Why is the Ifrit Mission fight geared towards 4 people, and not also a full party?

Why is standard decided to be 4 people, while 8 is decided as 'hard mode'? Couldn't all content that's instanced be scaled to suit both sizes?

Mission fights should not be treated as second rate nonsense to get at the goodies. Mission fights in the past, while not dropping gear, were treated as big achievements. I don't see why the mission fight and the 'hard mode' fight can't be treated equally.

So I pose this question:

In the future, why can't missions and hardmode battles alike have scaled content geared towards both Lite-Parties (4 members) and Full-Parties (8 members)?
The Ifrit mission battle in the translation at least seems to be treated as a nuisance to be cleared before you can get at the actual content. Is this true, and can we expect all future missions to be treated as 'easy mode'?

I liked feeling a sense of accomplishment with missions but in XIV they fall super flat as though no effort to making them challenging was put forth. Not everyone who plays as a casual character wants things /that/ easy.

So I'm going to wait to comment later after the patch goes live, so it's not really a matter of how difficult it is ( as we don't know ) but more of a question along the lines of why the arbitrary numbers set to the party system for missions and is it not possible to have both?

This would greatly improve the game in the long run to both cater to large groups and new players who don't know many people (therefore being able to choose the option for 4 people, instead of maxing everything out at 8)

Same for the endgame hard mode. It is not always possible to find enough people for Darkhold, so can't the bosses within be scaled in future updates to suit both groups?


I'm not asking for a drop in difficulty or level of the monsters within, but for the content to be scaled to suit each group.

Lots of changes are going to be happening over the next few patches, I imagine this is temporary until battle system and attribute and jobs are fixed. And to also see how people party(dont think they arent reading the publics battle logs)

Future instance/bosses will probably have a proper algorithm to scale proper

My outlook on this is that, you have the final boss, but he's meant to be "beatable" so that more players can experience the story.

But if you want the crazy extra challenge, insane min-maxing, greater rewards, and other stuff, you get ready to fight the Emerald Weapon, Omega Weapon, Death on the Clock Tower, Sephiroth in the Coliseum, etc.

edit: It almost feels like your post grew in length while I was typing this. I guess it depends on the type of scaling. And even then, might be harder to balance out, since would scaling only involve increased HP? Or would it increase the boss's stats, thus lowering the party's effectiveness, and making calculations across different level ranges even more difficult?

"Normal" mode is designed for a mid level group (R25? Or maybe it was R35) whereas "hard" mode is designed as a raid for R50+. It's not actually normal and hard mode, think of it more as story mode and farm mode. farm mode being the R50, because as far as I'm aware, the story Ifrit doesn't really drop anything unless everyone is from the same company. But that last part is just speculation.

I think there should also be a final boss for the story which while isnt easy mode - SHOULD be clearable with enough practice from casuals. There should be side bosses like ultimate weapon(example) which is hard mode. And it will come. Right now hes getting as much content to as much people

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Originally Posted by Oscillate_Wildly

Why is standard decided to be 4 people, while 8 is decided as 'hard mode'? Couldn't all content that's instanced be scaled to suit both sizes?

Mission fights should not be treated as second rate nonsense to get at the goodies. Mission fights in the past, while not dropping gear, were treated as big achievements. I don't see why the mission fight and the 'hard mode' fight can't be treated equally.

So I pose this question:

In the future, why can't missions and hardmode battles alike have scaled content geared towards both Lite-Parties (4 members) and Full-Parties (8 members)?
The Ifrit mission battle in the translation at least seems to be treated as a nuisance to be cleared before you can get at the actual content. Is this true, and can we expect all future missions to be treated as 'easy mode'?

I liked feeling a sense of accomplishment with missions but in XIV they fall super flat as though no effort to making them challenging was put forth. Not everyone who plays as a casual character wants things /that/ easy.

So I'm going to wait to comment later after the patch goes live, so it's not really a matter of how difficult it is ( as we don't know ) but more of a question along the lines of why the arbitrary numbers set to the party system for missions and is it not possible to have both?

This would greatly improve the game in the long run to both cater to large groups and new players who don't know many people (therefore being able to choose the option for 4 people, instead of maxing everything out at 8)

Same for the endgame hard mode. It is not always possible to find enough people for Darkhold, so can't the bosses within be scaled in future updates to suit both groups?


I'm not asking for a drop in difficulty or level of the monsters within, but for the content to be scaled to suit each group.

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The majority of people who want solo or light content also want easier content.

The majority of people who want full group/alliance content want harder content.

Unfortunately that is the breakdown of the majority of the community and so they cater to each crowd. There are a few people who enjoy small group and solo content which is challenging, and for them they have the option of undermaning content designed for larger groups.

Hopefully though they eventually add in some Maat like fights for solo play which are difficult and soloable (and same for small party). I just wouldn't expect the casual crowd to rally behind the cause.

The final boss should be beatable I agree but difficulty shouldn't be sacrificed to artificially make players feel good.

In other words, I hope future mission battles live up to their preprocessor online and offline in difficulty and don't follow the precedent set by past XIV missions. I think there was one with a few Amaljah and basically there were about 5 of them but they died within or under 10 minutes and that's hardly what I call difficulty.
Not that Ifrit is the same thing. But the precedent has been set.

And yes the hardmode option should be there but in the future what I'd like to see is an equal balance of both content mission and out of mission for lite parties and full parties.

meaning missions for 4 and 8 player groups, and after-mission 4 and 8 party groups, scaled properly to the amount of players present. I hope it's temporary. Viewing 4 players as 'soft core' is a bit...Hm. Which is what this thread is really all about. Not just Ifrit but plans for future balancing of content. D:

Although this isn't exclusively about how hard the content is. If you read deeper, it's about the number of people who can clear it.

While it's nice that missions require only 4, and it might max out at 4, doesn't mean the entire community wants to split up into so many small groups. It should be that there is an option to clear with 8 and an option to clear with 4. They've already started doing this with the instanced timed raids so I don't see why missions should be any different.

And I think right now I'd classify as a casual player who plays maybe once or twice a month lately and I'd like hard as butt content all up in my missions so I feel like I've earned whatever achievement it is for getting so far. To make all missions achievable with little to no effort (READ: MISSIONS) is a horrible way to view progress in this game.

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Originally Posted by Oscillate_Wildly

Although this isn't exclusively about how hard the content is. If you read deeper, it's about the number of people who can clear it.

While it's nice that missions require only 4, and it might max out at 4, doesn't mean the entire community wants to split up into so many small groups. It should be that there is an option to clear with 8 and an option to clear with 4. They've already started doing this with the instanced timed raids so I don't see why missions should be any different.

And I think right now I'd classify as a casual player who plays maybe once or twice a month lately and I'd like hard as butt content all up in my missions so I feel like I've earned whatever achievement it is for getting so far. To make all missions achievable with little to no effort (READ: MISSIONS) is a horrible way to view progress in this game.

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Some people think that to make missions any harder would be restrictive to certain players. My hope is that through the job system they add in quests/missions which require some amount of challenge since that entire system is geared towards grouping and does not have to cater to casual (mean proponents of easy mode) players.

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Originally Posted by Fiosha_Maureiba

My outlook on this is that, you have the final boss, but he's meant to be "beatable" so that more players can experience the story.

But if you want the crazy extra challenge, insane min-maxing, greater rewards, and other stuff, you get ready to fight the Emerald Weapon, Omega Weapon, Death on the Clock Tower, Sephiroth in the Coliseum, etc.

edit: It almost feels like your post grew in length while I was typing this. I guess it depends on the type of scaling. And even then, might be harder to balance out, since would scaling only involve increased HP? Or would it increase the boss's stats, thus lowering the party's effectiveness, and making calculations across different level ranges even more difficult?

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Nah my post didn't grow. Scaling I think would involve all those things, including the difficulty of handling any friends he may bring along. Kind of like how the new partying system involves mobs calling for help based on party size (or did I read that wrong?)

Over all perhaps, with less people beating on him, it might spawn fewer incidents of spammed TP moves and range of effect or damage dealt.
But if they can scale it up to fit 8 people for a hardmode version they can do some tweaks to allow both groups of 4 and 8 to attack the mission.

I have quite a few people in my LS, I know we'd all love to tackle the mission together but alas we cannot as it is limited to 4 people. That's great for players who want it done faster but for slightly bigger groups who might want a bonus challenge? Could try the 8 player full-mode for the mission.

It's the only way I can see to avoid dropping min-max all together on party requirements. 4 is nice again for small groups or players who are 'casual' but the thing is not just casuals are clearing the missions.

Missions shouldn't be treated as casual bullcrap to plow through to get to the hardmode dungeon. It kind of defeats the purpose of having it if it's just going to be treated as easy mode. D:

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Originally Posted by Murugan

Some people think that to make missions any harder would be restrictive to certain players. My hope is that through the job system they add in quests/missions which require some amount of challenge since that entire system is geared towards grouping and does not have to cater to casual (mean proponents of easy mode) players.

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I think you're missing the point of having both options of 4 player and 8 player available. The rise in difficulty is completely optional and fun. I don't think it's a hindrance to raise the difficulty in missions when they ought to be difficult in the first place.

Clearing all missions that crop up from now until the end of the game's life shouldn't resemble clearing 6 junk mobs and 1 slightly junk mob while the real focus is clearing it for the chance to enter the optional hardmode.

It's all in practising proper adjustments and balances to make the challenge there for all players.

I personally think they should be enterable(its a word) for 1-8 players. As I have seen sometimes its hard to get four people together, often its hard to get 8, but if we could wing it(making it harder) with the amount of us that are available it would only help with the situation. I barely ever get to make DD runs, because of the hardset number, I have never had a problem getting into tokoraka, but I have seen people on my server who got to it later instead of sooner are having a hard time forming a group. So make them all 1-8...

except in future when we have mega bosses that require alliances from all three grand companies, and if whether those are instance fields or not is up to the dev

Yes, the hours which I can now currently play aren't the greatest. It's even worse for my LSmates. I'd say both from 4 to 8 because they're set groups. It's not perfect, but I don't see why 4 is set at the standard for clearing a mission. That's what bothers me the most. I hope it's just for Ifrit and in time we'll even see Full party requirements on some of the harder or further-down-the-road missions. It'd be ridiculous if we got so far with no sense of relief or accomplishment.

An accomplishment that can't be entirely bought off with an optional fight that's the same exact thing only a lot harder. :S Even if it were for gear. In that case, I'd prefer to have just the mission and an optional area to explore. Like Dynamis or Sea.

You could do everything 1 to 8 without separating them but then where does the difficulty cap end? At 1 person or 8 people?
At least with the 2 groups, lite and full, you're balancing with specific groups in mind for whether you have 3 or 7 people you should be able to attempt at least one of the two.

To quote myself "when they have the algorithm to scale proper." While it could let 1-8 players in. The hardset number would only be the weakest the enemy could be. It would assume you have 4 if you are under so it doesnt get any easier. And it would scale proper to a full party. Now this could be for light-mid content. It could also be set where it is hard for 8 players, but 1 person can still enter, he simply cannot win unless hes amazing, has 5 materia on everything or until they raise caps or something....

I think they're going about it backwards, personally. There are less people at higher levels then there are at mid-range levels, so rank 30 content should be designed toward 8 people while rank 50 content should be doable by 4 people at the top of their game.

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Originally Posted by Oscillate_Wildly

Why is standard decided to be 4 people, while 8 is decided as 'hard mode'? Couldn't all content that's instanced be scaled to suit both sizes?

...

In the future, why can't missions and hardmode battles alike have scaled content geared towards both Lite-Parties (4 members) and Full-Parties (8 members)?

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I'm not on the dev team (obviously), but I'd imagine it's primarily a question of time. It would be awesome if fights scaled based on your level, the number of players in your party, etc. But for every different variable, the devs would have to put in a ton of work fine-tuning that scaling process. There's no dial they can just turn up or turn down. You've got to adjust HP, TP, MP, Weaponskills, rates at which Weaponskills pop, movement, and probably 50 other variables. You've essentially got to create an entirely new fight for every variable, and then you've got to put a lot of work in fine-tuning the fight to make sure it's possible and challenging, at the same time.

They're working right now to get content out as quickly as possible. So while it would be super awesome if they could scale every fight in the game, we'd end up having to wait months longer for 1 fight.

Scaling = harder to design and balance content.

That's all there is to it.

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Originally Posted by quantumsaint

I think they're going about it backwards, personally. There are less people at higher levels then there are at mid-range levels, so rank 30 content should be designed toward 8 people while rank 50 content should be doable by 4 people at the top of their game.

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I'm not sure that I agree with you here. In my experience, most of the current players have at least one class at r45+. But I could be completely wrong about that.

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Originally Posted by Betelgeuzah

Scaling = harder to design and balance content.

That's all there is to it.

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You said it much better and shorter than I did.

Sept 30th 2012 : When will we get basic MMO features in the game? As soon as we fix the battle system and implement jobs.

/facepalm

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Originally Posted by Fiosha_Maureiba

My outlook on this is that, you have the final boss, but he's meant to be "beatable" so that more players can experience the story.

But if you want the crazy extra challenge, insane min-maxing, greater rewards, and other stuff, you get ready to fight the Emerald Weapon, Omega Weapon, Death on the Clock Tower, Sephiroth in the Coliseum, etc.

edit: It almost feels like your post grew in length while I was typing this. I guess it depends on the type of scaling. And even then, might be harder to balance out, since would scaling only involve increased HP? Or would it increase the boss's stats, thus lowering the party's effectiveness, and making calculations across different level ranges even more difficult?

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I think the same and I really like it. Caters to both casual and hardcore. In XI there way quite a lot stuff I was never able to see because everything required a full party. :(