I can't believe I'm going to say this

[Karah]

Please, for the love of christ, add temps to delve. And nerf the ever loving shit out of it. Lower HP, lower Attack, lower defense, lower PDT/MDT/DT, make them exp mobs, I straight up don't care anymore.

The pick up playerbase (at least on my server) is incapable of even killing the tier 4 and 5 nms in delve. No chance in hell of ever defeating the naakual bosses in delve.

I really don't give a shit about difficulty anymore, not even a little bit. If I can beat it, but no one else can, it effectively eliminates me from even being able to do it, as no one else can.

So with great disgust, I ask that the same voidwatch temp items get added to delve.

If it comes down to fun vs skill, just give us fun, the people are no longer capable of skill based content.

Hell, let us use brews from abyssea, voidwatch clusters to weaken everything inside. I truly don't care.

I'm sooooooooooooo f*cking tired of seeing people fail to kill something that I can do solo, ruining my playing experience.
(linkshell argument is null and void.)

[Vladislav]

Well , in my opinion out fracture NM's are fine difficulty , not super easy but not impossible to gauge , in fracture idk cause i never been in cause ( watch game dead lol threads/etc ) those atm for EGLS only , at least here on Bahamut u will never see any Tolji or others shout , same for plasm runs again no pickups groups or even if they shouted , it only because LS is going in lack of BRD or PLD lol ! So this fracture feature need to be revamped a "little" . Maybe add some kind of "Displacer" or even more like Karah said add some kind of Brew to not only Delve but just for anything that ppl's want do asap lol (Brew's can be added even not "Right now" but atleast after actual content destruct by EG dudes to make everyone happy .)

[Mostfowl]

Delve difficulty wouldn't be an issue if every other piece of the game as a whole wasn't nerfed and the rest of the content they painstakingly provided for us over the first 7-8 years wasn't reduced to a waste of time

[Fynlar]

If I can beat it, but no one else can, it effectively eliminates me from even being able to do it, as no one else can.

Am I the only one here to which this statement makes no sense?

[Karah]

Ok, I'll restate it in simpler terms.

I'm capable of killing something.
No one else is capable of killing it.

I'm not strong enough to do it solo, therefor, I am CAPABLE of doing it, but UNABLE to do so, because everyone else is INCAPABLE.

Does that help?

AKA everyone is so god damn gimp, that they're impeding my ability to advance, that's what the thread is stating.

I'm good enough, that if there were 18 of me, there is no content I couldn't beat, but since I have to rely on people who are not me, I can't win anything. So give these people whatever it takes, I'm sick of sitting in Jeuno.

[Eijii]

If you can kill solo, stop complaining -w- on a more serious note: Eorzea welcomes you.

[Karah]

I'm not strong enough to do it solo, therefor, I am CAPABLE of doing it, but UNABLE to do so, because everyone else is INCAPABLE.


I'm asking FOR it to be soloable... if it were possible, I'd do it solo in a HEARTBEAT. Brews for Delve! TODAY!
<<Can I have it?>>

[Fynlar]

I'm capable of killing something.
No one else is capable of killing it.

I'm not strong enough to do it solo, therefor, I am CAPABLE of doing it, but UNABLE to do so, because everyone else is INCAPABLE.

So, you're capable of doing it, but you're incapable of doing it?

Why didn't you just say so?

[Behemothx]

The difficulty level seems pretty fine to me. You get access to armor/weapons which are pretty overkill compared to the old stuff, and you don't even lose your key item after buying something.

The game is already too easy as is.

[Karah]

The difficulty level is fine, yeah, if you have competent players.

Where are they? Not here that's for sure.

The people on my server cannot even properly count to 7.

[Fulgore]

I hear ya , ppl on this side are that bad players, that they wanna bead out mata..... nuff said-

[Sarick]

I'm asking FOR it to be soloable... if it were possible, I'd do it solo in a HEARTBEAT. Brews for Delve! TODAY!
<<Can I have it?>>

Well for starters the content you're asking for (brews) was apparently planned for the higher tier crafting skills they just never got to it. A lot of those spec ial items we had as temps and the empowered gear never got realized. These new caps where to come with the SoA content as new materials became available.

PROPOSED CAPS that where mentioned. (not openly)
Veteran 100 > Expert 110 > Master 120 > Grandmaster 130 > Legend 140 > Transcender 150+

Just like everything most other things where thrown in the closet. This was never an official announcement. So as you can see there MIGHT have been ways for players to CRAFT brews usable for ALL content. It just never happened.

[Behemothx]

The difficulty level is fine, yeah, if you have competent players.

Where are they? Not here that's for sure.

The people on my server cannot even properly count to 7.

Seems to me you got a general grudge against everyone. I find it hard to believe that en entire server would be incapable of doing those NMs.

If you blist people left and right (or get blisted) you're not gonna get any help that's for sure.

[Karah]

Well, here's the sum up for that statement.

There are 3 shells (not jp) the leader of the (blue) one is a douche. about 1/2 the members of the (pink) one are douches. I quit the third one (also blue).

Those 3 are capable, can't deny this fact, however, I have -zero- interest in doing (any) event with (any) of them.

The shouters, are INcapable of winning, which is the realm I'm confined to now. As stated MULTIPLE times, multiple people have failed to properly count to 7. The matamata has been a severe frustration for the numerically impaired. As such, the one obstacle (mere counting) is so difficult, that it hinders the entire event, and renders defeating Tojil, an impossibility.

Even when beading the mata mata, the lack of quality white mages, makes the other enemies impossible as well, so failure to accurately count is only the tip of the iceberg.

(*don't get me wrong, no one is claiming I'm not a douche as well*)

[Hayward]

You've got no sympathy coming here. S-E had the right idea with Abyssea and doing away with endgame linkshells and the politics that came & still come with them. But , OH NO, they couldn't leave well enough alone and now the developers find themselves in a trick box of their own making by creating a chasm between the connected and the non-connected. How Mr. Matsui plans to fix this hot mess is well beyond my knowledge but I've thrown in my lot with Yoshi-P and XIV for the near future and will spend the fall and winter months primarily in Eorzea.

[voevode]

AKA everyone is so god damn gimp, that they're impeding my ability to advance, that's what the thread is stating.

I'm good enough, that if there were 18 of me, there is no content I couldn't beat, but since I have to rely on people who are not me, I can't win anything. So give these people whatever it takes, I'm sick of sitting in Jeuno.

I sense some narcissism here.

[Revati]

I'm gonna have to agree that pickup groups are like playing russian roulette with 6 bullets. I tried Kurma blm burn style and half the people that joined thought maleficus was better than chatoyant staff. Only about 4 people had Apamajas I; 2 of them were my girlfriend and I.

[voevode]

Even with a subpar group, the t4-5 clears for each zone aren't unmanageable. For Kurma just spam dispels and stun Testudo Tremor, use SCHs as healers and stunners and get 4 embravas if it takes that long for your DDs. Nerrivik for Foret: Have blu Absolute Terror on pull and zerg from the front to break lantern, and take down like any other fight. Tax'et/Mastop may be difficult, but getting these clears without any delve weapons wasn't terribly bad (few tries for Tax'et), and it isn't unreasonable to expect SOMEBODY in your group to have a delve weapon, if not many of them. Overbuffing your DDs, even if they aren't the best, will likely get you a win. Complaining now about not being able to get clears isn't really going to help.


The short: Abuse your 1 hours and stop q.q'ing

[Karah]

You've obviously never actually done a pick up shout for delve.

People show up in osodes. with < 100 skill. or full perle. or any other number of just ridiculousness. You try winning with these mouthbreathers, and windowlickers.

Being forced to rely on these people, is retarded, and needs to go away, immediately. No Q.Q involved, just fact.

[voevode]

I have done pick up shouts for delve. But no I don't take perle DDs. You don't have to take everyone that responds, that's the joy of shouting. Joining shouts is different, worst being a Ninja shouting for Tutewehiwehi that wanted me to stun, heal, and keep it debuffed on SCH.

And there is definite Q.Q in your posts.

Edit: And if you really don't like it, transfer servers. There's nothing chaining you to Carbuncle unless you already transferred recently. Likely they'd be happy and so would you if you hold them in such disdain.

[Karah]

Well, see, I was here first (wah wah) I'm not going to pay to change servers.

PLUS retardation is rampant, it's not just my server, everyone has them, I'm not even asking to fix the players, nor to force them to play better.

Just make the content able for them to do it. yeah, a few of (us) are able to beat the new content, the 99% aren't.

What's more logical, please the 1% or the 99%... I'm in the 1% and I still advocate for the 99% /altruism.

Content should be for \everybody/ at all times. Not some of the people some of the time.

I know they can't beat it, I've watched them fail over and over and over.

My mule ( I 2box ) account, is in the 99% (no E/M/R etc) and I try to get him into shouts but they're all pretty failtastic.

[voevode]

lol

/endthread

[Draylo]

Try moving servers? There are plenty of competent LS that are recruiting across different servers that you could join and get wins.

[Karah]

Try moving servers? There are plenty of competent LS that are recruiting across different servers that you could join and get wins.

Honestly, I can barely justify wasting the $30 a month to 2box, how could I be talked into wasting an additional $60 to jump 2 accounts? In all seriousness.

I fully intended to server jump a long time ago, but I realize that all servers are the same, yeah some might have more legit players, but they're already in their clicks.

I'd rather, they just dumb everything down, I'll keep my money, and everyone wins. Now... if you could find me a 100% NA server... (totally racist comment coming) not a single jp player, I'd be all over that shit, like the second it gets made I'm gone, before you could even blink.

Since that isn't going to happen, here I sit.

[Draylo]

They aren't all the same. You already stated you have problems with many people on your server, so why not move then. If the mule is on the same square enix account you only have to pay the fee once to move all accounts tied to that SE account.

[Afania]

Well, here's the sum up for that statement.

There are 3 shells (not jp) the leader of the (blue) one is a douche. about 1/2 the members of the (pink) one are douches. I quit the third one (also blue).

Those 3 are capable, can't deny this fact, however, I have -zero- interest in doing (any) event with (any) of them.

The shouters, are INcapable of winning, which is the realm I'm confined to now. As stated MULTIPLE times, multiple people have failed to properly count to 7. The matamata has been a severe frustration for the numerically impaired. As such, the one obstacle (mere counting) is so difficult, that it hinders the entire event, and renders defeating Tojil, an impossibility.

Even when beading the mata mata, the lack of quality white mages, makes the other enemies impossible as well, so failure to accurately count is only the tip of the iceberg.

(*don't get me wrong, no one is claiming I'm not a douche as well*)

You can bead Mata and 2 other NMs, that works like weakness items in VW, don't need more weakness items. Also I see ppl /shout and clear Tojil everyday, I even started to see shark and bee /shout recently. I don't know if they're just LS lacking ppl though. You can also get better ppl from /shout by paying attention to their performance and put them on a list or something.

[Karah]

Even when beading the mata mata, the lack of quality white mages, makes the other enemies impossible as well, so failure to accurately count is only the tip of the iceberg.

Short of beading the matamata, and the peiste AND kurma... none of these shout groups are going to win. Other servers, this may be incorrect. Here, it's fact.

Even when beading 3 NM's still fail to stun Tojil and lose anyway, (oh yeah, it's happened).

[voevode]

May I ask what job you usually come to these fights?

[Karah]

Me, specifically? I go whatever they're looking for, I'm 99x22 with every empyrean, every delve weapon fully meritted and all legit geared, +cap skill.
(up to lolegion content).

It's typically MNK though. As that's all anyone ever wants.

[Mostfowl]

Me, specifically? I go whatever they're looking for, I'm 99x22 with every empyrean, every delve weapon fully meritted and all legit geared, +cap skill.
(up to lolegion content).

It's typically MNK though. As that's all anyone ever wants.

99x22 with 16 empy? At what lvl?

Ok I have to ask in all politeness, when was the last time you saw the sun? your friends and family? or just a movie?

[Karah]

Lol, fair question, for a while there I was pretty hardcore... playing like 8 hours a day.

But currently, I'm @ U of M medical, and a second college with a part time job, and I play only a couple hours a WEEK now.

Yes, all 22 jobs are 99, all 16 emps, @ 90 or 85 ( I refuse to use 1500 plates, period) 4 relics as well, 95 ( sold all my marrows instead of using them, waste of money to use).

I do not watch television, nor movies, and have no family, the sun, everyday u.u;; I have windows.

[RushLynx]

The end-game player base in Carbuncle is dead, apparently it's not on other servers (I'm not sure why not...) It's a vicious cycle. Those that played in the old days, like myself, find ourselves incapable of finding any joy post-Abyssea and defect to other games. I thought that there must be at least enough people left to make a solid LS. I tried, I really did, I shouted in Jeuno for days trying to find solid members, but very few answered.

Anyways, see you in ARR, maybe, Karah~! Let's hope they take better care of that game. :D

[Karah]

Thank you. At least one other person actually on my server understands what the hell is going on here.

people need to start being realistic and stop bullshitting that everything is "ok" it's not.

[zataz]

1234567 >.> i can count and there are people that can do it

[Karah]

1234567 >.> i can count and there are people that can do it

You're in the minority...

[Helldemon]

At least your server has NA ls that can get delve wins, siren still has no na ls that have won. Best I've heard is 70% Tojil lol.

[Karah]

I mean yeah, some groups manage to pull it off, not because they're actually good enough to do it, but because they paid other people to get them the win...

Then once you have all the gear from paying to win, it's a good portion easier to do it. I kinda think that's lopsided gameplay, but it is what it is.

They'll eventually nerf the hell out of it, just like Odin, just like Legion. They set the bar too high for the people who play these days, they overshot it by a sizable margin.

I'm just simply asking that they do it sooner than later, and possibly save a couple subs before everyone quits.

[Helldemon]

Well skirmish II gear should make it easier along with offhand weapons for 1H jobs and polearm for drg since they technically didn't get a plasm weapon and are stuck with Bee delve weapon or gtfo.

They did say they would make it easier once the higher tier content was released though.

[Mostfowl]

it's not that they set the bar too high, its that instead of making good lvl 99 endgame that will last like the good 75 endgame we had that lasted for years, they are doing this lvl progression stuff in gear and no one is going to spend time and gil on a weapon that they simply toss when they can get a weapon in a few hrs that is, as of now, ultimate.

they need to stop focusing on lvl progression via weaponry and armors and start focusing on making solid endgame with long term rewards that will stand the test of time.

I mean dyna was introduced in what, 2005, and as of the nerf in 2011 it was still going strong to the point where you usually had to camp the zone and there were still ppl who would snk/inv and ninja claim it, esp the icelands. Einherjar, assault, nyzul isle, salvage, MMM, the list goes on. They were all active and if anyone couldn't get into an established group they could make a group for it relatively easy. Now...not so much.

[darkhorror]

Just wait for the next update where all these lvl 100+ weapons have a ton of the new combat skill+ on them. It should make things a lot easier as the delve weapons will have a lot of skill+ on them and are easy to get. Which will be a huge acc and attack boost for DD's.

[Stompa]

Well, see, I was here first (wah wah) I'm not going to pay to change servers.

PLUS retardation is rampant, it's not just my server, everyone has them, I'm not even asking to fix the players, nor to force them to play better.

Just make the content able for them to do it. yeah, a few of (us) are able to beat the new content, the 99% aren't.

What's more logical, please the 1% or the 99%... I'm in the 1% and I still advocate for the 99% /altruism.

Content should be for \everybody/ at all times. Not some of the people some of the time.


I understand your frustration with /shout runs, but that dates back to O-hat days with wipes and the classic "I've got my Ohat now, ty, and theres 14 more pops to go, but my dog just started dying infront of me and I'm taking him to the vet /insert bs bail story" so by the time its your pop theres like three ppl left. Shout runs always had a potentially high fail rate and low quality gameplay.
I disagree with you on the 99% of ppl can't play end game content with skill & effectiveness. What you should also remember about delve is that theres a lot of veteran players who genuinely gave up on this type of randomised VW type event, and others who disagree in principle with luck-obtained weapons that are outside of the normal damage spectrum by such a huge degree. They are capable players but they don't want to do Delve, the LS I'm on has five such people and I'm sure theres more.
I agree that there is a general lowering of gaming proficiency in the game, but a lot of the delve /sh problem is that many veteran players don't want to know at all.

[Karah]

I just don't understand how so many people are perfectly happy with the do nothing stance.

Eh just wait, i'm happy wasting time and money while they f*ck things up, they'll fix it eventually.

The forums are here specifically to let them know when they're making mistakes. It's our responsibility to tell them when things suck. It's stupid to just go with it and wait patiently when its NOT working properly.

[Oddwaffle]

People are unskilled -> easy game content or make hard game content and hope people will get better? Chicken and Egg problem. You lose a few eggs when you turn them into chicken and some chicken never give you any eggs. If you make content too easy for everyone to do then it will be like VW. People would not gain high skill levels and FFXI will end up with lots of easy content and quickly become stale. Making hard content then you get the current problem of only a few privileged people get the reward (and sell them) while everyone else just quit the game.

I have been playing FFXI for quite a while and I notice that the fastest way for a person to become good at FFXI is to play in a 3-6 person party setup and read through guides and forums. It's very slow pace in a 3-6 person party so you can experiment some ideas or try something different than what you are currently doing. As long as you aren't too lazy and wish to improve, skills do get better over time. However, most people don't read guides or forum and have to rely on other people to tell them. Most people hate being told what to do "What is this guy?" "Why do I have to listen to this person?" "I am good as it is"

FFXI doesn't have any guides incorporate into the game itself so people are perfectly clueless on how to play.

[Demon6324236]

The forums are here specifically to let them know when they're making mistakes. It's our responsibility to tell them when things suck.People are happy with the do nothing stance because by now I think most people have gotten the idea that what we want or think doesn't matter, and that to the player base any disagreements with how things are going is nothing but a bunch of whining. It makes giving feedback to anything SE does seem & feel fairly pointless, after all, the player base just jumps you for it, and the devs just ignore you, so what's the point?

[Karah]

If you do nothing, nothing gets done.

If you do something, nothing may still get done, but at least make the effort.

Nothing can never lead to anything. But something could someday lead to something.

[Yinnyth]

The thing I find most entertaining is that the person who complains the loudest about everyone else being incompetent is usually the least competent person in the group.

You've confirmed that at least 3 linkshells on your server are capable of doing it, but you refuse to join them due to douchebaggery. These events are not too hard to be allowed in the game. They're too hard for you to beat when you create artificial requirements for you to beat them under.

[Karah]

Not to hard for (me) at all. Too hard for the people that I would be (required) to do them with, totally.

If you think I can't hit ctrl1 better than most, well, you're simply mistaken.

Integrity > Gear.

[Catmato]

stuff
Dislike
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[Deadvinta]

Can we just do something even better and finally ban Karah? It's well known he's an insufferable, irritating, curt asshole. He doesn't care about being in a multiplayer game and having fun with other people, he just wants to make himself look like this awesome player that can do anything by his own efforts.

What? There's something you have to get help from other people in a massively-multiplayer online game to do? What a surprise. It's like you've been brought down to everyone else's level.

Maybe instead of going on a hate-filled, "nerf-everything-because-everyone's-an-idiot" rant, why don't you start helping the newer players get used to the game. Offer constructive criticism and advice. You won't get what you want by insulting the playerbase and trying to place yourself above them.

[BST]

Fantastic read, entertaining.

[Aezelas]

The content works when leaders can get people to listen.
You should share your knowledge and wisdom to those who don't know.

Every delve content i've done so far was through pickup groups lead by someone who knew what he was doing, and knew how to explain people what he was expected from every job.
People were clueless at first, it sometimes took several attempts but we ended up with the feeling of a nice teamwork, because of listening and explanation skill.

FFXI lacks natural good leaders. Nerfing the game won't bring them back; you should try to become one of them.
Most people don't suck more than you do.

[FrankReynolds]

Meh, I feel Karah on this one. LS leaders are like "You would like to be in our LS? Okay... Go spend a few months gearing the three jobs that none of our current members want to play. We will not help you. Do that shit on your own and get back to us when you are done."

Or my favorite " Our runs are from 6:00pm - 12:00 midnight mon - sat. If you miss more than 4 runs in 30 days, you cannot lot gear." LOL

Then retards on forums are like "Why you no like play with others?!? Dis is MMO!".

[Mahoro]

Your second example is pretty extreme. Any shell that sets up that kind of exaggerated rule is certainly in the tiniest of minorities. A LS that doesn't have flexible lotting rules that are at least somewhat RL-friendly is a LS that will likely burn out after a short time.

Your first example, while still somewhat hyperbolic, is actually more in line with certain LS's recruitment policies. Some shells are very clear in what they are looking for, and it isn't entirely unreasonable for a newer member to play a support job until such time as they are able to get the necessary gear or prove themselves alongside the shell's other DD.

[Zumi]

It almost takes all the damage dealers having boss delve weapons to get a 5 NM + boss run. Boss kills without any boss weapons probably would take using beads.

I believe on my server there is 2 linkshells that have killed bosses. Seems to be a trend only 2-3 LS per server that actually kills them.

[FrankReynolds]

Your second example is pretty extreme. Any shell that sets up that kind of exaggerated rule is certainly in the tiniest of minorities. A LS that doesn't have flexible lotting rules that are at least somewhat RL-friendly is a LS that will likely burn out after a short time.

Your first example, while still somewhat hyperbolic, is actually more in line with certain LS's recruitment policies. Some shells are very clear in what they are looking for, and it isn't entirely unreasonable for a newer member to play a support job until such time as they are able to get the necessary gear or prove themselves alongside the shell's other DD.

Less than 15% of the population have scholar, bard, whm or cor leveled according to the most recent census. That means that 9 out of 10 people who apply for a linkshell are going to have to go level a job and gear it solo. That's not even taking into account your ability to meet their scheduling needs or to deal with their personalities. It's pretty ridiculous.

[Mahoro]

Less than 15% of the population have scholar, bard, whm or cor leveled according to the most recent census. That means that 9 out of 10 people who apply for a linkshell are going to have to go level a job and gear it solo. That's not even taking into account your ability to meet their scheduling needs or to deal with their personalities. It's pretty ridiculous.

Yeah, it IS pretty ridiculous that SE requires those jobs at any currently relevant endgame. But don't substitute blame to the groups that are trying to COMPLETE the content for SE's failings at making those jobs more attractive. That's my point reading between the lines.

What you observe out in the field are these big monolithic groups imposing requirements that you think Joe Average cannot meet. But I would argue that you are seeing the byproduct of what the game's design has wrought. What sense would it make for a group to recruit Joe Average for current endgame if his only jobs are thwacky thwack, and the shell's population is already filled to the brim with those? I hate to resort to an old cliche, but "don't hate the player, hate the game" is no less relevant for being one.

[FrankReynolds]

Yeah, it IS pretty ridiculous that SE requires those jobs at any currently relevant endgame. But don't ascribe blame to the groups that are trying to COMPLETE the content for SE's failings at making those jobs more attractive. That's my point reading between the lines.

What you observe out in the field are these big monolithic groups imposing requirements that you think Joe Average cannot meet. But I would argue that you are seeing the byproduct of what the game's design has wrought. What sense would it make for a group to recruit Joe Average for current endgame if his only jobs are thwacky thwack, and the shell's population is already filled to the brim with those? I hate to resort to an old cliche, but "don't hate the player, hate the game" is no less relevant for being one.

Yeah, that was sorta my point. They need to change the game. It used to make perfect sense back when they made content like Sky, Sea and Dynamis because having a few stragglers didn't hurt the group. They could farm pops etc. and then sit outside the alliance for the NM fights or farm more pops or farm more currency for the group until they were up to snuff. Hell, My mule still has a full einherjar pop set that never got used. Even he was useful on his almost completely gearless bard.

Even a complete idiot would have realized by now that these people screaming "We want more challenging content" are full of crap. All they really care about is grabbing cool gear and getting rich just like everyone else.

Ever notice how few people have afterglows? I guarantee you that if afterglow had added 100 damage to the weapon, people would have been pumping those things out left and right. That was a litmus test. SE misunderstood the results.

What they thought was that adding all the cool gear to hard stuff would motivate less ambitious players to team up. What they didn't realize is that most people either can't or don't want to be in those groups for that reason. I've been in 50 different event links that have failed. My social LS has been going strong for like 5 (?) years now. People don't want to be forced to group up.

[Zumi]

Tojil takes a set up something like
P1 mnk mnk drg whm cor brd (3-4 songs)
P2 mnk mnk drk whm cor brd (3-4 songs)
P3 geo geo sch sch rdm brd

You can take some different melees maybe. The thing is you actually need people to min/max optimize their gear sets, tp, ws, pdt, hp. The mages need a lot of sets, fast cast, enfeebling, sch needs stun set, the whm actually has to have good cure sets. Brds need ghorn and empy harp. The melee brds and cors should be swaping too throughout the fight so that needs to be coordinated.

You never needed good gear or much coordination to do old 75 content like sky, sea, dyanamis camp kings ect. A lot of the good players quit. Joe average that never swaps gear and does some horrible damage will never be able to win a delve boss run.

A lot of the stuff has a time limit now. Mediocre players taking 2-3 hours to kill kirin as they chip away at him stuff like that is no more.

After the 75 end game era Abyssea and VW kind of made bad players do ok with super buffs, and temp items. Now that those things are gone in SoA you can see how bad a lot of players that still play really are.

[FrankReynolds]

Tojil takes a set up something like
P1 mnk mnk drg whm cor brd (3-4 songs)
P2 mnk mnk drk whm cor brd (3-4 songs)
P3 geo geo sch sch rdm brd

You can take some different melees maybe. The thing is you actually need people to min/max optimize their gear sets, tp, ws, pdt, hp. The mages need a lot of sets, fast cast, enfeebling, sch needs stun set, the whm actually has to have good cure sets. Brds need ghorn and empy harp. The melee brds and cors should be swaping too throughout the fight so that needs to be coordinated.

You never needed good gear or much coordination to do old 75 content like sky, sea, dyanamis camp kings ect. A lot of the good players quit. Joe average that never swaps gear and does some horrible damage will never be able to win a delve boss run.

A lot of the stuff has a time limit now. Mediocre players taking 2-3 hours to kill kirin as they chip away at him stuff like that is no more.

After the 75 end game era Abyssea and VW kind of made bad players do ok with super buffs, and temp items. Now that those things are gone in SoA you can see how bad a lot of players that still play really are.

True, but I don't really see how making a bunch of people look bad is good for the game... I mean is being the best at a game where most of the good people already quit meaningful in any way?

[Zumi]

True, but I don't really see how making a bunch of people look bad is good for the game... I mean is being the best at a game where most of the good people already quit meaningful in any way?

Its becoming that game where a very small percentage of people can do the bosses because the bar is set above what the average FFXI player today can do. You get that 2-3 LS that do stuff while everyone else who isn't in one of those LS is frustrated to the point where they don't want to play anymore.

[Helldemon]

Then get better at the game? It's not hard.

[Mahoro]

Its becoming that game where a very small percentage of people can do the bosses because the bar is set above what the average FFXI player today can do. You get that 2-3 LS that do stuff while everyone else who isn't in one of those LS is frustrated to the point where they don't want to play anymore.

2-3 NA LS. There are usually a lot more JP LS than NA LS on any given server that have cleared boss runs, but that is also because there tend to be more organized JP LS's in general. Lord only knows the percentages of players who have beaten a boss, but it's certainly not the tired old Occupy Wall Street meme used in this thread of the 1%/99% (which probably deserves its own variation of the Godwin's Law label by now).

Don't get me wrong. I dearly wish SE got over their time-constricted events which only serve to add artificial difficulty and result in SCH/BLM stunning melee zergs. I hated it in Legion and I hate it here. It would be nice if things were tweaked somewhat. Maybe extend runs to an hour time limit to allow some job flexibility. But in the end, SE doesn't intend everyone to be able to clear the bosses at this point. It's Content Level 20, and there should be more events added to fill in the gaps in Content Levels.

[FrankReynolds]

Don't get me wrong. I dearly wish SE got over their time-constricted events which only serve to add artificial difficulty and result in SCH/BLM stunning melee zergs. I hated it in Legion and I hate it here. It would be nice if things were tweaked somewhat. Maybe extend runs to an hour time limit to allow some job flexibility. But in the end, SE doesn't intend everyone to be able to clear the bosses at this point. It's Content Level 20, and there should be more events added to fill in the gaps in Content Levels.

It's not event's that they need. It's gear. The difference in gear performance between what the 5-10% (a more accurate percentage) of players beating delve bosses (and I mean actually beating it, not riding coat tails and / or buying alliance slots) should be just that 5-10% better. They shouldn't have weapons that do 100% more damage. And more importantly, you shouldn't need that extra percentage (whatever it may be) to beat game content or even to get in a group that can.

Trickle down economics don't work (sorry, I had to ride the 99% / 1% thing out). SE is in a business with a flat rate. they don't get paid more by their high end clients. Catering to them serves absolutely no purpose other than to alienate the majority. They should be giving them things like 2 more strength on an axe, 2 more evasion on a leg piece, 10% reduction in bayld / plasm item prices. Not 10-15X as much plasm (and by extension gear) and 100% more damage.

I don't begrudge people for wanting to play challenging content, but the playing field should be even enough that almost everyone can gear themselves to the level required to play it without spending their life farming gil or taking out a second mortgage to buy it. Beating the content should be the bulk of the reward. The items should be very slight improvements. They shouldn't be make or break.


Then get better at the game? It's not hard.

Then learn to troll harder? it's not hard.

http://imgur.com/

Learn to make a meme or say something useful / entertaining. No one thinks you're cool.

[Mahoro]

I meant more events should be added in between the current Content Levels that result in gear acquisition that helps in progressively higher Content Levels. For example, the new Wildskeepers I believe were intended to be Content Level 17 (if I'm not mistaken, don't have time to look up dev post). There are some fairly good pieces that drop off those that might help groups tackle the Fracture Bosses which are Content Level 20.

I largely agree with your other points though.

[Xtrasweettea]

It's not event's that they need. It's gear. The difference in gear performance between what the 5-10% (a more accurate percentage) of players beating delve bosses (and I mean actually beating it, not riding coat tails and / or buying alliance slots) should be just that 5-10% better. They shouldn't have weapons that do 100% more damage. And more importantly, you shouldn't need that extra percentage (whatever it may be) to beat game content or even to get in a group that can.

Trickle down economics don't work (sorry, I had to ride the 99% / 1% thing out). SE is in a business with a flat rate. they don't get paid more by their high end clients. Catering to them serves absolutely no purpose other than to alienate the majority. They should be giving them things like 2 more strength on an axe, 2 more evasion on a leg piece, 10% reduction in bayld / plasm item prices. Not 10-15X as much plasm (and by extension gear) and 100% more damage.

I don't begrudge people for wanting to play challenging content, but the playing field should be even enough that almost everyone can gear themselves to the level required to play it without spending their life farming gil or taking out a second mortgage to buy it. Beating the content should be the bulk of the reward. The items should be very slight improvements. They shouldn't be make or break.


This is no different than being able to be qualified to clear Dynamis. You couldn't be a level 70 DD and expect to clear Dynamis Tav with Joe Average gear. Joe Average had to go out and get the levels, get the approved merits, cap their skills, and get non-average gear. The rewards back then were a few percentages increase from gear one may have entered with because the scaled difficulty was smaller back then.

Now the game has been leaned more towards a sharper incline in the increase in percentages because we no longer level physically beyond 99. The weapon supplements both level and gear growth. There will be more powerful enemies as they release more content. The players will need better gear to beat them.

The content doesn't alienate the majority. The majority alienates themselves from the content. The ones who refuse to change out of DD spots to go into the support roles (remember, you stated that the last census that less than 15% of the player base had WHM, BRD, COR, or SCH leveled) are the ones who are being alienated. The ones who do not have the want to learn the play different roles will be the ones left behind. The members of the majority who have beaten the Delve bosses have either good relationships with support players over the years or can change to support roles. Boss runs require a setup of ~34% DD spots and ~66% support. This is an inverse to what we have when you do a /search (probably an inverse and a bigger spread to what we have available for support and DD). Players are going to have to change if they want go through the content.

Also, this isn't Trickled Down economics. There's directly nothing that is trickling down from the people who have beaten the content other than weapons that can be crafted that full pearl DRKs can purchase. If you were to fit this content into some sort of economic system, it's Capitalism. The supply market is greatly filled with DDs with a low demand while the support market is in short supply with a huge demand. The ones who are making it in this market are the ones who understand the market.

[Rustic]

Ok, I'll restate it in simpler terms.

I'm capable of killing something.
No one else is capable of killing it.

Welcome to the long-term effects of Atma-brew-moding everything in Abyssea. It's turned the average 99's brains to mush.

I welcome the return of competent players gathering together vs. pick-ups who are learning the modern equivalent of being Spike Flailed by Fafnir for noobish behavior. There's entire tiers of gear for folks who can't handle the big boy pants, and there will be linkshells that once again form to do the stuff that matters. Because that's what happens in FFXI when there's challenging content. You see players get together (not pick-ups) long-term to succeed.

The failure in playing with gimp pickups is expecting them to be worth anything to begin with. Go and find the people who have shown their competence and learn how to join with them instead. Good players welcome more like themselves, and the gear on them from doing so should make it obvious where and which linkshells have the talent to meet your own.

[Zumi]

The main problem is I can be really good at FFXI have a lot of jobs geared to do bosses, yet both of the LS that do boss runs on my server are full not accepting new members. You can be a really good player even have a lot of support jobs, well geared damage dealer jobs with boss weapons you got from pick ups and still not find a LS due to the fact all the LSs on your server are full.

Which leads to getting lucky with a shout group. I got the clear in a shout group cause I leveled and skilled up geo. I really wanted to do bosses and geo is one of the few jobs I seen shouted for a long time and seemed like the easiest way to get in a run.

[Xtrasweettea]

The main problem is I can be really good at FFXI have a lot of jobs geared to do bosses, yet both of the LS that do boss runs on my server are full not accepting new members. You can be a really good player even have a lot of support jobs, well geared damage dealer jobs with boss weapons you got from pick ups and still not find a LS due to the fact all the LSs on your server are full.

Which leads to getting lucky with a shout group. I got the clear in a shout group cause I leveled and skilled up geo. I really wanted to do bosses and geo is one of the few jobs I seen shouted for a long time and seemed like the easiest way to get in a run.
If a LS gets full and you can't get in, start a LS or find one that is blooming.

The LS I am in is recovering from the stagnation of Abyssea and VW. We can over all the jobs for a Mega Boss run currently. Though, we are still accepting new members with a variety of jobs. We are accepting more members to have extra membership on purpose. We encourage all of our members to have one DD job and one support job leveled, geared, and know how to be played. If a member needs help with a +2 Empy piece, Magian Trials for their empy/relic, etc. we help each other. We do these things since we know as a whole we benefit from their growth.

There are shells like ours out there. You either need to make one or find one. This Mega Boss content isn't PUG friendly (unless they nerf it to VW difficulty).

[FrankReynolds]

Now the game has been leaned more towards a sharper incline in the increase in percentages because we no longer level physically beyond 99. The weapon supplements both level and gear growth. There will be more powerful enemies as they release more content. The players will need better gear to beat them.

I know that. That's exactly the problem.


The content doesn't alienate the majority. The majority alienates themselves from the content.

LOL good one. Am I holding it wrong?

Seriously. This isn't abstract art. It's video game. What you just said made no sense.

They either make stuff that people will play or they don't. They have no one to blame but themselves. It's not our job to like anything they make. It's their job to make anything we like. That's how commerce works. WHen they start sending me $25 a month to play this, I'll be far more open to do any old crap they put out. I promise.



The ones who refuse to change out of DD spots to go into the support roles (remember, you stated that the last census that less than 15% of the player base had WHM, BRD, COR, or SCH leveled) are the ones who are being alienated. The ones who do not have the want to learn the play different roles will be the ones left behind. The members of the majority who have beaten the Delve bosses have either good relationships with support players over the years or can change to support roles. Boss runs require a setup of ~34% DD spots and ~66% support. This is an inverse to what we have when you do a /search (probably an inverse and a bigger spread to what we have available for support and DD). Players are going to have to change if they want go through the content.

Ahh, I see. I like your line of reasoning. So like if Nike starts only manufacturing shoes in sizes 15 and up even though the average person wears a size 7, it won't be their fault that they went out of business. It will be the customers fault for not liking incredibly over sized shoes.

By this logic, no company will ever fail again. The economy is saved!!!


Also, this isn't Trickled Down economics. There's directly nothing that is trickling down from the people who have beaten the content other than weapons that can be crafted that full pearl DRKs can purchase. If you were to fit this content into some sort of economic system, it's Capitalism. The supply market is greatly filled with DDs with a low demand while the support market is in short supply with a huge demand. The ones who are making it in this market are the ones who understand the market.

No, the ones who are making it in this market are other game developers.

I understand that the market is saturated with DDs. A smart developer would in turn make the game less reliant on support and build more content that said DDs could do. Or at the very least attempt to make the support jobs attractive enough that people want to play them. At this point if they want to make people play more support jobs, they are pretty much gonna have to just give them top tier gear sets as soon as they ding 99. Otherwise people will probably just not do the events and / or quit the game.

[Mahoro]

I understand that the market is saturated with DDs. A smart developer would in turn make the game less reliant on support and build more content that said DDs could do. Or at the very least attempt to make the support jobs attractive enough that people want to play them. At this point if they want to make people play more support jobs, they are pretty much gonna have to just give them top tier gear sets as soon as they ding 99. Otherwise people will probably just not do the events and / or quit the game.

I agree with the spirit of your points here, and I wish SE would allow some more job diversity in its events. But I'd like to point out that there IS content for the saturation of DD's out there. Anything below Content Level 20 is not AS reliant on support, or if it is, requires minimal amounts of support. Someone with only DD jobs could do very well on Wildskeepers, Colonization/Lair Reives, Skirmish, etc. (Yes, Wildskeepers such as Yumcax take an army of CORs but only because people are choosing to fight it at low Colonization levels.)

Again, let's put this into perspective. All of the talk in this thread is about ONE event, which SE deemed the highest Content Level. That is the level that requires well-geared MNKs and RNGs, GEOs, BRD and COR swapping, superlative healers and stunners, and superior organization. I agree with you that SE should make playing support jobs more attractive. But SE, like any other game designer, does not have to render each and every difficulty level of its game able to be completed by each and every player. And yes, if the "majority" wants to beat that particular difficulty level, it should be prepared to take certain steps to do so.

Whether they have succeeded in making content available to players of all skill levels is quite another matter. That's the point where Joe Average player asks himself if the rest of the content is worth his $12.95. I would say the expansion needs to be fleshed out some more.

[Xtrasweettea]

LOL good one. Am I holding it wrong?

Seriously. This isn't abstract art. It's video game. What you just said made no sense.

They either make stuff that people will play or they don't. They have no one to blame but themselves. It's not our job to like anything they make. It's their job to make anything we like. That's how commerce works. WHen they start sending me $25 a month to play this, I'll be far more open to do any old crap they put out. I promise.

You don't have to like what they produce. You can up and leave. The biggest catalyst of any change is the loss or increase of money. SE isn't in enough pain right now to want to change. You want them to change, then cause them pain in the pocket book. Until then, you are still sending them monthly payments and that is enough for them to believe you are happy with the content. You forget that the OTHER half of commerce is the consumer and their voices.



Ahh, I see. I like your line of reasoning. So like if Nike starts only manufacturing shoes in sizes 15 and up even though the average person wears a size 7, it won't be their fault that they went out of business. It will be the customers fault for not liking incredibly over sized shoes.

By this logic, no company will ever fail again. The economy is saved!!!

Massive logic fail. There's a difference between the digital world of FFXI and the real world with Nike Shoes. Nike isn't going to mass produce shoes larger sizes, because like you said, not many will purchase them (I would be one of the few who could). Nike isn't also producing a world with digital hurdles either. Nike produces shoes and has enough market research to show what they need to produce and how much of it and to whom. You fail for comparing two different companies in two different markets for two different sets of consumers.

The world of FFXI has this feature since you started. It's called a Moogle. It can change the jobs you have unlocked or started with at no cost. SE put that in the game for you with the idea people changing jobs to meet certain event criteria. SE gave it to you up front. If you don't use it, then the blame sets with you as the player. When something obviously progress stopping occurs (like glitches, terrible programming, etc.) then that is where SE is at fault.



No, the ones who are making it in this market are other game developers.

You and I are talking about two different kinds of markets I believe. Since you are referring to the game developers making bank, then yes, they should be. No one goes into a business without the mindset of not making money. Of course, this is the same company that doesn't advertise the game outside of Japan. It is also the same company that made FFXIII and keep making sequels to it. I still feel Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest was less linear than FFXIII.



I understand that the market is saturated with DDs. A smart developer would in turn make the game less reliant on support and build more content that said DDs could do. Or at the very least attempt to make the support jobs attractive enough that people want to play them. At this point if they want to make people play more support jobs, they are pretty much gonna have to just give them top tier gear sets as soon as they ding 99. Otherwise people will probably just not do the events and / or quit the game.
I will agree that support jobs are not attractive at all. Support job gear isn't even attractive on top of that. Though we have had an era in the game that was very much DD friendly and not very support friendly: Abyssea and Voidwatch. Many support players I personally knew quit the game or changed to full time DD because they weren't being used as much as they were prior to Abyssea. Abyssea and VW didn't need a Dynamis BLM party. Abyssea and VW didn't need two PLDs, 4 WHMs to cure tanks and DDs, 2 RDMs to sleep links, etc. like you needed in Dynamis. Towards the end of the Abyssea era, one WHM could cure 17 people without MP issues. In VW, people brought mules on support jobs so that the mule's owner could get more loot. VW also force fed you temps so that support wasn't an issue. That is the content you are talking about.

Now we have content that basically needs pre-abyssea setups for events and Mega Boss kills. We can't support it because of the eras of the super DD friendly Abyssea and Voidwatch. The support players either quit or stopped playing support all together (cause and effect). Whatever was not available for support was supplemented by mules, buffs from outside sources, and/or temps.

The only way to make the support jobs more attractive is to make the players be able to have an auto-cast function or system or a UI that will allow auto-casting for a specific -na spell if you were to click on a party member's name. Also: BRDs would need to have their songs be alliance wide instead of party wide (on top of that, BRDs Songs need to be harder to dispelled). GEOs would need alliance wide INDI and GEO spells. Erase would need to hit outside of the party. There's a big list of things to adjust to make the jobs more attractive.

Until those changes are made, the easiest way to make support jobs more attractive is allow full-time support job players to play DDs while the full time DDs play as support jobs. This can help the full time support players not get burnt out from playing those support jobs constantly. Since, really, you don't play support jobs, you work a support job. You only play DD jobs.

[Mostfowl]

I understand that the market is saturated with DDs. A smart developer would in turn make the game less reliant on support and build more content that said DDs could do. Or at the very least attempt to make the support jobs attractive enough that people want to play them. At this point if they want to make people play more support jobs, they are pretty much gonna have to just give them top tier gear sets as soon as they ding 99. Otherwise people will probably just not do the events and / or quit the game.


My roomie loves brd, he played brd well before aby, always ran it for us in any endgame he could, he has capped skills and was insanely happy when +3 instruments came out. We were working on his relic horn for him when aby came out and dyna went kapoot (he was the 5th in our ls who we were making a relic for).

After the +3 instruments came out he shifted his attn. to getting them to supplement his songs until he finished the relic, then the empy harp showed up and the incredibly silly trials that went into making it. Needless to say the game lost a damn good brd over SE's overkill on a HARP trial. Most of the ls members we ran with for years quit and he could never find a group that wouldn't laugh him out when he said he wanted his harp. He tried soloing it for awhile while we continued work on the relic horn but the solo grind was such that he threw up his hands and said frak it. He left for awhile, then came back and tried to get back into the groove but cannot since he has no harp nor another job he is as well geared for and simply is stuck in a perpetual vortex of /sh camping and solo grinding.

With the insane need for support jobs, esp brd, you would think SE would at least cut them a lil slack with the trials. 14/16 empy are easier to get than the harp and nowadays you NEED the harp if you want to participate in any endgame.

If they want to make support jobs more attractive they could start with making requirements for them a bit less insane.

[Mostfowl]

Oh he actually just read this over my shoulder and told me he cancelled his account a few days ago lol

Another one bites the dust.

[FrankReynolds]

You don't have to like what they produce. You can up and leave. The biggest catalyst of any change is the loss or increase of money. SE isn't in enough pain right now to want to change. You want them to change, then cause them pain in the pocket book. Until then, you are still sending them monthly payments and that is enough for them to believe you are happy with the content. You forget that the OTHER half of commerce is the consumer and their voices.

And yet here you are posting... why are you here instead of silently voting with your wallet?

No, I'm sure you would love it if I quit, but I'll be here a while because I've invested a lot of time in this game and I don't really feel like starting a new one.

The question is how will I influence other players or potential customers of SEs? Will I spread the word about my love of FFXI? Or will I use the enormous amount of online forum posting time I have each day to spread the word that they ignore their customers and produce bad content? One way or another, I'm worth a lot more than my subscription fee.


Massive logic fail. There's a difference between the digital world of FFXI and the real world with Nike Shoes. Nike isn't going to mass produce shoes larger sizes, because like you said, not many will purchase them (I would be one of the few who could). Nike isn't also producing a world with digital hurdles either. Nike produces shoes and has enough market research to show what they need to produce and how much of it and to whom. You fail for comparing two different companies in two different markets for two different sets of consumers.

The world of FFXI has this feature since you started. It's called a Moogle. It can change the jobs you have unlocked or started with at no cost. SE put that in the game for you with the idea people changing jobs to meet certain event criteria. SE gave it to you up front. If you don't use it, then the blame sets with you as the player. When something obviously progress stopping occurs (like glitches, terrible programming, etc.) then that is where SE is at fault.

Yeah, Nike looked at their market research (Some might call it a census?) determines that size 16s don't sell well and focuses their marketing where it makes sense. In contrast, SE not only does the research, but posts it for their customers to evaluate and then ignores it and creates events that revolve around people playing jobs that people don't play.

Read it slowly:
Nike see's that 2% of their customers wear size 15, so they produce size 15 accordingly.

SE see's that 3.68% of their customers play Bard so they make bard a required job for all the important content.

You really don't see the what I was going for there? You really think that my logic failed?



You and I are talking about two different kinds of markets I believe. Since you are referring to the game developers making bank, then yes, they should be. No one goes into a business without the mindset of not making money. Of course, this is the same company that doesn't advertise the game outside of Japan. It is also the same company that made FFXIII and keep making sequels to it. I still feel Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest was less linear than FFXIII.

What I was referring to was the fact that this game has been steadily losing customers for a while now despite the fact that they keep adding content. Instead of making content for the customers they have, or the customers they could have, they keep making content for the customers they wish they had. They wish they had a bunch of happy go lucky, Link shell loving, players who would happily do everything the hard way because that's how the developer intended it. Normal game companies don't do that.

Most developers try to make games that are fun for the masses, then they add some unbelievable hard god mode crap that may or may not even be beatable and let the guy who beats it have some bragging rights like something shiny or a title. They don't give him stuff that affects the game in a massive way like a rocket launcher and let him run around tormenting all the other paying customers until they quit.


I will agree that support jobs are not attractive at all. Support job gear isn't even attractive on top of that. Though we have had an era in the game that was very much DD friendly and not very support friendly: Abyssea and Voidwatch. Many support players I personally knew quit the game or changed to full time DD because they weren't being used as much as they were prior to Abyssea. Abyssea and VW didn't need a Dynamis BLM party. Abyssea and VW didn't need two PLDs, 4 WHMs to cure tanks and DDs, 2 RDMs to sleep links, etc. like you needed in Dynamis. Towards the end of the Abyssea era, one WHM could cure 17 people without MP issues. In VW, people brought mules on support jobs so that the mule's owner could get more loot. VW also force fed you temps so that support wasn't an issue. That is the content you are talking about.

yep. It would be cool if they could find a way to keep support from being completely replaced by mule characters, but the truth is they make up like 15% of the player base and a fair part of that are likely mule accounts. I mean I can tell you that I have 3 whms, 3 bards, 2 red mages and 2 black mages just between my accounts and I don't play any of them unless I have to. I used to like BLM before the level cap increase, but leveling it on goblin pets was a pain in the rear that I would wish on no man and I'm sorta glad that it's barely used now.


Now we have content that basically needs pre-abyssea setups for events and Mega Boss kills. We can't support it because of the eras of the super DD friendly Abyssea and Voidwatch. The support players either quit or stopped playing support all together (cause and effect). Whatever was not available for support was supplemented by mules, buffs from outside sources, and/or temps.

Let's be honest with ourselves here. Support jobs were never very good to begin with. Outside of a few pieces of refresh, movement and enfeebling gear, they weren't very hard to gear sufficiently. Abyssea didn't do that. The support was always lacking. You just didn't need it as much.


The only way to make the support jobs more attractive is to make the players be able to have an auto-cast function or system or a UI that will allow auto-casting for a specific -na spell if you were to click on a party member's name. Also: BRDs would need to have their songs be alliance wide instead of party wide (on top of that, BRDs Songs need to be harder to dispelled). GEOs would need alliance wide INDI and GEO spells. Erase would need to hit outside of the party. There's a big list of things to adjust to make the jobs more attractive.

I agree. They just built a whole expansion. I have faith that they can do it.


Until those changes are made, the easiest way to make support jobs more attractive is allow full-time support job players to play DDs while the full time DDs play as support jobs. This can help the full time support players not get burnt out from playing those support jobs constantly. Since, really, you don't play support jobs, you work a support job. You only play DD jobs.

The problem is that while abyssea has made leveling these jobs easy enough, gearing them to a level that will get you in the vents you want to be in is a whole different story. Linkshells want G-horns, dur-duh-blah-blahs, Cure skin sets, Refresh items that come from places no one goes any more etc.

I seriously think they need to completely nerf the requirements for all old gear if they are going to continue down this path or something epic like that. Or maybe just add a bunch of crazy gear that at least matches everything to the bayld line. maybe a 3 song horn (not 4) and some more refresh for mages and some stuff with bonuses that match abyssea +2 gear and some stuff that replaces NNI. Just make all that stuff optional so that people can live in adoulin if they are going to make delve rape everything before it. Because right now, people wanting to gear those jobs who didn't start before delve came out have an epic road ahead in most cases.

[Peepiopi]

(linkshell argument is null and void.)

I like how you tried to eliminate the primary rebuttal to your complaint. Whether you believe it or not, you are not the only competent player on your server. Either find an End Game LS that will have you, or make your own. OR, maybe use vent, mumble or some other voip to communicate and lead your pugs easier so that you have a better chance at success.

It's kind of obvious really. The problem isn't really with skill. It's about communication. That's something that is always going to be more difficult with pugs vs organized events.

[Xtrasweettea]

And yet here you are posting... why are you here instead of silently voting with your wallet?
I am on here because I am really getting tired of all of these self-victimizing posts I keep seeing on these forums. Of course, my campaign is probably just as self-defeating as your campaign is.

I am not on here complaining about the product I am enjoying.



No, I'm sure you would love it if I quit, but I'll be here a while because I've invested a lot of time in this game and I don't really feel like starting a new one.
I have no personal feelings either way if you stay or quit. I couldn't care less. To me, you're just words on a computer screen.



The question is how will I influence other players or potential customers of SEs? Will I spread the word about my love of FFXI? Or will I use the enormous amount of online forum posting time I have each day to spread the word that they ignore their customers and produce bad content? One way or another, I'm worth a lot more than my subscription fee.

According to SE, you are worth your subscription fee, that's really it. You can inform other potential customers of this game (which is very few). You only seem to have a one sided point-of-view, though. It won't weigh much whether people will pick up this game or not. This game has bigger things that don't appeal to new players: the age of the game, monthly subscription, the need to interact with others, etc.

Even with all of your preaching I have seen on other posts, SE really hasn't taken much notice. If they have, it's probably the "yeah, we'll get on that" response just to temporary appease you.

Maybe you should try different channels to get SE's attention (without putting away your wallet).



Yeah, Nike looked at their market research (Some might call it a census?) determines that size 16s don't sell well and focuses their marketing where it makes sense. In contrast, SE not only does the research, but posts it for their customers to evaluate and then ignores it and creates events that revolve around people playing jobs that people don't play.

Read it slowly:
Nike see's that 2% of their customers wear size 15, so they produce size 15 accordingly.

SE see's that 3.68% of their customers play Bard so they make bard a required job for all the important content.

You really don't see the what I was going for there? You really think that my logic failed?

Your logic still fails, nice try.
FFXI has tools that allow you work within its world: you can change jobs. That is the crutch SE uses to make events curtail to certain jobs that are not very popular. SE wants to you to work with their tools. It's their world. It's their characters. You just happen to rent the character to visit that world.
Nike can't force you to change your feet size, they have to work within human and legal limits presented in this reality.

If FFXI did not have the function to allow you as the player to change jobs, then you would have a logical comparison. If FFXI didn't allow you to change jobs, then SE would have to build their game based on the census, since players are locked into one job. They wouldn't want to make a product that no one would play because the game doesn't fit the tools the players have.

Until SE locks players permanently onto one job (Or we can change our feet size at will) your comparison can't work.





What I was referring to was the fact that this game has been steadily losing customers for a while now despite the fact that they keep adding content. Instead of making content for the customers they have, or the customers they could have, they keep making content for the customers they wish they had. They wish they had a bunch of happy go lucky, Link shell loving, players who would happily do everything the hard way because that's how the developer intended it. Normal game companies don't do that.

SE is trying to milk this game for all that it is worth. If they believe that new content will keep the subscriptions rolling in, they will. So far, there hasn't been a large enough of people quitting the game to make SE think otherwise.

You also have to remember that the NA market is not the EU market which is not the Japan market. SE may be building the game for their local audience and curtailed to their culture. We as outsiders just happen to be playing the same game. It's no different when the cultures are reversed (like WoW is curtailed for American players, even when sold to a South Korean audience).

Also "normal" game companies make games for their niches and set audiences. Guild Wars2 is for people who love PVP. The game is made around PVP (the majority of my abilities for Guardian are PVP oriented... and Guardian is a defending class).

It is also very hard to make a game that can be fun for everyone all the time. It's nearly impossible. Someone will dislike something in the game. I am sure people will dislike something in "Super Hello Kitty Call of Duty Grand Theft Auto."



Most developers try to make games that are fun for the masses, then they add some unbelievable hard god mode crap that may or may not even be beatable and let the guy who beats it have some bragging rights like something shiny or a title. They don't give him stuff that affects the game in a massive way like a rocket launcher and let him run around tormenting all the other paying customers until they quit.

What has the new content brought that would break the game? If you mean all those new weapons and armor? Yes, the new pieces of gear would wreck old content. The new gear would still not break relevant content. Again, it has to do with the new system SE wants us to use. You will need that "Rocket" to whittle down the next challenge for the bigger "Rocket" to whittle down the next challenge after that.

After beating something in god mode, I don't want a title. I want something I can use, even if it can break old, irrelevant content. Having something useable for the direct benefit of the player and the indirect benefit of those around him or her is what keeps people playing. Meaningless titles or baubles really don't keep people playing.




yep. It would be cool if they could find a way to keep support from being completely replaced by mule characters, but the truth is they make up like 15% of the player base and a fair part of that are likely mule accounts. I mean I can tell you that I have 3 whms, 3 bards, 2 red mages and 2 black mages just between my accounts and I don't play any of them unless I have to. I used to like BLM before the level cap increase, but leveling it on goblin pets was a pain in the rear that I would wish on no man and I'm sorta glad that it's barely used now.

All I "play" are support jobs. I worked RDM before Abyssea, dieing constantly in Dynamis and other endgame events (I am using it again for Delve runs). I have BRD from the end of my Dynamis days all the way up until now. I played WHM, have played it during VW, Abyssea, Meebles, and have it ready for use for Delve. My BLM is only really used for VW and making Azure in Abyssea.

I have DRK geared with a Rag and PUP. I haven't touched DRK since SoA came out. I solo'd PUP until I was high enough to do Campaign Battles. I still use it to solo. I have MNK built up enough to do Delve Plasm farming, but not built properly enough to take on Mega Boses.

So I am in that group of the less than 15% of the population. I choose to be in those roles and have no problem doing it. This mentality allows me to do the content.



Let's be honest with ourselves here. Support jobs were never very good to begin with. Outside of a few pieces of refresh, movement and enfeebling gear, they weren't very hard to gear sufficiently. Abyssea didn't do that. The support was always lacking. You just didn't need it as much.
You say that supports weren't very much needed. Though to the contrary for what I have ran with in the past, our Dyna runs were really support heavy:
Party 1: Tank, Tank, WHM, WHM, Puller, Refresher(usually RDM for sleeps)
Party 2: DD, DD, DD, WHM, BRD, COR (or BRD or another DD)
Party 3: BLM, BLM, BLM, BLM, RDM, Backup Puller (or if not needed, another BLM)
Party 4: DD, DD, DD, DD, RDM (or another DD), WHM (or SCH when it came out)
Party n: (Repeat party 4)

Even though I enjoyed large group content, I still enjoyed small group content: like Nyzul Isle. Small enough content for six people at max. The content was not very support heavy. Most runs I have been on were DD, DD, DD, DD, RDM, RDM (or SCH). Those small events were 66.7% DDs and 33.3% support. Much closer to the general population.

I will give you that some support jobs were never really good back then. Gearing them wasn't too demanding either nor of much variety either.



I agree. They just built a whole expansion. I have faith that they can do it.

When their wallet hurts enough, then they'll change. If they don't change even after their wallet seems very light, they're hoping you'll head to FFXIV (I would jump to DQ10... if it ever came over here, only because I grew up on the DQ/DW games).



The problem is that while abyssea has made leveling these jobs easy enough, gearing them to a level that will get you in the vents you want to be in is a whole different story. Linkshells want G-horns, dur-duh-blah-blahs, Cure skin sets, Refresh items that come from places no one goes any more etc.

I seriously think they need to completely nerf the requirements for all old gear if they are going to continue down this path or something epic like that. Or maybe just add a bunch of crazy gear that at least matches everything to the bayld line. maybe a 3 song horn (not 4) and some more refresh for mages and some stuff with bonuses that match abyssea +2 gear and some stuff that replaces NNI. Just make all that stuff optional so that people can live in adoulin if they are going to make delve rape everything before it. Because right now, people wanting to gear those jobs who didn't start before delve came out have an epic road ahead in most cases.
It counts on the shell and people who they know. The shell I am in helps others outside of events. We don't require BRDs to have horns or harps, but we woudln't say no to not helping those BRDs to get those items. Our biggest helpers are the ones who are usually full-time DDs. They understand that they couldn't get what they want without support players' efforts.

I don't believe that no one will help others get older gear pieces. Especially if that older gear is what gets the helper on good terms with a another player he or she is helping.

[Helldemon]

Then learn to troll harder? it's not hard.

http://imgur.com/

Learn to make a meme or say something useful / entertaining. No one thinks you're cool.

Not trying to be cool or troll lol. You talk about Sky/Sea/etc but what 80% of the playerbase is trying to do is do sky/sea content at lvl 50.

[FrankReynolds]

Not trying to be cool or troll lol. You talk about Sky/Sea/etc but what 80% of the playerbase is trying to do is do sky/sea content at lvl 50.

None (well, there were lot's of people entering at the minimum level in dynamis...). They didn't have to. You aren't seriously trying to say that getting from level 50 (not sure why you picked that number) to level 75 is the same as getting level 120 gear are you?

[Helldemon]

No, I'm saying people that only have level 90-99 gear are trying to do content out of their gear range w/o getting better gear/learning how to play their job. As if someone that was level 50 is trying to do sky/sea/etc back when the game was still capped at 75.

[FrankReynolds]

No, I'm saying people that only have level 90-99 gear are trying to do content out of their gear range w/o getting better gear/learning how to play their job. As if someone that was level 50 is trying to do sky/sea/etc back when the game was still capped at 75.

And I'm saying that not only could people do that content at lower levels, but they were accepted. It was also a lot easier to get from say 50-75 (which was pretty much the only requirement) than it is to build a refresh set, or durdaubla or a bunch of ele / cure staves or... Are you getting the point yet?

People didn't have to do nearly as much crap to enjoy the "Highest level" content. Not only that, but winning it consistently relied far more on the group than the gear.

[Helldemon]

No, they could not. Level correction would have murdered any melee/tank job. Support possibly could but brds would have shitty songs to give people, mages would have shitty cures, rdm's wouldn't be able to land any enfeebles, blm's would get fully resisted. You must not remember 50-75 very well back then if you think you couldn't make trial staffs or make decent refresh/ws sets in less time. It took me a year to get my first 75, 50-60 alone took around 8 months.

Before abyssea, or even ToAU for that matter if you want to go back far enough, it would generally take 1-2 months if you really really really busted your ass level'ing a job. Even 50-75 in good colibri burns could take a couple weeks. You can make trials staves in a couple days solo. If you bust your ass you can make Harp in a few days if you have a couple dedicated friends.

Generally people expected things like Hauby/O-hat/SH/Snipers as well. O-hat took a bit of time farming the eyes then gathering 18 people for the fight and doing as many as 6-18 depending on if you could get friends just helping or people just in it for the scrolls.

This content is harder, but people also have much better gear available before getting into stuff like Delve Megabosses. Gear swaps is one of the biggest problems with bad players. Plenty still don't do it.

[FrankReynolds]

No, they could not. Level correction would have murdered any melee/tank job. Support possibly could but brds would have shitty songs to give people, mages would have shitty cures, rdm's wouldn't be able to land any enfeebles, blm's would get fully resisted. You must not remember 50-75 very well back then if you think you couldn't make trial staffs or make decent refresh/ws sets in less time. It took me a year to get my first 75, 50-60 alone took around 8 months.

I'm finding that hard to believe. Bard was super easy to get into a group, as was red mage. BLM pretty much had to solo the whole way, so no roadblock there but time. Even whm had a pretty easy time finding a party. All you had to do on those jobs was pout your flag up and mindlessly cure or refresh / enfeeble / or sing. I literally leveled 1-75 on red in less than a month.

But that's not even the point. The point is that you didn't have to be skilled or coordinated or have friends or even macros to get to 75 and be eligible for events. People just took on as many bodies as they could get most of the time and trained them as they went.



You can make trials staves in a couple days solo. If you bust your ass you can make Harp in a few days if you have a couple dedicated friends.

So now the people who had a hard time just getting a job to 75 are supposed to be able to build a durdaubla? Think about that.


Generally people expected things like Hauby/O-hat/SH/Snipers as well. O-hat took a bit of time farming the eyes then gathering 18 people for the fight and doing as many as 6-18 depending on if you could get friends just helping or people just in it for the scrolls.

Luckily there were shouts going on all the time and you didn't need well geared people to do it. All that other gear was off of the AH.

[Hexadecimal]

It almost takes all the damage dealers having boss delve weapons to get a 5 NM + boss run. Boss kills without any boss weapons probably would take using beads.

I believe on my server there is 2 linkshells that have killed bosses. Seems to be a trend only 2-3 LS per server that actually kills them.

Personally, I think this was kind of the intended design: the beads spot you the needed handicap to get a few people some weapon upgrades, and that ups your chances when you decide you're rough enough to deal with 5+Tojil to get the rest their gear. Other options to get a leg up include gear from Wildskeeper and Skirmish.

It also occurs to me that you don't necessarily have to succeed in killing Tojil in order to succeed in getting your group some better gear, so long as you've killed some or all of the NMs in the fracture. Even in those "losing" attempts, the people participating may see gear improvements, and they get to practice the player skills needed to be successful at endgame content.

[Zumi]

I think people may have got their wish. Delve will be a lot easier when after the Aug update when all the SoA weapons getting +skill 228, 242 ect on them. People will have less acc issues and do more damage due to increased attack. This alone will make nm + boss runs much easier to do.

[Babekeke]

Gear swaps is one of the biggest problems with bad players. Plenty still don't do it.

Having just done a morimar plasm farm PUG and trying to do 2 NMs to get double the bayld, I have to say that the other of the biggest problems with bad players is simply not listening.

"No magic damage on the raptor, that includes Skillchains, so only Shijin Spiral, so it doesn't SC with anything else".

Within 10 seconds, 4 other WS have been seen, which made a SC, and 1 of the WS was Wildfire, a freaking magic WS....

[Zumi]

Having just done a morimar plasm farm PUG and trying to do 2 NMs to get double the bayld, I have to say that the other of the biggest problems with bad players is simply not listening.

"No magic damage on the raptor, that includes Skillchains, so only Shijin Spiral, so it doesn't SC with anything else".

Within 10 seconds, 4 other WS have been seen, which made a SC, and 1 of the WS was Wildfire, a freaking magic WS....

It's like that with any online game really. The majority of people are pretty oblivious to whats going on they are in their own little world. If you tell them to do something they start getting all offended that your telling them how to play.

[Babekeke]

If you tell them to do something they start getting all offended that your telling them how to play.

Well, after wasting an hour waiting for the last couple of brds/cors to show up, then another 45 mins in the fracture, I'm offended that they're still breathing.

[saevel]

I think people may have got their wish. Delve will be a lot easier when after the Aug update when all the SoA weapons getting +skill 228, 242 ect on them. People will have less acc issues and do more damage due to increased attack. This alone will make nm + boss runs much easier to do.

Yes but the boss / NM's they introduce in the exact same update will be much harder to compensate for the increased player capability.

Right now what everyone's witnessing is huge schism's being created in the community. There are only a finite amount of super support (as in actually know WTF their doing) per server, and they always get recruited by the same shells. Your stuck building up from scratch and the moment your BRD gets their 99 Dura, BAM they get recruited by another shell. Or you lose your SCH's, or your COR's / ect. Now add in the fact that each NM requires a different melee setup and suddenly your leaving out large portions of the player base that can't devote 20~30hrs per week to the game. Resulting in the top 1~5% being capable of actually getting stuff done, then everyone else just looking at them talk smack all day.

It wouldn't be so bad but the difference between "delve MB" and "not delve MB" is so vast that it creates a catch-22 of the player needing the experience / gear from the NM to be allowed to fight the NM.

No sh!t, I saw this a few days ago.
Yell>> Supernal Chapuli need <lots of jobs> Veteran / Delve player only.

The shouter was wanting people who had already killed the NM and had delve gear ... to kill the NM and get delve gear. This isn't a 4+MB, but a regular outside poped NM, one of the easiest to kill.

[Oddwaffle]

The gap between the elite/competent players and the average casual/incompetent players are too high. It's the difference between having fun and quit the game. SE needs to close this gap not 6 months from now, not 3 months from now but right NOW.

There are too many 'you have to do this before you can do that' moments. SE needs to introduce a large amount of AH gear that are cheap, plenty, effective and can be used by normal people (i.e. people with 10hours of game play per week). This means less than lv80 crafting required and no synergy needed. Ideally, also introduce a large amount if affordable items and crafting materials to NPC as the market is drying out and forbid new players from skilling up crafting.

Remove the Rare/Ex from items that can be bought from NPC. Too many rare/ex items around making 'you have to farm this before you can get that' feeling. Too many ladders to climb.

Also, allow exchange of conquest points, ancient currency...etc between each other. How many of those do we have now? Too many currencies in the game now, we need to reduce it so people can have more options. Abuse problems? FFXI is bleeding players, you need to remove barriers to let people have fun again. That means let them 'abuse' the system to make their lives easier and remove those cumbersome hops and ladders.

[Vladislav]

SE needs to close this gap not 6 months from now, not 3 months from now but right NOW.
Quote'd this ! because this is the Right words . I will no post link to "other" forums that we all already know , where ppl's Selling , yea u heared me SELLING wins for 30/40 even 50 mills . How game get to this ? , this is a Game , not a Work ! I play FFXI not since start but already 5 years , but i never saw that some one selling any wins because content pretty Impossible for pick groups ! Idk DEV's need really do something with Delve Fractures about now . Maybe add easy/hard modes , where easy mode will no guarantee drops , but we will get just KI atleast , and hard where it stays as it is .

[Mostfowl]

Quote'd this ! because this is the Right words . I will no post link to "other" forums that we all already know , where ppl's Selling , yea u heared me SELLING wins for 30/40 even 50 mills . How game get to this ? , this is a Game , not a Work ! I play FFXI not since start but already 5 years , but i never saw that some one selling any wins because content pretty Impossible for pick groups ! Idk DEV's need really do something with Delve Fractures about now . Maybe add easy/hard modes , where easy mode will no guarantee drops , but we will get just KI atleast , and hard where it stays as it is .

The reason you didn't see it before 5 years ago is because back then most players had a competent ls, wait strike that, had a ls period lol. The game has become so solocentric that ppl have to resort to buying wins simply because they do not have a ls that is willing or able to complete content with/for them. A problem very few ppl had pre-aby. Even the most horrifically difficult battles and missions you could find ppl for. There was more cooperation and people actually had in-game friendships. Now its a dog eat dog, cut throat world out there where ppl are just passing voices in this week's ls. No one wants to help, no one cares who you are or what your doing and most are only interested in you if you are able to provide something they want.

[Camiie]

OP, if you want the people around you to be as awesome as you think you are, then gather up a ragtag bunch of misfits and help mold them into the players that you want them to be. Don't complain about others being gimp or incompetent when you aren't doing anything yourself to remedy the situation.

[Stompa]

Also, allow exchange of conquest points, ancient currency...etc between each other. How many of those do we have now? Too many currencies in the game now, we need to reduce it so people can have more options. Abuse problems? FFXI is bleeding players, you need to remove barriers to let people have fun again. That means let them 'abuse' the system to make their lives easier and remove those cumbersome hops and ladders.

When Magian weapons arrived they were /saluted by many people including me, as what I consider 'democratisation of weapons', meaning anyone could solo a weapon with powerful augments (magian99 weapons still have some of the best bonus augments in the game) and a higher base damage than the best AH weapons. You could farm a magian on your own time-frame, a few hours after work or w/e, you didnt need to /sh for alliances or beg people to farm Aby nm drops for you. Granted magian were never as good as REM, but they offered an inbetween tier of weapons ; far more powerful than AH weaps, and entirely soloable at your own casual or OCD speed depending on the player. I totally applaud SE for the magian weapons system, I wouldn't have added the geodes/etc. stages but made those stages like earlier stages, thus enabling you to build your 99 weapon with no gil cost at all. I still rate the magian TP bonus weaps as the best offhanders in the game, and they cost 0gil and you can solo them casually if you want to. Also the PDT and MDB weapons are excellant pieces and again soloable by anyone.
We had hoped that SoA would have more of these type of solo-effort weapons, maybe a few notches more powerful than magians. I don't include bayld weaps, they have no useful augments just dmg, but they are soloable they just suck compared to magians.
What SE has missed completely this last decade, is an alternate gradual-progression points system for obtaining any weapon in the game. For example if you can't farm Mythic or w/e in the normal way, there should be a soloable points-based system where you can grind out a few hundred points after work, and they add up slowly over the year, and you need a lot of points to get a weapon that would be much faster with a Mythic static group. That way casual players who have busy lives, could actually obtain any weapon in the game, just very slowly, but the feeling when you log-in would not be total hopelessness, there would be a flicker of hope coz u know even though its going to take ages, you can chip away at it solo. I had honestly hoped that, after the popular Magians, which were very soloable, SE would add similar powerful weapons progression system in SOA, that you could build even if you don't have time to hang round with alliances all day long.

[Mostfowl]

When Magian weapons arrived they were /saluted by many people including me, as what I consider 'democratisation of weapons', meaning anyone could solo a weapon with powerful augments (magian99 weapons still have some of the best bonus augments in the game) and a higher base damage than the best AH weapons. You could farm a magian on your own time-frame, a few hours after work or w/e, you didnt need to /sh for alliances or beg people to farm Aby nm drops for you. Granted magian were never as good as REM, but they offered an inbetween tier of weapons ; far more powerful than AH weaps, and entirely soloable at your own casual or OCD speed depending on the player. I totally applaud SE for the magian weapons system, I wouldn't have added the geodes/etc. stages but made those stages like earlier stages, thus enabling you to build your 99 weapon with no gil cost at all. I still rate the magian TP bonus weaps as the best offhanders in the game, and they cost 0gil and you can solo them casually if you want to. Also the PDT and MDB weapons are excellant pieces and again soloable by anyone.
We had hoped that SoA would have more of these type of solo-effort weapons, maybe a few notches more powerful than magians. I don't include bayld weaps, they have no useful augments just dmg, but they are soloable they just suck compared to magians.
What SE has missed completely this last decade, is an alternate gradual-progression points system for obtaining any weapon in the game. For example if you can't farm Mythic or w/e in the normal way, there should be a soloable points-based system where you can grind out a few hundred points after work, and they add up slowly over the year, and you need a lot of points to get a weapon that would be much faster with a Mythic static group. That way casual players who have busy lives, could actually obtain any weapon in the game, just very slowly, but the feeling when you log-in would not be total hopelessness, there would be a flicker of hope coz u know even though its going to take ages, you can chip away at it solo. I had honestly hoped that, after the popular Magians, which were very soloable, SE would add similar powerful weapons progression system in SOA, that you could build even if you don't have time to hang round with alliances all day long.

No thanks.

Read my above post, the ability to solo so much helped to deconstruct this game. And if you actually made an effort and looked it wasn't impossible to set up a static for farming r/m. Its an mmo not a single player game and it bugs me when ppl think that everything should be soloable just because its more convenient for them. That's what offline games are for. Sure its great to be able to solo some stuff but when you make a majority of the content and the most hardcore weapon (at the time) something you can solo, the game looses something. And oh look ffxi lost that thing made it great, as well as a whole lot of players

[Stompa]

Actually you miss the point. The whole inherent problem with online games is they are global, and people play in timezones. If you have two hours gametime maximum per day because of work/family etc. you need to find people who are doing mythic statics during those two hours only. And you will fall behind the static because they are doing longer hours. Ditto Empy's you would need to find people who are willing to give up that specific 2 hour slot to help you farm your empy, and to forgive you for not being online when they are farming theirs. So good luck with that, champ.
And forget Delve& wk.rieve, it takes two hours+ just to get off the ground.
So you completely missed my point about casual players obtaining HQ items via a point system (which would be incredibly slow increments and take LONG time to complete, but allow them at least the chance to work on it in their own time).
You also don't know me at all, I am a long term outspoken supporter of the Old Game, party dynamics, learning your job, being a humble and friendly person in pt's. Thats how it was in 04 when I joined, if you were afk or being an Ahole etc. u got kicked and not invited again. By a process of erosion this created a playerbase who were polite and friendly for the most part, and highly adept at their jobs.
I actually /liked your earlier post hours ago, where you talked about the old days and friendliness and competence and party dynamics.
However that does not apply to obtaining power weapons, which requires luck re; your timezone and how much slack the static is willing to give coz you only have 2 hours to play at certain specific times.

[Yinnyth]

Actually you miss the point. The whole inherent problem with online games is they are global, and people play in timezones. If you have two hours gametime maximum per day because of work/family etc. you need to find people who are doing mythic statics during those two hours only. And you will fall behind the static because they are doing longer hours. Ditto Empy's you would need to find people who are willing to give up that specific 2 hour slot to help you farm your empy, and to forgive you for not being online when they are farming theirs. So good luck with that, champ.
And forget Delve& wk.rieve, it takes two hours+ just to get off the ground.

That's not an inherent problem with MMOs, it's an inherent problem with us living on a giant rock which revolves around our primary source of light, which is much harder to fix. What you are suggesting is that even the most casual player should have the ability to obtain everything in the game, which is noble to the extent that it's non-exclusionary. But just like removing sports from school because they make fat kids feel fat, making the game more casual gives players less ability to do extraordinary things. Beating Tojil for the first time is an extraordinary feeling because it's an accomplishment. It's the culmination of a lot of strategy tweeks, member training, and experimentation.

Tending my mog garden every day is boring in contrast to extinguishing that dino. If you want to make it so everyone gets a sports trophy just for coming to school 50 days, then what's the point of excelling at sports? Most people would have just given up and said "Eh, Tojil is too hard. I'll just wait until I can buy his drops." Unless of course you're serious about it taking all year to farm enough points to buy something, in which case, the system would be worthless because as soon as you've saved up your year worth of points for oatixur, there's gonna be something better out there, and you're gonna have to start saving up a new type of points for another year.

[FrankReynolds]

That's not an inherent problem with MMOs, it's an inherent problem with us living on a giant rock which revolves around our primary source of light, which is much harder to fix. What you are suggesting is that even the most casual player should have the ability to obtain everything in the game, which is noble to the extent that it's non-exclusionary. But just like removing sports from school because they make fat kids feel fat, making the game more casual gives players less ability to do extraordinary things. Beating Tojil for the first time is an extraordinary feeling because it's an accomplishment. It's the culmination of a lot of strategy tweeks, member training, and experimentation.

It's actually more like having a league just for fat kids that get's TV coverage and pays just as well. They actually have something like this in the real world: http://www.majorleaguegaming.com/

:P


If you want to make it so everyone gets a sports trophy just for coming to school 50 days, then what's the point of excelling at sports?

Just to be good at sports?...

If they gave every kid a trophy would that make you suck? I mean wouldn't everyone still know that you were awesome? That's how it is in the real world right now, I can go to the trophy shop and buy one that specifically says I am better than you at literally any sport. Hell, I could probably even buy a super bowl ring. Just the other day Justin Bieber touched the Stanley Cup...


Most people would have just given up and said "Eh, Tojil is too hard. I'll just wait until I can buy his drops."

Isn't that what they do now? What's the difference? You only want really rich kids to buy them?


No thanks.

it bugs me when ppl think that everything should be soloable just because its more convenient for them.

So we should all just quit and go play a different game because this one is convenient for you? Nope. It bugs me when people think everything should require a huge group. I play just as much and just as well as you. I pay just as much too. You are not entitled to better things just because you know 10 other guys who have the same schedule.

I have every right to come in this game, interact with my friends, farm and craft and fish and feed the economy as you do. I can buy, sell, grow, make, fish things all day long while interacting with thousands of people and never set foot in a battle. That is what an MMO is for and that is the basis for a large portion of them.

[Yinnyth]

It's actually more like having a league just for fat kids that get's TV coverage and pays just as well. They actually have something like this in the real world: http://www.majorleaguegaming.com/

:P



Just to be good at sports?...

If they gave every kid a trophy would that make you suck? I mean wouldn't everyone still know that you were awesome? That's how it is in the real world right now, I can go to the trophy shop and buy one that specifically says I am better than you at literally any sport. Hell, I could probably even buy a super bowl ring. Just the other day Justin Bieber touched the Stanley Cup...



Isn't that what they do now? What's the difference? You only want really rich kids to buy them?

My apologies, I was using the analogy to draw a comparison to what would happen in game. You're right that we do live in a world where you can just outright buy the trophy for cheap instead of winning it in a competition, I was attempting to say that it is not that way ingame (or less that way, at least... it is still possible to buy a tojil win).

I don't understand what you're saying about rich kids though. I just want the game to have some hardcore goals for me to strive towards, and a good reason to strive towards them. Yes, some games I love enough to create my own artificial goals, such as KH2 when I beat sephiroth on proud mode with no items at level 37. I got no reward for doing that, it was all in my head. But for this game, I need some additional motivation. Some type of awesome treasure which I can only get if I slay the beast guarding it. Beating Tojil wouldn't feel nearly as good if all my LS members already had his entire drop pool wash ashore of their mog garden.

[FrankReynolds]

My apologies, I was using the analogy to draw a comparison to what would happen in game. You're right that we do live in a world where you can just outright buy the trophy for cheap instead of winning it in a competition, I was attempting to say that it is not that way ingame (or less that way, at least... it is still possible to buy a tojil win).

I don't understand what you're saying about rich kids though. I just want the game to have some hardcore goals for me to strive towards, and a good reason to strive towards them. Yes, some games I love enough to create my own artificial goals, such as KH2 when I beat sephiroth on proud mode with no items at level 37. I got no reward for doing that, it was all in my head. But for this game, I need some additional motivation. Some type of awesome treasure which I can only get if I slay the beast guarding it. Beating Tojil wouldn't feel nearly as good if all my LS members already had his entire drop pool wash ashore of their mog garden.

The problem is that you don't want a trophy. You want steroids. You want something that is going to continue to widen the gap between you and the other kids. It would be fine if you just wanted a trophy.

It would be fine if you just wanted everyone to know that you and your crew beat the game in "God mode" because the armor you got was a different color or shape or something, but you guys want the gear to actually be better. That means that the next thing they come out with has to be that much harder. Which in turn means that the guys behind you are that much further behind.

SE always nerfs things after a year or two, but it's always too little too late. It has to stop eventually.

[Yinnyth]

The problem is that you don't want a trophy. You want steroids. You want something that is going to continue to widen the gap between you and the other kids. It would be fine if you just wanted a trophy.

It would be fine if you just wanted everyone to know that you and your crew beat the game in "God mode" because the armor you got was a different color or shape or something, but you guys want the gear to actually be better. That means that the next thing they come out with has to be that much harder. Which in turn means that the guys behind you are that much further behind.

SE always nerfs things after a year or two, but it's always too little too late. It has to stop eventually.

You should work as a speech writer for a politician because you have a talent for smithing words to make something innocent look deplorable.

I don't care about you. I don't care if your gear is better or worse than mine. It's not about me being better than you. It's about me being better than yesterday me, and how challenging it is for me to proceed to the next step. (I should mention I am oversimplifying because I also want to help my LS grow as well, but I don't care if your LS is stronger or weaker than mine.)

I want my character to grow, and I want it to be challenging to grow. I want to be forced to adapt my play style. I want to be forced to team up with people and develop new strategies. I want that random guy who I thought was a newb to come up with a profoundly good idea which reshapes how we handle things.

I don't want a game where I just log in, grind away solo at something which is so easy I cannot possibly fail, and have my character maxed out until next update. When I want the feeling of massive character progression with no real challenge or teamwork, I play disgaia.

[FrankReynolds]

You should work as a speech writer for a politician because you have a talent for smithing words to make something innocent look deplorable.

I don't care about you. I don't care if your gear is better or worse than mine. It's not about me being better than you. It's about me being better than yesterday me, and how challenging it is for me to proceed to the next step. (I should mention I am oversimplifying because I also want to help my LS grow as well, but I don't care if your LS is stronger or weaker than mine.)

I want my character to grow, and I want it to be challenging to grow. I want to be forced to adapt my play style. I want to be forced to team up with people and develop new strategies. I want that random guy who I thought was a newb to come up with a profoundly good idea which reshapes how we handle things.

That's cool. I'm sure that you are a great guy / gal with the best of intentions. I'm sure that you just want to play the game and have a good time. The problem is that you are unfortunately better at it than most people. As long as you are challenged by the content that everyone has to do to advance their character other people will suffer.

You don't want to be that kid from back in the 80's who invited all his friends over on Saturday night to take turns playing pac-man, but forgot to mention that he knew the pattern and never died, so all his friends had to just sit there watching him play all night right?

As a business, it makes no sense to cater to the top players unless those players bring in additional revenue. I mean imagine if every kid in your high school had to go heads up with Lawrence Taylor in order to pass 9th grade P.E. class just because you were ready for the NFL and you wanted a challenge. How bad would it suck to miss out on college and have to become a crack dealer just because some other kid could run a 4/40 at 16? I'm guessing that most parents would send their kid to a school full of really fat kids if that happened.

Would it really be so bad if the rewards were something that didn't handicap everyone else by keeping them from getting in groups?

[Mostfowl]

So we should all just quit and go play a different game because this one is convenient for you? Nope. It bugs me when people think everything should require a huge group. I play just as much and just as well as you. I pay just as much too. You are not entitled to better things just because you know 10 other guys who have the same schedule.

Ah you misquote me. I said I hate it when ppl thing EVERYTHING should be soloable and casual friendly. An mmo has different lvls of playership from the casual to the hardcore. The problem I have is when even the 2 hr a day player feels they deserve the same rewards and achievments the 8-hr a day, huge group person should have. There should be lvls so that casuals get what they can and the hardcore crowd has what they can get. A game needs to balance the two and right now ffxi is becoming all casual because se is caving to the vocal few who want the game completely soloable and not just 98% soloable. This has destroyed the game.

You don't want to do huge groups? Fine theres content for that. But I do so why can there not be content for that? The sheer fact that they reduced all the group gameplay to solo content is what is slowly dismantling the community. So you can only play 2 hrs? Ok well your not the entire community so if I want my 18 man content that has the uber rewards why does SE have to nerf down my content to fit your schedule?

Its the typical casual vs hardcore fight and its the casuals who are always the ones that just don't get it

[FrankReynolds]

Ah you misquote me. I said I hate it when ppl thing EVERYTHING should be soloable and casual friendly. An mmo has different lvls of playership from the casual to the hardcore. The problem I have is when even the 2 hr a day player feels they deserve the same rewards and achievments the 8-hr a day, huge group person should have. There should be lvls so that casuals get what they can and the hardcore crowd has what they can get. A game needs to balance the two and right now ffxi is becoming all casual because se is caving to the vocal few who want the game completely soloable and not just 98% soloable. This has destroyed the game.

You don't want to do huge groups? Fine theres content for that. But I do so why can there not be content for that? The sheer fact that they reduced all the group gameplay to solo content is what is slowly dismantling the community. So you can only play 2 hrs? Ok well your not the entire community so if I want my 18 man content that has the uber rewards why does SE have to nerf down my content to fit your schedule?

Its the typical casual vs hardcore fight and its the casuals who are always the ones that just don't get it


Would you be willing to pay say 10 cents an hour? Seems fair to me. Then you could pay 4 times as much as the guy who plays 2 hours a day. That way when casuals pop in and go "I want more casual stuff" you could say "Shut up casual. This is our game. We deserve more game content because we pay more.".

[bloodbeat]

It makes for bad business to just pitch to your small elite playerbase.
It's like seeing one of those terrible restaurants that's had the same few loyal customers for years but is staring in the face of bankruptcy because nobody else wants to eat there.
It makes zero business sense to have such a narrow access pathway to certain content.
And the point is, you don't have to kill one method to accommodate another.
If people actually believe this (and I'm not convinced of it) community spirit still exists, then the harder, faster content should remain just as popular.
But we all know that if there were long-winded but far easier low-man or soloable ways of accessing these ill-conceived uber rewards, nobody would team up to do it.

It's a lesson Square-Enix need to learn fast and learn thoroughly. You should only have strictly cooperative content if you can guarantee available cooperation.
If there was ever any doubt that a significant percentage of the player-base was not engaging with new content then it should be addressed. The content exists to be used, so there's no reason not to ensure it gets used.

Plus, you'd have to have had a pretty lousy upbringing if you begrudge someone who only plays casually to have the same reward if they took a more lengthy, but manageable method of getting it.

[Yinnyth]

But we all know that if there were long-winded but far easier low-man or soloable ways of accessing these ill-conceived uber rewards, nobody would team up to do it.

This is exactly what I fear from these suggestions. I have waited so long for this opportunity to get some real strategy back in the game, and now people are popping out of the woodworks saying they want to remove all reason to team up.

[Umichi]

Would you be willing to pay say 10 cents an hour? Seems fair to me. Then you could pay 4 times as much as the guy who plays 2 hours a day. That way when casuals pop in and go "I want more casual stuff" you could say "Shut up casual. This is our game. We deserve more game content because we pay more.".

*Coughs* (Runescape)

[Stompa]

This is exactly what I fear from these suggestions. I have waited so long for this opportunity to get some real strategy back in the game, and now people are popping out of the woodworks saying they want to remove all reason to team up.

No, the suggestion I made was that the solo point-building path would be so slow that NOBODY would want to choose it over the party/alliance route. As I originally said in my first post here, it would be far harder to solo this in terms of total hours & work, than to team up with people for the faster option. So you should be extra happy with that, as 99% of ppl would go for the faster static-group/long-event path, with rewards yielded FAR quicker than the solo casual points system.
It would just stop the game from excluding players who have less game time, have to work long hours etc. The game is already slanted so that f.ex. kids with rich parents can play games all night and not have to work evening jobs after school, thus enabling them to partake in SOA NM's that require 7+ hours to defeat etc. For any kid/adult who has to work evenings/overtime just to keep a roof over their head and the taps running, 7+ hour gaming sessions are totally unrealistic and so they are eliminated automatically from obtaining the HQ ffxi items. This despite that they might love final-fantasy game series as much as anyone else here does. Any game where daddy's little princess buys gil with his CC and uses it to buy all the currency for a HQ relic is immediately slanted against kids from poorer backgrounds, then to compound it with events or even mobs that take 7 hours to clear, just means they can't earn those items the normal non rmt way either. I hear shouts sometimes by rank 1 new chars offering 1m for LB2, 1m for single +2 af3 drops etc. And seeing the same ppl who wanted LB, rocking a HQ relic a few months later, it just shows that rmt money gets you progress in the game faster than it ever did in ffxi history. Avoiding the rmt gil problem, SE could implement a system where somebody who can play 1-2 hrs per night, and might want to craft/xp-merit for an hour of that time, could use the remaining hour to get some points to gradually build armor or weaps over a period of years. More than anything it would give those people a feeling that they actually *can* get stuff even if its not gonna happen anytime soon at all. For players who are from working-class backgrounds and have to work a lot IRL, a solo points-based super-slow progression system for obtaining items would be very fair indeed, where you can notch up a few points here and there inbetween work & sleep. It will never happen of course, but that doesn't stop it being a valid suggestion.

[Oddwaffle]

@Yinnyth: I don't agree merely because it's not what a smart business should do. You work with what you have, not with what you wish for. If FFXI general population is too incompetent to compete in high difficulty events then you need to adjust events to suit their abilities. SE should never throw out an event and hope people adjust to it. Some will do that but some will quit. The more they do, the less customers FFXI will have.

It's not about solo or massive group content. It's about accessibility. Contents need to be available for ALL TASTES AND PREFERENCES. If you sell burgers then only people who like burgers will eat your food. If you sell large group content then only people who prefers (and able) to do large group content will play your game. Everyone else will quit over time and that will be the end of FFXI as the population keep shrinking.

Content also needs to come with rewards equal to the time and effort spend. It doesn't matter if you are doing a 64-person battle or soloing. They all take the same amount of time and dedication to the person playing it. Therefore, they both need to give similar rewards or at least not too far off.

Right now solo rewards are either useless or just for cosmetics, 6-players rewards are equally useless as 18-person rewards are so much more powerful. The gap between a highly competent player (and successful player) is so high that average/incompetent/unsuccessful players are forced to either buy gil or bot to buy the win from delve (50mil is it?). Content is inaccessible to players. Game is too unfriendly. Player base getting too toxic and elistist.

[Rustic]

Not to hard for (me) at all. Too hard for the people that I would be (required) to do them with, totally.

If you think I can't hit ctrl1 better than most, well, you're simply mistaken.

Integrity > Gear.

Sorry, S-E is not responsible for player egos blocking your access to content. The content is being beaten, therefore the problem isn't with the game, it's with the players.

And seriously? It's time to put down the keyboard and walk away. You're now starting to accuse the game of problems that only exist in your drama-filled universe...that is, because you can't find enough people that either you don't dislike or don't hate your guts, you can't go any further.

Welcome to the one skill you can't cap. Social.

[FrankReynolds]

Sorry, S-E is not responsible for player egos blocking your access to content. The content is being beaten, therefore the problem isn't with the game, it's with the players.

And seriously? It's time to put down the keyboard and walk away. You're now starting to accuse the game of problems that only exist in your drama-filled universe...that is, because you can't find enough people that either you don't dislike or don't hate your guts, you can't go any further.

Welcome to the one skill you can't cap. Social.

Okay, and it's not the world governments keeping people from having food in third world countries. Mark Zuckerberg has a billion dollars. The system is working fine. Those starving kids just haven't learned to social.

Sorry guy. When I want to "Social" I talk to people. Quit BSing like social is what these linkshells and groups are about. They're about getting gear. When you go to work, it's to make money. Any "Social" that happens is a happy coincidence. Same thing in game. Most people are hanging out with a bunch of people that they really could care less about just to earn something. If it was about "Social", the content would be beatable by "Social" linkshells. Not highly trained professionals.

[Yinnyth]

Right now solo rewards are either useless or just for cosmetics, 6-players rewards are equally useless as 18-person rewards are so much more powerful. The gap between a highly competent player (and successful player) is so high that average/incompetent/unsuccessful players are forced to either buy gil or bot to buy the win from delve (50mil is it?). Content is inaccessible to players. Game is too unfriendly. Player base getting too toxic and elistist.

All Item Level 100+ items are getting a boost soon which will help to close the gap a tiny bit.

Content is equally accessable to all players, the difference between hardcore and casual players has merely become more visible. Why is this a bad thing? Why is it bad that people who devote more time and energy to the game have something to show for it? Does it detract from your ability to play the game if the game has people who are stronger than you in it?

Extremely casual players have reives, quests, new jobs, coalition assignments, mog gardens, and soon monstrosity. Slightly less casual players have skirmish, pick-up delve, and WK reives. Hardcore players have delve NMs and megaboss.

No matter how casual or hardcore you are, this expansion has given you some avenue of advancement for your character. So why do you look at the hardcore players, covet the things they earned by devoting themselves to the game, and think you should have it for a fraction of effort? Why are you incapable of just enjoying the content which was designed specifically for your level of play?

[Xtrasweettea]

Okay, and it's not the world governments keeping people from having food in third world countries. Mark Zuckerberg has a billion dollars. The system is working fine. Those starving kids just haven't learned to social.
How the hell do you function mentally, Frank? The above line doesn't come from any rational thinking person. You sound like those politicians and public fanatics who take debates or topics and try to fit them into a narrative that they themselves and their followers could only comprehend in order to try to win an argument or prove themselves correct on a topic.

First off, the world that this whole thread is about is a fake world. Players are not doing Reives and Delve in the Amazon Rainforest. Players are doing these events in the fake world of Vanadiel. The starving kids in the real world are not lobbying to the president of Zimbabwe to get a DD slot in a Delve run so they can take on the local wildlife for plasm. Mark Zuckerberg isn't rich just from chatting with people. Quit trying to fit everything into a "Real World to Vanadiel" comparison. The majority of the time it isn't necessary to make such a comparison. Your statement doesn't make any sense at all.

Second, Rustic was referring to the term "Social" as the umbrella set of skills used to order to communicate with others. If someone wants to get something from someone else, social skills are needed. Rustic isn't talking about "chatting with others in a Social LS." Rustic was referring to these type of skills:
Diplomacy
Listening
Compromise
Persuasion
etc.



Sorry guy. When I want to "Social" I talk to people. Quit BSing like social is what these linkshells and groups are about. They're about getting gear. When you go to work, it's to make money. Any "Social" that happens is a happy coincidence. Same thing in game. Most people are hanging out with a bunch of people that they really could care less about just to earn something. If it was about "Social", the content would be beatable by "Social" linkshells. Not highly trained professionals.
You are correct, some of those shells are basically businesses: taking in labor from the players for "payment." The "payment" being progression, gear, plasm, etc. In some of those shells, there is no form of casual conversation going on, you can be correct on that. Though, your definition of "Social" is not what Rustic's definition of "Social" is. Which doesn't make Rustic wrong. It makes you wrong for not comprehending what he said. Rustic didn't mention "Social Linkshells" and those types of shells winning these events.

Then again, I am sure what Rustic stated offended you, therefore he is wrong. Which seems to fit your reasoning for replying to his response (as well as many other responses and posts I have seen from you).

Just like how I am jumping to respond to your post. Though I am not offended by your statement: I am just responding out of sheer wonderment of how you function. I am still dumbfounded by the first paragraph of your statement.

[Oddwaffle]

All Item Level 100+ items are getting a boost soon which will help to close the gap a tiny bit.

Content is equally accessable to all players, the difference between hardcore and casual players has merely become more visible. Why is this a bad thing? Why is it bad that people who devote more time and energy to the game have something to show for it? Does it detract from your ability to play the game if the game has people who are stronger than you in it?

Extremely casual players have reives, quests, new jobs, coalition assignments, mog gardens, and soon monstrosity. Slightly less casual players have skirmish, pick-up delve, and WK reives. Hardcore players have delve NMs and megaboss.

No matter how casual or hardcore you are, this expansion has given you some avenue of advancement for your character. So why do you look at the hardcore players, covet the things they earned by devoting themselves to the game, and think you should have it for a fraction of effort? Why are you incapable of just enjoying the content which was designed specifically for your level of play?

The bad thing is the wide gap. Alienation of hardcore and casual players. The gap needs to exist but has to be small. This is sort of like the rich vs middle class and poor people. You want it to be extremely small.

You forget that casual and hardcore players both pay the same amount. If FFXI had a pay to win shop then it's another story. Each players have his known sets of demand. A good business can fulfill most demands. If you tell the casual players that they can not have the same thing as hardcore ones and there is a huge gap between them then they will quit. They already quit a lot. A game with few casual player will be dry and toxic to play.

Casual players want the same reward or at least similar to hardcore players. It's unreasonable but that's what your customers demand. They want the best stuff with the lowest cost. You can't do that or you will be selling your goods for $0. However, you can try to give them something close. That means give rewards that are similar. Sure you can hive hardcore players slightly better gear but never make it clear that casual players will be make inferior cause people will quit.

Also, you should look up accessibility in business/gaming. It generally means lack of barrier to get to. Delve is not accessible by casual players because they don't have time to play and can not win because they do not have enough skills to win. Revive gives a reward too weak compare to Delve and wildskeeper take hours to finish (that's why you have a lot of afks BTW).

[Rustic]

You never needed good gear or much coordination to do old 75 content like sky, sea, dyanamis camp kings ect. A lot of the good players quit. Joe average that never swaps gear and does some horrible damage will never be able to win a delve boss run.

*snip*

After the 75 end game era Abyssea and VW kind of made bad players do ok with super buffs, and temp items. Now that those things are gone in SoA you can see how bad a lot of players that still play really are.

This, basically. And the emperor not only has no clothes once again, but should never be allowed to claim them. In this case, literally. Go after what gear equals your capacity, rather than whining about not being able to get the best in the game...because you're not good enough to do so.

That will certainly include me, but I won't be one of the whiny prats going "I shooooould geeeeet alllll theee geeeeears!".

[Rustic]

The gap between the elite/competent players and the average casual/incompetent players are too high. It's the difference between having fun and quit the game. SE needs to close this gap not 6 months from now, not 3 months from now but right NOW.

If you'd like to know why the gap between the competent and incompetent exists at such a high level...it's because Abyssea did exactly what you wanted. Make it as brain-dead easy as possible to do "elite" content, then pat you on the back for your good job because FFXI is going to be dead soon anyway, now that we have FFXIV!

And then FFXIV 1.0 folded and suddenly FFXI wasn't dead, but the "softening" effects of Abyssea continued all the way into Adoulin. And here we are.

If you don't have tough content, you don't get competent players in any numbers. You get mouthbreathers that THINK they're competent and then can't handle the shock of actually having something that takes real effort.

For them, there's plenty of content, even in Adoulin. But if you think that you should be getting the best of the best gear without skill, may you spend the rest of the expansion AFKing in Reives.

[Rustic]

Sorry guy. When I want to "Social" I talk to people. Quit BSing like social is what these linkshells and groups are about. They're about getting gear. When you go to work, it's to make money. Any "Social" that happens is a happy coincidence. Same thing in game. Most people are hanging out with a bunch of people that they really could care less about just to earn something. If it was about "Social", the content would be beatable by "Social" linkshells. Not highly trained professionals.

And here's that fail in big neon letters.

You clearly can't work with others, because if you could, you'd already be doing so. That's what I mean by "social"

Cannot Play Well With Others. You are anti-social.

FFXI's real skill barrier has always been the ability to work as part of a team- this is a Japanese-made MMO, teamwork is not only important, at the top it's frickin' mandatory...and it's a skill even a mediocre player by other MMO game standards can manage.

The important role is the one the team needs, not what you need. Be flexible. Contribute what's needed, not what you prefer. Don't make excuses or bitch, make what needs to happen, happen. Don't whine that you do less DPS because what your alliance wants is that extra TH from you putting a Thief's Knife into something's face instead of some gawdly D: UBAR weapon.

The reason NA linkshells and players have -always- been weaker on average (not that there haven't been NA LS who CAN do the job and do it well) is because frankly, we're more prone to want to be special snowflakes and "I" players vs. "we" players.

It doesn't matter how many 99's or gear-ups you get. If you can't work well with others, then you aren't going into content where the key is "works well with others" and winning the whole enchilada.

[Yinnyth]

The bad thing is the wide gap. Alienation of hardcore and casual players. The gap needs to exist but has to be small. This is sort of like the rich vs middle class and poor people. You want it to be extremely small.

You forget that casual and hardcore players both pay the same amount. If FFXI had a pay to win shop then it's another story. Each players have his known sets of demand. A good business can fulfill most demands. If you tell the casual players that they can not have the same thing as hardcore ones and there is a huge gap between them then they will quit. They already quit a lot. A game with few casual player will be dry and toxic to play.

You forget that casual players get exactly the same thing for their money that hardcore players get for their money. You get access to a virtual world, and that is all your money affords you. It does not guarantee you're going to have the best gear. It does not even guarantee you're going to be anywhere near the best. Would you complain that other guys in the club get more ladies than you even though you paid exactly the same price to get into the club?

We play the game for entertainment. Do you think delve megabosses are any more entertaining than skirmish? Why would you obsess over something that's too difficult for you instead of enjoying something that's just right for you? Oatixur is not a real thing. It's a virtual item which grants just as much enjoyment from obtaining it as any other upgrade your character might obtain.

[FrankReynolds]

How the hell do you function mentally, Frank? The above line doesn't come from any rational thinking person. You sound like those politicians and public fanatics who take debates or topics and try to fit them into a narrative that they themselves and their followers could only comprehend in order to try to win an argument or prove themselves correct on a topic.

I'm sorry, was the object to lose the debate? Am I running the wrong way coach?


First off, the world that this whole thread is about is a fake world. Players are not doing Reives and Delve in the Amazon Rainforest. Players are doing these events in the fake world of Vanadiel. The starving kids in the real world are not lobbying to the president of Zimbabwe to get a DD slot in a Delve run so they can take on the local wildlife for plasm. Mark Zuckerberg isn't rich just from chatting with people. Quit trying to fit everything into a "Real World to Vanadiel" comparison. The majority of the time it isn't necessary to make such a comparison. Your statement doesn't make any sense at all.

I took the notion that "If anybody is doing this it must be good" and gave an extreme example of how flawed that logic really is. Anything else you read into that is on you. The fact that a few people are doing X content is only good if your goal is to exclude almost everyone. Why would any sane person who is trying to make a fun exciting game purposely make content that most of their paying customers will not use? Does that really sound like a rational way to conduct business?

Forget that you just want to have special gear that's better than everyone else for a minute and explain to me how making joey the pink ninja lose hope of ever reaching a satisfying level of gear and quit is good for the game beyond the prospect of you not having to talk to him in a game that you so adamantly claim is about social skills.


Second, Rustic was referring to the term "Social" as the umbrella set of skills used to order to communicate with others. If someone wants to get something from someone else, social skills are needed. Rustic isn't talking about "chatting with others in a Social LS." Rustic was referring to these type of skills:
Diplomacy
Listening
Compromise
Persuasion
etc.

I know what he was talking about and it's exactly the opposite of what most of these shells use to conduct themselves. There are a few that are made up up close friends who happen to be very good at the game. The majority of them are not. Go google LS applications and read some of the crap these people say to prospective members. I would venture a guesstimate and say that most people won't / can't join these shells because of things that have absolutely nothing to do with their skill which makes the idea that "The best players should have the best gear" absolute BS. It's really about who is in the cool kids club and joining that club has nothing to do with being a good fair decent person.


You are correct, some of those shells are basically businesses: taking in labor from the players for "payment." The "payment" being progression, gear, plasm, etc. In some of those shells, there is no form of casual conversation going on, you can be correct on that. Though, your definition of "Social" is not what Rustic's definition of "Social" is. Which doesn't make Rustic wrong. It makes you wrong for not comprehending what he said. Rustic didn't mention "Social Linkshells" and those types of shells winning these events. [/quote]

I know he didn't mention social shells. I did. I thought I was pretty clear on why I brought them up too.


Then again, I am sure what Rustic stated offended you, therefore he is wrong. Which seems to fit your reasoning for replying to his response (as well as many other responses and posts I have seen from you).

Just like how I am jumping to respond to your post. Though I am not offended by your statement: I am just responding out of sheer wonderment of how you function. I am still dumbfounded by the first paragraph of your statement.

I don't think there is really anything that you or anyone else on the internet could do that would offend me. *Meaningful Discourse is the fastest route to enlightenment on many occasions and I can't think of a better place to have it than on a forum built specifically for that. If I saw yinnyth at a bar, I would probably buy him a beer and laugh about how stupid this conversation is.

EDIT: forgot a word or two in my rush to leave the office.

[Stompa]

There seems to be confusion over the hardcore/casual player thing. In my reference it doesn't correlate to good/bad players. When I say casual gamer I don't mean somebody who can't play the game at a high standard, I mean somebody who because of RL obligations can only play a few hours a night. My LS has about five veteran gamers who can only play for 1-3 hrs per night, but their game skills are super-tight and they know Vanadiel inside-out. Bad players is something else, you can have people logged in all day every day who can't play for toffee. The point is that playing games for 12 hours a day or so, is a LUXURY, it means you have a priveleged life. If you are working double shifts stacking crates or w/e, then login to Ffxi, you might be the most highly skilled gamer on Earth, but you are still tired and can only play 1-3 hours coz u have to get up early for more work.
So you need to make a distinction between good/bad (skilled) gamers, and people who can afford to play games for certain long/short amounts of time. Hardcore etc. doesnt really cover it, coz I know those ppl on my shell log in and play the game really intensely for those few hours then log out, so I guess they are hardcore they just don't have the luxury of Extended-Playtime that some others do. Getting rewards from 10-hour battles doesn't mean you are a better player, it just means you have 10 hours to spare, and sadly most people don't.

[Yinnyth]

Delve megabosses don't require you to sit at your computer for 10 hours to beat them. Delve is 45 minutes long. Everything beyond that is just the prep work which can be done ahead of time. Or is 15 minutes of gathering and 45 minutes of delving too much time for a casual player to set aside?

When I use the term "hardcore", I mean a person who cares deeply about being a better player and shapes parts of their RL around FFXI. For example: making sure they work specific hours so they have time free for linkshell events, spending lots of money on hardware to play FFXI on, spending free time studying aspects of the game or pondering things which give you difficulty.

[Oddwaffle]

You forget that casual players get exactly the same thing for their money that hardcore players get for their money. You get access to a virtual world, and that is all your money affords you. It does not guarantee you're going to have the best gear. It does not even guarantee you're going to be anywhere near the best. Would you complain that other guys in the club get more ladies than you even though you paid exactly the same price to get into the club?

We play the game for entertainment. Do you think delve megabosses are any more entertaining than skirmish? Why would you obsess over something that's too difficult for you instead of enjoying something that's just right for you? Oatixur is not a real thing. It's a virtual item which grants just as much enjoyment from obtaining it as any other upgrade your character might obtain.

No,you are wrong. They quit because they are not getting what they paid for. That is entertainment. The game is not fun enough for people who quit. There are many reasons and one of them is the widening gap between players. You need to take some economics reading to understand the difference between value and price. It doesn't matter if it's skirmish, delve or just sitting around playing with mog gardens. Casual people are getting less value than hardcore players. They have no access to delve content and can not participate in events that take more time. Therefore they have no access to better reward equipments. Maybe some people still have fun but FFXI is having people NOT HAVING FUN. That means some people realize they are not getting what they want for their money, time and effort => they quit.

On your club example: that's why some people don't go to clubs. Think about it for a second. Clubs serve a particular class of customers, they know they need to get the men in by getting the ladies in. The ladies attract the men. That's why you get clubs with free entry for hot ladies. Does FFXI serve a particular class of customers like the hardcore players? Should it be a super hardcore like the olden days with LS points, ultra rare drop and sadistic wait timer? OR do hardcore players realize that they actually need casual players to help move the game along and therefore should have SE give free access to casual players (i.e. like free to play games).

If you put effort and time into something then it has real worth no matter what it is. It can be anything from random piece of imagination to the largest construct in the world. Virtual item or no is irrelevant. It does not have to exist for it to have any worth because the value comes from the person placing it, not the item itself.

Stop thinking about 'this is the right thing'. There is no such thing as the right thing in business, only success and failure. Also, what was a success yesterday can be a failure today. Putting hardcore players on top is the failure at the moment and it is showing.

[Oddwaffle]

If you'd like to know why the gap between the competent and incompetent exists at such a high level...it's because Abyssea did exactly what you wanted. Make it as brain-dead easy as possible to do "elite" content, then pat you on the back for your good job because FFXI is going to be dead soon anyway, now that we have FFXIV!

And then FFXIV 1.0 folded and suddenly FFXI wasn't dead, but the "softening" effects of Abyssea continued all the way into Adoulin. And here we are.

If you don't have tough content, you don't get competent players in any numbers. You get mouthbreathers that THINK they're competent and then can't handle the shock of actually having something that takes real effort.

For them, there's plenty of content, even in Adoulin. But if you think that you should be getting the best of the best gear without skill, may you spend the rest of the expansion AFKing in Reives.

Since there is such a gap therefore we should introduce super hard content for players and hope that they will become better and competent? That's the solution you wanted to talk about right? And that's what SE had done. Do you think FFXI is now growing in numbers or do you think people are quitting?

The largest mistake SE made was making content around alliance and hardcore players with lots of play time. They throw out the hard content and hope people will change. Then they rapidly lowering the difficulty so everyone can do it. Well they failed, ever since Abbyssea. They failed even bigger when they put in better rewards for large competent alliance than small party and solo content. Look at what's happening.

Content that can fulfill demands from all customers begins with the one who gets the lowest value from your product. It's like a team marching. You are only as fast as your slowest member. Make the core or largest content for the most casual players. Then make content for people who are less casual after that. Keep the gap between the slowest person and the fastest ones close. Once the fastest people start finishing your easy/casual content, make harder (medium difficulty) content for them. This time give slightly better rewards but at slower rate. Once they start finishing those then you throw in your hardest content. This time you can have even slightly better rewards and can also decrease the drop rate for this content. Casual people would be finishing your most casual content and semi-hardcore players would be enjoying your mid-range content. Finally, release new casual content once you notice casual players finishing your easy content. You can introduce better items here for casual players to catch up to the hardcore players.

Note: I define casual players as people with less than 15 hours per week playing or looking for info about the game. 15-25 hours would be mid-range normal players and more than 25+ hours would be hardcore. Casual players don't mean lower skills but generally they are less skillful and have less understanding of the game than a hardcore player. This is because less time training and studying the subject as well as access to events taking more time and effort than they can afford.

[Xtrasweettea]

I'm sorry, was the object to lose the debate? Am I running the wrong way coach?
I am hoping your goal in this is to persuade others to see your point of view and maybe change their thinking a little. Extremism and forced narrative thinking does not usually assist those in trying to convince an audience who is not already in agreement with the speaker to change their minds. Instead it usually does the opposite.

I am assuming you are trying to get a point across and attempt to change the person’s (whom you are responding to) mind when you respond to a post you do not happen to agree with.


I took the notion that "If anybody is doing this it must be good" and gave an extreme example of how flawed that logic really is. Anything else you read into that is on you.
Extreme examples are usually flawed to begin with. They are outliers. They do not properly reflect what happens in most outcomes.

Also, these examples have different paths and nearly no connections to each other. As a reader of your post, I had to put together the strings that weren’t there in order to make sense of it. Anyone reading it without a proper explanation after the fact would have to “read into it.” That’s another reason why extreme examples really do not work to help get a point across.



The fact that a few people are doing X content is only good if your goal is to exclude almost everyone.

I did not know my goal of doing this content was to exclude other players. I thought the goal was me making the most out of the money I spend on the game and the cost of opportunity associated with playing the game. Usually the job roles I play the most often have to include others for their more effect monster slaying skills than I would do.

I also believe that most players who participate in such content are on purposely excluding almost everyone.


Why would any sane person who is trying to make a fun exciting game purposely make content that most of their paying customers will not use? Does that really sound like a rational way to conduct business?
Most of SE’s paying customers from which region: NA, JP, or EU? I explained before that there is a strong possibility that SE is tailoring the game for their native audience (JP). We as US and EU audience members were invited along for the ride. JP culture strives more on team work and less on individuality than we do here in the US.

There is a point to where the fault of SE for how they make the content stops and the point where fault of the player begins for not participating in events. Players do have a choice to participate in the events. Players also have the choice for how long they play, what they do, if they change off of that DD job that is like the other thousand DDs on their server, etc. How they choose to spend their time and what tools they use the game provides them is where the fault of the player starts. You cannot keep blaming SE for everything without removing all the faults that the playerbase creates through their decision-making.

You can’t blame SE for the social barriers created by the playerbase. Most of these social barriers are created because of the amount of which jobs the players have most of versus what is needed. In the average plasm party, there are only 8 DD spots (6 DDs, 2 THFs). The 10 other spots are for support jobs (including tanks and sacrifices). The shouter will want to get the most plasm per hour, so he or she will try to get the best DD for the least amount of effort. The shouter then puts up that barrier of “Delve DD only, RankX.” The shouter can do that because the +85% of the playerbase are DD. There is a high demand for what little spots there are for the run for DD. The shouter is practicing what is called “progressive credentialism.”

Is it morally wrong? It can be, yes. Progressive credentialism can exclude DDs with real skill and know-how but lack the credential that the shouter is looking for.

It is not wrong in the sense of cost: the cost of the shouter and the 17 other people he or she will eventually group with (whether the cost be time, opportunity, gil, etc.). It is easier to use progressive credentalism then it is to interview and question every DD that sends to a /tell.

Which would you rather do with your three hours of game play: be morally straight and not progress, or progress at the cost of possibly excluding others? Keep in mind, you joining a run that the shouter is using “progressive credentialism” does count as not being morally straight.



Forget that you just want to have special gear that's better than everyone else for a minute […]
Yup, I just want that special gear to show around town to everyone to gloat. I have no intention of using it for the benefit of others. That Tamaxchi that I use to cure and help land enfeebles will never see the digital light of Vanadiel, and I will not use it to benefit the other players who I may one day want to team up with to reach a goal. You are correct. You found me out!

Wait, I think this may be a better response to that quote:

You are correct. I shouldn’t be selfishly focusing on getting better gear. I feel guilty for my actions. I have “progressive guilt.” I will add that guilt to my “male guilt”, “white guilt”, and “American guilt” I have to carry around with me every day to remind me of my privilege. Thank you for showing me the errors of my way. I will toss all of my gear I earned by playing support jobs, jump onto DRK, and sit and in town like the rest of the oppressed. I am so sorry for oppressing you and others!


[…]and explain to me how making joey the pink ninja lose hope of ever reaching a satisfying level of gear and quit is good for the game beyond the prospect of you not having to talk to him in a game that you so adamantly claim is about social skills.
Am I explaining to you how to prevent Joey from losing hope with the use of social skills?

Am I explaining to you how my lack of social interaction with an unknown ninja is good for the game?

The question doesn’t make sense. Am I trying to not talk to him? Is he full of hope and wants to reach a specific goal but can’t because I won’t talk to him?

Explain.



I know what he was talking about and it's exactly the opposite of what most of these shells use to conduct themselves. There are a few that are made up up close friends who happen to be very good at the game. The majority of them are not. Go google LS applications and read some of the crap these people say to prospective members. I would venture a guesstimate and say that most people won't / can't join these shells because of things that have absolutely nothing to do with their skill which makes the idea that "The best players should have the best gear" absolute BS. It's really about who is in the cool kids club and joining that club has nothing to do with being a good fair decent person.

I have looked at LS applications before. I didn’t join many because of their barriers of entry. I got into two endgame LSs prior to Abyssea because I had RDM. I didn’t sign up at all, I got invited for the jobs I had and the game-play skills I had.

You might be correct about the amount of players that may not be able to join a shell. Though, if the owners of the shell have taken the time to create the shell, they can set the standards. If the players looking do not have what is needed for that shell, if they really wanted to join, they would aim to get what the shell is asking for.

The idea isn’t “The best players should have the best gear,” the idea is “What players’ sets of skills, jobs, and gear that would work best for the shell as a whole in order to reach the shell’s goal and benefit the members at the same time?” The idea of the shell is to reach the goal in the most efficient manner effectively. It is what real life businesses do (you know, that business point you keep bringing up). There are shells with a “good-ol-boy” system, but those are very rare.

[Yinnyth]

No,you are wrong. They quit because they are not getting what they paid for. That is entertainment. The game is not fun enough for people who quit. There are many reasons and one of them is the widening gap between players. You need to take some economics reading to understand the difference between value and price. It doesn't matter if it's skirmish, delve or just sitting around playing with mog gardens. Casual people are getting less value than hardcore players. They have no access to delve content and can not participate in events that take more time. Therefore they have no access to better reward equipments. Maybe some people still have fun but FFXI is having people NOT HAVING FUN.

It sounds to me like these people can't have fun if someone else is stronger than them in the game.

A casual player is not able to keep pace with all the changes in the game. They simply don't have enough time to collect everything their character needs for advancement. As a result, that casual player will constantly lag behind the progress of a hardcore player. Your argument is that the casual player gets less value from the game because of this, and you are correct. Ignoring the fact that I use 3 different accounts for right now, I pay the same amount, but I enjoy the game for longer periods of time. No amount of coding will change the fact that a casual player gets less from the game than I get.

So every time a casual player cries out that he is getting less value from the game than I am, should the devs bend to his will and grant him his request? No. Because the only way to make it so everyone gets the same value from the game (as you have laid it out) is to just hand everyone the exact same gear. No quest. No boss. Just everyone gets the same value. Whether you have 1 minute per year, or 24 hours a day to play FFXI, everyone would be getting the same value for their money then, and it would finally be fair.

The value of the game is in how much it entertains you. Apparently, you're only entertained when you have final tier equipment.



People are leaving the game one way or another, and there's no way you can even know how many of them are leaving for which reason. From a business standpoint, it makes the most sense to alienate NONE of your members. We have ONE hardcore event in SoA so far. The rest of the entire expansion is softcore. Yet somehow, this one hardcore event is enough to get all the casual players all hot and bothered about how they don't have enough time to play the game. Isn't that what a game is supposed to do? Make its players wish they could play more?

[FrankReynolds]

I am hoping your goal in this is to persuade others to see your point of view and maybe change their thinking a little. Extremism and forced narrative thinking does not usually assist those in trying to convince an audience who is not already in agreement with the speaker to change their minds. Instead it usually does the opposite.

Uhh... says who? Any facts to back that? Or were you just hoping I would believe you because you used no extreme comparisons?


I am assuming you are trying to get a point across and attempt to change the person’s (whom you are responding to) mind when you respond to a post you do not happen to agree with.

Not necessarily. I may not be able to change the mind of the fanatic, but I can at least keep him from swaying others by pointing out the flaws in his arguments.


Extreme examples are usually flawed to begin with. They are outliers. They do not properly reflect what happens in most outcomes.

Says you...


Also, these examples have different paths and nearly no connections to each other. As a reader of your post, I had to put together the strings that weren’t there in order to make sense of it. Anyone reading it without a proper explanation after the fact would have to “read into it.” That’s another reason why extreme examples really do not work to help get a point across.

Any example, even the simplest is left to interpretation. Just because it wasn't immediately clear to you does not mean it wasn't concise. Why do you think there are book clubs? Everyone interprets things differently. That which offends your sensibilities makes another person laugh just as what I said made me chuckle a little inside.



I did not know my goal of doing this content was to exclude other players.

I never said it was. You don't make the game.

I simply pointed out that making content for a niche in a finite base of customers is a poor business model if you can't get those niche customers to supplement the lost income from the larger majority. They can't. You guys are not multiplying and you are not offering to increase payments.



I thought the goal was me making the most out of the money I spend on the game and the cost of opportunity associated with playing the game.

What do you think I am trying to do? How does telling them to keep making things I can't do or don't enjoy equate to me making the best of the money I spent? Furthermore, if I don't enjoy it and I quit, how does the loss of development funding benefit you?


I also believe that most players who participate in such content are on purposely excluding almost everyone.

They do. Why teach a guy to fish when you can make a killing selling him the fish you caught?


Most of SE’s paying customers from which region: NA, JP, or EU? I explained before that there is a strong possibility that SE is tailoring the game for their native audience (JP). We as US and EU audience members were invited along for the ride. JP culture strives more on team work and less on individuality than we do here in the US.

That doesn't change the fact that they aren't doing it. It doesn't matter if one culture likes X while another likes Y. If the people who hate X far outnumber the people who like X then they are your key demographic.


There is a point to where the fault of SE for how they make the content stops and the point where fault of the player begins for not participating in events. Players do have a choice to participate in the events. Players also have the choice for how long they play, what they do, if they change off of that DD job that is like the other thousand DDs on their server, etc. How they choose to spend their time and what tools they use the game provides them is where the fault of the player starts. You cannot keep blaming SE for everything without removing all the faults that the playerbase creates through their decision-making.

Yes, I can. They are selling something. They either make what the customer likes, or they don't. It's not the customers job to like something just because they made it. FFXI is not my child. I don't owe it unconditional love.


You can’t blame SE for the social barriers created by the playerbase. Most of these social barriers are created because of the amount of which jobs the players have most of versus what is needed.

Who makes the jobs again? Who makes the content that requires said jobs? Not I.


In the average plasm party, there are only 8 DD spots (6 DDs, 2 THFs). The 10 other spots are for support jobs (including tanks and sacrifices). The shouter will want to get the most plasm per hour, so he or she will try to get the best DD for the least amount of effort. The shouter then puts up that barrier of “Delve DD only, RankX.” The shouter can do that because the +85% of the playerbase are DD. There is a high demand for what little spots there are for the run for DD. The shouter is practicing what is called “progressive credentialism.”

As a company, they are responsible for making that effect as minimal as possible. It's not my job to run around giving sermons convincing people that they like something they don't or that they should invite someone they don't want. This sort of behavior will never go away.

The only people who can have any real affect on it are the games developers. No one, not you, not me or anyone else is going to affect the attitude change required to fix this without their intervention.


Is it morally wrong? It can be, yes. Progressive credentialism can exclude DDs with real skill and know-how but lack the credential that the shouter is looking for.

It is not wrong in the sense of cost: the cost of the shouter and the 17 other people he or she will eventually group with (whether the cost be time, opportunity, gil, etc.). It is easier to use progressive credentalism then it is to interview and question every DD that sends to a /tell.

That is why you don't make all of the fun / rewarding content rely on this.


Which would you rather do with your three hours of game play: be morally straight and not progress, or progress at the cost of possibly excluding others? Keep in mind, you joining a run that the shouter is using “progressive credentialism” does count as not being morally straight.

It's a catch 22. Human behavior will not change. The content can.



Yup, I just want that special gear to show around town to everyone to gloat. I have no intention of using it for the benefit of others. That Tamaxchi that I use to cure and help land enfeebles will never see the digital light of Vanadiel, and I will not use it to benefit the other players who I may one day want to team up with to reach a goal. You are correct. You found me out!

And you don't think everyone else wants it for the same reason? They want to cure and land enfeebles just like you. You don't think they deserve to.

Wait, I think this may be a better response to that quote:


You are correct. I shouldn’t be selfishly focusing on getting better gear. I feel guilty for my actions. I have “progressive guilt.” I will add that guilt to my “male guilt”, “white guilt”, and “American guilt” I have to carry around with me every day to remind me of my privilege. Thank you for showing me the errors of my way. I will toss all of my gear I earned by playing support jobs, jump onto DRK, and sit and in town like the rest of the oppressed. I am so sorry for oppressing you and others!

Ahh, but you play support because you have work ethic right? in a video game.. work ethic...



Am I explaining to you how to prevent Joey from losing hope with the use of social skills?

Am I explaining to you how my lack of social interaction with an unknown ninja is good for the game?

The question doesn’t make sense. Am I trying to not talk to him? Is he full of hope and wants to reach a specific goal but can’t because I won’t talk to him?

Explain.

Just a few paragraphs ago you explained why he can't get in a group. I am here arguing that they need to affect changes to lessen his need for that group and / or the difficulty of getting what the group wants him to have in order to be accepted. You are arguing against said changes and saying that joey just needs to suck less and kiss more ass (I'm paraphrasing your whole social argument).

Explain how this is good for the game and how it could possibly make the game more popular.


I have looked at LS applications before. I didn’t join many because of their barriers of entry. I got into two endgame LSs prior to Abyssea because I had RDM. I didn’t sign up at all, I got invited for the jobs I had and the game-play skills I had.

See that's what you think, but actually you got in because they could afford to bring in people and try them out without significant risk. The content was more forgiving of crappy players and / or gear. They made it take forever to get good gear, but just about anyone could partake.


You might be correct about the amount of players that may not be able to join a shell. Though, if the owners of the shell have taken the time to create the shell, they can set the standards. If the players looking do not have what is needed for that shell, if they really wanted to join, they would aim to get what the shell is asking for.

See, this is the catch. Most of what these shells want takes ten times longer to get solo. Many people look at the requirements and go "well... I don't have time for that crap". Things need to be done to make it so that it doesn't take 6 months to gear up for an event that will give you gear ten times better in two days. It's ass backwards. There is nothing worse than working your ass off knowing that some other guy is getting paid loot for almost nothing just because he knows the boss (So to speak).


The idea isn’t “The best players should have the best gear,” the idea is “What players’ sets of skills, jobs, and gear that would work best for the shell as a whole in order to reach the shell’s goal and benefit the members at the same time?” The idea of the shell is to reach the goal in the most efficient manner effectively. It is what real life businesses do (you know, that business point you keep bringing up). There are shells with a “good-ol-boy” system, but those are very rare.

And that's great for the shell, but bad for the game and by extension the games developers. Linkshells make lots of money when they can aquire / sell things no one else can get. But that doesn't help sell subs. It just helps RMT really.

EDIT: hurt my back earlier, on lots of pain pills, take with a grain of salt etc.

[Stompa]

Delve megabosses don't require you to sit at your computer for 10 hours to beat them. Delve is 45 minutes long. Everything beyond that is just the prep work which can be done ahead of time. Or is 15 minutes of gathering and 45 minutes of delving too much time for a casual player to set aside?

When I use the term "hardcore", I mean a person who cares deeply about being a better player and shapes parts of their RL around FFXI. For example: making sure they work specific hours so they have time free for linkshell events, spending lots of money on hardware to play FFXI on, spending free time studying aspects of the game or pondering things which give you difficulty.

Well re; your delve point, shout runs take ages to fill up (sometimes) because they are waiting for certain specific job/gear. But you are more importantly missing the point that this Delve run would have to occur precisely during the 2 hrs the player is logged in and it would have to fill-up and start fairly quickly. The odds of that happening are very very small. Most ppl doing Delve are online longer than those two hours, hear a shout and join. That is difficult if you have only a two hour window. And of course then there's delve fails, where they fight it again after losing. Again this wouldn't be possible on such a small gaming window. And also wkrieves, stupendous 7-20+ hour sessions. This is SE at their most Player-Hating, ever. It is anti-gaming. I've been 32 years as a gamer & I know that accessibility and playability are the two gold-standards of videogames, my issue with SOA and some earlier content is that SE don't understand that.
I actually did LOL at your "making sure they work specific hours so they have time free for linkshell events" comment. Given the employment situation and economic problems globally, people are happy to get *a* job, and work whatever hours they are told to, and often work TWO jobs, or triple-shifts. In addition, many gamers are students, they study and then they work in the evenings. These people have a limited gaming window. Neither of your two points ^above would apply to these people.
I am self-employed on the computer, I have a work PC next to my game PC, and can stay log in all day, multitask work and ffxi. But on my LS for example, an average group of people, most people play evenings after work and/or studying. None of them can afford to play for more than 3 hours usually.

[Yinnyth]

I've been 32 years as a gamer & I know that accessibility and playability are the two gold-standards of videogames, my issue with SOA and some earlier content is that SE don't understand that.
I actually did LOL at your "making sure they work specific hours so they have time free for linkshell events" comment. Given the employment situation and economic problems globally, people are happy to get *a* job, and work whatever hours they are told to, and often work TWO jobs, or triple-shifts. In addition, many gamers are students, they study and then they work in the evenings. These people have a limited gaming window. Neither of your two points ^above would apply to these people.

There are more people in this world who can't afford to purchase a computer and copy of the game than there are hardcore FFXI players. This is not a reason against FFXI releasing one hardcore event with rewards in scale to the effort required for them. It is merely an observation to the sad state of the world we live in. If you are working 2 full-time jobs merely to make ends meet, you are in a rough place, and I wish you the best. But MMOs have a system in place where time invested = character progression. If you have less time to invest, you have less character progression. Being upset that you don't have the same things ingame that I have is less a statement of how messed up the game is, and more a statement of how messed up our world is.

SE gives things that you can do with only 2 hours per day, 3 days a week. Your chances improve even greater if you find a group of people who happen to run events during your 2 hour window that are willing to accept you (like 3 of the people in my delve LS who already have their tojil win despite being RL-focused, but capable of playing well during the limited time they're available.)

Someone who plays the game casually could accept the fact that they are a casual player, and instead of trying to undermine all hardcore content, they could enjoy the majority of new content instead of obsessing over the one event which is beyond their grasp currently.

[Stompa]

......But MMOs have a system in place where time invested = character progression. If you have less time to invest, you have less character progression. Being upset that you don't have the same things ingame that I have is less a statement of how messed up the game is, and more a statement of how messed up our world is.....


Well ok, but re; "character progression", the people I'm talking about have played ffxi religiously for 9~ years, and have all their 99 jobs and af3+2 sets etc.and every preSOA storyline finished, high crafting, etc. Their characters are not unprogressed at all, they are simply unable to engage in single runs that last for 10 hours or w/e.
Also the example of ppl around the world can't afford computers/software is irrelevant, we are talking about Final Fantasy fans, who played all the pre Xi games by Squaresoft and the later SE games. They have computers, they are good at games, their ffxi chars are top-notch, they just have a problem fitting long events into their lives. That isnt the planet earths problem, that is SE making some gear that only ppl with oodles of freetime can obtain.
Perhaps more importantly, and as I originally said, this was not a problem when your options were RME's or the lesser Magians. Anyone could solo a powerful magian on their own timescale, it was better than AH/nm drop weapons by a huge degree, so a player could feel that even though he didn't have time for RME, he could farm a magian with a very respectable dmg/delay/augment bonus on it which at least kept him in the same ballpark as players with RME. That is NO LONGER TRUE. SoA weapons are over double dmg of magian99s. So there really is a new SoA era gap between the haves and the havenots, which did not exist even remotely as much in the RME-magian gap.

[Yinnyth]

No, not anyone could solo a magian on their own time scale. Soloing a magian required a base amount of time investment. To the extreme, let's say you have only 5 minutes per day that you can play, and you are a bard who wants his fire dagger. Well, you're going to need fire weather which is rare as heck and very unlikely to happen during that 5 minute window during which you play, or firesday which is also unlikely to occur during your 5 minute window, so most of your playtime is spent hoping you get lucky and actually make progress. But even if you do get lucky, you're a bard, so you're fortunate if you can even kill one enemy in your limited time.

This is similar to what a person with only 2 hours to play faces today. The chances of them getting a delve run together during that slim window of time they play is relatively small (ignoring for a moment that they could create or join a linkshell which does scheduled delve runs during their available time). SE cannot make the game cater to every RL handicap a person has though. If it's fair to make it so casual players can obtain everything ingame regardless of how much play time they have, we need to find the lowest common denominator and scale it down to him, so everything needs to be doable in 5 minutes per day.

Would an MMO that only takes 5 minutes of your time per day in order to "win" be entertaining to you? I don't think 5 minutes of entertainment per day would be worth my subscription fee.

[Rustic]

Since there is such a gap therefore we should introduce super hard content for players and hope that they will become better and competent? That's the solution you wanted to talk about right? And that's what SE had done. Do you think FFXI is now growing in numbers or do you think people are quitting?

The largest mistake SE made was making content around alliance and hardcore players with lots of play time. They throw out the hard content and hope people will change. Then they rapidly lowering the difficulty so everyone can do it. Well they failed, ever since Abbyssea. They failed even bigger when they put in better rewards for large competent alliance than small party and solo content. Look at what's happening.

Same thing that's happening to WoW. As the challenge level declined, the population of the game declines. The casual wants the best shinies for the least effort, no matter what the MMO is. If you make the game that way, you then lose the hardcore population.

Oddly enough, if you -don't- cater to the casual, you last far longer. EvE Online is a feral mass of PvP and steep learning curves requiring in many cases dozens if not 100s of players to prosper in many parts of the game.

(Anyone who disbelieves this, I encourage you to go running around Goon-controlled space sometime and tell them you can take them on. Bring plenty of lube.)

It encourages player quality and teamwork. It succeeds fantastically. If you want casual, Runescape has been catering to you for years. You want to encourage people to play? You get them to go in, stick together, depend on each other. Make your game a casual solo-fest and the biggest reason for player retention goes straight out the door- friends. Comrades.

Abyssea was a failure in that, as people rapidly devolved into two-boxing or soloing much of the content. People stopped depending on each other, even in 6-man exp parties (which no longer exist, thank goodness), and spend much of the game running around in their newbie gear exping their way up through an endless supply of skeletons, crawlers, and bees...and then get to 50+ without even understanding simple things like "what stats are good for my job" or "I need spells, really?"...and are then encouraged to do much the same thing where they can be spoon-fed in Abyssea PT's where again, they often do even LESS.

And the server populations have plummeted. Turning the game into pablum kills it by inches, because in the end, that is the very definition of boring, led along only by the hope of new shinies so you can all be the specialist of snowflakes...because none of you will be special. When the rodeo ends, you could have plunked down $30 for a copy of a console game and felt like you accomplished more.

Now we have a game full of players who have been vastly "underexercised" and once again, are being asked to do the equivalent of a marathon to get to the top. And they whiiiiiiine about it. And want it eaaaaasy.

Screw that. We won't have an FFXI at that rate anymore. There's content for casuals, in Adoulin, but there -has- to be content for players who want a hard mode. And yes, they can't share. If everyone could do it, it wouldn't be hard enough to keep the players who craved a challenge in the game to begin with, and if the gear was identical, nobody would do the hardmode content because it'd be zero reward.

Instead, we have people who think they're competent trying the hardmode content because they want shinies raining down from heaven like Abyssea did and getting burnt. I'm sorry, but either skill up or shut up on that. Another Abyssea and there won't be an FFXI left anymore, because that kind of game is F2P on a dozen dozen companies.

[FrankReynolds]

Would an MMO that only takes 5 minutes of your time per day in order to "win" be entertaining to you? I don't think 5 minutes of entertainment per day would be worth my subscription fee.

I don't think anyone was suggesting that, so your point is irrelevant. The bulk of the game should be beatable by the bulk of the players. Crap that is nigh impossible should give rewards like afterglows and other relatively harmless shiny stuff so that the epeen no lifers can flaunt their skills and achievements without ruining the game for everyone else.

[Louispv]

No, not anyone could solo a magian on their own time scale. Soloing a magian required a base amount of time investment. To the extreme, let's say you have only 5 minutes per day that you can play, and you are a bard who wants his fire dagger. Well, you're going to need fire weather which is rare as heck and very unlikely to happen during that 5 minute window during which you play, or firesday which is also unlikely to occur during your 5 minute window, so most of your playtime is spent hoping you get lucky and actually make progress. But even if you do get lucky, you're a bard, so you're fortunate if you can even kill one enemy in your limited time.
Or they can do it on firesday. It takes 5 times as long but can be done whenever you wish.


This is the similar to what a person with only 2 hours to play faces today. The chances of them getting a delve run together during that slim window of time they play is relatively small (ignoring for a moment that they could create or join a linkshell which does scheduled delve runs during their available time). SE cannot make the game cater to every RL handicap a person has though. If it's fair to make it so casual players can do obtain everything ingame regardless of how much play time they have, we need to find the lowest common denominator and scale it down to him, so everything needs to be doable in 5 minutes per day.
Or they can take all the great ideas they used for years. Can't get floor 100 clears in nyzul? Just get floor 80 5 times. Takes 5 times as long and you don't get drops from floor 100, only the asterium, but anyone can do it. Don't have a LS to kill 100 NM's in abyssea to get you an empy in 2 days? Log in and kill 1 a day, and be done in 100 days. You can simply buy a relic weapon, or you can slowly grind it out 150 currency a day until it's done.

This is infinitely better than what we have now. "Can't beat delve bosses? Well fuck you you'll never level up again!"

What they should do is make a way to get it for anyone. For instance, Plasm shouldn't exist, nor should obsidian chips, there should just be bayld. (they're all magical, Ulbukan sand, how many kinds do we really need anyway?) You can beat Tojil in 45 mins and get a Yaoyahtl helm. Or you can take 2.25 hours to kill him 3 times for the bayld to buy the helm. Or you should be able to do reives for 30 hours to get 200,000 bayld to buy the helm. Maybe let people trade a Qhuillapi helm and 100,000 bayld for a Yaotahtl. Or even slower, you should be able to log in, do your coalition assignments, and then 3 months from now have the bayld to buy the helm. Or at the very least remove all this obsession with time limits. If people really want to spend 6 hours zombie killing, or all SMN killing a Delve fracture, who really is hurt?

Everyone gets the same stuff, the hardcore just gets it faster, or in larger amounts. None of this, "easier events have crappier rewards," bullshit. If gear is level increases, then making the best gear unavailable to most people, means most people will never be able to get to the level cap. This then means there's less people able to help you do things, and thus less people able to even play the game with you. It'd be like requiring you to trade a defending ring into Maat to break the level 70 cap, instead of a fight against him anyone can grind out until they win.

At least SE is learning. If you look at the Item level adjustments on the test server, they're making a set of bayld armor and a delve weapon add roughly 300 acc and attack, and enough DEF/EVA/Magic EVA to let people actually fight Delve NM's without incredibly restrictive MNK/MNK/WAR/Agonbitch/14 support jobs only set ups, that are needed to even scratch the bastards right now.

It won't do much for the idiots who can't understand "Count to 7, then formless strikes" or "Stay on this fucking side of the NM, or the cures won't reach you." but honestly screw those people.

[FrankReynolds]

Screw that. We won't have an FFXI at that rate anymore. There's content for casuals, in Adoulin, but there -has- to be content for players who want a hard mode. And yes, they can't share. If everyone could do it, it wouldn't be hard enough to keep the players who craved a challenge in the game to begin with, and if the gear was identical, nobody would do the hardmode content because it'd be zero reward.

So they can satisfy a bunch of people by pissing off a few or they can satisfy a few by pissing off a bunch of people. That is the bottom line. Your argument suggests that most people are craving something so hard that they probably can't beat it. I highly doubt that.

Your ideas are cute, but they won't make people want to play. People who only have 1-2 hours a day, people who speak the wrong language to get in groups, people who lack the mental capacity, aren't going to change their schedules / lives, learn a language etc. people aren't sucking on purpose and they aren't going to stop just because they add a million new absolute virtues. Hamster wheels keep people playing. Not uber hard OMG no one will ever beat this crap content. That's why there was only one AV and there was nothing in the game that required players having AV's drops to beat it. That stuff drives everyone who can't get into it away.

You know why there are there are a dozen F2P companies offering easy mode content like this? Because it's popular.

[Yinnyth]

Crap that is nigh impossible should give rewards like afterglows

Ok, now I can see the core of our disagreement. I think the reward should be commensurate to the challenge.


I don't think anyone was suggesting that, so your point is irrelevant.
People are suggesting that casual players should be able to obtain everything that hardcore players can obtain. I don't know how casual the most casual player is, so I just made one up. Casual and hardcore is all relative. Once you make it so people who are as casual as you can get their shiny, people who are even more casual than you will still be getting snubbed. So where do you draw the line?


The bulk of the game should be beatable by the bulk of the players.
The bulk of the game is beatable by the bulk of the players. People are merely fixated on one event and treat it like it's the only thing which matters in the game.

Edit: actually, the whole game is currently beatable by every player provided they're good enough at the game, they have enough time already invested into their character, and they can set enough time aside to do the event. In the case of delve, "enough time to do the event" is less time than it takes to watch a movie in theatres.

[FrankReynolds]

Ok, now I can see the core of our disagreement. I think the reward should be commensurate to the challenge.

The only thing more challenging about delve is the number of people involved. The increase in rewards should be commiserate with the fact that you are barely doing more actual work than a soloer if any. Duo boxing is actually harder (if you're not botting) than playing any single job in a party so technically that should have the best rewards, but that is obviously not supported by the devs.


People are suggesting that casual players should be able to obtain everything that hardcore players can obtain. I don't know how casual the most casual player is, so I just made one up. Casual and hardcore is all relative. Once you make it so people who are as casual as you can get their shiny, people who are even more casual than you will still be getting snubbed. So where do you draw the line?

I draw the line at a few places. Right now casuals have weapons with hundreds less damage than the hardcore. We're pretty far from having to worry about that.



The bulk of the game is beatable by the bulk of the players. People are merely fixated on one event and treat it like it's the only thing which matters in the game.


Because it really is.

[Xtrasweettea]

Uhh... says who? Any facts to back that? Or were you just hoping I would believe you because you used no extreme comparisons?
I believe I will never be able to convince you of anything, even without using extremes. Your stance is to the far left politically. It’s written all over your posts. I am too far to the center (and a little to the right) politically to come to some sort of agreement.
At this point I believe I am wasting my time on you.



Not necessarily. I may not be able to change the mind of the fanatic, but I can at least keep him from swaying others by pointing out the flaws in his arguments.

Your attempts are more than likely futile. Just like my attempts are futile against you.



Says you...

Says anyone with common sense and without an agenda to push…



Any example, even the simplest is left to interpretation. Just because it wasn't immediately clear to you does not mean it wasn't concise. Why do you think there are book clubs? Everyone interprets things differently. That which offends your sensibilities makes another person laugh just as what I said made me chuckle a little inside.

After going back and reading it again, it’s still isn’t clear… it isn’t me not being able to interpret what you said, the statement was terribly written.







I never said it was. You don't make the game.
I simply pointed out that making content for a niche in a finite base of customers is a poor business model if you can't get those niche customers to supplement the lost income from the larger majority. They can't. You guys are not multiplying and you are not offering to increase payments.

You do not make the game either…

Also, your statement was referring to people (including me) doing the content. The statement did not say anything about SE or the creation staff.

Who is the niche customer? Are they the “majority”? I keep seeing you type “the majority” but I do not see who the majority you speak of described anywhere.



What do you think I am trying to do? How does telling them to keep making things I can't do or don't enjoy equate to me making the best of the money I spent? Furthermore, if I don't enjoy it and I quit, how does the loss of development funding benefit you?

It looks like to me you are on here complaining about the game.

Part of the reasons you are kept from doing the “things” falls on you. I know you do not want to see it typed out, but it is the truth.

SE did state they will be making low-man content. You just need to be patient.

If you don’t enjoy it and quit, they will allocate money from other assets. SE has their fingers in other markets other than just the MMO Market. Though, your small amount of money that would be loss more-than-likely does nothing to the development funding.



They do. Why teach a guy to fish when you can make a killing selling him the fish you caught?

I apologize; I meant to say that most players doing the content do not want to exclude others usually. My editing oversight did cause to show me your left-leaning stance even more. It seems to me that you believe that everyone is only out for themselves and that no one in the game does things for others without some sort of payment or benefit.

There are people who have taught others to “fish” to help the student get up in the digital world. The student then has the choice to use the knowledge or not.



That doesn't change the fact that they aren't doing it. It doesn't matter if one culture likes X while another likes Y. If the people who hate X far outnumber the people who like X then they are your key demographic.

JA outnumbers NA and EU players. They are the focus group. If their focus groups hate the new content, they will change it to fit their focus group. We are not the focus group.



Yes, I can. They are selling something. They either make what the customer likes, or they don't. It's not the customers job to like something just because they made it. FFXI is not my child. I don't owe it unconditional love.

If you do not like where the game is going, stop giving SE money. SE does not have the ability to make the game to make everyone happy all the time. It is nigh impossible. Even if it was possible, the costs would be too much for SE to handle for a game that is aging.

It is the customer’s responsibility to use the game’s tools to their fullest. If the player doesn’t want to, but keeps paying for a service, then the player is at fault.



Who makes the jobs again? Who makes the content that requires said jobs? Not I.

The game makes the content and the jobs. The jobs required are up to the players to find out to put together. If the content does not specifically spells out what jobs are needed (Voidwatch is an event that basically tells you what jobs to bring), it is up to the players to try to find a way to beat the content. If the playerbase discovers that a PUP works as well as a DRG for Tojil that is the playerbase deciding that, not SE.



As a company, they are responsible for making that effect as minimal as possible. It's not my job to run around giving sermons convincing people that they like something they don't or that they should invite someone they don't want. This sort of behavior will never go away.

They have made the effect as minimal as possible without directly giving us the full strategy, the necessary jobs needed, and the gear the players should have for these events.

It is your job as a player to either rise up to the challenge that they give and you have paid for, or sit back and refuse to do it. You choose to obviously sit back.

You are correct; it isn’t your job to preach sermons to try to convince people to play something they don’t like. It is your responsibility to yourself choose to change or not or to play something you might not like to get something for a job you like to play. It’s called sacrifice. The ones who are achieving in this game are doing that.



The only people who can have any real affect on it are the games developers. No one, not you, not me or anyone else is going to affect the attitude change required to fix this without their intervention.

SE is making some adjustments to bayld gear and delve gear in order to make things easier for everyone to beat the Delve bosses. If they keep intervening too much, then the element of strategy and challenge are gone for those who want it. Then those who feel like they are not getting what they paid for will quit or complain on the forums.

It is the same thing you are doing as a reaction to the changes in the game SoA brought versus what you could accomplish in the era of Voidwatch and Abyssea.



That is why you don't make all of the fun / rewarding content rely on this.

I would not want to see the content you would like: everyone would get rewarded for something, everyone would be a winner, and there would be no losers.

Everyone would be the same and no one would stick out. That sounds like a game that follows the Egalitarian model. It wouldn’t be a game that keeps most people’s attention for long.



It's a catch 22. Human behavior will not change. The content can.

If content did come out that did award players with gear that was attractive enough to the player, someone will always get excluded for some reason. There will be an “elite class” for that particular content that would put up barriers of entry for players. Unless you have content that has a “cap” on certain criteria (gear level, stones available for entry, currency on hand, etc.), people will make their own cap.



And you don't think everyone else wants it for the same reason? They want to cure and land enfeebles just like you. You don't think they deserve to.

I do want others to get the gear I can get. I am not openly excluding others who want to work to aim for the goal.

You claim I don’t think they deserve the gear, though my in-game behavior states the opposite. The players whom I do not think deserve the gear are the ones who will not work for it.



Ahh, but you play support because you have work ethic right? in a video game.. work ethic...

I have work ethic, yes. You need work ethic to even play DDs. You work to get a relic, you work to level a character to 99, you work to learn about the jobs, you work to gear those jobs, etc.

The game is a form of real work, since this game can give the player the feel of accomplishment that he or she may not be able to achieve in a properly scaled amount of time in the real world. It fills that need for accomplishment and people work for more of that feeling.



Just a few paragraphs ago you explained why he can't get in a group. I am here arguing that they need to affect changes to lessen his need for that group and / or the difficulty of getting what the group wants him to have in order to be accepted. You are arguing against said changes and saying that joey just needs to suck less and kiss more ass (I'm paraphrasing your whole social argument).

Explain how this is good for the game and how it could possibly make the game more popular.

What’s the point of explaining? There is no way I can convince you (someone who has an obvious left-leaning political stance) of personal responsibility. My point will be twisted by you and you will find a way to group Joey into an “oppressed group” of people. That’s how you think and operate.

I can tell you how Joey can learn to network with others by inquiring which jobs are the most used by going to the forums or ask online. I can tell you how Joey can ask all the questions he wants, and there will be people who will help him or point him to all the information he needs. I can tell you that there IS a group of people out there who are in the same situation as him and would not mind joining up with Joey to reach a goal.

I would be wasting my time. Your stance will never change, because it removes blame from “big-bad SE” and onto the person. It is something you will never be able to comprehend.



See that's what you think, but actually you got in because they could afford to bring in people and try them out without significant risk. The content was more forgiving of crappy players and / or gear. They made it take forever to get good gear, but just about anyone could partake.

You claim it is what I think, but I experienced it and was explained to why I was invited. No DDs where taken along on trial runs. They were desperate for RDMs, PLDs, and BRDs. They needed them so badly, that they would pick up someone in a merit party.

You claim that content was more forgiving of crappy players and/or gear. I know your glasses are too tinted. If a White Mage couldn’t last through EXPing in LoO, then that WHM was booted from the group. There was very little tolerance for crappy players.




See, this is the catch. Most of what these shells want takes ten times longer to get solo. Many people look at the requirements and go "well... I don't have time for that crap". Things need to be done to make it so that it doesn't take 6 months to gear up for an event that will give you gear ten times better in two days. It's ass backwards. There is nothing worse than working your ass off knowing that some other guy is getting paid loot for almost nothing just because he knows the boss (So to speak).

It isn’t ass backwards. It is ass backwards to you because it doesn’t fit into your line of thinking (Populism and anti-elitism for this example). If the player wants to do the new content, but cannot join the shells available, he or she can start a new shell. He or she can draw up the rules and place the barriers if they want to. There is no barrier of entry to making your own shell. The shell owner will run into the problem of the lack of needed jobs, like all shells do.

You are correct; there is nothing worse than working your ass off and getting little loot while the one who “knows the boss” gets the loot. Though, you chose to stay in that shell. You could have left anytime. You could have opted out of that scheme.



And that's great for the shell, but bad for the game and by extension the games developers. Linkshells make lots of money when they can aquire / sell things no one else can get. But that doesn't help sell subs. It just helps RMT really.

So if everyone cannot get the benefit directly from a small group of people’s work, it is wrong? There’s nothing wrong with selling the the loot. There is a time/cost associated with doing the events. If there is a gil value to it, then people will make up the difference spent doing the event by selling it. That isn’t wrong.

Unless it is wrong because the shell isn’t handing the stuff out to those people who can’t or refuse to do the content… like a form of welfare or socialized system. If shells did that, then there would be no incentive to take on better challenges for better gear. The shell members would be giving out what they have earned to those who didn’t necessarily deserve. Those who get the gear for no effort won’t do the content, because there isn’t a reason to.

It’s very much like welfare in the United Sates.

Anyway, don’t bother responding unless you want to gloat or whatnot. I don’t care. I have spent way too much time trying to tackle someone who has enough time in their day to devote to their agenda. I am not going to respond or entertain you.

You keep trucking along Frank. I may not agree with what your stance it, but I support your right to say what you want to say to whomever you want to in whatever format. There are many of those who don’t and they should.

[Louispv]

Same thing that's happening to WoW. As the challenge level declined, the population of the game declines. The casual wants the best shinies for the least effort, no matter what the MMO is. If you make the game that way, you then lose the hardcore population.

Oddly enough, if you -don't- cater to the casual, you last far longer. EvE Online is a feral mass of PvP and steep learning curves requiring in many cases dozens if not 100s of players to prosper in many parts of the game.
And that game measures it's subscribers in thousands, compared to the millions of most MMO's. The fact that it's failing and switching over to micro-transactions to keep afloat doesn't help either.


And the server populations have plummeted. Turning the game into pablum kills it by inches, because in the end, that is the very definition of boring, led along only by the hope of new shinies so you can all be the specialist of snowflakes...because none of you will be special. When the rodeo ends, you could have plunked down $30 for a copy of a console game and felt like you accomplished more.
Revisonist history much? When abyssea was endgame the server populations soared and 10's of thousands of people returned to the game, because for the first time in a long time, the game was fun, and you could actually accomplish things. The effort/reward ratio was perfect, nothing was out of reach to anyone, and even the most casual player could slowly grind out whatever they wanted, while the hardcores could brag about doing it in a day, or brag about having 10 of the thing the casuals worked a year for.

On the other hand, as you forgot to mention, or more likely, outright lied about, is that people didn't start this mass exodus until Adoulin had been out for a month. When delve was released. When delve became literally the game's only event because nothing of consequence came from any other event, even the other events we had just spent a month doing in the expansion. An event most people could never even get into, much less win at.

Turns out, adding content only for hardcores, and making it impossible for everyone else, and then making it all obsolete next month when there's newer, more hardcore content, because the hardcores only needed a month to max everything, results in 90%+ of the playerbase not giving a shit about the game anymore because they will never get to play it, anyway.

[Yinnyth]

The only thing more challenging about delve is the number of people involved. The increase in rewards should be commiserate with the fact that you are barely doing more actual work than a soloer if any. Duo boxing is actually harder (if you're not botting) than playing any single job in a party so technically that should have the best rewards, but that is obviously not supported by the devs.

What a coincidence, I actually have dualboxed during tojil kills. But I disagree about the point you raise where you basically say "it just requires more people, not more work". In a group that large and in an event where any single person can make or break the run, the pressure is on everyone. It's important for anyone with cure to be watching the MP of the healers. If one healer is running low on MP, they need to communicate that fact, and other people need to cover their cures for a short while. If one person aggros a normal mob during an NM fight, there needs to be communication as to how to handle that mob. Do we sleep it? Do we sac it? Do we super tank it on the guy who aggro'd it? Do we kill it? If there's any conflict in how people believe the situation could be handled, one person will sleep it, another will turn and punch it, realized they just woke it, stop punching it, it will run over and start eating the mage, the sac will run in and try to pull it off, but it has active hate on the party now, so when the sac dies it'll come right back.

Communication and teamwork are at the core of skill in this game. Granted there are other factors involved, and it is possible to do skillful solo play, but it is nothing compared to the versatility and complexity of large group play. Each player has their own strengths and weaknesses, and everyone makes mistakes sooner or later. The group needs to make up for their weaknesses and cover for the mistakes if it is to be successful. There is no way to accurately replicate this dynamic in solo play.

[Stompa]

No, not anyone could solo a magian on their own time scale. Soloing a magian required a base amount of time investment. To the extreme, let's say you have only 5 minutes per day that you can play, and you are a bard who wants his fire dagger. Well, you're going to need fire weather which is rare as heck and very unlikely to happen during that 5 minute window during which you play, or firesday which is also unlikely to occur during your 5 minute window, so most of your playtime is spent hoping you get lucky and actually make progress. But even if you do get lucky, you're a bard, so you're fortunate if you can even kill one enemy in your limited time.

This is similar to what a person with only 2 hours to play faces today. The chances of them getting a delve run together during that slim window of time they play is relatively small (ignoring for a moment that they could create or join a linkshell which does scheduled delve runs during their available time). SE cannot make the game cater to every RL handicap a person has though. If it's fair to make it so casual players can obtain everything ingame regardless of how much play time they have, we need to find the lowest common denominator and scale it down to him, so everything needs to be doable in 5 minutes per day.

Would an MMO that only takes 5 minutes of your time per day in order to "win" be entertaining to you? I don't think 5 minutes of entertainment per day would be worth my subscription fee.

Well thats just nonsense isn't it. Nobody in their right minds would pay monthly subs for 5 minutes game a day. I was talking about 1-3 hours/day in which magians can be solo'd gradually. I have built eighteen Magian99's and I was doing an hour here and there between helping out on LS. Yes fire weather trials are a bummer but you can still get firesday and occasional lucky fire weather if you play 1-3 hours it just takes a long time (see my original post about points system for HQ rewards, with a timescale of years). Also not all magians are fire-weather related lol, the best magians (imo) are the the tp bonus weapons (# of ws), and the pdt weapons (easy earth path), which can easily be solo'd by somebody who has an hour an evening to play.
Also as a point of note, I have lots of game time and can farm my RME if I want to. And I don't actually even want the dmg200+ stuff from SoA, I think it doesn't belong in the decade long Vanadiel TW-->IT mob/damage spectrum. If you check a mob and it says 'incrediby tough', that should mean what it says, not mean that you can kill it in under ten regular hits with your SoA mega-weap. With a DMG:275 weapon all mobs are TW, even if they con IT.
What all this really boils down to is that you feel that you personally deserve RMED and wkrieve gear, but other people who don't have the luxury of extended playtime don't deserve those items. You feel offended that those people might obtain your prized gear, even if it took them half a decade to build the solo points. That isn't a game-related problem, that is a you-related problem.

[Fynlar]

The bulk of the game is beatable by the bulk of the players. People are merely fixated on one event and treat it like it's the only thing which matters in the game.

Are you saying it isn't?

[FrankReynolds]

I believe I will never be able to convince you of anything, even without using extremes. Your stance is to the far left politically. It’s written all over your posts. I am too far to the center (and a little to the right) politically to come to some sort of agreement.
At this point I believe I am wasting my time on you.

Probably. But this forum isn't really for you or me. It's for the company that makes the game. So whether you think you can change my mind or not is irrelevant. It's the people who make the game we both play that you should be worried about.



Your attempts are more than likely futile. Just like my attempts are futile against you.

See above.



Says anyone with common sense and without an agenda to push…

and you are here strictly for the sake of debate? No. You are here to push your agenda.



After going back and reading it again, it’s still isn’t clear… it isn’t me not being able to interpret what you said, the statement was terribly written.

Sorry? I could say the same thing about yours. Let's be honest. You knew what was meant. You just didn't like it.


You do not make the game either…

No. If I did, I would be changing it. Not arguing with you. I'm pointing out why a certain devlopment path is wrong. I never implied that either you or I or anyone else on this forum made the game. The fact that you are still confused about that is rather telling.

WHen I said "The fact that a few people are doing X content is only good if your goal is to exclude almost everyone.". I was referring to the developers. It's new content and the rewards eclipse the old content. They should want everyone to do it. They shouldn't be aiming to sell 200,000 people content that only 20,000 will actually enjoy. Intentionally making things that most of your customers won't like is a terrible business model and somewhat immoral really. They should be trying to make stuff that 200,000 people will use and then if some don't, trying to figure out how they can get them involved with everyone else.


Also, your statement was referring to people (including me) doing the content. The statement did not say anything about SE or the creation staff.

yeah, sorta. They made the stuff and you are glad that other people can't do it. "As long as I'm having fun... Screw everyone else".


Who is the niche customer? Are they the “majority”? I keep seeing you type “the majority” but I do not see who the majority you speak of described anywhere.

SE staff has specifically said that this content is intended for a very small portion of the customer base to do and it is working out exactly how they planned it. It's really not up for debate. If you haven't realized that most of the population is not meaningfully involved in the most desirable content in the game yet then you are skipping over a fair portion of reading that is prerequisite to this entire discussion.


It looks like to me you are on here complaining about the game.

Part of the reasons you are kept from doing the “things” falls on you. I know you do not want to see it typed out, but it is the truth.

[/quote]

SE did state they will be making low-man content. You just need to be patient. [/quote]

The notion that hardcore players would quit if they weren't constantly being challenged while casual players should just wait it out seems rather backwards. If they would up and quit just as quickly as the casuals, then they aren't really hardcore are they?


If you don’t enjoy it and quit, they will allocate money from other assets.

Hah!!!! That's a good one.



I apologize; I meant to say that most players doing the content do not want to exclude others usually. My editing oversight did cause to show me your left-leaning stance even more. It seems to me that you believe that everyone is only out for themselves and that no one in the game does things for others without some sort of payment or benefit.

Lol okay Steven Colbert I'll try and write a bill that the tea party can back.

I believe that most people do things for each other and others, but usually only people they know and or like. Most link shells won't do crap for someone not in that link shell. If someone else needs something, they charge them and use the money for shell members. They are basically businesses. You act like I've never been in a shell. I used to sell buttloads of sky sea and limbus gear. I made tons off of people who couldn't get into a good shell for one reason or another. It was messed up back then and it's ten times as bad now because the pool of viable linkshells to do this stuff with has shrunk incredibly.


JA outnumbers NA and EU players. They are the focus group. If their focus groups hate the new content, they will change it to fit their focus group. We are not the focus group.

Have you ever used google translate? I assure you that they have the exact same debates on the JP threads. They are slightly more respectful though. I wouldn't fit in there.



If you do not like where the game is going, stop giving SE money. SE does not have the ability to make the game to make everyone happy all the time. It is nigh impossible. Even if it was possible, the costs would be too much for SE to handle for a game that is aging.

That's why it is insane to cater to the smallest group.


It is the customer’s responsibility to use the game’s tools to their fullest. If the player doesn’t want to, but keeps paying for a service, then the player is at fault.

Nope, All I have to do is either pay or walk away. It's up to them to make me want to pay. "Make your own fun" doesn't sell subs.


The game makes the content and the jobs. The jobs required are up to the players to find out to put together. If the content does not specifically spells out what jobs are needed (Voidwatch is an event that basically tells you what jobs to bring), it is up to the players to try to find a way to beat the content. If the playerbase discovers that a PUP works as well as a DRG for Tojil that is the playerbase deciding that, not SE.

It's their job to prevent people from doing things in ways that make people have a crappy experience or quit the game. Why do you suppose they ban RMTs? They could say "It is the customer’s responsibility to use the game’s tools to their fullest. Love it or leave it"


I'll look at the rest later. Gotta go home now.

[Yinnyth]

What all this really boils down to is that you feel that you personally deserve RMED and wkrieve gear, but other people who don't have the luxury of extended playtime don't deserve those items. You feel offended that those people might obtain your prized gear, even if it took them half a decade to build the solo points. That isn't a game-related problem, that is a you-related problem.

I have no problem with other people having the same things I have. I have a problem with there being a lack of challenging content, or challenging content with no incentive to do it. The only reason we can get groups together to do these NMs kills is because the reward is so grand, and there is no other source. If either of those change, the only good reason to team up in years goes kaput. How would I get 18 good people together to kill tojil if the reward for beating him was a chocobo mask? How could I get 18 good people together to kill tojil if the reward is a badass weapon which you can buy for 50,000 bayld?

While we're falsely accusing each other though, you just want a game that you can play solo for an hour each day and have the same sized epeen as everyone else on the game. You don't care about the challenge, you don't care about the teamwork, you care about the reward. It's not about the journey for you, it's about the destination. There should be no opportunity to be exceptional. Neither through gear, nor through great challenges which force a player to exceed what they were previously capable of. You want a padded room in which everyone looks the same and can't get hurt.

[Umichi]

I have no problem with other people having the same things I have. I have a problem with there being a lack of challenging content, or challenging content with no incentive to do it. The only reason we can get groups together to do these NMs kills is because the reward is so grand, and there is no other source. If either of those change, the only good reason to team up in years goes kaput. How would I get 18 good people together to kill tojil if the reward for beating him was a chocobo mask? How could I get 18 good people together to kill tojil if the reward is a badass weapon which you can buy for 50,000 bayld?

While we're falsely accusing each other though, you just want a game that you can play solo for an hour each day and have the same sized epeen as everyone else on the game. You don't care about the challenge, you don't care about the teamwork, you care about the reward. It's not about the journey for you, it's about the destination. There should be no opportunity to be exceptional. Neither through gear, nor through great challenges which force a player to exceed what they were previously capable of. You want a padded room in which everyone looks the same and can't get hurt.

I concur on the premise of people wanting stuff now now now... Want that? Go find one of the many other more modern MMOs out there where lewt is based off of personal prowess and not team effort. Might I advise FPS MMO.

[FrankReynolds]

I have no problem with other people having the same things I have. I have a problem with there being a lack of challenging content, or challenging content with no incentive to do it. The only reason we can get groups together to do these NMs kills is because the reward is so grand, and there is no other source. If either of those change, the only good reason to team up in years goes kaput. How would I get 18 good people together to kill tojil if the reward for beating him was a chocobo mask? How could I get 18 good people together to kill tojil if the reward is a badass weapon which you can buy for 50,000 bayld?

While we're falsely accusing each other though, you just want a game that you can play solo for an hour each day and have the same sized epeen as everyone else on the game. You don't care about the challenge, you don't care about the teamwork, you care about the reward. It's not about the journey for you, it's about the destination. There should be no opportunity to be exceptional. Neither through gear, nor through great challenges which force a player to exceed what they were previously capable of. You want a padded room in which everyone looks the same and can't get hurt.

Maybe he / she wants a game where playing solo 1-2 hours a day affords the gear that allows him to play with his 18 friends on the weekend when he has 3-4 hours. Maybe making anyone who doesn't take the entire month off of work every time they release new content obsolete for life is a bad decision.

[Stompa]

I have no problem with challenges or personal work ethics. I just don't agree with stuff that excludes players coz of single-event-duration.
Also as said I work from home and can play ffxi in the background all day. I was talking about ppl like the ones on my LS, who have 2~ hours/day ingame. Their options are basically "the Auction House is <that way>. Go get your weapon from there. Or go build a magian which after SoA launch went from being a legit midrange weap to being a joke." I also don't count the bayld weaps, they have no augments and the dmg is like +10~ over a magian that hold great augments.
I already said the parallel solo route to obtaining the HQ gear should be so slow that it would discourage ppl from choosing that route except as a last resort. The unchallenged fact is that anyone buying gil can get a HQ relic, which would make the the whole A-Crowd think he is a super vet player even though he never farmed it himself. And anyone with the luxury of extended playtime can farm wkrieve delve gear for those weaps. Both of those things exclude players with normal fulltime working lives, players who don't buy gil because it disgusts them, or people who just want to play a few hours after work. If those two factors are what make the A-Crowd so special and great, then I'm glad I'm just a footsoldier in this game.

[Yinnyth]

Maybe he / she wants a game where playing solo 1-2 hours a day affords the gear that allows him to play with his 18 friends on the weekend when he has 3-4 hours. Maybe making anyone who doesn't take the entire month off of work every time they release new content obsolete for life is a bad decision.

I went 5/5 wins in skirmish with a group of 5 casual friends who were just shouting for a bard. None of them had an RMED weapon, skirmish weapon, or WK reive weapon. 95 magian weapon was the most impressive one I saw there. Their whm also had some fairly slow reflexes, so I was doing a large amount of the cures as bard. Even with how casual these guys were, we still managed to win 5 out of 5 attempts, and it took us about 2.5 hours total. A single run can be done in an hour with just a couple friends and/or a few shouts.

Granted, it's not solo, but there is still a solo path, unpleasant though it may be. Farm gil, buy scarletite and gabbrath horn, have them crafted.

[Oddwaffle]

People are leaving the game one way or another, and there's no way you can even know how many of them are leaving for which reason. From a business standpoint, it makes the most sense to alienate NONE of your members. We have ONE hardcore event in SoA so far. The rest of the entire expansion is softcore. Yet somehow, this one hardcore event is enough to get all the casual players all hot and bothered about how they don't have enough time to play the game. Isn't that what a game is supposed to do? Make its players wish they could play more?

But they didn't. They did not try to close the gap between members and alienate people. I could introduce a whole expansion worth of casual content with a chocobo hat reward and it will not close the gap between casual and hardcore players. Haven't you read your own post?

And actually try to read mine before you jump to the conclusion "Apparently, you're only entertained when you have final tier equipment." which is wrong btw. I will state again if you couldn't read before: The gap between casual players and elite/hardcore players is too big because casual players lack skill and equipments to be effective when they want to join Delve content. SE needs to close this gap by introducing rewards for low man and solo content that are close to Delve content; NOT cosmetics or too weak items that make people just try something else. DO NOT create a ladder form of content because people will quit once they see they have to climb the ladder while hardcore players can just skip that in 45min.

Also, you actually have to grant the casual player his request if #1 the requests would keep the population from bleeding as fast as it is now and #2 not fulfilling his request would cause the population to shrink faster. Where a good idea comes from is irrelevant, only the idea matters.

[Yinnyth]

And actually try to read mine before you jump to the conclusion "Apparently, you're only entertained when you have final tier equipment." which is wrong btw. I will state again if you couldn't read before: The gap between casual players and elite/hardcore players is too big because casual players lack skill and equipments to be effective when they want to join Delve content. SE needs to close this gap by introducing rewards for low man and solo content that are close to Delve content; NOT cosmetics or too weak items that make people just try something else.

You say I'm wrong when I put forth conjecture that people are only happy when they have final tier equipment, then proceed to claim that people are unhappy because they don't see any feasible way they can obtain final tier equipment.

Learn to find joy in your character growth even if your character is not as powerful as other characters. It is more possible than you realize to climb the ladder, but it is a tall ladder, and it will take time and effort. Hardcore players spend more time on this ladder than you, but these players are human, just like you, and anything they can do, you can do. Stop fixating on the top of the ladder and set your sights on just the next rung. You can be happy with each new height you reach instead of berating yourself for not already being at the top.

(Do the lesser events, grow your character step by step. Keep at it, and you will catch up. Just like I did.)

[Oddwaffle]

Same thing that's happening to WoW. As the challenge level declined, the population of the game declines. The casual wants the best shinies for the least effort, no matter what the MMO is. If you make the game that way, you then lose the hardcore population.

Oddly enough, if you -don't- cater to the casual, you last far longer. EvE Online is a feral mass of PvP and steep learning curves requiring in many cases dozens if not 100s of players to prosper in many parts of the game.

(Anyone who disbelieves this, I encourage you to go running around Goon-controlled space sometime and tell them you can take them on. Bring plenty of lube.)

It encourages player quality and teamwork. It succeeds fantastically. If you want casual, Runescape has been catering to you for years. You want to encourage people to play? You get them to go in, stick together, depend on each other. Make your game a casual solo-fest and the biggest reason for player retention goes straight out the door- friends. Comrades.

Abyssea was a failure in that, as people rapidly devolved into two-boxing or soloing much of the content. People stopped depending on each other, even in 6-man exp parties (which no longer exist, thank goodness), and spend much of the game running around in their newbie gear exping their way up through an endless supply of skeletons, crawlers, and bees...and then get to 50+ without even understanding simple things like "what stats are good for my job" or "I need spells, really?"...and are then encouraged to do much the same thing where they can be spoon-fed in Abyssea PT's where again, they often do even LESS.

And the server populations have plummeted. Turning the game into pablum kills it by inches, because in the end, that is the very definition of boring, led along only by the hope of new shinies so you can all be the specialist of snowflakes...because none of you will be special. When the rodeo ends, you could have plunked down $30 for a copy of a console game and felt like you accomplished more.

Now we have a game full of players who have been vastly "underexercised" and once again, are being asked to do the equivalent of a marathon to get to the top. And they whiiiiiiine about it. And want it eaaaaasy.

Screw that. We won't have an FFXI at that rate anymore. There's content for casuals, in Adoulin, but there -has- to be content for players who want a hard mode. And yes, they can't share. If everyone could do it, it wouldn't be hard enough to keep the players who craved a challenge in the game to begin with, and if the gear was identical, nobody would do the hardmode content because it'd be zero reward.

Instead, we have people who think they're competent trying the hardmode content because they want shinies raining down from heaven like Abyssea did and getting burnt. I'm sorry, but either skill up or shut up on that. Another Abyssea and there won't be an FFXI left anymore, because that kind of game is F2P on a dozen dozen companies.

WOW is getting toxic and unfriendly at the end game (the direction of current FFXI btw). It seems casual friendly but it is not because the population is getting elitist. EVE on the other hand is a pure PVP game. Like a FPS Call of Duty or Battlefield series or pure PVP game like Leagues of Legend, the EVE is highly competitive. The population is used to being extremely competitive. The game tries to keep the competition and its population instead of trying to be friendly to new players (it did but failed anyways).

If you are suggesting that FFXI should focus on hardcore players like EVE then you should suggest a cash-shop, gil buying option, extreme PVP or competitive element as well as an economist hired to read game economy. Also, that will get rid of most of the casual players. Do you think FFXI will survive?

On the Abyssea note, you are wrong saying that abyssea ruined everything because it's easy. Trying going into abyssea solo with 1 weak atma and tell me if it's easy to get atma NMs, seals and +2 upgrades. Also, to make it easy, you should do it in 2hr max per day. That's what new, returning, casual and slow players are facing. Even SE realize this and had to make plans to give free atma for people.

Also, if you actually read your own post you are realizing that you are whining about the population. If you notice FFXI has a problem with its population getting too unskilled, would you care enough to provide a solution other than 'skill up or shut up'? I told you why it doesn't work as some people are extremely skilled but have no time or access to content. You also have people with years of investing in their REM getting slapped in the face (with promises of a band-aid in the future). For new, unskilled players the current Delve content is too unfriendly and too difficult. There is no alternatives to Delve content and rewards.

I already said the rewards don't have to be equal but have to be close. It CAN NOT have a large gap or people will be left behind. Also, hardcore content must be hardcore, not 45min win. That is: rare drop and lots of grinding - not instant win. SE is having it in reverse as casual content has hardcore reward policies while hardcore content has casual reward policies.

[Oddwaffle]

You say I'm wrong when I put forth conjecture that people are only happy when they have final tier equipment, then proceed to claim that people are unhappy because they don't see any feasible way they can obtain final tier equipment.

Learn to find joy in your character growth even if your character is not as powerful as other characters. It is more possible than you realize to climb the ladder, but it is a tall ladder, and it will take time and effort. Hardcore players spend more time on this ladder than you, but these players are human, just like you, and anything they can do, you can do. Stop fixating on the top of the ladder and set your sights on just the next rung. You can be happy with each new height you reach instead of berating yourself for not already being at the top.

(Do the lesser events, grow your character step by step. Keep at it, and you will catch up. Just like I did.)

That's why I said FFXI has too many ladders. Step by step growth? Keep at it and you will catch up? Have you tried it with 2hrs a day playing? How long did it take you to get where you are now? How long do you think new players should spend to get where you are now? If I spend 10 years playing FFXI to get to where I am now then should you spend 10 years to get to get somewhere close to me? It took me 1 year from lv1 to lv75 (from 2002 to 2003). I don't think it will be a great idea to impose that kind of restriction on people - e.g. you need to spend 2 years to get to lv75.

Your conjecture of people are only happy when they have final tier equipment is wrong. The reason is that they don't have to be the final tier. They just need to be close comparatively, not necessary equal. A good example here would be Relic weapon at lv75 when Dynamis was 1st introduced. That was the final tier and people weren't unhappy when they didn't get it. It was rare and hard to get and it was the best. You made a weak assumption and got a wrong conclusion from it.

It's not about growth, it's about the large gap between people with lots of time and investment into the game and people with few time to play. You said it's a tall ladder and it takes time and effort. That is true and that's why it needs to be reduced. Some effort maybe required but time spend has to be reduced. FFXI skills actually doesn't require much other than pressing the right button at the right time. I remember a guy said this "FFXI require as much skill as using a calculator". Maybe it's not that easy but you certainly don't need to spend years to master FFXI skills.

Also, I think you are starting to assume that I am unskilled, under-equipped and unhappy because I'm not an elite. That's not only a wrong assumption, it's also irrelevant. I can be a lv1 newbie who have never played FFXI. If my idea is good then it is a good idea regardless of what I am and where I came from. You can be a 20x99 level player with all the gear in the game and is called 'GOD' by normal people but if you make a bad idea then it's still a bad idea.

[FrankReynolds]

I went 5/5 wins in skirmish with a group of 5 casual friends who were just shouting for a bard. None of them had an RMED weapon, skirmish weapon, or WK reive weapon. 95 magian weapon was the most impressive one I saw there. Their whm also had some fairly slow reflexes, so I was doing a large amount of the cures as bard. Even with how casual these guys were, we still managed to win 5 out of 5 attempts, and it took us about 2.5 hours total. A single run can be done in an hour with just a couple friends and/or a few shouts.

Granted, it's not solo, but there is still a solo path, unpleasant though it may be. Farm gil, buy scarletite and gabbrath horn, have them crafted.

A solo path to what? Paying some other guy to get your gear? And then by the time you can afford that gear, it is already crap again in the face of the next big new thing? Yay! Let's all pay to be a year behind on content and gear forever.

[Mahoro]

For new, unskilled players the current Delve content is too unfriendly and too difficult. There is no alternatives to Delve content and rewards.

I already said the rewards don't have to be equal but have to be close. It CAN NOT have a large gap or people will be left behind.

Sure there are alternatives: the crafted boss weapons. Market is starting to tank as more and more mats drop. You can essentially get weapons like Razorfury now for 5-10M gil, a tiny fraction of the cost Relics and Mythics ever were. The weapons tied to Ormolu Ingots are a bit harder to craft, but only because of the Ingots.

The WKR gear is also quite competitive.

[Rustic]

So they can satisfy a bunch of people by pissing off a few or they can satisfy a few by pissing off a bunch of people. That is the bottom line. Your argument suggests that most people are craving something so hard that they probably can't beat it. I highly doubt that.

Take a look at the server populations on multiple MMO's as content difficulty decreased. They declined notably as "easymode" went into effect. Everquest. Ultima Online. WoW. FFXI.

Note: That's different from "quality of life" changes. You can pander to a casual population, but you'll never keep them in the long run unless there's something to reach up for, something that actually is TOO hard for many.


Your ideas are cute, but they won't make people want to play. People who only have 1-2 hours a day, people who speak the wrong language to get in groups, people who lack the mental capacity, aren't going to change their schedules / lives, learn a language etc. people aren't sucking on purpose and they aren't going to stop just because they add a million new absolute virtues. Hamster wheels keep people playing. Not uber hard OMG no one will ever beat this crap content. That's why there was only one AV and there was nothing in the game that required players having AV's drops to beat it. That stuff drives everyone who can't get into it away.

And they won't stop clamoring for the best shinies and whining about it when they can't have them. You -never- needed the top drops in the game to play. You just "needed" them to play every, single, 100% part of the game with the most handy ways to do so. You can do Adoulin content without the top gear, too- and you can do it in casual mode, IF your server has the brain cells to actually not try and jump three steps at a time when they're so "out-of-shape" that doing it one step at a time is a challenge.

And if that top few percent is too easy, you end up with Abyssea. What we're going to see is the logical results of item-based "level up"- we're in the WoW model of MMO'ing. Adoulin will progress, and at the end when there's a new expansion, Adoulin's powerful shinies will be eclipsed by the low-skill, easy mode drops of the next expansion, while the top tier will be an entire NEW set of shinies- and you'll even watch the folks who couldn't take on the old "elite" content proceed to use their next-expansion shinies to beat the old content in easy mode and feel good about it.

And the next expansion, and the next, and so forth, and so on. There are people champing at the bit in Ragnarok already to take their shiny new gear and go beat up on older content...just because. Never mind that the gear isn't the best. They want to beat the "elite" content, never realizing it's no longer relevant to the "elites" to begin with.


You know why there are there are a dozen F2P companies offering easy mode content like this? Because it's popular.

You know how fast they come and go, too? A game that runs on a F2P model is selling it's carrots for real money, not making you work for them. Which do you want, Frank? Hard mode or money mode? My girlfriend regular sits there dropping cash on EA/Bioware for SW:TOR, because that's how a F2P game gives you the leet shinies. Cash on the barrelhead and you'll have the top of the crop!

[FrankReynolds]

They have made the effect as minimal as possible without directly giving us the full strategy, the necessary jobs needed, and the gear the players should have for these events.

Yeah. And the gear and jobs that players "should have" are not gear and jobs that most players have. They seem to be under the assumption that the players will have a good time leveling those jobs and getting that gear, but the reality is they don't have the gear and jobs because they either can't get it or don't like it. There is a reason why By extension, that means that they made content that people either can't do or don't like. And that's before these people even get to find out if the content itself sucks or not.

There is a reason that 96% of players don't have bard and it isn't because leveling bard is hard. There is a reason that most players don't have a 99 RME and it isn't because they don't want one. There are a million things that stop people from doing these things that have nothing to do with how skilled they are or how well they work with people.


It is your job as a player to either rise up to the challenge that they give and you have paid for, or sit back and refuse to do it. You choose to obviously sit back.

I don't choose to sit back. I have Delve gear for my Samurai and Monk. I'm almost finished with my 99 Spharai. I could probably get in just about any event on WHM if I felt like it. I want to be able to do fun rewarding stuff with people who don't treat the game like a full time job and getting gear / weapons with 100 less damage or 100 less skill 10 times slower than the next guy doesn't meet my standard for fun and rewarding.


You are correct; it isn’t your job to preach sermons to try to convince people to play something they don’t like. It is your responsibility to yourself choose to change or not or to play something you might not like to get something for a job you like to play. It’s called sacrifice. The ones who are achieving in this game are doing that.

Most people don't see sacrifice as a selling point in a form of entertainment. They tend to get their fill of that in real life. Being as this is not real life, there is very little reason why they should have to.


SE is making some adjustments to bayld gear and delve gear in order to make things easier for everyone to beat the Delve bosses. If they keep intervening too much, then the element of strategy and challenge are gone for those who want it. Then those who feel like they are not getting what they paid for will quit or complain on the forums.

It is the same thing you are doing as a reaction to the changes in the game SoA brought versus what you could accomplish in the era of Voidwatch and Abyssea.

The difference being that the people who are having trouble beating delve bosses far outnumber the ones who are beating them. If you gotta pick a group to piss off, it's usually best to do it with the smallest group ya know?



I would not want to see the content you would like: everyone would get rewarded for something, everyone would be a winner, and there would be no losers.

Everyone would be the same and no one would stick out. That sounds like a game that follows the Egalitarian model. It wouldn’t be a game that keeps most people’s attention for long.

You know that's not what I'm asking for. Even if I was, the game has been pretty much just like what you described with the exception of a handful of rare items throughout it's entire history. There used to be a few X knives and Mandaus floating around, but most thieves looked exactly the same. There used to be a few Aegis and Excals floating around, but most paladins looked the same. None of the differentiating items made anyone so good that they could beat something that other people could not beat without those items. They just made it a little easier. There was almost no event that you couldn't get into without those and very few shells who expected you to have them.

Now all of the sudden these people who probably didn't even have most of those items back then are gonna quit if they don't become the specialest snowflake there ever was? I doubt it.

These are the "Hardcore" remember? They don't just up and quit on a whim like the crybaby casuals. That's why we have to keep them entertained right?



If content did come out that did award players with gear that was attractive enough to the player, someone will always get excluded for some reason. There will be an “elite class” for that particular content that would put up barriers of entry for players. Unless you have content that has a “cap” on certain criteria (gear level, stones available for entry, currency on hand, etc.), people will make their own cap.

Right. And it's up to the developer to make that happen as little as possible. Not purposely expand the gap.


I do want others to get the gear I can get. I am not openly excluding others who want to work to aim for the goal.

No, your just saying that you don't care if they can't. As long as you're having a good time.


You claim I don’t think they deserve the gear, though my in-game behavior states the opposite. The players whom I do not think deserve the gear are the ones who will not work for it.

There are a lot of people not getting that gear. Do you really think it's because everyone is lazy? Is it that hard to imagine any other valid circumstance?


I have work ethic, yes. You need work ethic to even play DDs. You work to get a relic, you work to level a character to 99, you work to learn about the jobs, you work to gear those jobs, etc.

The game is a form of real work, since this game can give the player the feel of accomplishment that he or she may not be able to achieve in a properly scaled amount of time in the real world. It fills that need for accomplishment and people work for more of that feeling.

No, you need work ethic to do things you don't like "work". Doing something you like all the time is just called "Having fun". Having fun doesn't require work ethic. The object of a game should be to have as much fun as possible. The real world is for work.


What’s the point of explaining? There is no way I can convince you (someone who has an obvious left-leaning political stance) of personal responsibility. My point will be twisted by you and you will find a way to group Joey into an “oppressed group” of people. That’s how you think and operate.

WHat's all this "Left" crap about? I'm not running for senate here.


I can tell you how Joey can learn to network with others by inquiring which jobs are the most used by going to the forums or ask online. I can tell you how Joey can ask all the questions he wants, and there will be people who will help him or point him to all the information he needs. I can tell you that there IS a group of people out there who are in the same situation as him and would not mind joining up with Joey to reach a goal.

I would be wasting my time. Your stance will never change, because it removes blame from “big-bad SE” and onto the person. It is something you will never be able to comprehend.

I agree. People suck. Are you happy? Does that mean it's not SE's job to satisfy those people? Is that not the business they are in? If everyone logs in tomorrow and decided to universally quit fighting monsters and just do chocobo races from now to infinity, would it still make sense to keep pumping out notorious monsters?

You keep dancing around the fact that most of the customers are "Joeys". Nothing you have said has explained why the people who are better at the game than him are more important. He's lazy, he's uncoordinated, he lacks people skills, he has bad acne... list every negative thing that you want about him, but him and his lazy stupid bretheren pay 90% of the bills and keeping him happy is the road to survival.




You claim it is what I think, but I experienced it and was explained to why I was invited. No DDs where taken along on trial runs. They were desperate for RDMs, PLDs, and BRDs. They needed them so badly, that they would pick up someone in a merit party.

You claim that content was more forgiving of crappy players and/or gear. I know your glasses are too tinted. If a White Mage couldn’t last through EXPing in LoO, then that WHM was booted from the group. There was very little tolerance for crappy players.

That was Your shell doing that. Likely the same ones doing it now. If you haven't gathered by now, most people are not / did not have the same experiences as you. I got love torque on my first JoL run playing on my AH geared thief. I didn't even have AA yet. As a matter of fact, I made millions in sky and sea without ever getting those. I didn't actually get them until they nerfed dynamis because there were like 20 thieves ahead of me in my dynamis shell (which by the way had like 70 members because event's weren't capped at 18 of the best people available). I got in those shells by simply replying to a shout. I didn't have to build a relic and circle jerk the LS leaders just to go on a run.


It isn’t ass backwards. It is ass backwards to you because it doesn’t fit into your line of thinking (Populism and anti-elitism for this example). If the player wants to do the new content, but cannot join the shells available, he or she can start a new shell. He or she can draw up the rules and place the barriers if they want to. There is no barrier of entry to making your own shell. The shell owner will run into the problem of the lack of needed jobs, like all shells do.

Yeah, if you just start your own shell, you instantly become a skilled and loved leader who has all the time in the world and no outside distractions. /s

There are one leader and 17 members. Starting your shell can only work for 1/18 people right off the bat. That's pretty simple math. That's before you even consider the fact that every shell needs a few jobs that only 1/10 people have. It's a system that unless the entire populace levels every job and gears all the important ones to the teeth will have to exclude a fair portion of the populace just to exist. This is not opinion, It's math.

Telling someone "just start your own shell" Is tantamount to saying "I don't care. Piss off."


You are correct; there is nothing worse than working your ass off and getting little loot while the one who “knows the boss” gets the loot. Though, you chose to stay in that shell. You could have left anytime. You could have opted out of that scheme.

I was actually referring to what that shell expects players to have before they join. Your remedy to everyone's problems has been to start / join a shell. How does quitting one fit into your recipe for success?


So if everyone cannot get the benefit directly from a small group of people’s work, it is wrong? There’s nothing wrong with selling the the loot. There is a time/cost associated with doing the events. If there is a gil value to it, then people will make up the difference spent doing the event by selling it.

That isn’t wrong. It's not wrong if that isn't the only way to get the loot. For example. I bought my homam hands so that I could save my points and get the body first. There were lot's of limbus shells recruiting. I just didn't want to wait.

Most people can't get in a Delve boss shell. They literally have no choice but to pay whatever they are asking.



Unless it is wrong because the shell isn’t handing the stuff out to those people who can’t or refuse to do the content… like a form of welfare or socialized system. If shells did that, then there would be no incentive to take on better challenges for better gear. The shell members would be giving out what they have earned to those who didn’t necessarily deserve. Those who get the gear for no effort won’t do the content, because there isn’t a reason to.[/wuote]

There is a difference between being unable and being unwilling. I mean if I wanted to become an astronaut, I could. I don't meet the physical or experience requirements, but I could just go to college and get a degree in business and astrophysics, get rich and build my own ships. But that seems like an unreasonable amount of work. I'll probably just have to wait for richard branson to start selling tickets at like 10k a pop.

That's how people feel with this content. Is it possible for them to get in a group? Sure, if you just build a rocket ship for the leader.

[QUOTE=Xtrasweettea;458909]It’s very much like welfare in the United Sates.

That sounds like a pretty extreme example. DOes that mean no one will listen to you either?


You keep trucking along Frank. I may not agree with what your stance it, but I support your right to say what you want to say to whomever you want to in whatever format. There are many of those who don’t and they should.

Thanks. It's been fun.

[Yinnyth]

A solo path to what? Paying some other guy to get your gear? And then by the time you can afford that gear, it is already crap again in the face of the next big new thing? Yay! Let's all pay to be a year behind on content and gear forever.

Or learn to team up and earn it directly. You said that maybe they want a solo path, and there is one. Gil is a point system which has many different activities you can earn it from, and you can spend those points on delve weapons. It just sucks. But which sucks more? Learning to team up with people whose schedule works with yours, or farming gil? Because it sounds to me like people here believe teaming up just isn't an option.

We have the OP claiming that even though he's good enough to beat delve megabosses, no one else on the server is (except for the people he refuses to team up with). We have people claiming they only have 1-3 hours per day, so delve simply isn't an option (even though delve can be done in an hour). We have people claiming their gear options aren't good enough for delve (even though those same gear options were good enough for us when we started winning, and all ilvl 100+ gear is getting boosted soon). Did I miss any?

There are ways for you to beat delve. Will it take time? Yes. Is it worth it? That's up to you. If you really want it, you'll find a way. If you don't, you'll find an excuse.

[FrankReynolds]

There are ways for you to beat delve. Will it take time? Yes. Is it worth it? That's up to you. If you really want it, you'll find a way. If you don't, you'll find an excuse.

It doesn't all have to be super crappy drops, or super hard game play for large groups only. There's plenty of room in the world for good drops and approachable game play.

All this nonsense about how people need to work harder or team up or climb some ladder etc. is all meaningless. If you have 200,000 people paying for an expansion and 150,000 are feeling screwed because everything they previously worked for or were working for is rendered obsolete and everything they want is seemingly unattainable, you going to lose customers en mass. And no amount of tough talk about how people need to stop making excuses or guide as to how they can suck less is gonna change that. When you miss the mark by that far, you have to fix it. You can't just expect people to hum along like everything is okay.

The updates to all the Ilevel gear may help some, but that will sort of depend on how hard all the stuff they release with it is. SE loves to play evil genie. There is a good chance that they will update something else that will negate all those boosts.

[Karah]

you've all gotten off light, since they deemed it necessary to give me a temp ban for posting someone else's picture. Anyway.


Or learn to team up and earn it directly.

There are ways for you to beat delve. Will it take time? Yes. Is it worth it? That's up to you. If you really want it, you'll find a way. If you don't, you'll find an excuse.

Teaming up is not always an option. There are always people that you're unwilling to play with, that's what makes "MMO" such a draw, MULTIPLE options. If you don't like player A you can play with B C D E F G H all the way to Z, then AA AB AC etc etc.

However, that is no longer the case, if you don't like player A, these days you're sh*t outta luck. There are no longer MASSIVELY MULTIPLE people playing.

I'd go so far as to call it a Handful no-option RPG. This is unacceptable.

No one can realistically say that their server has more than even 10% of it's player base as "competent". And that severely limits options, to the point of becoming option-less.

[Yinnyth]

you've all gotten off light, since they deemed it necessary to give me a temp ban for posting someone else's picture. Anyway.



Teaming up is not always an option. There are always people that you're unwilling to play with, that's what makes "MMO" such a draw, MULTIPLE options. If you don't like player A you can play with B C D E F G H all the way to Z, then AA AB AC etc etc.

However, that is no longer the case, if you don't like player A, these days you're sh*t outta luck. There are no longer MASSIVELY MULTIPLE people playing.

I'd go so far as to call it a Handful no-option RPG. This is unacceptable.

No one can realistically say that their server has more than even 10% of it's player base as "competent". And that severely limits options, to the point of becoming option-less.

If people are not given challenging content and a big incentive for doing it, they have no reason to be competent. It's been a long time since they introduced a challenge on this scale, so people's competence has atrophied. Given enough time, as long as they keep providing us with similar challenges along the way, the percentage of skillful players should increase. Humans adapt to their environment.

Or they give up like a quitter.

[FrankReynolds]

If people are not given challenging content and a big incentive for doing it, they have no reason to be competent.

For ten years they gave minor upgrades as rewards for doing enormous time sink material. You are full of crap. People are out fighting over D rings for a 4% decrease in damage over dark rings. They don't need weapons with 300% more damage than the average guy to keep them playing.


It's been a long time since they introduced a challenge on this scale, so people's competence has atrophied. Given enough time, as long as they keep providing us with similar challenges along the way, the percentage of skillful players should increase. Humans adapt to their environment.

Or they give up like a quitter.

LOL does that "You don't want to be a quitter do you?" stuff motivate you? I don't think any one else is buying it.

[Mahoro]

I think people are talking past each other in this thread. His underlying complaint is not that there shouldn't be challenging content, but that the rewards for the challenging content should be minor upgrades to the next lowest level of challenge. That doesn't seem to be how SE operates anymore with the stepwise ladder progression philosophy. Regardless, his ultimate solution is that either SE nerfs the Delve Boss rewards or makes the lower level gear more powerful and competitive with it. Since they are doing the latter in the next month, I don't really see the need to perpetuate this debate.

[Yinnyth]

For ten years they gave minor upgrades as rewards for doing enormous time sink material. You are full of crap. People are out fighting over D rings for a 4% decrease in damage over dark rings. They don't need weapons with 300% more damage than the average guy to keep them playing.

300% more damage? Which weapon are you comparing oatixur to?


Edit: And people who give up because something is more challenging than they originally anticipated disgust me. I don't shy away from a challenge. Why do you? I play the game because it challenges me. Do you play the game because it's as easy as watching a movie? Why not watch a movie then?

[Karah]

300% more damage? Which weapon are you comparing oatixur to?


Edit: And people who give up because something is more challenging than they originally anticipated disgust me. I don't shy away from a challenge. Why do you? I play the game because it challenges me. Do you play the game because it's as easy as watching a movie? Why not watch a movie then?

Do you play to have all your accomplishments set aside while the mouth-breathers you have to rely upon fail over and over and over and over to do even the easiest of tasks?

I know that's my idea of entertainment. Nothing makes me happier than going to an event with the clear intention of loosing every single time.

[Demon6324236]

300% more damage? Which weapon are you comparing oatixur to?http://www.bg-wiki.com/images/3/34/Spharai_%28Level_99%29_description.png
http://www.bg-wiki.com/images/4/4a/Oatixur_description.png
Not exactly 300%, its 10 DMG short of it, its more around 280% than 300%, but the point is, vastly more powerful.

[Yinnyth]

Do you play to have all your accomplishments set aside while the mouthbreathers you have to reply upon fail over and over and over and over to do even the easiest of tasks?

I know that's my idea of entertainment. Nothing makes me happier than going to an event with the clear intention of loosing every single time.

I will resist the urge to correct your spelling beyond this condescending statement I'm currently making.

If you're going into delve, and you expect to win, you have an unrealistic expectation. Even after beating Tojil, we still lose often. The enjoyment comes not from the win. The shame comes not from the loss. It comes from how well you personally did, and how well the team worked together. I made a horrible mistake in Foret today, and called the monks to cancel formless far too early on craklaw, which cost us ridiculous amounts of time. But we learned from my mistake, and with luck we won't make it again.

But the point is you need a group, and you need to work with that group. If you're constantly calling everyone an idiot, no one will ever respect anything you say. So stop goddamned implying that your server is full of douchebags and idiots, and DO SOMETHING CONSTRUCTIVE. Maybe it'll take you a month to get a Tojil kill (which would be faster than it took me). Maybe longer. Who cares? Just play the goddamned game. Advance your character one way or the other. Find people who suffer from the same problems you suffer from and team up with them. That's the whole goddamned point of MMOs.

[Yinnyth]

http://www.bg-wiki.com/images/3/34/Spharai_%28Level_99%29_description.png
http://www.bg-wiki.com/images/4/4a/Oatixur_description.png
Not exactly 300%, its 10 DMG short of it, its more around 280% than 300%, but the point is, vastly more powerful.

I love that you were mentioning what an average guy was capable of, then compared 99 spharai to oatixur, but ok, I'm up for the challenge.

That's DMG+, not DMG. I'm sure you already understand this, but for the people reading this who don't:

H2H damage is based on not only the damage of your weapon, but also your H2H skill. (Skillx0.11)+3+H2H weapon bonus is your actual damage. At level 99, a monk has 424 H2H skill (excluding merits and gear). This is a little bit less than 50 base damage. That means spharai has 102 base damage (86 delay), and oatixur has 196 base damage (96 delay).

It's not 300%. It's not even 200%. And compare it to something which takes less effort than spharai. Ninza with 61 base damage (after aug). Or heck, Tlalpoloani(with no aug required). Or heck, Spharai 99 (after they finally get around to patching it).

Or better yet, compare it to something which any person who trolls the server shouts long enough can get: rigors. 151 base damage vs 196 base damage. 130% the damage. Not 300%.

[Karah]

I will resist the urge to correct your spelling beyond this condescending statement I'm currently making.

If you're going into delve, and you expect to win, you have an unrealistic expectation. Even after beating Tojil, we still lose often. The enjoyment comes not from the win. The shame comes not from the loss. It comes from how well you personally did, and how well the team worked together. I made a horrible mistake in Foret today, and called the monks to cancel formless far too early on craklaw, which cost us ridiculous amounts of time. But we learned from my mistake, and with luck we won't make it again.

But the point is you need a group, and you need to work with that group. If you're constantly calling everyone an idiot, no one will ever respect anything you say. So stop goddamned implying that your server is full of douchebags and idiots, and DO SOMETHING CONSTRUCTIVE. Maybe it'll take you a month to get a Tojil kill (which would be faster than it took me). Maybe longer. Who cares? Just play the goddamned game. Advance your character one way or the other. Find people who suffer from the same problems you suffer from and team up with them. That's the whole goddamned point of MMOs.

I'm already wasting hours on end playing the game in general, I don't enjoy wasting more time than necessary, (attempting) anything. You either do it, and you succeed, or you don't bother doing it.

There is no attempt. There is no "oh, we'll win next time". No, you're wasting MY time, on something I'm already wasting time on. That's a double no-no.

I play to enjoy the wasted time on my terms, not failing miserably because some retard can't properly count to seven for the matamata. It's just absurd.

Being forced to rely on other people, regardless of how competent they are is a no-no as well.

No one would willingly choose to do an 18 man version of Delve if an equal scaled down version existed for a 6 man or even 3 man team. Legion is a prime example, NO ONE (one exception... let's not name him) claimed to take the 36 possible.

[Yinnyth]

I'm already wasting hours on end playing the game in general, I don't enjoy wasting more time than necessary, (attempting) anything. You either do it, and you succeed, or you don't bother doing it.

There is no attempt. There is no "oh, we'll win next time". No, you're wasting MY time, on something I'm already wasting time on. That's a double no-no.

I play to enjoy the wasted time on my terms, not failing miserably because some retard can't properly count to seven for the matamata. It's just absurd.

So do not tolerate that retard. Find a player who can count to 7. Or teach that retard to count to 7. Or count for him (fight other NMs near him, but keep track of what the mata is doing). Find a path to success. That's how we did it, even with sub-optimal players in the group.

Recognize the problem, then find a solution. You've accomplished step 1, now start working on step 2.

Edit:

Being forced to rely on other people, regardless of how competent they are is a no-no as well.

No one would willingly choose to do an 18 man version of Delve if an equal scaled down version existed for a 6 man or even 3 man team. Legion is a prime example, NO ONE (one exception... let's not name him) claimed to take the 36 possible.

Yes, being forced to rely on how well your healer can pay attention is a bitch, is it not? So if you're duoing something, and your healer is afk, you're screwed. If you're in an 18-man group, and your healer is afk, hopefully some other person will pick up the slack. That's the advantage and complexity of group play. Or a small portion of it, anyways.

If you want to rely only on your own skill, by all means, rely only on your own skills. If you want to be part of a group, play an MMO.

[Karah]

hopefully
LOL. Hopefully, that's... hilarious.

If it were easy to find 17 people who could count to seven, I wouldn't have made this thread. I've literally watched more than 100 "attempts" to defeat that SOLOABLE mata-mata fail. That straight up tells me, people just plain suck. There is no remedy. The only option is to make the shit fail-proof.

I hate to keep bringing it back to that one specific enemy, there are MANY other issues, it's just pants on head retarded how bad people can be, with that as the utmost obvious example.

And you're still wasting time "training" people, screw that, "Ain't nobody got time for that".

[Yinnyth]

If it were easy to find 17 people who could count to seven, I wouldn't have made this thread. I've literally watched more than 100 "attempts" to defeat that SOLOABLE mata-mata fail. That straight up tells me, people just plain suck. There is no remedy. The only option is to make the shit fail-proof.

I hate to keep bringing it back to that one specific enemy, there are MANY other issues, it's just pants on head retarded how bad people can be, with that as the utmost obvious example.

And you're still wasting time "training" people, screw that, "Ain't nobody got time for that".

You are not "wasting" time training people. You're making an investment. I had time for it. Roughly 16 people in my linkshell, 20 people in the linkshell we team up with, and probably about 24 people in the linkshell whom I originally teamed up with had time for it. And there's probably way more people who would want to be part of this if they knew about it. And this is just NA Fenrir.

You could have gotten into a group to kill Tojil, Karah. You said it yourself. You just didn't want to be a part of their group.

[Karah]

I could've won multiple times, indeed, people ask me daily to go. I'd rather never get the wins than compromise the little integrity I do have (even if it's only virtual).

Sorry, but, I believe people should learn how to play on their own. No one showed me/taught me/held my hand 10 years ago when I picked this up and got my ass kicked by enemies that I had no ability to kill. I learned on my own. They should do the same, if you want hand holding, there's always my little pony.

There were no guides. No wiki or BG, just lolalla and somepage at some point. The amount of information out there on this game is neigh infinite. But the laziness of people is staggering.

[Demon6324236]

I love that you were mentioning what an average guy was capable of, then compared 99 spharai to oatixur, but ok, I'm up for the challenge.

That's DMG+, not DMG.

151 base damage vs 196 base damage. 130% the damage. Not 300%.I admit I did not read it all either, but it is a 300% increase of the weapons DMG, not the DMG a player has, but the weapon's DMG. No idea what is or is not being compared, but I felt it worthy to throw it out there because any weapon before Adoulin has less DMG than the H2H I presented, easy to see a 300% increase in the weapon's DMG. In fact, only 4 weapons in the game that are H2H actually beat out the Relic 99 H2H, Forefront being the most easily accessed to players, costing Bayld, and only being @56 DMG. I have seen almost no win runs on Phoenix as of late, so unless I am missing them, either you have them or you don't at this point. If you don't, then no Rigors for you unless you make your own group of a friend helps you out, so Forefront would be your best, and Oat still has a large amount of damage over that. As I said though, this is all based on the premise you go off of simply the weapon's DMG, not counting anything to do with player Skill contributing to DMG, and also, once this update comes to add skill to the weapon it could very well be a large bonus as well.

[FrankReynolds]

300% more damage? Which weapon are you comparing oatixur to?


Edit: And people who give up because something is more challenging than they originally anticipated disgust me. I don't shy away from a challenge. Why do you? I play the game because it challenges me. Do you play the game because it's as easy as watching a movie? Why not watch a movie then?

That was obviously a gross exaggeration intended to prove a point.

Here's an accurate example based on your H2H damage calculations.

From the test server:

Here's what a elite monk will have

Oatixur
DMG+126 Delay+96
Attack+26
Evasion+27
Hand-to-hand skill+228 Guard skill+232
Physical damage taken-3%

Damage - 200.72 Delay - 96



Here's what a well geared monk will have

Rigor Baghnakhs
DMG+90 Delay+60
Hand-to-hand skill+162 Guard skill+162
Automaton: Accuracy+20 Ranged Accuracy+20 Magic Accuracy+20

Damage - 157.46 Delay - 60


Here's what an average joe will have

Forefront Cesti
DMG+52 Delay+60
Accuracy+15 Evasion+4
Hand-to-hand skill+63 Guard skill+63
Reives: DMG+66 Accuracy+25

Damage - 108.57 Delay - 60



Now back at 75, people were plugging along happily building relics and the game was arguably at it's most popular.


Again, the elite monk

Spharai
(Hand-to-Hand) All Races
DMG: +23 Delay: +86 Attack +20
Enhances "Counter" effect
"Final Heaven"
Lv. 75 MNK

Damage - 58.12 Delay - 86


Again, the well geared monk.

Destroyers
(Hand-to-Hand) All Races
DMG: +5 Delay: +48
Latent effect: DMG +18
Critical hit rate +6%
Lv. 73 WAR / MNK / RDM / THF / PLD / DRK /
BST / RNG / DNC

Damage - 58.12 Delay - 48


Since you felt the need to point out how stupid we are for just going off weapon damage, It's especially worth noting the accuracy gained from all that skill. It could be the difference between going from near capped accuracy to near floored accuracy. Doing 50% - 75% as much damage per hit is bad enough, without missing almost every time. So it's not just the actual weapon damage after H2H skill.

It would have been nice if Spharai had been a little better at that level and there are other relics that were a more obvious upgrade, but the fact remains. Nothing was so far apart that a person who had weapon A could smash things that a person with weapon B couldn't even get invited to do. And from all accounts by the "I'm a bad ass club" the game had far more skilled and professional players back then before abyssea made us all into retarded mouth breathers who just want free welfare checks and Iphones.

So as far as I can tell, the addition of weapons and gear that are massive upgrades over both the previous gear and what the average Joe can obtain has nothing to do with what is keeping the elite playing the game. It actually seems like you guys are the ones who want something for nothing. In reality, you were gonna do this crap anyways. Now they're just giving stuff you don't really need and it's messing it up for everyone else.

I mean, you say that you are the only ones beating anything and we would be lost without you, but the mouth breathers supposedly aren't beating anything with you either, so I'm not sure what the point of that is.

[Mahoro]

So as far as I can tell, the addition of weapons and gear that are massive upgrades over both the previous gear and what the average Joe can obtain has nothing to do with what is keeping the elite playing the game. It actually seems like you guys are the ones who want something for nothing. In reality, you were gonna do this crap anyways. Now they're just giving stuff you don't really need and it's messing it up for everyone else.


How is it messing it up for everyone else when it's clearly possible for Rigor MNKs to beat Tojil? Granted, the rewards from Delve Bosses are a higher step up a ladder than prior events in the game from 2003-2010, but I don't really understand how that is preventing the "well-geared" in your classifcation from doing anything. At best, the Forefront MNK is excluded from Content Level 20 (which I assume is intended by the devs), but the "well-geared" Rigor MNK can win at quite literally everything the "Elite" MNK can.

[FrankReynolds]

How is it messing it up for everyone else when it's clearly possible for Rigor MNKs to beat Tojil? Granted, the rewards from Delve Bosses are a higher step up a ladder than prior events in the game from 2003-2010, but I don't really understand how that is preventing the "well-geared" in your classifcation from doing anything. At best, the Forefront MNK is excluded from Content Level 20 (which I assume is intended by the devs), but the "well-geared" Rigor MNK can win at quite literally everything the "Elite" MNK can.

Because people don't want "Can win" DDs. They want "Will win" DDs. They are adding new monsters / areas and there is a high likelihood that they will be geared towards the top end just like the current stuff meaning that by the time you get from forefront > Rigor > Oats, they will be outdated too. And you still haven't explained why having the lower weapons suck so bad in comparison is of any benefit to the game or the players.

I mean it effectively removes the ability to play multiple jobs for most people. When you have a favorite job that you built / obtained an ultimate weapon for and that causes that job to do 100%+ more damage than your next best job, evades 30% more hits, Takes 30% less damage and has 50% better accuracy (these are just examples) it basically renders every other job that doesn't have an ultimate weapon useless on any new content. It's like they raised the level cap, but made it so that you can only Exp on absolute virtue.

[Mahoro]

The question of why having the lower weapons is of any benefit to the game or players is rhetorical. At the moment, SE's design philosophy is stepwise ladder progression. The lower weapons help in lower Content Levels. Certain things might get outdated over time, but they don't want people to be static.

As for people not wanting "Can win" but "Will Win" DD's, I doubt that's the reaction of the majority of the playerbase that haven't beaten the Delve Bosses yet. With the new update, more of those people will be in a position to handle the Bosses.

[FrankReynolds]

The question of why having the lower weapons is of any benefit to the game or players is rhetorical.

It's not rhetorical. People are claiming that Elite players have to have things the way they currently are or they will quit. I think that's a BS excuse. I think those people just want to be as gear wealthy as possible at any expense. I don't think they will quit if their best of the best weapons are only 10 more damage than the next instead of 50 or a hundred. I think they like a completely lopsided playing field that allows them to call everyone else retarded.


At the moment, SE's design philosophy is stepwise ladder progression. The lower weapons help in lower Content Levels. Certain things might get outdated over time, but they don't want people to be static.

And they would help even more if they were more powerful. Remember. The people we have to worry about blowing through everything with powerful weapons have already done that.

[Yinnyth]

I mean, you say that you are the only ones beating anything and we would be lost without you, but the mouth breathers supposedly aren't beating anything with you either, so I'm not sure what the point of that is.

I'm saying what about who now? The message I'm trying to relay is stop thinking it's impossible for you to beat a delve megaboss. If you want delve megaboss gear, awesome. Now go play the game and make some amount of progress toward your goal.

[Mahoro]

It's not rhetorical. People are claiming that Elite players have to have things the way they currently are or they will quit. I think that's a BS excuse. I think those people just want to be as gear wealthy as possible at any expense. I don't think they will quit if their best of the best weapons are only 10 more damage than the next instead of 50 or a hundred. I think they like a completely lopsided playing field that allows them to call everyone else retarded.



And they would help even more if they were more powerful. Remember. The people we have to worry about blowing through everything with powerful weapons have already done that.

It's rhetorical because you are asking it in order to make a point. Obviously, if you accept as true the idea that the lower weapons suck so bad in comparison (which they do), it wouldn't have a readily identifiable "benefit" to the game or the players. It's just a byproduct of SE's new design. Furthermore, I don't think anybody is claiming that the Elite weapons have to be SO much stronger just to feed into a philosophy that "Elite players have to have things the way they currently are or they will quit." I don't think anybody actually connected those two ideas, and said Oatixurs have to be +50 more dmg than Rigors just to keep the Elites from quitting.

I actually agree with you that I don't think elite players would quit if their weapons are only 10 more damage. But I don't agree that it's doing damage to the game to have them be that much stronger in the first place. It WOULD do damage to the game if the bosses could ONLY be defeated with that degree of weapon, but they obviously aren't.

As for your other point, I don't even know what the debate is about anymore. The lower weapons are being buffed in a couple weeks. We should just see what happens to the general population's ability to beat the content after that.

[FrankReynolds]

It's rhetorical because you are asking it in order to make a point.

Sort of.


Obviously, if you accept as true the idea that the lower weapons suck so bad in comparison (which they do), it wouldn't have a readily identifiable "benefit" to the game or the players. It's just a byproduct of SE's new design.

You're right. Which is why people saying it's fine and people need to just deal with it are full of crap. People need to tell SE that it sucks so they don't keep doing it. People are blaming the players instead.


Furthermore, I don't think anybody is claiming that the Elite weapons have to be SO much stronger just to feed into a philosophy that "Elite players have to have things the way they currently are or they will quit." I don't think anybody actually connected those two ideas, and said Oatixurs have to be +50 more dmg than Rigors just to keep the Elites from quitting.

Saying that Oatixurs shouldn't be changed and that the current situation with only about 10% of the population having any reasonable hope of attaining them without intervention by SE is exactly the same though isn't it? I mean saying things shouldn't be changed even though they know it's bad for the game isn't really a defensible stance is it?



I actually agree with you that I don't think elite players would quit if their weapons are only 10 more damage. But I don't agree that it's doing damage to the game to have them be that much stronger in the first place. It WOULD do damage to the game if the bosses could ONLY be defeated with that degree of weapon, but they obviously aren't.

Technically they CAN only be beat with that gear. It's an 18 man event. Try Jumping on a mule without that level of gear and see if you can get anyone who CAN do it to do it with you. It's like being a millionaire. Technically anyone can do it. In reality almost no one can do it.


As for your other point, I don't even know what the debate is about anymore. The lower weapons are being buffed in a couple weeks. We should just see what happens to the general population's ability to beat the content after that.

We all know that they are going to keep all the gear exactly as far apart as it is now after the update which means that the next weapons / gear that are twice as good as the current will still be unobtainable by the same people.

Character progression is out the window. Essentially almost everyone will forever be at the same point in the food chain forever with this system. SOme will make the jump to the next class, just like in the real world, but for the most part those currently gear poor will forever stay gear poor because they will never have time to catch up.

[Mahoro]

Saying that Oatixurs shouldn't be changed and that the current situation with only about 10% of the population having any reasonable hope of attaining them without intervention by SE is exactly the same though isn't it? I mean saying things shouldn't be changed even though they know it's bad for the game isn't really a defensible stance is it?

That's just the point though. They don't think it's bad for the game, because it introduces a level of challenge they felt was lacking (regardless of whether you think they are looking for false challenges), and it supports organized LS endgame. Others have expressed this viewpoint throughout the thread. If they didn't think that elite weapons that are 10% improvement over the next tier were bad for the game, they won't think elite weapons that are 25% improvement over the next tier are bad for the game either.


Technically they CAN only be beat with that gear. It's an 18 man event. Try Jumping on a mule without that level of gear and see if you can get anyone who CAN do it to do it with you. It's like being a millionaire. Technically anyone can do it. In reality almost no one can do it.

What level of gear are you talking about here? I was referring to people beating Delve Bosses with sufficiently upgraded T1-T5 weapons and gear, which is possible in every instance. It's apparent that SE intended for people to work at the lower tier gear, upgrade them with Airlixirs, and then tackle the bosses. Of course, mages and support don't need to follow that trajectory to be successful.



Character progression is out the window. Essentially almost everyone will forever be at the same point in the food chain forever with this system. SOme will make the jump to the next class, just like in the real world, but for the most part those currently gear poor will forever stay gear poor because they will never have time to catch up.

I don't really know that we can say this with certainty now. There are only two Naakuals left to be introduced, along with the Delve versions of Yumcax/Hurkan and the last two mobs. It's clear the Delve versions of Yumcax and Hurkan will drop improved versions of the respective WKR gear, assuming SE follows that pattern (e.g., a super Ixtab, a super Tamaxchi, etc.). The last two mobs will likely drop those remaining job items not covered by the current Delve Bosses (e.g., a Delve Boss SMN pole), although it's possible one of them will be the "final boss" Naakual. If SE deems those mobs to be Content Level 20, we don't currently know how much higher the ladder will go. Is there a planned Content Level 25? Content Level 30? We just don't know until we get a better understanding of when Adoulin content will be exhausted.

[FrankReynolds]

That's just the point though. They don't think it's bad for the game, because it introduces a level of challenge they felt was lacking (regardless of whether you think they are looking for false challenges), and it supports organized LS endgame. Others have expressed this viewpoint throughout the thread. If they didn't think that elite weapons that are 10% improvement over the next tier were bad for the game, they won't think elite weapons that are 25% improvement over the next tier are bad for the game either.

But the challenge is artificial in that 90% of what makes it challenging has nothing to do with actual player skill. It's all who has what gear and who knows who. If everybody had equal access to a decent group and sufficient gear, things would be different. Right now, people generally won't let you in delve groups without delve gear or mage equipment that takes even longer to get than delve gear. They are artificial cock blocks that have nothing to do with level of skill and everything to do with accessibility.

A lot of that wouldn't be a problem if the weapons were't so far apart. Player skill can make up a 10% difference in gear. Nothing can make up a 100% difference in gear unless the guy with Oats is mentally handicapped and the guy with forefront is a friggin genius.


What level of gear are you talking about here? I was referring to people beating Delve Bosses with sufficiently upgraded T1-T5 weapons and gear, which is possible in every instance. It's apparent that SE intended for people to work at the lower tier gear, upgrade them with Airlixirs, and then tackle the bosses.

You don't just join a shell that can beat this stuff. They want you to have the gear. Even on a mage job they want you to have certain hard to obtain sets. It's not like you can just log in and be entering a Boss run 15 minutes later. You either have to stand around shouting for a long time or spend crazy time building sets and getting in good with a shell. Neither of those things are skill related or even fun in most cases. They are simply luxuries that the people with the most free time can afford.


Of course, mages and support don't need to follow that trajectory to be successful.

Even the shouts want mages to have pretty damn good gear and let's be honest. Of the 15% of the population that even have those jobs leveled, most of them don't have that gear. It's really not a viable option no matter how good it sounds on paper.


I don't really know that we can say this with certainty now. There are only two Naakuals left to be introduced, along with the Delve versions of Yumcax/Hurkan and the last two mobs. It's clear the Delve versions of Yumcax and Hurkan will drop improved versions of the respective WKR gear, assuming SE follows that pattern (e.g., a super Ixtab, a super Tamaxchi, etc.). The last two mobs will likely drop those remaining job items not covered by the current Delve Bosses (e.g., a Delve Boss SMN pole), although it's possible one of them will be the "final boss" Naakual. If SE deems those mobs to be Content Level 20, we don't currently know how much higher the ladder will go. Is there a planned Content Level 25? Content Level 30? We just don't know until we get a better understanding of when Adoulin content will be exhausted.


Well let's just go with the idea that there isn't anything new planned beyond the two new naakual then. That pretty much negates the whole argument that leet players have to have the best gear or they will quit. Everyone will catch up in that case and there was really no reason for it to be like this in the first place if it only served to keep them around for 2 more months.


If they do add more similarly difficult 18 man content with gear that is equally greater than the previous gear then nothing changes and all the upgrades to the lower level gear serve to solve nothing. There's only two ways to level the field. Make it so everyone can beat the bosses and get the drops or make drops that are reasonably close to them that can be more easily obtained so that people can beat the bosses by closing the gaps in gear so that a guy who doesn't have oats or fully upgraded delve gear can get in a shout or a shell.

It would make far more sense to close the gap in gear quality so that mid range players can more easily mingle with the current leet crowd and more linkshells of various skill levels can compete in the same content than to just make everything easier and make the leet sad in their pants about a lack of challenge.

[Mahoro]

Aren't they already closing the gap in gear quality? Percentage-wise, they might still be on a different tier than the Boss gear, but the August patch stats will allow many more people to beat the bosses because ACC is one of the biggest issues.

As for your other points, you have to distinguish Delve T1-T5 groups from Delve Boss groups. People have far less difficulty getting into groups that will allow them to max out the T1-T5 gear. Indeed, you can work on the gear buying things from the AH, and you can buy ready-made crafted Boss weapons that are just as competitive if not more so than Delve Boss weapons. And if you accept as true your premise that 90% of what makes the Bosses challenging is gear and who you know, then people with capped out T1-T5 gear and/or crafted Boss weapons can band together based on their own schedules to tackle the Bosses.

In the end, I don't think SE intends everyone to beat the content, because they've designated it Content Level 20. They have traditionally put in certain events to cater to large LS's. At the moment, this is just one event in the entire expansion. Although it may give rewards that are somewhat higher skewed based on the game's history, it doesn't prevent anyone on the next lowest rung on the ladder from completing the content.

[Afania]

But the challenge is artificial in that 90% of what makes it challenging has nothing to do with actual player skill. It's all who has what gear and who knows who. If everybody had equal access to a decent group and sufficient gear, things would be different. Right now, people generally won't let you in delve groups without delve gear or mage equipment that takes even longer to get than delve gear. They are artificial cock blocks that have nothing to do with level of skill and everything to do with accessibility.


I hate current FFXI direction but I still have to point out 1 thing that I often disagree with when I see above statment.

FFXI is an MMORPG, IT IS about who knows who, and who has what gear. MMORPG=make connections and player interaction, and gear grind. It is NOT about how awesome your playing skills are. Most successful players should belong to players with best ability to make connection and gets the resources to do so.

MMORPG sometimes can create an environment simiar to rl, and irl successful ppl are not always the "best", sometimes they just knows right ppl, has right resource, has good luck. It's not a fair playing ground, and it shouldn't be, because if everyone is equal to begin with, it's not fun as a MMORPG anymore.

If you want a game that best playing skill player dominates, go play a fighting game. But ppl need to stop asking FFXI to be a fighting game.

[FrankReynolds]

I hate current FFXI direction but I still have to point out 1 thing that I often disagree with when I see above statment.

FFXI is an MMORPG, IT IS about who knows who, and who has what gear.

So why all the fighting monsters and stuff? Why not just get a twitter account?


Aren't they already closing the gap in gear quality? Percentage-wise, they might still be on a different tier than the Boss gear, but the August patch stats will allow many more people to beat the bosses because ACC is one of the biggest issues.

You don't honestly think that they're going to give everything a huge boost like that and then not make every piece of content after it require those stats do you? There's always the off chance that the next tier of gear they release will be a much smaller increase and level the playing field somewhat for people who don't have it yet, but look at who we are talking about here and what they have done recently.


As for your other points, you have to distinguish Delve T1-T5 groups from Delve Boss groups. People have far less difficulty getting into groups that will allow them to max out the T1-T5 gear. Indeed, you can work on the gear buying things from the AH, and you can buy ready-made crafted Boss weapons that are just as competitive if not more so than Delve Boss weapons. And if you accept as true your premise that 90% of what makes the Bosses challenging is gear and who you know, then people with capped out T1-T5 gear and/or crafted Boss weapons can band together based on their own schedules to tackle the Bosses.

And that will be great if they don't do the exact same thing with the next tier of content / gear. Otherwise it changes nothing really.


In the end, I don't think SE intends everyone to beat the content, because they've designated it Content Level 20. They have traditionally put in certain events to cater to large LS's.

That's exactly the problem. Right now there's 1,500 people logged in on my server on a Saturday. According to FFXIAH, there's 10,000 active accounts (I'm sure that half of those are mules, but let's ignore that for now). Let's say just for the sake of argument that they all play 8 hours a day (In reality, most probably don't even play 4, but let's ignore that too). That means that My pool of players who I can team up with is now down to 3,333 (Actually less, because I don't actually play 8 hours a day but we'll ignore that too). Of those 3,333, probably 1/3 are either Japanese or other non-English speaking nationalities (This is far worse for people in other time zones). That leaves 2,222 (Which is probably the most that you will ever see logged in on my server at any given time). That makes room for 123 link shells (assuming 18 people. Remember when shells used to have like 60? ahh the good ol days) in my fictitious 8 hour play time zone. Those shells need 3 white mages for a total of 369. Of the support jobs needed, WHM has the highest population so let's look at that. According to the census, only 8 percent of players even have whm leveled. That means half those shells have no whm. Bard is even less. Right now there are 15 people logged in on bard on Cerberus.

Are you seeing where I'm going with this? Before people even start to talk about gear and skill and networking or the fact that a lot of those people aren't even doing Adoulin content because they are leveling, crafting or farming older gear, a large portion of the player base has been excluded from the content. There is an artificial elite class and they are creating the best content specifically for them. That's BS in my opinion. Are many of those players really good at the game? Of course. But the idea that they are somehow special and should have stuff that is 100% better than everyone else is silly.

[Karah]

Are many of those players really good at the game? Of course.

I was almost completely in agreement till I hit that sentence.

I know I've said this before, and I'll say it a thousand more times. There are a million "talent-less" monks with Oatixurs and maybe a handful "good at the game" monks with them.

All the things that can't be mentioned create an illusion of "good" they're not, they're just creative and willing to use things outside the ToS.

The "good" has left the game. The only ones left are the ones with (*ish-**tted) gil that buy gear to artificially inflate their lack of ability.

[saevel]

How is it messing it up for everyone else when it's clearly possible for Rigor MNKs to beat Tojil? Granted, the rewards from Delve Bosses are a higher step up a ladder than prior events in the game from 2003-2010, but I don't really understand how that is preventing the "well-geared" in your classifcation from doing anything. At best, the Forefront MNK is excluded from Content Level 20 (which I assume is intended by the devs), but the "well-geared" Rigor MNK can win at quite literally everything the "Elite" MNK can.

This was only valid for the first wave of NM / Boss wins. If you didn't catch it then you are now SoL as the groups who possess the support requirements to beat those boss's (2 x 3~4 song BRDs / ect..) will only allow Oax MNK's into Tojil runs. It's become a situation where your required to have the MB items to be allowed to fight the MB. I see where SE was going with this, they just released certain things way to early.

For the Rigors vs Oax argument, Oax comes at 100% power right off the boss or for 200K plasm, Rigors require you to sink significant gil into them (thankfully +2 prices have plummeted) first. That gil is non-recoverable and you basically throw them away once you get your Oax's. Most people aren't going to want to piss away gil to get Rigors to R15 only to throw them away cause they went COR / GEO to Tojil.

Now that we've figured out the MB's AI's their not truly "hard", they just require everyone to read up first and know WTF is going on. Honestly, like most things FFXI related, communication and knowledge are the real issues. We just use "gear" as a way to indicate if someone is "good" or not, honestly this is a horribly way to go about things as that MNK could of got their Oax's while on COR and have no idea what a MNK is supposed to do on Mata.

[Afania]

So why all the fighting monsters and stuff? Why not just get a twitter account?


What kind of reply is this? Of course you fight monsters in a RPG.

Edit: FFXI has been "get a good group or be a good friend with LS leader if you want to be successful" for years, it's what makes it stand out, if you don't like it, either deal with it or play games like D3.

[Karah]

FFXI has been "get a good group or be a good friend with LS leader if you want to be successful" for years, it's what makes it stand out, if you don't like it, either deal with it or play games like D3.

It was originally like that, then that shit stopped when kings stopped mattering.

Soon as ToAU came out, linkshell content (all but) ended. Overall more time has been spent with a maximum need of single party vs alliance wide content. Unless you actually wasted your time doing khim cerb and hydra.

That's the way it should've stayed.

[Camiie]

This was only valid for the first wave of NM / Boss wins. If you didn't catch it then you are now SoL as the groups who possess the support requirements to beat those boss's (2 x 3~4 song BRDs / ect..) will only allow Oax MNK's into Tojil runs. It's become a situation where your required to have the MB items to be allowed to fight the MB. I see where SE was going with this, they just released certain things way to early.

For the Rigors vs Oax argument, Oax comes at 100% power right off the boss or for 200K plasm, Rigors require you to sink significant gil into them (thankfully +2 prices have plummeted) first. That gil is non-recoverable and you basically throw them away once you get your Oax's. Most people aren't going to want to piss away gil to get Rigors to R15 only to throw them away cause they went COR / GEO to Tojil.

Good point. I was kinda thinking along these lines just yesterday. Unless one knows that they will never, ever fight the delve mega bosses then what really is the point of blowing all that gil or potential gil upgrading weapons like Bloodbath or Rigors? Isn't it better to just sell any airlixirs you get and put that gil toward buying a Tojil clear from mercs or purchasing a Razorfury off the AH?

I guess they intended the upgradable weapons to be both an end result for some and a stepping stone for others? I sure do feel like a fool for fully upgrading my Bloodbath. I wonder if that's something they intended as well.

[Mahoro]

That's exactly the problem. Right now there's 1,500 people logged in on my server on a Saturday. According to FFXIAH, there's 10,000 active accounts (I'm sure that half of those are mules, but let's ignore that for now). Let's say just for the sake of argument that they all play 8 hours a day (In reality, most probably don't even play 4, but let's ignore that too). That means that My pool of players who I can team up with is now down to 3,333 (Actually less, because I don't actually play 8 hours a day but we'll ignore that too). Of those 3,333, probably 1/3 are either Japanese or other non-English speaking nationalities (This is far worse for people in other time zones). That leaves 2,222 (Which is probably the most that you will ever see logged in on my server at any given time). That makes room for 123 link shells (assuming 18 people. Remember when shells used to have like 60? ahh the good ol days) in my fictitious 8 hour play time zone. Those shells need 3 white mages for a total of 369. Of the support jobs needed, WHM has the highest population so let's look at that. According to the census, only 8 percent of players even have whm leveled. That means half those shells have no whm. Bard is even less. Right now there are 15 people logged in on bard on Cerberus.

Are you seeing where I'm going with this? Before people even start to talk about gear and skill and networking or the fact that a lot of those people aren't even doing Adoulin content because they are leveling, crafting or farming older gear, a large portion of the player base has been excluded from the content. There is an artificial elite class and they are creating the best content specifically for them. That's BS in my opinion. Are many of those players really good at the game? Of course. But the idea that they are somehow special and should have stuff that is 100% better than everyone else is silly.

By your own numbers, you have actually demonstrated a substantial pool of players with which to form linkshells (or even well-organized PUGs). Some will never be motivated to do so and so they have self-selected themselves out of the content. The lack of support job thing is another issue in and of itself. I've already wholeheartedly agreed with you that SE should have made playing support jobs more attractive if they were going to require their presence at the highest difficulty endgame content. But I think it's already been demonstrated that there people out there who are motivated to complete content and therefore level a support job to aid the larger group, and to essentially be auto-invited to the most difficult content.

And I don't agree that the "best content" is being created specifically for them. Again, we are using subjective qualifiers here. Boss battles are one event out of an antire expansion. The best rewards might come from them, but that doesn't automatically make them the best content.


This was only valid for the first wave of NM / Boss wins. If you didn't catch it then you are now SoL as the groups who possess the support requirements to beat those boss's (2 x 3~4 song BRDs / ect..) will only allow Oax MNK's into Tojil runs. It's become a situation where your required to have the MB items to be allowed to fight the MB. I see where SE was going with this, they just released certain things way to early.

For the Rigors vs Oax argument, Oax comes at 100% power right off the boss or for 200K plasm, Rigors require you to sink significant gil into them (thankfully +2 prices have plummeted) first. That gil is non-recoverable and you basically throw them away once you get your Oax's. Most people aren't going to want to piss away gil to get Rigors to R15 only to throw them away cause they went COR / GEO to Tojil.

Now that we've figured out the MB's AI's their not truly "hard", they just require everyone to read up first and know WTF is going on. Honestly, like most things FFXI related, communication and knowledge are the real issues. We just use "gear" as a way to indicate if someone is "good" or not, honestly this is a horribly way to go about things as that MNK could of got their Oax's while on COR and have no idea what a MNK is supposed to do on Mata.

It may be true that the groups that are currently clearing Tojil will only allow an Oat MNK into the run, but that doesn't preclude newer groups from forming. There are a host of people who play support that aren't connected with the current Boss-clearing LS's, at least on our server Lakshmi.

I understand the "sunk cost in Rigors" argument, and I do agree it ends up being a bit of a waste, but you can also view it as the necessary cost for obtaining the Oat. When people are spending 300M on Mythics and 100-200M on Relics, sinking a few Airlixir's +2 into the endeavor to get an Oat doesn't seem so bad in comparison.

[Karah]

The "best content" is being created specifically for them. Boss battles are the only event out of an entire expansion. The best rewards come from them, that automatically makes them the best(only) content.

Corrected your errors in your statement.

[FrankReynolds]

By your own numbers, you have actually demonstrated a substantial pool of players with which to form linkshells (or even well-organized PUGs).

Actually what I demonstrated is a huge number of players being castrated from the content before they even get a chance to be rejected for the wrong gear, jobs, networking skills and a host of other things. I also used the absolute best case scenario most of those numbers are double what the reality is.

You're trying to look at the number of people who can possible do it from that group of 10,000 and ignoring the thousands of others who have been cut off before they even try. The reality is that like most people, I play maybe 2-4 hours a day which puts me in the range of 30 - 60 shells that could possibly be formed. That's possibly. Not actual shells in existence. To join / form one of those shells, would require incredible luck in a pool that small with that few support jobs to choose from. Also, the shorter your play window is, the less likely it becomes that your playtime will overlap significantly enough with other players to take on content that can take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour just to begin.

Honestly, unless they merge a bunch of servers into big ones with like 50,000 characters each, this just isn't ever going to be a good model again. There are way to many gaps in play style, time, gear, jobs etc. for this to work for any significant portion of the population right now.


And I don't agree that the "best content" is being created specifically for them. Again, we are using subjective qualifiers here. Boss battles are one event out of an antire expansion. The best rewards might come from them, but that doesn't automatically make them the best content.

So if we're ignoring gear drops, what is the best content then? Everything? I think we both know that isn't true. If you actually believed that gear wasn't the greatest qualifier of what is good content in the game, then you probably wouldn't even know what we are talking about here. You'd be off doing some "better" content with anybody who would do it with you because when gear drops aren't a concern, there is no need to form well skilled / geared parties. You can just play with whoever makes interesting conversation.


It may be true that the groups that are currently clearing Tojil will only allow an Oat MNK into the run, but that doesn't preclude newer groups from forming. There are a host of people who play support that aren't connected with the current Boss-clearing LS's, at least on our server Lakshmi.

Probably, but qualified support jobs have no need to join an LS. They don't need to get to know people. All they need is the prerequisite gear. Which most of them don't have. Which greatly decreases the pool of people you can play with in this content. And gives the ones that do have it the ability to only go with the best groups. They have no reason to join a PUG / shell that isn't top notch or already winning regularly.

[Mahoro]

Actually what I demonstrated is a huge number of players being castrated from the content before they even get a chance to be rejected for the wrong gear, jobs, networking skills and a host of other things. I also used the absolute best case scenario most of those numbers are double what the reality is.

You're trying to look at the number of people who can possible do it from that group of 10,000 and ignoring the thousands of others who have been cut off before they even try. The reality is that like most people, I play maybe 2-4 hours a day which puts me in the range of 30 - 60 shells that could possibly be formed. That's possibly. Not actual shells in existence. To join / form one of those shells, would require incredible luck in a pool that small with that few support jobs to choose from. Also, the shorter your play window is, the less likely it becomes that your playtime will overlap significantly enough with other players to take on content that can take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour just to begin.

Honestly, unless they merge a bunch of servers into big ones with like 50,000 characters each, this just isn't ever going to be a good model again. There are way to many gaps in play style, time, gear, jobs etc. for this to work for any significant portion of the population right now.

I guess we are looking at the numbers differently, because when only a handful of shells at the moment are currently clearing Bosses per server, 30-60 potential shells seems like a lot to me. I don't consider that pool to be small in these days of the game.


So if we're ignoring gear drops, what is the best content then? Everything? I think we both know that isn't true. If you actually believed that gear wasn't the greatest qualifier of what is good content in the game, then you probably wouldn't even know what we are talking about here. You'd be off doing some "better" content with anybody who would do it with you because when gear drops aren't a concern, there is no need to form well skilled / geared parties. You can just play with whoever makes interesting conversation.

The thing is, you say SE is designing toward the top end of the playerbase when there are events like T1-T5 Delve, Mog Gardens, Reives, Skirmish, Wildskeepers, and Monstrosity being added to the game, each of which caters to another portion of the playerbase with varying interests and skill levels. Yes, I do understand the larger point that the rewards for the Content Level 20 events are so incredibly better than the rewards for the lower Content Levels. But at least dev resources aren't being clogged toward the top 10% of each server. You are just focusing on one event.


Probably, but qualified support jobs have no need to join an LS. They don't need to get to know people. All they need is the prerequisite gear. Which most of them don't have. Which greatly decreases the pool of people you can play with in this content. And gives the ones that do have it the ability to only go with the best groups. They have no reason to join a PUG / shell that isn't top notch or already winning regularly.

I'm not sure how you arrive at the conclusion that qualified support jobs have no need to join an LS. Or that most of them don't have the prerequisite gear. There are probably a significant number of WHM's out there unconnected with a Delve shell who know how to put together a Rudimentary Cure Potency 50% set, along with some Fast Cast sets. COR's only need a few key pieces to participate in Delve Boss runs. GEO has at minimum two or three gear sets to make, the hardest of which is -PDT which a lot of people likely have already. BRD arguably has the highest bar as they are "required" to have Daurdabla.

[FrankReynolds]

I guess we are looking at the numbers differently, because when only a handful of shells at the moment are currently clearing Bosses per server, 30-60 potential shells seems like a lot to me. I don't consider that pool to be small in these days of the game.

That's potential shells. Those people still have to have the right gear, jobs etc. and all get along with each other. A fair number of those people will be in pink armor, have only one or two jobs like thief and dancer, be semi retarded, have no social skills etc. Not only that, but they have to actually form a shell and want you in it.

Supposing I do manage to get in one, there are still a crap load that want to but cannot. I'm not debating this for my own direct benefit. I'm discussing it because I need those people to stick around if the game is to survive and not only that, but they deserve to have the same level of enjoyment that I do.

I have Samurai with uguisumaru. I have Monk with BB and Rigors. I have WHM and Bard leveled and geared well enough to get me in PUGs. I have a pocket white mage / bard to help me solo things. I have lot's of cash stockpiled to buy the boss weapons if I want. I'm sure I could get into a great shell if I put some more effort into gearing Bard and / or whm.

If I see the hopelessness in all this, imagine how people who don't have those benefits feel.


The thing is, you say SE is designing toward the top end of the playerbase when there are events like T1-T5 Delve, Mog Gardens, Reives, Skirmish, Wildskeepers, and Monstrosity being added to the game, each of which caters to another portion of the playerbase with varying interests and skill levels. Yes, I do understand the larger point that the rewards for the Content Level 20 events are so incredibly better than the rewards for the lower Content Levels. But at least dev resources aren't being clogged toward the top 10% of each server. You are just focusing on one event.

That's like saying "why do you need to go college? Plenty of people live their whole lives on minimum wage". Those events don't reward people with things that allow their character to progress at the same rate as the content does. If people do those events, they will never be able to advance to a higher level of play in a reasonable amount of time and will be doomed to not get to do top tier content until a year after it comes out for the entirety of their FFXI careers.

You can say rieve gear etc. is better than old gear and it should be good enough to beat delve stuff, but the reality is that you have probably never seen a shout that said "(Delve) Plasm (Farm) (Do you need it?) Forefront Monk, Sam, War (Can I have it?)" ever. It's really not as easy as it sounds. Mages aren't going to run with a bunch of reive geared players when they can run with groups that kill NMS. Aegis / Ochain paladins aren't going to sit there getting punched in the face for an hour for 3,500 plasm. No one want to zombie the NMS for an hour for that either. Can open. Worms out.




I'm not sure how you arrive at the conclusion that qualified support jobs have no need to join an LS. Or that most of them don't have the prerequisite gear. There are probably a significant number of WHM's out there unconnected with a Delve shell who know how to put together a Rudimentary Cure Potency 50% set, along with some Fast Cast sets. COR's only need a few key pieces to participate in Delve Boss runs. GEO has at minimum two or three gear sets to make, the hardest of which is -PDT which a lot of people likely have already. BRD arguably has the highest bar as they are "required" to have Daurdabla.

I'm sure that things have changed, but as of last years census, only 8.6% of players had 99 whm. Of those, what percentage would you guess have geared it and or are willing to play it? Bard and cor are even lower. I doubt geo is much higher. It just seems like it because the people who have it are trying to spend as much time as possible on it.


It's like they built a freeway that can only be driven on by porsches mazarattis and lambourghinis and then put a toll road with a hundred stop signs next to it for average cars and put all the high paying jobs at the furthest point.

3:42 PST, 1,022 people logged in on Cerb. There has been one delve shout in the last 3+ hours. Guess what they were looking for.

[Mahoro]

That's potential shells. Those people still have to have the right gear, jobs etc. and all get along with each other. A fair number of those people will be in pink armor, have only one or two jobs like thief and dancer, be semi retarded, have no social skills etc. Not only that, but they have to actually form a shell and want you in it.

Supposing I do manage to get in one, there are still a crap load that want to but cannot. I'm not debating this for my own direct benefit. I'm discussing it because I need those people to stick around if the game is to survive and not only that, but they deserve to have the same level of enjoyment that I do.

I have Samurai with uguisumaru. I have Monk with BB and Rigors. I have WHM and Bard leveled and geared well enough to get me in PUGs. I have a pocket white mage / bard to help me solo things. I have lot's of cash stockpiled to buy the boss weapons if I want. I'm sure I could get into a great shell if I put some more effort into gearing Bard and / or whm.

Actually, I think with those assets you (and others like you) are already far ahead of the curve, but who's to say?


That's like saying "why do you need to go college? Plenty of people live their whole lives on minimum wage". Those events don't reward people with things that allow their character to progress at the same rate as the content does. If people do those events, they will never be able to advance to a higher level of play in a reasonable amount of time and will be doomed to not get to do top tier content until a year after it comes out for the entirety of their FFXI careers.

You can say rieve gear etc. is better than old gear and it should be good enough to beat delve stuff, but the reality is that you have probably never seen a shout that said "(Delve) Plasm (Farm) (Do you need it?) Forefront Monk, Sam, War (Can I have it?)" ever. It's really not as easy as it sounds. Mages aren't going to run with a bunch of reive geared players when they can run with groups that kill NMS. Aegis / Ochain paladins aren't going to sit there getting punched in the face for an hour for 3,500 plasm. No one want to zombie the NMS for an hour for that either. Can open. Worms out.

We're not going to agree on the issue because I don't agree with the first premise I bolded above. Not with the list of rewards from each event I listed. I also don't agree with the second premise, as the game is more casual-friendly in terms of bite-sized events than ever before (barring 20 hour Wildskeepers which are only such because people fight them at low colonization rates). Interpretation of "reasonable amount of time" will vary, of course.



I'm sure that things have changed, but as of last years census, only 8.6% of players had 99 whm. Of those, what percentage would you guess have geared it and or are willing to play it? Bard and cor are even lower. I doubt geo is much higher. It just seems like it because the people who have it are trying to spend as much time as possible on it.

It's like they built a freeway that can only be driven on by porsches mazarattis and lambourghinis and then put a toll road with a hundred stop signs next to it for average cars and put all the high paying jobs at the furthest point.

3:42 PST, 1,022 people logged in on Cerb. There has been one delve shout in the last 3+ hours. Guess what they were looking for.

We've already agreed about the support job issue. Either people level them and fill those roles or SE makes events less dependent on support jobs. The latter won't happen, which unfortunately leaves the former.

[saevel]

It may be true that the groups that are currently clearing Tojil will only allow an Oat MNK into the run, but that doesn't preclude newer groups from forming. There are a host of people who play support that aren't connected with the current Boss-clearing LS's, at least on our server Lakshmi.

There are plenty of mediocre folks but not nearly enough blinged out BRD's and SCH's. The MB's practically require 6~8 songs, 4 COR rolls and four Geo effects to be kill-able due to SE having a brain aneurism and giving them insane stats. Lots of groups have formed to take on the MB and failed miserably due to them simply not having the right support.

Majority of players play / gear a DD or a melee orientated job. Yet on a typical delve MB run you only have six DD "slots", with Tojil / Shark using MNK for most of those. That leaves 11 "support" slots and 1 PLD. That's a pretty bad ratio of job selection. Also each MB requires a different mix of DD jobs which further compounds the issue as someone who could contribute to Tojil suddenly can't contribute to the Bee / Shark.

[Demon6324236]

SE having a brain aneurism and giving them insane stats.Normally I would agree but the skill they are giving us in the next update I think was something they planed to do from the beginning, but were having a hard time getting to work, and they only implemented it on a few new weapons to make sure it worked properly. I could be wrong, but in either case, once our weapons work properly we will be much better off and these fights will becomes much easier, the same goes for when Adoulin gear gets their seemingly mass upgrades/changes in general.

[Mahoro]

Majority of players play / gear a DD or a melee orientated job. Yet on a typical delve MB run you only have six DD "slots", with Tojil / Shark using MNK for most of those. That leaves 11 "support" slots and 1 PLD. That's a pretty bad ratio of job selection. Also each MB requires a different mix of DD jobs which further compounds the issue as someone who could contribute to Tojil suddenly can't contribute to the Bee / Shark.

I agree 100% with your above statements. Although one byproduct is that a lot of people I know across the NA Lakshmi playerbase have taken it to heart and leveled jobs they wouldn't have ordinarily thought of leveling in the past in an effort to be more versatile. This has led some people to discover new aspects of the game to enjoy, like when some melee-onry people try their hand at being mages. An argument could be made that it enriches some players' experiences, and in the process of doing so increases the longevity of the game, because those players will be motivated to start collecting gear for their new jobs.

[FrankReynolds]

We're not going to agree on the issue because I don't agree with the first premise I bolded above. Not with the list of rewards from each event I listed. I also don't agree with the second premise, as the game is more casual-friendly in terms of bite-sized events than ever before (barring 20 hour Wildskeepers which are only such because people fight them at low colonization rates). Interpretation of "reasonable amount of time" will vary, of course.

What I'm saying is that the lower tier and / or prerequisite gear for doing to --> delve --> bosses comes from events that take longer to complete than the top tier gear from bosses does. Which means that the top players will finish that content faster not just because they are better, but because the content takes less time. If the devs want to make them happy, they have to release more top tier content. Which leads to the guys in the middle / rear falling even further behind. The grind is currently at the bottom. Not the top.

When I say "reasonable amount of time", I mean that people should be able to at least get to the top tier content before it becomes outdated.


We've already agreed about the support job issue. Either people level them and fill those roles or SE makes events less dependent on support jobs. The latter won't happen, which unfortunately leaves the former.

The least they could do is meet in the middle and make those jobs incredibly easy to gear up to current endgame standards.

The fact that Bard relies on two instruments that require upwards of $200 million in items to make and white mage (As well as red mage really) requires all sorts of annoying stuff like Magian staves, quested refresh pieces and potency pieces from VW events that no one does anymore and that Cor burns through bullets / cards etc. and requires people to skill up ranged acc. isn't a big help.

They could easily remedy some of that stuff.

[Rustic]

It was originally like that, then that shit stopped when kings stopped mattering.

Soon as ToAU came out, linkshell content (all but) ended. Overall more time has been spent with a maximum need of single party vs alliance wide content. Unless you actually wasted your time doing khim cerb and hydra.

That's the way it should've stayed.

Till you hit Odin/Pandy anyway. Oh, and people were still doing Dynamis, because that was still worth it as ToAU gear was often sidegrade-ish enough that you could walk into a big fight with mostly Dynamis/CoP gear and still be valid.

Right now, it looks like there's gear suitable for public/lowman/party content, and then there's alliance-level content and gear, and that's the big guys people are whining about fighting for half a day straight. Abyssea short-circuited the "experience curve" in FFXI, another reason I wish to set flaming bags of dog poop at the director for said expansions door 24/6. (On the seventh day, I just toss them in the nearest window.).

What I'd like to see is more relevant Adoulin-level content being distributed through the rest of the expansion areas, and I don't mean Voidwatch. Put out KI's that let you actually engage, say Dark Rider. Put content that updates CoP and ToAU to link to the Adoulin storyline. Tie it all together with appropriate item-level content and get more use out of the world.

As it is, there's vast swathes of zone content that is effectively wasted by the new expansions. Renovate the system instead.

[Mahoro]

What I'm saying is that the lower tier and / or prerequisite gear for doing to --> delve --> bosses comes from events that take longer to complete than the top tier gear from bosses does. Which means that the top players will finish that content faster not just because they are better, but because the content takes less time. If the devs want to make them happy, they have to release more top tier content. Which leads to the guys in the middle / rear falling even further behind. The grind is currently at the bottom. Not the top.

When I say "reasonable amount of time", I mean that people should be able to at least get to the top tier content before it becomes outdated.

I think that people have a reasonable amount of time to get to the top tier content before it becomes outdated, based on the dev's upcoming plans. The next round of Delve Bosses aren't even scheduled, although they will likely come out before the end of the year. And when they do, we know that they will (at least) contain the Delve versions of Yumcax and Hurkan, which will simply drop HQ versions of the current WKR gear. We don't really know when, or if, SE intends to outdate current Delve Boss gear. To my knowledge, nothing above Content Level 20 has been firmly discussed by Matsui.


The least they could do is meet in the middle and make those jobs incredibly easy to gear up to current endgame standards.

The fact that Bard relies on two instruments that require upwards of $200 million in items to make and white mage (As well as red mage really) requires all sorts of annoying stuff like Magian staves, quested refresh pieces and potency pieces from VW events that no one does anymore and that Cor burns through bullets / cards etc. and requires people to skill up ranged acc. isn't a big help.

They could easily remedy some of that stuff.

I agree BRD and COR have a fairly high "buy-in", but WHM and GEO are extremely accessible to gear. People are beginning to use Tamaxchi instead of Magian staves now anyway, and Bokwus Gloves exist. Most Refresh pieces can be obtained from a few quick kills in Abyssea (Serpentes gear, Owleyes), a 30-minute Nyzul run (Nares Trews), or from low tier Delve (Bokwus Robe). VW pieces like Heka's Kalsiris and Rubeus Boots might increase efficiency, but nobody will decline inviting a WHM who puts together a reasonably good cure potency, Refresh, and fast cast/Haste set.

[FrankReynolds]

I think that people have a reasonable amount of time to get to the top tier content before it becomes outdated, based on the dev's upcoming plans. The next round of Delve Bosses aren't even scheduled, although they will likely come out before the end of the year. And when they do, we know that they will (at least) contain the Delve versions of Yumcax and Hurkan, which will simply drop HQ versions of the current WKR gear. We don't really know when, or if, SE intends to outdate current Delve Boss gear. To my knowledge, nothing above Content Level 20 has been firmly discussed by Matsui.

Well, I guess we'll see. Hopefully there are some server merges by then, because there is nothing going on on Cerberus.


I agree BRD and COR have a fairly high "buy-in", but WHM and GEO are extremely accessible to gear. People are beginning to use Tamaxchi instead of Magian staves now anyway, and Bokwus Gloves exist. Most Refresh pieces can be obtained from a few quick kills in Abyssea (Serpentes gear, Owleyes), a 30-minute Nyzul run (Nares Trews), or from low tier Delve (Bokwus Robe). VW pieces like Heka's Kalsiris and Rubeus Boots might increase efficiency, but nobody will decline inviting a WHM who puts together a reasonably good cure potency, Refresh, and fast cast/Haste set.

I just called the WHM gear annoying because it comes from stuff that no one does and it takes a while (keep in mind we are talking about people who don't actually want to play WHM).

[Zumi]

Pretty much the best gear comes from bosses which are too hard for the majority of the player base. The boss items are so much better then anything else. There might be like 2 English LS per server that do these. Would I like to join a LS that does bosses yes I sure would but they are all full.

Even if you have a lot of useful jobs for bosses, IE you got in an organized pug got boss weapons, geared out your monk, leveled geo, cor, geared out your whm, rdm, sch. Chances of finding a LS that will let you join are so low due to the fact that there are about 2 or so LS per server they almost never take new members and if they do its because someone has a friend that is already in the said LS.

This leads to more and more people quitting because they can't do the content they want to do, saying you can do skermish or something else is not acceptable for most people.

I have this problem with FFXI right now. I want to do delve boss content I can't find a LS at all. I get told no all the time or they are full or what ever. I made a huge effort in leveling gearing jobs, skilling up stuff like geo, getting cor leveled, gearing out my melee jobs with top of the line gear, rdm, whm, yet still no lucking finding a endgame LS.

To me it seems like the game is on its last legs because it shouldn't be difficult to find a group to play the game with.

Compare that to other games. FFXIV ARR, there are so many guilds looking for that game because it is launching soon. I would have no problem getting in a endgame group in that game. Another example is WoW the game is like 8 years old they have 7.7m subs but declining however they still have a huge recruitment forum there's are tons of guilds looking for players for end game raids, it is very easy to post on their forums and find a group that is right for you.

FFXI doesn't have this at all. If I can't get into a group that does stuff, I am better off just not playing anymore.

SE made some weird design choice. In that they made delve boss content in SoA so pug unfriendly. Abyssea and VW were very pug friendly. I would be much more happy and content with the game if it had a VW difficulty, like PW diffculity would of been fine. Not exactly super easy that a bunch of new players but not so difficult that it shuts out the majority of the player base that wants to do this content.

I have gone on about 10 Tojil in some organized pick up groups but those are really once in a blue moon type of deals. I want to be able to do content everyday like how it was with Voidwatch not every so often I see some rare shout.

Catering to about 2 LS per server is not the way to run a game.

[Afania]

The fact that Bard relies on two instruments that require upwards of $200 million in items to make and white mage (As well as red mage really) requires all sorts of annoying stuff like Magian staves, quested refresh pieces and potency pieces from VW events that no one does anymore and that Cor burns through bullets / cards etc. and requires people to skill up ranged acc. isn't a big help..

What? COR is a complete leech job atm, you can do it naked and still clear....

Also nobody play DD COR anymore, COR/WHM is more effective in delve boss runs and usually contribute more, and you don't need zomg awesome gear nor skill up to cast haste/na/erase. I only know 1 LS on my server that uses COR/DNC, and their parse % wasn't big enough to make it more useful than COR/WHM unless your ally has surplus of support. And even if you do COR/DNC DD, you don't "burn through bullets", especially after recent recycle update.

There's really 0 reason to complain about COR requirement when it doesn't even need skill up to function properly atm, which makes it even easier than GEO. If COR is consider an "annoying job", you may as well don't play FFXI because almost every job needs 100x more work.

[Afania]

Pretty much the best gear comes from bosses which are too hard for the majority of the player base. The boss items are so much better then anything else. There might be like 2 English LS per server that do these. Would I like to join a LS that does bosses yes I sure would but they are all full.

Even if you have a lot of useful jobs for bosses, IE you got in an organized pug got boss weapons, geared out your monk, leveled geo, cor, geared out your whm, rdm, sch. Chances of finding a LS that will let you join are so low due to the fact that there are about 2 or so LS per server they almost never take new members and if they do its because someone has a friend that is already in the said LS.

This leads to more and more people quitting because they can't do the content they want to do, saying you can do skermish or something else is not acceptable for most people.

I have this problem with FFXI right now. I want to do delve boss content I can't find a LS at all. I get told no all the time or they are full or what ever. I made a huge effort in leveling gearing jobs, skilling up stuff like geo, getting cor leveled, gearing out my melee jobs with top of the line gear, rdm, whm, yet still no lucking finding a endgame LS.

To me it seems like the game is on its last legs because it shouldn't be difficult to find a group to play the game with.

Compare that to other games. FFXIV ARR, there are so many guilds looking for that game because it is launching soon. I would have no problem getting in a endgame group in that game. Another example is WoW the game is like 8 years old they have 7.7m subs but declining however they still have a huge recruitment forum there's are tons of guilds looking for players for end game raids, it is very easy to post on their forums and find a group that is right for you.

FFXI doesn't have this at all. If I can't get into a group that does stuff, I am better off just not playing anymore.

SE made some weird design choice. In that they made delve boss content in SoA so pug unfriendly. Abyssea and VW were very pug friendly. I would be much more happy and content with the game if it had a VW difficulty, like PW diffculity would of been fine. Not exactly super easy that a bunch of new players but not so difficult that it shuts out the majority of the player base that wants to do this content.

I have gone on about 10 Tojil in some organized pick up groups but those are really once in a blue moon type of deals. I want to be able to do content everyday like how it was with Voidwatch not every so often I see some rare shout.

Catering to about 2 LS per server is not the way to run a game.

This is what happen to FFXI when you replaced easy long term goals(REM) with hard short term goals(delve boss weapons).

The fact that it takes months or years for avg to get REM, means everyone have something to do and won't quit easily. For ppl with good group, they spent shorter amount of time, and that's their reward for their effort.

Now this game is hard short term goal only. You either get a LS that can kill 1~3 delve boss every night, capped every delve boss gears and make 7M in 3hr by selling airlixir +1(that's what I've been doing in past weeks, so I wasn't making it up), or you have no LS/group and unable to make anymore progress because every other lowman content gear and REM is worthless. Whether you get an LS or not, is irrelevant to your skill, time spent in XI nor job/gear you have. But only related to your connection. As long as you have a LS, the amount of time required to cap delve boss gears, is even lower than Abyssea era, much lower.

After few more months, ppl with LS cap delve boss gear and quit because they have nothing to do, ppl without LS also quit because they can't make progress, so it's kinda hit or miss.

This game shouldn't have kill REM/long term goal to begin with.

[detlef]

This is what happen to FFXI when you replaced easy long term goals(REM) with hard short term goals(delve boss weapons).

The fact that it takes months or years for avg to get REM, means everyone have something to do and won't quit easily. For ppl with good group, they spent shorter amount of time, and that's their reward for their effort.

Now this game is hard short term goal only. You either get a LS that can kill 1~3 delve boss every night, capped every delve boss gears and make 7M in 3hr by selling airlixir +1(that's what I've been doing in past weeks, so I wasn't making it up), or you have no LS/group and unable to make anymore progress because every other lowman content gear and REM is worthless. Whether you get an LS or not, is irrelevant to your skill, time spent in XI nor job/gear you have. But only related to your connection. As long as you have a LS, the amount of time required to cap delve boss gears, is even lower than Abyssea era, much lower.

After few more months, ppl with LS cap delve boss gear and quit because they have nothing to do, ppl without LS also quit because they can't make progress, so it's kinda hit or miss.

This game shouldn't have kill REM/long term goal to begin with.This post is amazingly accurate. I especially agree with the easy long term goals vs. the difficult short term goals. I also agree strongly with your statement that both hardcore and casual players will eventually hit a wall and run out of things to do.

[Helldemon]

This is what happen to FFXI when you replaced easy long term goals(REM) with hard short term goals(delve boss weapons).

The fact that it takes months or years for avg to get REM, means everyone have something to do and won't quit easily. For ppl with good group, they spent shorter amount of time, and that's their reward for their effort.

Now this game is hard short term goal only. You either get a LS that can kill 1~3 delve boss every night, capped every delve boss gears and make 7M in 3hr by selling airlixir +1(that's what I've been doing in past weeks, so I wasn't making it up), or you have no LS/group and unable to make anymore progress because every other lowman content gear and REM is worthless. Whether you get an LS or not, is irrelevant to your skill, time spent in XI nor job/gear you have. But only related to your connection. As long as you have a LS, the amount of time required to cap delve boss gears, is even lower than Abyssea era, much lower.

After few more months, ppl with LS cap delve boss gear and quit because they have nothing to do, ppl without LS also quit because they can't make progress, so it's kinda hit or miss.

This game shouldn't have kill REM/long term goal to begin with.

It used to be like this during kings/salvage era but there was barely anyone complaining compared to now. There were people in ls's/groups that could kill the hardest stuff and get the best drops and there were lots that couldn't. I think with abyssea and VW allowing pretty much anyone to get the best gear now everyone always wants the best and for it to be easy.

[detlef]

It used to be like this during kings/salvage era but there was barely anyone complaining compared to now. There were people in ls's/groups that could kill the hardest stuff and get the best drops and there were lots that couldn't. I think with abyssea and VW allowing pretty much anyone to get the best gear now everyone always wants the best and for it to be easy.Back in those days, "the best" wasn't light years ahead of the next best option like it is today.

[FrankReynolds]

What? COR is a complete leech job atm, you can do it naked and still clear....

Also nobody play DD COR anymore, COR/WHM is more effective in delve boss runs and usually contribute more, and you don't need zomg awesome gear nor skill up to cast haste/na/erase. I only know 1 LS on my server that uses COR/DNC, and their parse % wasn't big enough to make it more useful than COR/WHM unless your ally has surplus of support. And even if you do COR/DNC DD, you don't "burn through bullets", especially after recent recycle update.

There's really 0 reason to complain about COR requirement when it doesn't even need skill up to function properly atm, which makes it even easier than GEO. If COR is consider an "annoying job", you may as well don't play FFXI because almost every job needs 100x more work.

Yeah, I'm sure lots of PUGs and linkshells are recruiting butt naked cors now. Were you drunk when you wrote this?

[Louispv]

It used to be like this during kings/salvage era but there was barely anyone complaining compared to now. There were people in ls's/groups that could kill the hardest stuff and get the best drops and there were lots that couldn't. I think with abyssea and VW allowing pretty much anyone to get the best gear now everyone always wants the best and for it to be easy.
Because back in the day, we didn't have any of these problems. You didn't have to have a Defending ring on every melee and tank to kill King Behemoth. You didn't need Adaman Hauberks to kill Fafnir. The enemies were fairly easy to kill, the only work was getting to them.

And there were many many ways to get the stuff you needed. Today we have Delve and nothing else. We could, back in the day, get HNM drops, or regular NM's, or get Sky gear, or buy crafted stuff, or get limbus/dynamis armor, or do burning circles, or hell, some of Artifact was still good.

Also gear didn't matter. Adaman hauberk was less than a 1% difference from Hauberk. Actually getting TO the level cap and getting merits was a far bigger increase. Today, a person with delve boss equipment is twice as good as someone with bayld equipment. Demanding R/E/M only for voidwatch was dumb, but now that people without Delve weapons are literally 15-20 levels lower than those with it, it's justified entirely. But now that you "level up" by getting gear, that gear needs to be easily available to everyone, or else there's a different level cap for everyone. You are essentially telling many people they can't even play the game they bought.

[Ravencrest]

It's so much worse than telling people they can't play what they bought. You're being asked to pay for a a few people to own a sports car and the development of newer versions of said car down the road, while you're told to make do with a used riding lawnmower. Right now this game is chasing away money; nobody is going to stay to keep paying for other people to do stuff they are being turned away from.

What's going on right now is what I call CoP syndrome. People who got in on the first wave won't go back to help, and everyone else is stuck in the spot they left off at for various reasons. It's not a condemnation of those people who caught the wave, but it is a rather dumb business model for a company that should know better after making the same mistake before.

[Afania]

Yeah, I'm sure lots of PUGs and linkshells are recruiting butt naked cors now. Were you drunk when you wrote this?

When I make PUG I rarely ask COR to have specific gear except /WHM and haste/na/erase/pcmd add macros when I invite them, simply because capped skill and awesome gear is not needed. I certainly don't ask them to bring more than 1 bronze bullet to enhance dia, nor have capped skill. 1 stack of light card cost like, 5k? If you're complaining about spending 5k in 3+ runs, then you may as well don't play XI as everything else takes longer to do. I only invite ppl based on connection when it comes to this job, not gears, since no gears makes super big difference, maybe except relic hat if you don't have DRK in pt. If I know you and I know you pay attention to when to haste/na/erase/pcmd add, you can get in. If I don't know you, you won't get in but not because your gear sucked nor lack of capped skill, but because I don't know you.

And this is how delve LS/PUG works, it's just the way it goes. You need to stop all that "I can't get in because gear requirement is so high and I don't want to skill up+buy bullets", because that's not the fact. I don't specifically "recruit" naked COR, but if I know a naked COR that can do above task perfect, and another COR with capped skill+ 12 stacks of bullet can't, then I'd use that naked COR.

Linkshells that can kill delve boss every night won't accept every other job no matter how well it's geared, because it's often full, unless you have connection and get in with your connection. I've seen 4 songs BRD had to sit out in ls runs, because there are like 3 other 4 song BRDs waiting to get in, almost every LS that can kill delve boss every run has to rotate ppl.

[Afania]

It used to be like this during kings/salvage era but there was barely anyone complaining compared to now. There were people in ls's/groups that could kill the hardest stuff and get the best drops and there were lots that couldn't. I think with abyssea and VW allowing pretty much anyone to get the best gear now everyone always wants the best and for it to be easy.

At 75 casuals still have something to do, they may just lv a new job, do easier content like limbus Nyzul, or work on missions.

Now none of those takes time. Lving to 99 takes a few day and not really an accomplishment to appeal casuals. Easier content such as wildskeeper/reive can also be done in a few days. Missions also takes days, so not much else to do really.

[Mahoro]

Because back in the day, we didn't have any of these problems. You didn't have to have a Defending ring on every melee and tank to kill King Behemoth. You didn't need Adaman Hauberks to kill Fafnir. The enemies were fairly easy to kill, the only work was getting to them.

By the same token, I don't think I'd want to go back to the days where everything was fairly easy to kill, and all the "effort" was either 1) grinding out RNG or 2) standing around and watching other people kill stuff that you know you COULD have killed if you were only faster with the claim macro or lower in the lag.


Back in those days, "the best" wasn't light years ahead of the next best option like it is today.

If "the best" only gave 1% increase like the olden days, I doubt the interest level of most people would be satiated either. One of the overriding complaints from years past was the overabundance of sidegrades and minor upgrades. People abandoned a lot of older events because, in their individual analysis, the rewards weren't worth the effort required. Would the current complaints completely cease if the Delve Boss gear gave 1% increases? Would they even stop if the gear gave 5-10% increases? I don't envy the devs the quandary.

I think the more valid complaint is that the Bosses might be tweaked too hard for the general population, not that the rewards are so good. Because the rewards aren't the thing that is actually preventing people in the next best option from completing the content. Rather, it's the difficulty. SE intended this to some degree with their Content Level classifications. They weren't telling people you can't play the game you bought, just that certain challenges may not be able to be completed by all people. When you designate something Content Level 20, you know that not everyone is going to sport gear from that particular Item Level. But they might have overshot and excluded more people than they intended.

[FrankReynolds]

When I make PUG I rarely ask COR to have specific gear except /WHM and haste/na/erase/pcmd add macros when I invite them, simply because capped skill and awesome gear is not needed. I certainly don't ask them to bring more than 1 bronze bullet to enhance dia, nor have capped skill. 1 stack of light card cost like, 5k? If you're complaining about spending 5k in 3+ runs, then you may as well don't play XI as everything else takes longer to do. I only invite ppl based on connection when it comes to this job, not gears, since no gears makes super big difference, maybe except relic hat if you don't have DRK in pt. If I know you and I know you pay attention to when to haste/na/erase/pcmd add, you can get in. If I don't know you, you won't get in but not because your gear sucked nor lack of capped skill, but because I don't know you.

And this is how delve LS/PUG works, it's just the way it goes. You need to stop all that "I can't get in because gear requirement is so high and I don't want to skill up+buy bullets", because that's not the fact. I don't specifically "recruit" naked COR, but if I know a naked COR that can do above task perfect, and another COR with capped skill+ 12 stacks of bullet can't, then I'd use that naked COR.

Linkshells that can kill delve boss every night won't accept every other job no matter how well it's geared, because it's often full, unless you have connection and get in with your connection. I've seen 4 songs BRD had to sit out in ls runs, because there are like 3 other 4 song BRDs waiting to get in, almost every LS that can kill delve boss every run has to rotate ppl.

That's a neat story.

So in essence what your saying is that burning cor to 99 and then never getting any gear is fine?

Cool. But then in the same story (Notice I called it a story? That's because it's not real.) you said 4 song bard would probably have to sit things out?


Okay, maybe one time a PUG got tricked ionto taking a cor that didin't do shit. I'll buy that. But then after they lost (or at the very least, realized that dude was worthless), that guy never got invited again.

I mean sure, I bet we all could go burn a support job, warp to the zone and keep sneak / invis up and trick someone once in a while, but seriously? A whole boss run?

Wasn't the whole point of debating the OP to prove that the game needed hard content? The OP said "please make the game easy enough for the stupid people". Now your telling me that a butt naked burned job can do it easily? Great! no point clinging to the whole "We need a challenge" bull crap any more then. Let's make the slackers happy and be done with it.

Apparently a butt naked cor is good enough, so throwing a couple butt naked monks and ninjas probably won't hurt the game.

[Afania]

Wow, it's more like you're drunk or trolling, not me. Maybe you should go back to read what I said earlier.




That's a neat story.

So in essence what your saying is that burning cor to 99 and then never getting any gear is fine?

Okay, maybe one time a PUG got tricked ionto taking a cor that didin't do shit. I'll buy that. But then after they lost (or at the very least, realized that dude was worthless), that guy never got invited again.


I never say COR never do shit would get invited. I only said COR can get the job done naked with 1 bronze bullet in inv and 0 marksmanship skill, which is to counter your arguement that you said COR needs skill up and spam bullets. Get the job done naked does not mean never do shit in ally.

COR's duty in a delve boss run for most groups: Do chaos/hunter on DD, do evoker on mages, cast haste, cast -na, cast erase, invite BRD during rotation, cast dia2 and light shot on dia to enhance it.

If you have COR, you automatically gets JA chaos/hunter/evoker after you use item. You can use it if you're naked and have 0 skill and 0 bullet in your inv, all you need to do is click the JA. So why do you need skill up and spam bullets to play COR?

The only difference between a naked COR and a well geared COR, is that well geared COR has 30% of chance to super charge rolls. But if you're using DRK x2 in ally, super charge does nothing on chaos. Most of the mages I pt with in delve boss runs rarely drop below 50% MP, so super charge evoker doesn't matter. Only difference is hunter, which won't be an issue post update.

Further more, you can get free hat if you have log in campaign points, and you certainly don't need any bullet nor skill up to use JA phantom roll. So your arguement about COR requirement is still invalid.

2nd duty, cast haste/na/erase. If you caste haste/na/erase on a naked COR with 0 skill and no bullet, it has same effect as COR having every best gears, capped skill and bullets in this game.

3rd duty, invite BRD during rotate. Again, if you have 0 skill and no bullet, your /pcmd add macro works just as well as COR with capped gear, skill and 12 stacks of bullets.

4th duty, enhance dia with light shot. You get this JA at lv 40 with 0 skill, and it doesn't need to land to work. Unless test proved otherwise you can still enhance dia with 0 skill.

So, can you please explain why COR ever need capped marksmanship skill and 12 stacks of bullets to cast haste/na/erase, invite BRDs, use JA light shot, and use JA phantom roll?

I did not ever say COR can get the job done leeching and afking. COR/WHM is actually a fairly busy job in delve boss runs. It's just that due to the nature of phantom roll, haste/erase/na, /pcmd add macro and light shot, you can get those done without capped skill and using only 1 bronze bullet.

Or can you explain HOW can lack of bullets/skill/gear affect your /pcmd add macro, light shot, JA phantom roll and haste/erase/na?

As for 4 songs BRD sitting out. Before you call it a story and not true, maybe you should go check delve boss ally setup. Your delve boss setup need 2, or maybe 3 BRDs in ally, Max is 3.

If your LS has 4 4 song BRDs. BRD A/B/C/D all wants to get in, then someone has to sit out.

Before you call it a fake story, can you please explain HOW to do delve boss with proper setup without letting 1 BRD sit out?

And that includes every job. All delve boss LS that can kill delve boss every run on my server isn't recruiting, not because your COR has no capped skill nor 12 stack of bullets, but because they have 10 COR waiting in line to get in for plasm. And they won't kick their old current member to invite someone else that's not in their LS for win.

If you run a LS, obviously LS member gets priority to get goodies, that's just how a group works. So why do you want to invite someone that's not in LS for clear?

And lol@ your comment about naked NIN and MNK. Sure, I'll invite naked NIN and MNK if they can do phantom rolls naked like a COR.

[Louispv]

By the same token, I don't think I'd want to go back to the days where everything was fairly easy to kill, and all the "effort" was either 1) grinding out RNG or 2) standing around and watching other people kill stuff that you know you COULD have killed if you were only faster with the claim macro or lower in the lag.
And we fixed those problems fairly easily. Anyone could do limbus, or dynamis. Anyone could do salvage, it was easily trioed even back at the 75 cap. Anyone could save up seals for burning circles, or save gil for the AH. Even abjurations could be gotten from Einherjar, leaving basically just defending ring to be HNM exclusive. Hell the zeni system was almost perfect.


If "the best" only gave 1% increase like the olden days, I doubt the interest level of most people would be satiated either. One of the overriding complaints from years past was the overabundance of sidegrades and minor upgrades. People abandoned a lot of older events because, in their individual analysis, the rewards weren't worth the effort required. Would the current complaints completely cease if the Delve Boss gear gave 1% increases? Would they even stop if the gear gave 5-10% increases? I don't envy the devs the quandary.
Well since they did give 1% increases back in the "golden days" and that was when the game was most popular, I think that answers your questions. Getting the 1% increase is the very essence of an RPG, and the selling point of an MMORPG.

And people didn't ever complain about 1% increases and abandon events. They complained about sidegrades and unexplainable downgrades being the rewards from new events. Or stuff that was a 1% increase, but only against plantoids, on a full moon, with earth weather, and thus wasn't worth the inventory slots. I mean, what was even the point of evoliths? Why would anyone want 80% of what dropped in meebles? Neo-limbus gear other than the enif corozza, why?


I think the more valid complaint is that the Bosses might be tweaked too hard for the general population, not that the rewards are so good. Because the rewards aren't the thing that is actually preventing people in the next best option from completing the content. Rather, it's the difficulty. SE intended this to some degree with their Content Level classifications. They weren't telling people you can't play the game you bought, just that certain challenges may not be able to be completed by all people. When you designate something Content Level 20, you know that not everyone is going to sport gear from that particular Item Level. But they might have overshot and excluded more people than they intended.
But boss difficulty is gear strength. Since SE has made the retarded decision to not raise the level cap to 120, and instead make us get the stats of a level 120 from gear, gear strength is difficulty. Delve bosses have to be so stupidly strong, because people with boss drops need a challenge. So you need the boss drops to get the boss drops.

Look at it this way, Dynamis is available at level 65. But you'd never go in there at 65, you'd take way too much damage and deal far too little, and you'd go level to 75 then do it. But our cap is gear now, so you'd need dynamis gear to get to the cap to go get the gear in the first place.

And the whole "You design content to be uncompleted by some people" is a really stupid move for an MMO. It's a relic SE has never gotten over from their single player games. The requirements for legendary weapons in FFX, or knights of the round in 7 were fine if only 1% of people completed them, because they were A) optional, and B) single purchases. If you want people to keep playing and paying, they have to be able to access the game they're paying for, so everything has to be doable by everyone.

The armor boosts seem promising, but I'm not so certain that Yorcia and Marjami Fracture enemies won't be designed around the new, even higher stats, and make Delve 1.0 gear look like kariyeh all over and defeat the purpose. Especially since the people who haven't gotten delve gear yet will absolutely not be able to do the new ones, as then they'll be 30 content level behind instead of 20.

Even the old, "Bring 2 tanks, 12 support, and only 4 jobs anyone actually wants to play" trick won't work any longer. And then there'll be maybe 40 people per server at the new level cap of 130. Whereas, if the level cap was upped, or we got stronger through a more robust merit system, or they upped the sub job cap instead of the main job, everyone could eventually grind their way to level 130, and play the game instead of quitting in frustration.

[FrankReynolds]

Blah Blah Blah

I'm not even gonna read that nonsense. Save your breath. No one is burning a job to 99, not skilling it, not gearing it and getting into runs. You can talk all day about how it could happen, but it doesn't. The answer to everyone's problems isn't to burn cor to 99. You're being ridiculous.

[Mahoro]

And we fixed those problems fairly easily. Anyone could do limbus, or dynamis. Anyone could do salvage, it was easily trioed even back at the 75 cap. Anyone could save up seals for burning circles, or save gil for the AH. Even abjurations could be gotten from Einherjar, leaving basically just defending ring to be HNM exclusive. Hell the zeni system was almost perfect.

Yes, they had a greater variety of things for people to do that did not involve HNM-claiming, but that doesn't really address the other prong of everything being fairly easy and based on grinding out the RNG.

I think the larger point you are trying to make is that we had greater choice and variety to progress our characters back then. However, with certain exceptions, the events you cite were not all introduced at the same time. You are covering events staggered over multiple years and multiple expansions whereas Adoulin was just introduced a few months ago. It may be true anyone can do Limbus or Dynamis or Einherjar now, but at the time they were introduced (and for a significant amount of time after that), you needed an organized and balanced group for each, with support jobs. Yes, the Zeni system was great, but you still needed a large group to beat many of the mobs. Yes, Einherjar dropped some older abjurations....after YEARS of HNM camping being their exclusive province. These are the same issues occurring now with Delve, so I'm not sure how these analogies advance the argument.

In any event, people are saying they're bored now because they feel nothing is left except for ONE event in the expansion where the issue is that it can't be completed, rather than can't be grinded out. (Also, one minor quibble: people can still save gil for the AH and buy crafted Boss weapons that are either competitive or superior to Delve Boss weapons.)


Well since they did give 1% increases back in the "golden days" and that was when the game was most popular, I think that answers your questions. Getting the 1% increase is the very essence of an RPG, and the selling point of an MMORPG.

And people didn't ever complain about 1% increases and abandon events. They complained about sidegrades and unexplainable downgrades being the rewards from new events. Or stuff that was a 1% increase, but only against plantoids, on a full moon, with earth weather, and thus wasn't worth the inventory slots. I mean, what was even the point of evoliths? Why would anyone want 80% of what dropped in meebles? Neo-limbus gear other than the enif corozza, why?

I don't agree with your statement about the "1% increase [being] the very essence of an RPG, and the selling point of an MMORPG." I think it's extremely overbroad and unsupportable, and I think you might be confusing why the game was most popular back then. The game was most popular back then because it was fresh and new, its playerbase was younger, it offered an experience other games at the time couldn't replicate, and the MMORPG field was much less crowded. People didn't say to themselves "woohoo, can't wait to play FFXI and do Sky and Sea for my 1% upgrades!!!"

As for not complaining about minor upgrades, crafted HQ white-box gear, Neo-Limbus, Meeble Burrows, Odin v2, Walk of Echoes, Neo-Salvage, and Legion all offered more than just sidegrade gear. Each feature or event had several pieces offering demonstrable 1% or more upgrades to various jobs. But not many took to these events, either because they couldn't find a group for them or they just said to themselves the effort was not worth the reward.

I especially remember this with Neo-Salvage and Legion. Yes, people complained about 75% of the gear offering sidegrades or downgrades. But people also complained because what was left AFTER discounting that 75% wasn't enough for them to go ahead and do the events. People abandoned the events wholesale because only 25% of the gear offered (minor) upgrade potential, and because the effort was so high compared to the reward. Each new event was greeted with comments such as "that seems lackluster." It wasn't just because of the sidegrades (although I admit that was part of it). It was because we felt SE was not offering something that gave us demonstrable and fairly obvious progress.


But boss difficulty is gear strength. Since SE has made the retarded decision to not raise the level cap to 120, and instead make us get the stats of a level 120 from gear, gear strength is difficulty. Delve bosses have to be so stupidly strong, because people with boss drops need a challenge. So you need the boss drops to get the boss drops.

Look at it this way, Dynamis is available at level 65. But you'd never go in there at 65, you'd take way too much damage and deal far too little, and you'd go level to 75 then do it. But our cap is gear now, so you'd need dynamis gear to get to the cap to go get the gear in the first place.

And the whole "You design content to be uncompleted by some people" is a really stupid move for an MMO. It's a relic SE has never gotten over from their single player games. The requirements for legendary weapons in FFX, or knights of the round in 7 were fine if only 1% of people completed them, because they were A) optional, and B) single purchases. If you want people to keep playing and paying, they have to be able to access the game they're paying for, so everything has to be doable by everyone.

I understand boss difficulty is based on gear strength. But again, you don't actually need Boss drops to get Boss drops, no matter what the playerbase thinks. I'm not sure you can ascribe the motivation to SE to make the Bosses stupidly strong to give people with boss drops a challenge. I don't think SE much cares how often the people with boss drops spam the same fight. They designed the fight to be completed only with the best gear from the tier directly below. If the Bosses all of a sudden dropped 1% upgrade items, the people in the next tier below would still have the same difficulties. That's the point I was trying to make when I said that the more valid complaint is not the rewards one gets from the events, but the difficulty being tweaked too high for most people.

The "design content to be uncompleted by some people" has been going on for years in this game and other games (Elite raids, etc.), except it was also masqueraded as a grind in this game so people didn't notice as much. Not everyone wanted to grind out a Relic till it became snooze-worthily easy. Not everyone wanted to grind out a Mythic. Not everyone wanted to 99 an Emp. Not everyone wanted to camp an HNM for a 36 hour window, or even a 3 hour window for that matter. The difference here now is that every event can be technically "accessed," just not able to be completed by 100% of the game population.

[Afania]

I'm not even gonna read that nonsense. Save your breath. No one is burning a job to 99, not skilling it, not gearing it and getting into runs. You can talk all day about how it could happen, but it doesn't. The answer to everyone's problems isn't to burn cor to 99. You're being ridiculous.

You claimed capped skill and burning stacks of bullets are required to clear delve boss on COR, when 90% of COR no longer DD in delve, nor use DD COR in delve boss setup. Your info was completely incorrect and probably more ridiculous than getting into pt through connections on naked COR. Stop giving misleading info.

[bloodbeat]

I understand boss difficulty is based on gear strength, but again, you don't need Boss drops to get Boss drops. Why would you ascribe the motivation to SE to make the Bosses stupidly strong to give people with boss drops a challenge? I don't think SE much cares how often the people with boss drops spam the same fight. They designed the fight to be completed only with the best gear from the tier directly below. If the Bosses all of a sudden dropped 1% upgrade items, the people in the next tier below would still have the same difficulties. That's the point I was trying to make when I said that the more valid complaint is not the rewards one gets from the events, but the difficulty being tweaked too high for most people.

The "design content to be uncompleted by some people" has been going on for years in this game and other games (Elite raids, etc.), except it was also masqueraded as a grind in this game. Not everyone wanted to grind out a Relic till it became snooze-worthily easy. Not everyone wanted to grind out a Mythic. Not everyone wanted to 99 an Emp. Not everyone wanted to camp an HNM for a 36 hour window, or even a 3 hour window for that matter. The difference here now is that every event can be technically "accessed," just not able to be completed by 100% of the game population.

And that's fine if you don't want your business/product/service to be financially viable.
There's no escaping the reality that the game's player population is shrinking, and while you can attribute that to the age of the game, you have to view new content as attempts at propagating the population. If your content cannot guarantee significant retention of the player base then it is a failure and needs to be addressed.

[detlef]

COR strikes me as an easy support option that can be leveled and geared minimally very quickly. Between COR and GEO, that's up to 4 potential spots in a Delve mega boss alliance that can be taken from level 1 to serviceable pretty easily.

[FrankReynolds]

You claimed capped skill and burning stacks of bullets are required to clear delve boss on COR, when 90% of COR no longer DD in delve, nor use DD COR in delve boss setup. Your info was completely incorrect and probably more ridiculous than getting into pt through connections on naked COR. Stop giving misleading info.

I'm not giving misleading info. You are. Maybe you like to bring people like that to your events. Good for you. The rest of the world wants someone who knows wtf they are doing and showing up without af3+2 and not being able to hit the side of a barn isn't showing them that you know wtf you're doing.

[Mahoro]

And that's fine if you don't want your business/product/service to be financially viable.
There's no escaping the reality that the game's player population is shrinking, and while you can attribute that to the age of the game, you have to view new content as attempts at propagating the population. If your content cannot guarantee significant retention of the player base then it is a failure and needs to be addressed.

I actually don't disagree with anything you said, and I think you said it very well. But as has been said in this and other threads, MMORPG devs also have to design new content to cater to both the "hardcore" and "casual" playerbases. This expansion has attempted to cater to both. You could argue they failed in their attempt to cater to the "casual" playerbase, and I think many here would agree with you. But in the end, each contingent has to be programmed toward.

[Afania]

I'm not giving misleading info. You are. Maybe you like to bring people like that to your events. Good for you. The rest of the world wants someone who knows wtf they are doing and showing up without af3+2 and not being able to hit the side of a barn isn't showing them that you know wtf you're doing.

Unless you're doing fast cast rolls on yourself, or for some reason you're using regain(I see 0 reason to use it in delve though), AF3+2 set is nearly useless except hands for PR extention...and guess what, you can just roll again if your roll wears that you don't need it at all.

And I never say I like to invite ppl doesn't know shit about delve. I only been saying none of the gear/skill on COR makes huge difference on winning and losing, unlike every other delve jobs, that someone with proper playing skill and naked COR can contribute at least 80% of well geared COR with capped skill.

Not sure why you brought up NIN and MNK, when both jobs aren't roll/haste/na whore.



COR strikes me as an easy support option that can be leveled and geared minimally very quickly. Between COR and GEO, that's up to 4 potential spots in a Delve mega boss alliance that can be taken from level 1 to serviceable pretty easily.

GEO needs to cap skill to function properly, COR doesn't ._. This job is even easier than GEO ._.

[FrankReynolds]

Unless you're doing fast cast rolls on yourself, or for some reason you're using regain(I see 0 reason to use it in delve though), AF3+2 set is nearly useless except hands for PR extention...and guess what, you can just roll again if your roll wears that you don't need it at all.

And I never say I like to invite ppl doesn't know shit about delve. I only been saying none of the gear/skill on COR makes huge difference on winning and losing, unlike every other delve jobs, that someone with proper playing skill and naked COR can contribute at least 80% of well geared COR with capped skill.
.

Fact remains. You will not be getting in any shells or PUGS based on an ungeared, unskilled job.

[Fynlar]

Phantom Rolls require no skill, just a minimal gil investment (because let's face it, like 80% of the rolls are never used) and if you want to be cool, a few merits + pieces of gear to enhance them.

I've gotten into many events on COR without even a gun equipped. People want CORs that will maintain (good) buffs; they don't give a crap about your marksmanship skill. If COR is ever doing a significant amount of damage in an alliance, said alliance has some serious problems. (The one obvious exception is against Naakuals.)

[saevel]

Well the land of the azure underwear is kinda upset that Delve is "easy mode" and that


we have gone back to abyssea easy mode almost pnly need now to slap 2k HP on top of DDs and refresh to mages... god its so depresseing :/ .

And you wonder whether it's the dev's or the players that are screwing the community over.