Endgame Area

[Valcerio]

I made that post in the german forum and now i also want to know what you guys think of it.

Iam still missing something in Final Fantasy 14. A dangerous area!
An area that you can visit anytime which has a distinct feal of danger even if you reached the max level and are well equipped. I would call it openworld endcontent.



At the moment endcontent contains only hard boss encounters. All the armor and weapons you collect are made for those hard encounters that are only beatable with a fixed groupe of people. In the end the other players are only collecting equipment for glamour.

Dungeons and 24-player-raids are no motivator to raise your gearscore and they are not made for it. At the moment Amor and Weapons aren´t collected to beat Void Arc or a Dungeon. Dungeons and 24-player-Raids are a way to raise your gearscore… but they are not the goal.

There is no goal to get stronger and stronger appart from Raidbosses.
It would be great to have a optional area where players can really use their good gear without having a fixed groupe that needs to meet every week to learn complex mechanics. An Area that can be visited anytime without Dutyfinder and waitingtimes.


So this is my idea:




An Area for player with max. level / Endgame Area:

This Area is similiar to the „north shroud“ or „dravanian hinterlands” with a slight difference:
The Enemys you will meet here are very dangerous and need a well equipped adventurerer to be slayn.


Optics:



This Area should look very stunning so that even reaching and exploring that place could become a possible goal for players. It could be a dense jungle with exotic plants und beautiful beaches or floating Islands with giant cliffs, waterfalls and strange vegetation.


Accessibility:

No dutyfinder or other requirements keep you from entering that zone. No waitingtimes and forced partymembers that may have totally different goals. Just a normal area where player can group up if they want to.


Enemys:



Small enemys are made for solo adventurer. Players can test out their newly obtained Armor or Weapon and see how it influences the fight and if you failed before maybe its enough to win now. Your chocobo companion finally gets a real use too and becomes and valuable ally.

Bigger Enemys like Morbol are there for 4-man adventurergroups.

Even bigger Enemys like Behemoth or Dragons are there for 8-man or more.

Unlike in the diadem the enemys are not only moving punching bags with too many lifepoints. Avoiding an clearly shown AoE-Zone bores any player at the max. level. Since you can´t make complex mechanics for a single monster the player instead needs to use all his/her gatherd knowledge from the game so far to read and dodge the enemys attacks without any AoE-Zone shown on the ground. This way the player always needs to be aware of what the enemy is doing and needs to look out for his surroundings too. Just like the last boss in stone vigil hardmode.

As a result players can learn to use statuseffects like silence, stun, heavy, bind and blind to weaken enemys attack.

Monsters also shouldn´t be placed in strikt zones (like here is a bunch of crawlers and there is a bunch of mandragoras). Instead they should be mixed up to be more natural and authentic so that a Morbol is patrolling between mandragoras as a constant thread for careless adventurer.
Day and Night also matter in this Area. At night bats and maybe even ghosts and skelettons spawn to harm you on your way through the area making it even more dangerous to explore at night.



Layout:

Its important that you are unable to fly in this area. Fyling would take away any tension, enemys are no big thread anymore and exploring would be a simple checking from the air.
The ability to fly makes mapdesign way to unimportant.

There is an adventurer camp at the entrence of this area with repair-NPCs, aetheryte and merchants. Players are able to meet up and form groups to venture together if they want.

From the camp many paths lead trough this zone. Different paths bring different typ of enemys and gathering/fishingpoints.

Enemys at the start are mainly for solo players so that they can get a feel of how this area and the fighting here is working. The further you go into the area the tougher the enemys will get.


Goals:



That Area gives you tough enemys that make equipment valuable outside of raids.
But why should you spend your time here?

-Monster drops-
Enemys here drop unique materials that you can use for recipes (weapons, armor, bufffood or potions). Those that aren’t interested in the materials themselves can make some good gil with selling them.

-Treasure chests-
Treasure chests appear randomly inside this area. Finding one isn´t enough so. You need a key to open the chests and the key is a random drop from the local enemys. Besides gil, pets and other materials there should be unique and rare vanity-armors or weapons inside this chests. (maybe something like this http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...93#post3543793 … oh I would farm forever for those xD)

-Fishing and gathering spots-
Of course there are fishing and gathering spots in here aswell. They are cind a special since sometimes you need to ask a group of adventurer or friends to clear the path to your secret fishing spot.

-Quests-
Daily and weekly quest could be a motivator to visit that area aswell.
Even more important is the fact that Square Enix could use this area for tough questlines.
For example: You need to collect a rare flower that only grows at night near a hidden waterfall. This time you can not just mount your chocobo to run there and come back bored alongside with the feeling that the game sends you from point A to B 20 times to stretch content. Here you need to fight your way to reach the goal, maybe sneaking past some giant dragons and also keep an eye on the daytime.



Exploration:

Rewarding exploration and discovery is always bound to the confrontation with fearsome enemys. The aspect of constant danger makes searching for treasures and gatheringspots thrilling and good equipment valuable. That’s the philosophy and the goal behind this area.


A place to grow:

The enemys here require more then good equipment. Players also need to understand and start working with the potential of there own class. A Dragoon that only spams the last skills of his Combo wont beat anything. The difference here is that new players can see for themselves that they wont beat the enemy that way and can find out ways to get better. New players do have more time here to test their own skills and get direct feedback. In Dungeons and Raids they eventually never get that feedback since others can carry them. When the first enemys are beaten players might want to go further and go deeper into the endgame area with more challenge… maybe even leading into raidcontent some day.


Instantiated due to overcrowding:

Especially at the beginning the area might be overun by adventurers. That’s okay up to a certain point. Even if 24 players form an alliance for farming there is still enough space for small groups and solo players.
Its still dangerous even for alliances since you don’t see any AoEs on the ground and you can´t keep track of all the Monsters attacks.

If there are way to many players around which would destroy the thread and danger the area should be instantiated so that for example a max of 100 players are in the area at the same time. The 101 player will come into the new instance.


Future:

Every two content patches the gearscore is raised. With this increase of gearscore the area needs to be adjusted aswell otherwise it would lose its purpose.
With that adjustment there could be new enemys that inhabit the area, new places that are unlocked and new treasure chest items so that the area is still interesting and still motivates players to raise their gearscore.

....and with the next expansion comes the next endgame area.


Urgh, that was a lot. I hope you like the idea.

[OoglieBooglie]

Sounds interesting, but would probably take too much development time to create.

[Scallywag]

+1 , in my opinion , i guess the game needs to be more challenging in end game raid bosses.. more harder . and gear not too fast as many ppl get..

[Antonio_Xul]

Sounds pretty cool. Good idea. This is what Diadem was suppose to be like I imagine, but it's locked in an instance. Maybe remove that lock and have people go there solo or in groups.

[randomguy42]

This sounds great, but although it fixes many problems, players will always manage to turn any content, no matter how enjoyable, into a grind. Maybe making the whole thing a solo only would help with that. As for harder mobs, maybe npcs could be earned to help you fight by completing various quest lines. I know this is unlikely to ever happen, but I know a lot of people for whom this would be a dream.

[Maero]

I agree in that Diadem was probably mean't to be something similar to this, but alas we know how that worked out.
Honestly if Diadem was perhaps an area you could just fly to instead of waiting hrs to enter it may be viable? Not exactly what was suggested but it would be something i guess