Please bring back Exploratory Zones in Dawntrail

[LilimoLimomo]

My mind is more for healing or tanking. Contingencies and reactive gameplay and such. I make a poor metronome. This leads to the situation where I can perform a DPS rotation OR gameplay mechanics. On the other hand, choosing heals or tanking CDs on the fly I can do super easy while jumping through mechanic hoops. No idea how or why that works, but the short version is that I don't like involved rotations I need to maintain as an undercurrent while doing more important things.

I honestly agree with you here; one of my broad criticisms with DPS gameplay is that for the most part, each class seems to be designed to play two almost entirely disconnected games at the same time:

• The movement game, where you stand in the right places and not in the wrong places to not get hit by attacks.
• The rotation game, where you do your specific rotation to optimize your damage output.

Outside of the edge cases where you literally can't cast the move you would most want to cast, enemy behavior doesn't have an effect on what moves you use. Which for me makes me feel disconnected from what I'm doing, like I'm repeatedly stabbing an enemy that is no-selling every attack I make until they literally die. I dream of having ways to affect the battle that don't begin and end at "damage". But that would require a significant overhaul of the entire game, so...

But anyway, that might be part of why I'm drawn to BLM (aside from the pointy hat and explosions). Probably more than any other DPS class, BLM plays reactively. Long cast times coupled with a timer that is constantly ticking down mean you frequently commit to a plan of action that you have to entirely abandon when the boss throws out mechanic X or Y. When I'm playing BLM, I am often frantically improvising, struggling to regain my footing after being thrown off. The only "bad" thing is that when this happens you're doing bad damage. But from a gameplay perspective, it's fun.

And what makes it even more reactive is that BLM has some extra shiny tools to deal with standing in the right place that are dependent upon your party's often unpredictable behavior. You can instantly teleport to an ally as long as they aren't too far away, and if they happen to be in the spot where you need to be, that's incredibly helpful and efficient! But that's also one more thing to juggle in your brain's limited bandwidth! Thus, whether any given member of your party is in the "right spot" is another thing you can optionally react to when you're trying to be effective. I'm still not good at it, but when I do it successfully it feels amazing.

But I say all that just to share my experience and how I feel it relates to a preference we share; hopefully this doesn't read as me trying to get you to play BLM because that's not my intent. Tanking is really fun, and healing is fun as long as you've got healing that needs doing!

[Renathras]

But anyway, that might be part of why I'm drawn to BLM (aside from the pointy hat and explosions). Probably more than any other DPS class, BLM plays reactively. Long cast times coupled with a timer that is constantly ticking down mean you frequently commit to a plan of action that you have to entirely abandon when the boss throws out mechanic X or Y. When I'm playing BLM, I am often frantically improvising, struggling to regain my footing after being thrown off. The only "bad" thing is that when this happens you're doing bad damage. But from a gameplay perspective, it's fun.

Well, I play Extremes a lot as my endgame (and RARELY a fight or two of Savage), so the movement stuff becomes an issue, as does having a Raise spell given that I play pretty much entirely in PF. I think that's the part that gets me. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, is this nagging thought "but you're doing it wrong". I've been described before as a "frustrated perfectionist", haha!

SMN there's a lot less of that (granted, there's a lot less you can do wrong, but...) because it's designed to be more adaptable. Use Ifrit at the wrong time? Well, you have that Ruin 4 sitting there, use it for movement, and you can also slap your one filler Ruin 3 of the minute cycle in there somewhere, or Swiftcast your Ruby Ruin for just a minor DPS loss over using it on Garuda's tornado. You have options to salvage the situation, and you know for next time just don't use Ifrit there. To me, being able to recover or adapt my rotation on the fly is fun, and I think that's why I like SMN. While SMN has a set rotation, the rotation is loose and flexible. I can use the Primals in any order I choose, and I have a few extra tricks like Swiftcast and Ruin 4 that I can move around within the rotation. Even within the micro-phases, there are options, like you can decide whether to cast Ifrit's spells first then do the dash/slam, do the dash/slam first then the casts, or do one cast then dash/slam then the other cast, and have the option to stick a Ruin 4 and or Ruin 3 anywhere in there. That's flexible, but it's still upkeeping the overall rotation.

PLD is another Job designed like this, where the rotation is anchored by FoF/Requiescat once per minute, but what you do in between is flexible. You can use Holy Spirit right after Royal Authority, or after the first Atonement, the second Atonement, the third Atonement, the following Fast Blade, or the following Riot Blade. The only place it matters for damage is trying to stick it into the next Requiescat if applicable. And per the theorycrafters, the rest of your non-Goring/Swords GCDs you use in Requiescat are roughly comparble in damage, so doing things like (counter-intuitively as in pre-6.3 PLD) dropping Atonements is no longer considered optimal or necessary. This creates a Job that has a solid rotation, but the rotation has a good deal of flexibility, even though the choices are, on paper, relatively small.

RDM is another one I like, though optimizing it can be a booger on some fights. The base rotation is simple and intuitive, yet has some nuances in it. The overall structure of how to play it is easy to understand and easy to execute in general. The precise timing for things isn't super rigid, like you don't have to go into a melee combo RIGHT as you get 50/5X, you can wait a bit if the timing isn't quite right to do it (outside of burst windows, anyway...), and while it does have to go into melee for burst, it also gets 6 GCDs of total freedom of movement (though you can't use any ranged attack between the 1-2 and 2-3 of the melee combo...I don't even think you're allowed to use Enchanted Reprise, though I feel you SHOULD BE since the entire point of it is to be a movement tool at a cost in damage and mana... <_< ). And you have a lot of party flexibility and utility with Embolden, Magick Barrier, Verraise, and in a pinch, Vercure. So it has a lot going for it. But GOOD GOD is playing it optimal on some fights ridiculously insane, and its need to hardcast every other spell (though you can use Acceleration and Swiftcast strategically; you don't have to save Swiftcast for Raise, which is nice) makes it oddly immobile, even compared to BLM somehow. And to get the "perfect burst" requires a lot of setup and careful mana management and counting, and not all fights are even conducive to that. So it's a Job that I both like and hate at the same time, lol

The important thing to me about choices is they need to be VIABLE. For example, in Ifrit, using Ruin 4 there is viable. It's not some massive DPS loss vs not doing so. On the other hand, in BLM, if you're coming up to the end of your Fire phase, using Scathe for movement is not viable, since it could lose you out on huge damage and also cause you to drop Enochian, for an even bigger hit. And I like rotations that are flexible but "set" to a point. That is, I don't like DNC/BRD because of all the random procs. RDM gets a semi-pass, though I don't EXACTLY like that aspect, either. And I generally dislike DoTs/busywork upkeep buffs/debuffs. I think that's another point in SMN's favor since I don't have some "Increases your damage by X% for 30 seconds" upkeep buff or some "Does 30 potency per tick over 30 seconds" random DoT, and don't have my hotbars lighting up with random procs at random times. The rotation is set in the sense of the 1 min cycle of Baha/Phoenix, but I can move the pieces around myself in reaction to fight mechanics, and even within those sub-phases (other than Titan, I guess, but it's completely mobile to the point it's irrelevant to substitute Swiftcast/Ruin 4 in there anyway), I can move the individual actions around based on whether I need to move, get close to the boss, stay away from the boss, etc.

It's flexible AND viable, meaning the choices are allowed and relevant, and it doesn't have a lot of annoying busywork/needless mental bandwith hogging things like upkeep buffs/debuffs, nor obnoxious rotation changing procs all over the place.

But RDM has some of that with the procs and BLM has procs and DoTs.

And the thing is, some people love that, so I'm super happy that's in the game for them. \o/ I'm genuinely a "I want everyone to be happy" kind of person, so I love when the game has Jobs that cross many different playstyles and tastes, that way, everyone can find one they enjoy.

I honestly think the Caster role is currently the best designed since all three play COMPLETELY differently and so appeal to entirely different types of player, meaning lots of people have an option in Caster that they probably like.

I do agree with you about the "two games" thing. It's like Jobs are designed with rotations from a Tab-Target MMO, but then combat is designed like an ARPG, which neither the Job design nor the game's netcode REALLY fully support.

[Hazuki87]

In the keynote at the Las Vegas Fan Festival, Yoshi-P announced the different types of battle content coming to the game in the newest expansion, Dawntrail.

However, one type of content that was not mentioned in any shape or form in the slide was Exploratory Zones, the category that Eureka and Bozja belong to.

While they could still announce including it at a later date, its absence in Endwalker makes me worried that it will not return in the next expansion either.

Therefore, I am writing this thread to ask the developers of FFXIV to please include Exploratory Zones in 7.x alongside large-scale raids in the same vein that Bozja did.

This kind of content is engaging, fun and long-lasting. Features such as Lost Actions can bring new ways of playing jobs, which is personally one of the main appeals of it.

If you would like Exploratory Zones to return, please show your support by liking and commenting on this thread: do you want it back and why? What specific things do you think the content does well and which ones could be improved in future iterations?

They already said it coming back, was in the Q/A on Day3

[PumpkinPantsu]

I would be so happy if they did bring it back, I really miss the sense of community I found there, I love going in and being forced to find new groups to make friends and hanging out with them for a few hours and the excitement of finding the same people again next time you go. I love how the later relics get easier to incentivise you to stick around after doing one.

[Xeronia]

They already said it coming back, was in the Q/A on Day3

I thought that wasn't a hard confirmation and a more of a "We are looking into it but no promises."

[ICountFrom0]

I thought that wasn't a hard confirmation and a more of a "We are looking into it but no promises."

More like, "we are working on evolving it into it's next form".
They are also trying to evolve Deep Dungeons as well.

For all we know the two are going to merge somehow.

[Supersnow845]

I don’t really care for DD’s (POTD was interesting in its time but the other 2 were just functional carbon copies), however I would be interested if they fused them into exploratory content

Say a fusion of all three
-interact with the “deep dungeon” roughly every time you had a large scale raid in Bozja (so like say 3 sets of 30 floors) then each of those 30 floors unlocks upgrades both within the deep dungeon and in the wider field content zone (like say you could unlock the ability to use lost actions inside the deep dungeon by exploring it, and you could unlock a eureka style fragment system to better progress the external field content zone evoking how BA changed how you played eureka)

This way you could either rush towards the bottom of the deep dungeon (the end of the field content zone) but it would become harder and harder if you didn’t go back and peruse the different areas so you could become stronger, or you could take things super slowly and by the end be as strong as elemental armour makes you in anemos, but you would avoid how grindy the horizontal progress system is in Bozja

Fuse this also into a field content zone that has interesting Bozja style CE’s and wireless amazing map design and you’d have an incredible piece of content

[TaleraRistain]

I thought that wasn't a hard confirmation and a more of a "We are looking into it but no promises."

Yeah they want to continue doing it but they didn't sound like they confirmed anything for 7.0 itself.

https://gamerescape.com/2023/07/29/n...fan-fest-2023/

"In terms of large-scale combat situations like Bozja and Eureka, we still want to do things in that vein as well."

[LilimoLimomo]

The important thing to me about choices is they need to be VIABLE.

This is a really good point, and in a game where doing DPS at the highest rate possible is pretty much the job of DPS classes, it does seem like a potential problem with BLM's design; it has lots of ability to adapt to situations, but most of those adaptations come with meaningful DPS losses that really hurt the viability of the class for your average player. In any content where I felt that optimizing my DPS was important, I wouldn't be able to have fun playing BLM.

Though in some ways, I wonder how fair I'm being. BLM does have a bit of wiggle-room, in that Polyglot stacks can be spent for high-damage instant-cast spells whenever they would best fit in, 2 per minute. Maybe that should be enough and I just need to get better at using this tool, the same way I use Ruin 4 on SMN? Though perhaps it's different in that BLM requires deciding where to use your few instant-casts, and SMN requires deciding where to use your few long-casts? I'm unsure.

Meanwhile I'm on the same page with SMN and it's great flexible design, and I appreciate the exact way you described that flexibility in terms I wouldn't have thought to use before. And while I'm not much for RDM, it's great to hear about your experience of it!

And I definitely agree that Caster classes have the most diversity of play styles! Eager to see what the upcoming 7.0 Caster can add to that.

[Aco505]

More like, "we are working on evolving it into it's next form".
They are also trying to evolve Deep Dungeons as well.

For all we know the two are going to merge somehow.

They're also implementing some kind of combat content "never seen before" but the wording suggests that it's not related, at least directly, to exploratory missions.

Which is why we must keep showing support so that they actually implement a new improved one that also takes the good bits of Eureka and Bozja.