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

[Gula]

The reason we can't have a lot of innovative things is because,
1. Path of least resistance. This was explained with a dungeon that had multiple paths for multiple rewards and people went in the straight line to the finish.
2. Accessibility. People will complain if story or rewards are locked behind a wall they can't overcome. See Neo ExDeath. Yes it is supposed to be hard, but the fact remained that there was extra story behind it, and people were not happy.

I, personally, would like to see something like Eureka or Diadem, but not grindy or a one shot kill fest. A dungeon zone, but survivable. Give me open world chests, NPCs to find, sights to see and lore to be learned. I unsynced Coils just to see what the hubbub was about and I had that kind of feeling. This massive place with multiple paths, things to see and lore to be learned.

Then I got to Twintania and that was the end of that wonder.

[Nandrolone]

The reason we can't have a lot of innovative things is because,
1. Path of least resistance. This was explained with a dungeon that had multiple paths for multiple rewards and people went in the straight line to the finish.
2. Accessibility. People will complain if story or rewards are locked behind a wall they can't overcome. See Neo ExDeath. Yes it is supposed to be hard, but the fact remained that there was extra story behind it, and people were not happy.

I, personally, would like to see something like Eureka or Diadem, but not grindy or a one shot kill fest. A dungeon zone, but survivable. Give me open world chests, NPCs to find, sights to see and lore to be learned. I unsynced Coils just to see what the hubbub was about and I had that kind of feeling. This massive place with multiple paths, things to see and lore to be learned.

Then I got to Twintania and that was the end of that wonder.

I’ve always wondered this. The FFXIV community seems to complain a lot when content is locked behind grindy effort or something that requires a lot of time and energy. But other communities ive seen, they don’t seem to complain as much. I’m not trying to start any fighting, I just never really understood why that was.

[Vidu]

I’ve always wondered this. The FFXIV community seems to complain a lot when content is locked behind grindy effort or something that requires a lot of time and energy. But other communities ive seen, they don’t seem to complain as much. I’m not trying to start any fighting, I just never really understood why that was.

My guess would be that at least for the western community a lot of people dont come so much from other MMOs but from other FFs and they have more of an "This is a Final Fantasy game" than an "This is an MMO"-approach. This obviously effects their expectation of the game: FFs are story-heavy, story-driven games and while they can be very grindy at times, those grinds are usually tied to defeating some super-boss or just a meaningless item in your inventory. You can grind in some FFs, but if you choose not to you still gonna see most of the game and most important: Pretty much all of the story.
Most complaints about content being locked behind something that I see are in regards to story and lore being locked - sure, that glamour-thing is a nice extra-bit, but the main reason we got NMs for raids was because people who didnt want to raid were upset that they couldnt experience the coil-story-line.

Its just my personal guess ofc, but I believe that a large part of the FF-audience expects a story-heavy game and cares about having that story told to them - so they're not happy about potentially missing out on that story experience or they're more intrested in having said story told than following a mindless, potentially badly motivated grind.