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I was merely offering a suggestion to the Op That would give him the "excitement" that he feels he needs. Fates died with 2.1 which I am glad I got to 50 before it came out. PvP in set zones could give some excitement and give the devs a bit more time to create more stories for all of you to enjoy and CS for me to ESC thru.Quote:
Originally Posted by Enkidoh
I too would love to see some danger in the world, why not a zone area which isn't far off a dungeon in terms of difficulty (but with respawns!) Kind of old school days like EQ1 with The Hole etc. Currently the outside world is just very bland
Definitely no to open world PvP.
There's a difference to "risk of death" and "risk of bored people camping important quest objectives".
Imagining you're a newbie player, ready to go and fight Ifrit, you've heard that after you fight Ifrit, you can join a GC and get your Chocobo. You go to the location designated by the quest, and find 4 level 50 players too bored to do anything but camp low level players. Or make it level 30 and camping the Titan crystal.
With open world PvP, comes people who troll for fun. It would have been fine if this was a skill based "real PvP" game. But no, this is a level based game where a few levels of difference will render you completely useless. In my opinion level-based character development is simply not for PvP designs. But that's off topic.
I think a good design was how WoW had it back before 2.1.
Solo players are able to pick off single targets carefully, avoid patrolling packs, and get their quest objective. Party players can form a party and clear out camps of mobs. Runners that try to get help when low on health could bring back 2 more packs, forcing even a party of 4 players to run for their lives. You are always in danger of dying, but those dangers are 100% avoidable with careful play. It was 100% viable to level solo up to level cap, you just have to pick your targets wisely and be aware of patrols.
In FFXIV? Nothing's linked if you're solo. You can kill Mob A right behind Mob B and B will just sit there gazing at the sky. The open world in FFXIV is simply to safe.
Random encounters/ ambushes would be nice, it would make this game more like final fantasy.
Combine it with Fates would spark more amusing drama. :P
In a MMO I use to play, there was a system that would spawn random mobs of baddies in dark areas (minecraft reference much?), but when a Unique monster aka champion mob (mini boss) appears, a HORD of baddies would spawn and you would have to fight your butt off just to survive or being ganked to death by em. XD But even in big parties hords would spawn as well it was like waring against a huge swarm from hell, was fun while it lasted, till some troll user and his buddies come out of nowhere and nuke ya. XD
hopefully developers are looking at this. at the moment the current areas have all level 49 max mob level correct? in 1.0 i heard they was level 70.
i think you guys are correct, there should be more danger but, we got teleports so even if we die in those noob areas its no biggie you come back .
what we need in the next expansions, where new areas are added, not to add teleports and crytals except maybe to the main towns. add more higher level and dangerous area, etc.
also consider this, having special fates like Odin atm in general area accessbale by teleport is silly because u end up with 200 people in the fate. but maybe we have such special fates in higher level areas more suited to that kind of fate, where you need to travarse through dangerous areas to get their and be commited , instead of just waiting for ur Odin LS to say, odin is up now lets teleport...
There were four main reasons why FFXI had a sense of urgency from random mobs/zones
1) Most classes couldn't even kill a decent challenge/even match without lvl75/37NIN sub or abusing BLM sleep/sleep bolts, or extremely specific, often RMT-worthy expensive gear, or skills not everyone had (Hexa Strike for example)
2) You lost XP on death, with a possible delevel.
3) Soundtrack was extremely immersive.
4)Many of the scary zones were enclosed, possibly claustrophobic, or contained an extremely gloomy/horror atmospheres (Garlaige Citadel, Promathia's, Xarcabard, Tombs, tunnels, etc).
The first mechanic, while it worked for FFXI, will never be implemented in a modern-day MMO. That type of balancing is left to soloplayer games such as Dark Souls.
The second mechanic, while working splendidly to create an atmosphere of emergency and caution, also caused an extreme negative whiplash on endgame content. People constantly deleveling to lvl74 mid-raid, whiny players refusing anything less than a Raise III causing wipe-recovery to take like 15+ mins, having to XP/merit party hours before every raid to stack up XP, losing all merits upon deleveling, having no gear to equip mid-raid because you are level 74, and your gear is REQ. LVL75, etc. There are so many negatives to this its quite sad :(
In my opinion, FFXIV's soundtrack is nowhere near at the level of FFXI's, but thats just me. Even to this day, I still listen to FFXI's soundtrack and transcribe those instrumentals onto guitar/piano so I can play them.
FFXIV's zones are also almost entirely open field. Coerthas, Northern Thanalan, Outer La Noscea, Mor Dhona (these are basically all of the high level zones) are all open field, and don't carry a scary vibe to them. There's no haunted, abandoned mines crawling with undead, ancient demonic castles crawling with high level demons and floating eyes that will eat your face, or haunted crypts that scare the hell out of you the first time you enter them.
FFXI had one of the best atmospheres and soundtracks of any game I have ever played, seen, or heard of, but some of the things that attributed to that atmosphere also contributed to many of the negatives of the game. The first two bullets cannot be implemented in FFXIV without massive losses of subscriptions, the third won't be changed due to a massive amount of work and budget necessities, and the fourth bullet point will not have any effect if the others are not implemented. Face it, a decrepit, yet moving skeleton with no eyeballs readying Hell Slash is not scary when it hits for 150 damage, and there is no EXP loss on death looming in the back of your mind wherever you go.
Edit: Also, there were no mounts in most of these zones and if you aggro'd, mobs would chase you until you zoned out. some AF coffers required level 50-60's to go into level 70+ zones to seek their coffers, and these coffers sometimes took hours, if not days to find. This created an awesome experience, but it also was incredibly slow; if the modern-day MMO player had to go collect a set of AF from old school FFXI, they would probably unsubscribe, cry on forums, then proceed to give the game a terrible rating on review sites. People that respect the kind of game that FFXI was are a very niche, low populated audience. People want fast and easy content, and instant gratification these days. 95% of FFXIV's playerbase would not go afk in Sanctuary of Zi'tah just to listen to the music, or constantly board the Selbina/Mhaura ships to kill pirates for lowbies. They would speedrun themselves to 50 and get discouraged when they had to do limit breaks, then probably unsubscribe when they couldn't one-shot Matt, or ask for nerfs to him until he was trivialized.
Just my 2 cents.