Why can't Dungeons be longer/harder, but more... piecework?

Short answer is the casuals.

Long answer; the devs would rather cater to casuals over midcore and hardcore players(which their main demographic is midcore and hardcore playerbase).

Their is nothing wrong with catering to casuals so long as it doesn't come at the cost of the midcore and hardcore playerbase, but from a business perspective, if I had to choose between excluding casuals for more midcore and hardcore players to earn more money in the long run, I would choose the midcore and hardcore playerbase in a heartbeat.

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

Short answer is the casuals.

Long answer; the devs would rather cater to casuals over midcore and hardcore players(which their main demographic is midcore and hardcore playerbase).

Their is nothing wrong with catering to casuals so long as it doesn't come at the cost of the midcore and hardcore playerbase, but from a business perspective, if I had to choose between excluding casuals for more midcore and hardcore players to earn more money in the long run, I would choose the midcore and hardcore playerbase in a heartbeat.

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But they are giving more to hardcores that they do to casuals.
Casuals only have now 1 dung per patch and 1 alliance raid per patch which allows them to get some significant rewards.

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

Long answer; the devs would rather cater to casuals over midcore and hardcore players(which their main demographic is midcore and hardcore playerbase).

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What's your basis for the statement about the main demographic in this game? I would think that the main demographic for this game are people who enjoy story-based Final Fantasy themed gameplay, with the main story line as simple to get through as possible. Your so-called 'casuals'.

In my experience, the more an MMO caters to that demographic, the more money they earn. As soon as the modicum of skill required for regular gameplay becomes out of reach for players, the base contracts. If you have things for the majority of players to do, regardless of skill set, you encourage them to remain in-game.

You might not like it, but there are probably other MMO games out there that focus on mid/hard core gameplay for you to consider, assuming they haven't closed down due to the fact that their main demographic isn't large enough to pay the bills.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

But they are giving more to hardcores that they do to casuals.
Casuals only have now 1 dung per patch and 1 alliance raid per patch which allows them to get some significant rewards.

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The only piece of hardcore content is ultimate raids, and we get 2 every 2 years.
Savage content isn't really challenging enough to be considered "hc content", not when the last several tiers were cleared in 1-2 days. Devs want many players to do savage content, including casual players, that's why they made it easier and introduced the ultimate difficulty to give something to those players that want a real challenge. People being too scared or too lazy to try it doesn't really make it hardcore content.
Also, I believe crafting, gathering, housing, pvp (excluding ranked feast I suppose), msq, sub quests, beast tribes, eureka, gold saucer, blu mage and so on can be considered very casual friendly (in addition to dungeons and 24 man raids).
If anything, this game is very casual oriented. Not saying it's necesserily a bad thing, but reading that devs are giving more to hc players is frankly quite hilarious.

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Originally Posted by ACE135

I don't understand the people who say they want optional/non-linear stuff in the dungeons because they are boring but also say they will just do the optional stuff if it grants them (in their opinion) high rewards as compensation for doing the extra stuff. So do they want more variety to make dungeons less boring/linear or just an easy way to get more rewards for very little more "effort"/time? Shouldn't the fact of more variety in dungeons be enough of a reward?

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Because at that point, you're adding variety for variety sake. Say they included winding pathways, some lore tidbits and even a sort of mini-boss. After going through everything a handful of times, what incentive do I have to keep going down these pathways or fighting this weaker boss when I've seen it all? The whole point of rewards is to give a tangible reason to repeat things you've already done. Killing the Coeurl in Brayflux is pointless after the novelty wears off since he offers nothing and is ultimately a slightly stronger trash mob. If my reward for going down that pathway is a X-Potion. Well, once I've seen the aesthetic a couple times, I no longer care. I have no reason to.

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

Short answer is the casuals.

Long answer; the devs would rather cater to casuals over midcore and hardcore players(which their main demographic is midcore and hardcore playerbase).

Their is nothing wrong with catering to casuals so long as it doesn't come at the cost of the midcore and hardcore playerbase, but from a business perspective, if I had to choose between excluding casuals for more midcore and hardcore players to earn more money in the long run, I would choose the midcore and hardcore playerbase in a heartbeat.

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From several of your posts on here you seem to have an answer looking for a question. and you don't care what the question is.

If you get my meaning.

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Killing the Coeurl in Brayflux is pointless after the novelty wears off since he offers nothing and is ultimately a slightly stronger trash mob. If my reward for going down that pathway is a X-Potion. Well, once I've seen the aesthetic a couple times, I no longer care. I have no reason to.

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His chest has rings in it, which were actually really good for the level, prior to having brand-new ring that lasts you until your 40's.

Now that you'll likely level from 32 to 35 in your first brayflox run (or from 40 to 42/43 if you have road to 70, lol), its significantly less good.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Because at that point, you're adding variety for variety sake. Say they included winding pathways, some lore tidbits and even a sort of mini-boss. After going through everything a handful of times, what incentive do I have to keep going down these pathways or fighting this weaker boss when I've seen it all? The whole point of rewards is to give a tangible reason to repeat things you've already done. Killing the Coeurl in Brayflux is pointless after the novelty wears off since he offers nothing and is ultimately a slightly stronger trash mob. If my reward for going down that pathway is a X-Potion. Well, once I've seen the aesthetic a couple times, I no longer care. I have no reason to.

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The issue then is incentive structures and dungeon design.

There's a few ways they could do this. You could have an optional boss that gives current crafting mats that are difficult to get or possibly a BOP glamour as a RNG drop on top of gear of course.

The optional boss doesnt spawn randomly, nor does it spawn all the time. Some triggers might have to be started to get it spawn, such as beat 3 mini bosses within an allotted time, or clear out certain areas of the dungeon of trash mobs and hit a switch or two. Maybe you have to speed kill everything up to that point. Or the boss spawns, you engage, then it runs off through trash mobs to another location and you either clear its path before hand or fight your way through the mobs before the boss despawns.

There's lots of interesting things you can do to make the dungeon more interesting in that regards, and having bonus rewards that make it worth while to do is the key to this. Hell you dont even have to create sub bosses to make dungeons a bit more interesting. Creating multiple branching paths in a dungeon where the path you take is randomly chosen when you enter and the paths all have different things to deal with, so at the very least youre not autopiloting it. Or have dungeons designed in a fashion after PoTD with mobs, monsters and what not. It may not offer new rewards but atleast it's not killing my brain with retreading the exact 100% same path every single time.

It all sounds well and good until you actually put it to practice.

Wildstar tanked partly because the dungeons in that game were brutal when the game came out.

I don't think this game is designed well for optional paths in dngs.

The carrot at the end of ANY stick is just cosmetics (Glam, minions, mounts, Hairs, titles) or vertical stat growth. That's it really. Level cap dngs can never have gear that's better that the raid gear cause that raid gear is made as a carrot/ reward for the 2% of folks who actually bother to do the hardest content. Without raiding your best stats come one way or another from grinding tomes which are the reward from completing a dng.

"Have a path that leads to a rare crafting mat" Not great. That is already the goal of maps (the stick), to have rare mats drop that are NEEDED for cool glam (the carrot). If ALL you want is the mat then you will do which ever is easiest, right?
Make it a different mat that's needed? This game already suffers from mat inflation, too many things in this game are only used to make 1-2 items because they need to keep giving crafters reasons to do XYZ content ... People are not gonna be happy sitting in a dng for 45-50mins just for a chance to get a mat they may need more than 1 of just to make a glam. And if you don't make it rare it will become worth less in no time and "Uhhhg, this tank is taking us down this path to get a thing that goes for 8K on the MB?!?!".

If this game had horizontal gear growth then sure, I could see going to a leveling dngs for a hand gear that has a trait or skill that's good for a level cap build you're making. And that special gear could be on an optional path (that you use PF to farm as to not annoy the people who don't care about that optional path). That's how some MMOs work and how I HOPE the next big FF MMO works. But that aint how this game works.