So how about them new dungeons? (Layout and difficulty)

[Erys]

Alternatively, you could have paths and they could work like:

1. 3 path options, where one is the fastest with the hardest mobs and one is the slowest with weakest mobs and one is in between - have the game inform you of this as you approach your choice (Bravely Default style)
2. 3 path options, where one is the 'path of the day' that generates extra reward in the roulette
3. 3 path options, where none are necessarily faster than the other, but favour certain compositions - 1 may be AoE friendly (got SMN?), 1 may be physical damage heavy (got PLD?), 1 may be single target focused (got melee or blm?) [this is a bit like T2 where left was better for physical damage and right for magical damage]

Wouldn't the marked defeat the purpose of exploring a dungeon? Adventure is not adventure without mistery.

[AeraLure]

I feel like you are looking at the dev resources a little bit too simplistically. Part of the problem is not the amount of resources, but the inherent design of the game. FFXIV has shown that they have no problem pouring resources into making overly convoluted systems which would otherwise be a simple thing in other games (hall of the novice, SSS, Diadem, LoV etc.) They have the resources and the time, the issue is they have the design choice that their players will ultimately lower everything down to the lowest common demonstrator, so why create a more interesting/complex system that they'll tear apart anyway? In other words, the community will make it boring, so we'll just make it boring on release instead of wasting our time. It's a similar stance they have on anything that offers an "illusion of choice". Some people prefer it that way, I certainly don't, but that is the purposeful design that Square is taking. It has been successful, so why stop?

This, but I feel it's not just the players. Or rather, that it isn't the players at all. The players are adapting to playing the game as designed, and the use of tokens and tomes with nothing of actual use or interest in a dungeon makes for speed running and tunnel vision to be ideal. There is literally no reason to explore branched paths or do optional objectives. Waste of time. So yes, players will dumb down content, but that's because the game design is a bit dumbed down as well. Unfortunately.

[RiceisNice]

This, but I feel it's not just the players. Or rather, that it isn't the players at all. The players are adapting to playing the game as designed, and the use of tokens and tomes with nothing of actual use or interest in a dungeon makes for speed running and tunnel vision to be ideal. There is literally no reason to explore branched paths or do optional objectives. Waste of time. So yes, players will dumb down content, but that's because the game design is a bit dumbed down as well. Unfortunately.

There is also the side where not all players will go for that approach. I have no qualms doing my expert a day for 6 days (provided it's actually a roulette and not a goddamn coinflip, otherwise it just gets incredibly tedious) compared to capping my lore from farming EX primals for the pigeons or midas for token drops. The current design is incredibly bare bones and limited that you can't build upon it if you wanted to. Just having expert dungeons be level synced to the gear that it drops would already make the boss mechanics in general seem more meaningful because to this day, I do not know how you would remove the stacking debuff on the final boss of PS(HM)...if you can/need to remove it because the damage it gains from each stack is already dwarfed by the gear you have by the time you enter it.

[Shurrikhan]

Absolutely correct stuff.

And yet...

Some designs really do pay off more than others--often by what seems to be coincidence, often by principle, and often just because they give something conceptually new to their base (even if not necessarily great or new in itself). Movement towards more interesting dungeon designs might cover all those points, and may well end up with a better payoff. Given this particular team, I doubt it, but with another that's probably where I'd lay my bets.

If my choices were several dull options vs. one more entertaining one, I too would take the singular but superior path, I just don't believe the development balance is necessarily quite so simple or rigid. Hell, if we'd built up more interesting mechanics across our railway dungeons as is, at least we'd have a whole lot more to throw in later if we ever did take a different design path.

[Felis]

You know, it could just be me, but when I see a floating upside down tower I don't think "I guess I should start by walking along these straight paths with monsters and bounce pads at the end of them till I reach the last one that warps me to the LOWEST PART OF THE TOWER" ....Whats the point of that giant tower if your just gonna have me fly to the 200th floor, in which I friggen hope because to me it seemed like 4 floors if you ask me. Oh right lemme correct that: you walk across floating platforms using jumpads to get to the others, fly through the castle door (Doesn't look like an entrance when you get through) about 4 floating platforms descending, go through a door warping you into some realistic upside down corridor (now it looks like a castle interior) down 2 slopes of those, and your at the last boss.

We don't use the main entrance to enter the tower.

[Kurogaea]

We don't use the main entrance to enter the tower.

Yeah my bad, you use the floating magic platforms in the beginning to float to the blue door, then warp to some weird space area with a floating platform going down, then you enter a door that warps you to a corridor that looks like a castle interior. Just wanted to make my point clear really. "No warps. Why even."

[Priya]

I think these dungeons are just about right. I went in The Antitower with two very undergeared or underplayed DPS (Both doing 600-700 DPS), and we managed to clear in ~35 minutes.

While that's nearly double the time I'm used to when I run with friends, it's tolerable especially for the first week. If I can clear the dungeon faster than eating the penalty and re-queuing with people I know would take, I'm okay with it. Some of the older dungeons were really that long if you got poor DPS.

[Coldbrand]

FFXI had dungeons, XIV definitely subscribes to the loot hallway methodology. Except without the loot part (you obtained 3 pots of cream yellow dye.) It's not really a dungeon if you can't regularly expect to die, and it's impossible to get lost, and there's no traps or puzzles.

[Keramory]

It's strange. I thought the two dungeons were so opposite from one another.

One dungeon, the lost Temple, was insanely easy... Especially its last boss. I don't even know how you lose to it. As a healer I don't even know if I'm needed in the fight other then pretending to be a black Mage. I will say though the dungeon looked good. Boring run through, but good looking.

Then there's our new upside down tower. It trolls you with spending the majority of the time outside the dumb thing, then you go down a few halls and bam, boss. But at least the bosses were interesting and mechanics could actually kill you.

I'd rather them just spent the time to make one super dungeon then this.

[Derio]

From a tanking perspective the dungeons seemed much much easier than 3.1 dungeons and nothing really puts you in danger in the dungeon.