Quote Originally Posted by MicahZerrshia View Post
They innovated so much during the course of version 1, but since relaunch its been corridor dungeons, arena mega bosses and fates. I mean, I know they want to cater to the casual crowd, but they can still be innovative while keeping things simple. /rantover
To be fair, I don't think this one is entirely on SquareEnix, or even on 'casual' players. ARR had some dungeons where they were experimenting with multiple paths and whatnot, and in ARR (and even Heavensward), raids had more than just a single boss fight in a big arena. They were clearly willing to follow that path!

But people started optimizing. Why take the side paths in Haukke Manor, when you can just blow through to the end? Why go into the treasure rooms in Qarn? Why even bother to get the pieces to solve the puzzle? Forget about particular mob mechanics, just gather everything and pull it as far as you can, burn it all down at once.

Even now, when the devs do branch out to try something different—like the Great Hunt (Extreme), or the mechanics challenge in Bardam's Mettle—a vocal portion of the playerbase groans about it being weird or different or just plain inefficient to run compared to other content.

I mean, the playerbase demonstrated that if given dungeons that had multiple side areas to wander into, puzzles to solve, and whatnot... well, we'd treat it as a corridor dungeon and pull until a wall stopped us, ignoring every puzzle possible to ignore. So SquareEnix started giving us corridor dungeons where you pull until a wall stops you. I kinda feel like we as players bear some of the blame there.

(I do agree with all your points otherwise, though.)