Instanced Dungeon Que SystemFollow

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that auto-grouping for instanced content is actually confirmed to be in the cards (in fact, it would work across worlds to improve results). Level sync is in too, but I'm not sure it's on a choose-your-own-level basis.

Edit: Ah, here we go. The Zam thread regarding the Playstation Blog interview where the Content Finder was brought up.
http://ffxiv.zam.com/forum.html?forum=152&mid=13394577236471366&h=50

Edited, Jan 8th 2013 7:29pm by Xoie

Not necessarily my preferred mechanics but they have their merit in the right time and place.

I'm not averse to games where you have to go to a physical place (e.g., a waiting room) to enter the instance, and during that time have only the company of other players, so long as there are things to do there. I think it does a lot more for the sense of community and vastness of the world while circumventing the problems of active party searching, which tends to be time consuming and boring.

I do generally like being able to scale down your own level, but I like for mechanics like these to have some sense of narrative presence. Even something as simple as labeling the menu option "Hold Back," is better than some feature which magically makes you weaker.

The only thing that ensures lame multi-player is poor development. If you don't design areas with events other than instanced dungeons that people will want to participate in, you won't lure people away from the main hubs.

People will gather in hub towns no matter what - it happened in XI and it will happen here too. It's just a convenient and safe place to do business, chat, check out what people are selling, or wait for a group.

The alternative is server only parties manually created and job elitism ala FFXI. People flagging up for hours. People not able to get into groups because there's not enough players willing to take the time to /sea all and invite. Groups being slow to come together because the leader only wants to put together a perfect party and that PUP or whatever the equivelent ends up being is not wanted. Waiting for a bard. Waiting for a tank on your server when there's one ready to go on another server but you can't see her.

The arguments for and against have been made ad naseum for every mmo since its inception, and the answer always ends up the same. The benefits just plain outweigh the perceived consequences.

I think to keep things simple it will be auto group for the most part. In other words, i dont think there will be a chat channel or "find" feature where you can filter out players that you dont want. If people were fully capable of forming "manual" groups, it will only leave the "leftovers" when its all said and done.

Job elitism will be a tough one to overcome, especially with designated roles such as tank and healer. Without a doubt there will be more damage dealers than healers and tanks out there. But that has always been the tradeoff, more people want to be damage dealers which means a larger sample to choose from. Tanks and healers have less flexibility and are therefore more rare. If that is the case, then of course you will see certain jobs or even individuals boasting about how much damage they can do or what gear they have. In a way, this concept resembles capitalism vs communism. which one works better in the real world?

Job and gear balance has always been a tough one to figure out no matter how many updates and expansions are made. With every little change that makes one job better, there is another job that suffers. Think of it like your favorite sports team, when a referee calls something against your team or in favor of the other, your tendency is to cry foul no matter what right? Sorry to say this cliche but life in general isnt fair and we're all going to have to deal with it.

I completely understand where you're coming from. One of my friends was a really good PUP and I knew what they were capable of, but like you said there were way too many people who did the job a disservice. That, and the fact that the PUP really needed to be built up to be worthwhile. SAM/WAR/DRG didn't need as much time put in to equal more damage in a lot of cases.

I think PUP fell victim to the culture of min/max (which I did fuel in my time of XI.) Thing was, PUP could give you decent physical DD and healing in certain situations. It had the capability to do more than any one job by itself, just on a lower threshold in most cases. While that's great for all-aroundness, people in XI didn't want utility. They wanted maximization.

What's a 'que'?

That's really not a foregone conclusion. There are plenty of ways to ensure streamlined party play without falling on the double-edged sword of cross-server parties. Personally I don't like cross-server parties; I think it's a lazy bandaid on a gunshot wound in most situations. It might be a good solution if you're starting from a game like EQ or FFXI, but if you don't make the same mistakes those games did, you don't have the same problems.

For example, the insistence upon using a strict trinity system where healers and tanks offer more party value than damage dealers. This is a gaping design problem that, sure, could be improved upon somewhat with cross-server partying. But in a game where this trinity party dynamic is downplayed, or a different party dynamic is used altogether, it doesn't necessarily do anything but water down the sense of community.

Thank you. It's been about three years since I left the game and for some reason I still get mad when people have the audacity to insult my PUP.

My influence is spreading... muahahahahahaaaa *cough* hahahaaaa!

FFXI actuallly had seven distinct roles, most of which weren't used in regular party dynamics but which came into play on bigger NMs.

-Puller
-Tank
-Melee
-Nuker
-Healer
-Enfeebler
-Buffer

In a regular party those roles collapsed into the "trinity" somewhat. On larger NMs, the roles became more granular, and were often duplicated multiple times over. Consider the 75 cap standard Jailer of Love setup: A tank party, with two PLD, two whm, a rdm, and a bard. A DD party, with 4 melee, a whm, and a bard. A BLM party, with four blm, a rdm, and a brd or a smn. An external BLM party with 3-4 BLM and a RDM. JoL was technically killable by far fewer, but the overlap of buffs and healing within the main alliance meant you had a lot fewer scary moments, and putting the second BLM party external helped with hate control. (Oh, there was probably a THF in there someplace too.)

Now pit that against a standard 75 cap Dynamis Lord setup: You have a puller team with a THF and a PLD. The THF's sole job was to run the dragons as far away as they could with flee while the rest of the alliance took down the big bad. The main party was 2 PLD, a WHM or two. You have three bards doing a true bard rotation through the alliance to super buff everyone for a couple minutes, because a couple of minutes was all you had. You had as many DD in the main alliance as you could, then the bards dropped out and healers replaced them, and the bards went up to the BLMs in a separate alliance and sang ballads. And when the NM was pulled, everyone threw everything that they had at DL. When it worked, it was like NASA launching a rocket and it was beautiful. When it didn't work..... well, there were a lot of dead bodies sometimes.

Job versatility is important. I think XI's big issue for many years was that the variety of endgame content didn't permit enough job variety. We actually had a PUP who'd come to Jailor of Love, because his puppet was maxed out for nuking, and the lilttle guy provided a steady DoT of 10,000 -15,000 hate free damage over the course of the fight. The giant jellyfish would have moved if a DD did anything like that over the fight. (JoL was a rare XI fight where positioning of the players and the mobs was absolutely critical.)

Now that XI has multiple tiers of content, easy access content, hard mode content, and every flavor in between, people are more welcome to break out of the "trinity" roles and just do their own thing.

That's why as I've said recently, it's best to start with balancing jobs against one another first, then designing the monsters.

I dont know how you would build an RPG without defining roles such as the trinity. I've seen games that tried to do away with it like you said, but all it does is create more chaos in the grand scheme of things. Having a trinity, and every support role in between creates purpose. In a role playing sense, everyone involved in the group would like to have a special or unique purpose, hence the term "role playing game"

I tend to think of rpg battles as sort of a puzzle so to speak. If the developers design the game to where a trinity can solve it, then they will design battles accordingly. Of course, this is the most popular method of group dynamics for quite some time now and i think its mainly because of what i said earlier - everyone wants to have a meaningful purpose to their group or a "role" to play.

I think that in an rpg where there are many roles but are less definitive, you run into a situation like in Borderlands or Diablo where it almost becomes every man for himself. I'm not saying that teamwork cant come into play, but dimishes the reliance you would need for teamates. All the teamates represent at this point are more companions to finish the puzzle with. If somehow you can create some kind of reliance by needing other team members, then that would entirely something else.