their design.

Dungeons that are for story ok make them easy, but add dungeons/raids (Raid as in the traditional sense not Coil which is an instance boss fight) that are challenging, with multiple objectives, that drop relevant gear. And people would complain less about them being longer. I am going to mention a mmo that most people hate here but they need to look at FFXI and salvage style. You had objectives in that and each one droped stuff that was BIS. XIV should do something similar, not that I want to see salvage copied but the concept of multiple objectives and having important stuff come from not just the Main Boss but other things throughout the dungeon/raid as well. Different Paths with Drastically different results.

Ahhh ill just link a map of a dungeon from vanilla WoW BRD
Sadly WoW moved from that design and they now have the same corridor style we have here now.
Thing is though, if you were to clear everything in there it took even an experienced group about 2-3 hours to do.

I'm actually getting really, really tired of the 'wander down this short, incredibly linear path, kill some simple trash mobs, find the boss just standing around picking his nose in a perfectly circular arena, fight boss with static, %hp-based mechanics, get loot that is inevitably crafting mats or untradeable gear (why is almost EVERY piece of gear obtainable in a dungeon untradeable? This is absolutely ridiculous), rinse, repeat.' One of my favorite dungeons in the game? Brayflox Longstop normal mode.

I was just thinking that it would be really awesome to have some new areas to explore that were extra-dangerous. If you go there alone and get spotted you'll be attacked by more than one enemy, similar to dungeons, and may not able to survive or even run away fast enough.

You'd either need to be really stealth or go there with a couple friends so you can make to the other end of the map alive!

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Originally Posted by Wizhard

Ahhh ill just link a map of a dungeon from vanilla WoW BRD
Sadly WoW moved from that design and they now have the same corridor style we have here now.
Thing is though, if you were to clear everything in there it took even an experienced group about 2-3 hours to do.

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You just made me remember how much I miss that dungeon. My fiance and I ran through it once with our 85's and absolutely enjoyed just how monstrous it was.

But on that note, I'm really hoping that they can use the floating islands to add some real sense of exploration and danger to the game.

The problem is the way they input content, people will always seek out the fastest, easier route.
Praetorium and Castrum are pretty large, and people hate running them to the point they're on their own separate roulette with a large bonus.
And "Open World Dungeons" sound great in theory, but in practice all you get are campers, campers, and more campers. Or the entire thing gets used once, and forgotten forever. Like the ones we actually have that no one remembers because once you finish your quest, you're done.
The "boss-at-the-end" approach is completely intentional in order to keep people from ditching out on groups once they complete their own objective. There needs to be a concrete reason to keep going to the end. This is why the three towers have a minion at the end, and why they added a weekly that requires actually completing them.
So yeah, in the end it's because players would only want to explore ONCE that we get 3 linear dungeons every 3 months or so (with probably a lot more than that coming for 3.0) rather than one big open dungeon.
Interestingly enough, this aspect of design even bleeds over to custom maps in games with that feature: Players will overwhelmingly design custom content that is narrow rather than "exploratory" even when given the option to have both.
The reason? The latter takes for-freakin-ever to actually implement, and there's very little reason for it to exist once your audience figures out the shortcuts.
This isn't a single player game where you tackle a dungeon and explore everything once per run of the game. It's a MMO where you WILL be running these dungeons over and over again. Thus, it needs to be tolerable, doable at a good pace, and rewarding.

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Originally Posted by Rhaja

You just made me remember how much I miss that dungeon. My fiance and I ran through it once with our 85's and absolutely enjoyed just how monstrous it was.

But on that note, I'm really hoping that they can use the floating islands to add some real sense of exploration and danger to the game.

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Ahh, but see, running it on 85s is a whole different deal than running it with 5 levels 60s. On 85 mobs do not aggro you and bosses pretty much die when you look at them funny. Did i mention that we had to run it to pretty much the end to attune for the games first raid, molten core? And that its locked to 5 people but molten core is 40 people? :3
Its easy to get nostalgia for these types of dungeons, and dont get me wrong i loved them too, but you just didnt go into those with a random group of people, expecting a full clear.