How to keep the Gold Saucer relevant..

[Neridine]

Right now the Gold Saucer has been a topic of discussion for quite a few folks. Some people love it but are frustrated with some major aspects of the MGS, but other players who aren't into it because of not wanting to deal with the way certain things were implemented such a tournaments. I really think the common theme for boils down to the same reasons. Lack of accessibility to games from outside the MGS, no incentive to earn MGP in any way other than the most efficient way possible (meaning ignore activities that don't yield the best effort:reward ratio), and tournament issues.


I'll expand on those:

..also some quick acronyms: MGS= Manderville Gold Saucer, TT= Triple Triad, LOV: Lord of Verminion

Lack of accessibility

Issue: Currently anything except TT in a limited context is impossible outside the MGS. This limits participation significantly and stops a lot of people from participating frequently.

Solution(s):

Housing item that allows you to participate in Verminion or racing remotely. Another alternative could be like a "linkshell" item you purchase for MGP that allows you to queue for these things remotely as well ala duty finder.

No Reason to Participate in many types of MGS content

Issue: No incentive to earn MGP in various ways (thus shifting participation to only a few activities that might not encourage people to try different things). Additionally, once you get enough MGP to get your target item(s) there is currently not much of a reason to continue to participate.

Solutions:
Fine tune existing content and add some additional perks/changes to help spur the desire to participate and continue participating after just getting item rewards:

Add ranks to an MGS profile based on things like number of races won, highest pedigree bird raised, tournament matches won in TT/LOV/rank points/RP matches won etc that are required to buy certain MGS items. This doesn't devalue MGP really but does reward you for participating in lots of events.

Add a rare chance of obtaining a unique minion from the crane game or other such attractions.

Balance current content in the MGS:
In racing the restorative-type items are far more useful than the offensive ones since you can only use them on people in front of you.
In Verminion, minion cost is not well balanced between high and low cost minions considering the extra production time on higher cost compared to their survivability. Perhaps allow higher cost minions to activate their special ability with fewer minions summoned and/or increase their statistics to encourage tactics other than light unit spam (this would be GREAT to encourage a varied playing field and more strategy).


Increase the GATE appearance rate.

More double-or-nothing options for things like, Racing, TT opponents, Minion. Maybe have NPCs “upgrade” when you re-challenge for an increased award such as different cheaterface card decks with chance to drop a different/rarer card, special racers such as Godbert or Tataru, boss minions mixed within the playing field. The double down option for the new gathering minigames is great and I would love to see this kind of stuff extended to other games.

New rules for Triple Triad (Example, Lucky 7s: 7s overturn any other card value including other 7s, Shuffle: card positions change on board each round)

New racing track: Chocobo Forest


Chocobo Racing Prix tournament (See tournament issues)

The VIP lounge. Costs 100k MGP for one real life week of access. Allows you to race on a special course, access special minion challenges, triad opponents with unique cards, special items only purchasable by VIP members. To be able to purchase a VIP member pass you also need to have certain ranks within all the MGS attractions. The incentive to keep buying VIP could mean a discount over time or chance at really big winnings/high stakes games as well as maybe other perks such as personal FC style buffs purchasable for yourself via MGP (+20% mount speed for a week, gathering rate up 5% for a week, HQ chance increase by 5% for a week, Minion Defense +10 in LOV, Racing Chocobo +20 speed, etc).

The VIP lounge could also be a segway into something like the Battle Square from FF7. Instead of only a simple survival mode, perhaps special trials could be done as well such as a fight against all the Garlean Legatuses, the Scions, Hildebrand & Co., Minions vs Players.

Tournament issues

Issue: You can easily cheat placing in tournaments, they aren’t a true measure of skill due to non-random pairings

Solution(s): This has been discussed a lot. My solution however would be to make all tournament matches done via duty and data center wide. An even more extreme measure on top of this would limit you to challenging a particular player no more than once/twice/three times per tournament. There have been a lot of ideas given here already in other threads…howwwwwwwwever, once the actual tournaments are formatted to be fair to all players I would LOVE to see a Chocobo Racing Prix tournament!