FFXIV dungeons are a little bit too linear?

[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.