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.
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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.
Continue reading...