Quote Originally Posted by Striker44 View Post
Even then, though, if you were running M+, within a very short time people had already determined the "optimal" route to kill precisely enough mobs to satisfy the requirements, and every run was expected to follow that route.

And as others have mentioned, the "mob" approach to current dungeons is precisely because of how we the players ran them. There is also still some variety in terms of particular pats, 3rd pulls, and so on.
M+, unless ran with a group of friends, was always a miserable, miserable experience. Not just the M+ versions of the dungeons, but the "optimal" route mapped by top M+ players would inevitably trickle down to the more "casual" players that do the normal, heroic and M0 versions, and they'd turn into utter tryhards.
I got a lot of toxicity and vitriol from people for pulling a single pack that technically didn't need to be fought, or for not knowing the entire route inside out BEFORE the dungeon released (thanks PTR).
I think a curated, linear dungeon can work just fine, but I also think FF might be taking it a bit far, and seem outright afraid of any kind of variety aside from the visuals and boss mechanics. But maybe that's what variant/criterion is here to change.