FFXIV dungeons are a little bit too linear?

[Jeykama]

Disagree WoW created vanilla Blackrock Depths, Stratholme, Molten Core, and other huge nonlinear dungeon zones like that. But yeah on the topic of BRD...

Blackrock Depths was a beautiful nonlinear dungeon full of quest objectives, unlocking doors, and tons of optional bosses. It was also home to a raid instance entrance and a vital forge deep within for crafting epics. It had a lot of verticality so by virtue of that the map was awful and unhelpful. I didn't play vanilla, but I hear a top to bottom clear took 4-6 hours to get to the final boss Thaurissan, and even if you just wanted to zerg to Thaurissan it took at least an hour assuming no one got lost.

It was a masterpiece of dungeon engineering but way too damn long and involved for an instanced dungeon. The only way I could see this working in FF's more bite-size content style would be sort of like Diadem - you start at a certain point in a BRD-size dungeon and are given an objective nearby to clear, then you get there.

[Fevelle]

Might be nostalgia blindness? I can only speak for myself of course, but I've found nearly every game from the PS2 on with dungeons to be incredibly linear, barring maybe the .hack franchise.

FFXII dungeons were faaaaaaaaaaar from linear.

I might sound rude but the reason I think they won't ever implement this is that a lot of FFXIV players are not accostumed to the FF design of dungeons: time-consuming mazes where you had acess to 2 or more save-points to take breaks. It could be done, but they won't risk losing the WoW-side of the playerbase because of that.

[Eimian_Eda]

Until you figure in that it's highly unlikely that areas behind the invisible walls have been checked for collision & trap problems, out of bounds entrances, crash-causing texture errors, etc. I remember how long it took to debug simple Quake levels to ensure things like the above didn't creep in and that was far, far more simple a setup.

True. But if SE can't code us simply jumping from a cliff (as opposed to walking up and back down again) or hoping over a railing (I'm looking at you Gridania Inn), then... it's just sad to think about. These walls shouldn't have existed in the first place. (Sides, nothing wrong with finding a glitch in the system )

[Magis]

There's no point in making dungeons labyrinthine because people will always just find the shortest and fastest route to the end. Even if you were to compare MMORPG dungeons to single player RPG dungeons, you have to keep in mind that in singe player RPGs the dungeons are the meat of the gameplay, whereas in MMORPGs they are just one piece of the bigger platter of content. MMORPGs also tend to focus more on the boss challenges, not exploration, since exploration is kind of useless in a game where you are meant to do the same place multiple times.

Then let them find that route and take it if they wish? Dungeon design can give reasons to take path A over path B. Heck, Stratholm in WoW had two separate paths: Living and Dead side. People could choose either or and fight their way to the gate to get on the other side of town. Also let's not forget Black Rock Depths, a WHOLE GIANT CITY as a dungeon. People didn't expect to clear all of it, they chose which path/bosses/areas to kill or clear depending what they wanted out of it; gear, doing a quest, etc.

[Klamor]

So, I think we all need to take some things into consideration here.

1. Previous Final Fantasy games were heavily based on Dungeons & Dragons. This one isn't. From a developer standpoint, they want this game to appeal to a massive audience. Yoshi has said so several times. He's specifically said he doesn't want to implement things that could result in the players not wanting to do it. It's a bit of a silly fear, IMO, because you simply can't please everyone. Not a lot of players of the MMORPG are or even were fans of D&D and the sort of games that spawned from them. I'm sure some of you are thinking "but all of my friends LOVED Baldur's Gate!" but unfortunately you and your friends don't make up the majority of the player base anymore.

2. Dungeons in Final Fantasy XII were actually used as portions of the story and side quest content. There were several times in FFXII that you entered a portion of a dungeon, found your way through, exited on the other side and continued on with the story. Portions of it were simply blocked from access until you reached a particular point in the story. That opened up additional side content, and you had a reason to go back in. Other times, the portions of the dungeon would be blocked by monsters that you simply couldn't kill at your given level (I'm looking at you Adrammalech.) This type of blocking doesn't fit into an MMO where players would probably find this type of blocking just as frustrating as a door requiring a key. I do, however, think that this design of dungeon could be incorporated into the open world map of the dungeon as just a sort of Diadem-style open area that players can explore. Remember though, that in single player games it's OK for developers to put the most powerful weapon in the game down on of those random corridors blocked by monsters that you should or shouldn't be able to kill at any given time. That doesn't work in MMOs because having powerful equipment available freely in the open world negates the purpose for the standardized instanced dungeon. Some would argue that they'd prefer the open world style over instanced. I like them both.

3. Single player games utilize their dungeons as time sinks. For the most part, you spend your time in a dungeon fighting mobs to level up and get stronger. That's second to the story purpose of you going in there. In an MMO the story is NPC-based and rarely has you go gather anything of any real importance. As for the first portion, of entering dungeons for leveling purposes, remember that this is an MMO. The leveling process is designed to teach you how to play your job, and how to perform in a party scenario, to prepare you for taking on the end-game. Now, I agree that the leveling process could indeed be more interesting, however, we all have the feeling deep down inside that tells us not to spend a lot of time on something that's going to be replaced. You can spend weeks working through a dungeon to get that awesome Lv55 armor, and then replace it when you do the next dungeon at Lv57. It's really only at end-game that your investment for armor really pays off because you're wearing that stuff for a significantly longer period of time.

In closing, I agree that a more interesting dungeon design would only benefit the game, provided that players kept an open mind. However, I'm also one of the guys that gets bored doing the same stuff over and over, so if it's any more complex than it needs to be, it's not something that I'd be inclined to repeat for something like an Esoterics-grind.

Actual Edit, not by-passing 1000 character limit: I think it'd change the whole paradigm by shifting the Tomestone reward to the bosses instead of just the completion of the duty. That, I think, would encourage the full clears of dungeons with bosses and mini-bosses lurking behind sprawling corridors. You can speed run through and get a third of the total reward in a "third" of the time, or you can stay and clear all of them for the full reward. A daily bonus of 15% your reward would still encourage daily clears, and with it being percent-based, off what you already picked up, it would make full clears more appealing.

[Alexander_Dragonfang]

FFXIV is a textbook MMORPG of the conventions of the past decade. Doesn`t like to sail away too much from the more traditional formulas. Linear instanced dungeons are heritage of this era and FFXIV just sticks with what works.
Exploration in my MMORPG? What is this 2004?

MMORPG today are more MMO than RPG, what works is quick, linear and steamlined content. Exploration and alternatives just waste developing resources. Hopefully the east is sending a few MMORPGs this way that go back a bit in time, to open world dungeons and more diverse ways to play the same instance dungeon.

[DragonSlayer45]

My guess, the time WoW launched

I wouldn't point the finger at World of Warcraft either. I never played WoW, but I've looked at a few of the dungeon maps from that game and even it has a lot more substance built in them than all of the dungeons in this game.

-stuff about FF12-

While I don't think its fair to compare FFXIV to a single player RPG, but I agree, FF12's dungeon layout was marvelous. I still remember getting lost in the Great Crystal, couldn't use the map and was getting ambushed by Lv. 60+ mobs on the way to Ultima. Fun times.

However, even comparing it to other MMOs, all of FF14's dungeons are just Point A to Point B to Point C excursions.

[Magis]

My guess, the time WoW launched

As I mentioned above; surprisingly nope! Course some dungeons WERE linear (Scarlet Monastery for example) but there were a lot of exploration zones as well.

Black Rock Depths (it's difficult to get an idea from above like this because there are multiple levels):



Stratholm:



Zul'Gurub:

[Klamor]

I wouldn't point the finger at World of Warcraft either. I never played WoW, but I've looked at a few of the dungeon maps from that game and even it has a lot more substance built in them than all of the dungeons in this game.



While I don't think its fair to compare FFXIV to a single player RPG, but I agree, FF12's dungeon layout was marvelous. I still remember getting lost in the Great Crystal, couldn't use the map and was getting ambushed by Lv. 60+ mobs on the way to Ultima. Fun times.

However, even comparing it to other MMOs, all of FF14's dungeons are just Point A to Point B to Point C excursions.

If you really look at FFXIV, it has more characteristics taken from FFXII than probably anything, anywhere else. It's part of why I enjoy XIV. I had been looking for an MMO-version of XII for a long time.

[Dererk]

We need dungeons again similar to old Toto-Rak


Many paths, many endbosses, but only 1 endboss can be reached depending of the path the party unlock.

Gather first all blue photocells to unlock the blue gate. Then gather all green photocells to unlock the green gate or the door of the first endboss. Unlocking an endboss door use all photocells and the other gates of the dungeon can't be unlocked anymore.

Thank you for showing this. This is what we need.