Baldesion Arsenal Feedback

[Unease_Lemming]

From all the time I've spent on this, it looks like Arsenal COULD be fun. I've certainly had a good enough time when I actually got into it.

However, SE, please, can you enlighten me how one is actually supposed to run this content?
Going in solo doesn't work, either people aren't going in at all and no progress can be made, or a full pre-made from outside sources is running and will absolutely not tolerate your taking a portal, despite what they might be saying.

Going in as a full pre-made such as I mentioned above does not work, unless you're extremely lucky, it takes an average of maybe 3 hours to get all groups into the same instance, at which point you're the one needing to enforce the same "nobody else gets a portal" as everyone else if you want to have a chance to enter together.

I think the thing that frustrates me the most, is that the actual dungeon itself isn't even hard, at all. The mechanics are all exceedingly basic. If it weren't for the fact that people can't even enter, it would be trivial to clear with enough practice.

This entire post is only happening since I am sitting here, actively trying to run content, but the awful design of this is preventing this. It's been over 4 and a half hours of actively trying in my current group to get in, and we still haven't managed.

Please, developers. Do something about this, talk to us, anything. I have never been this frustrated with FF XIV since I started during beta.

UPDATE: 5 hours total after starting, the group of 48 people that all got together, were ready and willing to run the Arsenal, have given up since the game at no point allowed all of us to play together.

[Mix]

I think I am going insane.

Most of the time, can't get a portal to even get in. If I do get in the people outside fail the FATE, essentially wasting nearly two hours of my life (still preferable to the frustration of portal sniping).

I've put up with most of the experimental content the game has attempted, but this portal system is finally crossed the line, what a total disaster.

[ltsquigs]

The idea of an Open Dungeon is interesting, but they didn't predict people would be willing to go to incredible lengths to get around their roadblocks to make it harder to do with pre-made groups. It seems people are willing to put up with multiple hours of instance hopping and portal contention rather in order to do static 56 groups rather than do it with random people.

If they want to keep to their "open" design one solution would be to add it to the Duty Finder, remove the role restrictions (like pvp any party composition is possible), and disallow queueing as a party. This wouldn't match the original design entirely (no Ovni, would need to kill the support fate), but would force people to not try to game the system with large statics.

[Kazgrel]

It's a colossal failure.

We want large scale content like this, but this thing needs to be server specific or something. Just spent over a hour in a party trying to get in with other parties as part of our group in Discord only to keep getting in instances that already had groups in BA.

Content requiring this many people to join in should be done through DF, plain and simple. No sense in spending 2+ hours waiting for a chance to just get started.

[Fourbestintoner]

It wasn't designed for premades.

It was entirely designed for premades.
If they wanted actually wanted it to be puggabe they would let you switch job in the lobby to assign roles and organize.

[RitsukoSonoda]

IMO if you need an guide or watch a video to be able to do it is a design fail, sry... but it takes all the fun out it.

I don't call it a design fail. I call it a player base fail. You cant really apply that to BA because we also already have a very large number of players that can't even figure out how to play their job class or do a basic 4 person duty without watching a tutorial video on youtube. If you insist on trying to spin this as a design fail on SE's part then the fail is catering content for the lazy players that don't want to use their brain.

[KaivaC]

Does anybody have any insight into how the JP side is handling the implementation? I don't really care much for the argument of "oh JP is more capable of pugging, so yada yada yada..." - that's not what I'm wondering. I am curious is JP has similiar complaints about the entry requirements with the level of communication needed.

[Raisek]

Does anybody have any insight into how the JP side is handling the implementation? I don't really care much for the argument of "oh JP is more capable of pugging, so yada yada yada..." - that's not what I'm wondering. I am curious is JP has similiar complaints about the entry requirements with the level of communication needed.

Tonberry (Elemental[JP] DC) here. The Japanese also use discord (or other means outside the game) to organise runs, but PUGs over here are also very very prevalant, to the point where you'll have 3 to 4 people camping per portal during primetime. And no, most people aren't happy with the entry requirements. To quote somebody on the JP forums 'I want to fight the bosses inside the dungeon, not the players outside.'. And as I've said in a previous post, portal stealing/sniping are RAMPANT over here. Everybody is miserable, and this whole shenanigan has brought out the toxicity in both EN and JP players alike in my datacentre.

[AnnaMolly]

BA Feedback: The only thing I dislike about arsenal is that it's annoying and complicated to get in and causes endless drama among the users here, remember Dynamis in FFXI? Remember the Phantom/Timeless Hourglass?

Draw inspiration from that.

For those who aren't familiar with Dynamis, imagine if NA, EU, and JP were all on the same servers and there were 6 instances for BA per server, and you had to coordinate with 40-50 other linkshells of varying languages to figure out what zone was going to be open and when THEN you had to spend 1m to get in and hope you don't wipe. That's about how early days of Dynamis were. In hindsight, I do kinda miss meeting the occasional JP person I could communicate with. Was fun. =/

[Vnolan]

It was entirely designed for premades.
If they wanted actually wanted it to be puggabe they would let you switch job in the lobby to assign roles and organize.

If it was designed for premades there would be tools to make one. Look at the description of the content again. Does any of that fit with the entire alliance having someone call out mechanics over voice?