Can we have challenging and rewarding 4 man content, please?

[Riepah]

Hi there.

One major thing that bothers me about this game, is that there seems to be virtually no challenge for small groups. The three new dungeons are nice and fun, but they're hardly difficult, and the rewards you get are accordingly underwhelming, pretty much near worthless, aside from the tomestones.

It seems like there is quite a gap between 4 man and 8 man content, for some reason. As far as remotely relevant content goes, we skip from faceroll easy 4 man to 8 man content where having a handful of inexperienced players in the group basically means you're not going to beat it.

Could we have some middle ground, please? I'd really love some content that's actually difficult but for a party size of 4 instead of 8. It's much easier to get a small group of somewhat competent players together than it is to get a large one, and if there was more difficult and challenging content for small groups, the rewards for said content could also be something a little bit more exciting and less outdated.

[Sho86]

While I entirely agree 4-man content should be more relevant, what would they put in for rewards? Tomes are for the base current set, then you have the Raider set, and of course the upgradeable parts. The only thing that first comes to mind would be fully upgraded tome pieces, I assume on a lockout.

Edit- Shows how much I follow raiding. Looked up final coil rewards and seems -that- is the upgrade item area? So in reality we only have 1 set this patch unlike before with tome/high allagan? I really don't know then what rewards would be lol

[Beebles]

Would like to see 4 man trial style fights.

[Morningstar1337]

Would like to see 4 man trial style fights.

Ifrit, Garuda and Titan Story mode are 4 man

I think we need a sort of Boss Rush fight for 4 man; a gauntlet considering of all 6 Primals in Hard mode but done with only a Light Party, back to back (no breaks, as opposed to Coil what lets you start from the turn after the one you beat), with stats scaled to compensate for the decreased membership (and maybe a similar one for Extreme but with stats unchanged).

As for rewards? Well there could be a 3-6x Tome increase for both Sol and Poe, Time stuff, The usual Primal weapons, Alexandrite, Or maybe a set of gear that's between the Sol and Poe gear in iLevel and stats.

[Beebles]

Ifrit, Garuda and Titan Story mode are 4 man

I think we need a sort of Boss Rush fight for 4 man; a gauntlet considering of all 6 Primals in Hard mode but done with only a Light Party, back to back (no breaks, as opposed to Coil what lets you start from the turn after the one you beat), with stats scaled to compensate for the decreased membership (and maybe a similar one for Extreme but with stats unchanged).

As for rewards? Well there could be a 3-6x Tome increase for both Sol and Poe (though the Poe may have to Be on a lockout) Time stuff, The usual Primal weapons, Alexandrite, Or maybe a set of gear that's between the Sol and Poe gear in iLevel and stats.

I'd like to see difficult ones. Story doesn't count.

[Nestama]

While I entirely agree 4-man content should be more relevant, what would they put in for rewards?

All bosses drop four chests upon defeat, one for each player and will drop four-five items.

• For the mini bosses, the chests will drop: dye-able dungeon armour (Robe of Divine Death, for example, will still be i80, but can be dyed), untradeable paint dye (gold, silver, black, white, whatever other crazy colour SE will come up with next), 10 Venture coins, {Soldiery} item (Wootz, etc) and a 20% chance at dropping i115 gear.

• From the final bosses, exactly the same, but this time the fifth item that drops will either be the i115 gear (still 20%) or a i125 weapon (5% chance, locks you out from getting another weapon until reset).

Perfect incentive. Dungeons can give bosses more than one mechanic, players will actually have to think the same way they do in EX Primals, etc.

[Prototype909]

The problem is that if you make anything that isn't Coil non-faceroll people will complain it's in-accessible and that you're locking content away from the playerbase, even if it's vanity.

And if you put gear that's higher than the current iLevel trends you let players gear up too quickly which is exactly what 4 mans being irrelevant and the 50 lockouts are supposed to stop you from doing.

[fireslash]

how about 4man + their chocobos

[Nestama]

And if you put gear that's higher than the current iLevel trends you let players gear up too quickly which is exactly what 4 mans being irrelevant and the 50 lockouts are supposed to stop you from doing.

Which is why I said 5-20% chance of dropping. Also, i115 is less than i120 (so Poetics > Dungeon, but you're still gearing up, thus progression) and since chances are the last CT dungeon will drop i120 gear... where's the problem? Also, again, the i125 weapons would have a 5% drop and a lockout. Depending on how lucky you are, you might get the weapon instantly or never see one for a week-month.

Heck, SE could just release "Savage mode" of the current level 50 dungeons (while releasing the new "casual" dungeons that will probably drop i100 gear in 2.5). Savage meaning that the dungeons will have the same lore, but will have different mechanics for bosses to make them challenging. Could even include a random "dungeon quest" of sorts. Kill X amount of enemies before finishing the dungeon. Defeat {boss} in X minutes. Do not get KO'd. Complete the quest and you're rewarded with more gil and Soldiery.

[Prototype909]

Which is why I said 5-20% chance of dropping. Also, i115 is less than i120 (so Poetics > Dungeon, but you're still gearing up, thus progression) and since chances are the last CT dungeon will drop i120 gear... where's the problem? Also, again, the i125 weapons would have a 5% drop and a lockout. Depending on how lucky you are, you might get the weapon instantly or never see one for a week-month.

It doesn't matter how low the drop rate is, people would farm it because once you're done with your cap or you run into a wall in Coil there's nothing else to spend your time on anyways. There's a reason SE has made sure that 4 mans have dropped garbage even though the "problem" is obvious to anyone who has been level 50 since 2.1. They don't care if they don't drop anything relevant because they don't want anything to be relevant outside of their "Coil >(=) Upgraded Tome > Base tome = CT on Time Delay > Old content" system.

I'd love to see them implement something like this because it's similar to what FF XI did a layer of its end-game with Rem's Chapters (Fights ranging from Very Easy to Very Hard with layered rewards that increase in type and number as you go up in difficulty) but they've just shown such a lack of ability or desire to do anything that would make dungeons anything more than "Here's where you get your tomes (And as of 2.4, not even vanity is present since it's all recycled gear this time)". Honestly that's my biggest problem with this game, that Coil is the end goal and everything else has to be warped around "This is how you transition to Coil, this is how you make Coil easier, this is to help you catch up to Coil after X amount of time". It just warps the entire focus of the game into a single set of instances rather than even attempting to make a majority of the fights worthwhile to people who are progression focused.