Why is the Ifrit Mission fight geared towards 4 people, and not also a full party?

[Oscillate_Wildly]

Some people think that to make missions any harder would be restrictive to certain players. My hope is that through the job system they add in quests/missions which require some amount of challenge since that entire system is geared towards grouping and does not have to cater to casual (mean proponents of easy mode) players.

I think you're missing the point of having both options of 4 player and 8 player available. The rise in difficulty is completely optional and fun. I don't think it's a hindrance to raise the difficulty in missions when they ought to be difficult in the first place.

Clearing all missions that crop up from now until the end of the game's life shouldn't resemble clearing 6 junk mobs and 1 slightly junk mob while the real focus is clearing it for the chance to enter the optional hardmode.

It's all in practising proper adjustments and balances to make the challenge there for all players.

[Mushy]

I personally think they should be enterable(its a word) for 1-8 players. As I have seen sometimes its hard to get four people together, often its hard to get 8, but if we could wing it(making it harder) with the amount of us that are available it would only help with the situation. I barely ever get to make DD runs, because of the hardset number, I have never had a problem getting into tokoraka, but I have seen people on my server who got to it later instead of sooner are having a hard time forming a group. So make them all 1-8...

except in future when we have mega bosses that require alliances from all three grand companies, and if whether those are instance fields or not is up to the dev

[Oscillate_Wildly]

Yes, the hours which I can now currently play aren't the greatest. It's even worse for my LSmates. I'd say both from 4 to 8 because they're set groups. It's not perfect, but I don't see why 4 is set at the standard for clearing a mission. That's what bothers me the most. I hope it's just for Ifrit and in time we'll even see Full party requirements on some of the harder or further-down-the-road missions. It'd be ridiculous if we got so far with no sense of relief or accomplishment.

An accomplishment that can't be entirely bought off with an optional fight that's the same exact thing only a lot harder. :S Even if it were for gear. In that case, I'd prefer to have just the mission and an optional area to explore. Like Dynamis or Sea.

You could do everything 1 to 8 without separating them but then where does the difficulty cap end? At 1 person or 8 people?
At least with the 2 groups, lite and full, you're balancing with specific groups in mind for whether you have 3 or 7 people you should be able to attempt at least one of the two.

[Mushy]

To quote myself "when they have the algorithm to scale proper." While it could let 1-8 players in. The hardset number would only be the weakest the enemy could be. It would assume you have 4 if you are under so it doesnt get any easier. And it would scale proper to a full party. Now this could be for light-mid content. It could also be set where it is hard for 8 players, but 1 person can still enter, he simply cannot win unless hes amazing, has 5 materia on everything or until they raise caps or something....

[quantumsaint]

I think they're going about it backwards, personally. There are less people at higher levels then there are at mid-range levels, so rank 30 content should be designed toward 8 people while rank 50 content should be doable by 4 people at the top of their game.

[VydarrTyr]

Why is standard decided to be 4 people, while 8 is decided as 'hard mode'? Couldn't all content that's instanced be scaled to suit both sizes?

...

In the future, why can't missions and hardmode battles alike have scaled content geared towards both Lite-Parties (4 members) and Full-Parties (8 members)?

I'm not on the dev team (obviously), but I'd imagine it's primarily a question of time. It would be awesome if fights scaled based on your level, the number of players in your party, etc. But for every different variable, the devs would have to put in a ton of work fine-tuning that scaling process. There's no dial they can just turn up or turn down. You've got to adjust HP, TP, MP, Weaponskills, rates at which Weaponskills pop, movement, and probably 50 other variables. You've essentially got to create an entirely new fight for every variable, and then you've got to put a lot of work in fine-tuning the fight to make sure it's possible and challenging, at the same time.

They're working right now to get content out as quickly as possible. So while it would be super awesome if they could scale every fight in the game, we'd end up having to wait months longer for 1 fight.

[Betelgeuzah]

Scaling = harder to design and balance content.

That's all there is to it.

[VydarrTyr]

I think they're going about it backwards, personally. There are less people at higher levels then there are at mid-range levels, so rank 30 content should be designed toward 8 people while rank 50 content should be doable by 4 people at the top of their game.

I'm not sure that I agree with you here. In my experience, most of the current players have at least one class at r45+. But I could be completely wrong about that.

[VydarrTyr]

Scaling = harder to design and balance content.

That's all there is to it.

You said it much better and shorter than I did.

[Chain]

Sept 30th 2012 : When will we get basic MMO features in the game? As soon as we fix the battle system and implement jobs.

/facepalm