Variation of content?

[Miakisu]

First off, I love this game-how much effort has gone into making this much better than the original FFXIV and how much it has progressed. That said, I was wondering if we could see a little more variation of battle content. As it is, you get to level 60, get geared up for hardcore raids, fates and... that's really it. I'm not knocking on the hardcore raiding, I'm just wondering if there can be other battle content to spice things up a bit.

I understand that some of these examples made sense within the context of their stories, but I think it's possible to make these work.

Some examples/ideas I'll cite:

1) Example: City defense (Besieged from FFXI):
-Defend a city against an invading army. Repel them from reaching their goal and defeat their bosses within an hour to route their attack.

How this could work in the story: Perhaps defend against Imperials skirmishing against Eorzean patrols.

2) Example: Outpost defense/attack (Garrison/Campaign)
-attack or defend your own outposts while enemy NPC's invade/defend an area.

How this could work in the story: See above example.

3) Example: Invade Other World (FFXI's Dynamis)
(Diadem seems to be a step in the right direction toward this, but not quite)
-Invasion of another world in order to put a stop to evil and defeat their boss in an alternate dimension. Must take careful planning to achieve end goal.

Story suggestion: There are plenty of encounters with the void that we have in FFXIV. Why not go and take the fight to this Void? (Or Imperials)

4) Example: Castrum Meridanium (FFXIV)
A long dungeon with a lot of of different elements, including using cannon emplacements to destroy enemies (Also seen in Dusk Vigil Hard), loading ammo into weapons that team mates would control. Being able to take a player out of just doing their rotations was great!

Point: Got players out of their usual Dungeon-based jobs and mixed things up for some.

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5) Example: Steps of Faith (FFXIV)
-Coordination to destroy enemies using people who DPS, people who used cannons, and those that used snares to hold back the boss from the end goal. Fun when you can get a group of people to cooperate successfully.

-Point: See above.

6) Suggestion: Make fates matter for an area
-Perhaps the number of successful fates contribute to a "fortune" meter. If meter is high, benefits are given to the area (Perhaps for gatherers and exp for low-level players), or even the nation in charge of this territory. Too many fates lost and detrimental things may occur (Hunt bosses much more difficult, Void monsters/Imperials/Eikons appear and attack players, etc.)

7) Suggestion: Stop enemy advancing bosses
-Perhaps enemy strongholds may, at some times, spawn megabosses that travel through their areas and wreak havoc. A warning is given for players to participate and contribute to knocking down these bosses to keep players or resources safe.

8) Suggestion: Battles involving mounts
-I know I personally liked using the magitek armor to cut down imperials while my magitek still had HP in The Praetorium. Why not use them again (load temporary lethal ammo or something) in battles/raids? (And yes, I loved seeing them in Alexander too).

9) Suggestion: Airship battles
-Perhaps an on-rails adventure where players use cannons with certain HP to defend against pirates/monsters attacking their airships. Might mesh nicely with the pirates from the Void Ark quest. If players fail, ship may be boarded and players must defend their ship.

How these could be implemented is anyone's guess, but I'm hoping that this is not asking for too much. To the very least, seeing something different in battle besides just raids and dungeons. And yes, I know there are PS3 limitations that some will cite. But I honestly think that the PS3 can't be a block for all of these being possible.

What do you think?

(Sorry for the long post length)

[Alahra]

You can edit your post to to get around the character limit.

As for variation of content, that's something they are (supposedly) working on from here on out. Diadem was the first example of a new type of content we got, but it was unfortunately marred by some design oversights that have left it unpopular for the time being.

[Felis]

2) Example: Outpost defense/attack (Garrison/Campaign)
-attack or defend your own outposts while enemy NPC's invade/defend an area.

South Shroud, as a FATE

[Nalien]

South Shroud, as a FATE

Big problem being there is only like, two of these? South Shroud and Eastern Thanalan? Probably one in La Noscea as well, but the point still stands; These good kind of FATEs are extremely rare and not even that good anyway. The consequences for failure/success are a bleedin' minion vendor. There's nothing particularly big going on in the outpost you capture/save, they're just low level EXP FATEs that show what FATEs could be like, so really they're nothing more than a constant reminder that SE never did much more than churn out pop culture references with the same "Kill X enemies!" FATEs... If these kinds of FATEs were in the majority, and we had some level cap ones with significant enough rewards, well, perhaps people would be doing those FATEs anyway, perhaps getting Atma off them would be a bonus...

As for something like Besieged, I made a thread earlier this week. XI got things like Besieged and Campaign down perfectly, Hamlet Defense was an attempt to mirror Besieged I think, and FATEs are apparently I giant leap backwards, seeing as they're meant to be our replacement for Hamlet Defense... Imagine a Campaign against Garlemald, in which locations across the region are constantly being fought over and changing hands... We keep losing, we have to defend our HQ from Garlemald. We keep winning? We get a special instance like Praetorium in which we storm their stronghold...

There is a lot of potential for good content with such systems, shame the developers are more interested in churning out dungeons ad nauseum... Work it correctly and stuff like this is content that could have lasted from 2.0 to 5.0, instead we're lucky to get something that lasts from #.1 to #.2 these days...

[Derio]

I like the defense and attack idea. We already have that in pvp in a sense. However if you add a caste in. Add enemy NPC's and then add a 24 man alliance. I could see it turning out to be some really cool content.

I still think they are going to come up with random questlines that give rewards for Diadem though. I think they still have big plans for that area.

[Nalien]

I like the defense and attack idea. We already have that in pvp in a sense. However if you add a caste in. Add enemy NPC's and then add a 24 man alliance. I could see it turning out to be some really cool content.

PvE Frontlines (Secure) would work fairly well, though making it instanced robs it of much of its charm. There is no reason something like this couldn't be open world, just tie it in with FATEs.

Lets say you slap several of those capture points from Secure around Coerthas Western Highlands. Have it so they're captured/defended via FATEs. Controlling a lot of them provides some native bonus to everyone in the zone, as well as making the zone a safer place (since it's mostly controlled by Ishgard). You've then got a lot of defend/capture FATEs going on, and you can put in a few other ones (defending supply lines/etc.) to improve the defense (NPCs stationed there) of owned points. If we keep losing the points, eventually the only one we've left with is Falcon's Nest, and we have a huge battle defending it. If we own all the points, we get something similar, but with us attacking the enemy stronghold.

Obviously that doesn't work well for Western Highlands, you'd really need to design the map from the ground up with this in mind, but it's a solid enough concept. The rewards just need to be significant enough that FATEs are actually rewarding for once in their life...

That's pretty much the next step I see from Campaign in XI... Campaign had one outpost per zone, with XIV I see no reason why we couldn't have multiple outposts to fight over per zone. Multiple factions, too. Lets say we start moving into Garlemald in 4.0, we could have Ala Mhigo verses Garlemald verses Beast Tribes. Day one much of the area is controlled by Garlemald. Day two people have burnt through the area, leaving it in control of Ala Mhigo, affording players bonuses. Day three the Beast Tribes take over while we're busy on a new zone. Or, for consistencies sake, we could go with XIs Conquest "tally results every week" system. Either way, it gives us dynamic maps which we can impact. If we ignore a zone, it falls into enemy hands and we no longer get benefits from that zone, so we aim to take it back. FATEs go from crappy EXP/Relic grinds, to dynamic activities people (hopefully) want to do. People want those benefits for controlling regions, if a region is slipping out of our hands, people will want to go help out.

[DPZ2]

Suggestions by the OP are the reason I also play Guild Wars 2 ...

and, no, I don't want FFXIV to be a GW2 clone.

[Lexia]

1) Example: City defense (Besieged from FFXI):
-Defend a city against an invading army. Repel them from reaching their goal and defeat their bosses within an hour to route their attack.

How this could work in the story: Perhaps defend against Imperials skirmishing against Eorzean patrols.

They could perhaps maybe do this with a time travel expansion kind of how they did with FFXI with Wings of the Goddess for the crystal war.

[Miakisu]

You can edit your post to to get around the character limit.

As for variation of content, that's something they are (supposedly) working on from here on out. Diadem was the first example of a new type of content we got, but it was unfortunately marred by some design oversights that have left it unpopular for the time being.

Edited so that it's in one post now.

And I'd love to see more. I really miss seeing them try different things like they did in 2.0

[Alahra]

And I'd love to see more. I really miss seeing them try different things like they did in 2.0

It's just tricky because just about everything they've tried to do outside of the main formula has met with mixed success or negative results so far. Hunts are and continue to be a mess that they seem to have given up on reigning in. Diadem's been a mess. Lords of Vermillion seemingly took a lot of resources and has been seemingly pretty unpopular. The Gold Saucer was pretty popular for the first month and is now largely empty most of the time. Triple Triad's largely died out in popularity as well. Treasure Maps were new but ultimately have ended up being an incredibly minor part of the game, which have varying levels of player involvement. Though not directly related when it comes to new content, their experimentation with difficulty in HW has been kind of a mess, too, and I suspect the team may be getting reflexively more conservative.

I think we'll still see one new type of content in Heavensward (perhaps in 3.3 or 3.4), but I imagine their main focus now is on getting the ship righted after the problems with 3.0/3.1.