My Eureka Concept

[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.