FFXIV dungeons are a little bit too linear?

[Riardon]

Casual players will complain game is too hard and rage quit. Also PS3 limitations.

[Khalithar]

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.

+1 to this. This man speaks the truth.

[basketofseals]

Casual players will complain game is too hard and rage quit. Also PS3 limitations.

I think you're a little backwards here. The casuals are the ones who would like this the most. They wouldn't mind stopping to smell the flowers and appreciate possibly labyrinthine design. It's the "hardcore" crowd that would hate it and demand people take the fastest route.

[Galaktica]

You can say you want immersion of whatever, but let's be real. They would need to give people compelling reasons to take alternate routes literally each and every run because it would just devolve into "how fast can we get through this?" over the course of a week at the most. Sure, that doesn't apply to every player, but sadly I'd wager it's applies to enough players to warrant sticking to the status quo.

[Kuroyasha]

It's just a bunch of FF13s

[Frysia]

I'd love to be able to explore Saint Mocianne's Arboretum.... That place looks like it would be really cool to explore. The first time I did it I was thinking how cool if dungeons weren't just one straight path and were more like the open world dungeons in FFXI.

Maybe in the future they can turn dungeons into something more closer related to how Diadem is in terms of how things spawn and respawn with multiple parties in one dungeon at a time, just bigger dungeons and random objectives to complete with different bosses to kill as objectives as well and bosses giving the tomestone reward.

[Zeonx]

I have been thinking this for a while, the straight line effect.

Point A to point B that's it, was thinking something like the Sea area in FFXI something like that would be cool to have, that place was big and puzzles and bosses to fight.

[IndigoHawk]

Dungeons are linear because players will find the shortest route and play it as though it was linear. Don't ask SE to waste resources making branches that people will only see on the first day until they discover the fastest path.

Also, FFXIV focuses so heavily on grind that players will become quite angry with each other if someone wants to explore one of the slower paths.

It would be exactly the same debate as watching cutscenes but even worse because people who want to see slower paths wouldn't even bring a new player bonus! They would just want to do something different and have fun, which is totally incomprehensible to many players who just want to grind rewards.

[Eimian_Eda]

Don't ask SE to waste resources making branches that people will only see on the first day until they discover the fastest path.

Thing is if they just removed their "Invisible walls", despite how much SE loves them, dungeons (and the world) would become so much more open instantly. No resource cost there.

[DragonSlayer45]

Don't ask SE to waste resources making branches that people will only see on the first day until they discover the fastest path..

While this is true, I have to ask: When did MMOs go from being time sinks to instant gratification speedrun zerg fests? Here's a rough map from a dungeon in Everquest:



Compare this to what we get in FFXIV: