Quote Originally Posted by Akiudo View Post
Snip.

One way I would like to put this is...

Let's take Eureka and Deep Dungeon. Now Deep Dungeon as it current stands thus far in its life cycle is essentially just a square room with rectangular corridors (Oversimplified, I know), with the majority of the challenge coming in the fact that you are typically dealing with monsters and damage which you otherwise traditionally wouldn't expect to find in solo-play content (E.g., if you are playing solo there are certain monsters you are required to avoid). Now for the important part, if we were to take Eureka, or more importantly actually Bozja with the Fragments system, in addition to the duels -- What would happen if you took these 2 features and incorporated them into a system like Deep Dungeon; suddenly you end up where playing according to gimmicks plays a crucial part in getting through the content with each class potentially having a wildly different way of handling it, beyond just survivability, mobility.

Now let's come to the second issue (That I personally have), and that is the longevity or maintenance of said content. If I'm honest they would do themselves and other players a massive favor if they could find older content to be more relevant beyond the simple just doing roulettes. Add minions to more dungeons, for example. I find that when content has outlived its relevance then they abandon it, regardless of how good said content just might be. Expand the reward system for Ishgard Restoration for example.


Now let's also come to something a little more related to the first point. Let me borrow here from Runescape and just say that dungeoneering is one of the best things I've touched and they already have a good foundation for creating something like this with Deep Dungeon, there is really no reason why they cannot try and embed the crafting system to be more intertwined with combat, really.

To really summarise, they've got far too many separate systems which individually speaking whilst good, don't really have a lot of substance. Why must some systems be separate, why can they not try and innovate a little more by embedding these systems and features? Another one in this direction, whilst Bozja has mixed reception, why can't things such as Critical Engagements and Duels be expanded to the general open-world content in a bid to try and liven it up more, and to entice those at the end-game level to interact with the world more. I can say that Shared FATEs are a good start, but realistically speaking they are only really scratching the surface with what they can do and giving players critical engagements or even open-world dungeons (similar in concept to the Emergency Mission from Diadem, if people remember that). They've incorporated the Unending Codex which is a good step for something to actually entice people to do these things. Embed the lore into it a little more. -- I would argue that this would help massively with player retention too, especially if they can put it on the lower level zones, give people a chance to experience something at max-level, or even just use basic NPC job kits and give new players even a shred of taste of how the game can be without needing to sit through 100~ hours of story.

These are some of my biggest points when talking in relation to content.

On the note of profuse grinds, personally, I don't mind these but they need better milestones, so people can invest even shorter amounts of time in content to attain something. Let me draw from Diadem with this example, actually. You have the milestone of 50,000 points on Disciple of the Land, any, then you have the individual achievements for 150K, which offers nothing, and then you have 500K which offers a title, and then a mount for getting 500K across all DoH/L class, in this regard, why can't 150K be a milestone for each class with a title or even minion, and then another achievement on 150K for all classes, rewarding an additional title, or minion to entice people to engage more without needing to wholly invest.

If you were to put a ruler to a piece of paper and mark the milestones for the majority of content grinds you would have something that appears like...

Start Here--Milestone-------------------------------------------------End-goal
I------------------I-----------------------------------------------------------I

There is nothing between first Milestone and End-goal, there needs to be something between the first Milestone and the End-goal to make the content more meaningful on every and all levels