Lessons I hope SE will carry forward into 3.0
As ARR draws to a close and we march forward into Ishgard (hopefully making a stop in Ul'Dah to garrotte a certain Lalafell who set us up in the first place), I hope the devs have taken some lessons away from the first successful reboot of a failed game. Here are a few that I hope they will carry into Heavensward:
*FATEs need to be even more dynamic, with enemies becoming more powerful or numerous as more people enter as well as the converse.
*In addition to the Hunt Logs, a weekly endgame Hunt Log should be included that offers tomes and Allied Seals as rewards. The only question is whether Coil/Alexander bosses should be included.
*Healer Limit Break 3 needs to include a 10-15 second barrier effect to allow parties to recover sufficiently enough to continue fighting through the weakness effect. I've seen too many situations where a party that was raised by LB3 were wiped out seconds afterward due to a lack of recovery time.
*If there needs to be RNG in something (crafting, gathering, treasure drops), there also needs a progressive element that minimizes streaks of bad luck.
*Any and all new dungeons need to continue the trend towards smaller groups of sturdier enemies as well as barriers that can only be deactivated after defeating said enemies.
Weighted / Progressive RNG System
Definitely agree with the need to have a better RNG system. A suggestion from a while back:
Pure RNG is just awful. We need a change to the Drop System:
A Weighted Random Number Generator System. A bunch of people brought this up a while ago, when Atma were first introduced (and the % was even lower than today). Specifically:
* RNG Drop Rate + Increase Percentage(%) Chance for [Item] drop for Every Successful Clear (FATE, Dungeon, etc.), Until it Finally Drops.
For example, let's say the starting Drop Rate is 1% for an Atma. If you do a FATE and nothing drops, Square should add, say, +2% to your chance, so the NEXT FATE you do now has 3% (Base 1%+2%) chance. So at the most, you'd have to do 50 FATEs in the zone (+2% x 50 tries) to finally get your Atma Stone (if you had the worst luck).
This allows Yoshi P to keep that "Random Number Generator" / "Lottery" feel and grind (ugh), while providing a safety (and sanity) net for Players. So if you have bad luck, at least eventually you'll get the Item to drop within a reasonable amount of time. The Actual Bonus Percentage per Win/Clear can be balanced to whatever feels fair (+2%, +5%, etc.).
This Hybrid approach is the best of both worlds. It's frustrating that Yoshi P and the Dev Team refuse to consider something like this; and just stick with a simple, archaic "Pure RNG Only" system (just keep banging your head against the wall, "rolling the dice" and hope one day it drops). It's awful.
One other aspect to note is that Pure RNG's effects are felt even more severely due to Yoshi P's pure Vertical Progression style philosophy: Gear / iLevels get invalidated every ~5-6 months, so for most players, fighting RNG, they might not see drops until gear becomes OUTDATED, and at that point, it's worthless (just for glamour). :mad:
This needs to change in 3.0.