Beyond having obviously been designed back in early ARR as tutorials of sorts and a lot of the earliest ones are just in and out, I do feel they're a glimpse of what the game could have been about: adventure, RPG little missions with a lot of flavor, and very different things to do to complete them (and not just dunk on a boss in a circle arena for hours).
And, well, I guess that's not the game we've been getting and that's that, but it still did occur to me that if the MSQ was actually structured around those types of designs as solo duties (and not, once more, "go fight a boss in the middle of a circular arena and do DDR"), it could bring a lot of freshness to the game. It could also steer the MSQ from getting bogged down too much into traveling between NPCs and talk to them back and forth ad nauseam. Sure, we've had some duties like In From the Cold or some of the Thancred infiltration missions, but they've been far and few. People will obviously say that it may actually wall some players and I do agree, and that's why "very easy" mode should be able to be done close to doing them in god mode (it hurts nobody).
Heck, imagine you could do those in groups with friends? There is so many new players that start playing XIV with their friends and progress together and yet nothing beyond dungeons allows them to do that. This could also alleviate the problem of people being walled by such duties if they can be helped by friends to do them.
In any case, I strongly urge people to take a look back at guildhests and some of the encounter designs they had. You'd be surprised of the flavor they can have.
Continue reading...
And, well, I guess that's not the game we've been getting and that's that, but it still did occur to me that if the MSQ was actually structured around those types of designs as solo duties (and not, once more, "go fight a boss in the middle of a circular arena and do DDR"), it could bring a lot of freshness to the game. It could also steer the MSQ from getting bogged down too much into traveling between NPCs and talk to them back and forth ad nauseam. Sure, we've had some duties like In From the Cold or some of the Thancred infiltration missions, but they've been far and few. People will obviously say that it may actually wall some players and I do agree, and that's why "very easy" mode should be able to be done close to doing them in god mode (it hurts nobody).
Heck, imagine you could do those in groups with friends? There is so many new players that start playing XIV with their friends and progress together and yet nothing beyond dungeons allows them to do that. This could also alleviate the problem of people being walled by such duties if they can be helped by friends to do them.
In any case, I strongly urge people to take a look back at guildhests and some of the encounter designs they had. You'd be surprised of the flavor they can have.
Continue reading...