I love Exploratory Missions.

[Zeno_McDohl]

Simple as that. It's fantastic, and is the first true FC content we've seen so far. It's great.

• Variety (battle, gathering, flight, giant area, optional goals)
• Able to switch jobs in the instance
• Music is good
• Can enter and ally with non-full parties
• Not rehashed content; new monsters etc
• Good reward list
• Neat references to older FF games (Dinosaur Forest in FF6)
• A sense of mystery (we just saw Hyperelectricity Weather)

I only have two points of feedback on it: contribution rewards and alliance system.

Contribution system: The contribution system to earn a chest from a mob is changing crowd control for the worse. It encourages players to outright ignore adds and focus down the biggest target, thus generally leaving mobs unchecked and crowd control is a mess. Everyone is trying to hit the biggest target so they don't miss out on the chest drop. This aspect of game design is only going to trickle down to the playerbase with negative effects. Even if no one is pulling mobs during a NM fight, the chance of a lesser mob spawning on top of you is still common. All of this is compounded on the fact that you can gather in this area, but there is little reason to gather when combat is occurring or else you risk missing out a chest via contribution.

Alliance system: It's downright unacceptable. It's not even an alliance system; it's a pseudo menu in the workshop and nothing else. You have no link to your other parties in Diadem; no way to natively chat with them, no way to watch for them on the map, no indicators above their characters that they're with you, no way to see their status or HP. What's the point of having an alliance channel if it's not even used here? We need a real alliance system, period. And not the one that the open-world uses, because it enforces full parties.

Finally, we lose our friend list when we enter. I have all names off for non-friends, and suddenly in Diadem no player names show up unless I force that setting back on for all players. We also lose our FC crests. What's the point? This is huge FC content and it wipes out our FC crests on gear.

[EDIT] Expand this content in future patches with new areas, new music, new rewards; and I'll be a happy player.

[Loony_BoB]

All good points. Thumbs up.

[iambanana]

yeah i love this feature too, a feature where give me proper gear drought, where i can get gear that better than anyone even its behind a huge RNG wall. at least its give me something to grind and not behind the weekly lockout, my most hated in thing in this game.

i miss the time in MMORPG where a player can be little/or literal god, where a player can be famous by his overkill gear, and stomping anything in Pvp or/and current patch at Pve content. not famous by dancing 24 hour non stop in idyllshire.

and if the party disbanding, or anything goes wrong, i can just fishing/gathering to get some gil.

[Immut]

I've been saying before that exploratory missions are what the open world should have been the entire time. This goes both ways:

1. exploratory missions would be amazing open world content. They're dangerous, rewarding, and gathering requires a degree of teamwork.
BUT
2. They aren't a good instance. It will be dead probably in 3-4 more weeks, when everyone gets their i210 left side from void ark. Many people stuck on a3s will already have full or nearly full i210 right side from page drops. The randomass stats that more frequently than not are worse than upgraded esoterics are a huge turnoff.

[itti18]

I love it too , its such a fun and rewarding way to spend time

[Hysterior]

Not everything is good though... cannot kick/replace players, if a player leaves while the shield is on, everybody is stuck forever and need to get out and hit the 2H cooldown, hunt mentality, 1H30 can be pretty long...

[Zeno_McDohl]

Not everything is good though... cannot kick/replace players, if a player leaves while the shield is on, everybody is stuck forever and need to get out and hit the 2H cooldown, hunt mentality, 1H30 can be pretty long...

Honestly, I've never entered Diadem once outside my FC. All has been well.

[DarkDedede]

It would also be nice if the spoils trader didn't list equipment that I had in my armory chest, and had registered to a gear set. I would hate to accidentally trade in a piece of equipment that I was planning on using.

[Ruri]

I personally love it, its a good way to make gil with items bought with the bronze/silver coins and spiritbind while getting 210 drops. Also Eso tomes for completing objetives. If only we could kick/replace AFK members or fill in spots for those who disconnected it would be awesome.

[Zephrey]

exploratory missions would be amazing open world content.

100% Yes. If this was open world I feel like it would have ended up being far more enjoyable than the current status. I can get why they limited it into DF just because of the overwhelming amount of people that would be in one zone, but... ugh. Come on, this would have been awesome! Introduce 6 new zones with crazy ass mobs we can kill at lv60(with an item level requirement to enter the zone itself) and have a challenge in open world instead of mobs being in zones just to be obnoxious (Aka weighted down on a mount)