FFXIV and Risk vs. Reward

[DenebPunkin]

Some do, some don't. Same can be said about casuals to. That isn't just a hardcore thing.

No actually in this game it is mostly ( and I might even say "purely" ) a hardcore thing. The "casual" player is someone that does not gorge, they play intermittently and take there time with the content, not only that but they actually engage in as much content as possible. Hardcorers seem to focus on certain content and burn through that content than complain about not having enough to do. That is just the reality of FF14 at this point.

[Saccharin]

No actually in this game it is mostly ( and I might even say "purely" ) a hardcore thing. The "casual" player is someone that does not gorge, they play intermittently and take there time with the content, not only that but they actually engage in as much content as possible. Hardcorers seem to focus on certain content and burn through that content than complain about not having enough to do. That is just the reality of FF14 at this point.

The term casual has different meanings for different player, that's why I hate it so much.

[Vivi_Bushido]

No actually in this game it is mostly ( and I might even say "purely" ) a hardcore thing. The "casual" player is someone that does not gorge, they play intermittently and take there time with the content, not only that but they actually engage in as much content as possible. Hardcorers seem to focus on certain content and burn through that content than complain about not having enough to do. That is just the reality of FF14 at this point.

Well your wrong. It's not "purely" to just being a hardcore thing. I identify myself to be hardcore and hangout with a fair share of both casual and hardcore players, and I've been playing this game for almost two years without ever unsubbing once. And even though I gorge myself on the content, I never once got so bored as to quit playing for any period of time. Sure, there's been times where I didn't log in for a few days, but that's because of things that happen in real life that prevented me from doing so. I know this may be hard for some people to grasp, but hardcore players do have lives as well.

[Kaurie]

FFXIV: Heavensward had a lot of different expectations set upon it by different types of players. For some of us, we understood that ARR had to play it safe in order to rebuild trust in the game and draw in new players who may not have played MMOs before. We were okay with that. When 3.0 was being discussed, the dev team mentioned that they would be more experimental and felt more confident after ARR's success. Players like myself interpreted this to mean that the training wheels would come off, and that new content would be difficult or at least would require a higher level of skill and participation than content in ARR did, and that the open world itself would also follow this model.

I agree strongly with your risk vs reward argument. However, this is not how I understood what they were saying about 3.0 at all. I thought they were talking about them taking risks in game design and features. ARR was to set the baseline for the game, and 3.0 would add things which add variety in the way you play (things like traits, customization, builds, varied armor, interesting stats and new gameplay modes). They've (kind of) done this with Diadem, but the execution is very low-risk, and in my opinion did not turn out as well as it was hyped up to be.


(OK Now time to read the 4 pages of replies....)

[ArchonCina]

Wow, so many replies. Thanks for all the different opinions. I want the discussion to be visible.

For those who shot down my ideas (weather/day/night-only mobs, mobs that aggro to different senses than sight, and mobs that are weaker or stronger than average) what kind of suggestions could you propose to increase the Risk/Reward dynamic for FFXIV 3.2 and beyond? Maybe I'm not on the right track with the solution, but I think I'm definitely on track with the problem description.

The recap of my suggestion is that some mobs aggro to different senses. Sound, low HP, use of magic in proximity, etc. And some mobs be stronger than average, some weaker. For example, a lv55 mob normally has such and such HP and such and such ATK/DEF stats. Randomly, when mobs in that area spawn, some could spawn with 10% higher or 10% lower stats. (Okay, maybe 10%ATK/DEF is not the right bracket, but this is the idea). They'd look the same and have the same skills, but they might be stronger than you expect, or they might be weaker. This makes running up and hitting it in the face more engaging, because you might be in for a surprise. In my own ideal case, I'd like the "stronger" ones to be able to kill you if you aren't careful. Or maybe 1 in 100 of them will just be strong enough to be able to kill you unless you run away or out-level it.

Does this break the "EZ FACEROLL" of open world encounters? Yes, yes it does. And I think that's a good thing. But maybe you've got other suggestions to add risk and reward back into FFXIV.

[Kaurie]

Wow, so many replies. ....

I like your overall idea, but I honestly have 0 reason to go to the maps (except flying in for a hunt, where I fight 0 openworld mobs), so I am not sure why I would want the map mobs to be harder.

I'm fairly certain the last time I fought an open world mob (non-hunt/non-fate) was on June 21st.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

The issue is you need to give a people a reason to WANT to fight mobs outside of dungeons, otherwise they're just a massive waste of time when people just want to get from A to B for a daily quest. Mobs were a bit dangerous when 3.0 hit because we weren't geared up. After finishing the main story and gearing up on esotreics, we're right back where we started in 2.0 where the max level mobs pose no threat to us, but still aggro anyway because we're in level range and the RNG Heavy spam when we're just trying to get away.

[ArchonCina]

But server logs don't show emotion, just raw data. You have to interpret what that means to a person, or a lot of people as the case may be. I've seen a lot of threads about challenge/risk/adventure lately. I'm not on a limb here.

[Saccharin]

But server logs don't show emotion, just raw data. You have to interpret what that means to a person, or a lot of people as the case may be. I've seen a lot of threads about challenge/risk/adventure lately. I'm not on a limb here.

No, it doesn't you dont look at why bob and his friend quit you look at the bigger picture and see what you can do from that. People say AS3 is a dps check so SE can look and see what dps is needed to down it and then think ok, we'll nerf it just enough that half the tries we have in this data would have cleared it. Bob then downs, or gets to 3% and carries on and downs it next week. Made up situation but just to illustrate a simple case.