More raids, raids, raids...

[Azurymber]

beast tribe battles are going to be raids
I'm under the impression that caravan battles will go the way of behests, where no one will do them or ppl will only do them in one spot.
And I don't see why they are adding in a rank 20 dungeon when you can get to rank 20 in 1-2 days without any effort and the only way to solo or party now is to kill mobs 10 ranks ahead of you.
The only really useful open world content i see them adding is chocobos and airships and i have a feeling people will be dissapointed with both of those. Like how will they deal with chocobos and travelling to the mega high level areas? That will just allow fish botters to go hide in corners of the world and never get caught.

[Chiz]

There's also Quest Hubs which were put in 1.18 but haven't been populated yet with actual quests. Looking over 1.19 road map its hard to tell if this was tabled until 1.20, but it may fall under "Storylines and World Quests". It was my impression these Quest hubs would be an alternative method of exploring Eorzea, grinding EXP and obtaining loot along the way similar to Western MMO models, all while phasing out the importance of guildleves for leveling.

Personally I'm all for instanced Raids as the main form of content, but I would like to see raids serve multiple purposes. Instead of just a loot hunt once you hit a certain level, I'd like to see it also be a primary form of leveling. I'd love to be able to join a group at R42, crawl around a dungeon for a few hours and come out R44 with a few new shiny toys.

[Estellios]

I don't see what the issue is with a level 30 Ifrit battle. It gives mid-ranks more stuff to do and it would most likely be a fight tailored to that level with level 30ish rewards, meanwhile the level 50 one will be much more involved with better rewards. There needs to be stuff to do as you go through the ranks instead of everything being level cap heavy, and with these coming updates it sounds like there is gonna be a whole ton of stuff to do, which will help new/returning players enjoy themselves more.

If you've played FF11 I guess I imagine it being like the Ouryu 40 cap fight vs. the Ouryu uncapped fight, although the lower level one was a story mission so no reward =P

@Chiz: The raids are already really nice forms of leveling at-rank. I've done Toto-rak at r33 and i still get maybe 1/3 through my rank, and it's really good xp at 25 when you can enter. Once we get xp chains in place it should be phenomenal. I just want more of them at different levels since they're a lot of fun and I'd love to level up in raids till 50 =)

[Tsukino]

so far even a short conversation in quests is kinda instanced

Actually, I like this part. While I don't think everything in the game should be instanced, and would really hate it if it became like WoW where the world is just a lobby for people to use dungeon finder to play with people they'll never see again like it's not even an MMO, instances for quests like the main story quests do some things you can't do normally.

Yes, if you just walk right over to the person with an icon over their head, the instance seems useless. But you can also talk to all of the other NPCs there which have interesting things to say related to the current story events. A good example would be the last Gridania quest - the amphitheater is normally empty, but during that quest instance it's populated with NPCs to talk to about what's going on, and you even learn information you wouldn't otherwise like that the story NPCs are from Sharlayan. Gives you an opportunity to talk more with NPCs and learn more without interrupting the flow of the cutscenes.

[Madruk]

we are 2-3 members linkshell

Welcome to MMO's where interaction with more than 2 people is possible.

[Zemeckis]

You guys are hanging on a dying theme and you will have to adapt to the future of gaming or just quit them all together.

[Chiz]

@Chiz: The raids are already really nice forms of leveling at-rank. I've done Toto-rak at r33 and i still get maybe 1/3 through my rank, and it's really good xp at 25 when you can enter. Once we get xp chains in place it should be phenomenal. I just want more of them at different levels since they're a lot of fun and I'd love to level up in raids till 50 =)

Ya that's what I've heard for the R30 dungeon, unfortunately I don't have any classes left that are low enough to benefit from SP in that dungeon and there's really nothing to fill the void in the R35-R45 range. The R45 dungeon would be great for SP but the reality of it is, its not really designed to allow underleveled groups to get much done in there except for grind. I'd love to see dungeons from 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31-40, 41-50 that are designed with grinding/leveling in mind first, without all the time pressure and linearity/predictability of the current dungeons.


Also, with the Ifrit battles having two difficulty levels, didn't they do the same with the Primal/Avatar battles in XI after some time with a simple R20 fight designed to allow any SMN to solo the fight?

[Estellios]

Well, I just see the current dungeons as a way to have your cake and eat it too, at least concerning Toto-rak. You get good SP and some really nice gear so it's win/win. We just need more of them of different level ranges now =P

You are correct about the lower level avatar fights in 11. When the game was released in the US there was no way new players would be able to get avatars soon after getting the summoner job itself unless you leeched off of a high level Japanese group that was doing the fight. The low level fights allowed low level summoners to earn their avatars. There's no summoner in the game, though, so there has to be some kind of incentive for the low level fight.

[Griss]

The only problem i have with the r30 or should i say level 30 ifirit battle is its a bit of hickup in story flow. Unless of course they bring that mission down to be sub 30.


As far as people getting up in arms about "Raids" Remember mr-p uses the term loosely for any activity engaged in by more then 1 person in a large scale setting.

[Jynx]

Remember when you had to dig down the northern crater to fight sephiroth? Raid.

Did I need 7 other players to enter the northern crater? Thats not a raid it's a dungeon. I can't wait for the "Public" dungeons to be released because for the love of god if I require parties just to enter a area I'm automatically jaded against it.