New Direction in Content

[OoglieBooglie]

Would like to see a 99 floor semi-random dungeon

I too would like to see a randomly generated dungeon, of semi-variable length. 99 floors is probably a bit much.

[UBERHAXED]

Technically speaking, you are correct given I used incorrect wording:



Which is why I questioned the point of doing Savage outside of BiSing and challenge content. I'm not even going to factor the islands. I feel getting the tokens to upgrade something as little as a shoe will take two or so weeks, making it longer than running A2 weekly given your group's RNG is good.

Let's be real here. You shouldn't expect anything faster than the token we have right now. Which is a month for 1 upgrade item and 2 months for the weapon. Not sure where you are getting 2 weeks from.

[Kailok]

I too would like to see a randomly generated dungeon, of semi-variable length. 99 floors is probably a bit much.

FFXI was able to achieve 100 floors with Nyzul Isle, but you wouldn't handle them all at the same time. Basically every 20 levels there was a big boss to fight that dropped gear (Floors 20 & 40 could either be Adamantoise, Behemoth, or Fafnir so even the bosses were semi-random) and you went up 5 floors at a time, if I remember correctly. The areas were random and there were different objectives for each floor. It was pretty fun content and it lasted for a good while.

(Again, I don't want FFXIV to become FFXI, I'm just saying this kind of content is doable. Especially if FFXI was able to pull it off years ago.)

[Kailok]

Thinking about it, given the previous conversation, I would be willing to forego increased ilvls every 6 months and instead allow them to just rebalance the different gear in the game to have effects on them instead of just being bland gear with cookie cutter stats. I'm aware they've said before this would be tricky to balance, but this would not only make certain gear released viable for longer but it would also bring back "builds" and let players have different play-styles and content itself would still be relevant later down the line because it isn't being made useless every time a new patch comes out.

[Airget]

1) While yes at the same time XIV is just one game, I mean if you have fun just playing one game that's fine but you don't always need stuff to do to keep your busy, sometimes what's best is to do other things outside the game than rely on the game to offer you content to keep you satisfied year-round.

2) Scripted fights are a way to keep balance sadly, see by making fights more dynamic all you do is put more pressure on healers and tanks to adapt to the fight, DD don't really have anything to lose by a non-scripted fight because they just gotta not get hit, to survive. With a Tank though, random actions/sequences that occur could cause more damage than normal and with healers having to heal for harder hits their MP drains faster. An unscripted fight generates an unfair treshold of losing because the boss decided to use hundred fist back to back and what fun is that to lose a fight all because RNG said I'm going to use my mega super strong ability twice? At least when a fight is scripted you know the limits and how far your job can take you but the moment you throw a wrench into it all you end up doing is making it harder for Tanks/Healers to deal with the content.

3) I will admit raids do have their issues however I think the type of raid people really want will be seen in island exploration. With the way the 24-man hard mode area sounds like, it seems that's the type of hard raid-like content players want. That's the thing, in today's MMO world it isn't exactly easy to get 24 people to always be up and ready to do content, even in the days of XI Dynamis getting that many to dedicate 2-4hrs to content wasn't easy, think about that for a second, 2 days out of the week you are asking a large group of people to come online at the same time and set time aside to do content that could take up to 3hrs, 4hrs if you consider getting there on time, waiting for others, going in etc etc. 4hrs is 1/6 of a day doing that twice over months is a lot to ask out of a large portion of people, it's much easier to have a "raid" content with 8 people because organizing 8 is way easier than organizing 24 and battle wise it's easier to balance fights with 8 in mind than 24 in mind.

When it comes to island content however it's less about point A to point B and more about setting your own path, going in, testing the waters for 90 minutes, learning new things and then going back to use what you learned. There is less structure towards a forced path and there isn't a sense of needing to get to the last boss to "win" that has been in every content released up to now. Island exploration offers an experience to allow you to go in with 2-24 people and do what you can, push as hard as you can, and challenge yourself that I think you are looking for when it comes to expressing the lack of 24 man "raid" content. If you played XI when Dynamis was first released and even the change, this is what island exploration sounds like it will be like.

4) Eh, besieged campaign, FATEs are pretty much those, you can do FATE and obtain xp for a job or seals for GC to turn in for items and profit yada yada but honestly what was campaign or besiseged but content to gain xp and some currency to trade in for items? Doesn't that sound a lot like hunts and FATE? Though I will say, it would be neat to have a Campaign like content where Beastmen tribes attack and summon their primal to cause havoc in certain areas, while sadly it would be difficult to implement into 2.0 zones it could fit into 3.0 areas maybe even something that erupts through the Alexander storyline, beastmen want it for themselves and now you have to hold them back. Heck man go one step up and have it where when the beastman "wins" it makes savage mode harder, since savage mode can only be done with people on your server it could be setup where when x tribe overwhelms and "corrupts" alexander it alters certain aspects of the fight making it harder which would encourage groups to ban together to prevent the beastmen from making those encounters tougher.

5)PVP could easily be fixed by creating a unique instance server for that content. There is no reason why USA servers should be segregated from one another, they are all in the same location so it would benefit SE in terms of keeping PVPers around to create a cluster of instances in which it grabs from every NA server rather than the current system. I honestly think this would be hard to pull off if anything they could change it where the restriction is that you can only queue for PVP or Dungeons, so if you want to PVP you can't queue for frontline and a dungeon in the same "queue" of waiting because they are off different servers. With that mentality I think the stress that would be put on the servers would be alleviated because when you queue for pvp it's only focused on pvp areas and it's grabbing from all the other servers in NA area that want to pvp, by doing this you would increase the grab of people able to pvp by quite a bit and it would satisfy a lot of players who may be disappointing by the way it currently pulls because you are in essence missing out on half your competition because if you are on Aether, you can't player with Primal and vice-versa.

[Alex_Lenderson]

I think they just need to make 2 tiers of Raid content - the LFG version where you get the "catch-up" gear, kind of like how current Alexander exists, and then the more endgame oriented version where you take a small group in and spend some time in there. Sort of how WoW's Ice Crown Citadel worked where you went in and fought trash and each boss had a checkpoint where you could pick up again for the rest of the week. I just miss the "raid feel", and arena-based boss fights do not give any sense of adventure. Sure it feels good to finally win after hours and hours of getting everything just right, but that isn't a raid.

Why do you like hours of wasted time on trash mobs? I don't get this at all.

[Kailok]

Why do you like hours of wasted time on trash mobs? I don't get this at all.

Why do you like running the same scripted fight over and over again, spending hours just learning the script instead of involving yourself in truly dynamic content?

Besides, who said it had to be "hours" of time on trash mobs? Noone wants to spend HOURS on that. Make them difficult, make them interesting! Make every mob in there as strong as a B rank I get people don't want to "waste time" - then why not make the trash pulls more interesting in theme with the upcoming boss? Why not make them useful and drop useful things that could benefit your group / fc? Then it isn't as much a waste of time as it is that getting through the trash is also part of the experience of not only getting gear but, say, airship components or crafting materials for your crafters. I don't want trash for the sake of wasting time, I want trash to be in theme with the raid and to be part of the endgame experience, not just dealing with it 'til you get to the boss. I'm not saying put 15 packs of goblins you can easily Deathflare to get past - I'm talking about interesting mobs to fight that drop items that are useful to your raid group. It doesn't have to be Endgame gear to be useful to you.

Hell, they could even take away the singular upgrade material (200 eso -> 210 eso materials) and make them a gathering thing where you need X amount, and by killing trash you are able to farm them instead of them being a drop from the boss. That way even if your group isn't able to progress on the boss, you've still collected upgrade materials that help you progress. Suddenly trash doesn't sound so much of a waste of time, it sounds like a viable experience of the endgame raid. Then they put a checkpoint up just before the boss so for the rest of the week you can hop right to the boss without having to fight anymore trash. Then repeat next week. If you can't handle 30 minutes of useful material farming per week, I don't know why you're doing endgame anyway.

[Xatsh]

the issue is trash mob.

Why is there trashmobs? I never understood why that became a thing in mmo. There should never be trash mobs, they only waste time. Do not drop anything and just can be mindlessly face rolled over.

Gona do a cardinal sin around here and bring up xi again.

Make them like they were in dynamis, things that are require crowd control, specific kill orders, timed abilities. Make it so the trash mobs if the alliance screwed up will kill everyone.

But then again make them have a chance to actually drop worthwhile stuff to. On trash it can be random drops or token drops, bosses garenteed if they want to do that.

As others said make each boss the strength of an A or B (HW not oldschool) and make them come in waves of 6 to 20. Make people utalize sleep spells, bind spells, gravity and such. Bring back kiting. That is what is missing from the raids and dungeons. Get rid of trash and add meaningfull mobs... that actually drop stuff. Can even be say like an allegan shard, which can be traded for 1-3 esoterics. Make the normal mobs drop that if not gear.

[Fevelle]

I really can't see any of the people complaining about trash as long term FF players. Trash mobs give us a hint of what random battles were on previous titles, something you had to deal with to get to the boss. I do think they need better AI and a chain loot system like FFXII, but they do not need any especific "reward" just because there are trash in some raids.

[Kailok]

It'd be interesting to see if we can get a dev to respond on this. I know they are coming out with Explorations in Diadem, but I don't want them to stop there. I'd like to see more content like this and more progressive raids instead. I want to experience the next Alexander as a dungeon raid, really get a chance to explore it.