Quote Originally Posted by Arohk View Post
i highly doubt that the "majority" of players even uses this system, does anyone have actual numbers?
There is no benefit in running with NPC's over players, usually a dungeon with NPC's takes twice as long to finish, the only reason i see to use this if you are playing late at night and can't find a party for anything.
Other than dps queue times, there are two massive advantages. Lower-skilled players use them to avoid wasting the precious time of higher-skilled players, most of whom just want to get the dungeon done as quickly and efficiently as possible. Complementary to that, lower-skilled players can enjoy the dungeons at their own pace.

Thus lower-skilled players can safely run dungeons knowing they are not going to get laughed at on these forums by gaming gods, who seem to think anyone who isn't as good as them lack reading and observational skills, while the high-skilled players can min-max the snot out of the "braindead" dungeons.

But as I've noted elsewhere, if higher-skilled players want more difficult dungeons, the only solution is dual- or tri-mode dungeon difficulty. Because SQEX isn't about to gate the people they seduced with a once-compelling story via harder dungeons.

All that said, I don't think FF14 dungeons are boring because they're easy. They're boring because they are formulaic and rely almost exclusively for their challenge on DDR slop.