Final Fantasy Dungeons and Raids

This question is directly targeted at the Dev team, although it would be nice for everyone to discuss their opinions and thoughts on this.

I personally have played many mmorpgs including warcraft, aion, lord of the rings, etc. I have gone through hardcore Pvper to PvEer. And the thing about Final Fantasy XIV that i find the strangest is the dungeon content. I find it very bizarre that your party has to run through the dungeon (Darkhold) at the fastest time possible and avoiding all the mobs. The quickest time rewards you with the last chest, thus making it evident that Square Enix intended the dungeon to be rushed through. There is almost no point in killing the mobs unless you desire the exp, which there are usually more effective ways of achieving.

I am not sure what final fantasy XI dungeon content was like, but is this a normal style of play for final fantasy mmos? Will this most likely continue in the future? Will there ever be a point in CCing and fighting through waves of enemies, instead of popping quick stride and sleeping every single toad? I understand the timer is an easy way to make the dungeon hard, but is this something that everybody really enjoys? Im not sure if this has been discussed before but please share your thoughts ;)

XI was like that to a degree, but it wasn't a solid rush-through - you just had to plan the most efficient route. Can't expend all your energy before you get to the boss, now! I think every dungeon will have different styles and requirements, and the Darkhold was definitely a high-level free-for-all for the nicest gear possible.

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I am not sure what final fantasy XI dungeon content was like, but is this a normal style of play for final fantasy mmos?

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it was better you had to actually put some work in to even beable to do it, or collect items in dangerous areas and kill strong mobs, or buy a million dollar clock(price came down i think) for your LS for dynamis everytime you do it. the gods you had to get an item from each of the 4 gods to get 4 items to pop a 5 th god. and alot of of stuff in FFXI
FFXIV cant compete or even come close with FFXI even in its early days.

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Originally Posted by indira

it was better you had to actually put some work in to even beable to do it, or collect items in dangerous areas and kill strong mobs, or buy a million dollar clock(price came down i think) for your LS for dynamis everytime you do it. the gods you had to get an item from each of the 4 gods to get 4 items to pop a 5 th god. and alot of of stuff in FFXI
FFXIV cant compete or even come close with FFXI even in its early days.

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Though, xi had a much worse start than xiv, people were just more accepting and fanboys.

I don't mind timers since it's generally one of the better difficulty factors to balance content around. I haven't done Darkhold yet but, like you said and from what I hear, you don't need to kill anything at all. There just needs to be incentives to kill things or do specific actions in order to get rewarded in such a way that there is no way for you to complete all the goals in the alotted time, requiring you to pick and choose what you aim for. Since you can get all the chests to pop in Darkhold without killing anything, there really isn't a point unfortunately. Toto-rak seems much better designed in this regard because there's a chest for clearing all/many(?) enemies before fighting the boss as well as the speed run chest.

As an example from FF11: Salvage. I really really hated that event because the drop rates were absolute garbage, but on paper it was well thought out. There were 4 zones that in most cases had branching/split paths and a strict, hard cap time limit. Going down one path would lock you out the other, meaning you would be able to get certain drops but not others. In other cases, the branching paths would lead to side areas that were time consuming and if you wanted to get drops in that path, you wouldn't have time for the boss. Certain gear drops required items from another zone to pop a NM, so taking time to either farm for that item or fight that NM was another route you could take. If you wanted to fight the boss, you'd have to try to get through as quickly as possible but still getting enough items to un-gimp your characters so you could be strong enough to stand a chance against the boss (your stats/spells/abilites would get "locked" when you entered and you would have to unlock them as you go).

There isnt anything really wrong with Darkhold, I just hope Square thinks of some more interesting and challenging ideas. I admit it was very fun killing batraal the first few times, but there needs to be more long non speed-run dungeons. The speed run is an interesting idea i just think the entire darkhold is based around running through mobs. Maybe if speed incorporated killing mobs aswell, in warcraft the mobs cannot deaggro in dungeons. Therefore forcing players to kill them. I dunno....

Time limit plus kill everything is that exciting after a while, I'd take content geared more towards XI's content, but not completely a time sink either I'd say.