For all those complaining about stale dungeons: from a beta player perspective

[KitiaraIornsight]

I actually started playing FFXIV when it was a 2 week closed beta run for PS3. And yes, a TON of things have changed since.
But I keep seeing people complaining about how dungeons are just one long hallway in the same format over and over, and well there is a REASON why that's developed.
Its because speed runners looking for quick clears SKIPPED exploring the dungeon. Once players learned the quickest route to each boss, the vet players even when grouped up with a sprout promptly lead them down the fast path ignoring the fact that there is an in game mapping achievement for every dungeon and took them straight to the boss. This was sooooooooooo egregious they literally chopped out 99% of the content from the original MSQ because of this behavior after they had to block cutscene skipping for people speed running Prae and Castrum.
So why on earth would they change the dungeon format and formula AT ALL when speed runners always dictate the path, pace and course of the dungeon runs? Even with varient/criterion dungeons and ATTEMPT to get people to explore dungeons, 99% of speed runners figured out which of the 3 paths was shorter with the easier of the boss variations and that's the path they always take, screw exploration. Why waste resources coding content that gets skipped 99.9% of the time.
Shoot, before they changed some of the 2.0 dungeons to fit the new formula, I remember some players getting MAD by other players who wanted to open the entire maps.
The other day on an alt I took a group through sastasha and opened the whole map. 2 were level 100 players that didn't know you could rescue prisoners in the dungeon and there were hidden chests.
So while everyone complains about dungeons, your speed runners in their daily roulettes have locked us into this format, because they want to be in and out of a dungeon in under 15 mins period, no exceptions, the rest of the group can kick rocks.

Now that being said, I would like to see us go back to unique dungeons that have more explorations. I'd love to see more optional dungeons being dropped with variations of other dungeons we already have such as the hard modes we received from 2.0-4.0 but once covid came, they used that as an excuse to cut the content and increase the patch cycle lengths with no intention of returning to the 6 week cycle we originally had for new stuff.

I don't know what the answer is, but I can tell you unless the VAST majority (the people NOT in these forums) of players decided they are willing to spend more than 10-15 mins on a dungeon we will never see the old format come back and Variants will be dead after 2-3 weeks once all the drops from gil hounds are gathered and listed for 35,000,000 gil on the markets.

[Valence]

And SE in their usual fashion took upon to decide that if something is flawed, it's better to delete everything down to blandness instead of fixing it.

[BigCheez]

Its because speed runners looking for quick clears SKIPPED exploring the dungeon. Once players learned the quickest route to each boss, the vet players even when grouped up with a sprout promptly lead them down the fast path ignoring the fact that there is an in game mapping achievement for every dungeon and took them straight to the boss. This was sooooooooooo egregious they literally chopped out 99% of the content from the original MSQ because of this behavior after they had to block cutscene skipping for people speed running Prae and Castrum.

This doesn't make a lick of sense.

Yes, people will optimise their dungeon runs and cut out unnecessary rooms/mobs once they know the layout. Creating dungeons that allow for players to actually make those optimisation makes the dungeons infinitely more fun on their first few playthroughs though. And new players have the option to team up with friends or other new players if they want a slower-paced first run through the dungeon.

This is the epitome of SE's approach to design. If something isn't working perfectly, they don't even try to improve it, they just gut it completely. "Players were skipping the extra rooms in dungeons so we solved the problem by making dungeons so boring that they aren't even fun the first time you play them". Nice one. Great job.

[Altina_Orion]

Frankly, I care less about the hallway thing and more about the lack of engaging trash. Also, I hate that nothing truly punishes you. A lot of bosses you can just stand still and win.

[BigCheez]

Frankly, I care less about the hallway thing and more about the lack of engaging trash.

I'd like both.

I wish dungeon layouts were more interesting. There should be packs that can be skipped. Larger sections that give the players the autonomy to decide if they want to do it in 1 pull or break it into 2. If they don't want people to run the same optimised path every time, they could add some RNG elements and have multiple paths with where 1 is blocked off sometimes, different doors that are open or closed sometimes, etc. There are a lot of options that they could experiment with.

I'd also like to see some more interesting mobs. Abilities to stun/interrupt, roaming minibosses that can be CCd while you're fighting the surrounding trash, etc.

Dungeons in XIV are just wasted potential. It's sad.

[Volgia]

"Your speedrunners", there are players who found it fun to be able to optimize the dungeon and do it as fast as possible, I remember when some pulls in Darkhold could be dangerous but it was fun to try and get there as fast as possible.

So now, there's no way to do that. You can't "speedrun" anything, you cannot take any risks, the dungeons literally have doors between pulls denying you the ability to pull more even though we have 1000000000000000000 resources to deal with it, literally to appeal to people who complain about this subject.

[Jeeqbit]

I keep seeing people complaining about how dungeons are just one long hallway in the same format over and over

I don't think that is necessarily an issue. I think most people just can't articulate the actual problems they have. They want the enemies and the process of traveling through the dungeon to be interesting and create a varied experience each time. I think the issue is really that they did this via variant dungeons instead, a type of content you'll do then never touch it again because it has no roulette.

Its because speed runners looking for quick clears SKIPPED exploring the dungeon.

Agreed. People could go exploring through Sastasha but it's not as if they do. If anyone reading this is unaware Sastasha isn't just a hallway, you just proved my point. Players treat it as such so much that you come to think it is just a hallway anyway.

Another thing speedrunners caused was walls to be added. You can still see proof of this by entering each ARR dungeon in sequence. Eventually, you will notice a change where you can only pull 2-3 packs in most cases. This is because of examples like Snowcloak, where tanks tried pulling an insane amount of enemies all at once when the healer hadn't even barely moved yet, wiped, then immediately abandoned the duty. I saw this so many times in Snowcloak, and ironically it was the tank's fault but I doubt they saw it that way. Pulls like this are easier than they used to be, so you can't compare now to back then ie. PLD had no AoE, some of our dps stats weren't dps stats, potency was different.

I remember when some pulls in Darkhold could be dangerous but it was fun to try and get there as fast as possible.

I think Dzemael Darkhold did it in an interesting way. I've pulled all the enemies from the start right to the first boss and killed all the enemies on the purple area without a healer. It's an example of a pull that is fun, isn't dangerous but the main problem with it is the concern that a sprout that doesn't know better may have their heart race (in a bad way) when you pull that many enemies, since it looks insane until they come out of it alive.

Aurum Vale did it in an interesting way as well. Most of us learned to navigate around the edge at the start. But given it was the most abandoned dungeon for many years, it seems a lot of players protested with the abandon button and pushed SE's design decisions to where they ended up.

Both these dungeons you had to learn as a tank how to pull some mobs but not others. It was easy to pull more mob packs than you intended and get overwhelmed. This happens less now, so newer players may not understand, but you actually couldn't pull the whole lot in most cases in Aurum Vale and Dzemael, and had to judge the situation depending on the job you were playing, your healer's competence, amount of DPS, etc. Then work out how many your party could handle.

[TaleraRistain]

Shoot, before they changed some of the 2.0 dungeons to fit the new formula, I remember some players getting MAD by other players who wanted to open the entire maps.

This especially. When tanks didn't take the prescribed route and tried to get the map achievement they would get harassed and insulted.

I haven't been around as long as OP, only since 2.2, but y'all did this to yourselves. I have been around these forums long enough to remember the endless threads that used to whine about it.

[TaleraRistain]

Aurum Vale did it in an interesting way as well. Most of us learned to navigate around the edge at the start. But given it was the most abandoned dungeon for many years, it seems a lot of players protested with the abandon button and pushed SE's design decisions to where they ended up.

Was getting some older optional dungeons cleared on my alt a couple weeks ago and had someone abandon Pharos. The tank questioned why they hadn't "fixed" that dungeon yet.

[BigCheez]

[Removed for character limit]

At some point, I think you just need to bite the bullet and accept that you can't have an interesting multiplayer game without potentially allowing for disagreements to happen. If the choices are "allow for players to potentially get chewed out for making mistakes" or "idiot-proof everything to the point that the game is no longer enjoyable to play", I'll take the first option every time. Is it really that big a deal if someone rage quits a dungeon? Sure, it's not ideal, but neither is lobotomising the game.

AV is probably my favourite dungeon in the game, though. I think it does a lot of things right.

• You can get through the first room pulling only 5 mobs by hugging the left wall and dodging the toads.
• You can skip the whole room before the 2nd boss if you know how to path through the middle of the group of scorpions blocking the entrance without clipping their line of sight.
• You can skip everything in the room after the 2nd boss if you hug the left wall and dodge the mobs in the middle of the room, then pull everything right up to the morbol room, then once you're in there you can break all the plants to avoid the seedlings spawning.
• The first and last boss both have the unique fruit mechanic that gives you the autonomy to choose whether you want to play safer and take less damage, or take more damage but also deal more damage to the boss.

It's obviously very power crept now and the bosses are a bit of a sleeper since they added telegraphs to everything but a lot of the ideas in AV are great. It's sad how much dungeon design has regressed.

This especially. When tanks didn't take the prescribed route and tried to get the map achievement they would get harassed and insulted.

Explorer Mode exists. This isn't an issue.