Your reaction if SE adds in a Passive Ability to Mobs...

[Shurrikhan]

They could, but SE likes gating relic behind crafting, large tomestone farming and additional items that may, or may not, require even more tomestone farming. When you're forced to farm something like 24,000 tomestones, you stop caring about anything other than efficiency and speed. As it has been pointed out, there are people that simply want to take their time, others don't do things efficiently, others completely ignore mechanics; throwing in something like that doesn't mean it will only take 30% more time.

At that point, though, the defense becomes little more than "why make anything in a dungeon interesting (aside from perhaps its aesthetic flow enough for people to endure its grind with a modicum of sanity) when inevitably, no one's going to give a damn about what they're doing anyways?" (E.g. Least development costs for the most time gating = profit.)

These different groups of people exist either way, and will have an about an equally proportionate effect whether you give them a longer, more complex dungeon with increased rewards or a shorter, braindead one with fewer rewards. The only exception to this are those who actively refuse to learn how to play, or play at all well, and actually facing those issues can only be a step forward for the game, even if it's just by a different path of avoidance (e.g. expert roulette as a rule variant on any of various dungeons that makes them much harder, but the rewards that much better, rather than being limited always to only the 2 most recently released) that ends up creating more options for the playerbase, whatever its composition.

People will stagnate because they want to. There have been plenty of people across various threads that have said if the game forces me to get better, I will seek another game. In the end, you'd be more or less hurting only those that want efficiency.

Efficiency is going to be rewards/time. How could you possibly hurt efficiency when the rewards are at least proportionately increased? If anything, the gap would only increase further in the favor of those who play well/efficiently as you add on additional challenges. Are we talking about <reward/time*(level of attention required)> here? That's the only way I can imagine there being some restriction against "efficiency". And even then, there's nothing to say that every dungeon needs to be equal difficulty and reward even within its own tier; you could easily have one that's more "efficient" (in terms of rewards divided by cumulative level of attention required over the run) to an unskilled player and another that's more "efficient" in the same sense to a skilled player.

[Hayward]

When you're forced to farm something like 24,000 tomestones, you stop caring about anything other than efficiency and speed.

That level of fixation with efficiency is as close to unhealthy as it gets, not to mention potentially intolerable to DF members. At no time in each Relic/Anima stage have I ever tried to do something like that because I knew full well that would have ruined my overall experience in XIV. Even now, as I work towards getting my Anima Bow to i240, I have not once tried to force the pace to the point where I couldn't play anymore. There's no advantage to doing anything like that, no matter what forum tries to pass it off as legitimate.

[Nicobo]

....At no time in each Relic/Anima stage have I ever tried to do something like that because I knew full well that would have ruined my overall experience in XIV....

It reads like you have not experienced XIV actually... ^^;

[JunseiKei]

~snip~

You're misunderstanding me.

I'm not saying don't make dungeons boring or uninteresting. However, you can already find that in Palace of the Dead. Many "brain-dead" dungeons are actually quite interesting, though many have been nerfed or highly disliked by many. Also, the very term "brain-dead" is quite subjective. Many of your other statements I've already addressed in previous comments and it just sounds like you're re-wording the same point. I don't really want to just copy and paste my own quotes.

However, to counter this, I would propose this, then:

Ask SE to provide one dungeon meant for speedrunning. For 3.0, this would be Aetherochemical Research Facility. Remove forced gates or have as few as possible. Can add in mob mechanics- it won't really matter, they will either be dealt with or a way to cheese them will be found. Have the bosses have whatever mechanics they want- just make sure they're mostly hit-able throughout the entire fight. Give this dungeon the largest tome reward, much like ARF as it is compared to the other dungeons.

That way, roulette dungeons or what-have-you, can be this dynamic thing of not being "brain-dead" and the speedrunners will flock to this other dungeon. The more "interesting" dungeons can have the higher amount of locked tome (again, similar to now where expert dungeons have a higher reward for tomes even without the expert roulette bonus).

That level of fixation with efficiency is as close to unhealthy as it gets, not to mention potentially intolerable to DF members.

Efficiency and playing well are one in the same to some people. Time spent grinding for something you know you'll get anyway, so why drag it out any longer than it needs to be? Simply knowing when to use certain abilities over others is still playing into efficiency as well as maximizing things like DPS. Kind of like in other Final Fantasy games, you can hit a Flan with physical attacks (traditionally, highly resistant to physical attacks, but weak to 1 or multiple elements), but it's far more efficient to kill them with elemental spells and contributes to you just playing the game well.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

Snip

So much this. The relic weapon was always been about the journey, not the destination. Trying to farm it at the fastest rate possible is one of the most unhealthy things I could imagine fixating on.

? Or how Tidus got to be so great at leaping out of the way of 200+ lightning strikes for Lulu?

What is the journey that I'm missing?

Of course you'd ask me about one of the FF's I absolutely loathed with a passion. I'll formulate a reply once I've used google, but I don't see what the relevance is.

[JunseiKei]

So much this. The relic weapon was always been about the journey, not the destination. Trying to farm it at the fastest rate possible is one of the most unhealthy things I could imagine fixating on.

Though my next question may seem like I'm being quite rude or even mocking, I'm actually not, I am asking a real question.

So, in other games where you have to grind gold or gil for some armor or weapon and it's a lot, the journey getting that gil or gold is what should be fixated upon? Like unsealing Kimahri's weapon in FFX and reflecting on how many red butterflies got in the way? Or how Tidus got to be so great at leaping out of the way of 200+ lightning strikes for Lulu? I'm asking because I appear to be missing something when it comes to this.

What is the journey that I'm missing?

Of course you'd ask me about one of the FF's I absolutely loathed with a passion. I'll formulate a reply once I've used google, but I don't see what the relevance is.

They are tasks done toward unlocking their ultimate weapons. Having these weapons is required to get past the 9,999 damage limit.

[yohbuster]

I wouldn't ind dungeons having have cut off points where you have to kill the mobs before you can jet off into the next area. The issue tho people would be so mad cause everyone likes to hurry up and not wait. It seems like from reading this thread people do these dungeons before work or what have you. I'm just blessed to be retired and have all the time to go slow. But that's just me.

[basketofseals]

I wouldn't ind dungeons having have cut off points where you have to kill the mobs before you can jet off into the next area. The issue tho people would be so mad cause everyone likes to hurry up and not wait. It seems like from reading this thread people do these dungeons before work or what have you. I'm just blessed to be retired and have all the time to go slow. But that's just me.

Dungeons do have this now. Haven't you noticed all of the hard walls the level 60 dungeons have? Almost all pre-60 dungeons you could pull from boss to boss if you had the stats for it.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

I think she's talking about post 60. As for the FFx relics, I confess as far as I read they have more in common with raid weapons than the relic weapons, since they aren't upgrade able and are the best weapons you have access too.

Admittedly I feel the post 60 dungeons have way too many speed run pulls and would love to see fewer, but much stronger monsters. Like, make every monster a miniboss that can kick your ass, instead of the easily speedran weak stuff they are now.

[LineageRazor]

Ask SE to provide one dungeon meant for speedrunning. For 3.0, this would be Aetherochemical Research Facility. Remove forced gates or have as few as possible. Can add in mob mechanics- it won't really matter, they will either be dealt with or a way to cheese them will be found. Have the bosses have whatever mechanics they want- just make sure they're mostly hit-able throughout the entire fight. Give this dungeon the largest tome reward, much like ARF as it is compared to the other dungeons.

This is exceedingly unlikely to happen. SE depends on people who grind dungeons in order to keep queue times low for people who want to do those dungeons. They want players to play a wide variety of dungeons - hence the existence of Roulettes. The last thing they want to do is to funnel players into one, specific dungeon.

This isn't to say that there aren't flaws in the current system, and there are absolutely some dungeons and roulettes that get sadly neglected. Making a specific "grinding" dungeon, however, would just make this problem so much worse. It's the opposite direction from SE's preferred goal, keeping all dungeons stocked with plenty of players at all times. Keeping dungeons populated is half the reason we have roulettes and tomestone rewards in the first place (the other half being that this is a MMO, and in pretty much any MMO you're gonna wind up grinding something simply because they want to keep you playing as much as possible to reduce unsubscription rates).