Current Dungeon Environment is Extremely Toxic

[Kalameet]

To get one thing out of the way, I already know some so-called veteran players will likely see the thread title and roll their eyes. But this is actually an issue that's making dungeon content unbearable, at least in PuGs.

The current, I guess you can call it "meta", in terms of running dungeons seems to be to just blindly run in and pull everything at once and the party tries to AoE everything down as fast as possible. Sometimes that works. I'd say about 75% of the time it doesn't, and most other cases it's completely unnecessary. And yet at some point between Stormblood's release (when I first joined the game mind you) and today it's become so ingrained in people's psyche that they somehow need to treat every dungeon like some kind of speedrun, regardless of party makeup, the capabilities of the other players, dungeon layout, or any other aspect worth taking into consideration.

It's something that even happens in lower level dungeons. A tank thinks they can apply that mindset to, say, Tam-Tara, but doesn't take into account that they don't have as many abilities available compared to running a lvl 80 Expert roulette. This more often than not results in tanks getting themselves killed, a healer being overworked, tanks losing agro on several mobs and getting the healer killed, party wipes, and generally more time wasted than if they had just taken a few extra seconds and not try to blast through everything.

Most tanks don't even ask the party if it's okay for them to pull big, they just go without any regard for the rest of the group. Other times a healer or DPS will just run ahead and agro everything ahead of the party, ruining dungeon flow. None of these scenarios benefit anyone.

Just yesterday I was tanking Grand Cosmos, and the healer actually Rescue'd me out of the first batch of mobs because apparently I wasn't moving fast enough for them, ruining the rest of the party's AoE placements at the same time. And yet I was the one that got votekicked out of the group because I called them out for acting so petty instead of just simply asking for me to pull more.

Dungeons were one aspect of the game where I could just zone out, maybe have a stream playing in the background, and just enjoy a 20 to 25 minute run a day. But more and more people are for whatever reason making this speedrun mindset the default, and are making dungeons less bearable to work with as a result, and Trust runs don't exactly reward tomestones to my knowledge. Anyone that apparently doesn't comply are considered to be slowing things down, even if the completion time difference is minimal.

Either something needs to be done to dungeons that discourages blindly mass pulling everything, or something needs to be implemented to discourage people from being antagonistic simply because someone doesn't want to run a dungeon a certain way.

Apologies for the long post. You are know free to try to belittle my efforts for some semblance of sanity.

[Vidu]

When you say "have a stream playing in the background"... do you mean you're actually watching something else while running the dungeon - even if only in "the background"? That sounds to me like you're not actually fully engaged in the game at this moment - but the other people in your party might be and dungeons tend to get at least a bit more engaging when you dont slug through them.

Here are a few things you should maybe consider:
1) Someone not running a dungeon a certain way goes both ways - right now it just happens to be that your mindset conflicts with the mindset that most people seem to have. But it would be also possible that you'd end up in a run with two other people wanting to take it slow and a last person wanting to speedrun and having that person kicked instead.
2) If you dont want to deal with other people having a different playstyle from you: Good news! You can actually do those dungeons with Trust-NPCs now! (They do award tomestones, but you cant run your expert roulette with them - you still get the tomes from the actual dungeon run, though - so 50 tomes from the two most recent ones)
3) Consider another ingame activity thats more suited for "zoning out" - like gathering, crafting, FATEs or maybe even Triple Triad.

I agree that it would be nice if tanks were actually aware of their surrondings all the time when it comes to low level dungeons (Do we have proper AoE here? Is the healer a sprout?) but even with that said: Its not that big of a deal. Dungeons are laughable easy content - which is why you can have your stream running in the background instead of needing to focus on whats actually happening. And thats fair, they're meant to be cleared by everyone - but that in turn means that they're often less engaging then they could be, specially when our ilvl rises and they get pretty, pretty boring if you do single pulls - and still not really challening when you do wall-to-wall pulls. Infact as tank or healer wall-to-wall pulls are the only time I feel that I can actually make use of my full toolkit - something I personally enjoy, because I like making use of every skill I have instead of just resorting to 1-2-3 or my one healing spell and one attack spell. When doing single pulls, you literally can just netflix something - and thats not good design. I'm not saying that our current dungeon design is perfect, but I do consider it fair: Single pulls are possible for groups who might struggle with to many mobs, but for everyone who wants a bit more of at least the hint of a challenge there are max pulls. Most people seem to be in the later category and its fair for them to tell other people "Look, the three of us would like to play this game this way - you can join us or you can leave and find a group that wants to play your way". As it would be fair if the sides were reversed. What doesnt seem fair to me is what you're doing here: Trying to hard-enforce your playstyle onto everyone.

But hopefully, you wont need to anymore - now that you know that you can just run those dungeons in your own pace with Trust-NPCs.

[Kalameet]

What doesnt seem fair to me is what you're doing here: Trying to hard-enforce your playstyle onto everyone.

This part is what's telling me that you didn't even bother to read the majority of my post, as it's always been the opposite scenario: elitists and people with nothing better to do than be angry trying to force their methods onto everyone else.

When you say "have a stream playing in the background"... do you mean you're actually watching something else while running the dungeon - even if only in "the background"? That sounds to me like you're not actually fully engaged in the game at this moment - but the other people in your party might be and dungeons tend to get at least a bit more engaging when you dont slug through them.

You do realize it's not that much different than say having music playing in the background, right? And that it's possible for some people to focus on a couple things at once? That's called multi-tasking. If there's a situation where I really do need to focus, then I can just click mute or pause, do the thing that requires focus, then click it back on again.

But it would be also possible that you'd end up in a run with two other people wanting to take it slow and a last person wanting to speedrun and having that person kicked instead.

I have never attempted to votekick someone for wanting to go too fast. Not sure where you're pulling that accusation from.

Dungeons are laughable easy content - which is why you can have your stream running in the background instead of needing to focus on whats actually happening.

You'd be surprised how many people I've seen get wrecked on basic mechanics, and you're also ignoring sprouts or just anyone doing a dungeon for the first time.

Honestly, you're entire response feels extremely passive aggressive and judgmental for no real reason other than me bringing up a legitimate issue with the community.

[Mhaeric]

[Rongway]

To get one thing out of the way, I already know some so-called veteran players will likely see the thread title and roll their eyes.

Maybe don't choose such an eyeroll thread title.

The current, I guess you can call it "meta", in terms of running dungeons seems to be to just blindly run in and pull everything at once and the party tries to AoE everything down as fast as possible. Sometimes that works. I'd say about 75% of the time it doesn't,

It works almost every time I've run it with complete strangers, so you might want to think about what personal factors might be affecting your own personal success rate.

and most other cases it's completely unnecessary.

You can safely and effectively kill 10 mobs with AoEs in the same amount of time it takes to kill 5 mobs with AoEs, so why wouldn't you reduce the time spent on trash in half?

And yet at some point between Stormblood's release (when I first joined the game mind you) and today it's become so ingrained in people's psyche that they somehow need to treat every dungeon like some kind of speedrun, regardless of party makeup,

Party makeup doesn't matter after Lv50. By then, everyone has AoEs and healers have ways to heal the tank to full in the span of a single GCD.

the capabilities of the other players,

Everyone is capable of wall-to-wall pulls, and if they're not, they should practice doing it.

dungeon layout,

There are no significant differences in dungeon layouts after lv50 that would affect the success of wall-to-wall pulls.

It's something that even happens in lower level dungeons. A tank thinks they can apply that mindset to, say, Tam-Tara, but doesn't take into account that they don't have as many abilities available compared to running a lvl 80 Expert roulette.

Mobs in the first few dungeons don't hit very hard and tanks don't need eight different cooldowns to survive them. If even one of the DDs has AoE attacks in the dungeon, large pulls will still be a speed improvement over small ones, even accounting for lost healer DPS due to having to spam Cure because each AoE attack on a group of mobs does so much damage.

Most tanks don't even ask the party if it's okay for them to pull big, they just go without any regard for the rest of the group.

Because:

The current, I guess you can call it "meta", in terms of running dungeons seems to be...

Just yesterday I was tanking Grand Cosmos, and the healer actually Rescue'd me out of the first batch of mobs because apparently I wasn't moving fast enough for them, ruining the rest of the party's AoE placements at the same time.

If the rest of the party was AoEing, they were probably expecting you to do a standard (full) pull, and completing the pull would still have been faster than doing two separate pulls, even if their ground AoEs were lost.

And yet I was the one that got votekicked out of the group because I called them out for acting so petty instead of just simply asking for me to pull more.

Maybe just pull more instead of accusing them of pettiness. It's petty to antagonize the rest of the party for wanting a standard pull.

Dungeons were one aspect of the game where I could just zone out, maybe have a stream playing in the background, and just enjoy a 20 to 25 minute run a day.

Queue with friends if you want to run dungeons lazily. When people queue up for a duty with strangers they should be committed to doing their jobs to make sure everything dies as fast as possible so they're not wasting three other people's time.

But more and more people are for whatever reason making this speedrun mindset the default, and are making dungeons less bearable to work with as a result

So don't run things with random people.

and Trust runs don't exactly reward tomestones to my knowledge.

The Lv80 dungeons do.

Anyone that apparently doesn't comply are considered to be slowing things down

If you know a dungeon can be run faster by pulling bigger and you know that this is what people expect, and you still don't want to do it, then you are slowing things down, intentionally.

even if the completion time difference is minimal.

If a dungeon takes about 4 minutes per boss and 2 minutes per full trash pull, then splitting each pull in half would make what should be an 18 minute dungeon take 24 minutes. This is an increase of 33%.
According to one data aggregator, about 15% of active characters have run between 5,000 and 10,000 dungeons, raids, or trials. Let's consider something in the middle, say 7,500 duties, and let's consider that maybe 5,000 of the 7,500 duties were dungeons. If 5,000 dungeons took 6 minutes longer than they needed to, then each player would have spent over 20 days of wasted time in dungeons that could have gone faster over the course of their adventuring careers.

[TyrTry]

Either something needs to be done to dungeons that discourages blindly mass pulling everything, or something needs to be implemented to discourage people from being antagonistic simply because someone doesn't want to run a dungeon a certain way.

Speak up, vote kick, or leave the dungeon. You have options.

You are not forced to stay in a dungeon you deem to antagonistic. And what is up with these statistics lately? 75% of the time it doesn't work? I can do that too! Works for me 85% of the time!

And when it doesn't....so what? You had runs with some annoying players; it happens. I get them too. You find other players.

And as for the "zoning out" and "stream playing in the background", that might explain why you weren't "moving fast enough" and got kicked. I always hear the same "I can multi-task!" only to have the speaker die to something avoidable or holding the group back because they aren't fully engaged.

[Jirah]

I won’t pretend “those” players don’t exist. Ya know those <Perfect Legend> players that bring their Savage mindset into the most basic content IE dungeons, even though you can screw up your rotation and have 1/2 DPS die and screw up most of the mechs and still not cause any notable damage to the run.

But tbh that rarely happens it’s not every run, Rarely I get those PL Tanks judging the DPS of brand New 80 people, or Healers scorning the tank for not wall-to-walling the area. Dungeons aren’t hard some are mind numbing if your a DPS and since it’s not hard interesting players tend to focus on speed. But again this doesn’t happen often to be a concern

[Mavrias]

Please do not single pull Grand Cosmos. We're all level 80, here. There's no reason for a run that is usually done in 15 minutes or less to take 25. Hit your buttons and lets go.

[Ilyrian]

I won’t pretend “those” players don’t exist. Ya know those <Perfect Legend> players that bring their Savage mindset into the most basic content IE dungeons, even though you can screw up your rotation and have 1/2 DPS die and screw up most of the mechs and still not cause any notable damage to the run.

In my experience it's those players who act the exact opposite to the way you've described.

[Alyx_Morfyn]

Meh. Wall to wall is fine, smalls packs are fine too. I usually check if the healer can follow with the first pull, then I adapt. If he heals with oGCD's and starts DPSing, I'm good to go. If not, I pull smaller packs and that's it.

I don't think people having different expectations from yours make the environment toxic. Most of the time, you can talk it out.