Walk of Echoes

[TummieGaruda]

It's not really magicite-esque. It's just that crappy generic, chunky black obsidian shit all of castle zvahl is made of splattered in spots all over the northlands. Castle is like the same, except is has some cages. Notably ALL the beastmen and allies appear to have cages which implies to me a besieged like prisoner system some day.

Yeah I noticed this too, it might be possible, or it just may be for show (All of the 3 nations have some type of Jail/cage to hold beastmen). When I saw them in Windurst, I had imagined that you could capture the beastmen generals, which would force the beastmen to try to storm the city to rescue them via beating on the cell door as they would fortifications. Other than that Castle Zvahl is the same but with some very minor details added, mainly the beastmen flag plastered every 2 feet on the walls and some random crates in some rooms.

[Seeko]

Back to the page 1 discussion of odd ideas that could mix things up a bit:

You have the 16 islands, split into 4 paths. when you enter the area with your alliance (figure large group activity), your members randomly get set to 1 of 4 predetermined "floor 1" islands, so the group you work with is random. When you complete the floor 1 objectives, everyone is warped to the 2nd set of floors, but the groups are once again randomized (think like the teleporter to get to Kirin's room, except with 4 possible destinations). That way, you must have all groups run through at roughly the same speed, and you get the random factor of never being completely sure who exactly you will work with on the next floor.

Could cause a lot of problems if all your melees ended up in an area with no mages...temp potions go.

[Kaslo]

Back to the page 1 discussion of odd ideas that could mix things up a bit:

You have the 16 islands, split into 4 paths. when you enter the area with your alliance (figure large group activity), your members randomly get set to 1 of 4 predetermined "floor 1" islands, so the group you work with is random. When you complete the floor 1 objectives, everyone is warped to the 2nd set of floors, but the groups are once again randomized (think like the teleporter to get to Kirin's room, except with 4 possible destinations). That way, you must have all groups run through at roughly the same speed, and you get the random factor of never being completely sure who exactly you will work with on the next floor.

Could cause a lot of problems if all your melees ended up in an area with no mages...temp potions go.

Sandworm glitch as an event?

[Spira]

lol..

i kinda see it as 16 islands into 4 paths as well.. each path having 4 floors.
I'm thinking of it probably being a large-scale event, like 36 man.
Since the area isn't instanced, and to prevent overcrowding, I'd cap the area limitation to 60 minutes per group, and i guess it will work on dynamis style timer + gil used to buy something required to enter.

I'd love for it to be a progressive boss run.. i think that would be cool..
like island 1, you get a relatively weak NM, killable with 2 parties, probably with moderate HP, then lv2 you get another NM which is slightly harder, lv3 another even harder NM and finally Lv4 the path boss.
Some islands could be like 3-6 weaker NMs (cos the areas available are narrow and windy, kinda.. useful to make use of in this manner)
this way, the 1 hour limitation would not be the restricting factor.. like say the first lv NM could be downed in 5-7 minutes, the 2nd in 7-10 and the 3rd in 1-12 min, the rest of the time would be spent on the path boss
Path boss would be fixed per zone, but lower level bosses/mobs would be semi-randomized. The fights should be kinda strategized so that its not just a zerg-fest.. more limbus less einherjar lol.. and to keep with some sort of tier structure, it'd be to clear the 3 main paths to unlock the 4th path, which will be much harder than the first 3..and actually push the limits of groups under time, but with much better drops.

but at the same time, the areas would be used at random, so congestion won't occur just because 4 groups want to do the same path.. but only if theres a 5th group.
and to have things more interesting, boss AI would differ slightly depending on which island layout they get thrown into.

lets give say, an example of lv 4 boss, Light and Dark Ixion together, on the zig zag island (NW on the bottom right corner of the map). one would spawn on the top left clearing and the other on the bottom right. It doesn't move out of its area until you deal 20% damage to it, at which point it'll run to the next platform. Both act this way, but if you don't kill them when they're on the same island and both of them are engaged they'll reraise. They also don't aggro after running off.. That way the alliance would need to strategize to get them both to run into the same clearing and then kill them from there.. something to that extent would be more fun... tactical battles are more fun than pure zerg fests, but they have to be balanced well enough that they don't become like AV wtf tactics..

anyway.. im just raving about what-ifs.. excuse me.

[Qeomash]

I still hope it's a regular zone like sky or sea.

Or...make it like the palace in Sea. You have to do some sort of dungeon crawl to gain access to each island.

Also, there look to be several staircases that appear to go nowhere. They might be just broken off. What if they made them zone lines to take you to other islands? Sorta like the in zone zones of Pso'Xja and Ru'hmet.

[Spira]

i don't mind them being free-roam areas but SE hasn't been in the habit of making too many of those. Then again, there might be too many of those in the game now so they're kinda limiting the number of huge new areas that they're adding...

if its a new outdoor area, i hope the staircases aren't true zoneline zones, cos zoning around in Ru'Hmet was so annoying as it took a while to load, even though u were in the same zone..
something similar to Ru'Avitau teleporters, Alzadaal teleporters or those spacial displacement things in Riverne would be better.. none of those are automatic, but i'd rather have to click/hit enter once than wait for zone time...

[Ophannus]

It could be like einherjar where you trade [insert orb/lamp/hourglass/chip] to a door/portal/??? and you're taken to a single island for a fight. Remember when people were looking a Einherjar maps before it came out and people thought all 9 areas would be connected at the same time? Or when people thought the same about Nyzul Isle/Salvage?

[TummieGaruda]

It could be like einherjar where you trade [insert orb/lamp/hourglass/chip] to a door/portal/??? and you're taken to a single island for a fight. Remember when people were looking a Einherjar maps before it came out and people thought all 9 areas would be connected at the same time? Or when people thought the same about Nyzul Isle/Salvage?

Yeah but the only problem is we are looking at a ton of islands here.
Each island is relatively small so it may just be a 30-60 minute event where there is progression. Since there are 4 Atmos things in the sky, it would appear that they made it so that it would look as if each "area" was stacked on top of each other... for instance the 4 islands in the top left are lower than the 4 islands on the top right. What is not shown in the diagram are random floating islands which may give an appearance of the "other" sections being above it.

Even though the islands are small the whole area itself is still stupidly large.

Now on the other side of the coin, this could be the new Nyzul Isle, where its a 6 man event and you have 30 minutes to clear 4 Islands. Putting 18+ people on one of those islands seems very very crowded...

[Spira]

another thing about the islands are that they are very close together
so if they broke each group of 4 up.. u'd actually be able to see another group on the next island

[Linktri]

Walk of Echoes is a zone that has inflicts a permanent and very heavy Gravity effect on anyone inside. That's why it's not called Run of Echoes. All mobs inside have enhanced movement speed.

Seriously. Ways for SE to fuck with us:
1. Remove/restrict Job Traits.
2. Randomly remove/switch elements on JAs, WSs and SCs.
3. Have enemies that can permanently destroy gear/items.
4. Lock specific elemental actions.
5. Bind characters (or inflict other status ailments) for wearing certain types of gear. Remember that cave in FF2NA (I think), where if you wore metal items you couldn't move?
6. Create a level similar to salvage where the doors open and close during the instance to create a constantly random shifting zone.
7. Have enemies hidden in walls and floors that jump out when they go aggressive.
8. Reduce movement speed.
9. Regularly and randomly inflict heavy status penalties on the players.
10. Randomly and regularly kill players
11. Create an instance that saps your HP and MP.

[Starr]

4 islands
Nidhogg
KB
Aspid
AV

NEW CONTANT LULZ

[Spira]

old joke is old.
and AV will never appear in another expansion anyway

[dejet]

na the 4th will be a random shot at cerb, khim or hydra duh!

[stewie]

If I may ask, how are you viewing and getting pics of these zones?

[Hyan]

Model Viewer/Altana Viewer/EWH viewer/FFXITOOL UPDATE 8/12/08 - Killing Ifrit

EWH viewer

[Starless]

I was personally wishing for Walk of Echoes to be some mindfuck place like that M.C. Escher painting or Pokemon Platinum's Distortion world where gravity and physics are kind of thrown out the window. That "everyone is turned into a random job they have leveled" would backfire horribly when people refuse to let you in their WoE group because you have DNC leveled or something.

"Go delevel everything but SAM and/or BRD and come back."

[EternalSnow]

This is a video on youtube of a guy walking in the walk of echoes or whatever. the place looks pretty amazing
YouTube - FFXI Walk of Echoes : arena

[Kaylia]

It was pretty cool. That area has the potential to be my new favorite. It's on par with riverne and Al'taeiu in term of awesomeness.

[Asgon]

Simple and annoying way to "challenge" players. When you enter the instance, everyone is brought down to level 1. There are groups of enemies in the instance and 1 boss, every time you kill a group of enemies you receive a chest that "levels up" the alliance by 5/10 levels until you hit 75 again and fight the Mega Boss. Works just like level sync, you can use your 75 gear since there are no level restrictions anymore, and it fits with the whole "time-travel" theme, except this time its your characters level that gets sent back.

Not to shabby.

[Shenrien]

Simple and annoying way to "challenge" players. When you enter the instance, everyone is brought down to level 1. There are groups of enemies in the instance and 1 boss, every time you kill a group of enemies you receive a chest that "levels up" the alliance by 5/10 levels until you hit 75 again and fight the Mega Boss. Works just like level sync, you can use your 75 gear since there are no level restrictions anymore, and it fits with the whole "time-travel" theme, except this time its your characters level that gets sent back.

This sounds actually quiet interesting in a way they could play this. I would probably enjoy it o.o