Regarding Adjustments to Exploratory Missions

[Dualblade]

snip

Its highly unlikely that Diadam gear will stay at i210 through the whole patch cycle, so its just as much about future gearing.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Its highly unlikely that Diadam gear will stay at i210 through the whole patch cycle, so its just as much about future gearing.

Diadem gear will likely stay i210 and become a major source of materia. The new exploration in 3.3 will have higher ilevel gear.

[Dualblade]

Diadem gear will likely stay i210 and become a major source of materia. The new exploration in 3.3 will have higher ilevel gear.

If it is a new area (which I'll admit I didn't think of for some reason) then yeah you're probably right. That said changing it now would be a way for them to get the drop rates et al correct for the next area.

[Nidelia]

TL;DR: I think that we can easily solve a lot of problems in The Diadem if we switch the way tracks are spawned: Use the objective which give Esoteric and you can force people to do something else than DinoIsland.

Hello everyone. First let's start with the basic: Not english native speaker so sorry for bad english.

Since 3.1 launch, the Exploratory mission, The Diadem was the subject of much discussion. For or against, everyone selected a side but I think that nobody think it's flawless. This week, the patch brought some changes on it, causing even more uproar: "They didn't fix what was needed", "Now, it's still DinoIsland but with even less loots" are the most commun stuff I read.
I must say that I didn't do a Diadem since the change so I have no real clue of what happens really inside but I think that The Diadem is still exactly the same: You have one way to kill monster to have the highest loot drop possible, even if it's not DinoIsland anymore, and people will still blindlessly farm it.

It's a bit sad. I mean, Exploratory missions were showing a lot of possibilities, even during the trailer: Fight big monsters in group or with more than twenty persons, gather while beeing protected by the party, be actually able to gathering without annoying everyone, fly from island to another island, explore the map. And now The Diadem is reduce to kill little fishs to bait the big ones.
I really think that this issue can by avoid with not a lot of developpement time invasted into (still maybe too much with such tight schedule; I don't want to underestimate the FFXIV team job of course, but as someone out of this, it seems to be less heavy that some crazy stuffs people are suggesting).
So let's start to explain stuff with a first axiom and let's try to solve the problem with this starting material:

Axiom: Players will ALWAYS use the most effective way to obtain what they want. Even if it's mean focusing only one objective of a complex content.

Issue 1: Players are only farming DinoIsland, using less than 10% of the whole Diadem

Issue 2: Gathering is considered as a sin due both to the fact that you aren't contributing to produce loots and because, and it's a result of DinoIsland and the fifty players on it, you drasticly decrease the success rate of your team.

Reaction for Issue 1: You need to use a way to trigger Star rank which FORCE players to do other stuffs than bashing monsters on the same place.

Reaction for Issue 2: You need to make gatherers produce loot, help to trigger Star rank and try to avoid that they handicap the whole team.

One thing which really surpised me, and that's the solution I ll try to bring on the table, was the objectives in Diadem: Complet three and you gain your Esoterics. That's all!
But when Yoshida explained the Exploratory missions in Live Letters, I was thinking that it was completly different: The objective are the way to trigger Star rank, do the various stuffs they ask you and you will spawn a huge monster will give you nice loots.

I really think that if it was the rule which trigger Star rank, Diadem could be way more diversified, less tedious for a lot of players and could keep people interested longer that what it is now.

Solving Issue 1: Now peole have to, based on the already existing objectives, 1) Kill different sets of monsters 2) Find hidden chests and crystals on the map 3) Finding a certain number of chests aka killing random monsters 4) Gather to trigger tracks

Solving Issue 2: Because gathering is one of the objectives, even if you are gathering the ninty minutes, you are still helping your party.

These objectives can easily spread people on the map to complet them. It's solve too the problem of people saying that gatherers shouldn't be allowed to roll on battle loots because they aren't helping to trigger Star rank.

Now, I have to consider one thing:

Issue 3: Doing these objectives ask a lot of travelling time, which is probably a lost of normal chest or can cause an unbalance if they trigger to easily Star rank to compensate that.

Solving Issue 3: Completing an objectiv gives a chest to reward players for moving
and balancing even more gathering.

This is a nice start but we can go farer and add new objectives, more complex for example:

Issue 4: Caves are unexploited, you can't fly inside and they even aren't show on the map which make a lot of player avoid them.

New objective 1: Explore a given spot on the map. (Specially caves) To avoid players rushing it and just die, monsters will spawn like during quest and the objective is only clear when these monsters die.

Issue 5: You have no cooperation between battle class and gatherers.

New objective 2: During a short period of time, gather a high ammount of time. It will force the cooperation of some gatherers and battle class to pull monsters away and make the objective doable in this short time.

These two new objectives can already make the whole map usable to obtain the so wanted gold chests from Star rank. But it creats a new problem for me.

Issue 6: Now we are in a spot where you have 0 cooperation between groups minus for killing Star rank because "it has too much hp to kill it."

New objective 3: Kill a certain ammount of a given monster in a certain time which is too much for a 8-men party, forcing players in different groups to help eacher others.

We can obviously imaging more but I think that these three are enough to make The Diadem way more diversified and cover the complet map.
Obviously you need to take down so new problems:

Issue 7: The number of objective is actually limited (eight different?). What happens if we have only unclearable ones? Or no gathering objective at all?Or only gathering?

Solving issue 7: The objective list will creat a new objective each time you clear one. Each objective has a timer, if it's not cleared during this time, it is switched for another one. To avoid focusing only in easy objectives, the harder will give more points in Star rank triggering. At least one gathering objective is always up but not more than two.

A little point I want to talk about the situation when you enter and you need to find the winds. Because I find it dull.

Issue 8: At the moment, the best way to take winds is to sac pull while others are taking winds and in a seconde time, use the flying people to aggro monsters and help the remaining on groud to take them.

Solving issue 8: When you enter, two of the objective are to kill monsters on your starting island. First these objectives will have a high value in Star rank triggering, but they have a high timer on them which will block two slots of objectives if you aren't doing them.

I covered all the idea which, I think, are not to hard and not too time consumming to implament. I can obviously be complety wrong, however I want to talk about stuff which are probably harder to implament now but can be a good idea for another itteration.

Issue 9: With the actual system, tracks spawn on you, which can be a problem if everyone is spread on the map (early pull and all the good salty stuffs like that). You have too the problem when you can maybe not tag your own Star rank.

Solving Issue 9: The tracks spawn now as an objective on a random place on the map, when you spawn this objective, you can call it and people have time to fly to this location when you do the same plus when you clear the place of all the nearly monsters. Furthermore, when you trigger a tracks, you automatically claim it.

Now I will be way more greedy. The Braciausor is great but... I want something epic.

New feature: Add a Super Star rank; a wolrd wide FATE which will ask to clear a lot of subevent before triggering a Super Star rank where the whole mission can participate.

To conclude, I want to say that the alternative gameplay are way more important than what the uproaring part want to say, so thanks to the Developpement Team to propose us this kind of stuff. Too the whole FFXIV Team: Keep going and thanks for your job!