Well, in this and other similar Lamenting The RMT Situation threads that currently festoon this forum, it is often mentioned that "RMT Robot Beastmasters Are Clearing Zones With Their Jugpets."
Back in the day, pre-Stout Servant (Easyfication) and pre- ILVL/Statvom and pre "Jugpets Are Now Siege Engines", I was a BST75 main job for about four years, every single day.
These RMT Jugpet-masters, not Beastmasters, they would not have survived five seconds in the level 75 BST job.
Level 75 BST was a religious experience. I physically prayed every time I pressed charm. I prayed that mobs would not turn around and notice a mis-charm nearby, and link up with the mis-charmed mob. Playing BST75 was a high-tension skill game, with a large slice of praying for mercy, thrown in.
RMT are famously bad at gaming. I used to see dead RMT in all the NM areas during the lvl 75 era. I would watch them getting owned by the most silly NMs.
RMT could never have survived as a BST75 in the 2004-2009 age, of charming mobs, kiting, pinning, pet-swaps. It took skill, patience, and nerves of steel, and of course a lot of praying.
But RMT can easily survive in 2019 with Jugpets That Are Like Indestructible Siege Engines.
Nobody is saying that RMT did not exist in the old game. What I'm saying is that it took them a lot longer to get to max level and capped skills and capped merits. They couldn't just build a new full-power character in a day. But now they can, because of Easyfication.
My original post was not even about this. It was about the lack of engagement and friendships, which is caused by this solo rocketship burn from 1-99. People are not engaging and making friends like they used to, and the reason is because the game is so much easier.
I hope people enjoy Trusts and Easy Mode gaming, I hope it brings them joy. It is just that I'm comparing it to my own experiences, which as I say, I have a lot of real adventuring memories in the level 1-75 range, both hilarious and heroic memories, and these experiences are being missed entirely in the new era.
OK, first, that stuff you described about beastmaster wasn't fun at all and that's why the job wasn't ever very popular. Even in the best of circumstances as you described, you could just randomly be hosed by RNG. That's not challenging, that's just luck and bad game design. Now it's not fun for completely different reasons (i.e. being functionally unusable with the pet command changes), but either way, it wasn't fun and never will be for most people. Fighting with the random number generator is the least fun part of any game, except possibly the suspense factor of loot drops, that's okay.
By all means, go play something else, but there is so much dubiousness (stout servant is "easyfication?" what? That trait barely does anything) in your post it would take more time than I care to to address it all. Old content always gets easier as new content comes in MMOs, it's just how things go. If that bothers you too much, then maybe it's time to retire from them.
"Lack of engagements and friendships" isn't a fault of the game itself, it's a fault of how people play games today. People don't not interact less because the game is supposedly easier (it isn't, or mercs wouldn't be as prolific as they are), they do it less because of other factors, like smartphones and social media changing the ways we communicate.
Last edited by Alhanelem; 09-22-2019 at 12:37 AM.
You say, wrongly, that BST was never very popular. It was very popular with people who played BST. I was on an All Beastmaster Linkshell in 2004~2009. Everyone on the LS played BST full-time. Everybody loved the job. It was very popular.
If you say that BST was not popular in the mainstream game, that would be true. People didn't like to solo or low-man to level 75 on BST. It took ages and it involved a lot of death and delevelling.
But among actual BST players, the job was very popular. It was also an artform in of itself. There was a trapeze wire-balancing feel to it. It was graceful like ballet. It was not the brute-force thug job it is today. It was a specialised high-skill job, for people who knew how to play it. I loved playing it. All my friends loved playing it. It was a very exhilarating and beautiful job to play.
Regarding Stout Servant etc. I'm not going to rise to it. I've seen the difference on PUP, the week Stout Servant arrived.
Also, regarding Jugpets specifically, in the level 75 era, BST only used Jugs in BCNM, because there were no Charm mobs available. The only time BST used Jugpets outside BCNM, was as a 5-second stop-gap pet in between Charm mobs. You threw a Courrier Carrie at the NM while you ran towards the next Charm mob, and CC was obliterated in seconds, because Jugpets were weak. Are Jugpets weak today? No.
Regarding the random base Charm thing. You could obviously gear yourself to improve Charm success. Everything in FFXI was random-base. Today, my Jobmaster War with high accuracy gear and AG weapon missed a Bumblebee outside Windurst. Missed it twice. Base chances again.
Regarding "lack of engagement [not engagements] and friendship" this is actually what I said in my first post. New players who solo'd level 1-99 with Trusts and never made any friends in XP parties and mission parties etc. are much more vulnerable to Merc / RMT, because they do not have a group of friends with a shared adventuring history in the level 1-75 stage.
When a person just goes from level 1-99 without speaking to any other people, it leaves them isolated. The primary RMT and Merc business model is based largely on exploiting isolated vulnerable people who don't have a solid Friend Base.
Do you realkize just how silly of a statement this is? "It was popular with the people it was popular with." That's a meaningless statement. It wasn't popular at all with the playerbase at large, and even worse, most people who weren't BST hated ppl who played BST for taking up the mobs and stuff (there was an all BST LS on shiva that spent like 10 hours fighting tiamat back in the day, while all the normal people who could have done it in a fraction of the time sat there all day hoping for them to wipe)You say, wrongly, that BST was never very popular. It was very popular with people who played BST. I was on an All Beastmaster Linkshell in 2004~2009. Everyone on the LS played BST full-time. Everybody loved the job. It was very popular.
What you say is akin to me saying that Belligerency was popular because it was "popular" with me and the two other people I know that did it. Who am I kidding, of course it wasn't popular. But apparently anything can be popular if you ignore everyone that doesn't do something.
"friend base" is not a proper noun and shouldn't be capitalized. You sound like some other really famous person I've heard of that does the same thing.... It's funny you talk about people being isolated when you speak of playing a highly solo-focused job, which most people played solo. Yet you would suggest you don't personally have this "friend base" vulnerability that supposedly exists.When a person just goes from level 1-99 without speaking to any other people, it leaves them isolated. The primary RMT and Merc business model is based largely on exploiting isolated vulnerable people who don't have a solid Friend Base.
I've spent the bulk of my time in the game playing solo, only grouping where I had to to progress. And I didn't have any "friend base" problems, nor have I sought out mercs or RMT. The people who use these things are just people who have more money than they know what to do with. Normal people don't use this stuff, regardless of what you believe.
Finally- most of these changes, like the introduciton of Trusts and such, were created to make the game more playable with the lower populations. They aren't the cause of these problems, rather they are the result of them.
I was there too. It was an extremely modest improvement, and ididn't make the jobs "easy", just a tiny bit less frustrating. You vastly overstate the impact this had.Regarding Stout Servant etc. I'm not going to rise to it. I've seen the difference on PUP, the week Stout Servant arrived.
Last edited by Alhanelem; 09-22-2019 at 11:25 AM.
I'm truly very sorry if you or others were inconvenienced by inconsiderate BST who killed an NM slowly like that, or stole mobs near where you were having an XP party. I am sorry that you had those negative experiences.
I always XPed on BST in remote areas, far away from popular mainstream XP camps. I never slowly solo'd NMs that other people were actually waiting to zerg quickly. A girl on my LS was supposedly the first person to solo Xolotl on BST, but she waited until the area was empty and claimed the mob just before dawn despawn. So nobody was inconvenienced.
Once again I am truly sorry that you had those negative experiences at the hands of inconsiderate BST players.
On my BST, I helped hundreds, perhaps thousands, of non-BST with their AF coffer keys, Dark Spark, LB1~LB2~LB3 and farming Testimonies, farming Haku Eyes, etc. I liked helping people on my BST.
However, the 2019 JugpetMaster RMT who are emptying the Seekers starting zones, with their mighty Jugpets and their robot programs, and which is the subject of multiple complaint threads on this forum right now, they could not have done this using charmed mobs at level 75, it takes time and skill to fight using charmed mobs, and the intended target is always one enemy, rather than mass-pulling / mass-AOEing the whole Seekers area.
RE; "popular." On my LS we all had WHM75 and BRD75 and other jobs at 75. We chose to play BST75 main. Out of a list of possible 75 jobs that we had to choose from, BST was the most *popular* choice among our group.
English is not my first language. English is actually my fourth language. Also I was born with Cerebral Palsy, and I often type things in ways that make total sense to me, but perhaps not to others. I am deeply sorry if this has inconvenienced you."friend base" is not a proper noun and shouldn't be capitalized. You sound like some other really famous person I've heard of that does the same thing
I have praised SE on this forum for many of the post-2010 QOL things, especially /lockstyleset for wearing costumes over battle armour, and base movement speed increases. I have praised them for RoV, and indeed Copper Vouchers, and Raaz Mounts.Finally- most of these changes, like the introduciton of Trusts and such, were created to make the game more playable with the lower populations. They aren't the cause of these problems, rather they are the result of them.
But my humble opinion is that many players are very isolated in the new game, and this makes them more likely to feel they need RMT or Mercs. It is just my opinion. It is one thing to be a solo player by choice, and it is another to be a solo player by default.
Last edited by Alhanelem; 09-23-2019 at 07:58 AM.
I'm glad that you tried to set a good example for the BST community. It was a common problem, but I didn't mean to suggest every single one was like that.
I respect you for coming forward with that, and I accept your explanation. I am on the autism spectrum myself so I can be a bit callous or socially insensitive. (I do know certain people who do the Extra Capitals on purpose, and it reminded me of that, but I apologize for the accusation.)English is not my first language. English is actually my fourth language. Also I was born with Cerebral Palsy, and I often type things in ways that make total sense to me, but perhaps not to others. I am deeply sorry if this has inconvenienced you.
You just need to be careful to qualify these kinds of statements- Popularity within a circle of friends is different from popularity with the entire community.RE; "popular." On my LS we all had WHM75 and BRD75 and other jobs at 75. We chose to play BST75 main. Out of a list of possible 75 jobs that we had to choose from, BST was the most *popular* choice among our group.
I'm not trying to suggest that you're trying to beat up on SE, I just disagree on this particular issue that they can't/shouldn't try to do anything about RMT because of the possible impacts elsewhere. Most people who don't cheat or exploit things don't want to play with people who do. If we make the population smaller by removing undesirable aspects of the community, I think the typical rule-abiding player is happy with that.I have praised SE on this forum for many of the post-2010 QOL things, especially /lockstyleset for wearing costumes over battle armour, and base movement speed increases. I have praised them for RoV, and indeed Copper Vouchers, and Raaz Mounts.
I understand how you feel but I think there's enough things you can't realistically do yourself (or that you can do more easily and quickly with others) that this isn't a major cause of the issue. Every game has mercing and RMT. Go ahead and look at FFXIV, open the Party Finder, and you can probably find at least a half dozen listings of people "selling content" at any given time. I haven't seen evidence yet that ti's particularly worse here.But my humble opinion is that many players are very isolated in the new game, and this makes them more likely to feel they need RMT or Mercs. It is just my opinion. It is one thing to be a solo player by choice, and it is another to be a solo player by default.
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