Quote Originally Posted by Striker44 View Post
This is, frankly, entirely an "us" issue (as in the players). They used to create dungeons with multiple paths, optional side areas, etc.. What did we the playerbase do? Find which path was "optimal" for the fastest clear, and completely ignore anything that was optional.
This is... a bit disingenuous.

We haven't seen anything approaching dungeons with truly multiple paths since 1.x. We had optional side paths, but they were typically dull corridors you'd have to then backtrack right back through and doing them provided less rewards per minute than just skipping them.

In a group of randomly matched players with varying available time and assumption of how long the run should take, there's already going to be a skew towards fastest runs, yes, but it was predominantly just because the rewards were just clearly not worth the time* required and felt like low-effort tack-ons (outside of Sastasha and maybe the one lower chest in Darkhold) that people skipped them even when those dungeons were relevant.

Add to that the sidepaths rewards' completely failing to scale in any way for roulette-runners who no longer need the gear, and, yeah, there was a fundamental issue with the design of side-paths. It wasn't just an "us" issue, or even primarily one.