There have been many threads about horizontal progression to make content last longer and mostly what I've seen are suggestions about open world dungeons and NMs and hnms in the open world. To preface, I have not played ffxi but played more old school mmos like Ragnarok online, rose online, maplestory and more recently wow and dragon nest. What I'm suggesting here is less about open world content but more about how gear and loot is fully utilized in its current state.
1) Have loot be upgradable. By this I don't mean relic to relic +1 but the more traditional +1 - +9 (decreasing probability for success with each upgrade and chance for loot to be broken).
2) Have multiple iterations of the same loot. By this i mean loot having a base stat value (for example allagan sceptre matk 71, int 25, vit 24), but having a minimum and maximum value to each stat. (matk 69-73, int 22-28, vit 21-27). So for example player A kills twin in instance A drops a version of allagan scepter (matk 70 int 27 vit 22 and player B in instance B kills twin and drops another version of allagan scepter (matk 73 int 22 vit 23).
What the above 2 suggestions does is solve a few problems. Firstly, it will revive the dying marketboard as upgrading items (and their catalysts) will become valuable again. Secondly it will also solve the problem of not enough content and raid lockout can be done away with. the whole point of raid lockout is to prevent content being devoured too quickly but with the above, hardcores will be running raids till they get carpal tunnel syndrome trying to get max stats +9 gear and their subscriptions will still be maintained. At the same time, casuals can still get their weapons, albeit slower and less upgraded and still be walking about in their shinies. Any thoughts?
Would old school mmo mechanics work in ffxiv?
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03-11-2014, 03:34 PMskatergerWould old school mmo mechanics work in ffxiv?
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03-11-2014, 03:40 PMSeirra_Lanzce
just hit the edit button on your first post to cram all in.
just my 2 cent thou, would it work or not, is entirely up to you on how you would want it to run and how many audience are you actually aiming to please. -
03-11-2014, 06:02 PMSeif
Why not have these upgrades be materia based?
I don't see the point of even having materia if pre50 it's 100% useless and after 50 there are no slots. The system has a lot of potential if they play around with the difficulty of obtaining the required mats and attaching new pieces. -
03-11-2014, 06:59 PMNuinn
If I recall correctly they've said in one of the previous live letters that the main reason materia's been changed from 1.0 to how it is now because they didn't want some people to be able to have a huge advantage in stats over others, when it comes to gear. We no longer lose the gear/carbonized matter/materia when failing a meld and the overall materia attributes have been uniformed and lowered.
If they were to implement a random stat mechanic to loot drops it would probably be some low values in stat variation as well. Dropped loot (which in most cases is BiS, over crafted & melded) would require a rebalancing of most fights. They'd have to take into account all the min & max values and tune the content to be within reach of people who don't care about getting "perfect stats" but that's not too easy for the ones with highest stats on all their gear pieces. In other words, lots of work each time round for the devs :p
Personally, I'm not a fan of random stat loot, unless it's a Diablo-like game or something (but that's a different genre). I've had a fair share of "plusing" my gear over the years in other MMOs I've played and can honestly say I don't miss it. The flashbacks of "If you don't have a +12 weapon, you ain't worth s**t" are not so pleasant ._. Would be nice, thought, if they made the current crafted gear and materia good enough for people to bother with. As we have it, crafted+melded is perfectly fine for most of the content, but not enough for people to want to bother with it. -
03-11-2014, 07:05 PMFelis
For gear upgrades we have NQ and HQ.
At the beginning of old FF XIV we had NQ, +1, +2 and +3. The problem was that it was not only for gear, but also for every item. 80 inventory slots, each item in triplicate. It was an inventory nightmare. Later they changed +2 and +3 in +1 and gave gear +1 the stats gear +3 had
We have already gear drop with random stats. They are the aetherial gears.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nuinn
They are better than crafted gear, but worse than crafted gear with materia (because you can choose your stats here). -
03-11-2014, 07:18 PMNuinnOMG I completely forgot about the +1, +2 and +3 @___@ /cringe Yes, that was an inventory mess >.< Crafting mats in triple quality made it absolutely horrible ._.Quote:
Originally Posted by Felis
As for random gear, yes there's aetherial which is mostly good for spiritbonding and earning some Gil if you're lucky to get decent materia :p Was talking about what OP mentioned (Coil drops and if they were with random stats), sorry. Should have been more clear ^ ^; -
03-11-2014, 07:48 PMskaterger
Yes aetherial gear, I should have started with that. However, while aetherial gear usually has a large stat bonus over its NQ counterparts and its totally random what stats you get, what I'm proposing is just a range of minimal fixed stat variances over the original gear. So what I mean is that this alternate loot will have slightly higher or lower stats than its normal version, but its stats do not change. So a break blade will always have small varying stats of skill speed and critical hit but no other stat. If you want a defensive weapon you have to get curtana or allagan blade.
Materia, yes! I am all in for materia melding to be present in end game gear. Together with more unique stats or set bonuses that work in tandem with certain gear. I think these changes would make running dungeons much more interesting as people even have reason to run old dungeons like AK and WP. Now in Mor Dhona, if I see a blm wearing a crimson vest and relic +1, I don't even need to examine him/her to know the that I have the exact same stats that he/she has. -
03-11-2014, 07:56 PMGrizzlebeard
I think a large part of the problem with current gear is item budgets. All weapons/armour in a specific level range are going to have almost identical stats. There's no wow factor in getting "+1 betterer" on gear. Old school gear was often acquired for procs, e-peen due to rarity, or special clicky effects. Going back to early Everquest, guilds would exchange huge sums of money (often RL) to obtain certain gear that would in turn increase their chances of besting encounters (thinking Blade of Carnage with the Enraging Blow proc that assisted Warrior's in holding hate). There were also fun clickies like a waterskin that summoned AoE water for everyone in range and a similar item that summoned food or a mask that changed your appearance to another race. The point is, current gear is unimaginative and boring and we only grind it to stay on top of our iLevel.
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03-11-2014, 07:57 PMShneibel
wouldn't that leading to some player only want that class with this and that stats ? it can lead to issue with FOTM stats & everyone have to be that way or no pt
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03-11-2014, 07:57 PMCspr_Answrth
This set up reminds me a lot of Dungeon Fighter Online. Oh how I miss that game...
That being said, I like this idea. I just don't know how well it would fit into this. :3 -
03-11-2014, 08:10 PMskaterger
Let me try and explain this more clearly. Casual Carl only can play 1-2 hours per night and he decides to farm coil for allagan bracelet of striking. After 4 days of farming it drops the normal version (13 str, 11 crit, 16ss) and he decides hes done for the week and goes to play another game. Hardcore Hardy also farms coil and the same bracelet drops. The first copy of the bracelet that drops has 12 str, 10 crit and 16ss, which is an inferior version). He decides he doesnt want it and after 5 more coil attempts, gets the bracelet to drop again (this time with 14 str 12 crit and 13ss). He decides this is a good version and tries to upgrade it. He pushes it to +4 then it breaks at +5.
Now he goes back to farm coil and depending on luck and how hardcore it is, might or might not see the drop again. Now obviously some people will then spam dungeons the whole day if this is the case so i propose that you can't skip turns for progression content. So if the item you want drops from turn 8, you will have to do turn 6 and 7 to have a shot at 8 again. So the stats on items will be similar, some will just be higher than others based on the base version and upgrades. Now you can argue that PF will be spamming for +9 relic weapons only but these hardcore players usually have their own farming static for these sort of things anyway. -
03-11-2014, 08:48 PMGrizzlebeardThe problem with that is people will eventually cease to care about +1 here or there. The fact is, we can clear content almost naked now as long as we learn the mechanics with the exception of a few DPS checks. Maxing weapons, e-peenery aside, isn't going to yield tangible benefits.Quote:
Originally Posted by skaterger
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03-11-2014, 09:19 PMskatergerOn the contrary, afaik, the old school games which I shamelessly plugged these ideas from (Rose and RO) had people farming in the open world mvp for superior version of items so that they will have a chance to make it +9. I still remember the time I made my first +9 shield in RO with a <10% chance of success. It's a feeling that will never be replicated. As a side note in rose, the higher your gear was upgraded, there would be a stronger glow on it. WEll, these are old games so I doubt many remember or even played them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Grizzlebeard
As for whether people would be motivated to farm these items, I respectfully disagree seeing how people would totally mutilate their characters wearing ugly armor just for a +1 or +2 stat upgrade here or there. Its all about min maxing for the hardcores.