My Eureka Concept

[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.

[Wintersandman]

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?

In HW and ARR I could do a bulk of the Relic quest solo. I log into the game to experience the world and I don't necessarily always want to be in a party. Outside of my daily roulettes that I only am currently doing for leveling I would prefer to not have to interact with a PC all the time. Diadem was fun for the first two weeks but then it is the same repeatable content. In HW I had multiple sources of doing the relic for each step, some could be in a group and some could be solo.


Also Diadem you have to wait for 8 people to queue up to be able to do said content. Once people have their relics the content will die off which will leave several people stranded waiting for the next time SE makes Eureka relevant. Getting 3 other people together is a lot easier than trying to organize 7. I tried getting a dungeon pop for A1-4 during 3.5 and it was virtually impossible. Not everyone wants to go back and queue for old content that they already spammed.

They could simply scale the content into new expansions rather than abandoning it. May I ask what your aversion to raid content is? What specifically about 'raid content' bothers you?

Forced parties.... I don't always want to party which is why I don't touch raids after I complete the story and I only did A1S for light on my first relic. A1S is the only savage content I have ever touched and had the desire to touch. For my PLD relic I did PvP.