Random Rare Events on the Overworld

[KageTokage]

I had a thought that it would be neat if perhaps there was a tier of hunt even higher then S that spawns under even more specific, but predictable conditions such as a combination of time and weather.

[Cyreil]

I don't oppose it but once everyone gets what they can from it, it will join the rest of the random occurrence content. And people will create trackers for it as well.

[HeulGDarian]

Im disappointed that the thread hasnt mentioned the glorious fight vs alaimbert of the spiked butt

[Ultimatecalibur]

As I was flying around the Fringes I saw a shooting star and it reminded me of the Legend of Zelda - Breath of the Wild where every so often a meteorite would fall randomly and you could go to where it landed for rare materials to sell or craft with. That got me thinking about random occurrences that could happen in the overworld here. Something like a meteor falling could bring with it a rare mob and spawn unique FATEs for rewards. These could be RNG based on which mob landed where and when which could give players something to be vigilant about while out in the overworld and add some life to old zones as well.

I think this game could benefit greatly from having rare random events for players to pursue.

We already have those in the form of Achievement FATEs and A-rank and S-rank hunts. Each zone has 1 or more Achievement FATEs, 1 or 2 A-ranks and 1 S-rank. The ShB zones even share an SS-rank that can appear after an S-rank.

The primary problem with these is that once the majority of players have all the rewards they want from them and/or have outleveled the zone participation drops off quickly.

All this would do is end having unscrupulous players placing afk bots to watch and report when these FATEs spawn until they get what they want from them.

[Shougun]

I'd love to see more personal random events, I think FATEs and hunts can be improved but that they have a good focus on group random content (not that I'm saying no new interesting group focused stuff can be made, of course it can be too~).

Even if said personal event might lead to a social event. Like if a group of kids threw a snowball at you, you could choose to pick up a snowball from a nearby pile and throw it back, after chasing around the kids for a bit and cornering them they then scream get em! and loads more appear and you've this cute little stand off cut scene (like with western music and that whistle lol). Then the event has 2 or so minutes before it turns into an entire town snowball fight where players can pick sides and play in a very casual pvp environment with imbalances being handled with special tools given to the side that is losing / unfairly stacked, and at the end winners might get a tiny bit more but most of the reward would be based on participation.

Or I might example WoW's 'classic' abomination quest where you went about helping this shady npc collect animal parts over many quests and then later you find out you helped him build an abomination that'll attack the town (and can actually kill stuff in the town too, temporarily of course lol).

On improvements, of course the new shared fate system is a good thing for FATEs, and they can expand that (both the system itself but also to older content), but can also encourage them to try and make each FATE be more unique when possible (like discussing the difference between a kill x quest and some of the quests Witcher gets a lot of credit for doing, where that little bit of 'extra' makes it not feel always kill 10 wolves).

Or like for leve's I feel like they should work to make them less spammy but far more rewarding, and part of that could also have them take a few more steps, or they might introduce a leve portfolio / brochure like concept where you take this week's leve quests and they're all decent rewards but completing them all ups that. So you might take that idea of random personal events like on some occasion an NPC will offer you a free leve that adds to your portfolio, increasing the bonus at the end. Like when you turn in the portfolio they ask what you'd like and you could ask for weekly tomestones, a smattering of different seals, some crafting items worth decent gil, etc. One thing I liked from the leve quest was that it added NMs to it sometimes, so I'd like to see that encouraged for a sort of personal hunt system too (expanded A rank concept). May also suggest that your portfolio is always active, such that the world automatically has each one of those leve's active and exist in the world without you having to command them to exist.

Adding onto that concept would be I feel there can be a lot of immersive (not discussing realism, I mean 'immersion to the world') if we had an NPC linkshell and NPCs would sometimes send mail too. Such that you might get a follow up letter from an NPC with an additional requests, or even an extra reward, like helping a grandma gave some okay exp and gil but later she sends you baked goods, and then even more later she does it again- really making that quest feel different and lively. Like what if she sent you goods on the anniversary of saving her or whatever you did for her, a freaking year later and the game is like "yo, she remembers you". Obviously that last example is a bit tangent-y for the thread so going back onto track lol I think the linkshell could be a great way to introduce some extra liveliness and randomness- seldom calls for help, someone noticing something strange, riddles to be solved, even just cute random chatter like someone got on the wrong walkitalkie line (there should be a strict goal to not make it spammy, and even turn it off). Could include the hunts into that sometimes (npc commenting that they saw the biggest bee or something lol).

New chocobo content could go here too, like obviously having the companion revamped would get people using them outside some more but may also consider hot and cold perhaps sometimes having some random interactions. Like you're wandering around and suddenly your chocobo Kweeeeeeeeehs. So you hop on and head the direction you sense your chocobo spotted something. Some of these could be personal, just for you, and may sometimes actually a group content- like you might hear another player's chocobo through the zone and you all gather together to start digging out a giant hunt / fate monster lol.

A personal desire, which does change the system a bit though, to hunts that sort of makes them personal random events, is that when a hunt monster dies based on it's strength it'll slowly decay in stages. Such the first stage is just a fresh body, which quickly turns into light energy smoke like pyre flies from FFX coming off of the monster, slowly shrinking the entire time (perhaps rapidly in the beginning so it's not a visual obstruction to other content), and then finally just a small smoldering ember. When you kill the monster fresh it'll generally be achievable in smaller groups or solo (S rank in a group of like 4 or solo if you way over level it). You'll get a trophy for killing which can be turned in for rewards (quality of trophy determining rewards you can choose). If you check the body it'll give you a vague sense of when it was killed (allowing for a general idea of when it'll be back). With the corpse on the ground then you can kindle (dark soooulls lol) the body to purify it which will cause a very large smoke cloud to go up and in essence notify everyone (S rank will have an additional a deep rumble / pulse sound and visible smoke cloud that'll go cross zones if it makes sense).

After a short while the creature will rise up again with all of it's aetherial force manifested, and everyone will need to take part (no small group activity, some scaling to your level too - so old hunts don't evaporate). Some unique reward opportunities here, perhaps some good exp and especially nice if they added a cosmetic merit system, a nearby town might celibate so the decoration changes and text (maybe free drink/meal), a shop keeper changes their wears temporarily due to stuff they found on the battlefield, etc, additionally I think some of the SS ranks adding buffs or other entirely unique actions at completion would be nice, but on top of the trophy players can earn the enkindled version would focus more on the higher tier rewards (so you might not get any basic seals from them but you'd get more of the good seals, and it'd not be a chance based concept). You cannot relieve the monster's pain if it's not been kindled (the big smoke group effort part), after that though those who stumble upon the body can take part in a mirage of the fight, may even have a sort of phasing concept where it phases you out to do combat with a shatter/swirl of the screen like classic FF sRPG combat transitions- they'll be less difficult than fresh / enkindled variant and the more deteriorated the weaker they will be (and perhaps more monster hunter like in that most things can be dodged given awareness, so fixed tracking target being less used and casting times being a bit more friendly- allowing for more reliable solo play), and of course you can get the opportunity for a reward. S rank still being hard to solo but at the weakest point entirely possible, age of body giving you a different aged trophy. If the corpse is under an hour it'll have a chance to be just as fresh as if you found it live, if not then you'll get one less drop per stage (if this isn't direct trading of rewards, if it's more token exchange based, then you can have quality also effect which rewards are more or less likely). Each day A ranks reset and each week S ranks reset, there is no limit of the enkindled versions though if its enkindled you'll get a reward if you take part. The trophy perhaps can also be dismantled for unique hunt crafts a bit monster hunter like (which should be sell-able so if a crafter needs the hunt seals for their combat job they're not out of luck in their crafting side). Certain monsters might also come with special interactions, like if you pray, weep, mine, or hack (BTN) at them- you can get a special mining node from a giant rock golem, or a special tree node from an Ent. The purpose here being that enkindled forms act as a wait timer, fresh forms are a competition between all players (hunt competitions, may even introduce leaderboards and hunt teams), and even if you come to them dead you can still have some of the reward, so there is less wait for me as the game makes the timer for wait (and the first fresh version is meant to be fought over for hunter squads), and even if you're not in a big train pack you can, the trophy system may slightly reduce cross server actions and the smoke system will help cross server too as they'll be harder to swipe from under another sever's nose.

Just some random thoughts lol.

[SturmChurro]

All this would do is end having unscrupulous players placing afk bots to watch and report when these FATEs spawn until they get what they want from them.

Yep, as proven in other games that have more in-depth random events, or are based around them, they are continuously exploited by a section of the community. There really is no winning for the devs (or regular players) here.

[ItMe]

All this would do is end having unscrupulous players placing afk bots to watch and report when these FATEs spawn until they get what they want from them.

For awhile they were logging you out if you were AFK for 15 minutes. They could always just bring something like that back.

[KageTokage]

All this would do is end having unscrupulous players placing afk bots to watch and report when these FATEs spawn until they get what they want from them.

They already do that as it's a built-in function present in one of the most popular botting programs. The instant a S rank hunt or special FATE spawns in the same zone as somebody using the bot its location immediately gets relayed to a discord server that the botting program is linked to.

It kind of sucks because you're basically forced to rely on the information being gathered by these bots if you want to actually make it to a weaker hunt before it dies as randoms from across the DC will inevitably start swarming towards when it gets detected.