Dark Devices - Phase 1 Exploit

[Dantes]

I guess my issue with Dark Designs is that the behavior debated about over the last 10 pages only makes sense.
If I'm designing this Fate why would I expect players to skip the 20 or so xp providing enemies just to get to the 5 or 6 enemies that are necessary to complete the fate? If I don't expect them defeated repeatedly, why would I set them to respawn in seconds?
I'm no game designer but its hard for me to imagine that if I were I would expect the following line of thinking from a rational adult: "Ok, I'm here to gain experience points. To complete this event I must literally run through a mob of enemies that provide experience points to attack a small number of enemies. I will, therefore, ignore the glaring opportunity gain a large amount of experience points by chaining/defeating enemies and skip them to reach the 5 enemies behind them."

[Tsunenori]

snip

I think you have a half-truth there. The designers of this FATE definitely intended the enemies to hinder progress, and absolutely intended for them to be killed repeatedly as you're looking for the objective enemies, but I don't think they anticipated 50+ people bum-rushing it for weeks on end. Just like how the servers were having trouble, just like how the Duty Finder has had issues, I think this too is a matter of scale and of their not anticipating enough people there at one time to allow for this to happen.

In a world where FFXIV: ARR started with a slow burn instead of a large bang I don't think we would have seen this become the divisive topic that it is.

[Dantes]

snip

I can accept your point.
If that's the whole of it, I still don't think that what has resulted is an exploit. If it does move it into the territory of exploit, doesn't that move us into an era where we have to manage how many players are participating at once in any one event? I'm not trying to be dramatic but I'd like to avoid a scenario in which I must wonder if I'm participating in an exploit because the speed at which an objective is being completed is "too fast" since more players than expected are participating at once.

[Tsunenori]

...doesn't that move us into an era where we have to manage how many players are participating at once in any one event?

I think that's probably the best solution, yes. I've only done the FATE once, but I liked the spirit of it and of the whole chain. I'd rather see FATEs scale dynamically based on the amount of players involved rather than see this FATE and all others like it completely destroyed or nerfed into the ground, and I think they've said that they're looking into ways they can do that as well. This should, hopefully, prevent this from being an issue in the future where instead of having 70 players in a FATE designed for 20, you'll have 70 players in a FATE that scales for 70. It would also cut out a lot of this abhorrent behavior surrounding the whole thing, which is my main issue if I'm honest.

[Dantes]

Tsunenori:

This is 95% of my issue with it.
I couldn't care any less about anyone's, including my own, xp gain rate. Call me old school, but I grew up (I literally grew up) playing FFXI from launch until around 2010/11. I was ok with slowly leveling in Valkurm Dunes. I even remember trying to reach the old level cap in Bibiki Bay fighting Dhalmel. So leveling slowly is just part of a FF game to me.
What I do care about is common courtesy and decency. If I see a group of other people working together to accomplish something constructive, like xping, I'm not going to go over and ruin it. Also, if someone ruins my opportunity out of ignorance, I'm not going to yell at them. Both sides could use more patience with, and consideration for, the other.
The other 5% of my issue is with SE's silence on whether or not this is working as intended. That silence has contributed its share to the behavior as its enabled both sides to feel they're right and the other is full idiots.

[Tsunenori]

That silence has contributed its share to the behavior as its enabled both sides to feel they're right and the other is full idiots.

The story of human history is summarized in this sentence. Anyway, SE was fairly quick to act about Amdapor Keep speed runs, so I'm willing to bet we'll see something about this (or won't see something) within another week or so. Until then I'm just staying away from the whole thing in the game and letting everyone involved fight each other over it.