Alpha First Look: Video 8 – Instanced Dungeons

[Elexia]

Its not uncommon or common.... its rare. I haven't played a single other MMO where there is a time limit the moment you enter the dungeon. There may be time limited events in some of them, but never a kick-you-out-of-dungeon limit.

How crappily small are ARR's raids going to be if they slap a 1hr limit on them all?

You must only play main stream MMOs then, because it's really not that rare to see one that has a timer on a dungeon, especially ones that are part of a daily/weekly/hourly recharge/invite period.

How "small" they are is really irrelevant since using your words, it's rare to see an MMO with a lengthy dungeon since people, especially in this community, seem to hate the concept of anything lasting or taking "a long time" and by long meaning more than 30 minutes.

Remember, the timer has no significance to anything beyond wanting an achievement for that dungeon.

[Reika]

Main stream as in....?

[Vydos]

I'm not too fond of the timer myself and so were all of my friends. I don't mind timers when it comes to instanced boss fights like in FFXI. Because you only have the boss. But I'm not too fond of a timer for an entire dungeon run. I prefer to explore the dungeons at my own pace, chatting with my party members, goofing around and enjoy the sights.

[Roaran]

I'm not too fond of the timer myself and so were all of my friends. I don't mind timers when it comes to instanced boss fights like in FFXI. Because you only have the boss. But I'm not too fond of a timer for an entire dungeon run. I prefer to explore the dungeons at my own pace, chatting with my party members, goofing around and enjoy the sights.

I think it's important to understand why a timer is implemented in the first place. First, it's to absolutely ensure there are not erroneous instances being maintained for AFK players, or players who just want to hang out in the zone for awhile. This is to improve the quality of the experience for other players. Second, as a matter of balance, if there were no timer associated with these dungeons, groups would have an unlimited number of time and attempts to fight bosses. One unavoidable outcome from this is certain strategies being developed that would take advantage of this and make the mechanics of the bosses themselves irrelavent. Rather than implement something to deal with this specifically, a timer is far more effecient at handling multiple issues that arise. And with most dungeons, a plentiful amount of time has been given.

In addition, there is no rule that states the time allotted for the dungeon cannot be used for pure exploration instead of for dealing with the bosses. It's a simple choice you could make, as long as you can get friends to agree with your choice.

[Reika]

Like i said, other mmo's have no problems having a great deal of parties in instances, so timers, the whole afk thing, etc is only for POS servers that were 1.0. They said when they released darkhold that the time limit was because the number of parties that could be in the instance at a time was limited. you can add whatever other reasons for the timer all you want, but they said no other thing than that.

I can't expect a lot of ARR's grand new architecture if they cant do what the old fogey mmo's can do with instances and still have limits to how many parties can be in the instance at a time, and I'm not expecting a whole lot of adventure from ARR dungeons if they are going to keep the time limits, just a whole lota hurry up.

And... the only real difference I can see from that video between 1.0 dungeon and ARR dungeon is that now the objectives for getting the loot are shown to you now like a quest tracker, instead of making you find out if you did everything you needed to do by how many chests you got at the end.

[HiirNoivl]

There are no tanks in Alpha, only dragoons, bards, and White Mages

[Wynn]

There are no tanks in Alpha, only dragoons lancers, bards archers, and White Mages conjurers

Fixed. /10char

[Duelle]

There are no tanks in Alpha, only dragoons, bards, and White Mages

I was more getting at my being hopeful of 4-man dungeons being a little more open as far as group comps went.

To me the 2.0 tp regeneration seems like early 1.0 stamina system. You wear it down and then the rest of the fight you are waiting on slow tp regen which you will have no control over. People really need to take their blinders off.

I get the feeling you'll be seeing TP refunds and things that temporarily increase TP regen at some point. The headache will really be balancing 7+ jobs around one resource system in a fast-paced environment.

[indira]

all 3 musics are epicness.

ONLY issue i see is the timer @_@ they should only use timers if it plays a part in that instances story. such as if theres a bomb and you have to kill the boss to disarm it. timers just cause you to rush.

[Coyohma]

Sad that this happens despite Yoshida mentioning that alpha is more for stress testing than anything else.

I can't imagine why people would be having a problem with the new battle system, outside of the whole "i wanna be different for the sake of being different" thing. It looks lively and fast-paced, at least to me who has played fast-paced systems before.

"More than anything else." That's true - but that doesn't exclude discussion and feedback on other aspects. If SE didn't think this periphery stuff was important, why did they include a "Battle" section on the alpha forums? Feel free to answer that, since it's so sad that this happens.

You can't imagine why people would have a problem with the new battle system. Hmmm. Do you, who has played fast-paced systems before, realize that it boils down to either pressing 1 repeatedly, or pressing 1 and then, three seconds later, 2? For maximum DPS, the best you can possibly do, that's the entire "system."

Just because there are a lot of lights and noise on the screen doesn't mean what you're doing is impressive or complex. We can't rule out that beta will change what we've seen, even some fundamentals that currently seem limiting. But we know two things:

1) The battle system is far and away the most concerning thing about alpha
2) Beta will have to see it change drastically, otherwise ARR's battle is going to have a serious lack of performance discrepancy and depth

Tying this back into the beginning of this post, do you think it best to voice our thoughts during alpha, or is it best to say nothing until beta and just hope that our concerns are alleviated?

After 1.0 I find it indefensible to say that people shouldn't make their opinions heard as soon as possible. And as I've said, SE provided a forum specifically for this purpose.