Mixed Feelings Regarding PoTD

[Daeney]

I wanted to take a moment to delve into my thoughts on the PoTD and I'd welcome a thoughtful discussion.

I was pretty excited about the release of PoTD. Mostly I was excited to have some content I could run with a friend of mine. The flexible nature of the content really appealed to us and we were looking forward to having something to do CoOp style. And we did have fun. Running as a war and thief made for an interesting experience, complete with a good challenges, especially once we hit floors 31-40, and a sense of progress via quick leveling and frequent weapon/armor upgrades (we started at 0/0).

Then I started trying to grind for the weapon in matched parties. And in my option, matched parties, or really any balanced group of four, ruins the experience. Traps, monsters, bosses, everything, was immediately trivialized and my sense of reward and purpose became dependent on the results of silver chests. Furthermore, in a matched group I was not often paired with people in the same mind set. Sometime I got a group that consisted of like-minded individuals hunting those elusive +1s, which was okay, although this is not particularly fun, because we just rushed through. However, other times there'd be someone new'ish who wanted an experience like what I had with my friend that first week, and this was horrible. I felt bad for them because I know it's not fun when everyone is rushing ahead and I felt bad personally because I resented the fact that they moved slowly and didn't understand that the only things that matter are silver chests.

In summary, I am really glad that SE tried something new, and under the right circumstances it was a good deal of fun. But it can also be very un-fun, particularly in the typical match group. Which I think is problematic because queuing and getting matched with other players is a mechanism by which most FFXIV players are accustomed to doing content and in the case of PoTD, this 'default' means of completing content yields the worst experience.

[Moomba33]

You can get around the limit by editing your original post.

[Daeney]

You can get around the limit by editing your original post.

Amazing. Thanks.

[Estellios]

Have you tried getting people through party finder? You can still enter as a matched party that way so you don't have to commit to clearing the entire thing with the same group, and you can specify that you are going for Silver chests for upgrades. Although if you want to go in with less than 4 people you will still need to enter as a fixed party i think.

People tend to be more open to chatting that way too which makes the experience much better.

[Powe]

Yea doing DF in POTD is fine most of the times, just that I recommend you going as a healer since there's like no healers at all there.

[dejiko_san]

Although if you want to go in with less than 4 people you will still need to enter as a fixed party i think.

Nah I've been entering with less than 4 as a matched party. Matched just fills up the rest of the open slots with DF people.

[Estellios]

Oh I meant like, if you want to do a run with less than 4 for extra challenge. You have to go with fixed to ensure the slots don't get filled.

[Brannigan]

POTD is basically just underground FATEs with some traps on the floor and some items you don't really need.

[Daeney]

POTD is basically just underground FATEs with some traps on the floor and some items you don't really need.

That's an interesting analogy. I agree to the extant that I think PoTD design wise is somewhere between the curated, on rails experience, we expect from instanced content like dungeons and raid and the open world, wild-west that is a fate. Which I think harkens back to my original post; like a fate the number of players participating and the composition of the group dramatically affect the PoTD experience. And don't get me wrong, I loved the two person experience I first had with PoTD, but I have major problem with the following results of their design decisions: (1) the matched party is not fun and it's likely the first and most common way (I suspect) players will experience PoTD since we are so accustomed to using duty finder, and (2) the rewards you again from running PoTD, namely the weapon and experience, are most easily obtainable in a balanced 4-person group, which so happens (IMO) to be the lest fun way to experience PoTD. I hope SE reads this or has already come to a similar conclusion because PoTD can be fun and I really hope they continue to refine it.

[Brannigan]

Well I pretty much meant that it's a bunch of FATEs in that you're fighting monsters that can't possibly hope to kill you unless you screw up badly. POTD is SE's way of telling the player "I think you're an idiot who has to fight monsters this weak." It's only a challenge or even engaging if you purposefully fail to use the resources available to you (in this case a full party and the tank and healer roles). I did Edda last night with four DPS and no one even dropped below 80% HP - a tank or healer completely trivializes the fight, much like with FATEs. Because you're leveling from 1-60, POTD is basically like FATE grinding up a character in condensed form.

The biggest difference is that FATEs, ironically, have more varied gameplay than POTD. There are escort FATEs, defense FATEs, boss-kill FATEs (some of which are actually kinda tough to lowman, like Cancer), and collection FATEs. POTD is just killing easy monsters from floor 1 to floor 50, which is why it's so goddamn boring. SE seems to have put in the very bare minimum required to call POTD "complete" and then shipped it out, just like they did with Diadem.

Rarely, you will run into one of those undead NPCs or a floor with the "stops HP auto-regen" effect and things will get hairy, but it's far too rare there's very little variety.