Quote Originally Posted by Iscah View Post
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.