Wreck's Eureka Concept - 2.0

[Wrecktangle]

You know what, I was thinking to myself and something dawned on me. Why did Eureka cater to the common denominator instead of aiming upward? Let me expound on that for a second. Eureka at its core is one of two specific gameplay forms. Grind nameless mobs, or zerg FATE bosses. Neither of these qualify as engaging for a ex/savage quality player IMO. I think designing content for that is trivially easy, I mean like an Intern could do it easy.

So, why does Eureka not have ANYTHING in it to engage a stronger player? Why can't there be harder monsters to spawn that have actual interactions with the elements and magia board? Obviously your average player the risk to try and kill them simply isn't worth the reward, so only stronger players focus on them. Would it be bad if they got more resources/rewards or faster xp gain? Would that encourage players at the mid level to maybe try them out?

I fail to see how you can't have both exist simultaneously? That to me, is why when I see people defend it, I get frustrated. It's easy to say oh I enjoyed it because I got to afk with friends and bs and get rewards, but that's not good design (IMO). What they created felt really juvenile, and certainly not worth the dev time it took.

Below is a lengthy updated iteration on Eureka and its various systems.

First I want to look at the Magia Board and its elements. I expanded on the function of the Magia board below. My intent for this change is that it should have more effects than merely damage up/damage taken down. I'll cover my thoughts for this below.

Magia Board

Elements

• Fire
  Attack - Immolates an enemy reducing healing effects by x%
  Defense - Provides a HoT effect
• Wind
  Attack - Increases range of all attacks/abilities/spells by 10 yalms
  Defense - Take less damage the further from target you are
• Ice
  Attack - Chills enemies slowing incoming physical attacks and movement speed
  Defense - Grants immunity to slowing effects
• Lightning
  Attack - Attacks cause paralysis which slows cast speeds
  Defense - Increases movement speed by x%
• Water
  Attack - Poison an enemy dealing DoT
  Defense - Grants a small shield every x second
• Earth
  Attack - Reduces enemies defense
  Defense - Provides knockback immunity

Enemies:
One example I posted a while back would maybe be like treasure hunts. You get a key that you have to go find on the map and spawn the monster. Once spawned it belongs to only your group. It would be a larger than normal mob (think like any of the ARR fate boss styled models) and maybe have unique features and would be random (i.e. you wouldn't know until you spawned it). Enemies would use mechanics much more frequently than current design does. You would be constantly dealing damage, healing, switching targets, using cooldowns. Very high impact, high frequency mechanics.

Say you were fighting an Ochu. This Ochu might have it's body as a target, 2 whips, and its bulb. So 4 targets in total. A mob can be any element once randomly spawned. Depending on their element different abilities are empowered in different ways.

• The Whips use tank busters, but can be disabled by killing them both/reduced by killing one. However, the whips need to be "cut", so you'd want someone on WIND dealing damage that would destroy them
• The bulb contains the leafy sections so FIRE would destroy them, preventing its raidwide AOE, or maybe remove its passive HP regen
• The body takes damage from any of the other sub sections dying as well as general damage (think Shinryu tail)

Now imagine if you spawned a FIRE aspected Ochu. It's likely that it's resistant to FIRE so killing the bulb becomes less feasible. So now you have to use elements to help offset its new abilities. For instance maybe the FIRE Ochu has a the ability to spit lava balls out into the field that grow in size until someone with a WATER shield steps into it, which shrinks it.

Then you tie in the weather that empowers monsters of the same element, has environmental hazards, and negative effects attached to them.

Weather

• Fire: Heatwave - This causes slow damage over time to all players
• Wind: Hurricane - Tornadoes spawn and chase players and general gusts of wind push players in random directions periodically. Tornadoes that catch players launch them into the air, dealing moderate falling damage + inactive for a few seconds
• Ice: Blizzard - Obscures visibility and hides telegraphs
• Lightning: Thunderstorm - Darkens the skybox and think Ramuh EX lightning circles periodically spawning on individual players and the map
• Water: Rain - Drenches players amplifying Lightning damage taken and reducing Fire damage taken
• Earth: Clear weather - No Effect

So the idea would be that weather cycles randomly (could even go back to back same pattern too, with maybe Bad Luck protection, i.e. can't go back to back more than once) every few minutes. Weather would empower any mobs of the same element boosting their damage/defense/HP, as well as amplifying their abilities.

Let's take that Ochu for instance:

• A Fire Ochu during a Hurricane could ignite the tornadoes causing them move more quickly, and deal DoT if you got grabbed by one (in addition to the fall damage)
• An Ice Ochu during a Hurricane could freeze the tornadoes, which could provide cover to line of sight other mechanics
• A Lightning Ochu probably wouldn't have any synergy with a Hurricane.

The real danger (and reward) comes from fighting a Lightning Ochu, in a Thunderstorm. When the element and weather match, you get a super monster.

Remember the Ochu's base mechanics?

• The Whips use tank busters, but can be disabled by killing them both/reduced by killing one. However, the whips need to be "cut", so you'd want someone on WIND dealing damage that would destroy them
• The bulb contains the leafy sections so FIRE would destroy them, preventing its raidwide AOE, or maybe remove its passive HP regen
• The body takes damage from any of the other sub sections dying as well as general damage (think Shinryu tail)

A LIGHTNING Ochu might on its own not have the Leafstorm raidwide AOE, but instead has a Chain Lightning spell. It stuns a single random target (Think Susano EX) then immediately jumps to any player within x yalms dealing increased damage each time it jumps, and so on until there's no more targets within range. However, because this enemy is in its own element (weather), it's chain lightning now casts faster, and goes further (say x + y yalms), AND places a paralysis debuff on players (that needs to be cleansed). In addition, the tankbuster now causes a a short (say 6s) debuff that slows the tank by an increasing margin every second, and at the end of the timer, they explode taking the damage they took from the tank buster again in a raidwide AOE based on proximity.

A WIND Ochu's Leafstorm during a Hurricane might now have no cast and have a built in knockback. Alternatively, their tankbuster might shred tank armor, so it's imperative to make sure one tank takes both hits, and the other tank grabs aggro then off both. If both took one, they might not be able to sustain the auto attacks for too long. Because the Ochu is WIND elemental, and the whips are weak to WIND it means they're very hard to kill.

Ideally, these encounters would be like 4 minute fights. High impact, high frequency mechanics with lots of decision making and dynamic gameplay, ESPECIALLY if weather switches mid fight.

I feel like this dynamic of Magia Board -> Elemental Monsters -> Weather creates a really unique, ever changing adventure that would challenge (and hopefully reward appropriately) players like me, who don't find fighting trivial monsters, or zergs fun. The best part, is you could literally build this into the existing Eureka and change nothing to players who *shudders* finds the current design enjoyable. I don't think the weather has a negative enough effect on its own to offset the improved Magia Board that would upset the balance of the experience for them.

What do you think? Good ideas? Bad Ideas? Fun? Not Fun?

[Kazgrel]

Wait, this would require people to not be afk...

For real, though; only able to briefly go through this but I love the Magia Board idea. As it currently is implemented, it’s pretty meh.

[Wrecktangle]

Wait, this would require people to not be afk...

For real, though; only able to briefly go through this but I love the Magia Board idea. As it currently is implemented, it’s pretty meh.

Well, not technically. Because people could still afk NM trains, but now people who actually like playing can hunt dangerous monsters for more rewards. This way players of all skills can enjoy the relic acquisition.

On the real though, where's everyone else? I know the game is slow right now, but I got more hits on the OF than here and that's not normal.
@Granyala, @Faroth, @lawow74, @Katchii, @StrawberryZebra

[Faroth]

I've been busy dealing with some things all over the place at work and at home recently. And as of Thur, I hadn't really been online at all until yesterday. Took an extended weekend off and watched movies and played God of War over the weekend. Which means yesterday was catch up at work and remember what it is..... I do around there.

[lawow74]

I've looked at it, and I suppose it could work, but I doubt such a thing would come to pass. Likely the best you'll get is some kind of Emergency Mission-style 'raid boss' that's a jumped-up FATE spawn akin to Ixion et al. Personally I'd rather they add something like Leves or Hunt Bills to Eureka to give people a better solo/small-group alternative to the NM train.

And while I'm dreaming, they also won't extend the level cap in there and give us better triggers and spawn tracking for the stupid NM's so we don't stand there all day wondering 'when's this fucking thing gonna spawn??' :P

[Faroth]

You know what, I was thinking to myself and something dawned on me. Why did Eureka cater to the common denominator instead of aiming upward? Let me expound on that for a second. Eureka at its core is one of two specific gameplay forms. Grind nameless mobs, or zerg FATE bosses. Neither of these qualify as engaging for a ex/savage quality player IMO. I think designing content for that is trivially easy, I mean like an Intern could do it easy.

So the idea starts off insulting other players and insulting the developers. So automatically your idea has tanked with a % of people who just put up their defenses because you're an elite raider talking down to the filthy commoners who disgust you. The emotional response is "F off, Wreck."

Don't lead with insults.

I fail to see how you can't have both exist simultaneously? That to me, is why when I see people defend it, I get frustrated. It's easy to say oh I enjoyed it because I got to afk with friends and bs and get rewards, but that's not good design (IMO). What they created felt really juvenile, and certainly not worth the dev time it took.

Others enjoyed it, but you dismiss their opinions because it's not good design to you based on your opinions. Why should anyone, then, value your feedback if you don't put any value to theirs?

Also, huzzah, another insult to the development team.

Again, you're tanking your presentation before it starts.

Below is a lengthy updated iteration on Eureka and its various systems.

I'd leave out the insults and the talking down to both other players and developers and jump straight into the idea for things like this.

First I want to look at the Magia Board and its elements. I expanded on the function of the Magia board below. My intent for this change is that it should have more effects than merely damage up/damage taken down. I'll cover my thoughts for this below.

Magia Board

Elements

• Fire
  Attack - Immolates an enemy reducing healing effects by x%
  Defense - Provides a HoT effect
• Wind
  Attack - Increases range of all attacks/abilities/spells by 10 yalms
  Defense - Take less damage the further from target you are
• Ice
  Attack - Chills enemies slowing incoming physical attacks and movement speed
  Defense - Grants immunity to slowing effects
• Lightning
  Attack - Attacks cause paralysis which slows cast speeds
  Defense - Increases movement speed by x%
• Water
  Attack - Poison an enemy dealing DoT
  Defense - Grants a small shield every x second
• Earth
  Attack - Reduces enemies defense
  Defense - Provides knockback immunity

Fire:
How many enemies have healing effects? That might prove a bit of a waste. I think I'd go with a chance for it to proc a DoT for offense.
Heal over Time seems an odd pick for the element of destruction. I'd go with the water defense shield plus damage enemy when struck.

Wind:
Sounds good. Defensive could have an increased movement speed (with the cooldown, you might want to use it for enemies that require more movement or getting from A to B, but you're having to sacrifice a cooldown period to utilize it) rather than a straight damage reduction in place of Lightning. I get the idea of more distance = more damage reduction is combined with speed increase. It makes it a valuable defensive for AoE, etc. Get away from the area or the mob faster and further means less damage. Wind is just typically associated with speed (unless the lightning is greased).

Ice:
Dig it

Lightning:
Paralysis - would diminishing returns not be in effect? Wouldn't a full group of DPS using this effecitvely stunlock the target? Unless you mean a straight "slower cast time" in which case it just needs a new name.
Since I mentioned the increased movement with wind, the defensive lightning trait could be damage related. Reflect attacks or discharge lightning after x number attacks or received attacks or something. Not saying they'd have to swap, just first thoughts upon reading them (this one mainly just because I suggested speed with wind).

Water:
As said earlier, I'd swap it with Fire. Water is a base in poison (liquids) or you could have a "Drown" effect causing the reduced healing (or other effect, I still don't know that reducing enemy healing would be terribly utilized and if you have mobs that regularly heal themselves, I'm not sure how well that would go over even with the more hardcore difficulty crowds)
Defense: HoT from fire, water is more commonly associated with healing

Earth
Dig it

Enemies:
One example I posted a while back would maybe be like treasure hunts. You get a key that you have to go find on the map and spawn the monster. Once spawned it belongs to only your group. It would be a larger than normal mob (think like any of the ARR fate boss styled models) and maybe have unique features and would be random (i.e. you wouldn't know until you spawned it). Enemies would use mechanics much more frequently than current design does. You would be constantly dealing damage, healing, switching targets, using cooldowns. Very high impact, high frequency mechanics.

Say you were fighting an Ochu. This Ochu might have it's body as a target, 2 whips, and its bulb. So 4 targets in total. A mob can be any element once randomly spawned. Depending on their element different abilities are empowered in different ways.

This was actually intended with FFXIV 1.0 - having enemies with multiple targetable parts and attacking/destroying different parts would alter the battle. I thought Yoshida still wanted to do it when he took over, but it hasn't come to pass. Not sure if there are complications outside of instances or if they just haven't gotten it to feel right. I can see a lot of potential in the concept, though. Doing enough damage to a leg causes immobilization and increased damage to the body while the enemy is kneeling, etc. We've seen it minimally used in some dungeon bosses, so I think they should be capable of implementing it on a spawned boss outdoors.

One thing I'd add - If you wipe, rather than despawn the mob, leave it up. Another group could get there and watch and if the group that spawned it dies, they can charge in and try it themselves. Little bit of competition without room for griefing that I can see (probably a way to do so I'm not thinking of). Of course, once the mob becomes untagged, it's a race to who can retag it if there are multiple groups watching the fight.

Now imagine if you spawned a FIRE aspected Ochu. It's likely that it's resistant to FIRE so killing the bulb becomes less feasible. So now you have to use elements to help offset its new abilities. For instance maybe the FIRE Ochu has a the ability to spit lava balls out into the field that grow in size until someone with a WATER shield steps into it, which shrinks it.

Then you tie in the weather that empowers monsters of the same element, has environmental hazards, and negative effects attached to them.

Dig the idea.

Weather

• Fire: Heatwave - This causes slow damage over time to all players
• Wind: Hurricane - Tornadoes spawn and chase players and general gusts of wind push players in random directions periodically. Tornadoes that catch players launch them into the air, dealing moderate falling damage + inactive for a few seconds
• Ice: Blizzard - Obscures visibility and hides telegraphs
• Lightning: Thunderstorm - Darkens the skybox and think Ramuh EX lightning circles periodically spawning on individual players and the map
• Water: Rain - Drenches players amplifying Lightning damage taken and reducing Fire damage taken
• Earth: Clear weather - No Effect

Ah, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. So lofty your goals, so hard your fall. The idea of weather affecting combat has been something I've thought interesting since I first saw it brought up in Vanguard. They were more lofty with the idea of roaming weather patterns crossing zones, though, so contained to just "weather in Eureka" might be more manageable.

The problem with some of these ideas, though, you're no longer catering this to the savage raiders, you're now impacting every player in the zone. I don't know how feasible it is to expect an open world zone to have weather effects that only affect a certain area of said zone. Not that I don't think the idea of having weather affect combat zone wide for all levels of activity in Eureka can't be done, just that some of these ideas may be a bit extreme.

You could get more complicated by having elemental aspect counter weather effects, requiring players to decide if they want the effect to use against the enemy or to neutralize weather. Healers in particular seem to have the luxury of not worrying about elemental alignment as much, so maybe there's something they could use in that regard.

So the idea would be that weather cycles randomly (could even go back to back same pattern too, with maybe Bad Luck protection, i.e. can't go back to back more than once) every few minutes. Weather would empower any mobs of the same element boosting their damage/defense/HP, as well as amplifying their abilities.

Again, you're no longer designing only for the savage player but impacting all players. Could be a scale of how much the weather boosts them depending on their level and a rating (Eureka is somewhat akin to the notorious monsters of XI), perhaps.

Let's take that Ochu for instance:

• A Fire Ochu during a Hurricane could ignite the tornadoes causing them move more quickly, and deal DoT if you got grabbed by one (in addition to the fall damage)
• An Ice Ochu during a Hurricane could freeze the tornadoes, which could provide cover to line of sight other mechanics
• A Lightning Ochu probably wouldn't have any synergy with a Hurricane.

Hurricane typically indicates water. I'd suggest having some luck favor the players as well - fire ochu in hurricane would be weakened because storming water weakens fire. Sometimes you get lucky and spawn a mob that's weak to the weather in effect and it's less challenging. Other times you get one that's stronger due to weather.

The real danger (and reward) comes from fighting a Lightning Ochu, in a Thunderstorm. When the element and weather match, you get a super monster.

What rewards would you have, though? You don't like cosmetic rewards so much. You can't add another power level of items as we're already suffering from too many levels as it is. And if Super Monsters are extremely difficult, will savage raiders accept anything less than equal to or better than their savage raid gear? Contrary to claims, it seems a tiny percent of an already small percent are willing to do content "for the challenge." Few are even willing to undertake it just for titles and bragging rights, it seems.

I feel like this dynamic of Magia Board -> Elemental Monsters -> Weather creates a really unique, ever changing adventure that would challenge (and hopefully reward appropriately) players like me, who don't find fighting trivial monsters, or zergs fun. The best part, is you could literally build this into the existing Eureka and change nothing to players who *shudders* finds the current design enjoyable. I don't think the weather has a negative enough effect on its own to offset the improved Magia Board that would upset the balance of the experience for them.

Again, it all sounds good on paper, but how much development time do you pour into the small subset of players? Even on paper this is a very elaborate and complicated system, not to mention the challenges of coding it, balancing it, making sure every possible combination doesn't break anything or is too hard to be insurmountable. Plus making sure that what you've implemented for a small number of players doesn't completely bork everyone else.

Rather than designing this system for only the spawned mobs, it might be best to approach it with a scaling affect on regular mobs (with their own tweaks), Fate mobs, then spawned mobs for the highest difficulty.

One other detail to flesh out - how do you get whatever is needed to trigger the spawn?

Also, concluding with yet another insult. No matter how much you despise the current design and utterly despise the players who enjoy it, that has nothing to do with your presentation. Stop it.

There's some ideas here I like and would be interested to see explored. Eureka could get more complex as it goes deeper, the first one might be more of an introduction to the base ideas and elements. I definitely like the idea of treasure hunt style "tagged mobs" so only one group is tackling them rather than the zerg causing enemies to appear/disappear due to too many people on screen.

One thing I'd change about normal mobs in Eureka - boost the xp from chaining them so it's not as negligible to farm mobs with chains. Make them a good source of xp with FATEs and Notorious Spawns more for rewards than xp. You level up working on low level enemies with some elements of the weather effect, getting a feel for the use of the wheel. Maybe FATE mobs are best for xp at a certain level and up. Once you're max, you don't care about xp and focus on the Notorious Spawns.

Also, instead of a mob being "X element" I'd like to see every spawn be a random elemental alignment so you have to swap your board more often even on normal mobs.

Back on how to get the item to spawn them - maybe, suck it up, gotta do FATEs with others? Require a bit of assistance with lower levels in that regard to get the item to pursue what you want. Just spitballing.

Summary:
Like the idea of more factors to the magia board
Like the idea of something leading to spawning a mob for the group rather than everyone (heck, you could expand this to the final patch of Eureka having an area off to the side that's a 24 man boss)
Like the weather effects on combat, but might have to be really careful on how that's implemented
Like the idea of a progression within Eureka - Normal mobs > Fates > Spawning group owned "Notorious monsters"

Additional Idea

I'd like to see Tank/Melee/Ranged/Healers have an action button in Eureka that allows for the implementation of the FFXI style Skillchains.
Tank > Melee > Ranged = big damage combo (Conceptually: Tank stuns, melee strikes to create a weak spot, ranged strikes weak spot)
Melee > Ranged > Tank = Damage debuff (Conceptually: Melee/range weaken the monster and tank slams it to be off balance for a bit)
Ranged/Melee > Tank > Heal = AoE heal (Conceptually: Damage opens a weakness, tank stuns, healer gets an extra heal for free)

The skill chain system in FFXI was pretty complex from what I remember (you can read up on them for more ideas) and there wasn't much to tell you when to use your ability. You had to communicate who was starting it. There could be a little visual aid with a specific flash or something on screen, even just a Shield/Sword/Bow/Staff that pops up to indicate what was just used. You'd still want to communicate what skill chain you want to use. Maybe they build up similar to a limit break before they can be used.

[Katchii]

Well, not technically. Because people could still afk NM trains, but now people who actually like playing can hunt dangerous monsters for more rewards. This way players of all skills can enjoy the relic acquisition.

On the real though, where's everyone else?

I didn't respond at first because I didn't really have anything to add.

I like the idea a lot. Eureka is really chill, but provides very little incentive for me to go back and do it once I got my Anemos gear on the two jobs I really cared about, and I find other avenues of tome acquisition to be more fun, but Eureka does OK with this too...there's just no way of knowing how quickly / reliably you'll get them because it's hard to know what kind of instance you'll enter and how things will go once in there.

I would thoroughly enjoy a situation where people who wanted to actively hunt more difficult monsters, spawn super NMs, just camp the difficult packs, etc... could do that without being derailed by the NM train because right now that's all Eureka is.

I look at FFXI again for inspiration and see a mix of the zone colloquially known as "Sky" with the 4 god spawns that require certain conditions to be met and one person needs the spawning items which come from up to two separate NMs, and Abyssea with the NM chain spawns where you start with a basic NM that spawns on a pretty set timer and drops an item and then you use that item to spawn the next level NM up until you get the super NM which then drops the items you needed to upgrade your gear. Eureka kind of already does that, but stops at the first level and the mobs don't drop anything besides loot.

Couple this with your Magia board and weather idea and I think it would be wildly effective.

Basically, I'm on board with anything that gives players the option to do more than just afk spam NMs and require at least some level of participation and presence of mind to accomplish that provides a little more challenge and therefore provides additional/ different, or maybe just MORE, rewards.

A beneficial side effect of this would likely be that this would become the de facto Eureka game play, so it wouldn't always be so mindless.

[Wrecktangle]

So the idea starts off insulting other players and insulting the developers. So automatically your idea has tanked with a % of people who just put up their defenses because you're an elite raider talking down to the filthy commoners who disgust you. The emotional response is "F off, Wreck."

Don't lead with insults.

Duly noted (my post on the OF had a lot of that cut out because I noticed it was a bit testy).

That said, I don't think it opens with insulting the players. When I said common denominator what I meant (and I did detail it) was gameplay form. The existing gameplay forms in Eureka are INSANELY derivative. I can't really see anything in Eureka qualifying as new. Everything is derived from existing content forms, and honestly, it contains some of the WORST of those elements.

Regarding the devs. Agreed, but then again, I'm not sure I'm sorry for it. I really don't see anything here that warrants a 17 month development time for an junior developer, let alone an experienced one.

Others enjoyed it, but you dismiss their opinions because it's not good design to you based on your opinions. Why should anyone, then, value your feedback if you don't put any value to theirs?

I don't dismiss any opinions outright you know that. The only thing I dismiss is someone saying "XYZ" without qualifying why. If someone can qualify their POV regardless of whether I agree/disagree it gives me perspective. Saying that you liked something because it let you be AFK and chat, doesn't qualify as content (again I specified IMO).

Fire:
How many enemies have healing effects? That might prove a bit of a waste. I think I'd go with a chance for it to proc a DoT for offense.
Heal over Time seems an odd pick for the element of destruction. I'd go with the water defense shield plus damage enemy when struck.

Several enemies probably do. I didn't write an entire bestiary down, but it would be a relevant thing. Regarding the defensive bit - Fire is not only an element of destruction, but also a component of life. The radiant warmth of fire in many cultures and media forms is a regenerative thing just as much as it is destructive.

Wind:
Sounds good. Defensive could have an increased movement speed (with the cooldown, you might want to use it for enemies that require more movement or getting from A to B, but you're having to sacrifice a cooldown period to utilize it) rather than a straight damage reduction in place of Lightning. I get the idea of more distance = more damage reduction is combined with speed increase. It makes it a valuable defensive for AoE, etc. Get away from the area or the mob faster and further means less damage. Wind is just typically associated with speed (unless the lightning is greased).

Good feedback. My iteration of wind is intended to capture that light and fast feeling. Even though it doesn't directly increase movement speed, it's designed to keep you poking in and out of range based on needs and supplements your capabilities as such.

Lightning:
Paralysis - would diminishing returns not be in effect? Wouldn't a full group of DPS using this effecitvely stunlock the target? Unless you mean a straight "slower cast time" in which case it just needs a new name.
Since I mentioned the increased movement with wind, the defensive lightning trait could be damage related. Reflect attacks or discharge lightning after x number attacks or received attacks or something. Not saying they'd have to swap, just first thoughts upon reading them (this one mainly just because I suggested speed with wind).

The idea here (and I could have been more clear) is that this "paralysis" debuff isn't the same as the traditional debuff. This offensive debuff from lightning basically bogs down the speed at which an enemy's cast bar moves. It doesn't stack with multiple people using it, it's just something helpful to slow down an enemy who might have really fast casts, or during weather that hides telegraphs (giving more time), or weather empowering a monster that speeds it up.

I chose speed here to differentiate the speed that wind gives, because I felt that the core mechanic currently in wind could easily be retrofitted thematically there, where it isn't as applicable here IMO.

Water:
As said earlier, I'd swap it with Fire. Water is a base in poison (liquids) or you could have a "Drown" effect causing the reduced healing (or other effect, I still don't know that reducing enemy healing would be terribly utilized and if you have mobs that regularly heal themselves, I'm not sure how well that would go over even with the more hardcore difficulty crowds)
Defense: HoT from fire, water is more commonly associated with healing

The poison idea is one aspect of water. It's a commonly used offensive aspect of the element and has some useful thematics. I agree wholeheartedly that water is the defacto healing element, and as such it accomplishes that goal in a slightly different manner (similar to Wind) where it couldn't be retrofitted as easily compared to fire.

This was actually intended with FFXIV 1.0 - having enemies with multiple targetable parts and attacking/destroying different parts would alter the battle. I thought Yoshida still wanted to do it when he took over, but it hasn't come to pass. Not sure if there are complications outside of instances or if they just haven't gotten it to feel right. I can see a lot of potential in the concept, though. Doing enough damage to a leg causes immobilization and increased damage to the body while the enemy is kneeling, etc. We've seen it minimally used in some dungeon bosses, so I think they should be capable of implementing it on a spawned boss outdoors.

One thing I'd add - If you wipe, rather than despawn the mob, leave it up. Another group could get there and watch and if the group that spawned it dies, they can charge in and try it themselves. Little bit of competition without room for griefing that I can see (probably a way to do so I'm not thinking of). Of course, once the mob becomes untagged, it's a race to who can retag it if there are multiple groups watching the fight.

You get it. That's what I was going for. You can damage specific pieces of a monster to remove some of their abilities or improve your position.

I didn't go into it, but I didn't intend for the mob to despawn after wiping. But I like your idea where people watch on the sidelines and see the monsters moves and can go hell no, not messing with that thing, etc or jumping at the bit. That said, I'm not sure that'd feel too good to the party who died to lose their spawn. A balancing act for sure there.

The problem with some of these ideas, though, you're no longer catering this to the savage raiders, you're now impacting every player in the zone. I don't know how feasible it is to expect an open world zone to have weather effects that only affect a certain area of said zone. Not that I don't think the idea of having weather affect combat zone wide for all levels of activity in Eureka can't be done, just that some of these ideas may be a bit extreme.

You could get more complicated by having elemental aspect counter weather effects, requiring players to decide if they want the effect to use against the enemy or to neutralize weather. Healers in particular seem to have the luxury of not worrying about elemental alignment as much, so maybe there's something they could use in that regard.

While it is true it is affecting others, the effects aren't that dramatic on their own and are generally easily countered by the Magia board (if you notice you can usually kind of select an element to offset the weather pattern (i.e. heatwave drain easily offset by selecting Fire or Water and fighting monsters weak to that instead). It only becomes a complex issue when you're fighting the super monsters.

My design goal was that the magia board wasn't super deep, the weather wasn't super deep and the monsters themselves are only minorly deep. It's when you combine the three systems that you get the depth. This is how i intended to keep it simple for those who want to AFK NM train with friends or solo grind mobs, but also engage savage/ex players. I specifically avoiding making each system incredibly deep so that when combined it was a trench. That wasn't my design intent.

Hurricane typically indicates water. I'd suggest having some luck favor the players as well - fire ochu in hurricane would be weakened because storming water weakens fire. Sometimes you get lucky and spawn a mob that's weak to the weather in effect and it's less challenging. Other times you get one that's stronger due to weather.

Yeah I know cut me a break . I felt like tornado or storm was a bit redundant and wasn't sure what to call it.

I didn't cover it in my post, but I like your idea. This was my intent. I like a little luck in these situations and it impacting the difficulty is intended.

What rewards would you have, though? You don't like cosmetic rewards so much. You can't add another power level of items as we're already suffering from too many levels as it is. And if Super Monsters are extremely difficult, will savage raiders accept anything less than equal to or better than their savage raid gear? Contrary to claims, it seems a tiny percent of an already small percent are willing to do content "for the challenge." Few are even willing to undertake it just for titles and bragging rights, it seems.

The idea would be that these would be an alternative to the existing trivial gameplay forms in Eureka and as such would reward proportionally more based on difficulty. I.e. it takes you 15 hours of mindless grinding, but takes me 3 hours of high impact playing with perfect results, but this wouldn't be a perfect thing. It'd likely take us say 8 hours of playtime, but the difference being it's an engaging 8 hours vs. mindless 15 hours. Cosmetic stuff never hurts, same thing with titles, etc. I mean hell, they could take a page out of WoW's book with the Artifact weapons. Maybe killing XYZ of Y monster gives the ability to unlock a different color glow to your weapon, etc.

Again, it all sounds good on paper, but how much development time do you pour into the small subset of players? Even on paper this is a very elaborate and complicated system, not to mention the challenges of coding it, balancing it, making sure every possible combination doesn't break anything or is too hard to be insurmountable. Plus making sure that what you've implemented for a small number of players doesn't completely bork everyone else.

One other detail to flesh out - how do you get whatever is needed to trigger the spawn?

It depends. I'm fairly confident an experienced developer could have built my iteration and fleshed it out via feedback/testing in 17 months. I don't think adding marginal mobs or FATE mobs warranted 17 months. They could easily have been done in parallel. Once the tech is in place, you can then expand it to other areas where it makes sense.

I had only briefly toyed with that. I figured it was something once you had a full party assembled, you could take to say Krile and she'd give each person one item (crystal, map, etc.) and you could only hold one at a time. it would have hints and a image to give context on how to spawn/where to go. Something like that. I am not opposed to having to participate in other content forms to acquire the resources to spawn the monsters (it's a concept I quite like). However, in my old Eureka concept on the OF this concept was very heavily rallied against. People like the convenience and option and don't like "going out of the way" to do what they want.

Regarding your ideas for Eureka, agreed on most fronts. The skillchain bits I'm not sold on only because I don't think Eureka is the place for it (It would have been, had the magia board not existed).

I'd honestly rather see LB get reworked into something like that to be honest.

SNIP

Sounds good then

[lawow74]

Regarding the defensive bit - Fire is not only an element of destruction, but also a component of life. The radiant warmth of fire in many cultures and media forms is a regenerative thing just as much as it is destructive.

Fire is also an important part of the ecosystem, and has driven the evolution of quite a few plants in some interesting ways. Nature is smarter than we think.

I'd honestly rather see LB get reworked into something like that to be honest.

I wish they'd take a page from PvP and implement the goddamn personal Limit Break. That's a thousand times more fun than being beholden to some arbitrary number of other people present to execute it.

[Faroth]

Several enemies probably do. I didn't write an entire bestiary down, but it would be a relevant thing. Regarding the defensive bit - Fire is not only an element of destruction, but also a component of life. The radiant warmth of fire in many cultures and media forms is a regenerative thing just as much as it is destructive.

I'm not familiar with many self healing enemies save the occasional potion use. Not to say that couldn't be a thing.
And "many cultures and media" may indeed, but in Eorzea, fire is the primary weapon of the Black Mages who are definitely destruction oriented.

The idea here (and I could have been more clear) is that this "paralysis" debuff isn't the same as the traditional debuff. This offensive debuff from lightning basically bogs down the speed at which an enemy's cast bar moves. It doesn't stack with multiple people using it, it's just something helpful to slow down an enemy who might have really fast casts, or during weather that hides telegraphs (giving more time), or weather empowering a monster that speeds it up.

I kind of assumed it was different than the current Paralysis. Probably just need a new name (when I was writing my reply, I was first using a term somewhere and realized it was a current debuff, so had adjust that to avoid implying that debuff itself), simple as Shock debuff perhaps.

I chose speed here to differentiate the speed that wind gives, because I felt that the core mechanic currently in wind could easily be retrofitted thematically there, where it isn't as applicable here IMO.

I just quote replied, so when I had the wind speed mention I hadn't gotten to lightning yet. When I got to lightning...... I didn't feel like going back and rethinking what I wrote. I was mostly just spitballing additional ideas, though, not suggesting the initial ones outright wouldn't work.

I didn't go into it, but I didn't intend for the mob to despawn after wiping. But I like your idea where people watch on the sidelines and see the monsters moves and can go hell no, not messing with that thing, etc or jumping at the bit. That said, I'm not sure that'd feel too good to the party who died to lose their spawn. A balancing act for sure there.

Idea to balance that: Spawn the mob, party wipes > Mob remains tagged for 5 minutes. Party returns and wipes > Mob tagged for 3 minute > Party returns and wipes > Mob tagged for 1 minute. (Or 10/5/3 minutes). You get three attempts before wipe results in a free for all to steal the tag. If you're offering enticing rewards, spawning it and having a chance to lose it is part of the risk/reward paradigm.

While it is true it is affecting others, the effects aren't that dramatic on their own and are generally easily countered by the Magia board (if you notice you can usually kind of select an element to offset the weather pattern (i.e. heatwave drain easily offset by selecting Fire or Water and fighting monsters weak to that instead). It only becomes a complex issue when you're fighting the super monsters.

Hadn't thought about the weather thereby also affecting which normal mobs you go grind. Downside - everyone funneled to the same mobs because the weather makes you do so.

Yeah I know cut me a break . I felt like tornado or storm was a bit redundant and wasn't sure what to call it.

NO BREAKS!
"Twister" would work. If you got really fancy with zone design, Twister weather could cause hurricane condition on the shoreline but just tornado deeper inland. Y'know, if you just really want to go pie in the sky conceptually. Coders would probably mutiny for implementation, but hey, we're just spitballing here.

The idea would be that these would be an alternative to the existing trivial gameplay forms in Eureka and as such would reward proportionally more based on difficulty. I.e. it takes you 15 hours of mindless grinding, but takes me 3 hours of high impact playing with perfect results, but this wouldn't be a perfect thing. It'd likely take us say 8 hours of playtime, but the difference being it's an engaging 8 hours vs. mindless 15 hours. Cosmetic stuff never hurts, same thing with titles, etc. I mean hell, they could take a page out of WoW's book with the Artifact weapons. Maybe killing XYZ of Y monster gives the ability to unlock a different color glow to your weapon, etc.

Suppose they could also put some of the dyable versions of gear there. Or some otherwise unobtainable items (I'd argue much like Holiday items go to the Mog Station after a year, Mog Station items could go into a system like this after a time limit. I have to imagine Mog Station items have a front loaded surge and decrease in profitability over time). That would give players an option of "if I'm patient I can always wait until it's grindable in game" and you can set the grind high even with the more efficient method if you wish.

I had only briefly toyed with that. I figured it was something once you had a full party assembled, you could take to say Krile and she'd give each person one item (crystal, map, etc.) and you could only hold one at a time. it would have hints and a image to give context on how to spawn/where to go. Something like that. I am not opposed to having to participate in other content forms to acquire the resources to spawn the monsters (it's a concept I quite like). However, in my old Eureka concept on the OF this concept was very heavily rallied against. People like the convenience and option and don't like "going out of the way" to do what they want.

People always want the path of least resistance. They want whatever caters to them, only to them, and offers them instant gratification. It also results in growing bored more quickly. People don't realize they need inconvenience as a part of satisfaction. There's a reason psychology is a big part of game design. Of course savage raiders don't want to "waste their time" with the riff raff. They want the fastest, most efficient, most immediate path to get what they want and solely what they want, so no surprise it was rallied against.

At the same time, I suppose I can see an argument for three paths: Normal mobs, FATE mobs, Spawned mobs. You choose which one you want (though I still think normal mobs need some adjusting as it currently is; I'd like a full xp chain to be a little more challenging to get and some items to drop from the mobs or have their xp boosted in chains if they're not offering more drop-wise).

Regarding your ideas for Eureka, agreed on most fronts. The skillchain bits I'm not sold on only because I don't think Eureka is the place for it (It would have been, had the magia board not existed).

Magia board is by and large a preparation choice. The skillchain would be an active part of combat. Even with weather change and target change in combat, you aren't worrying about the magia board constantly (and as it's designed, it would be a little bit of a pain to expect people to click forward/backward on the fly to rotate it around and still be able to move/watch telegraphs/do rotations all at once).

I'd honestly rather see LB get reworked into something like that to be honest.

That would be pretty cool. You get a solo LB, which uses your class animation (probably with a shorter cast time).
In a light party, you get 2 bars and therefore can do a 2 LB skillchain.
In a full party, you get 3 bars and can do a 3 LB skillchain. Or you can just use them separately without skill chaining.
Would at least let tanks use a LB more often!

Only thing that would need to be reworked is the 3 bar mass rez option, but that should be simple enough.

I also wish Phoenix Downs were usable in combat.... but that's a whole other discussion.

[StrawberryZebra]

Just to preface this, I've spent a grand total of >5 minutes in Eureka. I'm not, entirely, sure how it works yet so I'm probably not the best person to be asking for feedback on potential improvements.

With that out of the way;

The big take away I get from most of what you've outlined about the Magia board is, largely, a more complicated update of a more traditional FF game. Where capitalising on elemental weakness/strengths is a core part of the game play. It certainly offers a lot more play than what I understand the current Magia board does at least. Having to actually DO something to take advantage of it gives you an incentive to switch up your playstyle. Some of the effects don't seem to be all that useful, the Fire healing reduction especially, but the overall idea offers some interesting modifiers to existing gameplay.

I'm also a big fan of randomised weather events too. They offer a way to keep gameplay from becoming repetative, without requiring much in the way of additional resources. If you have a pattern where the weather and elemental variation of mob you're fighting create a decent sized matrix of possiability, you've got content that'll stay fresh for much longer as well as offering some potentially very difficult permutations on familiar content.

Rather than "Treasure hunts" to unlock the bosses, why not instead just go for a straight forwards Monster Hunt? Have a bounty up that changes every X Hours or so that you can pick up from a bounty board or hunt master or somethinge. To keep things interesting, and separate, from regular Hunts have different conditions that need to be met for each one to spawn. Not something that would be too difficult for players to accomplish, but something that would require some degree of coordination between your group. Perhaps give the whole thing a Bounty Hunter type of vibe, where you've got talk to the people around town to gather clues, follow trails and set traps for your prey and the like? Most importantly, given that Eureka is open world content, it prevents those who aren't looking for that kind of challenge from running into it accidentally.

Having a board up, perhaps even with a Duty option too, also allows you to have various group sizes for the content on offer. You could go all the way from 24 to solo content and have content tuned for that number of players. Having challenging solo content is something that a lot of MMO's fail at in my opinion.

Again, I'm not sure how this would improve the current Eureka, other than to turn it into something that doesn't resemble a GW2 boss train.

[Wrecktangle]

I kind of assumed it was different than the current Paralysis. Probably just need a new name (when I was writing my reply, I was first using a term somewhere and realized it was a current debuff, so had adjust that to avoid implying that debuff itself), simple as Shock debuff perhaps.

Sold.

Idea to balance that: Spawn the mob, party wipes > Mob remains tagged for 5 minutes. Party returns and wipes > Mob tagged for 3 minute > Party returns and wipes > Mob tagged for 1 minute. (Or 10/5/3 minutes). You get three attempts before wipe results in a free for all to steal the tag. If you're offering enticing rewards, spawning it and having a chance to lose it is part of the risk/reward paradigm.

Not my favorite implementation, but not sure I have a better one yet. The concept is sound though, and it's not like you lose a ton, just go spawn another one.

Hadn't thought about the weather thereby also affecting which normal mobs you go grind. Downside - everyone funneled to the same mobs because the weather makes you do so.

Easy fix, mobs spawn with randomly elements like we covered earlier.

NO BREAKS!
"Twister" would work. If you got really fancy with zone design, Twister weather could cause hurricane condition on the shoreline but just tornado deeper inland. Y'know, if you just really want to go pie in the sky conceptually. Coders would probably mutiny for implementation, but hey, we're just spitballing here.

OK Helen Hunt.

At the same time, I suppose I can see an argument for three paths: Normal mobs, FATE mobs, Spawned mobs. You choose which one you want (though I still think normal mobs need some adjusting as it currently is; I'd like a full xp chain to be a little more challenging to get and some items to drop from the mobs or have their xp boosted in chains if they're not offering more drop-wise).

This is kind of what my intent was. Three different paths to the same goal depending on how much effort/skill you want to put towards it and the time you'd like it completed by.

Agreed on the boost.

Magia board is by and large a preparation choice. The skillchain would be an active part of combat. Even with weather change and target change in combat, you aren't worrying about the magia board constantly (and as it's designed, it would be a little bit of a pain to expect people to click forward/backward on the fly to rotate it around and still be able to move/watch telegraphs/do rotations all at once).

Ideally the magia board would be more than a preparation choice. You'd be switching it as needed depending on the situation. I.e. you realize no one was using fire and the Ochu keeps regenerating health (not to the point where it's healing, just slowing its incoming damage considerably) so you switch. Or if the weather switches mid fight, you switch, or if the Lightning Ochu's tankbuster is about to pop, switch to wind so you don't get obliterated if the tank tunneled and couldn't get away quick enough, etc. If the whips weren't getting killed quickly, 2 more people can throw WIND on to try and DPS it down more quickly, etc.

That would be pretty cool. You get a solo LB, which uses your class animaion (probably with a shorter cast time).
In a light party, you get 2 bars and therefore can do a 2 LB skillchain.
In a full party, you get 3 bars and can do a 3 LB skillchain. Or you can just use them separately without skill chaining.
Would at least let tanks use a LB more often!

I've long speculated that a LB rework is overdue. I just wasn't sure how I would personally implement it. A really long time ago (ARR) I had posited that TP should have been the LB. In that you accrue it via abilities/rotations and spend it at varying intervals I.E. costs half a bar to use, but can go to 2x, allowing 2 back to uses, but also gives flexibility to use when needed without overcapping.

Just to preface this, I've spent a grand total of >5 minutes in Eureka. I'm not, entirely, sure how it works yet so I'm probably not the best person to be asking for feedback on potential improvements.

Noted.

The big take away I get from most of what you've outlined about the Magia board is, largely, a more complicated update of a more traditional FF game. Where capitalising on elemental weakness/strengths is a core part of the game play. It certainly offers a lot more play than what I understand the current Magia board does at least. Having to actually DO something to take advantage of it gives you an incentive to switch up your playstyle. Some of the effects don't seem to be all that useful, the Fire healing reduction especially, but the overall idea offers some interesting modifiers to existing gameplay.

To give perspective into some of the effects keep in mind that mob design would get more robust too. I gave an example with an Ochu who passively restores HP over time due to one of its "parts". You can kill the part, but if you kill it with fire, you are nullifying its ability to regenerate. There'd be mobs with all kinds of new traits/abilities never before seen.

I'm also a big fan of randomised weather events too. They offer a way to keep gameplay from becoming repetative, without requiring much in the way of additional resources. If you have a pattern where the weather and elemental variation of mob you're fighting create a decent sized matrix of possiability, you've got content that'll stay fresh for much longer as well as offering some potentially very difficult permutations on familiar content.

Excellent way of putting it. A matrix of possibility. That's exactly what I was going for.

Rather than "Treasure hunts" to unlock the bosses, why not instead just go for a straight forwards Monster Hunt? Have a bounty up that changes every X Hours or so that you can pick up from a bounty board or hunt master or somethinge. To keep things interesting, and separate, from regular Hunts have different conditions that need to be met for each one to spawn. Not something that would be too difficult for players to accomplish, but something that would require some degree of coordination between your group. Perhaps give the whole thing a Bounty Hunter type of vibe, where you've got talk to the people around town to gather clues, follow trails and set traps for your prey and the like? Most importantly, given that Eureka is open world content, it prevents those who aren't looking for that kind of challenge from running into it accidentally.

I thought about it. I couldn't come up with a lot of examples that were good, that didn't impinge on existing hunt mechanics. It's not a bad idea though.

Having a board up, perhaps even with a Duty option too, also allows you to have various group sizes for the content on offer. You could go all the way from 24 to solo content and have content tuned for that number of players. Having challenging solo content is something that a lot of MMO's fail at in my opinion.

This content specifically is tuned for a full party (8). It's the only way to create interesting healing/tanking mechanics in the current design system IMO that are challenging/engaging enough to qualify.

I agree that solo combat that is challenging is incredibly hard to do. In fact, the only MMO to this day to accomplish this was BNS.

[Faroth]

Ideally the magia board would be more than a preparation choice. You'd be switching it as needed depending on the situation. I.e. you realize no one was using fire and the Ochu keeps regenerating health (not to the point where it's healing, just slowing its incoming damage considerably) so you switch. Or if the weather switches mid fight, you switch, or if the Lightning Ochu's tankbuster is about to pop, switch to wind so you don't get obliterated if the tank tunneled and couldn't get away quick enough, etc. If the whips weren't getting killed quickly, 2 more people can throw WIND on to try and DPS it down more quickly, etc.

>Ochu regenerates health if not tuned to fire - "DPS, be sure you're set to fire" That's a preparation setting. Or even assigning 1 DPS to fire and target the chest while other DPS are set to the arms, etc and focus on those. I just don't see how you'd avoid a party just assigning a DPS to use fire on the regeneration target to ensure it can't heal (while also doing damage to it in the process).

>Tank buster - depending on your setting, it might be multiple clicks to actually rotate to wind when a tank buster goes off. If the tank buster cast time is too quick, you don't have enough time to react and click over to it and get away. Or you use it while running in which case you're talking a very narrow distance remaining to escape. If the tank buster cast bar is too long the wind seems unnecessary.

>Weather switching during the fight - Would it be reasonable to expect weather patterns to change every 2 minutes? Or the possibility of having multiple weather patterns within a 5 minute window? Most raid fights don't last 10 minutes, but even then you'd have a weather change every 3 minutes to have 3 or every 5 minutes to have a single change during the encounter. That seems a bit too frequent to me.

Just trying to break any conceivable chinks in the armor that would have to be addressed.

[Wrecktangle]

>Ochu regenerates health if not tuned to fire - "DPS, be sure you're set to fire" That's a preparation setting. Or even assigning 1 DPS to fire and target the chest while other DPS are set to the arms, etc and focus on those. I just don't see how you'd avoid a party just assigning a DPS to use fire on the regeneration target to ensure it can't heal (while also doing damage to it in the process).

>Tank buster - depending on your setting, it might be multiple clicks to actually rotate to wind when a tank buster goes off. If the tank buster cast time is too quick, you don't have enough time to react and click over to it and get away. Or you use it while running in which case you're talking a very narrow distance remaining to escape. If the tank buster cast bar is too long the wind seems unnecessary.

>Weather switching during the fight - Would it be reasonable to expect weather patterns to change every 2 minutes? Or the possibility of having multiple weather patterns within a 5 minute window? Most raid fights don't last 10 minutes, but even then you'd have a weather change every 3 minutes to have 3 or every 5 minutes to have a single change during the encounter. That seems a bit too frequent to me.

Just trying to break any conceivable chinks in the armor that would have to be addressed.

1) Remember that you wouldn't know what monster spawns until it is. It would aggro immediately upon spawning. They'd switch then though. Depending on the element, you might need to use other elements. I.e. if the Ochu itself was Fire, you can't really kill the bulb easily with fire, and you don't want to use Fire on it. Alternatively, if the Ochu is of a different element, it may not have the healing over time effect, and thus fire isn't needed. One of the ways we can mitigate the preperation is by tuning. If one DPS can't burn it down quick enough, you need two. That has consequences because now there are more tankbusters to deal with. Alternatively - we could maybe have them respawn after x amount of time?

2) The wind example was a reference to DPS/healers. In that they can move x yalms away and take less damage by nature of it being a proximity attack. They can then further that (or supplement/replace) that by switching to wind, which then adds another layer of defenses). As far a multiple clicks go, we can fix that with some minor UI improvements to the board to allow you to shift more efficiently between elements. I don't think 1:1 is ideal, or good.

3) 2 minutes "feels" too short to me as well. 3 minutes might work though. So at the very least you can assume 1 change, but it's possible to have changes 2-3x depending on when the enemy was spawned. The harder thing to prevent would be I don't want to incentivize people waiting for the weather to change before spawning.