[dev 1015] Adding Visual Identifiers for a Pyxis: "Pyxis Labels" and More

[kingfury]

Hey Dev's /wave
1st, Thanks for the list of 12 recently infused Atmas! Works out nicely. ^^ Destroying chest is a nice touch as well! Could we please have the "/destroypyxis <t>" command to make macros with in light of this new feature as well? o.o

This Issue:
As Fell Cleaving hoards of enemies repeatedly for hours on end as a WAR has become a very common part of my Abyssean career (and other jobs too for that matter), so too has become the cumbersome task of trying to quickly and efficiently check, communicate the contents to party members, and open the dozens of pyxis that result from such an activity. While I find the Fell Cleaving part still very satisfying and rewarding to this day ^^ the latter part continues to be cumbersome and at times annoying for multiple reasons.

• Slow menu activation upon checking a pyxis
• Layout of the pyxis themselves occasionally based on possible bunching of enemies
• Difficulty to "quickly" identify and communicate to party members exactly which pyxis to open (example: amongst dozens of blue, and red pyxis that all look the same)
• Short despawn timers that ignore the time it takes to check the pyxis themselves

In a scenario where 15+ enemies all drop chests that are potentially desirable to the group, depending on how those chest are laid out, everyone checking the chest has only 180 seconds to try and quickly determine and communicate which pyxis are worth opening and available to all party members. While I'm not saying this is at all impossible to accomplish, because players have become very efficient at the process after so much practice, the process could be vastly improved with some intuitive additions.

Possible Solutions:
Additions that could help streamline the process:

• Adding a way to quickly "Visually communicate" the contents of a checked pyxis to other party members. Possible "Pyxis Labels", or "Pyxis Auras" could allow a player to check a pyxis and instantly Visually display the contents to effectively communicate to all party members in range the value of that pyxis. This could be accomplished by either adding an additional option to the pyxis menu called "Display Pyxis Label" or just perhaps making it an automatic response to the player "Peering through the cracks" of a Pyxis.
»Pyxis Labels example 1
»Pyxis Labels example 2
»Pyxis Labels example 3
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**EDIT**
Maybe allowing 2hr boxes to be keyed open without releasing the effect until someone selected the contents similar to Gold key item boxes. This would work the very same way as the suggested pyxis labels in terms of communicating which box was the 2hr box. Since this is the only box that is player dependent in terms of who keys open the chest receives the reward all that would be needed is an added selection menu. No extra graphics needed. ^^
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• Forcing uniform spawn layouts for pyxis's no matter how the vanquished monsters were piled together at the time of their killing.
»Forced uniform Pyxis Layout example 1

Thanks for listening Devs /salute

[Hanabira]

youre pretty much asking them to nerf fell cleaves

[Juilan]

I haven't cleaved since the patch to the chests, should see how it works, but ya there is a large bit of lag when trying to chest the chest... and then having to retarget it after you check it... if you could keep the target (since i do it with mules) id find the activity much easier

[Khiinroye]

So instead of having the person on chest duty key or destroy the chest, you want to have him call someone else to key or destroy the chest.

For blue chests, you key or destroy XP, Cruor, temps, and time extensions. No communicating on those.
ISL, you leave the blue chest and let your party know that its there; I'm sure they can see where you are and realize that the blue chest that you left is the right chest.

Red chests are key or destroy, no communicating.

For gold chests, you add items to the pool, call-out-and-open or destroy temps, and call out and open key items. The giant, open, gold chest is usually enough of a visual hint as to which chest it is.

Anyone who is checking chests should have keys, and if you're just opening ISL, you should also have keys for that.

The chest system in Abyssea is fine as it is.

[Leonlionheart]

Not an entirely horrible idea, but pretty unnecessary when there are so many other issues for the dev team to deal with.

[Alhanelem]

Not a bad idea but not really essential either. I don't want a /dstroychest command because it would make it even easier to just kill chests without really looking at them.

[Kimble]

Chest system is fine. Your idea seems like it would take way more resources then is necessary for an idea that isnt really needed.

[kingfury]

So instead of having the person on chest duty key or destroy the chest, you want to have him call someone else to key or destroy the chest.
For blue chests, you key or destroy XP, Cruor, temps, and time extensions. No communicating on those.
ISL, you leave the blue chest and let your party know that its there; I'm sure they can see where you are and realize that the blue chest that you left is the right chest.
Red chests are key or destroy, no communicating.
For gold chests, you add items to the pool, call-out-and-open or destroy temps, and call out and open key items. The giant, open, gold chest is usually enough of a visual hint as to which chest it is.
Anyone who is checking chests should have keys, and if you're just opening ISL, you should also have keys for that.
The chest system in Abyssea is fine as it is.

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^^ To make sure to clarify the grounds of my Pyxis Label suggestion, streamlining the check, communicate, and open process "party wide" is the goal with the visual indicators.

Depending on how many chest have dropped after a major pull, there are times when one key person is simply not enough to do this entire 3 step process effectively with enough time to spare for opening. No matter how fast your targeting finger is, there is in fact a slight lag from checking a pyxis that can't be helped and thus slows the process down even more so in the event of lots of chests to check.

The pyxis labels would allow for anyone in the party to help quickly identify the contents of the dozens of blue and red pyxis whether they have keys or not. If that player that's on key duty (or anyone in the party with keys) could look at a handful of chest and determine which ones to key open with just a glance, then you would be correct in your saying, "No verbal communication needed". Without it, you still have to say things like,

"ISL by me. No, to the far right. Well I know there's 5 blue chest to the far right ><. (all the while time is being lost) Here, right where I'm standing."

In this same example, the person on key duty could simply say

"ISL.", and the now activated visual pyxis label would do the rest.

Not an entirely horrible idea, but pretty unnecessary when there are so many other issues for the dev team to deal with.

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^^ Well neither was the adjustment to the Atma infusing menu (New list of 12 recently infused Atma), but here we are! lol But yeah, it's not game breaking at all, just a suggestion for streamlining the process. ^^
Thanks for the feedback /

Not a bad idea but not really essential either. I don't want a /dstroychest command because it would make it even easier to just kill chests without really looking at them.

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Thanks, and /agreed, we would continue to pop chest without any improvements, but just wanted to suggest a quicker method to something we all have to deal with at some point or another inside Abyssea.

That's kinda the whole idea I'm afraid in regards to the /destroypyxis command. ^^; Try to picture using the command coupled with the functionality of the pyxis labels for a sec. Instead of having to recheck which pyxis to destroy, other members of your party may have already activated the pyxis label while checking through the group chests but didn't destroy the chest yet, and with a simple glance you could quickly determine which chests are worthy of being destroyed. ^^
Though, even without the pyxis labels, lets say your party has amassed 300+ minutes inside abyssea and have capped all the lights you wish to for that run. At that point, any and all red chests that drop is fair game to quickly destroy with extreme prejudice ^^ lol so having a quick /destroypyxis command macro'd would come in quite handy. At that point it would become a game of "Who has the fastest macro finger" to snatch the cruor reward. lol

Chest system is fine. Your idea seems like it would take way more resources then is necessary for an idea that isnt really needed.

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Well, the chest system works as is, but it couldn't hurt to improve the speed of the process when it's being pushed to it's extreme, such as massive amounts of chests that potentially all need to be checked and opened within a window of 3 minutes. Again, not going to cause folks to quit the game or anything, but neither was the Atma infusing menu, but that got improved for very similar reasons. ^^ Improving the game experience is apart of the Devs job, so it's never a waste of time when they succeed in correcting a system that is not performing at it's best potential.

Technically speaking, since the data the pyxis labels would be displaying is already built into the system (the pyxis light color, rank/light strength, and despawn timer), adding a graphical identifier would literally be putting a face on top of it for players to visually see. Sort of like what warp npc's are. Both the coding and animation for warp already exist, so adding a new npc (pretty much a skin to the functionality) anywhere in the game isn't really much work at all.

[Kimble]

I don't think you understand coding tbh. Really, if you are doing a good burn, you dont really have time to checking chests and just popping it wahtever it might be. If you are doing a cleave for EXP then its even easier because you dont really care what is in the red chests.

[kingfury]

I'm no programmer no ^^; but I've had some education on the basics of a few programming languages here and there to know you can have a dozen of different faces/methods of activation for the same handful of code. It takes some tweaking depending on how you want the intended audience to interact with those different faces, but the end result of the action can still be based on that core coding.

Yeah, you lose 2hr chest that way... so I'm not too keen on the spamming open the chest logic, but different strokes for different folks yeah.^^ Red chest lose their worth when everyone is capped in the desired lights, so it just depends. I haven't done Fell Cleaving for EXP in a good while though.