Quote Originally Posted by RopeDrink View Post
God, all the mention of Maraudon...
And I'm just wondering how many people actually played it.

Purple and Orange route were both fairly linear (I don't count two ways around a pillar/pool as optional paths >_> ). I think purple had an optional chest at some point and orange a rare boss spawn (Razorlash, later mandatory), but that was it. Then they converged just before Celebras. After doing both purple and orange path, they could be skipped straight to earth song falls with the scepter (the most popular type of run on my server). Since you only needed to kill the last of the respective path bosses for the scepter, some groups jumped over to save themselves the need to go the entire other path. That was fairly linear gameplay, but it had some backtracking to Celebras involved after getting the second scepter piece, so I suppose it counts.

The latter part was fairly linear as well, if you ignore the routes whose purpose was to allow backtracking after you jumped down somewhere. You went straight ahead, left, then ever up to the giant golem (Optional, but people still cared about loot at the time - In FFXIV he would be skipped), then over the bridge to Theradras, jumped down for the croc and if the party was still going (Most stopped here), you went to the Tinker from there and were done, because you checked off all the bosses.

The whole thing was basically 3 dungeons crammed into one instance. And that's what they ended up doing when they introduced DF - make it 3 different dungeons to the finder.
So if SE were to design Maraudon, you'd have purple and orange path both as their individual dungeons with a quest for each scepter part associated with them, then after you did those you'd get another quest, a cutscene would play in which the NPC creates the portal and then you'd gain access to the third part. And that part would have no backtrack routes because invisible walls everywhere. They probably wouldn't even need to change anything else, because the rest is largely in line with their current dungeon design.

That said, I personally do not mind linearity. Once you have a goal in the dungeon, you beeline there either way and the nasty part in PUGs is that people might have different goals. One person might want an optional boss/route but the others not. See also: Silver Chests vs Speedrun, Gathering vs Battle in Diadem etc. I like that I don't have to first sit down for five minutes every time and discuss with the group which path we go, only for the healer to bail because he can't be arsed with an emperor run.

What irks me is that the dungeons feel very clinical. You can never jump down anywhere, the arenas feel artificial - Natural cavern systems shouldn't have perfectly round platform arenas all the time. I'd like the illusion that this was an actual place in the world, an area that technically belongs to the overworld but has been instanced for practical reasons, rather than completely disjointed.

And breaking the trash-boss-trash-boss pattern can be a part of that. Sometimes, I'd make more sense to deal with a trap filled corridor, run to safety from a falling ceiling after a boss fight, jump from stone to stone over lava or other things that make it seem a little more alive. Like a section where you ride the rails like in Alexander, except you have to jump and switch rails ever so often to avoid obstacles and dead ends. Or an Arena-style dungeon where you have nothing "but" boss fights coming at you in succession. Or the bad guy escapes after the second boss fight and you gotta chocobo race him for a section before the final battle. I'd gladly take that sort of variety over superficial path choices, truth be told.