Randomly Ridiculous FFXI to FFXIV

[Corrderio]

That's how I felt about BLU AF Alderaan.

[Kaylia]

Honestly this has to become a standard for MMO's, imo. Phasing is such an amazing feature and REALLY helps tell a story and you can probably get more people to stick around with a game because of how much better you can immerse yourself in a world with phasing.

After leveling in valkurm dune 500 hours, you're phased into a valkurm dune where every crabs are replaced with collibri. Would be great.


But really, I would like to be able to leave my mark on the world in certain obvious place. It doesnt have to be much, just something that make me feel like the world progressed, and that I actually saved the day.

[Lucavi]

Ahh.. its refreshing to have everyone on the same page for once! This pleases me.

[Crosius]

One cool Pseudo-phase WoW incorporates is when you are dead and running back to your body. I really like the feel of it. I would love to see a game where maybe you could interrupt a mob's mana restoration while dead in that same kind of chaotic death-plane. Phasing allows for even more creativity than just timeline changes, it allows for existence layers.

[arus2001]

While I don't think a lot of XI fans will dig corpse runs, it doesn't rule out perversion of the game world for the satisfaction of various quest objectives. Things like dream states, memory/time travel, false death, and so on. To some degree, I think the memory/time travel aspect has already been implied through leves and such.

[Cooleko]

After leveling in valkurm dune 500 hours, you're phased into a valkurm dune where every crabs are replaced with collibri. Would be great.

But really, I would like to be able to leave my mark on the world in certain obvious place. It doesnt have to be much, just something that make me feel like the world progressed, and that I actually saved the day.

If you want logic thrown into your dreaming see the spoiler, if not dont see it.

Spoiler: show

This would be absolutely AWESOME. After leveling for 500 hours THERE ARE NO MORE MOBS! they either abandoned hope or couldnt reproduce fast enough. Even having the crab populace decline and the valkurm fly populace increase would be unnacceptable.

/s I want my mobs having babies so i can kill them too. I also want to be able to starve the beastmen so when I get around to fighting them they are very weak and i get maximum (skill up for 14?) exp with no effort. /s

Dunes would be an empty barren desert with no low lvl mobs so the later generation would have to wait a month or so for them to respawn. While the original group would continue leveling and making the entire world barren.

*you* completed mission 10 and saved the world? So now everyone sees the changes? But they havent even started mission 1, it wouldnt make sense for them. or Do you really want to 'see' a big hole in the ground on your screen and have to walk around it (something exploded in mission 10) but the guy next to you floats right over it and says "i dont see it, wtf are you saying."

I love speculation, but asking for silly things is just silly.

You can not have progression because the world is static. If it is not changing for everyone then you would be in a separate world than the people around you which is not an MMO. Just because *you* kill alot of crabs doesnt mean someone else shouldnt be able to. If *you* walk accross one path every day for a week doesnt mean someone else has to see your trail.

Now, unless I jumped the gun, and you really want a all the grass to dissapear in every field for every person because all the adventures walked all over it, this dynamic inversion would not be practical.

All obviousness aside, and on your line of thought:
I would appreciate a seasonal cycle where the crabs leave when winter rolls in, but I would hope to find them moved just a few zones away because the polar bears/hare that replace them would not nessecarily be the same lvl and may eat me.

[Alderaan]

One cool Pseudo-phase WoW incorporates is when you are dead and running back to your body. I really like the feel of it. I would love to see a game where maybe you could interrupt a mob's mana restoration while dead in that same kind of chaotic death-plane. Phasing allows for even more creativity than just timeline changes, it allows for existence layers.

I just tried out WoW for the first time last week and one of the things i could not stand, besides the terrible character creator, was the corpse run thing. Phasing does sound interesting though.

[McGoonagle]

Maybe individual mobs could change with time. They pop as too weak, and then move into a set level for a while. Say your Gobbie ambusher in Valkurm settles in at 21 for a couple of hours. After two hours of being unclaimed, it starts oozing up to 24-25. That would be challenge or a reward for people spending time there. Not all the mobs in a zone would need to do it, just a couple.

[Crosius]

Maybe that is how NMs should come into being. For example, there is a goblin in east sarutabaruta that jogs by the little waterfall way up in the northwest corner. anyone on the way to tahrongi would have to go out of their way to get to that little bugger. He hasn't been killed since 2006 during the Feast of Swords. If they slowly increased level over time... {Help! I'm being chased by a Goblin Fisher!}

[Kawfee]

Maybe that is how NMs should come into being. For example, there is a goblin in east sarutabaruta that jogs by the little waterfall way up in the northwest corner. anyone on the way to tahrongi would have to go out of their way to get to that little bugger. He hasn't been killed since 2006 during the Feast of Swords. If they slowly increased level over time... {Help! I'm being chased by a Goblin Fisher!}

That's actually a pretty cool idea.

[Cooleko]

Maybe that is how NMs should come into being. For example, there is a goblin in east sarutabaruta that jogs by the little waterfall way up in the northwest corner. anyone on the way to tahrongi would have to go out of their way to get to that little bugger. He hasn't been killed since 2006 during the Feast of Swords. If they slowly increased level over time... {Help! I'm being chased by a Goblin Fisher!}

This is Rose Garden, and it's a horrible idea. Anyone who has attempted to go after Rose Garden will agree D:

*You sit there watching the goblin for 5 hours. then some random person skilling or leveling up sees your NQ mob. Oh hey I'm going to kill it! You /t please dont it will turn into a NM. Random person kills it and continues on his merry way. All the sudden you have been reset to waiting for it to change again.*

[arus2001]

I can't say I agree with mobs morphing while idling. Let it go too far and suddenly you get something that annihilates a group that was otherwise doing okay. Rose Garden was already mentioned above, but there are other stupid mobs like Noble Mold or Taisaijin.

Now, if we're looking for some mob variance, then SE could kind of yoink a page from Diablo and create a series of name prefixes that would affect the stats of the mobs. Using goblins as an example, let's say there's something like "Studious Goblin Mage" who, compared to a simple Goblin Mage, would have more INT or MATK. "Nimble Goblin Bandit" would have more AGI or EVA. It's just a slightly added layer of variance on top of levels, and it could even go the opposite way to make the random goblin easier like a "Stymied Goblin Mage" or "Clumsy Goblin Bandit". Mobs given these prefixes could even have their loot chances adjusted to justify a slight shift in difficulty. Make a big enough pool of prefixes and one mob can technically become many.

This could also be taken a step further with a suffix pool for randomly generated NMs. While I'd rather not see Diablo-esque NM names like "Snot Spit the Putrid", things could be a bit more personalized to mob type or race and, with again with goblins, maybe get something like "Stalwart Brixtix the Defiant", who would be an incredibly defensive paladin with high HP. And really, the intrinsic difference between these and mobs simply leveling up is in the name. Brixtix shouldn't be so vastly overpowered compared to other mobs in the area, but wiping if unprepared wouldn't be a super surprise since it is an NM.

[McGoonagle]

I can't say I agree with mobs morphing while idling. Let it go too far and suddenly you get something that annihilates a group that was otherwise doing okay.

[good thoughts trimmed solely to save space]

I wouldn't want it to go too far: pops at low end of range (TW for the zone), settles in mid-range (DC to EM), idles to a max level (T to VT), but spends 60-80% of time in mid-range. You'd also have to have it depop.

[Kaylia]

I just tried out WoW for the first time last week and one of the things i could not stand, besides the terrible character creator, was the corpse run thing. Phasing does sound interesting though.

Only time it really annoyed me was early, when I was learning the mechanics and dying a lot.

I personally hate any mechanics that prevent me to play for a while after my death, but you will probably get used fast enough like most of us did.

I wouldn't want it to go too far: pops at low end of range (TW for the zone), settles in mid-range (DC to EM), idles to a max level (T to VT), but spends 60-80% of time in mid-range. You'd also have to have it depop.

There is always a way to balance thing, but gimmick like this are probably not worth the trouble. I see very little benefit outside the "woah, i just got rapped by a mobs I thought was weak"

It could be an interesting at time, but it wouldn't make very interesting "strong" mobs. I would rather have more unique NM, instead of a stronger copy of everything else.

[Lucavi]

How does everyone feel about reskinned mobs throughout the game? We know most every MMO does them, but are you all looking forward to 15 different level spreads of crabs, or would you like a bit more variation throughout your leveling experience?

[SilverBreeze]

You could level 1-75 in FFXI and never fight the same types of mobs twice really. It's just the popular spots usually had the same mobs (birds and crabs and mandies).

That being said I'd love to have a nice variety of things to level on, leveling on crabs from 50-58 was pretty sickening back in the day.

Whenever I leveled I always tried to level in obscure spots, just to make things more fun. I even made a party one day that XP'd on Porgo Isle in Bibiki Bay for shits and giggles, and it turned out to be amazing XP.

[Kawfee]

It could be an interesting at time, but it wouldn't make very interesting "strong" mobs. I would rather have more unique NM, instead of a stronger copy of everything else.

If they developed slightly unique skins (maybe attach effects to their model, i.e. glowing eyes, a broken crown on their head, stuff like that) and had things attached to their names e.g. Murderous Colibri or w/e, I think it would be fine. It could help automatically make people have a reason to go to places that are normally not well traveled, to hunt for NMs.

[Kaylia]

If they developed slightly unique skins (maybe attach effects to their model, i.e. glowing eyes, a broken crown on their head, stuff like that) and had things attached to their names e.g. Murderous Colibri or w/e, I think it would be fine. It could help automatically make people have a reason to go to places that are normally not well traveled, to hunt for NMs.

Of course, there is always way around issue like this, but I don't think people would be happier with this than a traditional NM system. If they are worthless, they will be ignored completely and nothing will change, if they are too good, you will be back to NM camping.

I think it could works if their reward is small enough to prevent players from going out of their for them, but it's a lot of effort for a mechanics that is just "cool", and will be mostly ignored. At best, it would be like mining in Zhayolm, except you replace mining point with random NM.


That said, an evolving environment is still nice. I always liked seeing a wamouracampa evolve into a Destroyer of world, and if they can have many little thing like this, it would make an interesting world.

You could level 1-75 in FFXI and never fight the same types of mobs twice really. It's just the popular spots usually had the same mobs (birds and crabs and mandies).

That being said I'd love to have a nice variety of things to level on, leveling on crabs from 50-58 was pretty sickening back in the day.

Whenever I leveled I always tried to level in obscure spots, just to make things more fun. I even made a party one day that XP'd on Porgo Isle in Bibiki Bay for shits and giggles, and it turned out to be amazing XP.

You could, but let's face it, some monsters family were really weaker than other, and proximity of the camp also play an important role, especially when you know someone might leave soon, making you waste even more time waiting for a replacement.

My favorite camp was probably in the water near Leviathan's zoneline (area was cool, it was great xp, there was a zone nearby), but it's not the kind of place you can go with random people.

[Crosius]

Reskinning is fine, as long as they also manipulate Alpha Layers. If you create a model with alot of extra parts as a base, you can "alpha-out" the spikes, wings, horns, even extra appendages, then when you do a palette swap, you can paint the parts you want to show up. Takes a little more work but the end product has alot more variety than yellow crawler/green crawler. Add scaling and you got a badass NM.

[fussel]

This is Rose Garden, and it's a horrible idea. Anyone who has attempted to go after Rose Garden will agree D:

If you think Rose Garden was a horrible idea, you did it wrong.

I got my ring after coming home from a party at something like 3am, totally drunk, said to my gf "let me check my NM quickly", got there (takes just a few minutes from Yhoat with the chocobo guys there now), hardly killed it (the fight's easy without alcohol!), DORP 1/3.