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

[TaleraRistain]

But you never went everywhere, you done the bare minimum to get through, which is the point being made. Haukke Manor, Halatali, Dzemael Darkhold and more, all dungeons with extra areas that noone does. The biggest example I do want to point out is Sunkern Temple of Qarn. It has puzzles to solve that give rewards, but they aren't worth it, so noone does them. This is to the point where noone even collects the stones for the scales at the end, instead failing the puzzle as it saves a trash pack and so, makes it quicker.

And now with the rework, that whole thing was taken out because I guarantee you the devs noticed the players weren't even doing it anyway.

[ElysiumDragon]

The old dungeons were horrid, especially if you had a Sprout. I don't miss them in the slightest, and to this day, Dzemael Darkhold is still the single worst instance in the game.

[Basteala]

I understand why dungeon's don't have exploration anymore.

But what's with their obsession with artificial walls? Let us have boss to boss pulls like the old days you cowards!

[angienessyo]

I'm fine with the dungeons being pretty boring because I also play WoW and some of their dungeons are obnoxious to get through, so I've seen what it's like to do dungeons that aren't just a long hallway. And you're still supposed to go go go fast!!! in those crazy WoW dungeons. And no, no one does fun exploration in those dungeons either, someone just makes a Youtube guide on the optimal path that everyone just sprints through anyway. And if you don't know how to properly navigate those dungeons people just vote to kick you. Which would 100% happen in FF14 too because we're used to pulling wall to wall as fast as possible.

[Shinku_Tachi]

And now with the rework, that whole thing was taken out because I guarantee you the devs noticed the players weren't even doing it anyway.

Oh yeah, they definitely know, because the game logs everything every player does and every action every player takes, to the gnats ***. Every time Yoshi-P talks about "player data" that's what he's talking about. The logs of *every* little thing the players do or don't do.

[brinn12]

1 - Most of my dungeon runs via Duty Finder have always been the opposite of speedruns. I fail to understand where the notion of "the community wants speedruns" comes from, when some players are still bringing Endwalker gear into Expert roulettes. And if Square Enix catered to speedrunners, they wouldn't allow that to happen, or would start designing dungeons with real DPS checks.

2 - Old Prae and Castrum were just poorly designed, and should not stop SE from trying more complex dungeons. Also, that was ~10 years ago.

3 - SE can always develop dungeons where full exploration is required to complete the duty, if that was being an issue. Again, doesn't stop them from getting more creative.

4 - We don't need to go past 15 minutes to have creatives duties, and the old format is hardly any better. The bar was just set really low, especially with the release of Endwalker, where we had 0 interesting trash pulls.

Even if their goal is to make dungeons an easy and linear experience, why can't we have a dungeon with 2 bosses? Or 4 bosses? Maybe 3 packs between bosses? Does every place really need exactly 3 "difficult" challenges? It's so predictable it breaks the immersion for many, and feels like a lack of effort on their part.

[Xelanar]

I don't really mind linear dungeons.
I do mind how uninteresting trash is (always has been). No mechanics, nothing to look out for, because whatever few mechanics do exist, barely hurt at all.

They could do interesting stuff. For instance adding small mini-bosses to tutorialize the following bosse's mechanics. That way they don't need to tutorialize those mechanics during the fights themselves and could make those more engaging too.

But at this point their dungeon design has become so formulaic, they all feel the same.

They thought they found a perfect formula that would work for the entirety of the game's lifespan. But all it did was make the game predictable and less exciting.

I'm still hoping they realize what formulas and patterns did to the game, course-correct and stop treating every aspect of the game as mere data on a spreadsheet.

[Basteala]

I don't really mind linear dungeons.
I do mind how uninteresting trash is (always has been). No mechanics, nothing to look out for, because whatever few mechanics do exist, barely hurt at all.

They could do interesting stuff. For instance adding small mini-bosses to tutorialize the following bosse's mechanics. That way they don't need to tutorialize those mechanics during the fights themselves and could make those more engaging too.

God this. So much this. But that would require effort. And money. Money that needs to go to the next blockchain dontcha know.

[ElysiumDragon]

I understand why dungeon's don't have exploration anymore.

But what's with their obsession with artificial walls? Let us have boss to boss pulls like the old days you cowards!

Now THIS is feedback I can get behind! The entire reason healers are 'optional' in dungeons is because the pulls aren't big or threatening enough, and allowing for larger pulls fixes that.

[TheGrimace]

I'd like some dungeons that take ~30-40 minutes rather than the ~10-15 minutes they have become. This would include adding RNG elements to the dungeons so that different things could affect the progression, giving more reasons to replay the same dungeons over and over.

Like Variant. I liked Variant a lot. I'd like Variant dungeons that randomly choose which path is taken, and dramatically change the course of the dungeon. Add in more opportunities for exciting drops, and I'm all in. Add them to a roulette so people have incentive to do them. Variant failed because after doing each path once, they no longer had a reason to do them since they would prefer to queue for a Roulette that gives tomestones. Give Variants a roulette.