Regarding Adjustments to Exploratory Missions

[Kenji1134]

What then is the new "right way" - if you'd be so kind as to share.

Logically speaking, Diadem hosts 9 parties, an Alliance consists of 3 parties.
Hence it would seem as though the ideal group breakdown would be to have 3 parties per area farming mobs.

But for this to work worth a damn, it'd be nice if we had some useful information about how track spawning actually works... Such as:
1. A progress bar, more detailed than the short list of messages we see.
2. What are the EXACT requirements to get credit towards progressing a Tracks spawn? - Claim? Deal X% damage across the party? Have Y total credit (counting hate) across the party?
3. What is the exact threshold for getting credit on a Star mob? Such that we'd know how many "max" groups we can have fighting one, probably 6-7 max.

Then there is the rather simple issue of efficiency.
Why is Triceratops island so popular?
The mobs have low hp, no mechanics, and the going theory is/was that for spawning tracks the rank does not matter, just the kill count. Hence the efficient thing to do is kill the weakest mobs available, in bulk.
Perhaps this is no longer the case?

Again, the "smart/logical" thing would be to give each mob in Diadem a certain value in terms of the tracks spawning.
Using HM as an example, IIRC Rank 3 Triceratops have ~...lets call it 'G' HP, and no mechanics. Rank 5 Sanuwas have 2.333*G HP, trust me on this, and a very annoying aoe knockback mechanic.
On an efficiency scale, it is more than twice as efficient to kill Triceratops than Sanuwas. Form a time perspective, this is closer to 3x more efficient due to dps (and time) lost on Sanuwas due to the aoe KB.

So SE why not implement something like the following.
Use the lowest health, no mechanic mob as a baseline, have it be lets say 10 points.
Higher rank mobs' point value is proportional to the HP increase from the lowest hp one, so a 5 is worth 23.3 points in this case.
Now if the mob has a frontal cone mechanic, add another 0.5 to the modifier. If it is an aoe mechanic, add 1.0 to the modifier...

End results:
Points = (Mob HP / Rank 3 HP + Boolean*Frontal*0.5 + Boolean*Cone*1)*10
And lets say we require 200 points to spawn tracks.
Continuing with Triceratops vs Sanuwas, Triceratops would be worth 10. Sanuwas would be 33, due to 2.3x HP and an aoe mechanic (2.3+1)*10.
Hence it would require 20 Triceratops kills to spawn a tracks, OR 8 Sanuwas. This is starting to look more reasonable.
To sweeten the deal, add another 10% per "rank over minimum bonus" to encourage seeking out stronger enemies. In HM this would mean that 3's are unaffected, 4's are worth 10% more, and 5's are worth 20% more. This would bring our Sanuwa point total to 39.6, or 40, so 250 for tracks would mean 6 Sanuwas and some random 4.

[Zenji]

Just my 2 cents, LORDS OF VERMINION WAS A HUGE WASTE OF TIME, PLEASE DON'T IMPLEMENT THINGS LIKE THIS ANYMORE. DOESN'T EVEN HAVE REWARDS FOR PLAYING IT.

[Dualblade]

Just my 2 cents, LORDS OF VERMINION WAS A HUGE WASTE OF TIME, PLEASE DON'T IMPLEMENT THINGS LIKE THIS ANYMORE. DOESN'T EVEN HAVE REWARDS FOR PLAYING IT.

And that has to do with Exploratory how?

[Regpuppy]

Going in with a full group of 8; one tank, two healers, and five dps. My group had no trouble getting gold chests under the new system. Right now, the meta is such that it's better for your party to farm on its own until tracks are called, or you spawn them yourselves and call them out. Then everyone gangs up on the star rank. With this, my group at least, has had better luck getting gold chests and I have a feeling this was what was originally intended anyway. You don't get a ridiculous amount of bronze chests as you did before, but I found it more enjoyable overall.

Diadem still needs work in other areas, but I feel like this patch was an improvement on this aspect.

[YshtoraHoly]

another issue is it's really hard to get token now, so far it's the only and most effective way for me to get V materia. Now I can only get 5-6, 0 if I'm unlucky per run (usually almost 40 in the past). How can we prepare for 3.2 when we probably need at least 11 materia for each job? they just killed off their content on their own like this.

[PopeHat]

And that has to do with Exploratory how?

Because a company has a set amount of resources and budget set to work with. When you allocate part of that budget to content with limited appeal then it's wasted. Putting teams to work on high effort low reward projects detracts from other higher value initiatives. I'm curious as to how well received LoV was to the JP community, but from my NA perspective it's a failed initiative and I would do little more than just keep it on life support moving forward. I'm starting to have concerns that the development direction of this game is missing what the community wants or needs. Fluff content that requires a large amount of development resources shows a lack of understanding from the leadership of FFXIV.

[Whiteroom]

I'm starting to have concerns that the development direction of this game is missing what the community wants or needs. Fluff content that requires a large amount of development resources shows a lack of understanding from the leadership of FFXIV.

Look at how Diadem turned out too. I had a lot of hopes on it being fresh content, but it really is just blah. Will it get played a lot? well yeah, but its not satisfying or memorable. You only go there for the prize, not the journey. So sad for content that had such potential. I wouldn't even be going to diadem if eso gear was locked to roll instead of class.

It's nothing more than a skinner box zerg.

[Fynlar]

People are farming diadem because of the increased rate at which gear spirit bonds.

Hahahaha, no. I don't know about you, but non-DoH/DoL materia has become worthless on my server other than for tier Vs, which you can't get from spiritbonding. Nobody that cares about contributing to get enough credit to spawn chests is going to be there wearing a bunch of crap gear to spiritbond.

[Zhexos]

Greetings,

Thank you for all your feedback!

As touched on by Yoshida in his post last week, adjustments will be made to the re-entry time for exploratory missions. This is scheduled to take place during tonight's hotfix.

The re-entry time will be reduced from 120 minutes to 45 minutes.

Here's some input from the development team on their decision to adjust the re-entry timer:

After confirming how everyone is playing the content, we made adjustments to remove any downtime for those who play the content for the full 90 minutes, as well as those who play for shorter times such as 60 minutes.

In the Dec. 1 hotfix, the downtime will be changed to 45 minutes.
It’s possible that some may feel that this new re-entry time is too long in certain situations, such as if they are harassed in-game or have disbanded accidentally, but it would be difficult for us to reduce the waiting time any further considering the amount of Esoterics available from exploratory missions.

We read everybody’s feedback posted on the forums and combine with the feedback from the global communities when working on adjustments to existing content. In addition, we are working to ensure that your feedback gets applied to future exploratory missions content too.

We'll be sure to share any further updates we receive, so please continue to post all your impressions and feedback!

[Zorlinta]

this change on timer is awesome news