Dungeons are becoming style over substance.

[ForteNightshade]

Some of the most "non linear" dungeons with the most varied boss mechanics in the game are the most hated: Thousand Maws, Aurum Vale.


I have my doubts that the current population wants more of that.

Thousand Maws is detested because it's slow. The whole green slime at the end accomplishes nothing but to slow you down; there are no big pulls, especially due to our low level, and none of the added corridors lead to anything. In general, this is the problem with this argument. You can't expect people to care about branching paths if all you do is toss a snippet of lore text on the floor or a coffer with mostly useless gear. There needs to be a reason for players to branch off, but the dev team doesn't want to think of one.

[Dragonblanco]

Thousand Maws is detested because it's slow. The whole green slime at the end accomplishes nothing but to slow you down; there are no big pulls, especially due to our low level, and none of the added corridors lead to anything. In general, this is the problem with this argument. You can't expect people to care about branching paths if all you do is toss a snippet of lore text on the floor or a coffer with mostly useless gear. There needs to be a reason for players to branch off, but the dev team doesn't want to think of one.

I think SE is gravely wrong about turning dungeons into a pure vehicle for delivering the story, rather than an interesting encounter in and of itself

That's where FFXI and WoW did pretty good actually. While FFXI didn't have instanced dungeons, we did have zones that were used like one to farm mobs. Then WoW with instanced. In both cases, they had quests which brought you to areas within these dangerous locations to complete a quest. OR they would have rare mobs that might occasionally spawn that dropped OP gear or some really awesome transmog/glam type of stuff. Plus both had some things with very interesting mechanics, particularly in WoW. I remember like in Cataclysm having dungeon introduced where you would fly on dragons and have to try to kill mobs with fireballs. If you didn't, then your progression in that dungeon would be harder as you had tons of elite things to kill. But if targeted and attacked while, you had a quick and easy run.

That said, the player base over the years has pulled away from this stuff. Those in my age group who played things like WoW, Everquest, Age of Camelot, FFXI, etc since their launch all have grown to have families and jobs. Within that group there is a subset that gripe because as much as they like the old content, they feel like it works against them and they want it more fair. They don't have the time to do all the stuff necessary.

Then you have the younger generation in their 20s or below. They grew up without knowing what a truly difficult and limiting MMO is like. By time they joined, they know nothing of the social aspect of MMO and the events we had. They haven't actually gotten to see GM playing with us like they did in the past. So many get jaded, but what makes it worse is the mindset I often see appear. That mindset is you can't be unique, you have to follow exact specs and rotations that are shown on a website by someone who claims to be an expert and mathematically found what works best. If you don't, then you're a loser and shouldn't play. Leveling shouldn't take long, it needs to be instant. The best gear needs to be easily obtained by them but if too many others get it, that's not right! Essentially, they want to turn all MMO into WoW, CoD, etc. Where you can rush through content and then it's just killing each other and/or maybe hopping into raids. Neither really allows themselves to enjoy the grind and meet other players. It's all queue system and even then, majority won't talk and will ditch the group right away without even giving out commendations.

The two start to combine in the idea that neither wants content that takes long. Both want to be able to play casually but make good progression. Both got sucked into games like WoW and became addicted to AddOns, so now they lack player skill. The reason I say lack skill is that those players got used to using AddOns that tracked aggro and let you click to taunt, it had things like HealBot which made it simple click to heal instead of targeting the person and then hitting your keybind, it alerted you to timers for bosses, and so much more. All of these things which became "necessary" diminished the player's ability to actually learn fights and pay attention to what's going on around them. And over the years, with how players have added things and used 3rd party, the consensus is everyone likes linear dungeons with simple mechanics. They also want to feel OP, so if they can't churn out high damage and kill fast enough, they complain that changes need to be done.

There's a lot of ridiculousness to it all. And I could almost write a book on it. I just tried to narrow down some main points. Forgive me if a little off on things, as I'm extremely tired but wanted to answer on it.