My Eureka Concept

[Shurrikhan]

I respectfully disagree. Let's consider a light party comp of 1 tank, 1 healer, 1 melee, and 1 ranged/caster.

This means that tank cooldowns are binary. Content can only EVER have enough incoming damage to accommodate a singular tanks kit and cooldown timings.

This also means that you're limited by # of simultaneous mechanics/obstacles/adds. You can't ever have a fight with multiple priority adds because incoming damage would be impossible to tank/heal, else they'd be trivial and inconsequential, which directly goes against the goal of this content form.

A full party would have more room for additional simultaneous mechanics that can interact in unique and engaging ways. Splitting DPS on adds/boss can be more robust and tightly tuned rather than having it be so loose that any singular job needs to be able to do it, thus trivializing the check.

The "same" fight doesn't have to function identically for 4 people as it would 8, though. Many fights already scale their mechanics based on the number of survivors. (Heck, there's quickly a complaint thread up any time a trial fails to do that, because it makes it harder to underman farm in the next expansion when all challenge is gone from it either way.)

You don't need necessarily to design a fight for one set composition. You can generate the conditions for a skill table's formation, rather than using just one actual skill table for all comers.

Now, IF you were to design for just a 1/2/1 or 2/4/2 experience, that would then have the problems you've mentioned -- a light party design would be forced to have more concentrated intervals of damage or more lenient rest damage between, because all ability mitigation is dealt over half the uptime as in a full party -- forcing use of Cover skills or for those tankbusters to be dealt as multiple hits as to be swapped between mid-chain (your easiest standard fix for light party upscaling). But there's simply no need to fetter oneself in that way. You can have x adds with y damage at z frequency (timings, usually associable with z skillsets' coverage), whatever you need.

Exactly. It's not a linear map that says X > Y when considering party size in content forms. There are spots where some things are better and others could be worse. In the content form I designed with the goal I wanted (engaging/challenging) repeatable semi-random battle content for all 3 roles I felt that 8 man best fit that. I felt that 24 man would have diluted the experience and I felt that 4 man didn't reach the level I wanted, all 3 examples cited with evidence and reasoning for my deductions.

My intended emphasis here was actually on toolkit synergies between players, which are comparatively lacking in XIV due to near-complete absence of impactful short-term throughput goals in outside of eHP (party or target survival) and specified DPS checks. The closest I can think of in XIV to the above are things like barriers (used to nullify the threat of knockbacks or debuff infliction that would otherwise limit the affected's tactical options), Cover, Rescue, someone taxi'ing Aetherial Manipulation, etc. From a fight design perspective itself... (see above).

Having said all that... I do feel like so long as you don't intend for Eureka to feel like an open exploration zone for a larger data center or server community experience, but rather just an isolated, dedicated team without any added hassles, designing primarily towards 8-mans is ideal. I'd just prefer not to be forced to take a 2/4/2 composition, and I'd prefer that my way out of that be through more than just stat leniency.

That is just your view on fates. They can be engaging it is all in how they are designed. It could be "Sneak through the tunnel, open the gate, without being detected" while another simultaneous fate is going on "Seige the gate". It is a race to see which works and you could have x and y players participating in each. So if you are solo you could be sneaking through while an 8 man party is trying to seize the gate. A FATE is literally just an open world time based event and you can make it anything you want, the only limitation is imagination so don't get hung up on the word.

I wholly agree that FATEs could actually end up tremendously interesting, if XIV were to have the guts and trust to make them so. To be honest, being an fan of dynamic open-world content I wish we'd see that kind of stuff get more development time. And yet, I'd probably be pissed if I were to hear that even something as mediocre as one our expert roulette dungeons were sacrificed in order to create a few new FATEs, if only because of how unlikely I find it that they will ever be more than a "set objective; add objective center, if any; set domain(s); set NPC node(s), if any; specify mob models, levels, and names; set progress counter for spawn triggers, if any; set spawn positions or seed pattern" affair where localization for cringe jokes probably takes far more time than the actual design.

But I'll agree absolutely that open world dynamic events, in their full potential, could end up incredibly engaging if well designed.

[KaldeaSahaline]

That is just your view on fates. They can be engaging it is all in how they are designed. It could be "Sneak through the tunnel, open the gate, without being detected" while another simultaneous fate is going on "Seige the gate". It is a race to see which works and you could have x and y players participating in each. So if you are solo you could be sneaking through while an 8 man party is trying to seize the gate. A FATE is literally just an open world time based event and you can make it anything you want, the only limitation is imagination so don't get hung up on the word.

Correct - on EXISTING FATEs. Not to say they couldn't do better/different in the future, but I cannot for the life of me identify a singular "fun" FATE.

Your examples are good in theory, but put some implementation to them. Solo sneaking would be trivial and not challenging since it would just be a binary factor. If it was a split effort, i.e. 1 light party goes sneak, other breaks front door, that leaves some good gameplay as the sneaking group can focus on taking out small sized trash packs that try to flee, or activate warnings/hazards, etc. Kind of like the 8 man dungeon where you have to avoid the spotlights, patrols, and also make sure you're preventing the existing fights from fleeing/activating anything. THEN couple that with the affix system present. That'd make some compelling gameplay IMO.

The "same" fight doesn't have to function identically for 4 people as it would 8, though. Many fights already scale their mechanics based on the number of survivors. (Heck, there's quickly a complaint thread up any time a trial fails to do that, because it makes it harder to underman farm in the next expansion when all challenge is gone from it either way.)

You don't need necessarily to design a fight for one set composition. You can generate the conditions for a skill table's formation, rather than using just one actual skill table for all comers.

Now, IF you were to design for just a 1/2/1 or 2/4/2 experience, that would then have the problems you've mentioned -- a light party design would be forced to have more concentrated intervals of damage or more lenient rest damage between, because all ability mitigation is dealt over half the uptime as in a full party -- forcing use of Cover skills or for those tankbusters to be dealt as multiple hits as to be swapped between mid-chain (your easiest standard fix for light party upscaling). But there's simply no need to fetter oneself in that way. You can have x adds with y damage at z frequency (timings, usually associable with z skillsets' coverage), whatever you need.

In order to make generally WELL tuned content you need some fixed lines somewhere. My personal beliefs are that the experience is more valuable than its flexibility. if we add too much flexibility, I think it'll be nigh impossible to preserve the difficulty/engagement precedent I am trying to set.

[Wintersandman]

Solo sneaking would be trivial and not challenging since it would just be a binary factor.

But again to cater to all who play the game having binary elements can be engaging for the person who wants to pursue them. Just because it is an MMO doesn't mean forced party progression is required. Just because it is combat related doesn't mean it has to be grouped content. Crafting/Gathering is a solo venture and combat can be also.

Which leads to my original point. Keeping it open to binary, light party and full party allows for anyone, at any point in time, to pursue the content.