Let Players Speed Run Again

[SpookyGhost]

My problem isn't really with single target encounters, boss fights in 4mans are perfectly fine as is - in fact, I think the 2nd bosses in all of the new dungeons are great. Even doing these as quick as possible requires mastery of your job or at least your rotation, so there is no real problem with repetitively doing Primals/Coil/etc. However, trash is trash - in pre-50 dungeons it mattered more since it gave you exp, so skipping stuff wasn't really beneficial to you. At 50 you have no reason to bother with trash, so burning it down and getting through it as fast as possible to get to the boss that actually requires at least a little bit of concentration is optimal. Slow or fast, it's going to be the same trash with the same auto attacks and random melee AOE cleaves/circles. While I agree that the combat is fundamentally boring, I don't think this has any effect on trash in dungeons. Even with the most unique skills, you'd still just be burning trash. If they gave trash any sort of meaningful mechanics, like the bees in pre-nerf Qarn, then i'd be fine with how the dungeons are gated to stop speedrunning, but as it is right now there might as well be a path straight to the boss with buttons you have to press along the way to open doors that are just in the way.

[Krr]

Forced stops are honestly grating and boring design. The trash in endgame dungeons don't do a damn interesting thing and is somehow less of a threat than the trash in midgame dungeons.

That said, I don't feel that speedruns are either a problem or a solution. They are a symptom of bland dungeon trash design. I actually enjoy most of the boss fights but I can only think of a few pieces of dungeon trash that actually interest me endgame, and many of them are no longer relevant.

If S-E wants to stop speedrunners they should actually make the trash and environments threatening and interesting enough to A) not be speedrunnable in the latest patch in most cases, and B) Not bore players to death fighting them.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Trash mobs are never going to be interesting. They're called trash for a reason; to slow you down and be simple and quick to fight so that you got something to do in between boss fights. "Interesting" trash mobs are the boss encounters.

[Hayward]

If anything, I hope the devs add more Zelda-esque mechanics to current and future dungeons and maybe institute a star rating system like FFXIII that rates our participation in the dungeon rather than the speed in which we complete them.

Some mechanics that I'd be happy to see:
*Puzzle rooms (think Forest Temple in Ocarina of Time) that yield special rewards (Alexandrites, Treasure maps, etc.)
*Story rooms (Ramuh's test in FFIX). Reward: 3- or 4-star crafting items for each player
*Security codes for doors (Castle Oztroja in FFXI) that require reading slips of paper left on the ground and change for each instance.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Square would also not make mechanics too complex because they "don't want to stress/confuse their players". Yes I know I am the bearer of bad news, but knowing how Square thinks, they think most of their players are stupid. As much as I want to disagree with them, I keep getting people who prove them right.

[Pibz]

It's sad for me to see how lost they seem to be with tuning new dungeons.

This whole mess can be tracked back to the few loud voices of people complaining about the "difficulty" of the dungeons released in 2.1..

This last patch was an improvement, though sadly this dungeons are still easier than the 2.0 release ones were when we were all gimp geared..
But they committed their worst mistake with dungeons yet, instead of adding trash that simply does not allow you to aoe pull due to damage and/or mechanics they decided to put in full stop barriers where you just fight 2-3 mobs that are a joke..
I have no issue with spending more time in dungeons either because of wipes or just because the challenge forces me to spend that much time, but forcing me to stay there extra time just to be hitting what are pretty much striking dummies is just not cool.

That said there's no reason why we shouldn't have speedrunning be a thing, of course people simply shouldn't EVER(this is a main point) speedrun if their group isn't up for it.
But speedrunning (or time attack runs) is a great way to keep dungeons engaging long after their release(i'll touch on that in a few paragraphs ) for those who like to do that stuff.. killing them completely is a mistake..

It's also weird to me how many people seem to be disgusted of them and even go so far as saying that it makes players bad somehow which is just not true, after all good players can speedrun and do it faster and bad ones can't and i'll just leave it at that..


On another note, what i'd really like to see them do in the future would be to completely revamp the expert roulette by doing as follows:

• Making all the cap level dungeons part of the high level roulette.
• Expert roulette also now has all the dungeons but with a twist, it places ilvl sync (let's say 0-5 ilvls above min req, details aren't important) on your runs to make it a truly "expert" run
• Runs are timed and rewards are given accordingly (maybe bronze/silver/gold like other games have done) with a fixed daily reward bonus for completion and "in need" as we have now
• Create leaderboards for run time(system is already there in lodestone) and add achievements for clearing dungeons in x time ranking(many achievements )

Nothing in this list is new but i still find them good ideas and it has worked for other games, and it's a great way to keep cap dungeons(and we get a lot of them, we have what 13+ lvl 50 dungeons?!) 100% relevant and keep the community engaged with them(people chasing higher run ratings, leaderboard positions), and simply a good way of content recycling and it just fits so nicely with the ilvl sync system they have in place..

There's another big thing they need to change going forward: itemization and dungeon rewards. For this one i have no suggestions atm but i hope they find something..

Would like to hear what other people in this game community think of this, dunno if it was talked about in this thread or another but if so i apologize.

Sorry for the long post

P.S. : Speedrunning doesn't refer necessarily to aoe group pulling and just spamming stuff on them but simply figuring out ways to dungeons faster regardless of what they are..
P.S. 2: Also this isn't about running dungeons in 5,10,15m they could take 1hr or 2hr for all i care so long as i'm actually engaged in them somehow.

[Kaiser-Ace]

It's been almost 2 years now since 1.23b ended, I was legacy too but 1.0 sucked, It's desighns, it's dificultys swings (Feild monsters are all lvl 10 and below but Twelve forbid should you go in satasha below level 25). I played Paladin during the speed run eras, but not because I liked speed running, I played Paladin because it was cue convenent. As a Dragoon DPS I HATE tanks that think they can speed run but cant. Healing us too dificult, dps slowes down when our TP and MP runs out, then when the Healer's MP runs out, We, All, DIE.

So speed runs needed to not exist to begin with. The "Drops" in the Hull Breaker and Quarn, I like em. It gives the designs some uniqueness. They are also irrelevent from a "It drops my HP" point of veiw because Hullbreaker's is AFTER you beat a boss and Quarn HM's is BEFORE you fight one that's behind a door that you can't open with out clearing the Mobs any way. So all these point are irrelevent.

Speed runs were good for Pre-50s with new party members for the EXP bonus. After you hit Castrum at 50 though these bonuses stop. The Sol bonus can be achived with a new player as long as you clear in less than 30 minutes. if you take all 90 minutes to clear the EX dungeons then somthing is horably wrong in your team.

Long story short there is no practical use for speed runing. The Darkhold thing is invalid as well because in 1.0 Darkhold was a post 50 dungeon and Batrall was one of THE hardest bosses in the game. He can still be tough now if every one is new but it's a simple, streat forward, and most of the time easy fight even if you are new.

[Synestra]

PLD does have 4 defense skill buff you know.

Well with ideal group setup (PLD,WHM,BRD,BLM)you only need HG as no matter how big the pack is it should melt in less than 10sec :P Also if for some reason your BLM gets aggro just toss Cover on him so he can tank rest of it.

[Ellatrix]

Well with ideal group setup (PLD,WHM,BRD,BLM)you only need HG as no matter how big the pack is it should melt in less than 10sec :P Also if for some reason your BLM gets aggro just toss Cover on him so he can tank rest of it.

HG will not block damage incurred via cover.

[Chiramu]

I don't care for speed runs but I would like chain pulling. The only time I didn't really like the big pulls was the massive pulls tanks could do in Brayflox Hard and that is because of the goblins that dive on random players makes it a lot freaking harder to heal. A lot of the tanks that speed run don't understand what does damage and why people are taking damage from monsters.

You can do the runs decently fast now but there are so many people with 50 tanks that you can end up with some really slow runs >.>.