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.

What's wrong with Momodi? :( she's one of my favourite NPCs! I prefer her to Merlwyb ;)

Totally agree on the res and RNG though!

Having a barrier for healer LB 3 might be a bit OP. Seem like a way to cheese some mechanics timing a healers LB as people just die through a mechanic that is hard to master.

FATEs kill me often enough already, don't make them harder.

-Elemental wheel
-Cure should damage undead
-Additional Camera Distance (would have made divebombs a joke)

I think they messed up the group dynamic both in party size and the way enmity works in general, because it works against the tank now. And it also inspires negative competition amongst dps. Not to mention the heart attack moments it can cause healers. These are all stresses that we could as players do without because we have enough to worry about with laggy aoe animations versus their cast timer bars and all the one shot mechanics you like to throw at us without giving us the ability to effectively use items like healing potions or phoenix downs in combat, hence causing a wipe whenever it's not due to the dps checks that are in place of actual things you normally have to react to in a FF game, like being poisoned with bio up on you or being slowed and needing haste to bring you back to normal speed again.
Players want to be able to pull mobs even at the risk of being 1-3 shot without preparation and as dps not have to worry about tanking while in the presence of a tank because they have multiple ways of shifting threat away from them and or onto another. You can always give us moves like SATA or you could add odd number to grouping system allowing a support player class with an aoe that reduces enmity for himself and raises it for tank or even an aoe reduction for all non-focused members. As well as other fun tools to gift his/her party.

I agree with most of your points here, namely the ones about res, RNG, and dungeon structure. ESPECIALLY RNG, as a crafter, where I literally have to rely on RNG for endgame crafting, because Tricks of the Trade only works on Good condition and you can never tell when that good condition will come up. Hell, I've had several instances where an Excellent condition appears the step AFTER I use Byregot's Blessing, as if the craft is taunting me.

As for the FATEs, I think the lesson to be learned is that FATEs should not be required content for quests.

...and the hunt logs? I think that's a fantastic idea, but raid bosses should not be targets in said hunt logs. At all. That's just not fair to people who have difficulty clearing raids.

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Originally Posted by Hayward

*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.

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I'm either reading this incorrectly or you want more barriers in 4man dungeons we'll have to farm endlessly. I understand wanting more difficult trash, maybe enemies you have to actually CC instead of just burn (see: the t10 trash everyone skips), but just making you stop to burn trash for an unnecessary amount of time before you can move on seems kinda... not too great.

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Originally Posted by SpookyGhost

I'm either reading this incorrectly or you want more barriers in 4man dungeons we'll have to farm endlessly. I understand wanting more difficult trash, maybe enemies you have to actually CC instead of just burn (see: the t10 trash everyone skips), but just making you stop to burn trash for an unnecessary amount of time before you can move on seems kinda... not too great.

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Yeah, I'm not a fan of adding barriers to slow down progress. I'd rather have tougher enemies.

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Originally Posted by Cutie_McSnuggles

Yeah, I'm not a fan of adding barriers to slow down progress. I'd rather have tougher enemies.

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I'm all for more meaningful fights. The mechanics that allow a team to endure and forgo the 20 seconds until wipe unless you do X amount of damage all while dodging one shot aoe, that make it so melee lose dps would be welcome as well for me.

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Originally Posted by Hayward

barriers that can only be deactivated after defeating said enemies.

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The reason why I've only done 1 expert dungeon roulette in the last 2 months, so many annoying forced stops.

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*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.

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Frankly this is why I have stopped doing dungeons completely. I ran the 3 new ones in 2.5 a few times each, then almost never again. I can't even recall the last time I queued for expert roulette. The dungeons are already too easy and offer weak rewards. Making them more tedious and take longer just makes me not want to do them.

It is so dreadfully boring to pick apart 3 easy enemies, because there is a wall in the way and we can't move on until they are dead. Wall goes down... here are 3 more enemies and another wall. ZzzzZzzzZ

I'd be curious to see the data on dungeon participation. Be willing to bet more people ran dungeons back in the speed-run era of Brayflox and Wanderer's Palace. People even formed PF groups to run them. Those dungeons were not hard, but at least you could get through them quickly.

Now if SE would design dungeons that weren't braindead-easy, and actually posed some challenge... and if the rewards were actually interesting... I'd be more willing to take my time and trudge through them. But we all know the community would never stand for that.

OP, good stuff!

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Originally Posted by Amatsuhira

..You can always give us moves like SATA or you could add odd number to grouping system allowing a support player class with an aoe that reduces enmity for himself and raises it for tank or even an aoe reduction for all non-focused members. As well as other fun tools to gift his/her party.

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Please no. SATA was a pain and a half in FFXI and its battles were no where near as fast as in XIV. Not forgetting 90% of the playerbase won't know how it actually works. Let's just leave the XIV way of separate SA and TA be, as its already 100x better than having to stack them and position a whole party the FFXI way.

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Originally Posted by Spiritreaver1217

OP, good stuff!



Please no. SATA was a pain and a half in FFXI and its battles were no where near as fast as in XIV. Not forgetting 90% of the playerbase won't know how it actually works. Let's just leave the XIV way of separate SA and TA be, as its already 100x better than having to stack them and position a whole party the FFXI way.

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What if stacking was a 3rd option on top of the 2 you already have? When i used the work like I was leaving it open to ideas as well.

Honestly, I'd love to see some puzzles in dungeons. Blowing up waves of mobs is fun and all, but spread them out or make them a punishment if you fail to get past the trap. Let us take missions that require finding a certain number of mobs to kill as the goal for extra tomes or something.

I support a Weekly Hunting Log for the Hunts.

I fully support a lot less RNG in crafting and gathering. I'm tired of having the gear/skill to do something and seeing fails because of awful RNG.

Please keep the "walls" it's the reason I like the expert roulette a lot.

Let's all hope they learned on ARR launch that 90k is no joke.

Have them servers ready for us!!!

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Originally Posted by Amatsuhira

What if stacking was a 3rd option on top of the 2 you already have? When i used the work like I was leaving it open to ideas as well.

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Fair enough.

I just just have so many bad memories from having to deal with parties that just couldn't understand positions for a full SATA-or even split really-in FFXI. I just got through a horribad LCoA run where it took me watching us wipe 3 time before they listened to my suggestion that we use the mechanic(AKA-the doors) and not try and burn through Ruinous Omen with two fresh 50s and i shudder thinking about explaining SATA positioning to a group like that......

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.

I agree with you on all points except for the walls in dungeons. Unless they greatly reduce the size of the dungeons so that I only have to kill 2 packs between bosses, then no thanks. I agree with some of the above posters in that I rarely if ever do my expert roulette because I don't care for the constant bottle necking.

Please lay off the walls and forced stops in dungeons. It's lazy design and dumb when dungeons are only added that are 30 to 40 ilvls behind what most people are geared in. Killing 3 trash mobs at a time you crush with 40 ilvls on release is just uninspired dungeon design. When you have boring, laughably easy dungeons that players are required to spam for months, is it any wonder people figure out how to be efficient and speed run? Your dungeons are linear, boring and hugely under tuned. Putting a wall every 3 mobs doesn't fix any of that.

Better inspired and designed dungeons please. Not walls.

Instead of the forced walls, I'd prefer enemies that are a challenge, and foes that prove more of a challenge when grouped together. Right now, if you have the healing throughput and proper mitigation, you can pull wall to wall in pretty much any instance. I'd rather something like mobs that buff each other, so that making larger pulls becomes progressively harder, or perhaps mobs that exhibit different behavior if they are in the presence of other specific mobs, such as adding an AoE ability or CC effect to their movelist, but only when pulled into another pack with the same type of enemy, making the party deal with 2-3 raid wide damage attacks in a dungeon where there would otherwise be none in trash.

As it is now, one of the only places that makes me wary of mass pulls is Pharos Sirius, but boy is it fun. There are vulnerability debuffs abound, Gravity III for some serious hurt, Divide to be CC'd, and with crystals falling on your head all the while. Mobs are varied, interesting, and dangerous, and you actually need to know how to react to them in order to pull them en masse. I'd like to see more along this vein.

Other than that, I agree with most of your points, and I'll take any excuse to use healer LB 3 more, though instead of a shield, I'd ask for the animation lock to be reduced significantly.

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Originally Posted by Akuryu

Frankly this is why I have stopped doing dungeons completely. I ran the 3 new ones in 2.5 a few times each, then almost never again. I can't even recall the last time I queued for expert roulette. The dungeons are already too easy and offer weak rewards. Making them more tedious and take longer just makes me not want to do them.

It is so dreadfully boring to pick apart 3 easy enemies, because there is a wall in the way and we can't move on until they are dead. Wall goes down... here are 3 more enemies and another wall. ZzzzZzzzZ

I'd be curious to see the data on dungeon participation. Be willing to bet more people ran dungeons back in the speed-run era of Brayflox and Wanderer's Palace. People even formed PF groups to run them. Those dungeons were not hard, but at least you could get through them quickly.

Now if SE would design dungeons that weren't braindead-easy, and actually posed some challenge... and if the rewards were actually interesting... I'd be more willing to take my time and trudge through them. But we all know the community would never stand for that.

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This. Please this. I WANT to enjoy...but can't. QQ

*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.

I would sooner they just removed weakness effect on LB

More dungeons like Cutters Cry 1.x please.
Where the team get splitted up into 2 teams to defeat enemies in 2 seperate rooms at the same time to unlock the portal for the next room. If the enemies don't get defeated at the same time another portal show up that send the party members back to the previous room.