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.

[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.

[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.

[Nalien]

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

Any love child of Hunts will be a bastard, unless they finally took my advice and Hunts went out and got a fully time job with force pops...

If those NMs and HNMs are the same as Hunts... God f*cking dammit... I don't want another "We have to wait 30 minutes while my best friends flatmates grandmas dead cat logs on to get credit!", followed by a half minute zerg down... I also don't want something a handful of people can monopolize, and effectively kill the content for the majority... If they're not force popped, I'm going to be instantly disappointed...

Undersized Parties is by far the best thing they've added to Heavensward thus far, and I want this to be that, The Event. We already know we can enter solo or with a full alliance, and everything in between. Potentially relevant rewards on top of that is great. Everything just hinges on how the NM/HNMs are handled... Ideally this truly would be Sky, from Final Fantasy XI... That was great because you used items to pop Gods, I don't think we'd have seen things as interesting as Red Mages soloing Byakko, if the pop had to be contested, or the entire server could show up and help for credit...

Honestly. If they lock it to "Party Only" that kills it. It fixes the problem completely. Of course it means you will have to make it so the zone is large and spawns are fast enough so one party can't get everything.

It really doesn't... One party monopolizing them wouldn't be the issue, it would be several just camping them 24/7 and never giving anyone else a chance... Not to mention the drama that would create... You're happily waiting for a spawn, then someone else swoops in, it spawns, and they claim it, have fun!

Force pops or bust, IMO.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

Any love child of Hunts will be a bastard, unless they finally took my advice and Hunts went out and got a fully time job with force pops...

If those NMs and HNMs are the same as Hunts... God f*cking dammit... I don't want another "We have to wait 30 minutes while my best friends flatmates grandmas dead cat logs on to get credit!", followed by a half minute zerg down... I also don't want something a handful of people can monopolize, and effectively kill the content for the majority... If they're not force popped, I'm going to be instantly disappointed...

Honestly. If they lock it to "Party Only" that kills it. It fixes the problem completely. Of course it means you will have to make it so the zone is large and spawns are fast enough so one party can't get everything.

[Selli]

Snip.

I never made XI so I can't make any comparison. I'm not particularly fond of the salt hunts bring myself, but the reason why I compared it to them is because hunts, at one point, were actually really challenging. You had to come together as a team, as a server sometimes too, to bring something down. That's what I liked about hunts and why I made the comparison. That, and, wasn't it basically directly said by Yoshi that "the easiest mobs will be like level 60 B Ranks"?

No need to fly off the handle. I didn't mean to offend you.

[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.