Is there a possibility of making every single S rank working like Ixion?

[Eisi]

Anybody think Critical Engagements are a good model for overworld bosses as opposed to FATEs or S Ranks in their current form?

[KageTokage]

Anybody think Critical Engagements are a good model for overworld bosses as opposed to FATEs or S Ranks in their current form?

That would be nice, particularly since it would dictate a specific pull time people cannot interfere with in any manner.

I think five minutes is plenty of time for anyone who actually wants to be present to show up.

[Deveryn]

Didn't get enough attention?

/kneepat

Trolls never do. He forgets people have him on ignore.

Anybody think Critical Engagements are a good model for overworld bosses as opposed to FATEs or S Ranks in their current form?

Crit Engagements are cool, but limiting. I don't see them going in this direction because you lose that old open world boss feel. Assuming they go with the cap of 48 from Bozja, you also run the risk of having not enough people show up because people will stop showing up to queue for a spot and get rejected. Imagine all this fuss pushing for a change and you get stuck in the same place of not being able to fight these things. I would think they also have to make it a more mechanical and engaging fight at that point because of the limit on participants.

[Eisi]

Crit Engagements are cool, but limiting. I don't see them going in this direction because you lose that old open world boss feel.

Of course feeling is an etheral quality, but the Critical Engagements feel way more like open world bosses to me than the S Ranks do.

Assuming they go with the cap of 48 from Bozja, you also run the risk of having not enough people show up because people will stop showing up to queue for a spot and get rejected.

That's why I would propose a different queueing system - you queue for Critical Engagements server-wide wherever you are and then select which expansion you wanna queue up for, level 50 CEs, level 60 CEs, etc. Whenever something pops, people move up the queue. If you got a spot, you either get teleported to the location or if you think the open world feeling would suffer from that, you would be forced to travel to the location within the preparation time.

Additionally the cooldown on those Critical Engagements would be severely reduced to about an hour or so. Maybe with the added caveat that all monsters from an expansion or zone cluster need to be beat first before one can be tackled again, which would incentivize spawning.

S Rank hunting in this model would no longer be a cross-server or cross-DC issue, instead we'd have more server-bound hunting comms.

Imagine all this fuss pushing for a change and you get stuck in the same place of not being able to fight these things.

Yeah that would suck!

I would think they also have to make it a more mechanical and engaging fight at that point because of the limit on participants.

One hundred percent. The fights would force a stat sync and it would be on the level of Bozjan CEs difficulty-wise. If it's a world boss it needs to be dangerous, especially in lower level zones so the sprouts get to see some deaths. For sprouts who only experience a game without much challenge for a really really long time, it's good to have something to look forward to right in front of you sometimes. If you're that type of player that is.

Another upside of the CE model is that world bosses would not eventually scale out, they would stay evergreen content. A Level 50 hunt mark at this point is unfortunately no longer content, it's hay to graze for the antelopes.