next void ark concept art from LIVE letter?

[Shurrikhan]

Probably going to get shit for saying this, but they really should take notes from World of Warcraft for raids. Firelands was one of the better raids in recent(ish) time, it was open and let you pick the order you wanted to do the bosses in with exceptions in the final 3 I believe (7 total). That's not to mention the lack of conveniently placed circular or rectangular platforms, god am I getting tired of those.

I had mixed opinions about Firelands, quitting until Mist during its patch, but certainly did like that it felt more like a zone, complete with wide-roaming trash packs, that a dotted hallway of trash and bosses.

But looking back at it, the majority of WoW raids as far back as Molten Core and that troll place in Vanilla had at least some element of freedom of kill order. Most raids were developed with wings, often with 1 bosses leading to either of two who must be killed in either before reaching the fourth, etc, etc, which I really liked. I mean, in terms of visuals and often enough complexity, I feel like our Savage fights often outstrip WoW's heroic/mythic's combat aesthetics, but often feel like their thematics are weaker. When you add the fact that we get one boss in place of each entire wing or more of a WoW raid, even if at least frequent patch releases, you can't help but wonder what could be done with a bigger dev team here in XIV.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

I wish they would at least go back to something more similar to the Labyrinth of the Ancients, where they were a bit more daring when it came to experimenting with party co-operation. It breaks my heart that they decided to dumb the following 24-man raids down to alleviate "player stress".

Your experience must have been different from mine because 90% of my runs in the Crystal Tower were either trolls or people oblivious to mechanics after being told what to do.

[Shurrikhan]

Your experience must have been different from mine because 90% of my runs in the Crystal Tower were either trolls or people oblivious to mechanics after being told what to do.

Just imagine if there was a way to train players as not to be idiots prior to arriving at level-cap instead of dumbing down endgame (albeit casual) content for them, though?

[RiceisNice]

Probably going to get shit for saying this, but they really should take notes from World of Warcraft for raids. Firelands was one of the better raids in recent(ish) time, it was open and let you pick the order you wanted to do the bosses in with exceptions in the final 3 I believe (7 total). That's not to mention the lack of conveniently placed circular or rectangular platforms, god am I getting tired of those.

I had mixed opinions about Firelands, quitting until Mist during its patch, but certainly did like that it felt more like a zone, complete with wide-roaming trash packs, that a dotted hallway of trash and bosses.

No mention of the boss fight mechanics? I SERVE A NEW MASTER NOW, MORTALS! On my end though, I stopped like 2-3 months into firelands due to group reasons and the general lack of content outside of raiding, alongside catas's weak release.

On top of firelands (the raid), there was also the molten front for a daily hub. Even though they had very long pauses in each patch, there was enough content to tie over that long period of time too. Our patch cycles (especially something like 3.1), has almost no lasting power for veteran/current players. Sure it was a bit weaker/less dynamic than the future questing hubs ,but catacylsm in general was pretty weak.

Just imagine if there was a way to train players as not to be idiots prior to arriving at level-cap instead of dumbing down endgame (albeit casual) content for them, though?

It'd be nice for them to step out of their comfort zone (in general, not just to this) for designing content for the players. I feel that they played it too safe with 3.x in general.

[LaylaTsarra]

I used to love Crystal Tower. It got dumb sadly when people became over geared and stopped following mechanics.

[Shurrikhan]

No mention of the boss fight mechanics? [COLOR="red"]
It'd be nice for them to step out of their comfort zone (in general, not just to this) for designing content for the players. I feel that they played it too safe with 3.x in general.

Definitely, but sometimes I wonder if it's really even the mechanical design that's most hurt by their over-caution, or, indirectly, the community. Rather than raising both challenge and support, they seem to just cut the complexity in half. And our midcore population seems to get chopped off at the knees as a result. It's sizable, but just doesn't really seem to... get around. That may just be my server though.

I feel like a lot of the time there's just too much of a gap between so-called casual and static-requiring play. I have no doubt that many a capable PuG party, with mixed experience perhaps but no prior clears, could get through A5S within a few good hours. And yet at least on my server there's almost never a PuG PF up for it, just sub requests. That feels pretty different from when I was playing WoW heavily. I wasn't on an especially large, successful, or raider-heavy server back in Wrath, but we at least tended to know someone to knew someone, there was a lot of communication and member sharing between guilds, and the players certainly weren't afraid to let a lack of a static hold them back from heroic progression. I knew a few incredibly good tanks and healers who stuck to PuGing, usually showing up around the same times each week to join or throw up a PF, simply because they enjoyed having new people to play with each time. Heck, sometimes it seemed like the tossed together groups even learned faster and burned out a lot slower if only because they had a less stressful mentality to them (especially with those few familiar faces helping to keep things competent and respectful, but also fun and light). Again, it could just be my luck, but Levi Ex, casuals' T10, helping out with some late T9s just before FCoB's release, and all of two A2S pugs were about the only times I've actually seen this in XIV. It just feels like there's a stauncher inertia here, so to speak, and a lot of that probably comes from that gap.

[RiceisNice]

Definitely, but sometimes I wonder if it's really even the mechanical design that's most hurt by their over-caution, or, indirectly, the community. Rather than raising both challenge and support, they seem to just cut the complexity in half. And our midcore population seems to get chopped off at the knees as a result. It's sizable, but just doesn't really seem to... get around. That may just be my server though.

With the server transfers during 3.1, it's much harder on some servers ( at least mine) to put a PF together for anything ,if only because the player pool to draw from is significantly smaller.

Their lack of risk taking in 3.x is very evident when you look at MCH (original concepts and ideas being scrapped to what we have now), adjustment/changes to crafting (wanted speicalists to cover missing skills, but instead it;s utterly useless,) and Diadem with the lack of focus for anything. The release of 3.0 was a good time to meet the standards of what 2.x had already established (which it already fell short of imo, when you compare MCH's release to NIN, the overall initial end-game quality, lack of relic quest, and then 3.1's MSQ rears it's head), and to establish new standards to set the pacing (diadem, 2 dungeons in roulette, etc) for future patches.

[Xieveral]

It reminds me of PSO actually lol

Same here. I loved the the first Void Ark because it was reminiscent of the ruins. I look forward to seeing what comes in the next installment.

[AngelicSence]

You may not have asked for it, but I know many others have or will and unless the dev team suddenly got more people and a budget increase, it'll be just a pipe dream. How often do we see us players asking for a new feature, only to be told no in a variety of ways?

I guess it's not easy.. SE has talented devs and enough money to create beautiful content. It's just matter of time and design.

[Zohar_Lahar]

Looks like something from FF12.

It does look like Giruvegan, with a bit of FF9's Terra mixed in.

It's got to be the city of Mhach. I just hope the gear isn't as hideous as Syrcus Tower.