Expert Dungeon System

[ForteNightshade]

The thing is, even when the dungeons aren't constructed that way, players treat them like they are.

Side rooms in Sastasha. What are they?

Branching paths in Toto-Rak. When did anyone ever take the alternate route through the first zone? One tank in all the times I've played it.

Puzzles and treasure keys in Qarn. Lol no, we're just going to barrel straight past them and deliberately do the puzzle wrong because it's quicker to deal with the trap than to disarm it.

If I was a dungeon designer, I don't think I'd bother trying to make them interesting any more either.

What incentive do people have to explore though? If I don't need the accessory drop in Brayflox, then I have no reason to deviate. The issue with older ARR dungeons is the dev team added branching paths with no reason to explore them. They just expected us to. Which is fine on a first run, but afterwards... well, I don't have a reason to care about it anymore.

As Rufalus said, there needs to be compelling RNG to incentivize exploration. If going down a different path gave you bonus tomes or gil, people would be far more interested in taking detours.

[Dzian]

The issue is the game is built around the Duty Finder. So dungeons have to be linear and boring. If you had optional paths with optional bosses and optional rewards and then stuck that dungeon in the duty finder your basically asking asking for trouble.. You get matched to a group where 1 guy wants to take this path. Another guy that path. Someone else just wants to burn the quickest route possible.. It'd be disastrous.

The only way it could work is if matchmaking was completely disabled and players had to make there own groups...

Then comes the rewards they're all trash anyway. How often do you run an expert roulette or any dungeon really and the whole party completely ignores all the treasure chests. Because they don't contain anything of value...

Essentially if multiple routes ever existed players would just always take the fastest one because they already ignore treasure..

POTD HOH is yet another example. optional rooms get ignored its just activate the portal and go straight up. because the rewards from exploring the optional rooms are worthless trash...people evenignore the brown chests because they offer nothing valuable enough to make it worth wasting a few seconds dealingwith a potential mimic..

[ReynTime]

The thing is, even when the dungeons aren't constructed that way, players treat them like they are.

Side rooms in Sastasha. What are they?

Branching paths in Toto-Rak. When did anyone ever take the alternate route through the first zone? One tank in all the times I've played it.

Puzzles and treasure keys in Qarn. Lol no, we're just going to barrel straight past them and deliberately do the puzzle wrong because it's quicker to deal with the trap than to disarm it.

If I was a dungeon designer, I don't think I'd bother trying to make them interesting any more either.

That's because the dev team for whatever reason decided to scrap the bonus chest system from 1.1X. Those justified exploring, because there were bonus for clearing optional bosses/areas or opening certain chests.
IMO it was a big mistake. They tried to do optional paths/dead-ends during ARR despite removing the only thing motivating players to explore more than once per character if even that.

Moreover, as long as every dungeon is meant to be included in a daily roulette, there will always be a majority of players who just want to hurry and get it done. I don't care if the designers are so short-sighted now that they insist 4-8p dungeons can't be more than they are. If they implemented non-hallway sim dungeons designed not to be part of roulettes and give their own rewards, featuring the bonus chest mechanic again, I'm pretty sure it would work better than they expect.

Make bonus chest give mats for glamour recipe that can't be gotten otherwise, mount/minion chance, extra tomestones, or maybe even long-lasting role-wide leveling gear as a tiny extra if any of these dungeons could be spread across lower level tiers. It's not like there is a lack of things to use poetics for anyway.