Torghast compared to FF14 Palace of the Dead. Thoughts and Improvements!

Gameplay Dungeons, Raids and Scenarios
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So not sure how many know but Blizzard is adding content that other games have toyed around with and I think this is a good place to explain how FF14 does their “endless dungeon” vs how Blizzard is doing their content.

A current issue with Torghast is it very quickly scales and you start roflstomping the content. Below are difference between FF14 and WoW to show what the problem is. It is very quickly obvious.

Easy ways to fix Torghast to make it compatible with WoW is to make the buffs you get a finite resource, nerf the enemies slightly to create a better balance and add a timer but allow players to save progress after 10 floors.

There is nothing in Torghast that cannot be fixed but I fear the current approach makes it easily completable content that cannot be moved into a new expansion after Shadowlands and will be forgotten when it should be an entirely new game feature that IS BADLY NEEDED

Final Fantasy 14. Palace of the Dead

  • Accessible at a quest (level 17)
  • Upon entering at level 1 you are reset to a level 1 player.
  • Content can be solod or group play
  • When you enter you are given a weapon and if tank a shield that are at level 1. These can be leveled up via chest spread throughout the different floors
  • You wear the same gear as if you were level 80 (current max level) but this does not matter. The only thing that matter is the armor and weapon you are given upon entering that can level up to 99. You can be level 17 outside the instance but be level 60 the max level in the instance and still be as useful as someone far higher because of dungeon gear.
  • Pomanders grant you abilities that are on use such as strength or defense obtained from chest. You can only carry 3 Pomanders
  • Other Pomanders include sight which reveals traps on the floor, Safety which disables all traps and Influence which increases the amount of chest
  • Traps can give you debuffs like lose weapons and magic skills for 30 seconds or spawn 3 enemies to come after you
  • Every 10th floor has a boss and that is how you save progress
  • Throughout the floors as you kill enemies you unlock the Progression orb or a Return orb. Return orbs can bring players back to life if you do not have a healer with a rez
  • Pomanders (buffs) only last 7 minutes
  • There are currently 200 floors but this was released in 2016 and floors were added. Newer version called “Heaven on high” was released in the expansion prior to the current one and is a separate system from this one with its own leveling of the dungeon gear.
  • Drops potions and after you finish the 10th floor gives badges relevant to current end game content
  • You have one hour to finish 10 floors or progress resets back to your last save. If you die then you exit the instance and you restart at you last save point.

Now lets talk about Torghast

  • You enter at Max level which is asking for trouble as the only progression you make is via stacking buffs
  • You enter with whatever armor and weapons you got outside the instance so automatically people who raid will have an INFINITE advantage over non raiders
  • Pomanders or buffs you get do not appear to have a time limit which is just insane to me. This is causing players to become gods.
  • In Palace of the Dead compared to Torghast you are RARELY pulling more then one mob. Mobs such as Palace Hornet (aka Murder Hornets) straight up have cast that if they go off nuke you and have to be interrupted which all classes have some form of.
  • Enemy variation compared to FF14 is far superior
  • The abilities you get are not generic and benefit some classes far more then others.
  • Currently has 70 floors
  • You have 3 deaths before progress resets.
  • Looking at a Youtube video from 2 days ago of Death Knight play I did not see a timer. This is apparently a drama thing right now but the problem is the stacking buffs make Torghast far to easy so you progress extremely quickly.

6/4/2020 Edit: Added some clarification to some of the bullet points.

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You make some really flawed points.

The general population would riot even more.

Didn’t Blizzard say that once unlocked via main, leveling alts would be able to do Torghast? So this is kinda moot.

Raiding hasn’t been the best way to get good gear for a while now. M+ gearing is much, much faster. The only people who may struggle are those who refuse to do any content whatsoever. It’ll still be doable but naturally people who actually play the game should have an easier time. Why is this a problem?

This is WoW. Not FF14. It’s apples and oranges. I don’t want any of the changes you suggest. Keep them different.

Also, for…

Blizzard has already acknowledged that, they did so in a Q&A a while back. Lets wait till more changes are done, yes?

Eh, expansion specific features are expansion specific. Who would’ve thunk it. Don’t get me wrong, I get what you are saying with this but let Blizzard play around with it. Let’s see how its received by the entire playerbase. Blizzard can take note of what works and what doesn’t. And if its a smashing success, carry some of those aspects into future expansions.

/shrug. Just my opinion at least.

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Your point about gear is also moot. Ever heard of Heritage armor? I am just pointing out how Square Enix decided to solve the problem.

They could just flat line the mob health and create timers for the buffs but 70 floors of repetitive content might get old unless they add a lot of variation.

ALSOOOOO a major issue with gear is Torghast floors 1-70 will be balanced around gear on expansion release. By patch 9.1 this MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR piece of content will be completely outdated by ilvl increases.

To avoid this consider the leveling path and using Torghast specifc heritage armor pieces. It is just a thought but I very quickly see Torghast becoming old content unless they keep adding 70+ floors each content patch which will never happen and keep it interesting.

If you think Torghast should be expansion specific then get read for the next 10+ years hearing just like you hear with pvp vendors or MAGE TOWERS!!!

“You should add another Torghast”

Instead they can design it to be actual repeatable content that last multiple expansions and does not rely on the current expansions gear to make it work.

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The perennial cry of the blind optimist.

In essence, you’re not wrong to hope they will arrive at a good place with the content after making the necessary changes, but if you haven’t heard this tune before, then your naivete is showing.

In my opinion, unless you can test a change yourself, or have confirmation from a credible source that such changes are guaranteed to be incoming, players have every right to express their opinions till the very last minute.

I know you mean well, and I’m not trying to tell you off, but I will ask, please do not attempt to suppress another players wishes by telling them that Blizzard knows better, or that Blizzard is working on it. It’s highly unlikely you have inside information about what they’re doing, and even after they acknowledge a problem it’s no guarantee it will be resolved.

We have complained till we’re blue in the face about problems that everyone acknowledged was a problem and Blizzard has stubbornly ignored feedback.

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Torghast is definitely going to be a work in progress. The fear is they see people burn it down and not understand why then just give up like they have done with so much content before.

Imagine if they had just had Warfronts as player vs player. Such a simple concept that became so convoluted because they fell so in love with their “artificial intelligence” NPC’s.

Palace of the dead took a few years to get to a good spot so there is hope here but I sense like always Blizzard will not realize the master piece they have here and make it a one expansion type concept.

but Mission boards they can drag those things out every expansion somehow…

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How about stay in the dumpster fire that is the GD forums.

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I just don’t think it’s fair to scream the sky is falling without knowing what changes are planned. Which most forum users do. You can easily check my achievements to see that I have been around for quite a while, so no. I’m not blind to how things have been. But it also genuinely seems like Blizzard is making a lot of right choices(though arguably some choices are still poor) and acknowledging feedback more than they have in the past. Can they improve? For sure. It’s something though.

And I care not for suppressing other people with their opinions. I merely stated FF14 isn’t WoW. And WoW isn’t FF14. It’s okay for them to be different. It’s okay for Blizzard to design differently. Can Blizzard learn from other MMO’s? Absolutely. But I just think it’s a bit much to basically try and tell Blizzard to adopt all of what X does for Y content which is similar to Z.

What happens if, lets say the expansion after Shadowlands, Blizzard does another overhaul on classes? Anima Powers in Torghast would have to be completely changed to reflect this. Or, be essentially dead powers. What happens in the case of a new class? Time would have to be spent to design entirely new Anima Powers for that class, or just leave them generic stat increases. That would mean resources that could be used for current and future content have to be divided to keep Torghast up to date. That’s my fear. I get what your asking, and part of me agrees but the work involved would be pretty substantial and could lead to more WoD’s where 1/2 the content is cut due to lack of resources/time.

I’d rather Blizzard get it right and offer ways for it to be fun and meaningful while current. So that they can then focus on future endeavors. Like I said though, it seems like Blizzard is putting forth at least some effort this time around when it comes to feedback and communication, much more is desired obviously. But until further changes are made known, we don’t know. So I’d rather be a bit optimistic than openly pessimistic and damning them for everything they do.

TLDR: I get it, but I still think it’s not asking much to wait for later builds to see how it’s progressing with changes, especially when Blizzard said they are aware and trying to figure things out. If, within the next build or two nothing has changed? By all means, raise hell. You know?

/shrug

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And after 15 years of watching them spend the first six months of every expansion reversing poor decisions to give people what they clamored for in the alpha and beta, I don’t think they deserve a moment’s peace until nothing can be done. Then they deserve every bit of negative feedback they accrue.

The problem is that you think there’s a continuity to their development team that means years of experience will lead them to make the right decisions. The reality is that while they have much greater insight into what they can and cannot logistically do in this game, they are stabbing in the dark with new ideas.

Have you already forgotten how much push back players were giving about Azerite Power since BfA Alpha. Do you remember the feedback on corruption?

I love the guys at Blizzard for a million reasons, but they are just as fallible as the rest of us. Often they are blind to their ignorance or put too much effort into too many bad decisions to back out.

I’m dead serious when I say, go back and look at the In Development forums, especially the BfA items and Classes forum. It’s a travesty of good feedback overlooked or ignored. I understand there’s a limit to how much feedback they can process and implement at the best of times, but that doesn’t excuse them from hearing about it.

They make a lot of poor decisions. At the very least players deserve the opportunity to remind them that things like leaving the balancing of Shamans until six months in to the expansion is reprehensible and that the corporate greed that fueled their launch date was shameful.

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^

Nice to see some objective people for a change.

Other industries only wish they had so many apologetic compromising customers as the gaming industry does.

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Like I said, I’ve been around more than long enough to take note of all of Blizzards screw ups. I’ve got loads of reasons to hate them, to have a vendetta against them. But also a ton of reasons to not. Hell, I’m still livid about them deleting my main spec of over a decade, just to appease a minority. (Ranged Survival, obviously, but that’s for a different thread entirely)

So again, I genuinely understand what you mean. But as I said, it seems like they are really making an effort this time around when it comes to communication. Much more than they did with WoD, Legion and BFA. Yes, I’m fully away of how much they like to ignore amazing feedback. Even over the simplest of changes. So I get it. I do. With that said, since they claim they are aware, I really don’t think it’s asking too much to give them a build or two to make potential changes, to prove they are aware. We will see many, many builds of Alpha and Beta before its released for Live. So at least give them a little time to make changes, if they indeed care and are aware. Before completely damning them for dong nothing. You know?

As I said, if within the next build or two nothing has changed? Raise hell, and I’ll be right next to you with a pitchfork. And voicing concerns is fine, but it’s not fine when a lot of folks would rather damn them from the start and basically say “X does Y better so you should do it too”. I’m not saying give them all the time in the world. Moreso, just give them a little time after they’ve acknowledged problems(in this case Torghast scaling) to see how they iterate on things. Is that such a hard concept to grasp?

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It depends on the final product. If it’s something only hardcore players can do then it completely misses the point of why The Deep Dungeon is such a successful idea. It’s something that all levels of players can use for multiple reasons. Whether it’s leveling an alt class, learning a class, treasure farming and more hardcore endeavors like clearing the top floors. There’s so much that it can do. So I’m excited to see Blizzard’s take on it. I’m gonna be upset if it’s a shell of what we already have in ff14. So as long as Blizzard can see the benefits of Deep Dungeon then maybe we can get something akin to it but maybe better. Though if I’m honest with you there’s nothing wrong with how it is in FF14. It works for what it needs to do. So who knows. We might be proven wrong.

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They don’t have a choice.

They screwed up the BfA release so fantastically that they almost killed the franchise. Literally. Reception of the subsequent patches was poor and for the first time ever I felt like the franchise was in jeopardy. In reality, it still is. If this release does not go well they may lose more players than they gain at launch.

Are and seems are direct opposites in my argument, very importantly. I am no longer prepared to take it on faith that they will get anything sorted out. I wouldn’t be satisfied with “it seems like they got my food order right,” or “it seems like they’re going to correct the erroneous charge on my debit card.”

They are, or they are not. Until I know they are or they are not, then I will not be satisfied. They don’t have to tell me everything they’re doing, that’s unreasonable. But when the community manages to identify huge gaps in their development and they do nothing about it, they deserve every ounce of negative criticism.

I really do appreciate your cool-headed response, and I believe you feel comfortable letting them do their thing, but I no longer feel that way.

It’ll be too late, and that’s why it’s important to speak up now. The same way it’s too late when the release date comes around. It’s imperative that we make our feelings known. Nobody knows what avenue, or combinations of conduits it will take to reach a developer with feedback. They might catch it in a thread like this, or it may take an exasperated CM to break down and unload their frustration at having to see 50 new threads pop up on the same topic because a large number of players immediately hated their implementation.

Seriously, you do understand that SO much of what they’re doing in Shadowlands is finally reacting to the years of feedback they’ve been ignoring, right?

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/c/in-development/bfa-items-classes/29/l/latest?order=posts

Anyway, I think we both understand each other. I’m not suggesting we be jerks at all, just that we don’t back down with our feedback. Silencing voices because of a “maybe” doesn’t sit right with me.

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I think Torghast can be improved to fit a WoW community because there is zero chance that the difficulty curve of Palace of the Dead would be accepted in WoW.

Just going from floors 1-50 without dying has your cheeks clinched so tight trying to avoid the slightest screw up. It is an insanely trolly place.

Biggest feedback everyone is seeing about Torghast is the power scaling being off the wall high. I think they will make it work.