Alpha Video #8: Instanced DungeonsFollow

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/59289-Alpha-First-Look-Video-8-%E2%80%93-Instanced-Dungeons

Join our heroes as they take on the Tam-Tara Deepcroft in the eighth and final installment of our Alpha First Look video series. In this instanced dungeon, adventurers will meet with myriad opponents and obstacles to overcome before they may proceed further. The most spectacular spoils are granted only to those who venture into the deepest depths and emerge victorious.

* The instanced dungeon in this video is designed for low level players. Targeting and actions are demonstrated with the mouse instead of keyboard for greater clarity.

* The battle system is currently undergoing significant revision, including changes to all damage algorithms and the claim system.



Edited, Jan 4th 2013 10:19pm by Wint Lock Thread: lock

A definite improvement in the zone layout department.
The combat however... well... hmm.

I disagree with the underlined. It took me longer to clear mobs at level 1 then it did for the group in the video to clear trash pulls. It took them less than 40 seconds to down a boss mob. Why would you even need a full hotbar if you couldn't use it all over the course of an encounter anyway?

Unless the dungeons are level capped, so then you would need a party to clear them. I think there will be plenty of exploration aside from instanced dungeons.

Edited, Dec 27th 2012 9:59am by Wint

I'm not sure what you mean by traditional MMO dungeons. Did you play XI? Can you give me an example of one from XI? That's where most of my experience is. If you are merely referring to places not out in the open (ie underground, in ruins, etc) then we will have to wait and see what kind of zones we're given.

Ah I see. Well I don't think places like that existed in 1.0 (I did a bit of exploring, but not as much as others) but I would think some areas like that wouldn't be hard to add.

I can agree about the boss mob fight. There weren't many examples of regular enemies but it seemed to be longer than in the levequest video. Also, slim on details but, is this a normal mode dungeon, or hard? I would assume normal.

I agree that with 3 or more party members, this video definitly looked "Too weak to be worthwhile" as far as enemy toughness goes. Now I know it was said that these dynamics were going to be adjusted, here's to hoping we get some exciting grouping combat schematics. I would hope the more people that enter one of these dungeons as a party the more difficult mobs will be as opposed to solo experiences.

Three people at lvl 20 in a lvl 20 dungeon shouldn't be fighting lvl17-20 mobs/bosses. To me, that just seems like a wasted chance for fun and excitement. Also, bringing back some sort of fighting mechanics such as a SATA > Weapon skill and other multi-role partying combinations that encouraged an engaging battle. Besides just (maybe) putting two or so "Limit Breaks" together equals this more mob dmg or whatever they plan on doing with them.

I also hope most dungeons will not be instanced, I never liked the idea of instanced areas. If I need help with something or a party gets in a bind (maybe needs a raise), it seems like a much less of a chance for player interaction in the areas/zones/dungeons that count the most. Also, glad to hear they will be putting in falling dmg, hopefully it will work both ways, might be an interesting party dynamic with enemy falling dmg?

From media I've seen that I can't link here, this is actually a level 15 dungeon, not a level 20 dungeon. I think they went in with a higher level group just so they could show more of the dungeon and speed up the battles, similarly to what they did with the Levequest video.

Duo, I think the "indoor non-instanced" areas that you are looking for did exist. Tam tara deepcroft (the instanced dungeon in the video) was actually an underground cellar type place you could go and kill mobs that wasn't instanced in any way. You can check out those "underground" areas if you like if you go to the top and highlight the database tab and then highlight zones and then dungeons and those are all non-instanced cave/cellar type areas where you could go to kill mobs. Also, in one of the major patches they did in 1.0, they added beastman strongholds. The ixali one in Coerthas was called Natalan. The Amal'jaa stronghold in Thanalan was called Zahar'ak. They also closer to the end of the major patches added an Imperial stronghold in Mor Dhona called Castrum Novum. Those were all above ground outdoor places just like it or very similar to Castle Ostrozja from XI.

100% this

The area looks great. It certainly looks quite easy, but as some people pointed out, it's likely a level 15 dungeon that they ran on level 20 characters for the sake of brevity. I still find the combat a little bit too fast-paced for my taste, but I realize I'm in the minority here, and I can live with that. The flashiness of combat however has me more concerned. I have a hard time telling what's going on, too much going on at once; animations that are too similar one to the other and bright lights popping left and right.

I'm hoping they'll draw out the animations and make them more easily identifiable in the midst of battle, either by making them completely different from each other, or giving them unique sound effects. It would greatly improve the party's ability to work together and cooperate once they bring in limit breaks/combos/skillchains or whatever system they have coming to supplement what's already in place. And longer animation might make it feel like the combat is a tad slower, without actually toning it down, appeasing the old fashioned like me in the process!

Agreed. I've been saying this since the first preview of the combat, it's distracting and over-the-top for basic abilities and spells. It reminds me of a Michael Bay movie where it's "holy crap! explosions!" in the first 10 minutes but after sitting through it long enough you become desensitized from it. This is the 3rd? 4th? preview involving combat and I'm already at the point where I have no opinion other than, "well, it's still pretty looking and it's still flashy....".

There really weren't THAT many instanced dungeons n 1.0. First there was Toto-rak (low level 30ish, meant for making the 30's easier to grind through) and Dzamael Darkhold (originally meant for a party of 8 lvl 45+ characters). After that they added Cutter's Cry and Aurum Vale, both of which were for parties of 8 lvl 45+ characters. Outside of those, there were no completely instanced dungeons. There were open world places like Castle Ostroja where you can run around and see other parties or people doing stuff. For example, Natalan was used for wolf parties. Those were the main/best ways to level up from 40-50 or use as spiritbind parties to create massive amounts of materia in just a couple hours. That's actually how I made most of my gil when I actually tried to make it. I'm poor when compared to many/most of the other 1.0 players. Other examples of instanced content were primal battles against mobs like Ifrit, Garuda, or Good King Moogle Mog IV. Those weren't actual dungeons. They were just single battles that you enter kill the boss, open a chest and leave. There were per-requisites to entering them though along with different difficulties. Castrum Nova is Mor Dhona was an open world non-instanced stronghold where you could run/fight through all the imperial army and then at the end was a door you could open up and do an instanced battle. That was part of the grand company storyline and also part of the whole dalamud/coming of the 7th umbral era.

When talking about the "originally" part about the above instaned dungeons like cutter's cry, aurum vale, and d. darkhold, they were later changed and allowed parties of 4 or more lvl 45+ characters to enter since they added small chests to open up for AF armor when those were added along with the jobs.

when i said someone else who get sit I wasnt implying that YOU didnt get it as in I had to explain what I meant by "traditional" dungeon.. what I meant is someone else who understand the point/reason of why dungeons SHOULDNT be instanced

i say stuff like that is part of an MMO... if you dont like the overcamped HNMs... dont fight em,... thats the decision i made and it didnt hinder my fun at all.. I sure as hell could find better things to do with my ingame time than spend 3 hours waiting around for an enemy that i wasnt even gonna get the chance to fight to spawn.

but at the same time i thought it was cool that there ere enemies so rare youd only ever see em once every 24-72 hours

They did their best to combat this by making most of the fights they expected to be popular instanced. This way we didn't all have to fight over claims or anything like that. The issue they ran into, was an old one. The servers they originally made to store/run the game couldn't handle more than 30 or so instances of the same fight at the same time. This caused lots of issues when they released new content when practically everyone in the game wanted to do the same fight and there were waiting ques. It especially hurt when you were trying to learn how to actually do the fight because you'd wait 10-15 minutes to attempt it and wipe in it maybe 5-10 minutes in it and have to wait another 10-15 minutes just to try it out again. God forbid someone in your party d/c while in the battle... That made the re-entry timer be 30 minutes... Often times that would happen with new content b/c of the server instability. I'm confident that they've taken the time to take care of these issues with the alpha though and their new servers. They wouldn't want to repeat the same mistake they made the first time around.

What works for you doesn't work for everyone. This silver bullet you think you have really isn't one. I still like the idea of NM's and hope they find a way to implement them, but it's not a deal breaker to me.

I completely forgot about that one. Most of my classes/jobs were already lvl 50 by the time they added toto-rak and shposhae so the only reason I went in there was to get achievements/kill and NM that was in there. If I remember right, I didn't like the maze like map of shposhae. I do remember hearing how it was a very good place to party lvl/grind in the lower levels. Everyone I knew were already too high though to take advantage of this. Also, people genuinely stuck to the tried and true PL.

lol I remember BCNM fights like that in FFXI when story content just came out.. there would literally be a line of players outside the BCNM waiting for their turn lol

inb4 Kirin's magic ice cream and pizza

You're missing the point. Once you decide you want something, you have already intrinsically set a goal to get that thing. If you do some research and decide that it's not worth it, then you have abandoned that goal.

It's a game. Players are SUPPOSED to be able to achieve their goals, because that's a big part of what makes it fun. If you want to conceive of a game that isn't fun, by all means, imagine whatever crazy stuff you want.

Looks really good. Still no mechanics though :(

yeah i am also surprised no mentioned this, or Copperbell Mines, or Cass Hollow, or Mun-Tuy, or Nanawa Mines, etc etc. 1.0 had at least 2 non-instanced "dungeons" per zone.

I actually did some leveling in Shposhae, and really enjoyed it as well. You got exp, you explored, you got coffer keys, and then you used those keys and got somewhat level-appropriate gear. From a level-design perspective it was great. Maze-like, but not annoyingly so. And i liked that you could walk across the little lakes on lilypad things. And then there was that weird giant mystery clam with all the elementals gathered around it. wtf was that about?

I prefer the non-instanced dungeons with a "boss room" for the most part. Its a good compromise. However, instanced raids are fun in a more structured way. Its more of a "game" and less of a virtual world. Probably because of the timer (which has its pros and cons to be sure). Sometimes i'm in the mood for that kind of more "beat the game" kind of experience. So ideally a balance of both would be nice to see. Is that NDA lifted yet?




tbh, the open world NMs implemented somewhere between 1.0 and 1.23 worked quite well imo. They respawned fairly quickly, but not on a set timer. Sometimes they'd repop seconds after killing, sometimes it could take upwards of 20min. However, 1.0 had such a small population, so competition was rarely a problem.

Perhaps having all NMs drop some kind of tokens that could be traded in for gear (much like people were trading in NM drops for GC credits...or wait, that worked...so yeah, how about just that?) would cut down on the competitive aspect.



Edited, Dec 27th 2012 6:06pm by Llester

I think I have an idea what the ice cream will be like teehee

Hmm, first video I have seen lately. I have to agree that the flashies are over-done. Tone down just a bit so we can see what is going on please.

The dungeon looks great IMO. The gameplay does look pretty basic (with 4 lvl 20's putting the beatdown on a 17 boss). I expect the balancing of enemies is currently an ongoing process. I would play the game shown here to get to higher levels with greater challenges.

Let's just hope that the challenge the have in mind is not dodging an Ifrit eruption with a crappy hit box system that is not tuned to the visuals on the screen.

I want to be challanged by the battle, not the UI.