AT THIS POINT in World of Warcraft

[Rilifane]

I played WoW at least a decade ago so I know their dungeons have many differing paths, but that still doesn't solve the XIV problem of "no one runs the alternate paths anyway so why have them" problem that the devs have put themselves into. They could go the WoW path and put extra bosses and such behind alternate paths, but this community wouldn't care unless it's day 1 and you want the map achieve, or there's other rare stuff in those boxes (though they'll not care once they have them). I'm not against more variety in dungeons beyond "have an extra pack to pull, as a little treat" like we currently have, but most things just... wouldn't work because of what I mentioned in the post you quoted.

You didn't understand my point, I think.
The point is, the WoW dungeons are fun due to variety on many levels that keep them interesting, engaging, fresh and varied. That is why people are currently still happily do old dungeons for leveling, that is why people happily do full runs instead of skipskipskip everything (despite being accused of doing that, ironically). FFXIV is creatively bankrupt with dungeons. They are stale and sterile. They are designed to be efficient, fast chores that give minimal resistance so everyone can roflstomp through them quickly, grab their reward and leave them.
Blizzard certainly doesn't always hit the spot when they add special gimicks to a dungeon or with dungeon design in general but they sure as hell aren't afraid to try new things to keep it fresh and fun. Same with layouts, pathes and general size of a dungeon. There are a few dungeons people hate, myself included, like Gnomeregan but the majority are fun to run through.

With things like extras, it's mostly poor placement from SE.
If a group has to put in extra effort to skip even if it would be more efficient to do so or just do a full run that's less efficient but more fun, the choices are more balanced. But if you have to go out of your way to grab a chest in a room that gives nothing put a potion and some gil, then how are the choices even remotely balanced? How can you seriously expect all players to go for the potion locked behind one extra trash pack and a ton of walking?
Dungeons and achievements is something they've always done generally well on even during their worst expansions and FFXIV could learn a lot from it.

And I didn't mean you with the nostalgia, just forgot to quote the guy who claimed that anyone defending anything about WoW or let alone enjoy is blinded by nostalgia.

[R041]

....

A lot of people also forget what all of this does for casual players too. It generally makes the experience more enjoyable when it feels like we're on an actual adventure and have no idea what will happen.

People keep bringing up how tryhard players will make it an unenjoyable experience, but what do you expect them to do - Get rid of all of the casual fun just because a few people have managed to calculate the super perfect comp and path? Then they need everyone to execute it exactly as planned? We have just as many tryhards and friction. People just don't run combat content enough to see that. Hell even non-combat content has tryhard salty catbois.

I had a few runs like that, but majority were very chill. Even M runs were chill.

Ultimately though, it still provides more engagement opportunities, and a feeling of exploration. SE fails to grasp that the possibility of failure and confusion is a part of excitement for casuals too.

People don't really watch XIV streams because there's just straight up no variation to anything. It's like re-watching a movie that plays out exactly as you remember it.

They watch WoW because there's a lot of diversity and difference with how they run dungeons, comps, play their class.. None of those are really a thing in XIV. So of course the only reason people would ever watch XIV is when a big variety streamer is doing MSQ. Then we all sit and watch the same old movie together.

[rainichan]

My bad.

I guess what you're saying is, XIV can't do what WoW can in this regard. Because XIV has no real mechanical diversity. Which I agree with, it would be very difficult for XIV to even attempt it.

But that's just a byproduct of them washing everything, which in itself is frustrating. :/

In this regard... kind of? Toto-rak, before its rework, had at least an alternate path to go down to get the green blobs but no one ever went that way. Dzemael Darkhold also had some off-path extra chests but no one ever went that way, even for gear pieces. Everyone takes the most expedient route for everything because this community is all about being Sonic. Gotta Go Fast. I don't think even adding in extra routes with bosses would really help, even with locking rare things behind a drop there. People would run it til they get the rare drop and never go that way again.

You didn't understand my point, I think.

Ah, gotcha on the nostalgia thing, I figured that was the case!

To everything else: no, I get it. I played during Cata and had... not great dungeon experiences when I first started so I generally outleveled them some and just ran them by myself later (Beastmaster Hunter, made my cat tank lol). I did have some fun doing stuff like Stratholme a few times, but I didn't see what you've mentioned - that may be newer now because I haven't played since Pandas, or it's just been a hot minute and I'm misremembering, but hey if they changed stuff, good!

I do still think that, even if SE changed dungeons to be a little more dynamic, it will end up how I mentioned in my above quote. We have a much different dungeon meta and community in that regard, sadly. I wouldn't be averse to it, I'd love it! But I also know the general NA community is "get it done fast." That isn't everyone, but a greater majority, sadly. I'd love different paths to decide to take that particular run, different bosses, etc. Maybe not all quite like how the Variant worked, but similar. But I know it'd come down to "this path is the fastest, this is all you'll ever see" and it'd be wasted unless you're in a premade group.

[Renalt]

Ah beastmaster Hunter. That was my 1st build before I found out the glory of Druid.

[Shinkuno]

In this regard... kind of? Toto-rak, before its rework, had at least an alternate path to go down to get the green blobs but no one ever went that way. Dzemael Darkhold also had some off-path extra chests but no one ever went that way, even for gear pieces. Everyone takes the most expedient route for everything because this community is all about being Sonic. Gotta Go Fast. I don't think even adding in extra routes with bosses would really help, even with locking rare things behind a drop there. People would run it til they get the rare drop and never go that way again.
.

New players do. Ofcourse someone that ran it 100 times knows the optimal path, why does it matter though?Let NEW players go on a dungeon adventure instead of a braindead move from a to b. The MSQ is full of that already

[Ranhansha]

In this regard... kind of? Toto-rak, before its rework, had at least an alternate path to go down to get the green blobs but no one ever went that way. Dzemael Darkhold also had some off-path extra chests but no one ever went that way, even for gear pieces. Everyone takes the most expedient route for everything because this community is all about being Sonic. Gotta Go Fast. I don't think even adding in extra routes with bosses would really help, even with locking rare things behind a drop there. People would run it til they get the rare drop and never go that way again.



Ah, gotcha on the nostalgia thing, I figured that was the case!

To everything else: no, I get it. I played during Cata and had... not great dungeon experiences when I first started so I generally outleveled them some and just ran them by myself later (Beastmaster Hunter, made my cat tank lol). I did have some fun doing stuff like Stratholme a few times, but I didn't see what you've mentioned - that may be newer now because I haven't played since Pandas, or it's just been a hot minute and I'm misremembering, but hey if they changed stuff, good!

I do still think that, even if SE changed dungeons to be a little more dynamic, it will end up how I mentioned in my above quote. We have a much different dungeon meta and community in that regard, sadly. I wouldn't be averse to it, I'd love it! But I also know the general NA community is "get it done fast." That isn't everyone, but a greater majority, sadly. I'd love different paths to decide to take that particular run, different bosses, etc. Maybe not all quite like how the Variant worked, but similar. But I know it'd come down to "this path is the fastest, this is all you'll ever see" and it'd be wasted unless you're in a premade group.

Because the gear system is not the best. If the next dungeon had an alternate path with a boss and a chest with a 630 piece, everyone would do it. What kind of gear did you get from DD? Was it even meaningful? You probably outleveled that with the augmented tomestone gear you get with poetics. I don't know, they could at least try something, but they are so scared or lazy they don't want to. I'm not sure people would feel like fighting an extra boss for extra dyes, but maybe some groups would take a diversion to clear an extra pull or a puzzle to get a couple of those rare red/pink/blue/yellow dyes. I know I would. Maybe have a quest for things like that. We had it for accessories back in HW with the 24-man raids and the "Ultima Weapon" (Can't really remeber the thing). You never know if you don't try.

[rainichan]

New players do. Ofcourse someone that ran it 100 times knows the optimal path, why does it matter though?Let NEW players go on a dungeon adventure instead of a braindead move from a to b. The MSQ is full of that already

Not always. They'll follow where the tank goes. Unless everyone is on board with "hey can we go into the extra room" most people just go from point A to point B.

Because the gear system is not the best. If the next dungeon had an alternate path with a boss and a chest with a 630 piece, everyone would do it. What kind of gear did you get from DD? Was it even meaningful? You probably outleveled that with the augmented tomestone gear you get with poetics. I don't know, they could at least try something, but they are so scared or lazy they don't want to. I'm not sure people would feel like fighting an extra boss for extra dyes, but maybe some groups would take a diversion to clear an extra pull or a puzzle to get a couple of those rare red/pink/blue/yellow dyes. I know I would. Maybe have a quest for things like that. We had it for accessories back in HW with the 24-man raids and the "Ultima Weapon" (Can't really remeber the thing). You never know if you don't try.

Back in 2013? Absolutely. Now? No. But once that gear is outdated, they run into the same problem, even in new dungeons. Yeah I can turn it in for tomes, but what's the point? And if it were anything but dyes, people would run it until they got what they wanted and then "nah takes too long going that way" and "well you should have been in a premade". That is 100% a big chunk of the community anymore. Even for dyes or something reusable, you'd run into the same problem of people not wanting to because they don't care to make the detour.

Then again, the devs do make alternate paths or whatever in a dungeon and we'll probably just see people complaining that they did that anyway, or complaining that the items that get them a lot of gil on the MB are crashing now.

[Lieri]

What happened with Warlords of Draenor vs Endwalker is incomparable. I posted a lot on Blizz forum back then. In WoD players had no say in whichever direction the game was heading, at all. Thats why they kept adding stuffs to Garrison, their biggest investment in the game due to servers cost despite of it being a disaster for a game like WoW where the main cities are always crowded with players and interactions, cities are their preferred places to hang out, not Garrison.

In comparison XIV has always listened but of course they need to take the middle ground and didn't implement everything the players want. Devs also have a life, there's also budget so it's understandable if sometimes they take the easy way to solve problems (like the current fix for PLD, not adding instanced housing but instead just copy paste wards, etc). But during WoD I would say not even 5% of the community's input get implemented into the game. The jobs design was good during WoD though. The only time they almost got the balance right but they screwed it up with other systems.

[Liam_Harper]

LMAO. No, they arent. WOW is so primitive in its design that it ENCOURAGES stalkers, it is poorly moderated, poorly managed, has more bugs than a flea infested warehouse, cannot manage a universal day night cycle, cannot even manage a calendar to show events in local time, has piss poor privacy measures, relies on three and only three endgame areas, raid, pvp, m plus, the open world is a joke, the story looks like a smashed mirror put together with sellotape, the list of deleted and wiped content is HUGE, their GMs cannot and do not take active part in moderation, their crafting is a sick parody laced with RNG , they allow vendors , npcs and questgivers to be ganked because "wurld pee vee pee" which NO ONE cares about or gives a rats fart for, the graphics are old , dated and quite frankly horrible, their classes are laced with RNG, racials tied to an idiotic, outdated, hackneyed faction war no one gives a crap for and hasnt for years, their communication is non existent, their vaunted "community council" has accomplished NOTHING, they have a PTR that is ostensibly for testing and feedback..said feedback of course goes into the proverbial black hole as they listen to NONE OF IT...how many times have they been warned about problems and ignored them?

FFXIV is literally worse on most of this or straight up doesn't even have it. Notorious for enabling stalking, no event calenders, no real endgame besides raids, no open world, a story that makes no sense, dead PvP, dead crafting, even less communication. Sure, WoW's a mess in many ways, but let's not pretend FFXIV is better.
The real difference between WoW and FFXIV however is a lot of WoW is fun and FFXIV is sterile and boring.

most of ffxiv players are actually in the game and playing it and not on the forums posting.

Most of ffxiv players are playing the game. That's obvious, they're ffxiv players?

What posts like this fail to realize is all you see in the game are those who still play the game, but you don't see the former players who decided "eh, this game isn't for me" and ditched it. Complainers are a minority in that most people silently leave if they don't like a game. Complainers are a sort of an in-between who dislike aspects of a game but see potential in it and leave feedback in hope it could see improvement one day. For every one complainer there's usually a whole crowd of other people who felt the same and simply left. This is why most companies value negative feedback far more than white knighting and empty praise.

When complainers give up and leave too, it's usually a very bad sign because it means the players who once saw potential now have no hope. And I've noticed a huge number of names on the forums who used to leave feedback have faded away over Endwalker.

[Y2K21]

What happened with Warlords of Draenor vs Endwalker is incomparable. I posted a lot on Blizz forum back then. In WoD players had no say in whichever direction the game was heading, at all. Thats why they kept adding stuffs to Garrison, their biggest investment in the game due to servers cost despite of it being a disaster for a game like WoW where the main cities are always crowded with players and interactions, cities are their preferred places to hang out, not Garrison.

In comparison XIV has always listened but of course they need to take the middle ground and didn't implement everything the players want. Devs also have a life, there's also budget so it's understandable if sometimes they take the easy way to solve problems (like the current fix for PLD, not adding instanced housing but instead just copy paste wards, etc). But during WoD I would say not even 5% of the community's input get implemented into the game. The jobs design was good during WoD though. The only time they almost got the balance right but they screwed it up with other systems.

I think people forget with WoD is that management literally told the devs about 75% through development that they wanted to change the direction of the expansion - which is why a lot of things were put into the Garrison as well as simple content because of the time constrant.

There was no content because of managerial meddling, as much as we want to blame devs.