Why can't Dungeons be longer/harder, but more... piecework?

[Shurrikhan]

You can't invent new dungeon systems if you don't understand why the current dungeons are the way they are.

I would generally agree, but perhaps you can quote the parts that evidence a lack of understanding, while being clear of whom you're responding to? As the OP, I'll assume that's me for now.

And I know you don't understand that, because your replacement causes a lot of problems that the current design addresses.

Again, without any indication of whom you're responding to or indicating what portion of their ideas you've read, you prevent any honest discussion with you or about your concerns.

You may not like the "fast food" approach to dungeons in XIV, but they are built for efficiency on the service end--to get as many players participating in and completing content as possible. To do this, they're relatively short and relatively similar to one another, with a few exciting but simple variations, so that by learning one, you have a good idea of how to do the next, even if you've never done it.

As someone who can be misread as disliking outright the "fast food approach to dungeons in XIV", let me offer some balancing logic.

One need look no further than WoW to see where prioritizing breadth of engagement (as measured by players' time played and the percentage of players to complete a given piece of content) can reach a lower product than when prioritizing both breadth and depth of engagement.

Edit: I'd go for a big crazy dungeon you can do all at once, or in shorter segments, saving your progress like Palace of the Dead, 1000%, but I wouldn't want that to replace the regular dungeon grind or tomestone farming method. Supplement it? Sure.

I'm looking for where anyone beside perhaps myself has suggested outright that we replace even the MSQ dungeons (the only ones thus constrained) with more experimental varieties, but I'm not seeing it.

So, let me clarify my own part, since I was not especially clear when spitballing this thread with just a random idea on reward systems. (My interest was primarily on seeing whether players would even like experimental dungeons at all and would be willing to see arbitrary reward systems adjusted slightly if it meant more player freedom.) My intent was to only suggest that reward systems don't have to be left exactly as they've been if it would otherwise mean that different, more experimental takes on dungeons could qualify as the sort of experimental content that can be afforded by making fewer standard dungeons.

That's only relevant, of course, if anyone wants to see more experimental dungeons in the first place. Judging by the likes on either side across this thread, many do, but not enough to compete with Eureka, Aquapolis-like, and PotD-like content*. (*Some here have argued that PotD and HoH effectively are the experimental dungeons that others' have been asking for and that those posters' desires are therefore redundant, but I have trouble seeing why that would be the case; to me, at least, PotD/HoH has as more in common, even, with being a small party on its own in Eureka or doing Aquapolis-like content than it has with a dungeon, however experimental, especially if going by the ideas posted thus far.)