Since the third producer letter, the reduction of the maximum party size have been include in the planned modifications. While initially I wasn't pleased with the reduction since 15 players party are great when it come to NMs or linshell events like guildleves run, I do understand that 8 people is a correct number for most of the stuff. Also, up to now I was hoping for 8 to be the normal size and for the possible inclusion of an alliance system for specific events like NMs or maybe dungeon or instances if those are added. That was until I read the ffxivcore interview today.
After reading this it seem clear that you're intending 4 member party to be the normal size and 8 to be the size when a bigger group is needed. I really hope this will be reconsidered since honestly 8 people max seem a bit small to be consider an alliance. Maybe it's just because I'm used to the 15 players party but I'd prefer 8 as normal size and 15 as alliance to 4 and 8. In the interview it's mentioned that the community size are smaller but with linkshell maximum size being 128 and if the party search feature would be improve, I have no doubt that reaching 8 people for normal parties wouldn't be too hard.Quote:
Once parties are limited to a max of 8 players, any thoughts on an alliance system that will allow multiple parties to join up together as one large party to take on really big mobs?
In the past the communities that were playing each game were a lot bigger, and so you could have a lot of people there. And now that the community sizes are smaller, we want to concentrate a little bit more on smaller party sizes, and so starting off with regular content that you can do with 4 players--making that our base. Then making bigger type of battles that you need to think about, "Ok how are we going to defeat this," and make that the 8-player party.
The 8-player party is currently what you would think of as an 'Alliance' with normal parties being 4. Then once we have enough content to support that, we'll start considering adding content that requires more players. Right now it's 4 and 8, that's what we're aiming for.
So that's my opinion on the subject and I hope others will share it.
[dev1020] Party system changes. The maximum party size.
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03-09-2011, 11:30 AMAramil[dev1020] Party system changes. The maximum party size.
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03-09-2011, 11:34 AMlinafanboy
As long as we never see those 15 man rape squad SP party again I will be more than happy.
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03-09-2011, 11:35 AMNephera
I will miss 15 person parties, I'm hoping they'll add some content where 15 people get a decent challenge, but i'll admit they're kind of overpowered atm.
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03-09-2011, 11:37 AMviion
I find 8 to be stupid as well, whoever thinks its hard finding people for events clearly has no clue. In my LS we are sometimes way over packed for events by far so by reducing it down to 8 will make like 15+ people are sitting around not being able to join and have to go do something else.
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03-09-2011, 11:42 AMKurokikaze
Cant design encounters where you need 15+ people to attend with the state of the game. There just aren't that many of us left to do that content. 4 and 8 man content for now then after the game is up to par with current MMO standards they will have their welcome back campaign and release some bigger alliance stuffs.
Right now it's just not feasible.
My LS had 64 people from FFXI (old LSmates and their friends) 2 weeks after release. Now we're lucky to see even 10 online at any given time. -
03-09-2011, 11:44 AMGracious
I have no problem with a 4 member party but an alliance should be able to have 18.
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03-09-2011, 11:45 AMNepheraYeahQuote:
Originally Posted by Kurokikaze
sadface -
03-09-2011, 11:57 AMAmsai
I agree with Kuroki. However, I will also say that I love low-man content and find it to not only be more fun but more challenging as well. Think CoP missions before they were nerfed. It is my opinion that Large endgame events only seems more epic due to the chaos. In my experience, it ends up being either a zerg fest or people endlessly throwing bodies at the mob til it dies. There is nothing epic or even remotely challenging about that. Sometimes Large-Scale content can be good, but the only examples I can think of are Besieged and Campaign. Now I will say that I would not want LSs to have a limit to members. Think of it more as different teams under the same flag. You could still have leadership, LS banks, strategy sessions, and call for back up in the event of an absence.
Here is my list of things that would be better: less drama, less being 40th in line for a sought after drop, less chaos, more challenge (especially with lower numbers which would decrease the margin of error), less ninja looting, less fair-weather LS mates that leave the min they get that uber drop, less canceling events because not enough show up, closer bonds due to smaller size, more synergy and coordination from working together, no more trying to get a large group of people to listen to a strategy session only to have it blow up in your face because someone was afk/not paying attention/wanted to play hero. -
03-09-2011, 12:04 PMZaris
Like Yoshi-P, I think optimizing parties as a group of four is pretty swell -- a tribute to the maximum party size of Final Fantasy IX. Doubling that size for tougher, larger scale events seem all right to me (in this game). Other than behest, much of the content that I have seen look well built and accomplish-able on groups of eight or less.
Of course, finding that optimum ideal number for party and alliance play will depend largely on the subjective variables of the individual gamer. -
03-09-2011, 12:11 PMKurokikaze
I think the best part of all this is Yoshi-P coming out and telling everyone that the accepted "party" sizes are going to be 4 and 8. We've been going through so much crap testing trying to see how many people we can in parties before we get drastically reduced SP bonus/gains.
Him telling us its going to be 4 is just like FFXI force-feeding us 6 man PTs. Sometimes the players need to be told that way they can design encounters and balance regular mobs around the many class combinations that will be available in the 4 man groups.
It's a good step forward. Personally I would've liked 5 or 6 but 4 is good too. -
03-09-2011, 04:21 PMReika
I dont mind this change, however they need to keep 15 man parties doable, unless they plan to adjust the current Field NM strength. Haughtpox Bloatbelly would not be doable with just 8 people unless they change the encounter (less adds and/or HP and defense.
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03-09-2011, 11:05 PMraseol
I really like duo and 4-man parties. Larger groups tend to be messy, because i only see just a few monsters you have to kill before you move on to the next group. Do you really need 15 men to do that? It's also a matter of content, there has not really been a reason to go play with 50 guys. When i started i imagined the limit was endless, but when i started paying attention there really isn't a reason to do 128. I hope it will come though because i want to see some of the massive in mmo's, and besides doing a mission or event with all of the linkshell sound pretty good to me.
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03-09-2011, 11:15 PMGod
The problem with less people in parties means LESS leve links which takes a huge hit on everyone SP which I imaging is exactly why SE implemented this.
8 Party limit will screw a lot of LS's. We already have to cut like 5 players when we start our NM events due to the 15 cap. Dropping that to 8 just leaves more people excluded. Not all NM's are so easy with only 8 people.
There was NEVER anything stopping any group from inviting a whole 15 for those whiners. Don't like the 15 man parties turn your damn recruit off and go with 4-6-8 or whatever. -
03-09-2011, 11:20 PMFeldtPersonally in my opinion i liked the bigger - the better parties and when people still used party search feature etc. i was very often making parties around 10~15. And i even though they would in short time expand the limit to parties of 25 and more but i guess they are going the other way. Well I will see how it will play and will it come to my liking.Quote:
Originally Posted by linafanboy
And btw. i forgot, tbh it was quiet rare when i was in small party... one time or two i experienced 2~4 man party (including myself) but usually i was in parties of 7~12 and i liked when another player joined and we ware having 13,14,15 :3 -
03-09-2011, 11:24 PMSynthesis
I prefer quality over quantity. 8/8 party is nice idea in my opinion and fair enough.
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03-09-2011, 11:36 PMObeadius
I believe the party systems should be changed to an alliance system with 6 member parties. I do not believe 4 man parties will be efficient once new content/jobs are released because we are going to want certain classes in certain parties in the alliance and if the party size is only 4 people.
One idea would be to lower the party size and implement an alliance system, this would be friendly for people who would like to solo and people that would like to do more large scale events.
Seeking Party System Rather Than Recruitment Party System
The bigger issue in my mind is to change the Party Seek Function. The current party seek function is not very effective and is rarely used.
Ideas on how to change:
1) Implement /sea all functions
2) Do away with the current party seek function
3) Allow players to put flags up who are searching for Exp/Sp/Missions and allow them to designate interest
4) Implement a message box when seeking to state classes/interests
This in my mind is a more effective system. Players will be able to see where everyone that is looking for a party is and players will be able to see peoples interests. This might be more difficult because of the constant changing of job and classes and might be heavy on the servers, but if they were to come up with a system that allowed people to write in their class/job into a message box, then that could help with the load on the server. -
03-09-2011, 11:36 PMKurokikazeA THM soloed that... I think you guys can manage.Quote:
Originally Posted by Reika
And you think that 4 man groups wont be balanced for FUTURE content... If that even happens it'll be a big sign of failure for Yoshi-P.Quote:
I believe the party systems should be changed to an alliance system with 6 member parties. I do not believe 4 man parties will be efficient once new content/jobs are released because we are going to want certain classes in certain parties in the alliance and if the party size is only 4 people.
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03-09-2011, 11:55 PMSephr
One of the major reasons for this is because the community's so small now. Making a base of 4 and 8 people means that they can balance content that's relevant for the players right now and then expand upon it in the future if (when!) the game becomes more popular as it's improved.
I'd expect to see alliance content make a come-back eventually once 4 and 8-man is fleshed out. Personally I quite like the idea of 4-manning things, it'll make it easier to just get friends together to do things and feel like a real adventuring squad like FF's of old! -
03-10-2011, 01:38 AMarleeUhm its been 4 man'd and even solo'd. Just goes to show probably half the population right now just zergs NMs and can't do anything if it wasn;t 15 manned.Quote:
Originally Posted by Reika
Thing is if they introduce instanced dungeons or whatever limiting the party to 8 would be fine You have a big LS you can still get everyone to do the endgame stuff just break up into say 2 or 3 grps and everyone can experience the content and not be limited to just 1 group -
03-10-2011, 01:55 AMAva
I think that designing a majority of the content around low man groups is great, I feel that they should also do -something- for those that want large scale chaos as well. I'm all for low man stuff and probably the only thing that would make me play WoW again would be them doing away with 10 and 25 mans and just focusing on 5. So, in my opinion, good for you SE, I'm totally with you!
However, I also loved Campaign and Dynamis. I didn't really care for Salvage or Limbus but if it weren't for Campaign I would have shaved about 2 years off my FFXI subscription. Abyssea was alright, but I think would be a lot more difficult to implement in an HD game like XIV.
So what I, personally, would like to see Square do is focus on 4/8 but down the line maybe after PS3 release, enable players to create an alliance of either 2 (16), or 3 (24) parties to take on things like Dynamis and Campaign. Not so much for Campaign since you can go solo just fine, but you get my point!
I'd like to see this down the line, though. Right now SE needs to focus on new players and keeping the few they have. I think low man content is the way to go with that. It's not very good for linkshells since you end up with a bunch of cliques that eventually want to break off, but at least people will have something to do. -
03-10-2011, 02:03 AMColinoCompletely agreed. We also won't have to spend insane amounts of time waiting to get to 15 because the content requires it. I think 8 man parties are fine. Easier to group, easier to manage and just more fun than the insane 15 person zergfests where you barely have time to pull your weapon out.Quote:
Originally Posted by linafanboy
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03-10-2011, 02:07 AMGodStop with the retarded comments nothing ever stopped you from partying with under 15 people. 15 is/was the max NOT the required. Want a 3-4-8 man group THEN WHY NOT JUST MAKE ONE.Quote:
Originally Posted by Colino
8 people means more crap leves that dont have enough links to make them worth while. Simple fact is More people ment FASTER SP. -
03-10-2011, 02:13 AMColinoYou do realize that's the whole point of changing the party limit right?Quote:
Originally Posted by God
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03-10-2011, 02:22 AMGodYou do realize this is why players whom have this affect them most are upset right?Quote:
Originally Posted by Colino
Nothing stopped people from only forming parties of 6 so they can get slower SP. Hell want a 'challange' like everyone bitches about larger parties; up the stars to 5 and go to town with your smaller group. -
03-10-2011, 02:54 AMSonic_the_Hedgehog
I like the idea of 4 man parties, it's seems very Final Fantasy-ish. Also nice signature Feldt ;)
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03-10-2011, 03:07 AMFrebaut
The problem with going to 6 people and doing a 5 star run is you can't pass it. The mobs defense is so high and they hit so hard theirs no challenge because you will die. As of now either the mobs are to easy or they wipe you with one AoE. Theirs no in between.
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03-10-2011, 03:37 AMZhinse
I like this discussion!
I am in favor of the lower party count and low population content. It should be able to get us through these tough times right now and 8 years from now when the game is getting older. I find Low man battles a lot more fun too. -
03-10-2011, 04:11 AMAlothia
I can understand why they're changing the party size, but that doesn't mean that I have to like it. My linkshell is quite large, and we like to party together. I just wish that they would take into account that there are some groups that DO like to get together in bigger numbers. I'm fine with them giving a small nerf to larger parties, but to change the limit down to 8 and then maybe even 4 is just disappointing.
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03-10-2011, 04:46 AMTubalaTrommler
A problem I see with having smaller parties is that you then need a higher concentration of specific job types, namely mages and tanks. Given that gladiators are already fairly scarce at high ranks, and that 90% of DD players do not like to tank, I think that this could be quite a problem.
At the moment, with 15 person battles, you only need one tank for most things. If the max size was 8 you then need two tanks to have two groups run, and if you do not have enough then 7 people will miss out on the activity.
They should make an alliance two parties of 8, and have content difficulty scale based on number of people. -
03-10-2011, 04:56 AMFleur
Ditto what Alothia said (and hi, my large linkshell's boss lady!). When I do leves a 3-4 person group is what I wind up in if am grouping with either a) random people at the camp, or b) people from my very small linkshell. But my large linkshell has a bunch of people in my rank range, and to be honest even with the current 8-man "optimal" limit I hesitate to try and join them as there are just so many of us and I don't want to horn in and mess up the SP.
And that is a good point TubalaTrommler. There seems to be no shortage of mages, IMHO -- I see 'em everywhere and am rarely in a party without another one besides myself. If you need 1 mage in a party of 4, that is doable as I am sure that at least 25% of the battlers are mages. But I am quite often in a party that is lacking a gladiator or decent tank, even in larger parties. We can usually manage fine without a proper tank, but I suppose that is just part of the way the battle system is set up now. -
03-10-2011, 07:58 AMarleeno shit you can make whatever party size you want, thing is right now there is no middle ground for the leve difficulties, its either stupid easy or stupid hard.Quote:
Originally Posted by God
As for the OMG moar people = moar SP! you realize that there is a max link you can do right? you and 10 people linking the same leve is not gonna net you more sp than say a 5 link. more people doesn;t = more sp. you just gotta play smart, meaning pick the right leves to link and GA buff
yeah i agree their needs to be some sort of median for the reg groups. right now the stars for adjusting difficulty in leves is bullshit, there is no middelground. 1 star is too easy and 5 star is too dam hard. 3-4 stars is pretty much just like 1 star. The difficulty goes from easy to super hard, what happened to the middle ground?Quote:
Originally Posted by Frebaut
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03-10-2011, 08:06 AMKurokikaze
Um to the person that said that they would be limited to how many leve-links you could have and essentially reduce you SP gains...
You are CLEARLY not aware that the cap on level links is three. 1 person starts the leve and 3 others link. That is the cap, there are NO further bonus to SP that can be made besides using Aspect.
No you cannot argue with me on this. It has been tested - it is fact. -
03-10-2011, 08:09 AMarleelisten to this man, what he said /\Quote:
Originally Posted by Kurokikaze
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03-10-2011, 08:18 AMGod10 people WILL net more SP then 5 because you can do 3 runs at max links instead of 1 and a half.Quote:
Originally Posted by arlee
You do realize that reducing the size of the party means the chances the party all has the same amount of leves to achive max links rarely happens now. assuming theres no static group.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kurokikaze
So great I love doing devlets at broken water cause only one of the 6 people or 8 people who whatever small size group you go with don't have enough to link. Super.
Going with 15 assures that you can do multipul runs of the good ones and blast through the crappy ones at a decent pace.
Right?
Leves are random people are random not everyone saves their leves for redoing every reset nor do they get offered the same leves every reset.
It was much more enjoyable doing 3-4 runs of dunesfolk than burning all the good leves once then twiddling your thumbs not having any leves to do until next reset. -
03-10-2011, 11:31 AMFeldtI see one big flaw in your "suggestion"Quote:
Originally Posted by Obeadius
I want to search for ready parties, not ppl want to search for me, your flag idea isn't the god idea... when I'm in gridania for example i need to bee in a spot with players so actually someone want to notice the flag. I want a system where i will search on board (like the current one) and be displayed all the parties that are in, with the actual members that joined. I want then to click "Join" and ask them where the heck are they so i can arrive or where do we go. If we would go with the flag system how the heck will i find a party for company that are in limsa or ul'dah when I'm in gridania and can't search it. and another thing
PLEASE!! NO MORE COMMANDS! this isn't linux! I'm not a computer to remembers XXXXXXXX Commands to operate properly... I want it all doable and clickable though menu, in nice gui, an option to select from menu for example that will display some window or something.Quote:
/sea all functions
And about the current system. Well mostly I'll tell you how it was.
Square Enix never posted tutorial on how to use party search/recruitment system (though it mine opinion it doesn't need it since it's intuitive and easy to use - i know how to use it from first day) but, in my adventures i meet LOOOOOOOT of people who don't know how to use it... and because they don't know... they don't even care to learn... after I educated some, they started to learn this. But...another thing arrived, since there was like 80~90% of ppl that didn't know how to use the party search and recruit, the rest of ppl that do know (10%) stopped using it as well...
back around November and before in 2010 that 10% of ppl that do know created parties, some of them of cores didn't since not everybody want to be party leader and some players are afraid of the role (I was as well). Well anyway, somehow those people stopped creating those recruitments since the rest of players (that 90%) didn't looked on the board... Somehow the number decreased with time, and now the situation looks like this:
Even if someone will create recruitment it's really rare to get any response since the people who Know how to use this functionality, and the ones that don't know (still most of players don't know how to use it) know that no one ever looks there and thus they don't even bother to look there.
I was using back in 2010 quiet frequently this functionality, but now... every time i create recruitment i got no response even I'm stopping to look up there since every time i look... there is no recruitments...
I really dunno what's going up here, I saw exactly the same system in couple f2p MMORPG's and it was used normally, you saw loots of recruitments from people and could easy join a party...
Something need to be done with that...
btw. i almost forgot, I even meet ppl that didn't know what the "party" option in menu was for...
PS: I pray that this post will be on some understandable level because it's almost 4am here, I'm very tired and I'm already couple hours past my bed time...
Thanks :3Quote:
Originally Posted by Sonic_the_Hedgehog
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03-10-2011, 11:45 AMAbriael
I'm fine with 4 and 8. They seem two easily manageable numbers both balancing-wise and from the perspective of making a group.
In any case the most fun I ever had (PVE-wise) in any MMORPG were with 6-men dungeons. 4 and 8 are quite near to that number, so the mechanics shouldn't be too different.
They didn't exclude bigger groups anyway.
Yoshida said that they just want to get all the content in line for smaller parties, and then move to bigger ones. -
03-10-2011, 11:50 AMFeldtWell... i don't mind it that way, anyway they need to somehow bring con... um stuff to the game (CONTENT = In my Definition is Story Line and Story Quests.Quote:
Originally Posted by Abriael
All mobs and stuff added like new dungeons etc. aren't content for me) and doing storyline with like 4 ppl would be reasonable idea ^^ Anyway i won't judge etc. I just want to see it how it plays on my own eyes then i can get my opinion on that :)
PS: Damn I'm really tired i should get some sleep =_= -
03-10-2011, 11:51 AMAbriaelThe biggest problem is that they need to completely (and I mean it) rebalance encounters. Most current monsters aren't a challenge for a duo, let alone 4 people.Quote:
Originally Posted by Feldt
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03-10-2011, 11:57 AMFeldtWoah O.o i didn't knew there was a cap for leave link O.o i usually see lots of ppl linking for max. Today i saw like 5 links on one leave.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kurokikaze
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03-10-2011, 12:00 PMAbriaelWell, as far as I am aware, if you don't take part to the leve link, you don't get the bonus. So the two additional ones simply linked as well because, even if they weren't adding up to the bonus, they didn't want to be left out from it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Feldt
(or they simply didn't coordinate beforehand).