The Diadem: Can it be fixed?

[Nalien]

What I want;

Put Sky Pirate Spoils as a common drop from enemies, getting gear to turn in is then just an extra bonus, there is no more frustration from losing lots and getting no Spoils. You kill a mob, there is a good chance you just out right get a Spoil for it, then you lot the gear either to use or to get extra Spoils.

Incorporate Gathering into the event. Increase the rate on uncovering chests, and rather than trash materials in the chest, put temporary items (powerful potions/etc. that exist only in the instance, you can't take them out with you) in them. This way Gathering acts as almost a support Job, in that they're getting these chests frequently and providing the party with buffs through temporary items. Given that point, you can arguably make the party requirement Tank/2Healer/4DPS/Gatherer, since the Gatherer can act as support.

Proper force pops (and proper enemy claiming). There should be some kind of order to things similar to Sky/Sea in XI. You kill these enemies to spawn this NM, you kill this NM to get a pop for this NM, and so on until you spawn Kirin/Absolute Virtue and the event is over. This would make exploration far more important, rather than the current "Where are we farming?" shout we get. You'd go in, have an idea what NMs you want to go after, and go after them. That would require farming key items from enemies (perhaps also gathering) in certain areas, and the spawn point where you pop the NM would be in a specific place. To a degree this can use the same Fresh Tracks system that is in place.

Combine the above two. Caves now become important, because specific NMs are spawned there. Now you throw Gathering into the mix, rather than the caves just being open, you instead have blockages preventing you from exploring the caves. You can DPS these down slowly, or you can have a Miner/Botanist deal with them, successfully gathering from the node on a Rock/Root that is blocking the path would deal significant damage to it. Rather than Gathering now just being its own thing, you have a situation where you want Gatherers to speed up exploration, further more you want the rest of the party to actively defend them from enemies that might aggro.

Similar to force pops, Gathering needs to be less all over the place. I like Fishing in Diadem, you know what? Because I go somewhere, I sit there, and I fish. Miner and Botany have me running around the entire map in an annoying fashion. With friends, it is feasibly that I could go "Hey, I'll fish here while you keep the nearby enemies off my back", but with Miner and Botany? Impossible. You have to keep moving around the entire map and it just kills any potential for that.

Gear drops also need to be changed. Diadem strikes me as fairly similar to Dynamis at this point, just with materia (as of 3.2, anyway) replacing the Relics of Dynamis. AF2 from Dynamis was hit and miss, some was awesome, some were worthless. People went after whole sets because of the aesthetics of the gear though. Diadem however, has no unique gear, there is nothing really to chase after in that regard. At this point I'm incline to think we can instead put tomestone gear in Diadem, with tomestones instead buying you a RNG based aetherial set (maybe that even justifies dropping the weekly limit, I'm unsure). Diadem gear then becomes less about the stats, and more about the aesthetic, just like Dynamis. Alternatively, with Lore/Eikonic gear being introduced in 3.2, the maximum item level Diadem drops could be raised.

Finally, slap Unidentified Seeds/Ore/Shell/Bone in Diadem.

What I expect we'll see;

Unidentified Seeds/Ore/Shell/Bone in Diadem. Job done. No more adjustments to it ever.


That third point I made is, I think, the most important one. Diadem needs to feel like an event, not an aimless slaughter. There needs to be some sense that you're going after something, and having a NM spawn chain similar to what XI used a lot is the perfect way to implement that. You'd go to one island to find a key item to spawn a NM there, that NM would drop a key item itself. You'd go to a different island, find another key item, combine them to spawn the next NM, and so on. The way SE handled Diadem, which is effectively just Hunts, was IMO incredibly lazy and uninspired. What I'm suggesting isn't even that astounding, it's literally just a system copied right out of XI, where it worked for over a decade. It is a solid way to design content, that the developers didn't even look at their own history with MMO for inspiration really makes me worry about the future of this game... IMO Diadem is not content, it is a zone and some enemies, absolutely no effort was put in by the development team to work Diadem into an event, it's just a zone to go grind Hunts in. It is a step back from dungeons, at least with dungeons you're running from A to B. Given Diadem has cost us a dungeon (if not more), it really should have been more than that. In a similar vein, updating the gear drops makes it consistently relevant (though arguably materia will do that now), unlike dungeons and raids, which become irrelevant every other patch, something like Diadem should remain relevant for the expansions lifespan (and hopefully beyond). Higher tier Mist- gear in 3.3 would achieve that fairly easily.