State of the Game: Savage+ Dungeons and End Game Leves

[KaivaC]

Exaggeration seems to get the point across, but some of you are still nitpicking the point not being made. Any "retooling" of old content, means everything that goes into it gets rebalanced. There's no point making a "challenge" mode that is just 10x the HP, and utterly devoid of anything new.

It may surprise you to know that I would rather have an entirely different kind of combat content designed, rather than, as you put "reskin stormblood". Because the storyline is fine as it is, what is a problem is that the content is not engaging once it's been cleared. The MSQ content should offer a reasonable challenge, not just a low bar to jump and then oops, a boss with 1000x the hp.

The game already contains mechanics that we've seen in PotD/HoH, that suggests they can do things to the content already (eg the miasma on some floors, no auto-healing, ambush spawns traps, etc), but I'd suggest that applying PotD mechanics to the other game content is probably the opposite of what should be happening.

Let's say, for example, each ARR dungeon gets two challenges, a level 60 and a level 70 mode. Both modes level and ilevel sync you to minimum ilevel for the content as the basis for the challenge, and the existing monsters are levelsynced to 60 or 70 as well. This means that you get to use your level 60 or 70 skills, but the monsters also get to use theirs. So that means that all the ARR monsters will suddenly have mechanics that were only see in "reskins" of their monster type. From that, each dungeon contains extra chests that contain one-time use pomanders to buff the party. So you only get a reward for NOT using the pomanders. If you only want the clear, grab the pomanders and reduce the difficulty, but if you wipe you have to start over.

The point is that you don't think it's a good idea, simply because you don't want to do it. Which is fine - but I have not once seen you contribute anything to discussions that offer up content like this. Rather, it seems that all you've done is complain about every little suggestion that has been put out there, especially by those of the raiding side of things. Here, we have somebody who actually does do things for the community. What we have here is a pretty nice layout of what could be a really great idea. You...what have you done aside from bringing in an overall negative attitude to almost everything? You say there's no point - but really, there's no point for you because you don't want to engage in an actual discussion. You want to debate and shoot down ideas for no reason other than your own pessimism over anything and everything that has to do with skill level and higher difficulty.

The way the OP presented, these ideas were meant for players who are apt to try something with a challenge in them. It wasn't meant for pessimistic players who shoot down anything with a challenge. Let the good folks here discuss this idea and quit trying to shoot everything challenging down at every turn. It is this kind of mentality that contributed to cries for nerfs on content that can be done if you know how to play decently, ala Aurum Vale, The Royal Menagerie, and fighting Hashmal.

Don't mean to take away from this thread, because the ideas therein are amazing and I would love to see it to fruition - but the pessimism is honestly quite annoying.

[KisaiTenshi]

The point is that you don't think it's a good idea, simply because you don't want to do it.

Please point where I said this. You are putting words in my mouth. I said, repeatedly, that the issue is that this would come at the cost of new content, which means anything from losing one or two primal/raid tiers to an entire patch cycle. And again, arguing against the point not being made. This is about what the dev team should be putting resources into, and the raiders only play 1% of the content. It's not in the dev teams best interest to design new content that only raiders play, since they don't respect the developers enough to not spoil it. If the developers are going to spend any development time on anything new, I'd rather they come out with new content, and not give us 20 versions of Ifirit, Titan and Garuda again. They should be designing content to have more than 2 days of longevity, and that is perhaps why they are releasing content in smaller and smaller amounts more frequently.

Don't mean to take away from this thread, because the ideas therein are amazing and I would love to see it to fruition - but the pessimism is honestly quite annoying.

If you have nothing to add to a thread, don't add to it.

I add to the threads like this, because people don't consider the engineering requirements of, pretty much anything. I don't work for SE, I'm free to speculate on why something can or can't be added. The biggest reason why you won't see "something like Mythic+" is again, that was a solution to make WoW's stale content have more longevity. For FFXIV to have the same kind of thing, would require changing all the content to scale in ways that the content is just not designed to do, and the game has a hard enough time dealing with 24-player alliances, to say nothing of how poorly Eureka wound up being, both skill and engineering-wise.



The most basic thing Mythic+ does is ramp up the hp/mp and damage. So in FFXIV context, this is like giving the monsters an extra X levels over your current level. If you've not ever looked at how the HP scales in FFXIV, every single monster in a dungeon is the same level, and has the same HP except the bosses. So the trash monsters with 6000 at level 50 end up being level 60 with 12000 hp, and four times harder to kill, to say nothing of how the boss monsters attacks all become instant-ko's that were originally balanced to take 50% of the hp off an appropriately geared player.

That's why adapting this, "Like WoW" doesn't work. The part that does work, is how progression works, as that's exactly the same idea that unlocks "Savage" modes in FFXIV and we've previously seen this in coil where you had to clear all the turns in order every week. Just now instead apply this to the dungeon + level, or take the exact same cue as PotD and have separate party "save game"'s for that content. The other key thing about Mythic+ that I see is that there is a very strict time limit, and making mistakes/dying reduces the remaining time.

Cue the call for nerfs on the first day, when players can't get past the first level because, oh gosh, it's hard. Look no further than the nerfs asked for PotD and HoH.

Which is why I'm telling you, don't expect this kind of thing. WoW's version just makes content "harder" by changing the tuning knobs, which it can do because it plays differently. In FFXIV, changing the same knobs makes would just turn things into an endurance test, not a challenge. Level 50 monsters with the hp of level 60 monsters but no new skills, is still boring.

[KaivaC]

snip

The key thing that I am taking out of the original idea by OP, particularly with the dungeon idea, is that the content would not be meant for casual players who do not enjoy dealing with challenges. I.e those same people who thought that the Royal Menagerie should've been nerfed, and others because it was 'too hard for a story dungeon'. If they can't get past the first level, either find a competent group, get good, or both. I haven't tried HoH, but if it's just like PotD, then I feel that it's sad that people are asking for nerfs. You are saying it would be like an endurance test - perhaps, but from what I have been able to tell, the idea is warmly received by those who are more than willing to try something new.

It would be great to revisit older dungeons scaled up to current levels. There is obviously demand for it. Not overwhelming, but the demand is definitely there.

On the topic of it taking away from content - what is funny is that a lot of people said that about Ultimate. They also said that it's not in their best interest to make Ultimate solely for the raiders, that that brought more excitement to FFXIV than anything since the launch of Stormblood as far as overall interest is concerned. Honestly, from the way you are putting it, retooling does not sound like nearly difficult task that you are making it out to be since it's mostly just reusing assets, and one can pull the team that did Ultimate onto the idea of Savage Dungeons. I am sure it would get plenty of traction from those who actually want more than just the same boring stuff, especially if a leaderboard were to be implemented.

What you may find boring, others may find quite refreshing.