Comments from the Devs

[Alkar]

I don't even think soloing these dungeons should be possible. They should have the dungeon adjust to your level if you can simply enter at any past 25.
Or an option as you enter:
-Standard (rank 25).
-Adjusted (to whatever rank your group is).
Don't really need caps.

[blythe]

I hope they eventually remove the party requirement for people who might want to enter the weaker dungeon solo as a Rank-50 and farm a little (assuming that is possible). Apollyon/Temenos style, except this time actually instanced instead of fucking claimed.

I think that's exactly why they put the party requirement in in the first place. Not that I agree with it.

[miokomioko]

Maybe there will be solo dungeons later, but a minimum requirement makes sense.

No, it does not make sense. Yeah, I get why they did it and I know what it was ultimately designed for, but requiring that you are accompanied by 3 other people to enter some grotto does not make sense. Let people go in solo if they want, let them get raped in the ass by the first unavoidable group of mobs, who cares? Putting limits on needing to drag people along to do anything inside of it is not the best of ideas... especially if it's just to communicate that the content is focused on group-play. It's strictly locking out content for people who feel like playing solo, even if that means they'll only get to kill 5 mobs and run out of time. The freedom to do so should be there.

I think that's exactly why they put the party requirement in in the first place. Not that I agree with it.

Not quite, these dungeon is instanced, unlike Apollyon/Temenos/Dynamis/etc. There will not be any claiming of zones. They figured that out by the time Assault came around. They said they'll reconsider limitations based on the server stress these areas create. AKA: the less popular they get, the more likely they'll remove the restriction. I'm hoping the limit is just so there's not 4x as many zones trying to be active at any given time when the patch goes live as people will want to just pop in to see the new area and not actually trying to do much else in it.

[Grey Jorildyn]

Old maxim is old. You NEED a group to do anything, period. SE isn't in the business of changing that because they put JP philosophy into everything. Just how it's gonna be. It's one of the 8 million reasons they can't compete in the mmo market imo. Sure they can be "successful" with 250k subs, but the big picture is that that isn't successful for a mmo at all.

[qpoiuwer]

The minimum requirement should be half the number of people they expect it to take. Like someone said before if you have 7 really well-equipped, smart people... the game shouldn't limit you because you "need" 8 because of some artificial limit. Unless, of course, there's 8 switches you all need to hit at the same time or something. If there is a hard requirement for a certain number of people, make that the limit. Artificial limits are generally pointless.

[Kaylia]

This is group content. It's designed aground groups. Of course there should be a minimum requirement to enter. Maybe there will be solo dungeons later, but a minimum requirement makes sense. I just wish/hope they make the party tool more effective for forming parties for this kind of group content.

The content should be difficult enough that you can't solo, but these limits can become annoying after a while when you reach the point where you don't need a full group to clear the content.

I'm sure you remember these nights where we had hard time finding a 3rd member for Red vs Blue, or we had to call off salvage because we only had 4 or 5 members online. It's at time like this where the limit lose its sense.

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

Aoe toggle removal: Shit. I wanted this streamlined to make it flow better(some sorta outside toggle) but I liked it. Welcoming the shit storm of new spells for the mages to clutter up my bar again. GG SE.

Min reqs for dungeons: lol. I find it really hard to believe that NO ONE at SE said "Hey, what about people who can't get a group of 8 together?", "Sucks for them, you NEED 8 to see this content!", "Well what about people that have the skill/gear to low man it?", "Low manning is for the birds, we're gettin rid of that shit". Seriously?

[Kaiyoko]

My reason for being against the requirement is because of the same reason I was forced to make mules for salvage. When salvage was 6 person limit and I needed only 4 people to do a run we'd have people warp after confirmation or use mules to get inside. I'm guessing the content is going to be down for most people after a week to a month.

If it's WoW's 100% drop system people are going to be needing less people because of everyone having the gear needed to beat it.

[miokomioko]

I literally think (and hope) that the limitation is being created just for the couple months or so of the patch launch (until the next), so people aren't loading up the instanced zone, putting unnecessary strain on the already-fragile servers just to explore solo and/or fuck around.

This is a result of the balancing that is done inside of the actual raid, along with ensuring proper load on the servers are maintained. With the release of patch 1.18 we will monitor the comments and feedback from the community and re-evaluate as necessary and implement variations as needed.

[Gadritan]

This is group content. It's designed aground groups. Of course there should be a minimum requirement to enter. Maybe there will be solo dungeons later, but a minimum requirement makes sense.

The minimum requirement shouldn't = maximum number of participants. I hear you on "group content," etc, but this is going to exclude more people than include them. As I stated on the official forums, if you have 13ppl show up for r50 dungeons...what then? No matter how you slice it, 5 people are boned.

Luckily it's temporary.

[Sephiroth]

There's nothing wrong with a minimum player requirement, but making it the same as the maximum is retarded. If 14 people in your LS show up you can probably handle it fine with two groups of 7. Instead you've got to tell six of them that they may as well log out for the night. Sucks to be the one doing that job and sucks for the six that don't get to play.

[miokomioko]

There's nothing wrong with a minimum player requirement

There is something wrong with minimum player requirements to experience content. When a majority of people have surpassed caring/needing the content and/or the average level of players has surpassed needing that many players to get what might be needed from it... it becomes a retarded inconvenience to have to drag people along just to help you enter the zone or push some fucking levers... especially in a game where you can level up each different class/job. The difficulty of the content should be what determines the "minimum requirements."

There's plenty of other ways you could subtly encourage grouping up without completely blocking solo players from even stepping into the area, regardless of whether or not they are setting themselves up for failure.

[Sephiroth]

There is something wrong with minimum player requirements to experience content. When a majority of people have surpassed caring/needing the content and/or the average level of players has surpassed needing that many players to get what might be needed from it... it becomes a retarded inconvenience to have to drag people along just to help you enter the zone or push some fucking levers... especially in a game where you can level up each different class/job. The difficulty of the content should be what determines the "minimum requirements."

There's plenty of other ways you could subtly encourage grouping up without completely blocking solo players from even stepping into the area, regardless of whether or not they are setting themselves up for failure.

Then lower the minimum when the majority of people have surpassed caring/needing it. Then again I can't actually see one positive of having a minimum other than the server stress of potentially having dozens of the instance running at a time because people are trying to solo it. That wouldn't be an issue if they lowered the minimum later on when few people need it. The minimum really shouldn't be any higher than half its maximum if we're to have a minimum at all.

[miokomioko]

Then lower the minimum when the majority of people have surpassed caring/needing it.

Hopefully it's not just that, but just the dungeon's popularity in general. Remove the requirements when people playing solo in the content won't break the server. No point in limiting it otherwise unless you just want to create an artificial inconvenience for players who don't feel like grouping up or might just want to go after something that's realistically solo-able (not going for the clear, etc.). It was only a problem in Temenos/Apollyon/Dynamis because they were not instanced. They learned their lesson, for the most part, after that... but they stuck to this Japanese "party or gtfo" mindset (that they are currently "trying" to shed) when it came to Assault/Salvage/Nyzul.

[Lokus]

At least they touched upon disconnecting while in the middle of the dungeon. If they made it like leves where it's an automatic fail, the backlash they'd receive would be heavy.

The minimum requirement is a bit asinine as well. It's locking out content to certain players (soloists or those with minimal numbers online) not to mention removing an aspect of the game that some people enjoy doing (low-manning and artificially increasing difficulty). If the dungeons require 8 people to stand on levers to proceed then so be it though I think stuff like that should be for optional routes that lead to better gear without hindering the ability to complete the rest of the dungeon.

[Lucavi]

Then lower the minimum when the majority of people have surpassed caring/needing it. Then again I can't actually see one positive of having a minimum other than the server stress of potentially having dozens of the instance running at a time because people are trying to solo it. That wouldn't be an issue if they lowered the minimum later on when few people need it. The minimum really shouldn't be any higher than half its maximum if we're to have a minimum at all.

That's laziness on their part, then. Id' love for them to admit that they don't have the "tools" in the engine to have multiple versions of a large-scale instance running at the same time on a server.

Its one thing to have an established party size throughout the entire game.. you know... like every other MMO does. "Instance party = 5. Raid party = 25. Instanced PVP party = 10,15,20. World PVP party = ???". Instead, we're looking at a 4-man for one instance and a 8-man for another. Is that going to be the trend? Will every instance have different party sizes? Does that mean we could have an eventual 2-man duo instance? How about a solo instance with a ton of NPCs that you fight together with?

There's potential there for something new, but can/will SE realize it? Can they even -see- the potential there, or is this just some sort of plaster-filling over a gaping hole in the street?

[Siatdiat]

I am just going to come back in 8 years when they announce level 99 and make ff14: abyssea.

[Meko]

That's laziness on their part, then. Id' love for them to admit that they don't have the "tools" in the engine to have multiple versions of a large-scale instance running at the same time on a server.

Its one thing to have an established party size throughout the entire game.. you know... like every other MMO does. "Instance party = 5. Raid party = 25. Instanced PVP party = 10,15,20. World PVP party = ???". Instead, we're looking at a 4-man for one instance and a 8-man for another. Is that going to be the trend? Will every instance have different party sizes? Does that mean we could have an eventual 2-man duo instance? How about a solo instance with a ton of NPCs that you fight together with?

There's potential there for something new, but can/will SE realize it? Can they even -see- the potential there, or is this just some sort of plaster-filling over a gaping hole in the street?

At this point, I just don't know. With how they are 'displaying' auto-attack, I can't be confident that anything unique is remotely on the horizon. Stepping back and looking at things, the game is a total flop (imo). The only reason it hasn't been shut down is probably because it's SE and they have made a lot of money off of FFXI. If it were any other company, they'd probably have pulled the plug on it. It's easily the worst MMO launch that I've ever been apart of...period.

[ascalon]

Personally I think its really sad that they're still worried about the strain on the servers. How awful ARE they? Can they not get some new ones? If they can't afford new ones, don't make content that needs them. It is going to annoy people more when you get into an instance and it crashes on whatever atrocious server hardware they are running. I mean, just look at WoW. Every time you get the "Instance Not Found" issue, there's a HUGE rage -- and they have pretty well optimised servers I would guess.

On the subject of instances, I still think that solo and elite mobs are the ways forwards. Populate dungeons with elites and just open them up to whoever wants to go in. Part of the joys of being high level in WoW (and, to a lesser extent Rift, whose content scales a bit more) is going back to lower level dungeons and kicking their asses solo (I'm looking at you, Van Cleef!) Not being able to go into low level content at level cap because of an arbitrary limit is stupid.

Anecdote (With a point!): I went into Darkening Deeps (I think it was) in Rift, solo, as my lv.50 cleric (who has a tank spec and a grinding spec). The second or third boss is a spider. I'd never run the instance before, so didn't know that she has a web ability. Halfway through the fight, I got webbed (resisted it up until that point). And then I died, because the web lasts for sixty seconds or so. I was kinda shocked, and then I laughed a bit, because it served me right forgetting that it wasn't WoW where you could solo 90% of the game as a bear druid.

THAT is the kind of enforcement that content should have for grouping. If I'd had a friend along, they could have broken the web and we'd have cleared the content easy. If I'd resisted the webs all the way through (ie. getting lucky) then the same would have happened. But at the end of the day, its a level 25ish dungeon. At the cap, I shouldn't be forced to find other players to just go and have some fun farming an instance for achievements or whatever.

[Kaylia]

THAT is the kind of enforcement that content should have for grouping

Artificial gimmicks that prevent you from doing old content no one care about? Thats kinda stupid if you ask me.

I've that issue in lotro where I want to complete old quests in dungeons that are not liked. I'm all for partying, but not being able to find a party should never be an issue if the contents require a team.