FFVI Worlds Collide

nothing is really "gated" behind items, which makes this rando sort of a "Find the most optimal character/item route, do that on all seeds, and get a great time" one-trick pony. Perhaps requiring to have certain characters to access certain parts would be a way to have the route vary?

I really appreciate your (as well as other experienced speedrunner's) feedback about this. I want to make runs as interesting as possible so ideas from veterans really helps. If I understand what you mean, once players discover which events are quickest to complete the best approach will be to repeat that same path over and over until you get the luckiest. To help alleviate this characters would each have to unlock multiple new events to better prevent one single optimal route. Does that sound correct to you?

I believe you are right and I will probably need to implement some kind of progression system eventually to keep things interesting. I will start giving some more thought to exactly where/what the gates may be.

Character gating is okay, but you could also use the rare items for this.  FF6 has 20 Rare Items which are handled by event bits 1D0 to 1E3.  You could rename some of them and then require them to trigger events (by putting a branch at the start of your event triggers that returns [go to $CA5EB3] if the event bit for the rare item is unset).  Then, you could shuffle the "get rare item" events in with your character and esper scramble.

For instance, maybe you make one of the rare items a train ticket and require that to board the Phantom Train... or an Opera Balcony Pass could be required to trigger that event.  Heaven knows a randomizer doesn't need four fish and a manicure!  Although... maybe "Poison Fish" could trigger the "Cid Dies" event!