[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Eleccybubb]

Yoshida has talked about some system with retainers. They teased that they were evaluating FFXII's gambit system when thinking about what they can do with retainers.

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Another thing to be sure you're doing is retainer quick ventures. Yes, it's hit or miss, but those "Oh, my retainer just brought me a 1 million gil item" hits are sure nice.

But the gambit system was commands that you set up for a character to specifically perform during battle such as "If hp is less than 40% use cure". How would that work here?. Also I can't really complain about ventures after 2 whiskers in a row . Sold one and other went to my mogbow.

[Scufflegrit]

Another thing to be sure you're doing is retainer quick ventures. Yes, it's hit or miss, but those "Oh, my retainer just brought me a 1 million gil item" hits are sure nice.

Followed immediately by a week of fish and one pair of level 23 gloves.

[Lathais]

E.g.

You are a fairly fit dude.
You are moving.
You ran into trouble with an old solid wood cabinet.
You got the nearest friend over to help.

a)Together you move it and share a beer in the evening.

OR

b)Together you fail to move it.

b.1)You shrug and start thinking of an alternate solution.

OR

b.2)You flip out. Question why your friend isn't stronger. That if he was as strong as you, the cabinet would have been moved no problem. Call him a loser and tell him to get out.

This is the ideal kind of "team based" gameplay. Your team member failing you does not result in nerdrage or even annoyance.

"b.1)" is the outcome 99% of the time. Your friend is doing you a favor. He is not obligated to help you. You are not entitled to his help.

"b.2)" almost never happens unless you are a psychopath ... and you won't have a friend after that.

To some extend it's more a matter of "social engineering" than game mechanics.

The problem is, you fond someone to help you in the game and that person is not the same thing as a real life friend. Add in the anonymity of the internet and the fact that it's just some random person and that's not how things turn out.

[Faroth]

But the gambit system was commands that you set up for a character to specifically perform during battle such as "If hp is less than 40% use cure". How would that work here?

If your retainer is able to go on missions with you, or run dungeons with you, or something along those lines, the retainer would be akin to the party members you weren't controlling in XII.

Player speculation, then, is that you may be able to run dungeons with less players and retainers joining you. So you + your retainer, me + my retainer = current level dungeon runs. But again, this is just player speculation. Yoshida was rather vague and only hinted at them looking at the Gambit system for some sort of use.

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Followed immediately by a week of fish and one pair of level 23 gloves.

My retainers are pretty good with quick ventures of bringing things that sell.
Don't ask me why level 23 gloves sell for 15k

Now...fish? Those are usually the 18 hour field exploration ventures. >:/

[Lathais]

Replace friend with helpful guy on the street.

Edit: It's almost like you don't want to "get it". Whatever man.

Even if it's a helpful guy on the street, if I flip out on that guy, there are real life consequences. If he flips out on me, there are real life consequences. Don't pretend it does not happen though, I have seen it. Add in the anonymity of the internet and people act differently.

[Faroth]

The problem is, you fond someone to help you in the game and that person is not the same thing as a real life friend. Add in the anonymity of the internet and the fact that it's just some random person and that's not how things turn out.

You just explained why the days of EverQuest were, to me, better than today's instant gratification "gimme gimme" insta-group queues. You formed friendships. Further than that, you built a server reptuation. Assholes didn't exist long in EverQuest with random groups. They often found their own kind, but server wide "blacklists" could, and did, get formed by the community to block out jerks from finding groups.

[Lathais]

Eh...

...if there's a pass/fail problem in play, then I could get irritated. But when my pug roulette run of Sastasha isn't a speedrun because some of the people are kinda bad? Really? I'm supposed to get mad about that? Meh.

Not asking for speed runs, just asking people to perform at at least 80-90%.

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Tbh anyone who cries about a healer not doing dps in low levels like that is a bloody tryhard. It really isn't a big deal. Hell max level dungeons these days take like no effort to complete especially Lost City HM. Infact nearly all of that dungeon for me is mindless AOE as BLM.

Wasn't saying all healers should always DPS, just saying if you have one or both DPS who both "feel like performing at 60%" and then in addition you have a healer who is not DPSing, that slows the run down considerably.

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You just explained why the days of EverQuest were, to me, better than today's instant gratification "gimme gimme" insta-group queues. You formed friendships. Further than that, you built a server reptuation. Assholes didn't exist long in EverQuest with random groups. They often found their own kind, but server wide "blacklists" could, and did, get formed by the community to block out jerks from finding groups.

Yeah, same thing happened in FFXI as well. However, it could also take hours of looking for a group and that would often times result in nothing. Much better the way it is now IMO.

[Gutler]

Question:

Does removing of materia still carry the risk of destroying your gear?

I dont rememebr it ever carrying that risk at all at most you would lose the materia.

[Advent]

So it's ok for you to ruin my dungeon experience but not ok for me to ruin yours? See, this is one of the reasons I just plain stopped playing. When I did play, I have limited time to play. I want to log in, get some stuff done and log out. If you are playing at 60%, the dungeon takes longer. I don't have time for that. If you don't feel like performing at at least 90% of what you can, then do not group with others. Play by yourself where it does not affect others. Do open world stuff.

Why is it ok for you to waste other people time? Seriously, if you have a healer who is not DPSing and DPS performing at 60%, that run is going to take near 40% longer than it should. I don't have time for that.

In short, this is team based gameplay, if you are not bringing your game to team content, you are wasting the rest of the teams time. If you don't feel like performing the best you can, don't bring other people down, play by yourself.

Maybe. However, there are few, if any pass/fail mechanics in 4mans (Which I do exclusively) that I can't overcome. So, if it takes 3 minutes longer, big deal. If you can't spare an extra 3-5 minutes for a run I'm not sure what else I can say. Moreover, I may have misspoke when I stated 60% was my target goal. I don't really have a target, but I often try not to concern myself with being the absolute best at all times. It fringes on my nerves and frustrates me when I don't get it right, so I had to learn to let that go. Things like, letting Heavy Thrust or Blood of the Dragon fall off when I'm playing Dragoon, or missing an Elixir Field or some other OGCD ability that puts me behind when I'm playing my Monk. Mistiming Crush Armor when I'm on my Ninja. Realistically, I'm not that anal about my play, and I don't expect others to be either. I learned to lower my expectations when joining a roulette. For both myself and the people I happen to be playing with. It has made my experience in the expert roulette much more bearable and stress-free.

[Lathais]

If you're asking for 90% efficiency in all areas, then yes...you're expecting a speedrun of that instance.

To some extent, I get it. These games tend to force you into repetition of unenjoyable content. You just want to get in and get out. But remember that not everyone is a jaded level 60 just farming tomestones and running Toto-Rak for the 662th time.

But I am not asking for 90%, I am asking for 80-90%, with breaks to explain mechanics to new players being ok, going for full clear being ok and not gonna freak out if someone has something comes up and needs a quick 2-5m break. Asking for people to perform at 80-90% is no where near the same thing as a speedrun, not sure where you got that from.

[Lathais]

Maybe. However, there are few, if any pass/fail mechanics in 4mans (Which I do exclusively) that I can't overcome. So, if it takes 3 minutes longer, big deal. If you can't spare an extra 3-5 minutes for a run I'm not sure what else I can say. Moreover, I may have misspoke when I stated 60% was my target goal. I don't really have a target, but I often try not to concern myself with being the absolute best at all times. It fringes on my nerves and frustrates me when I don't get it right, so I had to learn to let that go. Things like, letting Heavy Thrust or Blood of the Dragon fall off when I'm playing Dragoon, or missing an Elixir Field or some other OGCD ability that puts me behind when I'm playing my Monk. Mistiming Crush Armor when I'm on my Ninja. Realistically, I'm not that anal about my play, and I don't expect others to be either. I learned to lower my expectations when joining a roulette. For both myself and the people I happen to be playing with. It has made my experience in the expert roulette much more bearable and stress-free.

If each boss takes 3-5 minutes longer, and there are 3-4 bosses, that means the bosses alone took 12-20 minutes longer. Add 15-20 seconds for each trash pack along the way and you;ve got a run that likely took 10-30 minutes longer than it should have.

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Well, given that "time" was presented as your primary concern, I came to the conclusion that you meant 80-90% efficiency in all areas, including time spent on things.

I mean, if you're ok with stopping to explain things, pulling more mobs for a full clear, and a 5 minute break partway through then it doesn't really sound like time is your primary concern.

Well, I have macros to explain all the boss fights for all the dungeons in the game, so that does not take very long. Pulling more mobs for a full clear is just something I have come to expect and if people want to do it, I've planeed for it, if they don't great that's a bonus to me. As for a break, it does bother me every time it happens, but I've also had to do it sometimes. Often times it is not anything you have control over. All of these are things that you have no control over. You DO however have control over how well you perform. So let's save time where we can to make room for wasting times on the things we can not.

I don't really see how hard that is to understand. If people are not performing well AND you have all those other issues happen, you have a run that should take 30-45 minutes take near 2 hours, and yes, I have seen this happen. If everyone is performing well but you have some of the other issues, the run that should take 30-45 minutes takes an 60-75 minutes and that's not too bad, I can deal with that. 2 hours, no, not gonna deal with that.

[Faroth]

Or they just rerolled Necros and soloed their whole lives.

And then took out their bitterness by charging an arm and a leg for corpse summons!

[SodiumChloride]

I dont rememebr it ever carrying that risk at all at most you would lose the materia.

Had a former FC leader lose his boots when removing materia - in hindsight he felt he should have just converted it.

Not sure if they have removed the risk of gear loss.

[Granyala]

I just don't understand people who feel so strongly against the relic. It's time consuming, but still possible to advance it even with only minor effort each day.

The main detractors for me are:
1) the WHM staff is ugly.
2) I know it will be nerfed HARD later on.
3) I don't raid -> I don't need the player power.

Why is it ok for you to waste other people time? Seriously, if you have a healer who is not DPSing and DPS performing at 60%, that run is going to take near 40% longer than it should. I don't have time for that.

If your time is so limited you can't accomodate a run with weak players, you should refrain from doing group content.
Yes I like speedruns and good DPS too. But I don't give damn whether my expert takes 15 or 23 minutes.

[TheWindWalker]

If your time is so limited you can't accomodate a run with weak players, you should refrain from doing group content.
Yes I like speedruns and good DPS too. But I don't give damn whether my expert takes 15 or 23 minutes.

This guy's attitude is my issue with playing Black Mage as a serious investment. I wouldn't want to explain to someone why I don't weave in Flares in my single target rotation and why they just saw Enochian fall off 4 minutes into a fight with heavy movement.

[SodiumChloride]

Even if it's a helpful guy on the street, if I flip out on that guy, there are real life consequences. If he flips out on me, there are real life consequences. Don't pretend it does not happen though, I have seen it. Add in the anonymity of the internet and people act differently.

Is there a possibility of someone going off on you like a nutcase? Of course.

But will a typical reasonable person go off on you?

Long story short, this is really more of a social engineering matter. Who will players blame if something goes wrong?

In the current design, it's implied that everyone is responsible for the outcome, people are going to get flamed for failing.

However if it's implied that you and only you are responsible for accomplishing your own objectives then any help you get is pretty much an extra, ergo, you aren't entitled to quality help.

[Tazila]

I don't think I've ever seen a run take two hours.

Generally because the instance ends after an hour and a half, but also because either it was abandoned WELL before the 90 minute mark, or we just tried until maybe 80 minutes in and then gave up.

And the only instance I've spent 80 minutes in (in one group, timer ticking down) was in Steps on the day it came out. We stopped at 80 minutes in because the fight was on a timer anyways and we would have hit it by default. No point going foward with another attempt.

Other than that, 90% of the time, all instances take on average 30 minutes, rare situations where it may lead up to 45-50, but they're so rare that they aren't anything I'd complain about. Even groups that I feel DPS is awful, the run time still really doesn't shift that much. Most Alexander's for me are one shots. Usually if they aren't, the group just vote abandons and everyone tries again.

Maybe I'm more patient than most, but I'm not going to tell someone "Hey if you don't learn your rotation and execute it within 80-90% accuracy then no one will want you around and you should just go play stand alone games or play by yourself where you aren't taking up anyones precious time.".

There's various reasons as to why people play the way they do, from mental slowness to laziness, to being young or new or not understanding how things work. I don't expect any pug I join to function like a guild raid group, having high communication, knowledge of their classes, and synergy with the others they're around. If I did, I'd end up quiting because that's just way to much work and worry for a group of people I'm 99% likely to never run into again. God forbid 30 minutes of my day get spent watching a dragoon autoattack and not hit his buttons or move when the monster moves. That's the real bane of video games right there. /eyeroll/shrug

[Lathais]

Is there a possibility of someone going off on you like a nutcase? Of course.

But will a typical reasonable person go off on you?

Long story short, this is really more of a social engineering matter. Who will players blame if something goes wrong?

In the current design, it's implied that everyone is responsible for the outcome, people are going to get flamed for failing.

However if it's implied that you and only you are responsible for accomplishing your own objectives then any help you get is pretty much an extra, ergo, you aren't entitled to quality help.

and I have yet to see you offer a suggestion to bring this in to the game yet keep the team based feel. See, I actually like the fact that it's a group thing. If there was some separate task that each player had to accomplish, and I complete mine, then I am done for the day and the people that did not complete theirs then have to run again, and again, and again and each time they run without accomplishing their personal objective, they did a run with no rewards. That seems like a system that is doomed to fail, as you'd have a bunch of people unable to ever complete their portion and no one can help them with that either.

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I don't think I've ever seen a run take two hours.

Generally because the instance ends after an hour and a half, but also because either it was abandoned WELL before the 90 minute mark, or we just tried until maybe 80 minutes in and then gave up.

And the only instance I've spent 80 minutes in (in one group, timer ticking down) was in Steps on the day it came out. We stopped at 80 minutes in because the fight was on a timer anyways and we would have hit it by default. No point going foward with another attempt.

Other than that, 90% of the time, all instances take on average 30 minutes, rare situations where it may lead up to 45-50, but they're so rare that they aren't anything I'd complain about. Even groups that I feel DPS is awful, the run time still really doesn't shift that much. Most Alexander's for me are one shots. Usually if they aren't, the group just vote abandons and everyone tries again.

Maybe I'm more patient than most, but I'm not going to tell someone "Hey if you don't learn your rotation and execute it within 80-90% accuracy then no one will want you around and you should just go play stand alone games or play by yourself where you aren't taking up anyones precious time.".

There's various reasons as to why people play the way they do, from mental slowness to laziness, to being young or new or not understanding how things work. I don't expect any pug I join to function like a guild raid group, having high communication, knowledge of their classes, and synergy with the others they're around. If I did, I'd end up quiting because that's just way to much work and worry for a group of people I'm 99% likely to never run into again. God forbid 30 minutes of my day get spent watching a dragoon autoattack and not hit his buttons or move when the monster moves. That's the real bane of video games right there. /eyeroll/shrug

I'll give you the 90 minute timer, I forgot about that it's been so long since I have played. However, there is really nor reason a run should take over an hour and I remember seeing that quite frequently. Again, the only time this really happens is when you have multiple things "go wrong" like breaks, explaining fights and full clears in addition to poor performers. I don't expect every run to go as smooth as a guild run either. However, I do expect someone who is there as a DPS to actually be doing DPS. To actually AoE when they should AoE. To actually use their best abilities and not be lazy. It's my time too and messing around is for your own time.

I dunno, obviously people don't get what I am saying and think I am one of those go go go kick anyone who wastes any time at all people so I am just gonna shut up now. Assuming that the people here are decent representation of the current population, I think I'll just keep not playing. Too bad because I really did enjoy the game, but if people think that dungeon runs that should take 30-45 minutes taking over an hour is ok, well, not for me. I'm not asking for 30 minute speedruns every time, but a 45 minute run is already 50% more time then it should take, going too far beyond that is ridiculous. I know if I took 50% more time than a task should take for anything at work, I'd lose my job.

Also, yes, I only have about 90-120 minutes a night to play. So sitting in que for 30 minutes takes up a good portion of that time. If a run takes over an hour at that point, I either have to lose sleep or just leave and I accomplished nothing.

[SodiumChloride]

and I have yet to see you offer a suggestion to bring this in to the game yet keep the team based feel. See, I actually like the fact that it's a group thing. If there was some separate task that each player had to accomplish, and I complete mine, then I am done for the day and the people that did not complete theirs then have to run again, and again, and again and each time they run without accomplishing their personal objective, they did a run with no rewards. That seems like a system that is doomed to fail, as you'd have a bunch of people unable to ever complete their portion and no one can help them with that either.

Firstly, I don't work at SE, it's not really my job to work out the details of an implementation.

Secondly, off the top of my head, one way is to give players a soloable but difficult/tedious objective - you can do it yourself, if you want to challenge yourself, but it's better if others help out; ideally help out out of a sense of alturism.

Perhaps the objective is to kill high HP monsters ... that is responsive to skill chains. As you do your normal rotation, windows of opportunity will open for others to throw in a hit or two starting up a skill chain that can keep chaining - further details I will leave to game designers that actually have experience designing such systems. No grouping required.

You can do it yourself, the monsters don't hit that hard, it will just take awhile.

For those helping, maybe give them a small bonus reward when they complete their own objectives - i.e. maybe you are awarded karma points and when you turn in your objective you get a bonus reward (gil?).

No one is beholden to each other but you are encourage to help out. Everyone will still be playing together.

[Lathais]

Firstly, I don't work at SE, it's not really my job to work out the details of an implementation.

Secondly, off the top of my head, one way is to give players a soloable but difficult/tedious objective - you can do it yourself, if you want to challenge yourself, but it's better if others help out; ideally help out out of a sense of alturism.

Perhaps the objective is to kill high HP monsters ... that is responsive to skill chains. As you do your normal rotation, windows of opportunity will open for others to throw in a hit or two starting up a skill chain that can keep chaining - further details I will leave to game designers that actually have experience designing such systems. No grouping required.

You can do it yourself, the monsters don't hit that hard, it will just take awhile.

For those helping, maybe give them a small bonus reward when they complete their own objectives.

No one is beholden to each other but you are encourage to help out. Everyone will still be playing together.

Then that's not team play. I love dungeons. I love the fact that we all have to work together and if one does not pull their weight then the whole thing fails. That is what attracts me to these types of games. None of what you described would have that feel.

Also, if you say you want to leave it to the designers, then please do. By saying you want something else, you are not. The designers have given us what they feel is the best based on their experience and that is clearly not what you want. But then you want them to design it. If they design it, this is what you get. If you want something else, say what it is. If you want to leave it to the designers, well, don't complain when you get what they give you.