Instanced Raids Unveiled!

[Airlea]

but in all honestly...they shouldn't be able to beat it with less than 8ppl...maybe get some stuff done in the dungeon, but if they are able to comlpetely beat with less than 8, the whole "difficulty and challenge" debate would go out of hand.

Your 8 people aren't my 8 people aren't his 8 people. It's easy to say no one should be able to beat it with less than 8 people, but realistically you'd be alienating most of the player population in the process. By default, most players are average in skill level. To raise the difficulty to the level you suggest would mean targeting only the most elite players and making it near impossible for them. Anything less would be mean they could more than likely accomplish the same with 7 people.

[TheVedis]

It is not good balance to have the best rank 30 gear be the easiest to obtain. Hardly anyone would bother to craft other rank 30 gear since there would be no point.

Furthermore, having rank 30 raid gear is not a sign of accomplishment since it would have been possible to steamroll through the dungeon with your rank 50 class, or have another rank 50 do it for you.

im a crafter mostly, and let me tell you now, it wont hurt the market.
the new NM gear didnt, i still sell ALOT of stuff thats not considered better then the NM gear, and it sells GOOD

also, if it isnt an accomplishemnt, why are you so bent on stopping 50s from obtaining it easier then a 30?
you keep contradicting your point here


either it matters, or it doesnt

if it isnt important, if it isnt an accomplishment, why do you even care if a 50 gets it easier then a 30?

a 50 crafter can craft 30 gear easier then a 30 crafter can, does that make it unfair to the 30 crafter that he might fail when a 50 wont?
of course it doesnt!


the logic you keep putting forth isnt making sense with the point your trying to make, you keep counter arguing yourself

[Val_Rhys]

If a group of 6-7 playere are able to finish it(even with more difficulty) the whole purpose of balancing it around 8 players is stupid. Endgame in XIV is gonna be tuned for 8man PTs. You knew that since the Letter from the Producer from the beginning of the year...if you're now getting "angry" about that, go figure...I'm not against being able to ENTER the dungeon with less than 8 people, cause that requirement seems kinda strange...but in all honestly...they shouldn't be able to beat it with less than 8ppl...maybe get some stuff done in the dungeon, but if they are able to comlpetely beat with less than 8, the whole "difficulty and challenge" debate would go out of hand. Its tuned for 8 and its gonna be difficult for 8, making it possible to beat with less than 8, makes the whole reason of it being tuned for 8 obsolete.

I don't think people are upset that the dungeon is "tuned" for 8 people - it's that you can't enter otherwise. I think people are drastically overlooking the disparity in player skill in FFXIV (and really any MMO). The reality is, good players can accomplish tasks with much less players than mediocre/bad players. See: any FFXI endgame activity. So if the content is tuned for 8 average players, 8 good players are going to steamroll it. And I really mean that. I can't think of many FFXI events that top tier linkshells couldn't do with half the maximum available players (or even less). Now, I admittedly don't know how this will translate to FFXIV. Obviously since the maximum number is only 8, it may not mean 4 good players can clear the content early on (but who knows).

So, simply saying "if it's designed for 8 means it shouldn't be able to be cleared by 7" is much harder to implement than many people think. With the exception of using silly tricks like 8 pressure plates to unlock a door. But that won't change the difficulty of the actual encounters.

[Airlea]

...This is why doing the rank 30 dungeons as a rank 30 character should reward you appropriately with uber rank 30 gear, whereas doing the rank 30 dungeon as a rank 50 character should not reward you with uber rank 30 gear because you didn't earn it...

So what's one of the big perks to grinding a job to 50? It makes a lot of other stuff easier. That's part of your reward. Part of what you earned in achieving max rank. It sounds strangely like you're suggesting that no one would ever need gear for another r30 job again, and that if they do, they should only be able to obtain it on that job before they hit r30.

...If the current R30 NMs are any indication, then you will. There are several pieces of R30 NM gear that are useful for endgame...

Did you farm any of that gear? Did you make sure you were on a rank appropriate job before engaging the NMs? I mean, surely a r50 shouldn't be able to solo and obtain gear for another job. They didn't earn it amirite?

[Xenor]

If a group of 6-7 playere are able to finish it(even with more difficulty) the whole purpose of balancing it around 8 players is stupid. Endgame in XIV is gonna be tuned for 8man PTs. You knew that since the Letter from the Producer from the beginning of the year...if you're now getting "angry" about that, go figure...I'm not against being able to ENTER the dungeon with less than 8 people, cause that requirement seems kinda strange...but in all honestly...they shouldn't be able to beat it with less than 8ppl...maybe get some stuff done in the dungeon, but if they are able to comlpetely beat with less than 8, the whole "difficulty and challenge" debate would go out of hand. Its tuned for 8 and its gonna be difficult for 8, making it possible to beat with less than 8, makes the whole reason of it being tuned for 8 obsolete.

Once people get better gear over time and stuff, the challenge will be less and less for 8man groups(and groups of 6-7 might be able to beat it)...but that's where new content tuned for those people should be rdy so...this is an endless cycle and if they start making it faceroll from the getgo...I'm done and say goodbye.

It all depends on the level of difficulty they're aiming for. Difficult and challenging for the average player? For the hardcore player? For the top 1% of players? It's doubtful it will be the latter or even the middle option because they want content to appeal to everyone and this is the first real content they're adding. They will want the average player able to beat the content even though it's difficult and challenging for them. Problem there is the top 1% won't find it as difficult and challenging as a more casual player therefore you can get away with doing it with a man or two less. Additionally the hardcore and top 1% of players have more classes ranked up, more cross class skills, more HQ gear etc. and this too reduces the level of challenge.

[Rentahamster]

also, if it isnt an accomplishemnt, why are you so bent on stopping 50s from obtaining it easier then a 30?

...

if it isnt important, if it isnt an accomplishment, why do you even care if a 50 gets it easier then a 30?

I want to make it difficult for a rank 50 to get rank 30 raid gear so that rank 30 raid gear becomes an accomplishment.

Raid dungeons are supposed to be hard. If they are not hard, they have no meaning. If they are hard, and if they hard to everyone equally, regardless of what rank you are, then all the raid gear rewards become an accomplishment, not just the rank 50 raid gear.

If the raid content is easy, then the prestige of earning raid gear and the satisfaction and perceived value of that gear is diminished.

[Malakhim]

This. I think it's a big mistake to make the requirement to enter a full party. First off one of my favorite things to do is low man stuff in FF. That's out of the window. Second, people are going to get left behind a lot. Like quoted above, a ls of 15, only 8 can go. One of my favorite things about XI was that you could do stuff in a huge alliance where rarely people get left behind (or you could swap them in if you did), or low man it. Not shaping up to be the same story here in XIV.

A minimum requirement of 4-6, with the difficulty being pretty extreme would be a good balance here. Sure you can enter with a lower number but good luck completing it. This min/max 8 crap is going to suck.

This isn't a burn, so don't take it as one, but you are aware that these are just the first dungeons being released, and it should stand to think that they'll probably create higher rank 4-member group dungeons following feedback upon release of the first few.

[Rentahamster]

So what's one of the big perks to grinding a job to 50? It makes a lot of other stuff easier. That's part of your reward. Part of what you earned in achieving max rank.

Yes, of course it makes stuff easier. And that's perfectly fine when applied to the over-world. It's not fine when applied to dungeons that are designed with difficulty in mind. It especially clashes with the stated design goals of "rewarding skillful play".

Did you farm any of that gear? Did you make sure you were on a rank appropriate job before engaging the NMs? I mean, surely a r50 shouldn't be able to solo and obtain gear for another job. They didn't earn it amirite?

Of course I farmed the gear. No one in their right mind is going to fight stuff at a lower rank if they don't have to. That is why in certain applications, like a specifically designed raid dungeon, level caps are good to maintain value and gameplay longevity.

[TheVedis]

I want to make it difficult for a rank 50 to get rank 30 raid gear so that rank 30 raid gear becomes an accomplishment.

Raid dungeons are supposed to be hard. If they are not hard, they have no meaning. If they are hard, and if they hard to everyone equally, regardless of what rank you are, then all the raid gear rewards become an accomplishment, not just the rank 30 raid gear.

If the raid content is easy, then the prestige of earning raid gear and the satisfaction and perceived value of that gear is diminished.

then make it an accomplishemtn for you, no one is going to stop you from doing that

you are putting too much into caring about what other people do

[TirionCrey]

Your 8 people aren't my 8 people aren't his 8 people. It's easy to say no one should be able to beat it with less than 8 people, but realistically you'd be alienating most of the player population in the process. By default, most players are average in skill level. To raise the difficulty to the level you suggest would mean targeting only the most elite players and making it near impossible for them. Anything less would be mean they could more than likely accomplish the same with 7 people.

I'm not talking about the best elite super awesome Chuck Norris players only. But just going by the fact that 1 out of 8 players equals 12.5% performance of the group(assuming everyone is on the same lvl skillwise) and being able to do it with 6-7 people, that equals beating the dungeon with a performance equal to 75-87.5% of the capability of a 8man group. Sorry if a group is able to complete a dungeon with only 75% of the capable performance of a full PT, then the dungeon tuning can be deemed as a fail. Cause a difference of 25% in neccesarry performance to get it done is way more than it should be to call it "difficult".

PS: This is all assuming that 8man group consists of reasonable players who know how to play(common sense and knowledge of game mechanics, not the uber pros who deal 2% more dmg than the average pro blah blah BS). Players not able to play shouldn't be able to clear this even with 10+ people...

And having played a lot of MMOs I know that these players still provide the majority of the playerbase. But tuning everything around stupidity doesn't make it better. I'm just asking of tunement where common sense and "knowledge" of your class is needed, rather than just going in and do whatever, it will work out anyway stuff.

PPS: I don't want the dungeon to be tuned for the average players, cause the average in an MMO is somewhere between stupid and ignorant. The endgame should be tuned around the 30% of players who actually know what they are doing and are able to think.