Please do not make group quest open world areas.

[Gunspec]

I can see people asking for better LEVES to take down with friends, since being encounter locked allows SE to make them far more difficult and offer much better rewards. But open world enemies? Feels outdated to me.

In fact, i'm disappointed nobody has been asking for SE to utilize that content to give us more to do. Maybe offer 20 allowences to start a super-difficult levequest with 4-8 of your friends, that offer gear/materia/tomes. But nooooo, we keep crying for silly glorified trash mobs

Oooh, yes, more challenging leves should be a thing. Combine the idea with the underutilized guildhest mission structure, but set it in the open world. THAT would be the type of content that builds community and gets people working together, not trash mobs.

[Edellis]

The point I was trying to make is that the sonic fanbase cannot decide on what makes a sonic game good. Is it just going really fast? They started making the "boost" games, like colors which lacked the awful Werehog nonsense, and people still complained. Sure, most new sonic games are trash, but what I was getting at is that the community sends mixed messages on what they want improved. Probably not the best comparison, but whatever.

Ah. Well, just in response to that? The reason Sonic the Hedgehog games can't find a good formula is because the developers themselves simply don't know how to make good games anymore. The sonic community can tell the developers what they want forever, but Sonic Team no longer has the talent to use their own intuition, which is why all their games play like a jumbled mess of shallow concepts. It has nothing to do with "modern" or "classic" in sonic's case, Mario has altered it's formula tons of times and achieved overall success. Sega just can't design solid games anymore.


As for Square? They clearly take input, but have their own professional intuition as developers to know when to listen and when to make the other call. Some people agree, some disagree, but in the end it has worked out very well for this game. Black Mage is a good example of this, Summoner is an extreme example, and in heavensward hopefully it'll be a good one.

The only thing I can think of is the raid boss birds in Plane of Fire from Everquest. They often would charm the high level that comes to help people out. The charmed high level proceeds to steamroll all the lowbies.

Oh my god. That is hilarious.

Oooh, yes, more challenging leves should be a thing. Combine the idea with the underutilized guildhest mission structure, but set it in the open world. THAT would be the type of content that builds community and gets people working together, not trash mobs.

I know, right? In fact when they announced Hunts, i was fully expecting it to function like this. Instead....well, we got what people were asking for. And it's not very fun.

[KokonoeAiyoko]

Personally I'm SUPER HAPPY that they're finally bringing actual DANGER to the world. I'm a lover of exploration, and yet, with no threat of anything, it's almost as if they may as well not put monsters there at all...Sneaking around dangerous enemies, hell even dying to some, led to some super fun times with my friends and I XD

Here's an example of what it was like in Mor Dhona back in 1.0

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO yes.

[NovaWulfe]

snip

Well said, I can actually fully agree with you there.

[Edellis]

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO yes.

That...doesn't really look fun to me. He got one-shot. I already have to wait 10 years for a tank to join my queue, I have no desire to need a squad just to walk down an area.

[Seryl199]

That...doesn't really look fun to me. He got one-shot. I already have to wait 10 years for a tank to join my queue, I have no desire to need a squad just to walk down an area.

And again, I'll bring up that it was never stated that HW areas are intended to require a group to make it through. SE is making this change based on feedback they've received from their player base. This information is undoubtedly more than the daily whinings of the forum. Their decisions must be carefully considered from a financial standpoint, to please as large of a portion of their paying subscription members as they can. 2.0 was a fairy tale open world, and many of us weren't really impressed by it. Now, they are trying something with a bit more bite to it. If it is positively received, that doesn't mean that open world difficulty will continue to trend upwards. It means that SE listened to what the players wanted and delivered it, and will continue to do so. If not, they will do their best to adjust accordingly.

[Gunspec]

You know, I actually remember dying to stuff in the environment when I first started 2.0. Now granted, that was almost two years ago, and was due to having an ilevel that barely matched my character level, mostly NQ pieces of gear due to no crafting classes leveled, and sometimes facing off against enemies 5 levels higher than me. I would try and get kills for my hunting log, and enemies like the crocs in coethas and the garlean robots were pretty hairy encounters. I remember having trouble moving around freely in the slyphlands during 2.1 for dailies without having three or four spellcasters blasting away at me. The world HAD a sense of danger, but that was a long time ago. I've been level capped on everything for well over a year, and have trouble remembering when I was lower than ilevel 90.

"Fairy tale open world" isn't exactly how I would describe that initial 2.0 experience. Sure, I'm a destroyer of worlds today, but I think a majority of people are really overstating their power from a 2.0 perspective. So moving into 3.0, the idea of a "difficult" enemy is going to mean different things depending on what item level we consider bringing into it.

[Spy]

That...doesn't really look fun to me. He got one-shot. I already have to wait 10 years for a tank to join my queue, I have no desire to need a squad just to walk down an area.

We actually didn't need to go as a group. We just chose to. We wanted to get to the crystal cave together. And going together was part of the adventure :3

[TheEnygma]

Hm, I can't seem to get past this area
<Random player travels by>
"Hey! Want to group up? Since it's supposed to be hard and stuff?"
<Party invite declined>
"Hm....what about you?"
<Party invite declined>
"/fume"

[Seryl199]

You know, I actually remember dying to stuff in the environment when I first started 2.0. Now granted, that was almost two years ago, and was due to having an ilevel that barely matched my character level, mostly NQ pieces of gear due to no crafting classes leveled, and sometimes facing off against enemies 5 levels higher than me. I would try and get kills for my hunting log, and enemies like the crocs in coethas and the garlean robots were pretty hairy encounters. I remember having trouble moving around freely in the slyphlands during 2.1 for dailies without having three or four spellcasters blasting away at me. The world HAD a sense of danger, but that was a long time ago. I've been level capped on everything for well over a year, and have trouble remembering when I was lower than ilevel 90.

"Fairy tale open world" isn't exactly how I would describe that initial 2.0 experience. Sure, I'm a destroyer of worlds today, but I think a majority of people are really overstating their power from a 2.0 perspective. So moving into 3.0, the idea of a "difficult" enemy is going to mean different things depending on what item level we consider bringing into it.

I experienced the entirety of the MSQ and almost all of my initial adventuring as a conjurer, as well as the first 30 levels of ACN, which possessed a modest physick, so I found myself pretty self sufficient. In recently beginning to level BLM, I can see where you'd say there is still some sense of danger, but I never walked out of an encounter saying "wow, that mob put up a good fight." I either had enough hp to kill it, or I didn't. The suggestion that we will need to bring our all to the battle when trying to fight multiple enemies seems to hint that enemies will be, if not substantially, at least noticeably more difficult. I'm sure that Square is aware they have a delicate line to balance, to make things challenging but not too difficult.