Comments from the Devs

[solracht]

I would like to see GW2's "mobs give exp based on how long they've been alive" system. It encourages you to kill a bunch of enemies every now and then if you're in weird places, but it discourages grinding on them.

[Takiwaki]

Does not matter if it could be addressed or not the fact is that it does, and since its not the players choice if something changes in the matter, people will speak up to the devs to try and affect that change, which we all see as the outcry lol. Its not irrational but people are overreacting for sure.

Meh this isn't the place for that discussion anyways. I'll start another thread on human behavior in the spam thread or something.

GW2's Mob idea is great actually, It would work well if they decide to change things around. That would allow the camps to clear out and move around allowing people that want to do hunting logs to kill those mobs that were being grinded on.

[Lucavi]

GW2 has a flaw, though, and its the absurdly high amounts of HP boss mobs tend to have. Nobody likes a 15 minute fight where you just wail on a boss with a million HP when it realistically has no chance of beating you.

[Takiwaki]

GW2 has a flaw, though, and its the absurdly high amounts of HP boss mobs tend to have. Nobody likes a 15 minute fight where you just wail on a boss with a million HP when it realistically has no chance of beating you.

Dynamic scaling!

I really do want FATEs to have some challenging fights, that can wipe the floor with people if people did not work together in some fashion

PS
I still love you GW2

[Achitophel]

Does not matter if it could be addressed or not the fact is that it does, and since its not the players choice if something changes in the matter, people will speak up to the devs to try and affect that change, which we all see as the outcry lol. Its not irrational but people are overreacting for sure.

Really, the overarching point is that people trying to limit choices for other people, even if it doesn't affect them, based upon their own subjective preferences is horrible and laughable, regardless of the topic (video games, politics, whatever), or the venue (OF, BG).

http://static3.depositphotos.com/100...ase-closed.jpg

Moving on.

[miokomioko]

I don't want Eorzea to turn into a full-blown shanty town.

[Kurokikaze]

Found this on reddit:



Seems fairly accurate for FFXIV... Versus seems like a giant troll though. lol

[miokomioko]

Similarly, someone on Reddit pointed out that every game on the list with an unannounced/rumored release date got piled under June 30th...

[Kachiko]

Couple of quick thoughts:

Open World Grinding: If there's one type of mob grinding that I could see being acceptable, it would be the BAM method that TERA had. Those were very fun and a single area could support multiple parties, but I haven't seen anything like this for FF14, so I doubt it's going in. Also, I would run their LVL 50 and under dungeons non-stop since the combat was that much fun and the better gear from it and if FF14 can deliver on that, it's a no-brainier, for me.

FATE/Dynamic Events: Proper event scaling and lag are the two biggest hurles for this type of content. If the mobs are just HP scale, it's a snore fest. If the mobs damage is scaled too high, then one basic move will wipe tons of people and nobody will try to res because you'll be in range of it's one hit wonder moves (Arcanist Lab event in Sparkfly...). There's also the problem that, when these mobs are zerged, by tons of players, everything lags down and deters from the game experience (Any Daily chest reward event and launch week).

Hoping that they get the FATE system properly implemented to try and alleviate those problems.

[miokomioko]

Hoping that they get the FATE system properly implemented to try and alleviate those problems.

One thing they've acknowledged regarding FATE but are waiting to see if they really need to do it is if there are too many participants for a FATE, potentially splitting the group into their own instances to break up the lag, to keep it from being a mindless zerg-fest, and to let people actually participate instead of not getting a chance to land a single spell on something before it's dead.

[Odin'sLaw]

Found this on reddit:



Seems fairly accurate for FFXIV... Versus seems like a giant troll though. lol

they need to find a better shop! who pays 1000 (dollars?) for a game? (presuming its all just trolltastic :/)

[miokomioko]

they need to find a better shop! who pays 1000 (dollars?) for a game? (presuming its all just trolltastic :/)

Protip: Those are not US dollars. :3

They are Norwegian kroner.

[Kachiko]

One thing they've acknowledged regarding FATE but are waiting to see if they really need to do it is if there are too many participants for a FATE, potentially splitting the group into their own instances to break up the lag, to keep it from being a mindless zerg-fest, and to let people actually participate instead of not getting a chance to land a single spell on something before it's dead.

Seems inevitable, to me, that the events are going to be getting zerged once people know the respawn times and where the FATEs spawn, just like in GW2. I was just thinking that, what if the server could phase several instances of an area, and your character would walk into a phase that hadn't hit population cap? In WoW, the LK world had a lot of phasing in it, where you couldn't interact with people on a different phase. Somehow combine that with the FATE system and I think you'd have a winner.

[Rasa]

Seems inevitable, to me, that the events are going to be getting zerged once people know the respawn times and where the FATEs spawn, just like in GW2. I was just thinking that, what if the server could phase several instances of an area, and your character would walk into a phase that hadn't hit population cap? In WoW, the LK world had a lot of phasing in it, where you couldn't interact with people on a different phase. Somehow combine that with the FATE system and I think you'd have a winner.

People are most certinaly going to camp the spawns, but like you said, there is nothing new about that. Camping eventually stops when the players find more interesting content. So, the problem is only a problem if camping the NMs is the best way to get gear/xp or the most entertaining content. And let's be honest, there is no way either of those will be the case.

Camping happens. But campers eventually pack up their tents and move on.

[miokomioko]

I can already tell my leveling process when I'm too lazy to raid is going to end up being:

stand at notable FATE location > turn volume up > AFK > come back when I hear it start > participate > repeat

One thing I really appreciate about FATE is that it starts immediately and ends when you expect it to (timer/NM down/etc.). A far cry from what Campaign was.

[Makwa]

Dark Souls 2 should be out by now then eh?
I mean, that says march 13th don't it?
I do agree June 30th sounds pretty damn close. I've been telling my friends August.

[Sign]

Dark Souls 2 should be out by now then eh?
I mean, that says march 13th don't it?
I do agree June 30th sounds pretty damn close. I've been telling my friends August.

Dark Souls 2 is listed as March 31st. The date is 31-03-13.

[arus2001]

Seems inevitable, to me, that the events are going to be getting zerged once people know the respawn times and where the FATEs spawn, just like in GW2. I was just thinking that, what if the server could phase several instances of an area, and your character would walk into a phase that hadn't hit population cap? In WoW, the LK world had a lot of phasing in it, where you couldn't interact with people on a different phase. Somehow combine that with the FATE system and I think you'd have a winner.

The biggest mistake SE can make with FATEs is putting them on predictable timers. Timers should only be utilized to guarantee a minimum amount of FATEs are taking place with a respect to a cooldown so you don't wind up seeing the same FATE twice in a row and such. Otherwise, there should be some connection to population and activity within a given zone/area. I know some are probably sick of me being a broken record about Rift here, but Trion flubbed on their event mechanics with a mix of keeping trigger mechanics secretive (so you could try to spawn a specific event, if for any reason, an achievement) and being a bit too sensitive about lower population areas, thus no events. Right now, the Dreams of Blood and Bone event, or the Volan encounter, seems to have a cooldown not unlike XI's old HNM timers, which is REALLY dumb since the Biofoundry area is only accessible for 2 hours after the event. So, if Volan doesn't match up with your connect time, you won't be able to partake in any of the related content, even if the BF area is rather minor.

If I had to make an ideal, it'd be that no matter where you are in the game world, you'd be no more than 5 minutes away from a FATE. And if in the long term, FATE participation rewards in and guarantees quality endgame gear, not just bare essentials (One of Rift's current problems alongside the grind), then even better. Ironically, Trion has "succeeded" in that 5 minute rule by expanding upon cross-server visiting, or what people familiar with GW2 may call guesting. While it was technically an oversight of another feature, they've embraced it and promised to expand on it. So, basically if no zone events are going on your shard/server, you can party up with people on other shards to do their events. You'll get some lulls now and then, or maybe not able to find someone on a given shard to get to it, but that's one of those things I'd hope gets streamlined as they improve the feature. Sadly, Rift lost a lot of its event pool to the recent cap increase on SL and not retworking mentoring to reward Infinity Stones for helping with lowbie events. Thus, people don't care about backtracking unless it's for an achievement like I noted earlier. That'll also improve in time, but I'm not content with Trion's rate for such.

[Kachiko]

The biggest mistake SE can make with FATEs is putting them on predictable timers. Timers should only be utilized to guarantee a minimum amount of FATEs are taking place with a respect to a cooldown so you don't wind up seeing the same FATE twice in a row and such. Otherwise, there should be some connection to population and activity within a given zone/area. I know some are probably sick of me being a broken record about Rift here, but Trion flubbed on their event mechanics with a mix of keeping trigger mechanics secretive (so you could try to spawn a specific event, if for any reason, an achievement) and being a bit too sensitive about lower population areas, thus no events. Right now, the Dreams of Blood and Bone event, or the Volan encounter, seems to have a cooldown not unlike XI's old HNM timers, which is REALLY dumb since the Biofoundry area is only accessible for 2 hours after the event. So, if Volan doesn't match up with your connect time, you won't be able to partake in any of the related content, even if the BF area is rather minor.

If I had to make an ideal, it'd be that no matter where you are in the game world, you'd be no more than 5 minutes away from a FATE. And if in the long term, FATE participation rewards in and guarantees quality endgame gear, not just bare essentials (One of Rift's current problems alongside the grind), then even better. Ironically, Trion has "succeeded" in that 5 minute rule by expanding upon cross-server visiting, or what people familiar with GW2 may call guesting. While it was technically an oversight of another feature, they've embraced it and promised to expand on it. So, basically if no zone events are going on your shard/server, you can party up with people on other shards to do their events. You'll get some lulls now and then, or maybe not able to find someone on a given shard to get to it, but that's one of those things I'd hope gets streamlined as they improve the feature. Sadly, Rift lost a lot of its event pool to the recent cap increase on SL and not retworking mentoring to reward Infinity Stones for helping with lowbie events. Thus, people don't care about backtracking unless it's for an achievement like I noted earlier. That'll also improve in time, but I'm not content with Trion's rate for such.

Whatever the timer may be, the community is eventually going to figure it out. It took GW2 about 6 months to put together a player updated site that tracks windows and spawn times of the worthwhile end game events, and combined with guesting, most events are now a lagfest zerg whether that timer is 30 minutes to 1 hour or 3 to 4 hour spawn windows. I'm still fully expecting the launch to be a laggy button smashing zerg adventure, but since there's no Guesting to allow other server players to flood another servers event, it will mostly boil down to how rewarding the events are, combined with how often they spawn. I'd expect things like Avatars, HNMs, and other End of Zone events wouldn't happen but every 4-6 hours, making them still feel epic but generally letting most people see them once a day. They should also reward high level players for doing low level events too, so that people stay flushed around most zones instead of concentrated into two or three end game zones.

[Gokulo]

Damn, Zavvi trolled me, they have a release date for Lightning Returns set for April and I wasted a -10% on pre-order code on it -.- Never thought it seemed to be a little too fast doh.