Sorry, but Content deal finder again.....

[Kiote]

And for the record..

The "Best Gear in the game" should be completely subjective. It should come from everywhere.

The biggest problem with what little end game we have so far is that there is actually definitively a "Best Gear in the game". The best gear in an MMO should always be a point of contention between players. If it is not, the Dev team has epicly failed at creating a strong enough variety in both Armour and Play Styles.

[Wolfie]

For the record, Patriarch, I am not against open world content in a general sense. Only when it has to deal with highly sought after items, or it is made in such a way that the people who are the "losers" (i.e. didn't get the claim, are in the wrong time zone for a pop timer, fought and died*) end up walking away with nothing but wasted time on their hands, frustration, * and are unable to try again in a reasonable amount of time.

Things like that lead to overly-hostile communities and griefing (if allowed by game mechanics). It happened way too many times in FFXI with the sought after HNMs that had longer pop timers.

It's less about what is available and more about how content must be presented. Contrary to popular belief, Instances are not created to prevent competition, they are created to save resources. You sacrifice variability to ease the load on a single server. If you allow for a single instance to have a large set of variables you instantly take away any and all resources saved by forcing your servers to store and load a large number of different versions of the same instances. Open world event only occur once at a time. You can have all the variable occur at random, but only one set will ever happen at any given time.

Sure, I'll give you that instances can help save resources, and that it's easier for developers to fall into the rut of having formulaic content via instances. That's not always the case, and it's not a technical limitation of instances. Can you give me specific examples of things that are done in open world that can't be done in instances, aside from having other groups around?

[Onidemon]

Yes but there's the danger that it affects the actual world layout and open world nature of what you come to expect from an MMO. Obviously at this point we don't know how they intend to set it up, but I'd rather have a proper MMO than a convenient entrance lobby.

Look at WOW , this is how it will be done. He pretty much got the idea from there.

[Nikita]

"We have Group Finder for those that want to jump into a random group, and our standard PC search for those that don't wish to use Group Finder, oh, and you can use this in leveling and dungeons!"

Wow, they so sincerely want everyone to be happy and be able to play the way they want to play, and there are people like the OP who will not be happy unless SE caters to them specifically and ignores everyone else.

That is quite disgusting.

[Chezen]

Can you give me specific examples of things that are done in open world that can't be done in instances, aside from having other groups around?

Well I can't speak for what Kiote was getting at, but I can tell you a very big thing that's missing in instances to me, and that would be the "open world" part. I largely play mmos to experience the worlds they are built in. I like wandering into the various tough places and randomly trying to make my way though them. If an mmo is supposed to be about instancing, then why make a world in the first place? Why not just make a city and have everyone sit there while they wait for their instance to cue? I personally do not really like waiting in the city to be shuffled off to a cubicle. But if I want to do that content, I don't really have a choice. Even friends will cue up, rather than run out to the instance.

But as long as they continue to make open world content along with instanced, I'm not too concerned about it. Both are needed for different types of people.

[Zumi]

I have used dungeon finder and raid finder in WoW. Both were very useful. It didn't get rid of harder content either.

Dungeon finder let you run dungeons 5 man group, while leveling up so you could get a lot of exp while running through some easy dungeons with a group thats put together for you. This is pretty good because you can't always find people your level to group with. Or you man not want to only solo with quests. They also let you do 5 man dungeons at level cap to get some basic gear you need for harder raids later on.

The way Blizzard did their raid finder set up is that its 25 man, and the difficulty of the raid is set to Easy. Now there is also a normal and hard mode. If you run the raid on normal or hard you have to make your own group and go to the zone like normal raid finder can't make a raid for those difficulties. Normal and Hard mode drop better items then the Easy raid finder version of the raid. In WoW less then 1% of the player base can beat the Heroic (hard modes) raids. Most people can do easy or normal.

So in the end you can have a raid finder and still allow really hard content for hardcore players.

[Alerith]

It's an MMO, I've never took "hours" to find a group, not even in ffxi.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

You just have to learn how to look for people. In ffxi I could get a party going less than an hour.

"Could" being the operative word. Sometimes people just aren't available or there just aren't the right combinations of jobs. I'm sure just about everyone (who played FFXI) has a horror story of waiting for hours in the dunes while they were repeatedly passed over while the WHMs were practically jacked upon zoning in.

What of those poor 2005 DRGs?
Or BLMs during ToAU?
Or PUPs...since they were released? (ba-dum psh)

If you personally never, ever had to wait over an hour, then you are EXTREMELY fortunate, if not ungodly lucky.

EDIT: Almost forgot the whole point of my post... -.-;

Sometimes, there just aren't the right people available in your community, and being able to reach into another community to supplement is a great option.

A good hypothetical example is that you're 6/8 for a party and you want two healers. You can shout forever in Ul'dah and not get a single reply, but you also have the option to pull from another community for healers which gives you a greater chance of actually finding one in a reasonable time period.

[Nexxus]

What of those poor 2005 DRGs?

Without their wyvern* :P

And you forgot to mention Thief, because to sneaky they doesn't exist ? ^^.

I've had time to farm over 10 Leaping Lizzy in a row until i got an invite, it was the only good part of the no party invite, you can seek while doing things (farm & stuff~).

I really like how it's going to be, "Extra-Community", because i don't even care about the one of my server as i probably will never know everyone.

[Renshi]

*whistles* Oh!
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...l=1#post631796

[Jynx]

*whistles* Oh!
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...l=1#post631796

With that I am still saying World finder is going to have the dev team focus heavilly on instanced content....yay.

Not that it needs to be stated again, but I'm against this and I hope SE doesn't do what I think they are doing. Suprise me SE keep your crummy content finder to a minimum.