Starting to lose interest in the whole game...

[Hayward]

I've been playing this game for close to 9 years and finally seem to be at the point where I'm struggling to find reasons to keep putting crysta in or even log on for an hour each night. Even a skillup session on GEO seems like a futile effort.

What really triggered this was finally successfully soloing Hedjedjet and getting absolutely nothing for 60 minutes of Avatar kiting, Not even a Card of Ardor. It really seems Mr. Matsui really is trying his hardest to kill off interest in XI by making the game the dojo from hell that actively tries to break the spirits of those who enter. Non-hardcore players need not apply, if you will.

Over the last week or so, I've been playing Guild Wars 2 on the Mac side of my laptop and I get the feeling that ArenaNet got things right where S-E missed the target badly. It seems ANet's philosophy from the jump was to make the game challenging but not unforgiving. Even after only a short period of time, I got the sense that that game wasn't trying to replicate an Ironman Triathlon or some other hardcore activity that excluded a high percentage of its customers.

If they haven't already, S-E would do well to take some pointers for ArenaNet as far as designing FFXIV 2.0 updates in the future.

[Demon6324236]

It really seems Mr. Matsui really is trying his hardest to kill off interest in XI by making the game the dojo from hell that actively tries to break the spirits of those who enter. Non-hardcore players need not apply, if you will.

Will people please stop blaming the person who came up with mostly good content so far!?

Abyssea was not Matsui's design, neither was VW, or most of this game. The only content I can think of he made any sort of direct impact on that was created before he came in, was Meeble Burrows. He awesomely made it give you more points for more people instead of less points for more people, thus turning an event where people were left out so the smaller group could earn more, into an event where bringing and including others is more rewarding.

Lets look at Adoulin's content though, something I am sure he had much more influence on. Reives, they are like Campaign Battles, sure they have some flaws, but it introduced a HNM system which did not exclude players with 24 hour, or even 72 hour repop times. Skirmish, well, I never did it myself, it was a mistake, to restricted to enter and outdated far to quickly.

Delve, near perfect event in my eyes. Each zone has 6 NMs, 5 of which can be fought outside, beating any of the 3 lowest tier gives a KI to buy the drops from any of those 3 with a type of points you earn. Beating the highest tier, or one of the 2 NMs in the mid tier allow you to do the same with their items. Augmentable but not in a bad way, allowing you to choose a path for your weapons and directly influence their stats, rather than the random augments we have always seen in the past. Points can be gotten in a number of ways, from fighting normal mobs, to joining an entire alliance to go into a Fracture, or fighting NMs, allowing everyone from soloists to people who prefer large parties to get their things provided they can kill one of the NMs first. This event does not have procs, does not have the horrible drop rates, cells, or impossible NMs that VW had, it has a point system, but unlike others like Meebles or Einherjar its points can be gotten in a few different ways, none of which is tied to a lock out timer, such as Einherjar's day wait, or Meeble's Sacks once every 20 hours.

In my opinion, you are yelling at ghosts of the past, that is not Matsui's doing, asking him to go back and fix it would be better than blaming him for a problem he did not cause.

[Fynlar]

What really triggered this was finally successfully soloing Hedjedjet and getting absolutely nothing for 60 minutes of Avatar kiting, Not even a Card of Ardor. It really seems Mr. Matsui really is trying his hardest to kill off interest in XI by making the game the dojo from hell that actively tries to break the spirits of those who enter. Non-hardcore players need not apply, if you will.

You do something in perhaps the slowest, most inefficient way possible and you're surprised when you don't get rewarded for it?

Did you even grellow or TH it? I'm guessing not, in which case, you really shouldn't be shocked that you got nothing.

[Cledant]

Will people please stop blaming the person who came up with mostly good content so far!?

Abyssea was not Matsui's design, neither was VW, or most of this game. The only content I can think of he made any sort of direct impact on that was created before he came in, was Meeble Burrows. He awesomely made it give you more points for more people instead of less points for more people, thus turning an event where people were left out so the smaller group could earn more, into an event where bringing and including others is more rewarding.

Lets look at Adoulin's content though, something I am sure he had much more influence on. Reives, they are like Campaign Battles, sure they have some flaws, but it introduced a HNM system which did not exclude players with 24 hour, or even 72 hour repop times. Skirmish, well, I never did it myself, it was a mistake, to restricted to enter and outdated far to quickly.

Delve, near perfect event in my eyes. Each zone has 6 NMs, 5 of which can be fought outside, beating any of the 3 lowest tier gives a KI to buy the drops from any of those 3 with a type of points you earn. Beating the highest tier, or one of the 2 NMs in the mid tier allow you to do the same with their items. Augmentable but not in a bad way, allowing you to choose a path for your weapons and directly influence their stats, rather than the random augments we have always seen in the past. Points can be gotten in a number of ways, from fighting normal mobs, to joining an entire alliance to go into a Fracture, or fighting NMs, allowing everyone from soloists to people who prefer large parties to get their things provided they can kill one of the NMs first. This event does not have procs, does not have the horrible drop rates, cells, or impossible NMs that VW had, it has a point system, but unlike others like Meebles or Einherjar its points can be gotten in a few different ways, none of which is tied to a lock out timer, such as Einherjar's day wait, or Meeble's Sacks once every 20 hours.

In my opinion, you are yelling at ghosts of the past, that is not Matsui's doing, asking him to go back and fix it would be better than blaming him for a problem he did not cause.

I don't see anything perfect @ Delve , specially when you need to do mindless grind-fest for plasm in order to upgrade items/other stuff with no storyline, it's very boring and repetitive. Plasm farming is the only thing to do on ffxi atm, this new expan killed everything and made vw a forgotten event.

[OmnysValefor]

Well, there's Salvage II this month, but so many of those pieces weren't really ever attractive.

[Demon6324236]

I don't see anything perfect @ Delve , specially when you need to do mindless grind-fest for plasm in order to upgrade items/other stuff with no storyline, it's very boring and repetitive.

You can kill NMs for your items, who said you had to grind Plasm? No one, people just favor that as it helps multiple people, if you wanted you could go out and do Mata, kill it, get Airlixirs for upgrades, use the 500 Plasm a kill and use that Plasm for more items as you slowly build it, need around 600 Airlixirs for a level 15 piece of gear anyways, say you get 15 on average counting +1s, that's 40 kills, 20k Plasm, enough for most drops from normal mobs. Besides that there is always the possibility of killing normal mobs.

Plasm farming is the only thing to do on ffxi atm, this new expan killed everything and made vw a forgotten event.

We forgot a horrible event, sounds like a good thing to me.

[OmnysValefor]

Still, Delve isn't perfect. It's pretty boring, and like with anything, the pugs actually get, dumbfoundingly, worse.

[Karah]

I'm the first person to agree that XI has gotten -STALE- I mean it's been that way since (forever, honestly) but more so as of Limbus II release.

Limbus II showed us (me) what a complete and utter waste of time was. Not one single piece of EnifMurzim/ nor the mage set ( i dont even know the name its so bad) was even remotely worthwhile.

The Odin II, the same thing, while you could argue that the valk II pieces are SLIGHTLY better than the alternatives, nothing worth jumping up and down over.

Salvage II hit and some of the things were pretty badass, but then Adoulin dropped and just (a collective sigh of disgust) swept the land.

it just obliterated Voidwatch, negated all(most) Dynamis/abyssea/salvage II/limbus II (lol)/Einherjar II/Legion (which was never that worthwhile to begin with).

Going from alliance wide events, (old school sky/sea/dynamis) to (YEARS) of lowmanning, limbus/limbusII/einherjar/Nyzul/assault/salvage/salvageII/Meebles/MMM/Campaign(I guess?)/Abyssea/ etc etc BACK to an entire alliance style event reviving linkshells just was not something I had/have ANY interest in whatsoever.

I can't really say anything bad about logwatch, yeah the drop rates are abysmal, and the materials for empyrean 95/99ing are "@.@" but it was "entertaining" and "time killing" done pretty well (all things considered) it kept us at least "satisfied" (begrudgingly).

Legion/Odin II/Fracture just totally killed it all, while you could skip legion and odin, and just shake your head at all the people wasting their time... Fracture is all there is/all there will be for the near future.

It's -not- fun at all, not even a little bit. It's more monotonous than dynamis. It has the -stupidest- timed gimmicks, far worse than finding time extensions/proccing. It's just miserable. But it's either do it, or do nothing. And that's the big fail here. Rather unfortunate.

[OmnysValefor]

I agree, except that there were some worthwhile pieces in Limbus II.

Enif Cosciales, with 5% haste and 8% fastcast come to mind.

Usukane +1 also has a few gems still afaik.

Edit: Adoulin is surely the biggest single gear reset in this game but there's a lot of gear that isn't obsoleted yet.

Mekira and Heka's still have their place, as well.. several pieces collectively.

[Demon6324236]

To clarify, I never said it was perfect, I said near perfect, its by far the best event we have had in a while.

When you look at Abyssea, it was great, but then what came after?

VW? Spam a mob possibly hundreds of times without getting your drop and no trackable progress, it also had a lot of wins needed which after the majority of people had, it became increasingly difficult for others to get them. Rehashed content? Well, lets start with the first, Neo-Nyzul, started out impossible, then was forced to only be possible with exploiting a specific SP ability with 4 DDs and even then it was almost impossible for most groups, and now its easier and able to be done with a SCH, BRD, and 4 DDs. All in all the gear was great and still is but the problem it had from the start was that luck ruled it, like VW, and made it highly annoying for many people to get the rewards from it. Limbus had little use, Odin had very limited use, mainly only DT sets were effected, and then you have Salvage II, which had some good gear, but most of it was recently outdated, and even before that, the way it was built encouraged people to go with as few as possible, many people ended up dualboxing it or doing it in very low groups, excluding more players. Meebles had gear which most people did not care to much about, was meant to be for more casual players but the higher tier NMs with some of the better rewards were both cheap and had low drop rates. Once they added the ability to buy wins it helped a little, but only rich players, if you did not have a ton of money you could do nothing more than before because the costs were to high, the last adjustment was the best one, the one that made the point amount higher for bringing more people, which completely turned the events point system around, encouraging bringing more people instead of less. Legion started out near impossible, continued to be that way for most people, and so far as I know its finally something accessible for a lot of people thanks to changes and Delve weapons, but all of that came to late as few things from there are worth anything anymore, and the most worthy items are still much to expensive to bother with due to material costs for crafters to make.

All in all, each had its own flaws, most being either luck based or having mostly irrelevant gear. Delve has neither of those flaws, almost all of the gear has some use, especially with augments included, and are all obtainable. None of it is really luck based, all of the NMs have some sort of gimmick you must exploit to win, one which includes some small bit of a unique strat to killing it, rather than just PD zerg or stun lock zerg as we have had most of the time. Sure its just tedious farming for Plasm, that's what most seem to do, but see, what is not that way? Salvage, spam it for plans, Dyna, spam it for currency, VW, spam it for drops or Emp items, Abyssea, spam it for Seals, +2s, and Emps. At least in Delve I am spamming something with a guaranteed reward at the end, trackable progress, and I choose my reward no matter how I get the points. Like I said, in my opinion, its the best event we have had in a while.

So far as the OP goes, my point was Matsui has done a good job so far as events go since he came in. While I disagree with everything he has done weapon wise, the rest I find amazing, and think its the best job we have seen in a while, probably since Abyssea. As I said, if your problem is with Abyssea, or anything that is really pre-Adoulin, I have to say I think it is blaming the wrong person, and besides that, as Fynlar said, if you did it in such a stupid and slow way without any procs or TH then you have no one to blame but yourself it should be obvious by now that Abyssea without procs or TH is a slow painful progress and you should not expect rewards every time, if you did and got nothing, your disappointment is your fault, no one elses.