My Eureka Concept

[KaldeaSahaline]

Eureka
The overall concept would be a procedurally generated open world duty area similar in size to all combined landmasses in say Azys La. It would use tilesets from all available dungeons/zones to attempt to create a unique experience every time. You would start at a random spot ANYWHERE on the map. Flying is disabled at first, but can be activated for a brief time under certain conditions.

The zone would be filled with enemies ranging from solo to groups of say 10 minor enemies. Killing enemies and exploring sections of map fills up a bar that spawns a boss somewhere on the map as well as granting Weapon Experience. Maybe the aetheric compass could help pinpoint boss spawn by telling you how far away.

The 2+ star content would scale each patch based on expected ilvl and also always scale to the expansions most current level. 1 star DF will generally stay very low ilvl to allow people to overgear and grind it as they would for normal relics.

Party Size:
The duty would be designed for 8 players. 2 Tanks, 2 Healers, and 4 DPS. The party is encouraged to split up or stick together whichever works best for them. (You'd be sacrificing trash safety and speed to explore more, and kill more camps, albeit more slowly). Your strategy could likely dictate how close you are to spawning a boss, and how much time you left (dynamic gameplay > static).

Rewards:
The primary goal would be to provide "Weapon Experience" to level up your Relic Weapon.

Additionally, bosses found in Eureka will randomly drop personal loot that you can opt to take, pass to the group (to roll on normally), or you can convert it to Weapon Experience. Upon the duty ending, it will tally up your experience and add it to your weapon based on enemies/bosses killed and % of map explored. If you explore the entire map you get bonus "Weapon Experience", as well as instantly filling the boss gauge!

Certain enemies can even drop Treasure Maps for the zone! It'll be extra challenging to try and find the map location within the time constraints when taking into account enemy positioning too! They reward Materia, Gil, Travel Feathers (key item that allows flying in Eureka for 5 minutes for the whole party, disappears when duty ends), various pieces of relevant loot/gear, etc.. Finding a Treasure also instantly fills the boss gauge!

Cost to Enter:
Eureka costs 800 Creation tomes to enter (in 4.2 Creation tomes will no longer be the main currency, hence the cost, my reddit post wasn't as clear originally hoping this fixes it)). In DF it charges 100 per player upon zoning in. In PF any # of players can contribute any amount of tomes to reach the total 800. The idea behind this is to gate the amount of times you can do it in a row, but also allow people who play more to help those who play less. There are also other items you can supply to change how Eureka rules works and you only have 3 enhancement slots. More on that below.

Difficulty:
Eureka would scale based on a star system ranking 1 through 5. 1 being the least dangerous, with 5 being the most. The DF would limit the difficulty to 1 star. You can boost the star (difficulty) rating in PF by supplying key items achieved from other forms of content. There are key items from Normal raids/dungeons that can be acquired to boost the difficulty to 2 stars. EX Trials can offer items that boost the difficulty up to 3 stars. Savage raids can boost the stars up to 4 stars, and lastly clearing the final turn offers a guaranteed item to boost to 5 stars. The key items needed to boost the star rating aren't super rare, but they aren't common either.

Each star increases both the HP%/DMG% of the enemies/bosses as well as granting them both additional and more threatening features. It also considerably increases the rewards.

Time Limit:
The content is timed like all duties. You're in a rush to explore as safely as possible while navigating the challenges randomly presented to you. The default time limit is 30 minutes. You can extend this in PF groups only by supplying a key item "Hourglass of Time". This item can be obtained via crafters. Each one increases the duration by 10 minutes.

Enemies:
Trash packs can range from a singular solo enemy (of varying strength) to as large a group as 10. Each trash pack has traits assigned to it at creation of the instance. Think similar to Diablo 2 rare trash packs. They will be listed when you target them (in 1 and 2 star difficulties) so you know ahead of time to skip if you don't like the combination. They will have a certain # of traits based on the instance star difficulty rating. From 3 stars onward, you can no longer see ahead of time what traits enemies have.

• 1 Star: 1-2 traits
• 2 Star: 2-3 traits
• 3 Star: 3-4 traits
• 4 Star: 4-5 traits
• 5 Star: 5+ traits

Here are some example traits you may see on enemies(not a complete list): (don't hate the blatant M+ affixes )

• Fleeing - When enemies fall below 40% HP, they flee to the nearest trash pack, not in combat.
• Raging - When brought below 20% HP, they deal 100% increased damage and attack/cast 100% faster.
• Stalwart - Unable to be CC'd.
• Volatile - Slain enemies burst, dealing 25% of your max health (this % increases up to 75% on 5 stars)
• Fearless - Threat resets on random intervals.
• Poisonous - Enemies place a heavy DoT that is only removed when you're healed above 80% HP.
• Wounding - Enemies place a stacking debuff that reduces incoming healing.
• Commanding - A specific enemy will have an aura that significantly boosts the damage and defense of nearby enemies.
• Camaraderie - Enemies slain within 20 yds release an aura that grant enemies 10% additional damage and increases their HP by 10%

.
Bosses:
Bosses would spawn as soon as the gauge filled up randomly somewhere in the map. Bosses can be generally any Mob (enlarged and maybe slightly modified model, or existing boss mob). The bosses are assigned a random # of boss mechanics from a pool based on the star difficulty rating.

• 1 Star: 4-5 mechanics
• 2 Star: 5-6 mechanics
• 3 Star: 7-9 mechanics
• 4 Star: 10-13 mechanics
• 5 Star: 15+ mechanics

An example boss might be like a Rafflesia model from T6. On 1 star difficulty it might have:

• Shared Cleave - Tanks should stack on each other to share cleave.
• Add Spawn - Boss spawns an add by x interval. Not killing the add in time grants damage up stack.
• Tether - Boss places a marker on a character tethering them to it. Boss hits the player for catastrophic damage based on distance. Use Sprint.
• Void Zone - Boss places random void zones on the ground that deal damage and slow. Boss gains vuln down if it is standing on void zone.

This is a fairly simple boss with fairly simple checks. Pretty much on par with your normal dungeon/raid boss (just with more threatening damage output) and you want to kill it ASAP so you can keep exploring and spawn more bosses! The fun bit is not knowing exactly what the boss can do before fighting it. The scary part is when you get to the higher star ratings and bosses have a ton of mechanics, that could be REALLY scary. Like Imagine a boss with a shared cleave, HP down on cleave, and vuln stack on cleave. You'd have a tricky time figuring out just how to survive that. I want to replicate that feeling I got from original M+ where we had to come up with crazy strategies and see bosses do things we've never seen before, even if it felt ridiculous or unfair.

In Summary:
The idea here is to create content that scales is repeatable and unique. Offers difficulty that you want, and meaningful rewards.

What are you thoughts? Does this sound fun? Boring? Does it cater too hard one way or the other? Is there anything you do/don't like specifically? Is it too similar to original diadem?

For me personally, I'd enjoy the living shit out of this.

[Fight_Club]

So thats Diablo 3's Greater Rift, I'd like it but maybe light party instead of full party.

[Shurrikhan]

1. Would there be a way to receive this "weapon experience" / light in a later-transferable item form for those who want to enter and get something out of Eureka but haven't yet gotten their Relics to the appropriate stage / haven't decided which Relic to spend the resource on?
   
   
2. Why Creation Tomes, directly, rather than Creation Tome-purchasable items that can still be made or gathered in some other way?
   
   
3. It seems that there's been no attempt to include gatherers in this version. Not that I'd likely disagree, but I wonder what is your reasoning behind this, as better integrated gathering (and perhaps even crafting) seems like it could otherwise add a lot to the gameform, especially now that no penalties are paid for job-swapping.
   
   
4. Why the decision to pare down the content from en masse to a single full party?

At a glance:
- On paper alone, I can't see anything particularly exciting about this, but...
- Rewarding freeform-ish open world content will usually have me grinding the shit out of it, regardless, and without complaint (that said, current Diadem, or even former Dino Island Diadem, certainly was not that).

[KaldeaSahaline]

Would there be a way to receive this "weapon experience" / light in a later-transferable item form for those who want to enter and get something out of Eureka but haven't yet gotten their Relics to the appropriate stage / haven't decided which Relic to spend the resource on?

The way I envisioned it is that you accrue Weapon experience strictly 100% based on which job you enter in as (Treat it as if it was a dungeon you cannot switch jobs inside).

That said, I would not be opposed to having items that drop in there that can be "spent" on any other weapon.

This content was designed on the statement Yoshi made that Eureka was designed specifically for the Relics. I have no issues shifting this design paradigm out of "relic weapon" territory.

Why Creation Tomes, directly, rather than Creation Tome-purchasable items that can still be made or gathered in some other way?

I chose tomestones because I am currently capped on every possible type of tomestone and have been for months. I felt like having a dump was good.

The reason I chose to not have purchasable items is because honestly, I think FF14 overuses this concept FAR too much. My inventory is beyond saddled with all kinds of nonsensical currencies.

It seems that there's been no attempt to include gatherers in this version. Not that I'd likely disagree, but I wonder what is your reasoning behind this, as better integrated gathering (and perhaps even crafting) seems like it could otherwise add a lot to the gameform, especially now that no penalties are paid for job-swapping.

2 specific reasons I am in no way shape or form an expert on crafting/gathering. I am an expert on battle content. Instead of half-assing adding them in, I left them out.

The second and significantly larger goal was simply because this game lacks good repeatable engaging/challenging content. My design for Eureka was specifically to cater to:

1) The low skill playerbase that strictly sticks to DF/Side Content. In this vein, their experience will feel like a randomized dungeon and will providing meaningful experience and loot to their character progression.

2) The Midcore playerbase is very lacking on content. This would give them content to build parties for, get good loot, be engaged, make friends, and give fresh new experiences every time.

3) The skilled playerbase has raids, but raids only come every 6 months. Only the best of the best can attempt ultimate so it's nice to have some repeatable content for those that can't where they can challenge and push themselves.

Why the decision to pare down the content from en masse to a single full party?

I don't like zerg content and with huge # of people I fail to see how you can make meaningful large party content that isn't just a zerg. I find that small party content is my favorite personally so I designed the content to accommodate that. It's hard enough recruiting for 8 people in this game, and honestly coordinating 24 people (or more) in FF14 is an absolute nightmare, not even accounting for the inability to segregate players based on skill/gear (because FF14 has everyone at a close ilvl gap).

If I had my way I would have SQEX devote some resources to transforming the 24m raid bosses into 8m EX's. Easy art assets and minor work for a lot more boss content for the midcore population. I absolutely abhor the 24 man experience in its entirety. Let the lower skilled people keep their 24 man raids, and give people who hate everything about 24m, but maybe only like EX Primals more content.

I went back and forth numerous times over 4m or 8m, and found that 8m just offered a much better experience for what I was going for. Given the existing constraints of the combat engine I just cannot see anyway to make a 4 player adventure fun for tanks in the context of the content I designed.

At a glance:
- On paper alone, I can't see anything particularly exciting about this, but...
- Rewarding freeform-ish open world content will usually have me grinding the shit out of it, regardless, and without complaint (that said, current Diadem, or even former Dino Island Diadem, certainly was not that).

Interesting. Procedurally generated layouts, mobs, and mechanics that scale doesn't excite you? What would then? With constraints of the current existing design schema. We've discussed at length the things we wish we could change

[Shurrikhan]

To the reply as a whole:

Very reasonable answers, and just the thought-context I was looking for. Thanks.

Interesting. Procedurally generated layouts, mobs, and mechanics that scale doesn't excite you? What would then? With constraints of the current existing design schema. We've discussed at length the things we wish we could change

It's hard to say, because I'm just having trouble envisioning it. Rather, I can envision some really good possibilities for it, but simultaneously, XIV has kind of forced me to build up a tactic of imagining the shallowest way possible to meet the "on paper" descriptions. I don't know what it would look like, what kind of tile sets would pop up; what, if any, environmental mechanics would come into play; how one can mitigate against annoyances that pop up in being dropped into a truly randomly generated area vs. an overly-scripted seeding pattern removing from that sense of a new experience each time, etc., etc. I'm all for the concept of the house, so to speak, but I'd at least like to see at least one picture of the house before I say I'm in. And since we have no actual pictures available, that's probably going to take many more illustrations from words alone. I need a way to better imagine the moving to and fro, or why this would be taking place in an open area, rather than these scalars and modifiers appearing in something like a dungeon or a deep dungeon (shudder).

Put simply, precedent design for AGC in XIV is Palace of the Dead. It's really tainted the image of my one of my would-be favorite concepts.

Bit-by-bit:

I chose tomestones because I am currently capped on every possible type of tomestone and have been for months. I felt like having a dump was good.

The reason I chose to not have purchasable items is because honestly, I think FF14 overuses this concept FAR too much. My inventory is beyond saddled with all kinds of nonsensical currencies.

I agree that at this point a dump might well be a good thing, but consider:
- A dump means that to at least some degree, people need to do other things. Is that intended, or not accounted for / simply negligible?
- Dumping directly from tomestones means no items can be handed off, allowing for dump-trade, which further leaves Creation Tomes themselves with low (monetary) value.
- You can have the best of both worlds by consuming said item, if available, and tomes directly if not, rather than furthering the causes of bloat unnecessarily -- which I agree has gotten out of hand.

2 specific reasons. I am in no way shape or form an expert on crafting/gathering. I am an expert on battle content. Instead of half-assing adding them in, I left them out.

The second and significantly larger goal was simply because this game lacks good repeatable engaging/challenging content. My design for Eureka was specifically to cater to:

A diagnostic question for you then. If,
(1) someone else could produce a means of integrating in gathering and crafting without it coming at any significant cost to the quality of (even if perhaps to some of the time spent upon) the combat experience, and
(2) there was already a system for creating repeatable engaging/challenging content (e.g. we got our own Mythic+ dungeons or dungeon mash-ups or augmentations)

would you then still be opposed to crafting/gathering in Eureka?

I don't like zerg content and with huge # of people I fail to see how you can make meaningful large party content that isn't just a zerg. I find that small party content is my favorite personally so I designed the content to accommodate that. It's hard enough recruiting for 8 people in this game, and honestly coordinating 24 people (or more) in FF14 is an absolute nightmare, not even accounting for the inability to segregate players based on skill/gear (because FF14 has everyone at a close ilvl gap).

In present design, I have to agree completely. That said, I personally think there are places for certain kinds of zerg content, although Diadem and anything ever made like it or to replace it -- certainly what you've described of Eureka -- are not likely among those places.

Aside: I believe there is something to be said for content chaotic enough for delegation to be necessary -- such that people break into teams in order to best cope with that chaos -- but that goal, while applicable to zerg content in its basic sense, probably would not then be called "zerg" content. I see 24-mans or large-scale (including flexible-member-count) content, conceptually, as actually having an incredible ability to reward skill, tactics, strategy (though less so than tactics), responsibility, awareness, etc. One would just have no reason to think as much from XIV, where it's been used solely for casual content.

8-man sounds good. The world would be a little player-sparse, perhaps, in some people's eyes, but that's a lot better than losing key mobs to other parties or the overall experience feeling like a zerg when it's supposed to be this sublime frontier.

The way I envisioned it is that you accrue Weapon experience strictly 100% based on which job you enter in as (Treat it as if it was a dungeon you cannot switch jobs inside).

That said, I would not be opposed to having items that drop in there that can be "spent" on any other weapon.

This content was designed on the statement Yoshi made that Eureka was designed specifically for the Relics. I have no issues shifting this design paradigm out of "relic weapon" territory.

I have to say, not being able to swap jobs during a basically open world gameform is a bit of a turn-off to me. I like being able to change around as needed, and would generally like to see more of that even in dungeon/raid content, rather than job locks pushing into open-style content, too.

I feel like if something like this were truly weapon "experience", then (apart from the necessary and long-awaited separation of job experience from the same class in the case of SCH and SMN) one would need merely to swap jobs and it would just start accruing on the new one instead. At that point, one might complain that they'd rather be able to work towards a job different from the one they're actually using (none too reasonable, given how Light worked), but it wouldn't feel like we're facing interlocking restrictions in design.


EDIT: Do you think this could potentially work as flexible content, allowing the scalers to work on a by-role level, so that you could take anywhere from 4 to 8 people and, within reason, whatever roles for those people you want?

And before I forget again: the only other auto-generative content idea I'd seen before—or at least that I can remember:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...urneys-Concept

[Wintersandman]

I would also prefer light party over full party. Since this has to be instanced it takes away from it being casual because look at Diadem.

[Rubieus]

I really like the monster mechanics and the ability spreadsheet, kind of like create your own monster template. randomly chosen I assume. This kind of feels like Dynamis, but not limited to certain monsters from certain zones. Overall it looks good, but why creation and not poetics? Is there a vote to kick system in place? what if i lose my tomes upon entry because i dc'ed /get kicked.

[KaldeaSahaline]

I agree that at this point a dump might well be a good thing, but consider:
- A dump means that to at least some degree, people need to do other things. Is that intended, or not accounted for / simply negligible?

One thing I really liked about B&S is how it very strongly incentivized me to run multiple content formats to empower my character. I did dungeons for materials and gold. I did PVP for soulstones, I did tower of infinity for badges/materials, etc. It made it so that anytime I logged in I could pick which goal I wanted to work on.

My goal here was to supplement different forms of content (i.e. tome earning/dungeons/crafting/raiding) to supply the fee's required and the bonus items to enhance the experience.

I know that people like a little "freedom" if they want to spam POTD we should let them, but honestly I have never really liked that approach.

A diagnostic question for you then. If,
(1) someone else could produce a means of integrating in gathering and crafting without it coming at any significant cost to the quality of (even if perhaps to some of the time spent upon) the combat experience, and
(2) there was already a system for creating repeatable engaging/challenging content (e.g. we got our own Mythic+ dungeons or dungeon mash-ups or augmentations)

would you then still be opposed to crafting/gathering in Eureka?

100% ok with it. Nothing is set in stone. it's incredibly likely there millions if not billions of people in this world with different or better ideas and I'm open to hear them.

In present design, I have to agree completely. That said, I personally think there are places for certain kinds of zerg content, although Diadem and anything ever made like it or to replace it -- certainly what you've described of Eureka -- are not likely among those places.

Aside: I believe there is something to be said for content chaotic enough for delegation to be necessary -- such that people break into teams in order to best cope with that chaos -- but that goal, while applicable to zerg content in its basic sense, probably would not then be called "zerg" content. I see 24-mans or large-scale (including flexible-member-count) content, conceptually, as actually having an incredible ability to reward skill, tactics, strategy (though less so than tactics), responsibility, awareness, etc. One would just have no reason to think as much from XIV, where it's been used solely for casual content.

8-man sounds good. The world would be a little player-sparse, perhaps, in some people's eyes, but that's a lot better than losing key mobs to other parties or the overall experience feeling like a zerg when it's supposed to be this sublime frontier.

I think hunts fulfill zerg content, and we can leave that there.

The problem is with the core of FF14 game design. How would you design content that isn't zerg, but mechanics matter accounting for 24 people?

It can't be tuned like savage because you'll have 23 people making one off mistakes wiping the entire alliance. 7 others is already bad enough, imagine having to account for consistent solid play from 16 others.
It can't be tuned like hunts, or it's just more zerg content.

That basically leaves somewhere in between which personally existing 24m's have shown me that it just wouldn't be much fun. I'm open to being convinced otherwise though.

I have to say, not being able to swap jobs during a basically open world gameform is a bit of a turn-off to me. I like being able to change around as needed, and would generally like to see more of that even in dungeon/raid content, rather than job locks pushing into open-style content, too.

Then we run into the issue of does the gameform lock weapon experience based on job at end, or job at entrance? If so are we comfortable with people leveling relic weapons on jobs they may not have invested in? Personally I have no dog in the fight. I'd be open to opening it up and likely it'd benefit me anyway. I.e. doing a 4 star with friends, but in no way shape or form is my DRG prepared for it, but my PLD didn't need it so I can accrue DRG points on my PLD.

I feel like if something like this were truly weapon "experience", then (apart from the necessary and long-awaited separation of job experience from the same class in the case of SCH and SMN) one would need merely to swap jobs and it would just start accruing on the new one instead. At that point, one might complain that they'd rather be able to work towards a job different from the one they're actually using (none too reasonable, given how Light worked), but it wouldn't feel like we're facing interlocking restrictions in design.

The original design was that you were awarded weapon experience at end of the content. I.e. it tallys all maps, treasures, bosses, which mobs were killed and how many and assigns a value to you at that time. I'd honestly prefer we just allow you to accrue it on a different job at that point rather than have it be dynamic throughout as I think it would encourage shifting jobs too frequently which could cause headaches/delay the group.

Maybe borrow the concept of the "item world" from Disgaea. You 'throw' a weapon in the pot and it opens a portal into the world inside to the item. Whatever item thrown in is what you accrue weapon experience for allowing free-form job changes to accommodate challenges inside.

EDIT: Do you think this could potentially work as flexible content, allowing the scalers to work on a by-role level, so that you could take anywhere from 4 to 8 people and, within reason, whatever roles for those people you want?

One thing I previously said I'd like to clarify. You can totally do 1 tank 1 healer 6 DPS in Eureka. I know I mentioned it was 2/2/4, but you could form it anyway you wanted.

While I'm a huge advocate of flex I am not sure how it would work with such a sample size (4-8). I would need to really think on it and again one of my primary concerns with 4 man was making it engaging for tanks and I struggle within constraints of existing design paradigm of how to make 4 man solo tank content engaging.

And before I forget again: the only other auto-generative content idea I'd seen before—or at least that I can remember:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...urneys-Concept

I'll check it out.

I would also prefer light party over full party. Since this has to be instanced it takes away from it being casual because look at Diadem.

Why would you prefer light party? Why does it being instanced take away from being casual (note that casual is not actually a measure of skill, but a measure of time). By your definition, dugneons and normal mode raids aren't casual?

I really like the monster mechanics and the ability spreadsheet, kind of like create your own monster template. randomly chosen I assume. This kind of feels like Dynamis, but not limited to certain monsters from certain zones. Overall it looks good, but why creation and not poetics? Is there a vote to kick system in place? what if i lose my tomes upon entry because i dc'ed /get kicked.

The idea is that abilities are chosen at random based on the star rating at time of instance creation for each "trash pack". I.e. not all "mechanics" are available at certain stars nor would certain combinations. As you progress into higher star count you run into more dangerous combinations, more frequently and you get less of a warning.

Bosses would be assigned their mechanics at time of their summoning with similar constraints. I.e. a 1 or 2 star boss wouldn't have multiple mechanics tied to tankbusters, but a 3 or 4 star boss could easily have several mechanics tied to it as well as significantly more dangerous ones at that.

I'm not sure about kicking. My inspiration for this content was the old Mythic + system where keys were depleted if you failed the instance. The idea that EVERYONE wants the rewards so no one wants to fail was enough of an incentive to mitigate harassment/abuse (obviously not all). In all the hundreds of dungeons I did in that game we never kicked anyone mid dungeon (no one benefited from this).

That said, DC's are an obvious issue that I haven't thought or worked a solution on.

[Shurrikhan]

One thing I really liked about B&S is how it very strongly incentivized me to run multiple content formats to empower my character. I did dungeons for materials and gold. I did PVP for soulstones, I did tower of infinity for badges/materials, etc. It made it so that anytime I logged in I could pick which goal I wanted to work on.

My goal here was to supplement different forms of content (i.e. tome earning/dungeons/crafting/raiding) to supply the fee's required and the bonus items to enhance the experience.

I know that people like a little "freedom" if they want to spam POTD we should let them, but honestly I have never really liked that approach.

Imo, "permanent" freedom is often overrated and "instances of freedom" underrated. If something becomes the most efficient, either in itself or by the fact that it's what most people flock to and/or have gotten used to, then the other choices are continually diminished. Diminishing that choice in turn, periodically, then relevels the balance of choices, allowing from a pick of n-1, rather than just, effectively, the 1.

100% ok with it. Nothing is set in stone. it's incredibly likely there millions if not billions of people in this world with different or better ideas and I'm open to hear them.

Cool. I'll see if I can come up with any particularly fun way to integrate them, as a basically combat-onry player myself.

The problem is with the core of FF14 game design. How would you design content that isn't zerg, but mechanics matter accounting for 24 people?

It can't be tuned like savage because you'll have 23 people making one off mistakes wiping the entire alliance. 7 others is already bad enough, imagine having to account for consistent solid play from 16 others.
It can't be tuned like hunts, or it's just more zerg content.

That basically leaves somewhere in between which personally existing 24m's have shown me that it just wouldn't be much fun. I'm open to being convinced otherwise though.

Imo, it mostly comes down to splitting the task in seemingly authentic ways, or rather to tasks that can be readily, recognized as having intuitive and authentic partitionable needs. A single boss can rarely provide that. But a boss pack? Or a boss with meaningful adds? Further mechanics atop that? And then some more (with each added party)? Now you have some leverage to stand on, design wise. However, I'd imagine you'd need to see some prior changes to gameplay that affects the jobs or role mechanics themselves before this would be as easy as creating a by-role-count mechanics table for the mob/boss/encounter in question (especially to only party members being targetable by most support effects or any curative AoEs).

The original design was that you were awarded weapon experience at end of the content. I.e. it tallys all maps, treasures, bosses, which mobs were killed and how many and assigns a value to you at that time. I'd honestly prefer we just allow you to accrue it on a different job at that point rather than have it be dynamic throughout as I think it would encourage shifting jobs too frequently which could cause headaches/delay the group.

Unless each WXP contributor provides a somehow different kind of weapon exp, I don't see why any WXP working in the same fashion as class/job XP would further encourage shifting jobs in any way. The only real difference would be leaver penalties / completion rewards. If the game (also) gives exp during the process itself, rather than (solely) at the end, then leaver penalties are lessened. However, design could just as easily check the WXP of all jobs upon entry and then double the difference (or, if only given at end -- contribution) made during the run as the bonus (perhaps even reshuffling the overcap portion), as it would be to check the difference (or, contribution) across all jobs and give it only to the weapon equipped when exiting or upon objectives' completion (which would then have to be capable of receiving said WXP).

Then we run into the issue of does the gameform lock weapon experience based on job at end, or job at entrance? If so are we comfortable with people leveling relic weapons on jobs they may not have invested in? Personally I have no dog in the fight. I'd be open to opening it up and likely it'd benefit me anyway. I.e. doing a 4 star with friends, but in no way shape or form is my DRG prepared for it, but my PLD didn't need it so I can accrue DRG points on my PLD.

I imagine some middle space between the two ends may be the best choice, making it optimal when focusing a given weapon to go with a target that allows you to use that weapon throughout, as to give a more authentic sense of difficulty per job that you mean to progress -- adding a bit of variety and reducing the guilt of running on anything but your best-geared job -- while still allowing crossover for when you want to run with friends but still want to get something out of your WeaponXP-capped character.

Heck, I could see another broad design idea working well here. If you allow the weapon to actually level up, it gradually gets less from enemies beneath it, right? But similarly, as per a long-requested change, if (weapon) experience is gained on a capped character (or, weapon), that becomes rested (weapon) experience of the % of level. Thus, the further out of sync with the difficulty of content you would face if you actually brought the job you're targeting, the smaller the rewards transferable become (though never particularly small, as I imagine these weapons needn't have all that many levels to them anyways).

Maybe borrow the concept of the "item world" from Disgaea. You 'throw' a weapon in the pot and it opens a portal into the world inside to the item. Whatever item thrown in is what you accrue weapon experience for allowing free-form job changes to accommodate challenges inside.

That seems a bit much to me, but who am I to say? /shrug

One thing I previously said I'd like to clarify. You can totally do 1 tank 1 healer 6 DPS in Eureka. I know I mentioned it was 2/2/4, but you could form it anyway you wanted.

Is this do to scaling formulas, or just your typical leniency (nothing to specifically require two tanks, which would otherwise prevent those mob packs being faced during group-splitting anyways)?

While I'm a huge advocate of flex I am not sure how it would work with such a sample size (4-8). I would need to really think on it and again one of my primary concerns with 4 man was making it engaging for tanks and I struggle within constraints of existing design paradigm of how to make 4 man solo tank content engaging.

I'd just like to eventually see compositional flex applied to just about anything and everything, and feel like this range of content (serious enough to entice try-hards, aware-and-adaptive players, and high skill-gap, but not so far as to be crushingly fixated upon and meta-ruled over near its top and sheeped after at its lower levels) would be absolutely perfect for it.

[Nezerius]

Flying is disabled at first, but can be activated for a brief time under certain conditions.

[...]Travel Feathers (key item that allows flying in Eureka for 5 minutes for the whole party, disappears when duty ends)[...]

This just sound like a terribly frustrating idea, especially given your example of the area's size (Azys Lla is a pretty big zone). There'd be nothing fun about getting a boss spawning on the other side of the map.
You'll either have to just have a set objective that enables for the entirety of the instance timer, or decrease the size of the map.

Cost to Enter:
In DF it charges 200 per player upon zoning in. In PF any # of players can contribute any amount of tomes to reach the total 800.

Why is it that a DF group gets a total cost of 1600 tomes? That seems like a silly "incentive" to get people to use the PF. Just leave it at 100 tomes per person, the same as the total cost of a PF group.

Difficulty:
The key items needed to boost the star rating aren't super rare, but they aren't common either.

What's the point of setting the difficulty, when you have to rely on RNG to even start it at the difficulty that you want your group to tackle it at? Just give players the freedom to set the difficulty.
If you really want to have some way of "unlocking" higher difficulties, perhaps some type of attunement would be better. Like clearing the last savage turn of the current raid to permanently unlock the highest difficulty.

Time Limit:
The default time limit is 30 minutes. You can extend this in PF groups only by supplying a key item "Hourglass of Time". This item can be obtained via crafters. Each one increases the duration by 10 minutes.

I can already see the PF comments. "LF x MORE FOR EUREKA - MUST HAVE 1 HOURGLASS OF TIME TO JOIN"

At which point, you might as well just set it to a normal instance timer.

The monster stuff seems okay, though it might be tricky to pull bosses from other types of content, while retaining the possibility of each having 15+ mechanics.