Variant dungeons are actually boring

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Originally Posted by Koros

- Extremely boring trash

- You have to wait for the NPCs forever to progress the dungeon.

- Literally the same first boss every route doing the same few mechanics (with like one irrelevant variant each time).

- The last bosses do nothing interesting really, other than maybe the secret final boss which copied Ktisis' first boss' mechanic but made it slightly interesting by cloning itself

- Variant actions are so pointless and boring compared to Lost actions.

Yeah no thanks, Delubrum Reginae normal was 20x more fun than Variant dungeons, and with Lost actions it was actually fun because they significantly alter how you play your job like with Irregular tank with Lost Blood Rage. It's honestly really sad how Variant dungeons are seen as good content in EW it shows how low standards are now.



sry, i forgot ff14 is a side-game to do while everyone's just watching succession on hbo, my bad pls disregard this post

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You find them boring. I enjoy them a lot. Imagine that. People can have different opinions and they don't matter at all. I will continue to enjoy them. You will not. Life will go on.

Eh, I for one enjoy them. Sure, they are not perfect and things like reward structure need to change I say, but I hope its somthing thyey can improve in time. Nice to have some solo aimed content outside of just quests at least.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

They need to be put in their own roulette, as it stands right now for me they are better than regular dungeons (a low low bar to clear) but you have no incentive to return once you have cleared them (even clearing all 12 paths is debatable if it’s even worth it) and the game doesn’t have any systems to make you want to return so they are just kinda there

As it stands I love how solo’ing these is just another way to show us how bad current healers are but that’s an argument I’ve spent way too long arguing

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Clearing those 12 paths is literally the most boring thing I've done this week and I had to watch HBO while doing it because it's so god-awful boring. And yes, I actually did it blind. It's not hard, just read the NPC dialogue and the V&C lore entries. And no, doing it blind does not make it exciting because 5% of the time is spent on figuring the puzzle out, which yes is interesting and slightly fun, but the other 95% is repeating the same shit again. And actually it is even more unfun doing it blind because if you have a wrong theory congrats you are literally repeating everything again for like 20 mins so I actually totaled 14 runs.

The lowest point is when I reached the place with the tree and the stone and I was falling asleep because I knew that I had to repeat the exact same sequence of events again, this time just pushing the tree instead of the stone and I'm like "ok".

This "variant" feature of the variant dungeons is about the shallowest way to implement branching paths ever. It's just three different short dungeons mashed into one and doing one emote changes one boss's attack from water to fire.......... oooookay.

They should literally just copy Metroid or Castlevania if they're this bad at designing non-linear dungeons but well, we know the real reason they can't make this good: too expensive and too much brainpower required. Or if they can't just bring back complex job design, like seriously the reason it's so unfun is because you're just pressing your AoE 1-2-3 combo like 90% of the time.

I don't have much problem with the Variant Dungeons, but I dislike the Devs. making the first boss be the same one again on all paths.

I was hoping they wouldn't do that again, but nah they gotta double down.


What I don't get is they put all this complexity into the boss models, animations, music, VFX, SFX, whatever.

But it comes to level design its just very shallow, and I say that in general for the whole game minus a few dungeons.

I don't understand what is happening here.

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Originally Posted by Kaliesto

I don't have much problem with the Variant Dungeons, but I dislike the Devs. making the first boss be the same one again on all paths.

I was hoping they wouldn't do that again, but nah they gotta double down.


What I don't get is they put all this complexity into the boss models, animations, music, VFX, SFX, whatever.

But it comes to level design its just very shallow, and I say that in general for the whole game minus a few dungeons.

I don't understand what is happening here.

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The fact that they use this beautiful animation of a blossoming cherry blossom tree on the first boss all so they can recycle a more basic form of E12N and make it a new boss definitely says alot about their design decisions for the variant dungeons

First runs were fun, but my issues is that for something you need to do at minium 12 times for the true ending, there really isn't enough variety. Different paths all fine and dandy in theory, but in reality they all lead to the same boss (except 1) and most of the "different" routes, are just do the same thing you always did, but click the tree instead of the stone.

At the very least, if each initial route had a different first boss it would help a lot with the tedium. Fighting the same ninja 12 times, but slightly different doesn't really scream variety

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Originally Posted by Gullis

First runs were fun, but my issues is that for something you need to do at minium 12 times for the true ending, there really isn't enough variety. Different paths all fine and dandy in theory, but in reality they all lead to the same boss (except 1) and most of the "different" routes, are just do the same thing you always did, but click the tree instead of the stone.

At the very least, if each initial route had a different first boss it would help a lot with the tedium. Fighting the same ninja 12 times, but slightly different doesn't really scream variety

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exactly, it's boring even within the first few runs lmao

Honestly, I think the only reason variant dungeons are somewhat interesting is because the standard dungeons have become so insufferably dull at this point that any kind of deviation from the norm feels refreshing, even if it's something as mundane as having branching paths with minimal actual influence on how things play out.

Criterion really makes me wish we could've gotten proper hard modes for all of the other dungeons in the game, though.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

Criterion really makes me wish we could've gotten proper hard modes for all of the other dungeons in the game, though.

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I would love some Extreme and/or Savage dungeons.

The place is pretty (I really enjoyed the setting), the concept is nice on paper and doing every boss once or twice was fun. It's also good to get solo content as an option.

However, when it comes to the execution, doing the ninja 12 times was not fun and save for the last boss we didn't need to see the other 3 bosses that much either (I kept changing jobs to try to add a bit of variety). The adds along the paths were boring: just spam aoe and take an occasional side step to avoid their slow aoe.

I wish there would have been more boss variety, more interesting add fights (Criterion was better) and a more difficult solo option as it was all too easy.