Mixing up the formula - Will Eureaka be the answer?

[Altena]

And as much as I hated Abysea... that style content where you could take as many or as little ppl as you wanted and gear that was extremely easy to obtain like that would work in this game due to gears short life span... unlike the another game where it sorta killed the whole endgame scene.

I have made this comment before - I don't think Abyssea was actually "bad" content, I just don't think it fit the XI model very well.
This game though? I think it would fit it exceptionally well.

Adding mild horizontal progression where there currently is none.
Introducing content that allows you to solo, or to go in with a full alliance and still get stuff done.
Content that isn't locked on some timer of "do once a week/day and be done with it".

Finally, adding back a sense of community into this game. This game is stuck in this whole "very large lobby with a bunch of instanced fights"..
Half the time people won't even say "hello" when you enter a dungeon anymore.
Give us some mass-scale stuff (like what Diadem should have been).

[Sandpark]

Adding mild horizontal progression where there currently is none.
Introducing content that allows you to solo, or to go in with a full alliance and still get stuff done.
Content that isn't locked on some timer of "do once a week/day and be done with it".

Finally, adding back a sense of community into this game. This game is stuck in this whole "very large lobby with a bunch of instanced fights"..
Half the time people won't even say "hello" when you enter a dungeon anymore.
Give us some mass-scale stuff (like what Diadem should have been).

Yummy, Abyssea. And while you're at it...

Add Sky, Sea, Besieged, and Campaign. Wow me, do it better than before in this version and give players something constantly to progress towards without needing to queue up, actually bond with FC members or same server players. Hell, throw in a party synergy system so meta isn't about who can play with themself the best via rotations.

[Altena]

Yummy, Abyssea. And while you're at it...

Add Sky, Sea, Besieged, and Campaign. Wow me, do it better than before in this version and give players something constantly to progress towards without needing to queue up, actually bond with FC members or same server players. Hell, throw in a party synergy system so meta isn't about who can play with themself the best via rotations.

You obviously know where it's at.

There were so many positive elements to take away from Abyssea it's not funny.
People just see it as the doom and gloom of XI (which it statistically wasn't considering how subs increased during that time).
There were negatives about it, sure.. However Abyssea was actually a good thing at the time - minus the short falls of being able to EXP in there from level 1 etc..

The other content was also great at the time but for it to fit in XIV I would imagine that it would have to see rather large adjustments to it.
I think Abyssea is the best example of a solid system that would slot right into XIV with very minimal adjustments.

[Sandpark]

You obviously know where it's at.

There were so many positive elements to take away from Abyssea it's not funny.
People just see it as the doom and gloom of XI (which it statistically wasn't considering how subs increased during that time).
There were negatives about it, sure.. However Abyssea was actually a good thing at the time - minus the short falls of being able to EXP in there from level 1 etc..

The other content was also great at the time but for it to fit in XIV I would imagine that it would have to see rather large adjustments to it.
I think Abyssea is the best example of a solid system that would slot right into XIV with very minimal adjustments.

The thing with Abyssea was as great as it was in itself, it offered the first pieces of gear that was better than most 75 gear that did not take 1/2 as long to obtain as that 75 gear. Without the super buffs, abyssea was still pretty challenging content that allowed players to make steady consistent progress. The option to level to 99 practically faster than anywhere else or being carried to 99 pretty much made other outside options seem slower.

The smart thing it did was have multiple zones of the content. If Abyssea was confined to one zone without time limitation parameters, there would be lag and over population issues at a more frequent rate. Assuming SE did bring over an improved version here. I would hope SE keep that in mind when designing it.

If it doesn't use recycling ilevel like the rest of the game.

How could SE make it a relic upgrade style content that doesn't become so good it has most players playing it versus other contents sparingly?
Could experience point parties or even skillchains become a thing in this version?
Should the super buffs come into play here?

Lots of questions.

[Altena]

The thing with Abyssea was as great as it was in itself, it offered the first pieces of gear that was better than most 75 gear that did not take 1/2 as long to obtain as that 75 gear. Without the super buffs, abyssea was still pretty challenging content that allowed players to make steady consistent progress. The option to level to 99 practically faster than anywhere else or being carried to 99 pretty much made other outside options seem slower.

Well that's just exactly it. Probably the biggest / most glaring issue wit that content in XI was that it made a large portion of reasonably difficult to obtain gear - obsolete. And by fairly cheap / easy to obtain items as well..
That and EXP was just too fast in there. They were probably the biggest take-home notes from Abyssea.

The smart thing it did was have multiple zones of the content. If Abyssea was confined to one zone without time limitation parameters, there would be lag and over population issues at a more frequent rate. Assuming SE did bring over an improved version here. I would hope SE keep that in mind when designing it.

I imagine it would be instanced (similar to diadem) with a player cap per instance. Instances are fine for the most part, the issue with the current formula is that we are confined to (mostly) 4, 8, 24 man content (with the exception of PvP). And all of the content aside from Diadem are dungeon crawlers or individual trials.

If it doesn't use recycling ilevel like the rest of the game.

How could SE make it a relic upgrade style content that doesn't become so good it has most players playing it versus other contents sparingly?
Could experience point parties or even skillchains become a thing in this version?
Should the super buffs come into play here?

Lots of questions.

I imagine iLvl would still be a thing. Just reasonably comparable to tome/raid gear. They could even have it at equal iLvl but one less meld slot or something. That would honestly be enough to encourage people to aim for raid gear.
My thought would be aetherial gear similar to Diadem (perhaps less random), however in addition to that - add in some form of currency that drops from the mini/zone bosses that you can trade in to upgrade your tome gear.
I understand the need to make raids still worth doing, and it's a difficult thing to balance.
However in saying that, I never liked the concept of forcing people to raid to upgrade their tome gear - because raiders would generally try and chase BiS anyway. So their reward is essentially getting BiS with gear that exclusively drops from raids.
Raids should still be top tier. They should also be more difficult. Unfortunately with the stat reworks, horizontal progression is even less likely because the lines of BiS are a lot more blurred.
I am saying that as someone who used to raid quite often (but a lot less these days because of a declining level of interest).

Skillchains / bursts were a good design in XI first and foremost, but they just wouldn't work in this game. Not sure if you played 1.0, however they tried a similar system early on (Battle Regimes?) and it just didn't really work and was very clunky to use. Now that the battle system has changed completely, that sort of system would have even less chance of working now. Skills are too heavily rotational based and just bluntly - just would not work.
I am not pushing to make this game more like XI. I am just pointing out how well the content that some people proclaim destroyed that game - would fit extremely well in this game, partly for the reason that the design of XI was inherently so different to XIV to begin with.

I think remove the EXP element from it entirely. Treat it as end-game content purely for progressing your gear and relics. We have plenty of other effective ways to gain EXP in this game and I don't really think we need any more.

As for the superbuffs / atmas, I posted this in an earlier response..
They could add optional quests while you're in there that take a bit of effort to do, however give the entire party a temporary buff (eg. 10% damage increase, 10% damage mitigation etc).
I guess the best example is what they tried to do with Diadem, however instead of forcing it on people - make it optional. You can put in the effort to get all these extra buffs and kill the bosses, or just skip all of that and go kill the bosses without them.

Final note, is that I am pretty certain I am going to be disappointed with Eureaka but a person can dream a little can't they?
I am dying for some new content that doesn't flop so hard. I think Abyssea-esque content would just fit so nicely..

It's weird that people still don't understand why Diadem 2.0 went the way it did. One of the complaints of 1.0 was that it was just standing in one area and zerging the same few mobs over and over until the time limit. There was no structure, so everyone went to the easiest and faster method and got bored of it. So to add structure to it, the devs gave a reason to actually move around to different islands and locations and fight different mobs. They did this by marking them with big blue glowing circles called fates. It's the same respawning mob spam as before, but with structure added to it. It was "just fates," but it was still the same thing as before. 1.0 just didn't have the fate marker over the mobs like 2.0 did.

What happened that made 2.0 fail? A certain niche of people got exactly what they asked for. They hyped it up as something and people that didn't want that thought they did. Once they got that content, they realized the didn't and never wanted it, so they stopped doing it.

I can't say much for Diadem 1.0 because I was actually taking one of the aforementioned breaks at the time. When I came back (few weeks after it was released) my FC basically told me that it sucks and not to bother with it. So I never really tried it.

I think the problem was more that there was no purpose to killing the mobs.
Killing mobs in the FATEs beyond the quests gave you very little. The rewards were pretty hogwash and extremely random at best.
Speaking of rewards specifically, the reason people did it was a chance for the weapons. However the Emergency Quest was just a random pop, and the players in the zone had no control over it. It just popped every now and again.
There was little reason to actually sit there and grind the FATEs.

As far as structure, they could have done it a number of ways. However they chose to recycle the FATE design. They really shot themselves in the foot with this one because FATEs have a pretty bad stigma associated with them in the first place.
Adding structure could have been done much better than how they chose to go about it.
For starters, the emergency quest was a good start - but why was it completely random?
Make it so that if you kill boss A, B & C the emergency quest pops.
To pop boss A, you need to kill mobs x,y,z. Repeat for different mobs for bosses B & C and you have yourself a tiered boss system.

Pair that with reduced RNG and decent filler rewards and it might have actually been worth doing.
However I can't count the number of parties I went with where all they wanted to do was clear the quest and wait around for the EQ.

[LineageRazor]

My expectations for Eureka are pretty low. I know that it is intended to be the medium for advancing the Stormblood relic weapon - and I also know that the previous relic grinds were simply too magnificent a resource for SE to simply pass them by. However things turn out in Eureka, I'm pretty convinced that enormous amounts of grinding of low level content will be required. Still, I suppose it's best to wait and see. Maybe SE will have something clever in addition to the massive grind.

Well that's just exactly it. Probably the biggest / most glaring issue wit that content in XI was that it made a large portion of reasonably difficult to obtain gear - obsolete.

I find it very odd when people say this, because it's simply not true. FFXI gear was not at all like equipment in FFXIV; there were many pieces of gear that were viable WELL beyond their level. Heck, there were choice pieces of level 10 equipment that weren't out-of-place on a level 75 player! The top-of-the-line gear at 75; Salvage, Abjuration, and so on, were still great pieces to have at 99. You'd still be macroing in bits of Hecatomb gear for weaponskills no matter what junk you'd managed to scrape together in Abyssea, because the STR and Acc on the stuff was still leagues ahead. RDM's Pimp Hat took a long, long time to replace, as well. Those are only a few of many, many examples.

It wasn't until Seekers of Adoulin that the stuff actually started to become obsolete. That was the point at which the game started to introduce item levels, and the stat boosts from that by necessity blew anything 99 and below away. It is the point at which gear in that game became almost as boring as gear in this game. It's also the point at which SE introduced and began to flesh out a glamour system, basically the only good reason to bother with lower level gear from that point onwards.

But, no - pre-Abyssea gear was still powerful and useful, even with all the higher level gear Abyssea tossed at us.

[Sandpark]

My expectations for Eureka are pretty low. I know that it is intended to be the medium for advancing the Stormblood relic weapon - and I also know that the previous relic grinds were simply too magnificent a resource for SE to simply pass them by. However things turn out in Eureka, I'm pretty convinced that enormous amounts of grinding of low level content will be required. Still, I suppose it's best to wait and see. Maybe SE will have something clever in addition to the massive grind.



I find it very odd when people say this, because it's simply not true. FFXI gear was not at all like equipment in FFXIV; there were many pieces of gear that were viable WELL beyond their level. Heck, there were choice pieces of level 10 equipment that weren't out-of-place on a level 75 player! The top-of-the-line gear at 75; Salvage, Abjuration, and so on, were still great pieces to have at 99. You'd still be macroing in bits of Hecatomb gear for weaponskills no matter what junk you'd managed to scrape together in Abyssea, because the STR and Acc on the stuff was still leagues ahead. RDM's Pimp Hat took a long, long time to replace, as well. Those are only a few of many, many examples.

It wasn't until Seekers of Adoulin that the stuff actually started to become obsolete. That was the point at which the game started to introduce item levels, and the stat boosts from that by necessity blew anything 99 and below away. It is the point at which gear in that game became almost as boring as gear in this game. It's also the point at which SE introduced and began to flesh out a glamour system, basically the only good reason to bother with lower level gear from that point onwards.

But, no - pre-Abyssea gear was still powerful and useful, even with all the higher level gear Abyssea tossed at us.

Well sort of with a caveat. That 75 gear that used to dominate was still applicable because SE added ways to upgrade alot of that old gear if you stuck around.

But by then it was already too late, top that off with the beginnings of mmo casualization and other things.