My Eureka Concept

[KaldeaSahaline]

Not a content designer. You posted here for feedback and I am providing it and why I dislike it.

Nor am I. I still managed to put some ideas down and construct a completely new gameform.

But you could always make it Light Party and like Diadem/RW have multiple groups and have the content scaled based upon how many people in the instance. Or make it an open zone where anyone could participate solo, light party, full party and those different groups could engage in various objectives in the zone which would eliminate people getting locked out and also people being forced into a full party or a group for that matter.

What are some good examples of these objectives for all playertypes (solo/LP/FP) that would be FUN to engage in?

Fates have a bad rep but you can make fates meaningful like the chains that are all over the world. Breaching the Hive and Clearing the Hive are perfect examples. You could have a fate like event going on where you are breaching or storming a keep and could use a combination of cannons, mechs, magitek, etc that the full party could engage or several solo people could use the cannons to enable the full party that is charging through. Or have various things going on that tailor to Alliances, full parties, light parties, solo.

FATE chains are not engaging and regular FATEs are by and far the most horrifically boring gameform I've ever played in an MMO. They're incredibly boring zerg content IMO. That is why nothing of the sort exists in my paradigm. At best, they're trivial AFK content while the group simply spams AOE attacks til completion and at worst they're incredibly tedious if you're soloing.

That said your example is good on paper (very similar to a PVE version of Rival Wings). I would VERY much be open to adding the concept of "interactive" FATE objectives in Eureka. The challenge would be making multiple different "types" and resolutions so that it wasn't just a binary do X @ Y type of obstacle.

In context of your example could be 'sneaking' past a patrolled area while managing trash packs to infiltrate a subset of the Eureka zone. Maybe later in the week you encounter the same "infiltration" subset, but, you have cannons to break the front door down allowing a different path/route, but would end up pulling additional enemies via a shorter route. Stuff like that.

As far as dungeons go I dislike dungeons for the same reason I dislike FATEs. They're static never changing gameplay that offers next to no engagement/challenge.

The same way you make 8 and 24 man content "engaging", except with less wiping because one in X people didn't jump the rope in time?

I respectfully disagree. Let's consider a light party comp of 1 tank, 1 healer, 1 melee, and 1 ranged/caster.

This means that tank cooldowns are binary. Content can only EVER have enough incoming damage to accommodate a singular tanks kit and cooldown timings.

This also means that you're limited by # of simultaneous mechanics/obstacles/adds. You can't ever have a fight with multiple priority adds because incoming damage would be impossible to tank/heal, else they'd be trivial and inconsequential, which directly goes against the goal of this content form.

A full party would have more room for additional simultaneous mechanics that can interact in unique and engaging ways. Splitting DPS on adds/boss can be more robust and tightly tuned rather than having it be so loose that any singular job needs to be able to do it, thus trivializing the check.

Things like tank swaps based on organic gameplay (i.e. out of tank cooldowns, swap) until mine are back up, etc. or more rapid swapping to maximize cooldown uptime to handle harsh incoming damage, etc..

Phase 1:
You start by pulling Cruise Chaser and he starts by throwing right and left laser swords and spin crushers instead of autoattacks at random people. Optical sights work entirely the same, except a random clock position is called out when a clock position is demanded. Whirlwind becomes a gaze attack. No add, but the pauldron spawns on Cruise Chaser himself and needs to be killed in time. Cue limit cut and 1-8, which will slowly count down from 1 to 6 and alternately drop chaser images and corresponding target markers, the latter only if you face the most recent chaser image to emulate the current gameplay. An image without target marker will cause a wipe. It works the same again in P3. Counting to 6 instead of 8 because you may not overlap target markers and there are only 3 safe placings between the turrets in Phase 3. Then the ATE begins and you transition to phase 2.

Dodging telegraphs and killing an add solo doesn't quantify as terribly engaging to me because its fixed gameplay and never changes and how could you even tune that to be challenging? It's a simple pass/fail. You either push your X amount of keypresses (GCDs / DPS check time allotment) or fail.

How would incoming damage work? How would a DPS do this? How would a Healer do this? If you allow any and all jobs to solo this, it means DPS checks don't exist. Incoming damage wouldn't exist, it'd literally just be Bardams Mettle second boss. Is that what you're advocating?

A tab target trinity MMO just doesn't have the core combat fundamentals to be a good platform for solo content IMO. An action combat system a la B&S handles this content form infinitely better IMO, but that's because of reactionary dodging/healing and defensives that allow individual skill to flourish. Whereas its large group content IMO is not as much fun as FF14's.

Yeah a mechanic can be just as interesting whether you have 60 people or 1 person.

You're looking at mechanics in an isolated singular fashion when this is not indicative of how it actually works in encounter design.

Look at O4S Exdeath. He does a Holy Stack marker. If you don't have to worry about 7 other peoples positioning or Fire III timing that mechanic becomes trivial.

It's not about simply looking away for gaze or getting to the middle with the stack marker, or running away from a blast point. It's about navigating dynamic player and encounter positioning based on other simultaneously outgoing mechanics and managing the space therein.

While I'd agree that there's certainly nothing to necessarily make a given fight any more complex when scaling to higher player counts, the lack of such indicates wasted opportunity, imo.

Consider the difference in complexity from 1 to 6 players in Overwatch, for instance.

Each added player creates additional factors, by-fight and in macro, of interaction or by which to leverage a win. Rather than redundancies, they end up being mechanically augmentative.

Exactly. It's not a linear map that says X > Y when considering party size in content forms. There are spots where some things are better and others could be worse. In the content form I designed with the goal I wanted (engaging/challenging) repeatable semi-random battle content for all 3 roles I felt that 8 man best fit that. I felt that 24 man would have diluted the experience and I felt that 4 man didn't reach the level I wanted, all 3 examples cited with evidence and reasoning for my deductions.