Baldesion Arsenal Feedback

[Vnolan]

The response would work if it was 2013-14 when the game just released. In 2019? Not so much.

Having said that, due to the above mentioned issues and other things we’ve learned through your feedback, we’ve caused our players a great deal of stress, and this is something we deeply regret. We’ve been made to realize there are many things we can change and improve upon. We’re determined to correct all the major issues and take the experience with us when we develop future content.

144 players, 48 portals. How could you have not foreseen the issue? By itself it should have been obvious, but there have been other instances where players were forced to compete over a limited number of resources and it turned out horribly as one would expect. You also see it with hunts.

The Baldesion Arsenal was an extremely ambitious venture, and we were driven by the strong desire to deliver an experience and enjoyment that players had never seen before in a battle content. At the heart of the enjoyment is the restriction on resurrection, which introduces a heightened sense of tension as you play. This is how it all began.

The inspiration for this were the games I used to feverishly play, for instance Diablo 2 and its hardcore mode and Wizardry on the Famicom, to name a couple. I feel that we succeeded in bringing that same enjoyment and sense of tension to our players in the Baldesion Arsenal. I also think we succeeded in creating an enjoyable high-difficulty raid dungeon for the largest ever number of participants ever seen in FFXIV.

A4S sac, A8S sac, tank LB in Byakko EX, skipping Soar, skipping ghosts in O5S, tank LB for the Red Fists in O11S, to name a few examples. If the player has the option of getting around gameplay that inconveniences them, they'll do it.

With BA, that inconvenience is having your chance of success and the amount of time you have to spend grinding back to elvl 60 tied to how well the other 47-55 players in the dungeon perform. SE either failed to realize this player mentality yet again when designing BA or they intended for players to group up, but for some reason provided no tools to do it and for some other reason allowed anyone to join the dungeon when no such option exists with content like Ultimate or the later floors of PotD/HoH.

As a result, there may be situations like Hydatos, where feedback diverges greatly depending on region, and issues arise that are beyond our anticipation. But we’ll learn from this and strive to continue delivering new ways to play.

(This also happens with Raid Finder)

The response doesn't address player feedback about not being able to change jobs once inside BA, not being able to reliably group up with other players that you want to be paired with and there being no Eureka fragments from the support FATE.

On the other hand, we also believe there is payoff to be had, a sense of accomplishment, at the end of sustained effort and heightened tension. This is a good kind of stress, and it’s the driving concept behind content such the Diadem and Eureka, which aim to break outside the FFXIV box.

As an aside, using words like "sense of accomplishment" for content like Eureka when another company famously received and continues to receive much negativity for similar comments is an odd choice. It would be like teasing a new job only to announce it wasn't actually a job just a few weeks after a competitor teased its players and then failed to live up to expectations.

SE makes a great game, but there are many questionable decisions that keep being made.

[Physic]

The response would work if it was 2013-14 when the game just released. In 2019? Not so much.


144 players, 48 portals. How could you have not foreseen the issue? By itself it should have been obvious,

With BA, that inconvenience is having your chance of success and the amount of time you have to spend grinding back to elvl 60 tied to how well the other 47-55 players in the dungeon perform. SE either failed to realize this player mentality yet again when designing BA or they intended for players to group up, but for some reason provided no tools to do it and for some other reason allowed anyone to join the dungeon when no such option exists with content like Ultimate or the later floors of PotD/HoH.


(This also happens with Raid Finder)

The response doesn't address player feedback about not being able to change jobs once inside BA, not being able to reliably group up with other players that you want to be paired with and there being no Eureka fragments from the support FATE.



As an aside, using words like "sense of accomplishment" for content like Eureka when another company famously received and continues to receive much negativity for similar comments is an odd choice.

SE makes a great game, but there are many questionable decisions that keep being made.

yes, this is supposed to be a public dungeon where you end up grouping with people in the instance who have the desire to do the content. Its not designed to be for your 56 man prebuilt, Eureka has directly gone against that concept, you cant queue into instances in large numbers. Why would everything in eureka have been designed with small groups of players, banding together with whoever happens to be in the instance, but the final teir of content for it, be designed for prebuilt 50 man groups?


the reason why people take two hours getting into the same instance, and drama with other people in the instance, is because its the opposite of how the content is designed to work.


and yeah, you are supposed to fail sometimes, thats why eureka has partial goals, the eurekan fragments, which increase your offense, and defense. Losing to ozma, is not really a zero gain, if you get that far, you get progress along the way. This is a see far you can go content.


Also, leveling back is not difficult, and its intended to be part of the play loop of hydatos. You lose 70 million exp or something, but you can get 18 million every few minutes from elementals, 24 million killing ovni, you get 1.8 million killing high level adapting monsters. you do a few fates, and get exp back to make another attempt, which you are rewarded for the further you progress.


people are supposed to be attempting this content way more than the current NA meta allows, its not supposed to be that hard to get back into. A 56 man prebuilt, is supposed to be as rare as 50+ people gathering aetherized keys for the portals, and getting into the same instance.

[Eisenhower]

the reason why people take two hours getting into the same instance, and drama with other people in the instance, is because its the opposite of how the content is designed to work.

No doubt that's how SqE wants us to play the Eurekan content, but I'd wager a whole bunch of players see it as unnecessary hoops to jump just to get to play.

The premades exist because parts of the community wants to play with those that are on the same page in terms of scheduling, investment, and goals. There are players that don't want to YOLO into the arsenal and hope that this time RNGeesus will bless them with the right combination of roles, player skill, and motivation.

The drama exist because players have no choice but to compete over entry through the same door - a problem put there by SqE when a fully serviceable system is already in place. The players end up doing the job of the duty finder system to the degree where different discord servers share schedules and time slots in order to avoid stepping on each others' toes.

Just because a design is implemented doesn't mean it's good or enjoyable.

[KageTokage]

and yeah, you are supposed to fail sometimes, thats why eureka has partial goals, the eurekan fragments, which increase your offense, and defense. Losing to ozma, is not really a zero gain, if you get that far, you get progress along the way. This is a see far you can go content.

The thing about that is no amount of elemental gear will save you from the mechanics most prone to causing wipes at Ozma. It'll make it die slightly faster, which can potentially spare you from having to see said mechanics as often, but Ozma's pattern is so random you can end up having to contend with them several times regardless.

With BA's intended design, it's also very unlikely you'll be able to run the instance with the same players consistently, which means there's no guarantees everyone is going to be able to handle said mechanics properly.

I really don't think personal raid-wiping mechanics are appropriate for large-scale raids like this because the more people are involved, the higher the chances someone is going to mess it up.

[Liam_Harper]

yes, this is supposed to be a public dungeon where you end up grouping with people in the instance who have the desire to do the content. Its not designed to be for your 56 man prebuilt, Eureka has directly gone against that concept, you cant queue into instances in large numbers.

It's interesting. Judging from the upvotes on this post, players by far prefer the public system and going in with random groups.

However, in the 4 out of 5 instances where there isn't a premade group and BA opens, barely anyone goes in or bothers. I get the impression people argue for things they have no intention of doing themselves at all. How many people are honestly going to stick with random public groups all the way to the Ozma mount?

[RitsukoSonoda]

It's interesting. Judging from the upvotes on this post, players by far prefer the public system and going in with random groups.

However, in the 4 out of 5 instances where there isn't a premade group and BA opens, barely anyone goes in or bothers. I get the impression people argue for things they have no intention of doing themselves at all. How many people are honestly going to stick with random public groups all the way to the Ozma mount?

This honestly is a trend in more than just games but in the sense of games its ranged to other things.

People complaining about the cost of things in a game's cash shop when they have no intention of ever spending anything in it even if the price should be lowered like they ask.

People complaining about tank or healer balances or changes needed to make them more appealing that still would not touch either of these roles if the changes they asked for were done.

People complaining about relic being too tedious to build and still don't build 1 after patches made it easier.

Going back to where someone said that BA was likely being entered more often on the JP datacenter. I can definitely see that based on my experiences in FFXI. Playing during JP primetime with that side of the community it was very easy to get going even with randoms for content because we would just look at what we had available and figure out a way to make it work. Playing during NA primetime I experienced a lot of "We don't have X so there's no point in going.". The JP community back then generally took exp loss on death without any cares because it was just a short matter of getting it back. NA players back then frequently acted like de-leveling was like perma death of their character. I had a lot of fun back then with the JP community on my server dying and de-leveling which happened frequently due to trying new things (sometimes stupid things) just to see if they work and if so how well they worked. Example: Pulling an NM during an EXP party and wiping. Most JP parties I was with we laughed it off because we tried. Most NA parties resulted in party members raging and crying before either disbanding or kicking the person that pulled the NM. Bear in mind these are generalizations I experienced during my gameplay from Vanilla FFXI launch in like 2002 until shortly after that moogle mini expansion.

[Xellos2099]

The one I'm in has no bot to announce anything, we have a bot only to apply tags to show what role we are and what we want to do/where we're at in BA and when you're looking for members, you @ those tags.

The people who don't like the discord fall into one of two categories generally; 1. People who are unable to hear or speak and people who are unable to use discord due to lack of a nearby PC or phone and 2. people who want an easy way in and don't care if they are cutting in an established line, people who have cut in said established line and are unwanted in organized communities, and lastly people who just take some weird issue with discord for whatever personal reason. I do suspect there are a few people in the discords who tell snipers where to be and when, but doing anything to these people unprovoked and without proof would just be unfair.

Point is, the one I'm in has a bunch of randoms, just as random as anywhere in-game and anyone is welcome to enter.

My question is, how many times does a person have to snipe before it simply becomes harassment or nuisance behavior by the ToS. We have a few who have basically attained meme status for sniping.

EDIT: On the above, category 1 is understandable and I think we should make some sort of adjustment in such a case.

I recall we got a few problem with the stablizer user the past few days and less people want to do support siince the sniping rate is higher than before.

[Liam_Harper]

Yoshi's post is nice, it's great to see developer insight on the official forums after coming from games like WoW that have fired their forum CM's and only post via twitter, carefully avoiding feedback issues.

However, it doesn't address the biggest problem with BA, namely getting into it and why the portal system is necessary over a standard premade queue unlocked by finishing Hydatos. BA itself is great, a challenging 56 man instance is lots of fun, it's just getting in there to even try it that's the problem.
I can understand trying new things, the portal idea maybe sounded good on paper, but when it clearly isn't adding anything beneficial to the experience and is causing a lot of negativity, why stick to it?

I also noticed they mentioned trying new things again in 5.0. Considering a lot of content in SB is experimental, I'd recommend taking the parts that worked well and polishing them before throwing it all aside and jumping into the next experiment. Start looking at what the playerbase enjoyed and deliver that in the best form possible instead of flitting from new idea to new idea.

[Physic]

Yoshi's post is nice, it's great to see developer insight on the official forums after coming from games like WoW that have fired their forum CM's and only post via twitter, carefully avoiding feedback issues.

However, it doesn't address the biggest problem with BA, namely getting into it and why the portal system is necessary over a standard premade queue unlocked by finishing Hydatos. BA itself is great, a challenging 56 man instance is lots of fun, it's just getting in there to even try it that's the problem.
I can understand trying new things, the portal idea maybe sounded good on paper, but when it clearly isn't adding anything beneficial to the experience and is causing a lot of negativity, why stick to it?

I also noticed they mentioned trying new things again in 5.0. Considering a lot of content in SB is experimental, I'd recommend taking the parts that worked well and polishing them before throwing it all aside and jumping into the next experiment. Start looking at what the playerbase enjoyed and deliver that in the best form possible instead of flitting from new idea to new idea.

a premade queue doesnt really fit the open world system, and to be honest, the main thing it would solve is preventing people from pre organizing at all. This is not meant to be another queue type content, its meant to be more open world focused, and more public, the players are meant to interact with the outside hydatos world, and exist in the same rough space.


people who want to get dibs on the content are meant to expend time and resources to reserve a spot. A decent amount of players are meant to come from the existing instance.


basically, in general you are supposed to be randomly grouping with players who were in the instance. The key here is this is supposed to be public content, for the people in that instance.

[thantaimetmoi]

Thank you, Yoshida i like eureka
hope we can see more content like that in 5.0