Request for HC characters

As title. Perhaps allow players who die in dungeons or trials to accept raises until the duty is complete or abandoned to avoid trouble for anyone else, then permanent delete, but maybe not even then? IDK, shooting from the hip on that one.

FFXIV limited overworld danger and homogenized many aspects of the game to the chagrin of some.

Allowing HC characters would

1. Present clear danger in even the oldest and mildest of content for those that wish it.

2. Birth and entirely new community, forge statics of another kind, bring a closeness and dependency on one another for those that reminisce fondly on FFXI and other 'more difficult' MMOs.

3. Revitalize older zones.

4. Perfect for duty assist and trust system.

5. Low resource allocation to implement (I think?)

Would love to hear what others think on this. Obligatory - I did not check for other posts of this kind admission.

The idea itself doesn't sound bad, though when it comes to the lore of the game I don't think we can die
Not at least with the blessing of light

never happen. SE is convinced we are stupid and babies... which is why everything is a cakewalk now.

they would NEVER implement perma death based on it would cause... stress.. and possibly even learning. which they go out of their way to avoid

Okay for anybody Confused - hes basically asking for a hard core or Ultimate Mode challenge. This means if he dies his character gets deleted.

so, i will go over why HC iron man wont work in ffxiv and why there is still a way to simulate a harder experience

First why it wont work In this games combat system, your death is not dependant on you, but your healers. and with the ability for so much to go wrong out of your control, this Will just breed toxicity. So it need some level of forgiveness in team play. infact its prolly better of HC players were no matched for normal players to avoid toxicity in general

So what can SE do? Simple. They can implement a mode similar to that of free trail. NO trading on MB, including selling. Everything must be obtained by you and crafted by you. No player requesting melds or repairs, no retainers. And already. you've made this game 100% more interactive and fun. you've brought life back to the overworld. kept older systems like leaves alive. made fate farming worthwhile for exp and even done away with Exp bloat.

SE will (most likely) never do this. As a(n imperfect but workable) work-around you could set that challenge for yourself and delete your character yourself when you lose. I don't mean this in a sarcastic/provocative way btw. I mean the same thing pen & paper players or challenge gamers do when they create their own sets of specific rules that they commit to.

You legit just suggested perma death in an mmo? No, the end. This is such a bad idea on so many surface level obvious ways it isn't even worth responding to almost. There are mmo's that have this, and they are beyond niche with extremely tiny player bases. There is a lot of reasons for that.

If SE wants "harder content" all they need to do is add optional modes for some content that force the minimum I level while maybe also adding extra or harder mechanics. Which they wont, because they tried harder content in Endwalker and no one played it.

That reminds me, I keep planning to do a Nuzlocke on Pokemon Scarlet and never got around to it.

There are dungeons where you die as part of the mechanic, the game treats it as a real death as you unlock the tutorial text for death then as some solo no death attempt players found out.

But yeah, this game isn't made for it. You know why? Because you have to pull like 5 mobs 8 level above you to actually die after a minute. There is barely any danger in open world FF14. WoW is much more fun in that regard.

tl;dr: Just go back to WoW.

For some context, "HC" or "hardcore" characters in other games, such as WoW and Diablo, are characters with permanent death enabled. If they die at any time, for any reason, whether that reason is the player's fault or not, the character is lost forever. Some games let you change the character into a non-hardcore version after they die. Others just delete them outright.

The operative phrase there is "for any reason, whether that reason is the player's fault or not". If you disconnect while fighting something and die before you reconnect, too bad. If another player pulls a zillion mobs, you happen to wind up on their aggro table, and that player themself dies, and then all the mobs run over to you and delete you next? Too bad. If you're running instanced content and happen to mess up a boss mechanic and die to it? That's it for that character, go next.

There's a reason WoW has entirely separate servers dedicated to hardcore characters. The mode at its core is too easy to troll unless the guy considering trolling it has as much to lose as their potential victim(s). MPK is against ToS but "plausible deniability" is very easy to establish if you know what you're doing. There's nothing stopping someone from ending a HC character by popping into a random dungeon as tank, wall-to-wall pulling, not popping anything, dropping dead, and going "oops mb" as the SAM dies and screams their head off over having to start over again.

So you wouldn't just need separate servers in 14's case. You'd need a dedicated data center for it that has cross-DC travel disabled both ways. And that's a hard sell for a mode that's likely to appeal to less than 1% of FF14's total playerbase.

But let's assume that's not an issue. What do you do about the MSQ? Because that's a huge pile of effectively free experience players can get just from walking places and skipping cutscenes. What do you do about MSQ solo duties if you do away with the MSQ? Force them to be done on Normal? What happens to a character if they time out of a duty but don't actually run out of health? Does that still end a HC run? What's stopping someone from starting a MSQ solo duty, doing the bare minimum to not get AFK kicked, letting the duty time out so it's considered failed, then restarting it on Very Easy, which is now available because the duty was failed once?

Now the flip side of the coin: would you want to lose your character for messing up In From The Cold, or one of the several duties where you aren't actually playing as your character?

Say you're in a dungeon and realize you've messed up a one-shot mechanic. What's stopping you from abandoning the duty before the mechanic actually kills you? Basically everyone's willing to sit through a 30 minute penalty in order to save a HC character. Is that considered MPK if you do that as the tank and the boss winds up killing all your teammates?

Long story short, there are both IRL logistics and game design hurdles to overcome in potentially adding a hardcore mode to FF14, to the point where it's better off for SE to just not invest in it at all, and for people who desire it to just go play a game that offers it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sindriiisgaming

First why it wont work In this games combat system, your death is not dependant on you, but your healers. and with the ability for so much to go wrong out of your control, this Will just breed toxicity. So it need some level of forgiveness in team play. infact its prolly better of HC players were no matched for normal players to avoid toxicity in general

---

nice that you were able to single out healers as the main cause of death. nothing to do with standing in bad spots, jumping off the edge or just being unskilled enough to do a combination of many things unrelated to healers.

and you talk about "toxic"? whats the view like from the cheap seats anyway?

I mean they could maybe do like a Palace of the Dead style content where your progress is wiped and your level is reset on death. So like permadeath content-wise but not for the character could work I guess?

Do the Deep Dungeons work like that? I genuinely don’t know lol. Deep dungeon savage?

I can’t imagine they’d ever add a way to have the player character end up ‘deleted’ in any way. I mean, the game is very much designed for the player character to be the ‘special chosen one’, so it’d kinda fly in the face of literally the entire game’s design since its’ (2.0) inception

If someone wants to play their game like that.....why not just delete your own char when you die....don't force it on everyone else....

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kes13a

nice that you were able to single out healers as the main cause of death. nothing to do with standing in bad spots, jumping off the edge or just being unskilled enough to do a combination of many things unrelated to healers.

and you talk about "toxic"? whats the view like from the cheap seats anyway?

---

You can still die even if you avoid every single AoE and do the mechanics flawlessly
If your healer dies, most, if not all DPS will be unable to sustain themselves for an extended period of time Your second wind will only do so much, your blood bath will only do so much

That doesn't even include the DPS that do not have that sort of sustainability - they will perish

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Connor

I mean they could maybe do like a Palace of the Dead style content where your progress is wiped and your level is reset on death. So like permadeath content-wise but not for the character could work I guess?

Do the Deep Dungeons work like that? I genuinely don’t know lol. Deep dungeon savage?

I can’t imagine they’d ever add a way to have the player character end up ‘deleted’ in any way. I mean, the game is very much designed for the player character to be the ‘special chosen one’, so it’d kinda fly in the face of literally the entire game’s design since its’ (2.0) inception

---

Your Aetherpool level isn't reset upon death, you only lose anything you obtained during a run before you completed it

So if you obtain 4+ Aetherpool and die before or on the last boss then that +4 is gone, but you'd still have whatever you went in with
The only way to lose that is to turn it into the weapons

I could be wrong in some places, but the point remains
I agree on it being hard to implement with lore, and honestly I don't see them adding it either way for other reasons
It would make things pretty difficult for other players not participating if one of their party members couldn't be revived

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CVXIV

You can still die even if you avoid every single AoE and do the mechanics flawlessly
If your healer dies, most, if not all DPS will be unable to sustain themselves for an extended period of time Your second wind will only do so much, your blood bath will only do so much

That doesn't even include the DPS that do not have that sort of sustainability - they will perish

---

of course you can die, you can die to many things.. what I was objecting to was this: "your death is not dependant on you, but your healers."

a problem in this game is that nobody has to learn anything. you can blame it all on healing. SE has turned the role into one tailor made for braindead 5 year olds... and then people are shocked when those are the only people seemingly still playing it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Karkarov

You legit just suggested perma death in an mmo? No, the end. This is such a bad idea on so many surface level obvious ways it isn't even worth responding to almost. There are mmo's that have this, and they are beyond niche with extremely tiny player bases. There is a lot of reasons for that.

If SE wants "harder content" all they need to do is add optional modes for some content that force the minimum I level while maybe also adding extra or harder mechanics. Which they wont, because they tried harder content in Endwalker and no one played it.

---

The idea of an optional game mode with a hardcore feature set is perfectly fine for an MMORPG. It's an option within World of Warcraft Classic and is hugely popular. Especially right now with the recent fresh base game servers Blizzard launched as part of WoW's 20th anniversary event.

With this being said, FFXIV's game design doesn't suit a hardcore ruleset. The levelling experience is driven by a cinematic MSQ, not the grinding mobs and kill/loot 10 boars you find in WoW. Now we have softcore options, so to speak, in content such as Eureka and Bozja but I don't see a death penalty being applicable outside of those bubbles.

Aside from the 'they would never because of...' branch of thinking - I'm more curious to know if people would actually like the option itself, which is what I think would actually garner attention.

Why would SE put development time into officially sanctioning something like that? Someone who wants to play that way can just delete their character when they die.

If you want to have something like this after you die delete your character and don't try to force it on to others. The game is already bad enough how it is now and doesn't need to get any worse.

There is nothing in this game that HC characters would benefit from. The story dungeons and trials are piss easy, you don't go around in the overworld dealing with dangerous areas while leveling, the overworld itself except for the ARR beast tribe quests and some early ARR areas isn't even designed in a way where you can remotely be in danger. HC wouldn't be an experience like in other mmos, or an experience at all, you would just lose your character because an AoE snapshotted you or some random forgot to do a mechanic.

I'm not gonna mince words, your idea is bad and you should feel bad.

Terrible idea. Won’t happen. The game is simply not built for that.

Imagine if your dps character with mogstation outfits and a house is struck by a tankbuster because the tank died or had no stance on, died because someone didn’t stack or missed a bodycheck, someone broke the rocks on Behemot in LotA, etc. Or better, once had a healer pull a tank with an AoE tankbuster and managed to kill the entire raid save the tanks in Thaleia. I can already imagine the toxicity this would bring.

So many things can kill you through no fault of your own in this game, even DCing at the wrong time. Then who would endure replaying the whole thing from scratch each time they die?

Anyway, if OP wants to do that, he is free to delete his character each time he dies.

Someone would have to do actual work to make this mode happen? OwO'
Mode which would be 99,99% played by trolls or few different sorts.
And even then even fewer people would invest in it than in Ultimates.

Why not just find some cosy survival game insread, op?

Is this inspired by Path of Exile? The only MMORPG that had permadeath that I can think of is Shaiya, even to this day they have "normal" and "ultimate" mode (previously had also easy mode) which affects the amount of stat points you get per level (5 vs 7 respectively). In order to preserve your character, you had to buy a special cash shop only item that would be consumed upon your death, but you'd keep your character, then they added a 15-day and 30-day buff later. Game ended up being p2w so hard, it just collapsed on itself.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Toutatis

Terrible idea. Won’t happen. The game is simply not built for that.

Imagine if your dps character with mogstation outfits and a house is struck by a tankbuster because the tank died or had no stance on, died because someone didn’t stack or missed a bodycheck, someone broke the rocks on Behemot in LotA, etc. Or better, once had a healer pull a tank with an AoE tankbuster and managed to kill the entire raid save the tanks in Thaleia. I can already imagine the toxicity this would bring.

So many things can kill you through no fault of your own in this game, even DCing at the wrong time. Then who would endure replaying the whole thing from scratch each time they die?

Anyway, if OP wants to do that, he is free to delete his character each time he dies.

---

Honestly my first thought went to Seat of Sacrifice, and how if a single person fails the active time event then everyone dies lol

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by EddardStark

As title. Perhaps allow players who die in dungeons or trials to accept raises until the duty is complete or abandoned to avoid trouble for anyone else, then permanent delete, but maybe not even then? IDK, shooting from the hip on that one.

FFXIV limited overworld danger and homogenized many aspects of the game to the chagrin of some.

Allowing HC characters would

1. Present clear danger in even the oldest and mildest of content for those that wish it.

2. Birth and entirely new community, forge statics of another kind, bring a closeness and dependency on one another for those that reminisce fondly on FFXI and other 'more difficult' MMOs.

3. Revitalize older zones.

4. Perfect for duty assist and trust system.

5. Low resource allocation to implement (I think?)

Would love to hear what others think on this. Obligatory - I did not check for other posts of this kind admission.

---

I've been playing Hardcore WoW for the past couple of days, and while I find it both a refreshing and enjoyable experience, I don't think it can work in FFXIV. Even at a low level, the open world mobs do not present any big challenge to you, unlike mobs in WoW who may nuke you if you pick up the wrong target, even if both of you share the same level. The only challenge would be in dungeons and trials, which shouldn't be the case in hardcore.

In Hardcore WoW, you're not surviving a dungeon to another, but surviving a quest to another. When you visit dungeons, you do so when you're high enough to not worry as much as you'll do in the dungeon's intended levels (Deadmines intended level range are 16-20, but people go there as +20)

If FFXIV can replicate this experience, then I'm all for it. Not every gameplay mechanic or mode has to conform to the lore (Not totally break the lore, but also not conforming to it, just like levels)

In summary, Hardcore mode in MMOs is a neat idea, executed beautifully by WoW, but FFXIV is not built for it. The only close hardcore experience we have in this game is solo deep dungeons, which already has it's own community. If SE can change the game, or introduce a hardcore mode that's significantly different than the base game, then I'm all for it, and anticipate it would have its own community just like deep dungeons do.

This would be a good idea if this game had interesting/challenging open worlds and proper dungeons, but sadly it does not so I don't think it would really work.

Why? This game is absurdly easy and a slog to play through MSQ. I can't think of anything less fun than a hardcore FFXIV playthrough.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CVXIV

Honestly my first thought went to Seat of Sacrifice, and how if a single person fails the active time event then everyone dies lol

---

When the tank mistimes the tank LB...

If someone was really inclined for this, they'd be better off making it a self-imposed challenge rather than Square spending resources towards a system that very, very few people would actually try. This game just wasn't intended for any kind of hardcore perma-death options.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Loggos

When the tank mistimes the tank LB...

---

Yeah, raids in general don't really fit well with the "hardcore character" design idea.

Even in WoW Classic, it's only really viable because

a) raiding is the actual END of the game: the big thing in Vanilla was the journey from 1 to 60 with raiding being basically add-on content for people afterwards, unlike the modern MMO paradigm where raiding is usually considered the main oeuvre and everything before it as an extended tutorial, a chore to complain to the devs for shortening, or heck, sometimes both. This puts it a significant degree closer to Diablo's idea

b) fiddly mechanics were quite a bit less common even at endgame. I seem to remember it wasn't really till BWL that anything not really "ordinary" was attempted (although that's already the beginning of the end of "HC" because of Vaelestrasz in particular). It works poorly with modern raiding because so much is now based on trial and error and fail it till you make it design (I have mulled this over a fair bit. Pretty sure it is in fact to increase the amount of time needed to clear because farm time is so abbreviated now with smaller groups and more generous loot)

c) it's not actually permadeath, as dead WoW HC characters instead are simply forced to make a (free) retirement transfer to a regular Classic Era server.

Those are all really good points. I started hardcore in diablo 2 back in the day, all the way up to honor mode bg3, divinity 2, wow, minecraft... so that's my basis for the question. I didn't really see the risk of dungeons and raids being a problem... just part of the fun.

But all things considered, I see how many of the points would be valid to most of the playerbase.

I just ahve to say that would most likely destroy FFXIV if they make a hardcore version, or made it so your character is deleted. for example what if you get the BiS at 100 from the last raid of arcadia. But your character dies due to sudden lag. You lose months or even a year or 2 of progress

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Karkarov

You legit just suggested perma death in an mmo? No, the end. This is such a bad idea on so many surface level obvious ways it isn't even worth responding to almost. There are mmo's that have this, and they are beyond niche with extremely tiny player bases. There is a lot of reasons for that.

If SE wants "harder content" all they need to do is add optional modes for some content that force the minimum I level while maybe also adding extra or harder mechanics. Which they wont, because they tried harder content in Endwalker and no one played it.

---

It would be optional lol
i don't think it'd fit this game though because the game is piss easy unless you're doing savage raids and stuff. you will never die in the open world unless a hunt mob decides to kill you

I don't understand, we already can do this, if you die log out and create new character. Nothing stopping you.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

If someone was really inclined for this, they'd be better off making it a self-imposed challenge rather than Square spending resources towards a system that very, very few people would actually try. This game just wasn't intended for any kind of hardcore perma-death options.

---

There have been similar challenges before, I know back during the EW lull period, someone did a "ARR to EW without teleport" challenge, the answer is that, technically no, because after the initial trip to Thavnair, you are forced to teleport out of there since you don't have access to Radz-at-Han yet to take the Airship out, but outside of that precise circumstance, you can complete the 5 expansions worth of story without ever teleporting around, and I imagine DT would qualify too, I can't remember a single instance where I *had* to teleport during DT.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by VeyaAkemi

There have been similar challenges before, I know back during the EW lull period, someone did a "ARR to EW without teleport" challenge, the answer is that, technically no, because after the initial trip to Thavnair, you are forced to teleport out of there since you don't have access to Radz-at-Han yet to take the Airship out, but outside of that precise circumstance, you can complete the 5 expansions worth of story without ever teleporting around, and I imagine DT would qualify too, I can't remember a single instance where I *had* to teleport during DT.

---

Can't you just take the boat back to Sharlayan or Limsa or wherever? Or was that "that ONE zone" where you had to get there via Estinien teleporting you or something?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ArchlordPie

Can't you just take the boat back to Sharlayan or Limsa or wherever? Or was that "that ONE zone" where you had to get there via Estinien teleporting you or something?

---

Yeah the first half, you use an experimental Aetheryte to get there, and this does not break the rules because it's beyond player action plus the game has a lot of instances where it just moves you, but then since you, story-wise, teleported in, the game expects you to teleport out, and that breaks the rule because even if you don't have the choice it's still a player action. Technically you can avoid using an actual teleport by dying and reviving at wherever your respawn point is, assuming you didn't set it to be Yedlihmad/The Great Work, but that breaks the rule in spirit, and it's like, if that's a self-enforced challenge, rule lawyering it like this is pointless, right?

I have a silly self-enforced challenge myself, where I will occasionally, at least once a week but also whenever I am feeling it, I will que for M2N, and play up a WWF-style rivalry between myself and Honey, if I ever get a Vul stack, she wins the match, if I get none, I win, and if I get to 3 hearts and become mesmerized, she takes it all, with some clauses to account for becoming mesmerized due to not being my mistake, but party failure, it's a silly RP thing but it amuses me enough.