FFXIV dungeons are a little bit too linear?

http://36.media.tumblr.com/f2dea3083...r148f3_500.png

Might be nostalgia blindness? I can only speak for myself of course, but I've found nearly every game from the PS2 on with dungeons to be incredibly linear, barring maybe the .hack franchise.

I hate..and I mean HATE running dungeons in this game. They feel very linear...I like your suggestion OP, is a really good idea.

They're trying to cater to the largest audience. And the majority wants things to be relatively fast, regardless of linearity or complexity (the majority of them would prefer the former). When they added certain mechanics, like a puzzle or a boss mechanic that made it comparatively more difficult (thus lengthening the time they had to be in the dungeon) people complained-- a lot. What more if we get larger dungeons or multiple paths? Party finder specific groups aside, duty finder runs will immediately look for the most convenient/quickest path through the dungeon for the roulette tome bonus.

That said, I'd prefer it if they made the dungeons have, at the very least, a branching path or two. I'm actually surprised there haven't been more complaints about the linearity after FFXIII's release (because everyone and their dogs were bashing it for how linear the maps were, and that you could see how linear it was on the minimap).

Here's one from FFXI:

http://www.ffxi-atlas.com/maps_norma..._halvung_1.jpg
http://www.ffxi-atlas.com/maps_norma..._halvung_2.jpg
http://www.ffxi-atlas.com/maps_norma..._halvung_3.jpg
http://www.ffxi-atlas.com/maps_norma..._halvung_4.jpg

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Originally Posted by Thunda_Cat_SMASH

Might be nostalgia blindness? I can only speak for myself of course, but I've found nearly every game from the PS2 on with dungeons to be incredibly linear, barring maybe the .hack franchise.

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Final Fantasy XII Lhusu Mines

http://i1202.photobucket.com/albums/...su-Mines-4.png

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Originally Posted by Colorful

U'Ghamaro Mines is everything but exciting..

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The layout is, imagine if it was a real dungeon, compared to those linear ones we get. I'm not saying that it's exciting as it is now, just the design. ;)

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Originally Posted by basketofseals

I think you're a little backwards here. The casuals are the ones who would like this the most. They wouldn't mind stopping to smell the flowers and appreciate possibly labyrinthine design. It's the "hardcore" crowd that would hate it and demand people take the fastest route.

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Precisely, I enjoy runs in levelling roulette where I get an enthusiastic newbie who wants to see everything. If my time is too tight to do a FULL dungeon run taking as long as it takes then I shouldn't be running it outside of a premade. Sorry about it, but it's true. It's a game, not a punishment to be over and done with ASAP.

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Originally Posted by Eimian_Eda

Thing is if they just removed their "Invisible walls", despite how much SE loves them, dungeons (and the world) would become so much more open instantly. No resource cost there.

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Until you figure in that it's highly unlikely that areas behind the invisible walls have been checked for collision & trap problems, out of bounds entrances, crash-causing texture errors, etc. I remember how long it took to debug simple Quake levels to ensure things like the above didn't creep in and that was far, far more simple a setup.

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Originally Posted by DragonSlayer45

While this is true, I have to ask: When did MMOs go from being time sinks to instant gratification speedrun zerg fests?

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My guess, the time WoW launched

Disagree WoW created vanilla Blackrock Depths, Stratholme, Molten Core, and other huge nonlinear dungeon zones like that. But yeah on the topic of BRD...

Blackrock Depths was a beautiful nonlinear dungeon full of quest objectives, unlocking doors, and tons of optional bosses. It was also home to a raid instance entrance and a vital forge deep within for crafting epics. It had a lot of verticality so by virtue of that the map was awful and unhelpful. I didn't play vanilla, but I hear a top to bottom clear took 4-6 hours to get to the final boss Thaurissan, and even if you just wanted to zerg to Thaurissan it took at least an hour assuming no one got lost.

It was a masterpiece of dungeon engineering but way too damn long and involved for an instanced dungeon. The only way I could see this working in FF's more bite-size content style would be sort of like Diadem - you start at a certain point in a BRD-size dungeon and are given an objective nearby to clear, then you get there.

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Originally Posted by Thunda_Cat_SMASH

Might be nostalgia blindness? I can only speak for myself of course, but I've found nearly every game from the PS2 on with dungeons to be incredibly linear, barring maybe the .hack franchise.

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FFXII dungeons were faaaaaaaaaaar from linear.

I might sound rude but the reason I think they won't ever implement this is that a lot of FFXIV players are not accostumed to the FF design of dungeons: time-consuming mazes where you had acess to 2 or more save-points to take breaks. It could be done, but they won't risk losing the WoW-side of the playerbase because of that.

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Originally Posted by Culfinrandir

Until you figure in that it's highly unlikely that areas behind the invisible walls have been checked for collision & trap problems, out of bounds entrances, crash-causing texture errors, etc. I remember how long it took to debug simple Quake levels to ensure things like the above didn't creep in and that was far, far more simple a setup.

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True. But if SE can't code us simply jumping from a cliff (as opposed to walking up and back down again) or hoping over a railing (I'm looking at you Gridania Inn), then... it's just sad to think about. These walls shouldn't have existed in the first place. (Sides, nothing wrong with finding a glitch in the system ;) )

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Originally Posted by Veerne

There's no point in making dungeons labyrinthine because people will always just find the shortest and fastest route to the end. Even if you were to compare MMORPG dungeons to single player RPG dungeons, you have to keep in mind that in singe player RPGs the dungeons are the meat of the gameplay, whereas in MMORPGs they are just one piece of the bigger platter of content. MMORPGs also tend to focus more on the boss challenges, not exploration, since exploration is kind of useless in a game where you are meant to do the same place multiple times.

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Then let them find that route and take it if they wish? Dungeon design can give reasons to take path A over path B. Heck, Stratholm in WoW had two separate paths: Living and Dead side. People could choose either or and fight their way to the gate to get on the other side of town. Also let's not forget Black Rock Depths, a WHOLE GIANT CITY as a dungeon. People didn't expect to clear all of it, they chose which path/bosses/areas to kill or clear depending what they wanted out of it; gear, doing a quest, etc.

So, I think we all need to take some things into consideration here.

1. Previous Final Fantasy games were heavily based on Dungeons & Dragons. This one isn't. From a developer standpoint, they want this game to appeal to a massive audience. Yoshi has said so several times. He's specifically said he doesn't want to implement things that could result in the players not wanting to do it. It's a bit of a silly fear, IMO, because you simply can't please everyone. Not a lot of players of the MMORPG are or even were fans of D&D and the sort of games that spawned from them. I'm sure some of you are thinking "but all of my friends LOVED Baldur's Gate!" but unfortunately you and your friends don't make up the majority of the player base anymore.

2. Dungeons in Final Fantasy XII were actually used as portions of the story and side quest content. There were several times in FFXII that you entered a portion of a dungeon, found your way through, exited on the other side and continued on with the story. Portions of it were simply blocked from access until you reached a particular point in the story. That opened up additional side content, and you had a reason to go back in. Other times, the portions of the dungeon would be blocked by monsters that you simply couldn't kill at your given level (I'm looking at you Adrammalech.) This type of blocking doesn't fit into an MMO where players would probably find this type of blocking just as frustrating as a door requiring a key. I do, however, think that this design of dungeon could be incorporated into the open world map of the dungeon as just a sort of Diadem-style open area that players can explore. Remember though, that in single player games it's OK for developers to put the most powerful weapon in the game down on of those random corridors blocked by monsters that you should or shouldn't be able to kill at any given time. That doesn't work in MMOs because having powerful equipment available freely in the open world negates the purpose for the standardized instanced dungeon. Some would argue that they'd prefer the open world style over instanced. I like them both.

3. Single player games utilize their dungeons as time sinks. For the most part, you spend your time in a dungeon fighting mobs to level up and get stronger. That's second to the story purpose of you going in there. In an MMO the story is NPC-based and rarely has you go gather anything of any real importance. As for the first portion, of entering dungeons for leveling purposes, remember that this is an MMO. The leveling process is designed to teach you how to play your job, and how to perform in a party scenario, to prepare you for taking on the end-game. Now, I agree that the leveling process could indeed be more interesting, however, we all have the feeling deep down inside that tells us not to spend a lot of time on something that's going to be replaced. You can spend weeks working through a dungeon to get that awesome Lv55 armor, and then replace it when you do the next dungeon at Lv57. It's really only at end-game that your investment for armor really pays off because you're wearing that stuff for a significantly longer period of time.

In closing, I agree that a more interesting dungeon design would only benefit the game, provided that players kept an open mind. However, I'm also one of the guys that gets bored doing the same stuff over and over, so if it's any more complex than it needs to be, it's not something that I'd be inclined to repeat for something like an Esoterics-grind.

Actual Edit, not by-passing 1000 character limit: I think it'd change the whole paradigm by shifting the Tomestone reward to the bosses instead of just the completion of the duty. That, I think, would encourage the full clears of dungeons with bosses and mini-bosses lurking behind sprawling corridors. You can speed run through and get a third of the total reward in a "third" of the time, or you can stay and clear all of them for the full reward. A daily bonus of 15% your reward would still encourage daily clears, and with it being percent-based, off what you already picked up, it would make full clears more appealing.

FFXIV is a textbook MMORPG of the conventions of the past decade. Doesn`t like to sail away too much from the more traditional formulas. Linear instanced dungeons are heritage of this era and FFXIV just sticks with what works.
Exploration in my MMORPG? What is this 2004?

MMORPG today are more MMO than RPG, what works is quick, linear and steamlined content. Exploration and alternatives just waste developing resources. Hopefully the east is sending a few MMORPGs this way that go back a bit in time, to open world dungeons and more diverse ways to play the same instance dungeon.

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Originally Posted by Morningstar1337

My guess, the time WoW launched

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I wouldn't point the finger at World of Warcraft either. I never played WoW, but I've looked at a few of the dungeon maps from that game and even it has a lot more substance built in them than all of the dungeons in this game.

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Originally Posted by Klamor

-stuff about FF12-

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While I don't think its fair to compare FFXIV to a single player RPG, but I agree, FF12's dungeon layout was marvelous. I still remember getting lost in the Great Crystal, couldn't use the map and was getting ambushed by Lv. 60+ mobs on the way to Ultima. Fun times.

However, even comparing it to other MMOs, all of FF14's dungeons are just Point A to Point B to Point C excursions.

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Originally Posted by Morningstar1337

My guess, the time WoW launched

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As I mentioned above; surprisingly nope! Course some dungeons WERE linear (Scarlet Monastery for example) but there were a lot of exploration zones as well.

Black Rock Depths (it's difficult to get an idea from above like this because there are multiple levels):

http://www.wow-pro.com/guidepics/brdmapg.jpg

Stratholm:

http://www.videogamemaps.net/wow/map...-%20Mephea.jpg

Zul'Gurub:

http://fin.instinct.org/maps/zul-gurub.jpg

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Originally Posted by DragonSlayer45

I wouldn't point the finger at World of Warcraft either. I never played WoW, but I've looked at a few of the dungeon maps from that game and even it has a lot more substance built in them than all of the dungeons in this game.



While I don't think its fair to compare FFXIV to a single player RPG, but I agree, FF12's dungeon layout was marvelous. I still remember getting lost in the Great Crystal, couldn't use the map and was getting ambushed by Lv. 60+ mobs on the way to Ultima. Fun times.

However, even comparing it to other MMOs, all of FF14's dungeons are just Point A to Point B to Point C excursions.

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If you really look at FFXIV, it has more characteristics taken from FFXII than probably anything, anywhere else. It's part of why I enjoy XIV. I had been looking for an MMO-version of XII for a long time.

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Originally Posted by Felis

We need dungeons again similar to old Toto-Rak

http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...ialDevices.jpg
Many paths, many endbosses, but only 1 endboss can be reached depending of the path the party unlock.

Gather first all blue photocells to unlock the blue gate. Then gather all green photocells to unlock the green gate or the door of the first endboss. Unlocking an endboss door use all photocells and the other gates of the dungeon can't be unlocked anymore.

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Thank you for showing this. This is what we need.

This is another illusion of choice issue. Tam Tara used to be longer and had optional bosses and branching paths in beta. But people didn't care about them and just went straight to the end, so they shortened it and made dungeons more linear. And even if it was branching paths to reach the boss, only a handful of people would get to enjoy the mystery, as once it had been explored everyone would know the best route to take and there would just be animosity towards new people who want to complete their map.

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Originally Posted by Magis

Then let them find that route and take it if they wish?

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They will and that will become the accepted way of doing things and any one that tries to argue against it will probably be shunned. Which leads me to my next point, I'm sure SE will realize that the same thing will happen and as such, why take the time to do such a thing when players are just going to naturally gravitate towards the path of least resistance per usual? Even if you make the shortest path the most difficult one, I have a very strong suspicion that players would just drop until they can find a group capable of doing that shortest path. I appreciate the sentiment, I enjoy long exploration dungeons myself and seeing all the interesting stuff and hidden nooks and crannies, but I feel that the time of dungeons like that is gone now and it goes in the bin with other obsolete MMO mechanics like exp loss and having to carry around actual ammunition.

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Originally Posted by Khalithar

They will and that will become the accepted way of doing things and any one that tries to argue against it will probably be shunned.

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Give people a reason to explore and they will. Yes, if you put a reward down one path and nothing anywhere else, of course people will shun it. That was the great thing about BRD, there were different items depending where you went, and different objectives needed going different paths. At the same time, they weaved in a story and setting that made the place believable and fun to explore. Dungeons in FFXI had different level range mobs in different spots, NMs here and there, and some required different paths to connect to different zones. Though this was more an openworld dungeon which doesn't compare well to instanced ones.

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Originally Posted by Khalithar

I appreciate the sentiment, I enjoy long exploration dungeons myself and seeing all the interesting stuff and hidden nooks and crannies, but I feel that the time of dungeons like that is gone now and it goes in the bin with other obsolete MMO mechanics like exp loss and having to carry around actual ammunition.

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Yeah, seems anything that gave MMO's depth was thrown in that bin (can add elemental systems to that as well), and all that is left is a bare-bones husk with a shiny coat of paint.

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I'm actually surprised there haven't been more complaints about the linearity after FFXIII's release (because everyone and their dogs were bashing it for how linear the maps were, and that you could see how linear it was on the minimap).

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Funny how people didn't seem to think FF7 was linear, although it only gave you one path to progress. You just had the option to backtrack (but no real reason to for 90% of the game). Fort Condor was optional and could be ignored, and 2 characters could also be ignored or never gotten. But the entire path westward to rocket city and then eastward to Temple of the Ancients, are linear. By the time you need to find your (only way) to Icicle place, it's the only place you haven't visited, besides possibly Wutai (but I'd do it later, with a flying airship). And people didn't pan it for being linear.

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My guess, the time WoW launched

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When they went from openworld dungeons everyone can compete in to instanced dungeons where everyone has their own private things and where griefing/camping is harder to do.

The solution could be quite simple if one would think about it. Here's some food for thought:

Dungeons could be made non-linear and with multiple rewards. They'd have to pull some ideas from other games (like wow), but it'd be possible.

Have multiple branching paths that overlap in places, and several bosses scattered throughout the dungeon. Not just the ffxiv standard of 3 bosses per dungeon...but maybe like 6 or 7 bosses in the dungeon. In order to get to a boss, you may have to go down path C which requires you to do something to 2.0 toto-rak and the little balls of light. You gather them, you get access to that boss. Said boss drops a chest that pulls it's rng loot from the gear loot table for that dungeon. More bosses, more loot.

Of course, that would just make people take the straightforward path to the endboss. Which is why one little dungeon mechanic would need to be added. RNG DOORS!

Imagine you start the dungeon, and you go forward. You immediately find yourself with 3 paths before you. Except that this instance, the dungeon loaded with paths 1 and 2 closed. You have to go down path 3 which takes you a certain way. Next time you enter the dungeon, doors 2 and 3 are closed. Guess what?! You're going down a new path! You'd technically be able to fight all the bosses in the dungeon if you EXPLORE (OMG), but even if you decide that you want to try and just rush it, your rng doors will make sure that you'll be taking different paths each time.

i.e. you'll fight 3 bosses before the end boss, and there are 6 bosses not including endboss. One run you'll fight 1, 4, 6. Another you'll fight 2, 3, 5. Another you'll fight 1,2,4. Ta-da! You're dungeon just got interesting. Why? Because there are multiple paths, and which paths are unlocked are randomly determined the instance is loaded.

The problem is the players. Nobody wants to do all the extra turns and corners if they don't have to. They want to get in and get out asap.

& what he said too --^

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Originally Posted by Veerne

There's no point in making dungeons labyrinthine because people will always just find the shortest and fastest route to the end.

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What he said.. ^

The fastest route is always a straight line. With people who just want it over with they'll speed run right to the closest or easiest boss> end it> repeat. If that old 1.0 dungeon ended if you fought Antares, that would be all the dungeon you needed.
Take XI, the only reason you had to explore places like Garliage, Sky, Sea, was either to find places to camp mobs for exp, hunt Nm's or look for quest/mission "?". Otherwise you had to randomly run about in groups hand mapping the place until you find that random mob dropping a key to a random chest in a different section of the area to get a dungeon map KI. All while drawing the shortest, straightest route to the various goals. Once Wiki gets the map and route/directions posted people followed that and avoided further exploration. Until I eventually got those maps I got lost so often in sky and sea. I just didn't want to go there past the main story or go further than the outside, and I still don't.

A timed dungeon that big from 1.0 would have a long queue line and have little room for mistakes. Imagine if dps was low, died several times to other bosses and you got to the end with 5 min left on a average 13 min fight; and one person wants to watch the 4 min cutscene. Keep it simple and keep it to point for efficiency. Otherwise a large multy path/segmented raid dungeon sounds good but if your held up by one group who is barely making it through, and decides to randomly loose 1/2 their members because the setup sucks. The other two parties on their own sections are now 'dead end" due to a lack of a third group. If anyone noticed, LoA, WoD, Void keeps all path splits in the same section and are not that far apart and can send 1or 2 from each over to fill the gap..

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Originally Posted by Magis

...Also let's not forget Black Rock Depths, a WHOLE GIANT CITY as a dungeon. People didn't expect to clear all of it, they chose which path/bosses/areas to kill or clear depending what they wanted out of it; gear, doing a quest, etc.

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That's it! This games needs something like Black Rock Depths, a place where different paths lead to different rewards...

Having played Wow from BC onwards, I think it's a pretty silly idea to go all gung-ho for multi-level, multi-path dungeon instances. Back in the days when maps were NOT supplied, instances like Mauradon were an exercise in frustration -- nobody wanted to go through them because (a) they got lost (b) purple or orange pathway first? (c) it took waaaay to long. Finding a party for that instance (which was a leveling instance) was problematic, although I will give you points if you played through it in 1.x, as there really wasn't much to do if you couldn't find a raiding party back then.

As far as those suggesting the 'scenic route' ... just try taking the time to read the texts in Gubal Library some time while in a daily DF. See how long you get to admire the scenery. Sheesh.

For premade group, Diadem-style content? Sure. But I would under no circumstances make a dungeon as long and complex looking as the pics on the front page for simple roulette style dungeons. The thought of slogging through one of those labyrinths with 3 other idiots who can't play their jobs sends chills up my spine.

What SE could do is give dungeons different pathways per run. It'll still be a linear pathway, but instead of going down the exact same road, you might have to go in a different direction and fight a different mini-boss. Final boss could also be different, but only if everyone in the party has finished the dungeons quest.

Pathway roulette in your Expert roulette.

While I've stated I do prefer the linear dungeon design, another thought I had while thinking on this topic, what about them just doing a partially randomized dungeon? Say the bosses of the place or the layout is different each time while maintaining parity in the overall difficulty/time of completion?

As someone who always gets lost I prefer linear dungeons, sorry...

People complained and whined about toto-rak's layout. Also OP's comparison to an MMO and non MMO is a bit of a disservice,

http://media.blizzard.com/wow/media/...ing2-large.jpg the "other" big MMO is no better, linear dungeons are a standard thing in most MMO games, it's not a good, or a bad thing, it just is what it is, really

I don't know why people keep cherrypicking very specific examples from WoW. The vast majority of WoW's dungeons are just as linear as FFXIV's, Blizzard has just gotten better at hiding how straightforward they are (like in Ilitsa's photo). About the only thing you have a say in is what order you kill the bosses, but since in most cases you're required to kill all of the bosses anyway, it doesn't really matter.

We also need to stop trying to compare MMORPGs to single-player console RPGs because that's an extreme apples/oranges scenario for a number of reasons that have already been mentioned in this thread.

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Originally Posted by Eimian_Eda

True. But if SE can't code us simply jumping from a cliff (as opposed to walking up and back down again) or hoping over a railing (I'm looking at you Gridania Inn), then... it's just sad to think about. These walls shouldn't have existed in the first place. (Sides, nothing wrong with finding a glitch in the system ;) )

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Totally agree, should have been done from the start. It's just that it would take time & money to go back & redo old content. It's not that I don't want them to, because I have the same wanderlust as you.

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Originally Posted by ElHeggunte

I don't know why people keep cherrypicking very specific examples from WoW.

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It's not cherrypicking. The example of Blackrock Depths/Stratholme/whatever that EQ zone was etc. are large non-linear dungeons from previous MMOs (important) that are easy to get lost in with optional objectives like the OP seems to desire, and explaining why they were discontinued for more linear dungeons.

1) they're huge dev resource sink, imagine something the 10x the size and visual intricacy of the Arboretum - they don't even want to do three dungeons per major patch, so it would have to last basically a whole expansion for one dungeon with their standards.
2) getting lost tends to be a waste of time, casual time-limited players tend to not enjoy "wasting time"
3) dungeon-running players tend to chase objectives and goals. the first time through they may enjoy taking in the sights, but afterwards they want it over with. Heck, a lot of HW dungeons have optional chests off the beaten track and mostly the're ignored.
4) ergo, players will prefer to not waste time getting lost and make a beeline for their objectives, thus invalidating the majority of the dungeon and wasting dev time.

Granted, the devs don't seem adverse to creating instantly obsolete content, but huge dungeons just seem a colossal waste of everyone's time when more concentrated zones lend time for designing interesting bosses (because most of BRD bosses were rather... not special).

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Originally Posted by ElHeggunte

I don't know why people keep cherrypicking very specific examples from WoW. The vast majority of WoW's dungeons are just as linear as FFXIV's, Blizzard has just gotten better at hiding how straightforward they are

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Giving the player the illusion of choice, is better than not even trying. (Don't forget that even though WoW also has linear dungeons, there are enough tricks/areas that you can explore around to do the dungeon different, or even ignore trash mobs entirely.. something you can't do in FF14.)

But alas, we will continue to get lazy, themepark designs, because this game's playerbase seems to like lazy, themepark designs.
Bare minimum work for bare minimum play.

They could reduce the GCD while they're at it, just makes things needlessly extended.

As Dungeons today are mostly used to gear up a fresh max. Level Charakter and then providing some kind of currency system to make it still viable as Content, it doesn't make sense to make it not linear.
No one today runs Dungeons for loot. It is just for ESO and therefor only the fastest way is the way to go.

Another Point from MMOs today vs MMOs before 2005 is the Player base. Back the days MMOs has been played be Computer Nerds that played on a daily base with 3-6 hours each day.

Today, MMOs are played mostly by Gamer that spend around 2 hours a day with gaming.
Releasing a multilayer Dungeon today that needs 4h+ to complete? Wouldn't been played much overall.

If they had a multi-route option, they could make it so that the route is randomized, meaning only certain doors are open each time you enter.
So each time you enter, it's a "different" dungeon experience.

I guess that's still pretty linear but it'd add a bit more differentiation to each time you do the dungeon.
They could also make an "easy" "medium" "hard" path and then add loot accordingly, but I'm sure people would just rage about that.

Also I didn't see this at first->

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Originally Posted by Nestama

What SE could do is give dungeons different pathways per run. It'll still be a linear pathway, but instead of going down the exact same road, you might have to go in a different direction and fight a different mini-boss. Final boss could also be different, but only if everyone in the party has finished the dungeons quest.

Pathway roulette in your Expert roulette.

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I agree with this :O
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OR! What they could do is had side objectives, similar to Diadem, that gives extra Esos. You could speed run the full dungeon for quick esos, or do the longer, more "treasure-hunty" dungeons for extra esos.