Airship Exploration!

[Whocareswhatmynameis]

I'm really excited to hear some more news on the Airship exploration thing. They are saying its actually going to be fairly difficult and I hope they aren't lying. This sounds like exactly the kind of thing to get me excited to jump onto one of my battle classes again.

My only real complaints would be I'm not entirely sure they should give the 210 gear out so easily. And the airship thing only takes 10 minutes? Seems really short to me but I'll wait and try it out before I pass judgement.

[Viuiji]

From what I understand, the gear drops are 'up to' i210. So theoretically you could get lot's of i130 gear before you saw a i210. They did say in the slides that we will need luck

The 10 minutes was actually referring to the Aether Currents. We will have to attune before we can fly. No quests though (yea!) and then we will be able to fly within 10 minutes using our favourite flying mounts. ^^

[Windklinge]

its gear will be BIS mostly be piss easy to do but have a UNHUMAN dropchance because of RNG madness all over it. the fact alone that they stated its gonna be luck based says ALL about it. this makes void ark useless before its even out on top of that. gg SE.

[Selli]

When they first announced these, I thought they were a gather class only thing. (I don't... really know where I got that idea... I really don't. XD).

But now they sound like treasure maps and hunts had an amazing love child.

[Kuwagami]

its gear will be BIS mostly be piss easy to do but have a UNHUMAN dropchance because of RNG madness all over it. the fact alone that they stated its gonna be luck based says ALL about it. this makes void ark useless before its even out on top of that. gg SE.

ib4 3 month of constant parry/acc i210 gear for tanks.

VA won't be useless btw. i200 gear, upgrade items for i210 are a good thing as they are guaranteed. Nothing like a "kill it, hope for a gold chest, then hope for a i210, then hope it will be for your job, THEN hope it won't have trash stats so that you can use it".

Still, if you are super lucky, you'll be decked in i210 pretty soon, on multiple jobs.

[WellFooled]

I'm really excited about this feature. It has the potential to be something great. All the ingredients are there; the setting is cool (Airships!), it's open world (there are so few open world options), it has NMs, and the chance at very cool loot (both for stats and glamour!).

I have two worries right now though, because of its open world nature I worry that it could be so crowded that it's more of a race/competition than it is fun, but it's possible that the zones involved are big enough with enough resources that this won't happen. I also worry that the randomness involved could hurt some people (it's no fun being a statistical outlier), but the fact you can turn in unwanted items for points alleviates this worry a bit for me.

All and all I'm super hyped. My company is small and none of us are involved in hardcore raiding, this seems like a great way for us to get together and knock out fun and relevant content without needing to DF things or bring in outside help.

[Hyrist]

I have two worries right now though, because of its open world nature I worry that it could be so crowded that it's more of a race/competition than it is fun, but it's possible that the zones involved are big enough with enough resources that this won't happen. I also worry that the randomness involved could hurt some people (it's no fun being a statistical outlier), but the fact you can turn in unwanted items for points alleviates this worry a bit for me.

It looks like this section is semi-instanced. Large zones, but they have a participation limit before chucking people into another instance.

Speculatively, it looks like they built this structure off of their front-lines PvP system, where you queue up, it's a large instanced zone where parties can show up - but instead of being faced off against one another, those limited number of people in this semi-instance will be encouraged to work together to tackle the hardest content.

[AsakuraVN]

I have two worries right now though, because of its open world nature I worry that it could be so crowded that it's more of a race/competition than it is fun, but it's possible that the zones involved are big enough with enough resources that this won't happen. I also worry that the randomness involved could hurt some people (it's no fun being a statistical outlier), but the fact you can turn in unwanted items for points alleviates this worry a bit for me.

Take it as the field instances that made hunts alot more annoying when 3.0 just came out. You have 2-3 instances of the same map & if an instance get too crowded, all new players will be pushed to other instances when they teleport in. Except the population cap of Airship exploration maps are alot lower, I'm guessing 2 alliances max.

I'm just a little disappointed that they're free to fly zones, instead of having players stick with their airships. Would be cool if the airship suddenly got attacked by mobs & people has to defend it with cannons or something.

[Pibz]

I just really really hope this doesn't turn into Hunts 2.0, where it's just people rushing to wherever their LS calls coupled with griefing because of ninja pulls, and the things being turned into loot pinatas.
Again i'm hopeful, so please don't do the same thing again SE

[Hyrist]

I just really really hope this doesn't turn into Hunts 2.0, where it's just people rushing to wherever their LS calls coupled with griefing because of ninja pulls, and the things being turned into loot pinatas.
Again i'm hopeful, so please don't do the same thing again SE

The way they're explaining this makes it sound like there's a hard limit on how many people are going to show up in the zones. They say you may encounter other parties there. Not that it is a fully open zone like those we are used to.

So, speculatively, it sounds like we're covered. But I have a feeling that the greatest monsters in these Missions will require collaboration with our neighbors.