I wish Eureka could be like WoW's Timeless Isle

For those who don't know what the Timeless Isle was, it was an open world area released in Mists of Pandaria's last patch, where there were many elite monsters of various strenghts, mechanics and attributes, some rare elite monsters, timed free-for-all bosses, daily quests and chests. You could trade timeless tokens for mounts, gear, minions and glamour items.

Monsters could drop gear tokens and timeless tokens with rates that depended on their strength, quests and chests rewarded timeless tokens and gear tokens. Gear tokens were generic items that when used, generated a piee of gear with random stats (for example, using a leg token as a tank would give you a leg tank gear).

Because you couldn't fly in that area, you had to actually fight your way towards the further areas (such as crossing an infamous bridge).

So the Timeless Isle was a place where you could chill solo or with some people. If solo you would farm the weaker monsters, if in group you'd go for the stronger ones for better rewards. There was a super boss, Ordos, the god of fire, that spawned on the furthest, strongest area of the isle, that area was only accessible for people who had the legendary item so he had that "exclusive" feel that so many crave in MMORPGs.

It was basically Diadem done right.

I think it would serve this game well as "something to do" in endgame besides dungeons and raids. It had a nice old school MMORPG feeling where you didn't have a set objective, there was no set group size, you could get surprised by finding rare monsters and items, hell, you could simply get killed because you aggroed more than you could chew.

Just leaving the idea here... it didn't please everybody but personally I really liked that content.

http://i.imgur.com/96dOmlT.jpg

I honestly want to see something a kin to Sea or Sky from FFXI if you do not know what that was ..I am talking about Al'taieu (sea) and Ru'aun gardens (Sky) and those mechanics with some 2017 MMO mechanics dropped on top of it, if you get my drift.

OP don't forget about the big bad boss guys you can fight in the big arena where the vendors were. Oh and the having to climb certain spots to get at a chest. I loved trying to get the chest on the pirate ship. Man... I miss timeless isle... Spent SO MUCH TIME there, especially after I had gotten my cape. It's a shame the rest of the game wasn't as good.

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Originally Posted by Wolfleader

I honestly want to see something a kin to Sea or Sky from FFXI if you do not know what that was ..I am talking about Al'taieu (sea) and Ru'aun gardens (Sky) and those mechanics with some 2017 MMO mechanics dropped on top of it, if you get my drift.

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Ru'aun Gardens/Al'taieu was so much fun in FFXI I would love for them to bring it to ffxiv

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Originally Posted by Wolfleader

I honestly want to see something a kin to Sea or Sky from FFXI if you do not know what that was ..I am talking about Al'taieu (sea) and Ru'aun gardens (Sky) and those mechanics with some 2017 MMO mechanics dropped on top of it, if you get my drift.

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Can't give enough likes for this. Those were the best times in my MMO life. Would love something like them in XIV

I loved the timeless isle, but let's be real here. No one fought their way to get across that bridge, it was a "run and hope you don't get dazed off your mount" with a chain of mobs chasing you. :)

I hated Timeless Isle and think it was the beginning of the end for me with WoW. Then they came out with Warlords of Draenor and sealed the deal. Of course if it hadn't happened I wouldn't have made the move to FF XIV so maybe some good came of it although Blizzard might not agree.

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Originally Posted by Wolfleader

I honestly want to see something a kin to Sea or Sky from FFXI if you do not know what that was ..I am talking about Al'taieu (sea) and Ru'aun gardens (Sky) and those mechanics with some 2017 MMO mechanics dropped on top of it, if you get my drift.

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This so much.

To the OP, sky and sea sound somewhat similar to your Timeless Isle except that the high end mobs didn't spawn randomly. There were various areas of varying degrees of difficulty that you would get to and you could farm normal monsters for pop items. Once you got the necessary pop items you would work your way to specific points where your party could use the pop item to spawn a high end monster that only your party could fight for rewards. A lot of these higher end mobs also dropped pop items. When you had defeated all of the popped mobs in the area and gotten all of their pop items, you could go to the "zone boss" and use all of the pop items to fight him. When you were solo or with a few friends you could go in and farm lower level pop items so that you had them when your larger group met. It actually worked very well.

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Originally Posted by Wolfleader

I honestly want to see something a kin to Sea or Sky from FFXI if you do not know what that was ..I am talking about Al'taieu (sea) and Ru'aun gardens (Sky) and those mechanics with some 2017 MMO mechanics dropped on top of it, if you get my drift.

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I would like to see stuff like this too. I think if they mixed both then we could finally see some rather fun content with actual longevity ^^

People have been asking for this for years...and yet here we are, 2017...still nothing like this from SE...well, maybe when the games lifespan is over lol T_T

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Originally Posted by Amaranths

Ru'aun Gardens/Al'taieu was so much fun in FFXI I would love for them to bring it to ffxiv

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I do remember Ru'aun, it was one of the most beautiful areas in the game. Well, admittedly the next expansion threw some more really eye popping things out there too, but it remains one of the more incredible memories from the game.

A lot of the FFXI Aethetics were breathtaking and stunning. I loved the old monoliths that were everywhere. They really contributed a sense of history when you were there, and a kind of mystical old world feel to them.

As to the Original post...

Yes, I admit the open world where there's real danger to be found, without a feeling of safety really does make an area that much more exciting to be in. Knowing you can get killed at any moment.

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Originally Posted by Silverquick

Yes, I admit the open world where there's real danger to be found, without a feeling of safety really does make an area that much more exciting to be in. Knowing you can get killed at any moment.

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For the life of me I cannot fathom why they refuse make an open world that has some sense of danger in a game that has 0 ramifications for death. If there was something actually bad that happened to you when you died then I could understand it as the more casual players may find it difficult to accomplish anything. However, its the same as dungeons... if you die you just return and warp right back to where you were so what's the problem?


SE should make various parts of new zones with different difficulties. I know HW areas had varying difficulties by area but the whole zone was filled with little more than nuisances in level 60 white gear but I mean vastly varied. Strongholds and late game areas should literally require an 8 man party to move through at the start of the expansion. Then once gear level increases they would gradually scale down to where it would be somewhat challenging but able to be traversed solo by the end of the expansion cycle. By no means am I suggesting these areas should be heavily linked to the MSQ, or require players to enter them until late in the cycle but putting some sort of interesting things there would help.

A big reason why XI's sky/sea would be tough to emulate in XIV is the dev team's philosophy of not locking claims to parties. With the current free-for-all mentality, farming for pop sets would be the exact same zerg we see in hunts and Diadem.

It blows my mind though that XIV's systems aren't more connected. Like, why can't items found from Treasure Maps (or from Aquapolis, even) be used to spawn rare NMs in Diadem that ARE locked to your party, just like the map monsters are?

This is just the tip of the iceberg for how systems could be more connected (and engaging). It would make everything so much more meaningful though.

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Originally Posted by Thayos

A big reason why XI's sky/sea would be tough to emulate in XIV is the dev team's philosophy of not locking claims to parties.

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Well there is that basic idea... But also the fact that in FFXI... all Boss Mob fights were already directly AT the main boss mob fight... GETTING to the location where you had to get into the instance of the Boss Mob fight was covered with all kinds of bad guys that could kill you IN the open world...

So the open world was a lot more dangerous, then you went into the actual boss mob fight AFTER you got to the location IN the dungeon for the Boss Mob instance... after clearing all the trash to get there... which generally was level appropriate, and surprisingly deadly in places. So you could just go into the dungeon and grind on the mobs as well.

(continued)
In FFXIV... they throw the entire dungeon into the instance... so that's your real danger in getting to the boss mob is all the stuff in between.

The original... the rest of the world was open... and it was a danger to even get that close to it due to all the random mobs running around or blocking the way to it. And the dungeon itself was open world designed too...

Only the Boss Mob was the instance.

Here its a little different... in the "how" you get there. But it was more of an open world deadly feel to it.

I didnt realize that the timeless Isle was some kind of content people thoroughly enjoyed.
To me, it was just some place I'd pretty much go through once with all of my chars to get the chests with possible gear upgrades and maybe go for that boss thats there.
Thats it.

Its not even a good time sink, Eureka better have something more to offer than just that...

Timeless Isle was the last good thing they did in WoW. Everything since then has been rushed to meet deadlines and it's been bad for it.

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Originally Posted by Faliandra

I didnt realize that the timeless Isle was some kind of content people thoroughly enjoyed.

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All sorts of stuff starts looking REALLY attractive and enjoyable in the face of a zone that used to be zerg down this dinosaur until another dinosaur pops for you to zerg down but was ultimately updated to be 1 gigantic FATE camp.

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Originally Posted by Silverquick

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You can bypass the character limit by editing your post after you have already posted it. I typically write up a thorough response, cut all but the first sentence out of it, post it, edit and paste the remainder in.

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Originally Posted by Dement

You can bypass the character limit by editing your post after you have already posted it. I typically write up a thorough response, cut all but the first sentence out of it, post it, edit and paste the remainder in.

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Oh THATS how you guys do that... I was wondering... the character limit rarely gives me enough space to explain myself.

I feel like flying is not the best idea for instances like that, I think it's hard to design a fun and exciting map where in about 80% of the map you're basically invincible. I imagine a PvP map with flying would be kinda difficult too unless people could shoot each other out of the sky with cannons or something.
Since nobody seems to want flying or underwater combat (never seen it as a bad thing myself to be honest) it's just a nice little gimmic and not really good for stuff that is supposed to be challenging or exciting. Nothing is exciting about savely flying around till you get to a point where you want to set up camp and farm for the next 45minutes pulling everything in sight.
Flying is for saving time in open world or really large maps (not that the maps here are really large but still) and there it makes sense.

Also, throw a few mean mobs in there, make a few almost invisible (ghosts?) and a few that look like real trees and until aggro them, and a few mobs that come back to live. Put a few huge castles around the map and there is a chance Dracula or some Werewolf King spawns in one of them and you have to fight your way there. Halloween Diadem... Diadem of The Dead.

But different Diadems with different themes and different unique mobs and fun content would be cool...
For now I'll look for what OP's post was talking about and when Stormblood hits I'm gonna try out the new Diadem wielding my outdated Animas proudly.

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Originally Posted by Thayos

A big reason why XI's sky/sea would be tough to emulate in XIV is the dev team's philosophy of not locking claims to parties. .

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But we did have content like this in 1.x with no claim system...they just put these types of fights in leves. It was called Fraction Leves. No zerg fests there! ^^

You made a PT (or alliance) of 8 or more, popped your set of very difficult NM's and then got access to the next leve with an even tougher NM. I think it would be nice to have stuff like this for FC content in the open world :)

I'm in a small minority of people who loved Mists of Pandaria. If you want to know how I feel about Timeless Isle? Well, my guilds, or free companies as they're called here, in every other game I play are called "Huolon Timer".

I un-subbed for the first time in seven years when Warlords of Garrisons came out. Legion coupled with how burnt out I felt (and feel) of this game made me re-sub. One of the very first things I did when I logged in again after all that time was to go to Timeless Isle on my beloved Koltira Deathweaver look-a-like DK, accompanied by my lock friend and her new minions. When I had settled down after having burst into tears over the shear amount of nostalgia, we saw something in the general chat that made us lose our shit completely. "timer for Huolon any1 know?"

I would love to have something like this here, but being my usual cynical self, I don't think they could pull it off in this particular game. SE to me has become "decent to great ideas implemented poorly if at all". I only hold a sliver of hope left that Stormblood will impress me. I really do hope it does though because when FF14 is good it is so god damn f-ing good it can give you a semi.

Meanwhile I'll mostly be playing Wildstar, and curse whenever I log on to FF14 and realize my dodge and double jump are gone.

tl;dr Would love a Timeless Isle but I don't have faith enough in SE that they could pull it off.

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Originally Posted by Anyan

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It took me about a month straight of camping Huolon for that mount.... Good times though. I had lots of fun on that island.

Sounds very similar to WildStar's Arcterra zone: mobs of difficulty ranging from solo to 2-man, 5-man, and 20-man. You trigger the more difficult mobs to spawn by killing a bunch of the smaller ones, so you roam around killing the solo bosses to get the 2-man ones to spawn, and then kill the 2-mans to get the 5-mans to start spawning, and so on. The progress bar tops out and a 20-man boss spawns (one of three possible bosses). There are also dynamic events scattered around the zone which are doable solo, many of which are pretty fun (I love the tornadoes you have to bounce up into the air with to collect crystals, and the snail you have to chase around on ice - you SKID! - while trying to destroy all the eggs it spawns), plus challenges. Every so often a blizzard hits the zone, which spawns five special bosses that, when killed, unlock access to an open-world "raid" of four 20-man boss encounters. There is also a world boss in the zone that can be force spawned by feeding a node a special currency, or freespawns on a timer. Everything drops soulfrost, which can be used to exchange for gear, rune materials (kinda like gems or materia), or cosmetic items.

I absolutely ***loved*** Sky and Sea.
There was danger everywhere - things could and would kill you if you weren't extremely careful. You had to fight to get to where you needed to go.
The best part was that access was earned (Zilart missions for Sky, Promyvions for Sea). The missions - especially the promys before the nerf - were tough as hell. It gave players a much deeper sense of accomplishment and was far more rewarding. It felt like it was earned, not just ground out.
Yeah, I can imagine anything like this in XIV would have massive numbers of casuals whining about content being too hard and not being able to faceroll for top end gear.

I'd like to see an instance that challenges players in a way that Divine Might did. For me, clearing that after 5 failed attempts was a definite high point.

I always wished that Diadem would be more like Dynamis (although with a much, much higher drop rate on gear).