New Difficulty Mode Suggestion: (Chaos)

[AmiableApkallu]

What are your thoughts on a difficulty mode like that?

:shrug: I don't understand why a new mode needs to be made out of this.

Randomization should be a feature of all encounters. Not necessarily in the exact way proposed here, perhaps, but nonetheless, it's tiresome walking into an encounter already knowing how it will play out.

[Saraide]

:shrug: I don't understand why a new mode needs to be made out of this.

Randomization should be a feature of all encounters. Not necessarily in the exact way proposed here, perhaps, but nonetheless, it's tiresome walking into an encounter already knowing how it will play out.

The benefit of making it its own game mode is you can chain together tons of already existing fights in a boss rush.

[Gemina]

Agree with the person above me that nuking rewards would probably demotivate those who don't want to bash their head into something over and over again (i.e. non-savage crowd or the non-deep dungeon crowd). I'd say rolling back a tier or two of rewards upon failure would be more suitable as it's still a punishment but doesn't feel like a complete waste of time (if I spent like 3-4h in here and died and only got a fete present I'd probably never touch it again lol). If that's not acceptable than perhaps an "Accursed Hoard" option could be available so people can pick up sack equivalents on the way that they can't lose and roll for rewards afterwards. As far as tokens go, I'm open to it but I don't believe it should be double digit tokens to get one item. Ultimately it needs to respect the time of the player attempting it in some form, otherwise I feel a large percentage of people will avoid it for other content that is more flexible with its offerings.

Not against the idea, it's interesting. I just am wondering with the way the devs are currently modeling the game (making things easier), if they'd be open to throwing something like this into the game if it's supposed to be extremely punishing. I agree that the game needs more harder content for midcore and I'm hoping that in DT we start to see the signs of the trend shifting to more harder activities, but who knows.

The only reason why I think players would be deterred to continue running the content is because they want to go down easy street to get the rewards. Eff that. And I mean that in the biggest way possible. I'm sick of it. This isn't like the current treasure dungeons where there is a ton of RNG involved. There would be with the bosses you face and the handicaps received, but not so much with the rewards. If players want the next long hairstyle, or glamours typically found only in the cash shop, they are simply going to have to git gud. There could be things they do keep such as gil and tomes that's rewarded after each encounter, but not what's in the loot box.

There simply must be a risk vs reward aspect to this content, or it will undoubtedly fail. We have this already with Faux Hallows. You only get to play the grid game if you beat the current unreal trial. If you don't. Then too bad. Get better. There needs to be more content like this, especially at the casual level to help players desire to get to higher ground.

[AmiableApkallu]

The benefit of making it its own game mode is you can chain together tons of already existing fights in a boss rush.

The idea of a "boss rush" mode is independent of the idea of making encounters more "chaotic." One can exist without the other.

If you want to tell me that I can only have more engaging, less predictable encounters by running this separate "boss rush" mode, there's a thread for that already.

[Saraide]

The only reason why I think players would be deterred to continue running the content is because they want to go down easy street to get the rewards. Eff that. And I mean that in the biggest way possible. I'm sick of it. This isn't like the current treasure dungeons where there is a ton of RNG involved. There would be with the bosses you face and the handicaps received, but not so much with the rewards. If players want the next long hairstyle, or glamours typically found only in the cash shop, they are simply going to have to git gud. There could be things they do keep such as gil and tomes that's rewarded after each encounter, but not what's in the loot box.

There simply must be a risk vs reward aspect to this content, or it will undoubtedly fail. We have this already with Faux Hallows. You only get to play the grid game if you beat the current unreal trial. If you don't. Then too bad. Get better. There needs to be more content like this, especially at the casual level to help players desire to get to higher ground.

Glad you mentioned faux hollow because as far as i'm aware beating unreal once and then going back in for the second weekly reward doesnt take away the reward for the first clear if you wipe on it.

[Astrus]

If we have to have rewards at stake what I'd like to see is the content awarding its own (wallet!!) currency, which each fight giving you the option to wager that currency for a stacking multiplier the longer your win streak keeps going.
Until you either cash it in and reset the multiplier or lose and all your wagered currency and multiplier is gone.

That'd give people the option to slowly grind out rewards without wagering, speeding the process up a little with "safe" wagers or trying to quickly earn a reward with a risky wager if they think they have the skills to pull it off.
One could even make the wager contingent on individual character KO rather than the party clearing the encounter if people carrying/selling clears is a concern (I mean they still could but at least one would need to do mechanics correctly even if not providing any dps).

[CaptainLagbeard]

:shrug: I don't understand why a new mode needs to be made out of this.

Randomization should be a feature of all encounters. Not necessarily in the exact way proposed here, perhaps, but nonetheless, it's tiresome walking into an encounter already knowing how it will play out.

The attacks in most content could possibly be a little more randomized... But the idea would be to add extra random things happening in the fight.

Which on a base level could be fun, but the main problem I see is the possibility of a random effect possibly making the entire fight unwinnable.

[AmiableApkallu]

The attacks in most content could possibly be a little more randomized... But the idea would be to add extra random things happening in the fight.

Which on a base level could be fun, but the main problem I see is the possibility of a random effect possibly making the entire fight unwinnable.

I suppose… Randomness and unpredictability is not a binary, on/off thing, nor does it require that everything be at the mercy of a roll of the dice.

What I want to see is some amount of unpredictability as the baseline for all encounters. I don't want to be a bot following a plan recorded in a spreadsheet; I don't want to rely on my fellow players being "creative" to make this run different from that run.

At the same time, I think the developers can weight the dice so that certain things simply don't happen. They should understand the space of Things That Might Happen well enough to ensure that certain Terrible Combinations happen with little or no chance. And even should one roll of the dice lead to an unwinnable scenario, that's little different from my cat suddently walking on my keyboard and ruining an encounter: sad and unfortunate, but as long as it doesn't happen too often, easily shrugged off.

None of that argues against the OP's proposal. I simply want some notion of "chaos" to make its way into other content.

[TaleraRistain]

Not a bad suggestion but speaking on the software development side, I'd want to see how high demand was and if there was going to be adequate return for the development resources invested. Now they could do this with surveys and such so that's one area where they could try to more accurately gauge community interest.

If it's low dev time, then that would make it more attractive as a low-hanging fruit win that could be pushed out which would make some players happy but others mad at the dev time possibly taken away from something else. So I think they'd want to balance that, too, along with how much it may take away from current projects.

[Gordita]

I like the idea, think it's great. I won't dive into specifics too much but the idea of random bosses, and random environmental hazards and other mechanics seems like a big old mess of chaotic fun. If it were to happen I'd like to see solo and party mode options as well as normal and hard mode

I was thinking the other day about how the gold saucer is missing the combat arena and how it would be nice to have in xiv. And snowboarding.