Was Ambuscade too popular?

[Pixela]

I'm assuming it was far too popular because I can see no other reason why the first month offered a set of monsters to fight and a solo monster fight yet this month offers 2 group monsters to fight. What's the point of having 2 tombs with 4 difficulty levels?

The first month the content was aimed at everyone, better geared players could do the more difficult fights for better rewards and everyone else could do the 2nd tomb on a fairly decent difficulty.

This month the "easy 2nd tomb" is 2 monsters, killing one makes the other monster enrage. The taur can use mortal ray and kill you or your pet/trust tank with a pretty good chance of success (cause cursna sucks) and they have party based aggro, so whether you hit the other or not it's going to go and kill your healer.

You really have to make your mind up what you want here, are you offering content for everyone or are you offering content where they have to be carried?

This feels like a bit of a bait and switch.

[Diavolo]

You really have to make your mind up what you want here, are you offering content for everyone or are you offering content where they have to carry their own weight?

Fixed that for you.

[Jile]

Fixed that for you.

Remember that when sending invites, don't ask newbie players to change jobs when they're spark geared and only have one 99-dd job and still want to do this content at max level and have no chance at contributing beyond the social aspect.

SE needed to address the entry to allow orderly and fair play, they need many more instances. Slapping soloers when 2016 players solo 95% of the time makes little sense. A sign SE dev team either doesn't play xi nor every job.....and they play on gm-server with other supremely geared players.... A far stretch from the reality we play in.

[Diavolo]

Remember that when sending invites, don't ask newbie players to change jobs when they're spark geared and only have one 99-dd job and still want to do this content at max level and have no chance at contributing beyond the social aspect.

Any newbie I invite wouldn't be wearing that sparks gear the next day.

SE needed to address the entry to allow orderly and fair play, they need many more instances. Slapping soloers when 2016 players solo 95% of the time makes little sense. A sign SE dev team either doesn't play xi nor every job.....and they play on gm-server with other supremely geared players.... A far stretch from the reality we play in.

Glad I'm not the one that had to say it.

[Olor]

yeah this is disappointing - gear with a pet job on it and ZERO pet stats for one thing - and replacing the only soloable event in the game with one designed to thwart soloers. Way to kill my desire to play SE.

[OmnysValefor]

Honest question: How does it thwart soloers? It entices people to group up, which is a fine thing in an mmo, but it doesn't actually penalize soloers.

As someone who prefers to play with others, at least a few others, it's a little frustrating to have one guy fighting the dragon for 25 minutes (not all soloers are this slow).

Like everyone else, I wish they either had more copies of the instance or, even better, varied the instances (and possibly the battles themselves). Bring back the classic BCNMs that sit empty most of the time, like KS99s, Under Observation, etc.

But given that there are limited resources, I like that grouping up is rewarded.

[Immortta]

yeah this is disappointing - gear with a pet job on it and ZERO pet stats for one thing - and replacing the only soloable event in the game with one designed to thwart soloers. Way to kill my desire to play SE.

Last I checked almost everything is soloable outside of the highest tier of Escha NMs lol.

[Vanfrano]

The problem is that they presented Ambuscade as content aimed at everyone, from soloers to top-geared players.

The Gallantry system is perfectly fine because, indeed, party play should be rewarded but we can't deny the fact that a lot of players are now playing solo in FFXI for different reasons, the dev team itself keeps adding ways to make soloing a possibility. I am not saying that the whole game should be soloable, it is not anyway but they should really be more careful with how they handle content, especially when they themselves say that a type of content is aimed at all players.

The choice of monsters for this month Ambuscade is clearly saying "we don't want you to solo" so they should either remove the possibility to enter solo altogether or change what they added. Gallantry was enough of an addition, if you party you get rewarded more, simple as that. Gallantry and the Tauri is more of : if you party you get rewarded more but if you solo you get punished.

Soloers are a non-negligible part of today's FFXI, whether we like it or not, they pay their fees just like everyone else and should be able to play the way they want to -again, especially when SE says "this content is for everyone"-. It takes 145 Volume 2 runs on Normal to get the whole set, that is work, it should be difficult and I don't think most soloers don't enjoy difficulty, on the contrary, but out of all the monsters in the game, chosing ones with mechanics such as Doom and Hundred Fists is punishing and it is clear it is not an innocent choice, even more so knowing how unreliable Cursna is.

[Pixela]

Last I checked almost everything is soloable outside of the highest tier of Escha NMs lol.

There is a difference between someone with all the best gear in the game and a huge amount of player skill and a casual soloist.

That's like asking why your mom can't pick up her car to change the tyre cause the worlds strongest man did it.

Honest question: How does it thwart soloers?

I just stated how it stops some people doing content solo, it's 2 mobs, the mob rages after the first dies, they have shared aggro so cures make the 2nd mob go kill your healer and they use death moves that are custom made to kill an npc tank.

The reality is that you can't force people to group in this way. They just won't do the content if they can't solo it, given the game needs to keep people entertained that's not a good thing for the future of the game. If content is created that is party based like Escha Reisen then fine, you have to accept it. When they do a bait and switch and make you think it's content for casual players and then change it next month because too many people were engaging in the new content that's going to have a very different reaction.

If they keep doing this there won't be a problem getting into ambuscade because people are going to stop playing the game again. You can't dismiss the casual portion of this game and giving them nothing while they pay the same subscription.

I understand that many people are simply only interested in their own self interest and want faster queues but you also have to keep in mind that there are a lot of solo casual players and that if they have no content to do anymore they will go play something else, this game is borderline unprofitable as it is. They have like 3 people and a small parrot on the dev team, not sure how much more streamlined they can make it with a smaller playerbase again.

In a perfect world with a welcoming and accepting playerbase (or a party instance system every other mmo has) maybe this would work, the xi playerbase has never been either of these things though so people just get ostracized for being scrubs.

[OmnysValefor]

You wrote several paragraphs about people only being interested in themselves ("wanting faster queues") in defense of soloers, lol.

Soloers are quite clearly only interested in themselves.