Power as a function of reward, and not of time. Variations + Challenge = Reward

[Shougun]

Thanks for entertaining my thoughts, hopefully the below can answer and address some of yours.

I do agree with that so I prefer when rewards aren't RNG but more like get 50-99 of whatever currency.

I think RNG helps break up an easily precevied treadmill, but being, imo, one of the primary ones that at least on the English forum side pushed for the token-ization of FFXIV... totally agree. I was there... 3000 years ago.... and I definitely pushed strongly to fill FFXIV with safety nets.

What reward? Even endgame gear is mostly useless once you've bought crafted gear or farmed weekly tomestones for several weeks into the 9 month cycle.
Then the reward rates (like minion droprate) would just go up passively as your gear level improves, without much effort to attack better.
There are reasons to do roulettes for old content already.

• Experience = progression.
• Tomestones = gear progression.

Think there is either verification request to me, or a misunderstanding, as I can't fully tell. But yes. Yes.

I am aware of the general carrots that work, and yes those would be the carrots that would be needed. I alluded to in the OP but, for example certain activities would literally translate to more tomes at the end (or % reward increases).

There would be unique opportunities (random examples already given), but there would also be general applications of rewards. So for an exceptionally generic example, lets say a dungeon normally took 10 minutes (easy number) and this was worth 1 dungeon of exp (easy unit). As time goes on players gain more power and theoretically under an unbalanced system could finish the dungeon in 7 minutes, and then 5. Lets use 5 for easiness. In the old system the 5 minute dungeon is undoubtedly going to be 'ignore all mechanics, if there is a new person just drag them by their toes as they have no idea what the actual hell is going on'.


Instead of that, now approximately the dungeon took 8-10 minutes but reward 2 dungeons worth of experience. This is where we can discuss those more specific / intelligent rewards though, like to be cognizant of players in MSQ (as players often out pace MSQ accidentally), and could be checking their level to the MSQ and offering (perhaps via token) the opportunity to priortize cool items over way too much EXP for a new player doing MSQ.


I would like to see unique ideas too where possible though, or contextually intelligent like mentioned above, for example you referenced minions and maybe the game is like "oh, you don't have the tetra card". Make getting cards a bit more reliable (still some grind, but add some more hope in there ). Coins of fate that let you narrow down glamour opportunities, etc. There are many ways we can sweeten the pot, but we have to be pragmatic and know that (as OP said) giving a level 100 double aetherial level 15 gear is not going to be much of a 'deal'.

They could just actually sync it properly. After all, they already sync previous-expansion content anyway - so it may as well be sync'd using Minimum Item Level and Silence Echo settings, like Leveling dungeons and Endsinger effectively are. It wouldn't prevent really good players doing above average damage and getting some sort of reward for it either.

The problem with this is it destroys growth. I had thought of that but I think the OP system is better as it allows the game to accelerate without destroying it's balance. I think the acceleration is important, but by making it "fast and easy" as our current choice of acceleration I think it just makes it bland. SO this system maintains the challenge but ALSO maintains the acceleration that happens through power. If we do a tight sync, like min, then it isn't fast and easy anymore but you've lost acceleration (which I think is important for the game as those contents age), and also removes some of that progression vibes you get from getting better gear and playing better.


Also I like that the above system has combined 'doing better' with 'different things to see' and 'more rewards', and I imagine (paper ideas right now lol) that this would make a nice gameplay loop (especially if SE can occasionally poke it, so old content a year from now might surprise you).


So that is the key thing to keep in mind. We are not slowing the game down, we are not removing power acceleration- we are just changing how it works. In that way I think ultimately having just a tighter sync is not the solution I am trying to hit upon, as it misses the primary concept (sort of seeing the trees and missing the forest type situation).

We can easily make the game just slower (min ilvl sync!), but I am not asking that .

This would be useful with how bored people get of Expert Roulette. And yet we have some efforts in this area with Variant dungeons, they are just hidden away in a User Interface that the majority of players are not going to use the majority of the time like they do with Expert Roulette.

The interrupt idea is interesting but the problem is that mechanics are often designed to work together in a cohesive sequence and missing one of them can potentially ruin the whole "difficulty" of the fight in the first place. This same issue can make randomizing the mechanics a bit of a problem too, especially if there's only 4 mechanics.

In any case, they could have a vote at the start of the content to:

• Add random gimmicks of some form, such as the regularly stacks debuffs that need Esuna or Counter Stance that counters all damage dealt back at the party (so you are effectively fighting yourselves).
• Remove telegraphs.
• Buff boss HP and damage output to threaten even tanks.

They do this sort of thing for Blue Mages so they could if they wanted to tbh. There are fresh weekly challenges for them as well as achievements for doing unique things.
The best way to handle this, in my opinion, is a status on the hunt that reduces all incoming damage by the level difference as a percentage, and increases all outgoing damage by the level difference as a percentage. This would avoid needing to click a "Level Sync" button entirely and prevent the issue of it only affecting a certain amount of players.

Yeah I just made some random examples and I don't think each example fits in all content. My example of Chimera was thinking specifically because I think it could fit, but you couldn't do that for all bosses cause as you said it would mess everything up. Definitely a thought I had, and I agree it must be considered.


Some ideas can be content wide, which is nice for dev time value, but a lot of ideas might be dungeon specific (like the goblin paratroopers was thinking of specific dungeons). Thanks for suggesting ideas too

Would be interesting if SE added nuances like that but it would need to go along with a more sophisticated power progression and strength/weakness system overall, which SE hasn't demonstrated being able to build successfully in recent years.

/cry lol

They haven't ignored it. They've even mentioned it in interviews how they are going to look at it in 8.0. But there have equally been voices asking for homogenization. When you say "my job doesn't have a gap closer, give me one", that's asking for homogenization. When you say "why can't DRK heal as much?" that's asking for homogenization. When you say "Sage can heal without losing DPS, why can't SCH?" that's asking for homogenization. And so on.
That already began with 7.0. They specifically said the Expert dungeons and 8-person raids were examples of this. I think it would be fair to include their other high-end duties in this as well. However, the first tier is always easier than the later ones so they do of course plan to go a lot further in 7.2.

I mean from my perspective I'm king of beating the horse of class fantasy (gameplay roleplay) and I feel they have been ignoring it for years (and have a lot of room to improve), but I know they said they will work on it now. Maybe they'll do great, I hope they will. I agree that some of the changes have ABSOLUTELY been asked by players, and that it was likely that feedback that lead them.

There are reasons why I still say SE reads feedback, there are many things I could associate to feedback. This feedback is one I think I'd say wasn't timely responded to / adjustments not consistently in the right direction though lol. As sometimes, I think, their solutions are far too eager to chop up the limited class fantasy / roleplay fantasy they have in order to meet excel metrics.

I can example one that I know I was part of which was Flash spam on Paladin, which I felt suuuuuucked lol, and they removed that! I was definitely one of the ones asking for that to go :P. Like usual I try to come up with ideas, so I think I came up with some sort of magic interactions, like you flashed and then you could attack flashed monsters for AoE enmity generating explosions, but when they made the more general change I didn't mind cause I hated spamming flash XD.

I can also see how some changes will cause issues for high end content... and I have never felt there was a beautiful solution for that except some sort of eternal hell for the balance team. Good luck on that thankless job. I care a lot about class fantasy though... and I am really hurting right now, and have been pointing at the walls saying "they're closing in!" / getting roleplay claustrophobia for a while : /. Genuinely hope they can find a good way to navigate that situation and I don't envy that tough position. I have my thoughts on how to go about it, but it is with problems (like I think most solutions are...).