Updating "Old" Content

[ShadowCadja]

Roaming NM gear can be melded... At least my Tricorne has a nice materia on it... ._.

[Kiara]

Hi All,

Good post / question.

I think there are a few points at work here. For those that don't want "old" content updated, I think there's a difference between "old" content that has run its course (and was successful / provided most of the player population with a good experience (e.g., Final Fantasy XI's SKY or Dynamis)) vs. some of the things being asked by Gidonoidon or syntaxlies and others.

The problem is that the 3 paltry Faction NMs that we have in XIV, and Dzemael Darkhold have been experienced by such a tiny amount of players, and they are effectively being "thrown away" / overridden for new content when this game hasn't even really taken off yet.

I think by now, most of the Players have 1000 Faction Credits saved up (Max Limit) with nothing to spend them on. There's a system - Faction Credits System with 3 NMs already created - that is basically just sitting there, useless at this point.

Dzemael Darkhold - a rather fun, introductory Dungeon (for those that have never been in one before) - is now mostly invalidated by the Materia System and Ifrit content.

It's one thing if this content was experienced and farmed repeatedly as heavily as, say, SKY or Dynamis was in XI, but it's not even close. And to be fair, Faction NMs and Dzemael aren't even close to the interest-level / fun factor of SKY or Dynamis, but this is still functioning content that sits unused in the game now.

I think a few ways to make some of this "old" content viable again wouldn't take too much work:

• Update the Stats on the Faction NM Drops: This would take no additional resources except 1 Combat Designer to vette out the stats to make sure it was balanced and "fair" compared to current New Items in the same category.

• Change the Faction NM and/or Dzemael Darkhold Drops to be Materia Meldable and Convertible. Again, look at the stats and make slight adjustments as necessary, but then allow them to be Meldable or at least Convertible (perhaps with a better chance at rarer Tier IV Materia). This is again a cost-effective change that would make this content viable again.

• Consider making Dzemael Drops by Materia Meldable *and* the result of Rare *Parts*:
  
  Imagine if the Bladedancer's Jackboots were Materia Meldable *and* they can only be created by finding, say, 2 Rare Materials.
  
  1 Rare Material is from Dzemael Darkhold. And the 2nd Rare Material is from the New Dungeon in 1.21 (announced already).
  
  You'd have to get both, and then you can create the Bladedancer's Jackboots and you can fuse Materia to it as well.
  
  With a change like that, you'd have a relatively cost-effective solution to make already created drops far more meaningful, *rarer* and span 2 Dungeons instead of 1. The Jackboots are already created, so it's more of the time it takes one Designer to balance out stats and place the drops in the 2 dungeons.

If you think about it (in hindsight), Dzemael was created to really appease all of us who were desperate for some Max Level Content. Looking at the amount of drops it gives, in *ONE* Dungeon, it's rather crazy to think about how many drops were contained in there (from all the Chests along the way and Batraal himself). It covered every single class, and they had multiple Armor pieces, Weapons, etc. that were all just drops (no components or other steps necessary), with high drop percentages.


There are definitely some ways to make our current "old" content viable for us right now, with little extra work. And that work that's done on this (like the examples given above) could still make it meaningful as a good foundation of starting content when 2.0 launches (since the Faction NMs are spawned, so they are not affected by Map Redesign; and Dzemael Darkhold is an instance so it can be moved anywhere safely).

[Rukkirii]

Yoshida's post looks like it would fit nicely in this thread since he addressed some concerns that were also mentioned in here. Sorry for raising it from the dead. Mmmm BRAINSSS!

Hello, Producer/Director Yoshida here.

Thanks for the feedback on The Dzemael Darkhold and other previous content.

There is a reason we’re working on implementing new content before making adjustments to existing content. After the launch of the game, there wasn’t really any high-level battle content like instanced raids and primal battles, so first we needed to quickly add in additional battle content. Of course some of you might be thinking “you're only giving us new content, but you're not doing anything to adjust the previously implemented content.”

However, we have chosen not to actively push PR activities, or actively seek out new players, because we think that the best thing to do would be to cater to our current players by implementing lots of “consumable” content that matches the players’ levels. (You’ll start to notice more PR-related activity with the release of patch 1.21)

Of course, we won’t simply ignore implemented content as it is, and in the coming patches, we plan on preparing some motivation to go back and tackle previous content again.

Also for 2.0, as I said in a separate thread, we plan to introduce an easy mode and extra hard mode for primal battles and instance raids, and the rewards will be vary depending on the difficulty setting.

Up until 2.0, we'll continue our main focus on increasing the amount of content first and foremost and then with 2.0, we'll expand on the previously implemented content, as well as adding more. This is how we plan to go about things, and if you have any further ideas please let us know!

[Elune]

GM necro. The best kind.

[Rutelor]

Yoshida's post looks like it would fit nicely in this thread since he addressed some concerns that were also mentioned in here. Sorry for raising it from the dead. Mmmm BRAINSSS!

This is great news as a confirmation of everybody's desire that, in the future, there's a retrospective look thrown towards homogenizing the quality of the game. And we thank you, Rukkirii, for posting this here.

However, welcome though this might be, it still leaves unanswered the very good idea introduced by Gidonoidon_Sur in his great OP. Is there, consequently, any chance that this idea could be presented to Yoshida, and ultimately graced by a reply from him? I'm convinced his reaction to this will be of great interest to all.

Again, thanks Rukkirii, and good day to you.

R

[Roaran]

I was actually just thinking this morning how awesome dyzmael was, and how sad that all the gear and motivation to go there is gone now.

Also a note on the separate difficulties, I think it would be much cooler to have an easy and hard mode type of "switch" for each of the battles. Take Ifrit for example, a sort of hard mode could be triggered by not breaking the horns. And players that want to just beat ifrit without too much effort could just break the horns off.

I think incapacitation would be a much more interesting method of adjusting boss difficulty, and adding rewards for players who attempt the bosses unincapacitated all the way through and allowing the Primals special abilities in that form, would be farm more interesting than just having a prompt: ENTER IFRIT (HARDMODE); ENTER IFRIT (NORMALMODE)

[Felis]

Who said the 2.0 primal battles would be the same as the 1.x? ^^

For dyzmael gear, with 1.21 we can exchange u/u gear to company seals ^^

1.21 Special supply & provisioning ops : Addition of unique and untradable item categories

[SniperRifle]

Great question cause I've never thought about it before. Simply updating the drops, or the battle, or the lockout of the NM/dungeon?

Dzemael gear gets replaced by single meld crafted gear, same with the weapons. Why not just make little adjustments to make the place worth going to for, if even for just one or two pieces of gear? (i.e Haste/Movement Speed+ gear for completion in under 20mins)

[MysteriousRonin]

Being able to change the appearance of armor and weapons and still keep the stats of your best gear (like Rift or EQ2 appearance slots) would be a good idea to get people to do old content. I recently started playing WoW again and that transmog thing they added in the last patch has gotten a lot of people going through the old content to collect gear just for appearances.

[Youngblood]

I agree on some of the stuff here. Refreshing and expanding at the same time would work wonders. Not only would players backtrack to the old content to do new stuff, expanding and implimenting new content would provide even more things to do after all is said and done with the old.