Dungeons: Make them less linear! FFXIV:ARR doesn't have to be a themepark!

[Garlyle]

I get where you're coming from. I'm going to mention though, that in practice... well, here's an example: the Binding Coil's Turn 2 lets players go through it in several different ways, adjusting the boss as a result of what the players do. What happens? Everyone takes one specific path, every single time.

Now, if you want to talk "sometimes these bosses are different" or "different mob groups spawn here" or "here's these puzzles that take different solutions each time", sure, I'm totally down for that.

[Rufalus]

I was thinking it would be cool to have a boss arena with sort of mirrors that can be rotated by interacting with them, and depending where the enemy is you'd have to coordinate with your team to set the mirrors up so an add's big cast gets ping-ponged around and reflected back to the boss, but set them incorrectly and the party gets blown up instead.

But more on topic, it would be interesting to have an alliance-sized raid with each party starting in some randomised section of the map and needing to clear challenges to open up pathways somewhere else on the map that help the other parties advance, where eventually you'd all meet up and do a 24-man big boss.

[Kyriea]

I'm still eagerly awaiting endgame that will be on par with salvage in XI. Yea the drop rates were bad and usually you were fighting with 18 people for the items that eventually dropped but that was a perfect example of open dungeons. Different bosses with different drops in each direction with no way of going back to the other sides, specific mobs that unlock specific attributes/gear. Even starting out with absolutely no gear at all was a challenge that XIV has come nowhere near replicating yet.

XIV has no variation at all, it's a perfectly straight line MMO where you start at point A and there is 1 path to get to point B. Sure there is 1 alternative route which is longer and involves tomes, but that's not what I would call variation, actually less of seeing as you're stuck at one stage of the path and just get boosted to the end for sticking around long enough!

[Rufalus]

4. Rare drops from normal mobs off the beaten path! Because why not go down the dead end with pointless normal mobs for the chance of a rare item, maybe hang out in a dungeon and chat with the people you randomly got grouped with? Perhaps they're on the same server or if you're in a pre-made better yet!

Yes please, it would be great to have a reason to fight 'trash' mobs for a chance at a rare useful loot, so I won't get impatient people any more pushing me to skip everything, and when trying to skip everything gets botched they all get very upset and angry. I would love to go back to playing normally and actually defeating all the enemies, which doesn't confuse new players.

[Litre]

XIV has no variation at all, it's a perfectly straight line MMO where you start at point A and there is 1 path to get to point B.

And unfortunately that's how most other MMOs are with linear bosses where you just kill the bosses in order, but that doesn't mean FFXIV needs to follow their lead, and yes turn 2 was a good change from the everyday and a step in the right direction, they need more of that - a lot of those lower dungeons when they make a hard mode really need to be more open. It's like how they screwed up FFXIII a bit with the linearity, the best part of all FF games has always been the freedom to explore and not knowing what's around the corner.

For example even if in a dungeon we all dropped through a trap door and got a random set of mobs everytime, that'd be a good break from this linear rollercoaster themepark. But all that means nothing if people can just wipe and try again, this time they know what's underneath the trap door.

What I mean is weakness needs to fixed to incentivize people not to wipe, but instead raise and try to fight it out. If you do wipe you should get hit with a harsher status debuff that lasts longer, so people try harder not to wipe.