Regarding Adjustments to Exploratory Missions

[Mature]

Just to say that Diadem is dead right now. There was more people interested in going in before the patch.

Right now I don't see much point on doing it.I really like the idea and the whole concept but at the moment is a bit pointless as to why should I go in for 90 mins. Maybe for gathering...

The best thing to do for it is to add more gathering stuff , increase the spawn rate for steel spoils by 40% , add materia crafting/gathering V now (I know is coming for 3.2) let the star ranks pop faster as it was so there's something to do.

90 mins is a long time to run a "dungeon" and to press buttons for not reward to be worth having of is not there.

I honestly like a lot the whole diadem idea it just needs good rewards for people to join all the time.

[Kaurie]

Thank you for all the feedback regarding the Diadem.

The mixing of battle classes/jobs with gathering classes

Requests for a filter feature for aetherial equipment exchange

Players ignoring monsters after managing to land the first attack

Implementing a vote dismiss feature

Honestly, Yoshi, I really appreciate all the hard work you guys do, but this post saddens me. First off, the list of feedback you posted seems to be addressing very minor issues. There are plenty of feedback posts and threads which tackle much larger issues, but you seem to have focused on a very minor select few. Further, to each point, it sounded as if you said 'we get that you're unhappy, but we have our reasons and are going to keep it as is." with the notable exception that you are decreasing the drop rates of items.

The core issue and feedback that I've seen on reddit, on general discussion posts, on dungeon forum posts and here, is that Diadem lacks actual incentive for exploration. I've seen various ideas of how to fix it. Some are fairly viable, others not (in my opinion). However, none of that is addressed in your post.

The core issue with Diadem is not that gatherers can come, or that people aren't trying when there, or that we cannot kick someone or that we can't filter equipment. It's that the entire execution is boring. There is no feeling of exploration at all. When I go on an exploratory mission I expect the focus to be exploring. It's not, at all. And this is not because players don't want to explore, it's because the design of the entire Diadem. A combination of the following things make it this way:

*Mobs respawn
*Killing mobs quickly increases respawn rate of better mobs
*Flight


This has resulted in people flying to the easiest thing, because they can just fly over everything else, and then killing that easiest thing over and over until the stuff with the good loot spawns. It's a fundamental design flaw.

Therefore, I feel that removing any one of the above may help solve the problem. If mobs don't respawn, people naturally have to move around to kill. If people can't fly, they have to work their way to the good stuff. If killing mobs more quickly doesn't increase spawn rate of better mobs, people may have more incentive to spread out.

However, other things could be added which encourage exploration. For example, make use of the caves. Have a gold chest that sits at the end of the cave, so if you work your way through it then you get a chest. Provide a gold chest reward if you fully reach a certain point on each island. Or whatever.. encourage people to move. Right now you encourage people to sit at one point and farm, and any movement is detrimental to the party.

I was really looking forward to this, as exploration is a big thing for me, but this isn't exploration. This is a Hunt Farm.

Another big issue that I have seen is that this was hyped up to be rather mid-core. That it should appeal to people who find things like Void Ark to casual and Alex Savage to difficult. However, this is not difficult at all, and definitely not mid-core by any means.

[Levi]

There is no skill, fun, teamwork or anything else involved. The Diadem is a failure on all fronts, made to let "causals" get their 210 items with no effort while we break our backs try to pass the outrageous mechanics you guys put in A3, another way to pad game time.
Please, think about the huge mistake you've made creating this content and refrain from making anything even close to this "Boring Diablo Clone" you've made.
Take care.

You shouldnt be doing hard raids if you dont want to be one of the few people completing it. If all could do it, it would be another easy Alexander. And all would complain that its to easy and that there are no hard raids and so on.

And the casuals will get their 210 gear in 3.2 anyway. Well they(we) are getting it in 3.1 at NA weekly one piece anyway.

[umbralcadenza]

Here's another great example of poor logic and reasoning (though not featured in this post: )

The amount of Allagan tomestones rewarded for completing objectives in the Easy/Normal mode has been adjusted to be more balanced with the amount of time needed and the mode selected to complete the objectives.

I'll do some basic arithmetic here with information before this change:

* Diadem can be queued for every 2 hours, and you can complete objectives to obtain 40 Esoterics.
* An EX dungeon can be completed on a safe average of once every 40 minutes to obtain 40 Esoterics.
* Which of these grant more Esoterics per hour?

This isn't a riddle. Why are you nerfing Esoterics in Diadem? You can't even argue about work vs. reward because Esoterics already grossly over-rewards you with some of the best gear available for doing some of the most trivial content available. Running EX once per day barely takes any time and is not even close to difficult.

The devs need to spend a lot less time trying to make content "balanced" (since clearly they are terrible at it) and figure out what they need to do instead to make content fun, which I can only hope would be a modestly more successful endeavor.

Seriously, put some of your long-term MMO players in a debate with these people.

[Colorful]

snip

How much Esoterics does it give now? I'm sick and tired of running dungeons day in and day out, and this gave me a method of making them while not even trying to, and they nerfed it? That on top of the measly 20 Esoterics from a Void Ark run which is far longer than your average dungeon run...

[Alistaire]

Here's another great example of poor logic and reasoning (though not featured in this post: )



I'll do some basic arithmetic here with information before this change:

* Diadem can be queued for every 2 hours, and you can complete objectives to obtain 40 Esoterics.
* An EX dungeon can be completed on a safe average of once every 40 minutes to obtain 40 Esoterics.
* Which of these grant more Esoterics per hour?

To be fair, if people want to farm esoterics in diadem, it was more like 10-15 minutes for 40 eso, ditch, repeat 10 times whenever through the week, and not need to do anything else at all. And since people ditching makes other people upset; SE wanted to nerf that. I did a run in normal for eso before the maintenance, with 3 people, and got it done in 15 minutes.

Also normal is 30 eso now. (edit: and that makes it still more efficient than dungeons if you can do it in 10 minutes)