Lets get together and argue with each other aka Draylo is always wrong?

[Xenhas]

Overpowered mobs that wipe entire alliances in seconds unabated unless you stunlock them is pretty shitty game design.

They never changed it either because they were disillusioned by the fact that we did stunlock them, making the developers think that the content was fine. It wasn't.

Name the move that will cause a wipe without stunlock. Please. Go ahead.

I'll give you a hint

Spoiler: show

(it doesn't exist)

[arus2001]

I'm not really sure why you quoted my post? If when they add new content and that is the design for it than sure there's the extra incentive, but currently with how delve is there is nothing making people want to take 18, when you can just as easily do it with 6 and get the exact same drops/plasm/number of drops.

Not saying SE's done things right here, either. But it's more a generalization of the fear people wouldn't do large-scale content if low-man could serve as an alternative.

Personally, I feel like there's some over-valuing the playing with others that goes on. XI isn't particularly good about splitting up objectives, as an example, with our tank classes not being too hot on gathering and holding multiple mobs. As such, the more bodies involved, the less stressful I actually think the environment can get. "Learn the mechanics, follow a script" pretty much applies regardless of manpower needs. But I also think it helps weed out who your friends really are and emphasizes doing something more for the love of it than because there's no other choice.

[Gredival]

Personally, I feel like there's some over-valuing the playing with others that goes on. XI isn't particularly good about splitting up objectives, as an example, with our tank classes not being too hot on gathering and holding multiple mobs. As such, the more bodies involved, the less stressful I actually think the environment can get. "Learn the mechanics, follow a script" pretty much applies regardless of manpower needs. But I also think it helps weed out who your friends really are and emphasizes doing something more for the love it than because there's no other choice.

SE's game design since the Abyssea era has been terrible at making alliances relevant in alliance content.

But theoretically, there is a natural challenge inherent in large group situations that cannot be attained simply by adjusting the amount of people down.

The larger the fight the more opportunities for intricacy. It requires a higher level of collective skill when you impose the need for organization/coordination. When fights are limited to lowman groups the level of intricacy is constrained. Yes, you can have a multi-faceted encounter with just 7-9 people. However the level of complication is always shallower than with 18 people.

For example, as you point out, XI tanks are not good at holding multiple mobs. Therefore when a mob has pops, you usually need them controlled by someone else. If a single person handles crowd control the spawns must be limited by however many spells he has. So the encounter has to designed such that one person can do it all. But if a group of three people are tasked with additional spawn crowd control, they can be charged with controlling more mobs than just three times the amount one person should be able to handle because you can increase the amount of spawns by more than three since they can stagger their spells, be given a bard simply to reduce their cooldowns, etc. The very nature of a larger group expands the challenges you can throw in because you can force them to rely on good timing and organization to handle more than they could each do individually.

This is the essence of when game design forces you to have an alliance that it truly elevates the content instead of just creates the need for more bodies. When it forces the group to become greater than merely the sum of its parts. You don't just need a lot of people, but people who can hold their weight.

Real alliance content should stress an alliance's weakest link, not it's median. The extra people should not be providing a safety cushion for incompetence in the players. If that happens, it's poorly designed for reasons other than requiring 18 people.

[arus2001]

Well, I'd propose the environment tends to rarely play a role in XI encounters, and I wouldn't blame that solely on a lack of jumping.

Overall, if you want alliance content to be "really alliance-y" then we're back to XI needing better tools to get people together than just shouting in Jeuno or hoping someone might see a post on a board. Otherwise, you just get a lot of people spinning their wheels stuck unable to do things, and NOT because they're a "lowest common denominator" as was claimed earlier.

[Gredival]

Well, I'd propose the environment tends to rarely play a role in XI encounters, and I wouldn't blame that solely on a lack of jumping.

Overall, if you want alliance content to be "really alliance-y" then we're back to XI needing better tools to get people together than just shouting in Jeuno or hoping someone might see a post on a board. Otherwise, you just get a lot of people spinning their wheels stuck unable to do things, and NOT because they're a "lowest common denominator" as was claimed earlier.

Well the answer used to be Linkshells.

There is of course always an inherent playerbase problem there; most End Game linkshells will coalesce around "prime time" for certain zones (US; EU; JP) and people outside of those playtime windows will need to hope there are enough players they can find in their window of playtime to form a functional alternative.

But outside of Linkshells I honestly can't think of a solution to making truly challenging alliance content. Because the mere competency level for players in XI is around the 90th percentile mark of the population, any alliance content has to be neutered so that dead weight can be dragged across the finish line. So good alliance content will be inherently tied to the other restrictions of linkshells.

So we're back to the fact that the core tension in design is between challenging or facilitating the lowest common denominator. We've seen both extremes where SE has made the goals extremely punishing (Defending Ring) and extremely easy (Abyssea), but at the end of the day there's no internal skill rating established in the game where players above X can go to an NPC and claim gear rated for certain players.

The fact is that making content easy will be more financially lucrative because most of the playerbase (i.e. the lowest common denominator) prefers not being excluded because of their ineptitude. That's not to say everyone who didn't do golden era End Game was a scrub. The vast majority excluded from End Game LS participation were excluded for skill reasons (hi2uSunRings). And those are the same people who profited from the Yoshi P. overhaul.

[Byrthnoth]

Maybe you haven't noticed the extreme disparity in player skill that's evident in this thread. Pre-patch, some players could clear Delve with 9 characters and a good bot. Meanwhile, success rates of shout groups were so low that people were paying him something like 10mil/head to leech wins. One of the major reasons that shout groups suck is because players that were capable of doing Delve (especially on useful jobs) capped out 6 months ago and have no reason to go back. This isn't the setting of a "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" story of a bunch of noobs forming a linkshell and bettering themselves until they can finally beat Delve, because most of the groups capable of doing that already did that months ago. This is the setting of a "I was gone for 6 months and now I have to deal with retards and hope for luck in order to get wins" horror story.

Frankly, I capped out on Delve shit back before the July update (of last year). I have a stun-capable Scholar that I don't mind playing and a 4 song Bard, which means that there's essentially always a place for me in Delve. I haven't done Delve since FFXIV came out because half my LS quit and we got out of the habit of selling wins to an event that none of us cared about anymore.