Too much of XI is needlesly complicatated.

[radar]

There is far too much needless complexity in FFXI in the later endgame content.

It's really obvious that whoever was in charge of designing the endgame content for XI that was released in the past 5-6 years really loves being a seriously hardcore nerd, and they love making it as incredibly complicated as they possibly could.

For a new player, trying to wrap their mind around all the complexity of obtaining and upgrading Ody gear, or Sortie or upgrading Dyna D it's laughable.

If there isn't going to be new content, then work on simplifying the processes with what you have so more people can engage with it.

The process for getting r30 Ody gear alone is laughable, the amount of hoops you have to jump through, the requirements and unlocks etc is unmatched in any game I can think about. It's so bad that most people are just not going to engage with it at all, cause the mountain you have to climb to just engage with the grind is far too much. So you're going to lose players in the mid tier who cap out on the stuff they were doing, and that won't engage with this newer complicated content.

When most of the devs from XI moved over to XIV last year I can imagine the culture shock of being told this kind of content design isn't acceptable anywhere was mind blowing.

I cringe when I try to explain XI endgame beyond Ambuscade to a new player, it's designed by people who are very smart but have no understanding of creating things in a way that is palatable for normal people. I know many XI players take pride in it being the way it is (and many wiki writers gush over it endlessly, cause complexity is porn to them), but for new players coming from XIV it's just laughably stupid.

[Dihlyte]

Honestly, this is why I love FFXI now.

When I want to play a simple game, and turn off my brain, I go play FFXIV.

Which is why I haven’t touched FFXIV at all in the last 2 years, and why I’m neck deep in FFXI.

I don’t mean to undermine you, but honestly once FFXI clicks, it’s the most satisfying game I’ve ever played.

[Rinuko]

That's the appeal with the game imo. Please don't simplify and dumb it down.

[Zenion]

I don't see how Odyssey or Dynamis-Divergence gear is complicated at all. Fight this boss to unlock the gear, fight it more to upgrade it, the NPC in charge straight up tells you "keep fighting these things." Enter a zone to unlock a piece, defeat the boss or a lot of weaker mobs to unlock it more, then talk to the relevant NPC and you can be given the full shopping list including clearly job and slot specific items so you can't accidentally try to trade in the wrong ones.

Sortie though, that was downright cryptic, and while we got through it I don't think that's what content should be like. There should have been clues, maybe a message when doing the thing that makes basement mid-bosses drop their chest, message when succeeding or failing at the challenges for things like kill with the right kind of attack or go through the doors in the right order. Luckily we have enough amateur detectives in the player base that we got it figured out, but I can see that being impossible to solve without access to community resources.

[radar]

If you create a type of endgame, and almost everyone wearing the gear is stuck at r0 because upgrading it is so complicated and difficult, you failed at game design. Everyone you check in Ody gear should have some amount of upgrades on it, and most don't. Even if most never get it to r30, everyone should be working on it.

It's ok to have content most can't do when a game is getting updates or is new, but if you stop updates and people still can't engage with the grind, you're gatekeeping the grind that is designed to keep them paying to play the game.

This is not like FF14 where people can stand around role playing or dancing, the grind is what XI is all about.

It's imperative that they allow everyone who has this gear to slowly be able to work on grinding it out to cap, without jumping though sky high hoops they obviously are not engaging with. If not, people are going to leave due to having nothing to grind and nothing else to look forward to after it.

Ambuscade is incredibly well designed grind content, and is open to everyone in a way Ody is not.

[Zenion]

I struggle to call Ambuscade "well designed" when many months saddle you with some gimmick that makes the fight either unfairly difficult (sahagins) or mind-numbingly tedious (iron giants, moogles). That said though, it was the entry-level event, the place where you'd get your first solid ilvl119 gear, so if it's not open to everyone there's a real problem. Odyssey is the event for the top-shelf gear, it's meant for people who have nearly completed their gear progression and are built to tear through enemies; if it's difficult for new players, perhaps that's an indication that it's not for new players.

That said, it's still possible to at least attempt bosses, it's just so painfully slow that nobody would ever do it for long enough to achieve it. It's not a difficulty issue so much as a poor ratio of reward to effort. Changing absolutely nothing else, but giving players 4x segments for hall B solo, maybe 3x for duo or trio, and 2x for a party of four, would make the event rewarding enough that players might actually try it without a super endgame party.

Sortie has the same problem, the rewards just aren't there if you're not running with decked damage dealers and support in a full party of six, so you have your haves building prime weapons and your have-nots getting by with reforged empyrean +2 because 70000 gallimaufry is too much to imagine spending on a piece of armor.

[Rinuko]

If you create a type of endgame, and almost everyone wearing the gear is stuck at r0 because upgrading it is so complicated and difficult, you failed at game design. Everyone you check in Ody gear should have some amount of upgrades on it, and most don't. Even if most never get it to r30, everyone should be working on it.

The problem I see, is most people either buy mercs/rmt or have friends kill v0 bosses to unlock it then never touch it again.
I don't think it's the system's fault but people are lazy and fine with just unlocking the pieces.


Sortie has the same problem, the rewards just aren't there if you're not running with decked damage dealers and support in a full party of six, so you have your haves building prime weapons and your have-nots getting by with reforged empyrean +2 because 70000 gallimaufry is too much to imagine spending on a piece of armor.


Agree. I haven't found a dedicated group to run Sortie, and I also came in late when it comes to this content.
I currently casually solo it but my character isn't fully decked out and I get lost in there, lol. I can't even do 10k per run so there is several runs just to unlock 1 +2 slot. Which is fine I suppose, it's a grind after all.

[Dragoy]

Somehow I don't remember getting a set for one job to +3 via Sortie, solo (samurai), being that big of a grind... though it probably was.

I'd get around 8k Gallimaufry per run at most.

With a newer adventurer in mind, I believe it is doable, like with Ambuscade equipment, and I think getting the Empyrean equipment +1 or +2 first would be more source for a confusion there.

I also defeated some of the Odyssey bosses solo (samurai), but don't actually remember how many of them. Not enough for any relevant equipment to be available in any case.
I did not continue on that yet because I needed more segments, which is a bit slow to get alone, and I haven't really felt like hunting for those.

As said, though, I, too, don't think these are for new people to tackle in the first place, although in many ways I find the Empyrean equipment to be the easiest best things to get now, since there is no need for expensive items or tough bosses, just a bunch of time and luck with treasure boxes.

Compared to Artifact and Relic upgrades at least it, Empyrean sure is the most doable for a solo or few adventurers.

Odyssey I don't have much to say about, since I did it so little, but that one definitely is a bit more complicated (to some extent, it is fun to see how far I can get alone in that... might even gear up some more jobs just for it... but I digress).

[Rinuko]

What is generally a good strat for solo Gallimaufry? I've just been running back and forth getting chests and try kill the lesser NM's. I haven't tried to solo the area NM's yet (solo that is).

[Dragoy]

What is generally a good strat for solo Gallimaufry? I've just been running back and forth getting chests and try kill the lesser NM's. I haven't tried to solo the area NM's yet (solo that is).

No idea about good, but I tend to go Ghatjot (only area boss I can solo I think, since the others have so wide area attacks that alter egos kind of go down real quick), then the smaller NMs in the areas (depending on positioning of Deletemeeerious), the easy chests in F and G for the chance for rocks if needed, and maybe end with the Esurient Flans which also give kind of OK examapopoints on the side. Probably not good for maximum Gallimaufry but I kind of like the side "bonus" on that.

[Gwydion]

Some people like Monopoly ...and other people prefer to play Candy Land. (Sorry, I can't thnk of a better analogy).

[radar]

The reason Ambuscade is good is you can do the hardest and most complicated way and get the fastest reward or you can do it the slow and easy way, there are really no big roadblocks and the goal is open to all. You don't have to kill 5 different v1 encounters on VD to unlock the ability to build a Naegling, all +2 and all capes. You just grind them out.

In Ody it's not this way, there is only one path and everyone has to engage with the difficult complicated path to get to r30. Unless a solo or casual player can kill every NM to the one they want armor from, they have to buy it. If they want to upgrade they have to kill higher tiers of that monster continually to unlock the ability to grind it higher, this is ridiculous.

It's fine to have elite gear that the best players can show off with, but since they are not adding more content they need the mid tier players to engage with the ody grind to be able to keep playing and paying a sub.

It needs to be simplified, there needs to be a path to the goal to all without overcoming the high roadblocks.

From a standpoint of keeping people in the game, when they are not making new content simplifying Ody in particular is required (just as they did with Vagary, when they added the BCNM versions). More than messing around with Besieged, cause nobody is paying a sub for that.

[Zenion]

I mean, you know what, you're right. It's also silly how you have to go and do Omen five times, kill those bosses, just to get your one fight for the Regal stuff. Or how you have to fight those four in Sortie to get to the one that drops the prime upgrade item (on hard mode only!) Everything should just be one fight.

Frankly, Odyssey is miles ahead of, say, Nyzul, where you have to climb from floor 1 to floor 100; in Odyssey, you can just skip the early bosses if someone else has done them already, and get your unlock from skipping straight to the later ones. Heck, you could unlock Nyame rank 30 without ever seeing another boss if you could find (hire?) somebody willing to do the fight for you.

I'll agree that Odyssey isn't particularly solo-friendly, but... it's a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. That it's potentially possible to do it solo at all is already pushing the model.

Can we all take a moment to reflect, though, on the fact that we're comparing two opposite ends of the high-level content spectrum? The FFXI community has a tendency to treat the very highest-tier gear as a baseline expectation (an entry-level bard has at a minimum one relic and one empyrean weapon, and one mythic and one aeonic too if they want to be taken seriously) but Odyssey stuff, especially augmented, is basically the final endgame equipment. It's not for beginners and casual players, it's what your equipment from Ambuscade, Dynamis - Divergence, Omen, and Sortie is supposed to be leading you up to being able to obtain. And you can have access to it a week after reaching level 99.

This is comparable to complaining that it was too difficult to get Artifact +1, or Relic, or the Nyzul, Limbus, and Salvage sets, back at level 75. Yes, it's hard, because if it wasn't, there's be no game left to play.

[Rinuko]

I agree with Zenion. I have sympathy for new players, or players on very small servers and/or playing on odd hours. It can be difficult to find players, which is why I suppose I see more and more people multibox in 2024.

I'm in EU and in the past it was always hard to find suitable LS's in my playtime, especially during the 75 eras. I lost count how many dynamis or sky/sea events I had to attend at 2-3am or camping HNMs at 4am when I had class next morning, lol.

But the good news is there is plenty of EU players around these days on the 3 big servers (Asura, Bahamut, Odin).

[Dihlyte]

I personally play FFXI because its not easy, and because they don't offer "participation awards" to everyone.

I appreciate when something has to be earned.

If I could get everything easily just from logging in, then it would be no different from FFXIV.

I do think there can be content that is easier, but some content should be more difficult and more rewarding.

This makes things interesting and challenging, and something I greatly appreciate in gaming personally.

[Beastorizer]

There is far too much needless complexity in FFXI in the later endgame content.

It's really obvious that whoever was in charge of designing the endgame content for XI that was released in the past 5-6 years really loves being a seriously hardcore nerd, and they love making it as incredibly complicated as they possibly could.

For a new player, trying to wrap their mind around all the complexity of obtaining and upgrading Ody gear, or Sortie or upgrading Dyna D it's laughable.

Been playing on and off since 2004......And I have no damn idea wtf is going on with the end-game.......

So we have to level subs jobs, after getting master leveled jobs, but you gotta do CP parties to do so lol? Never touched Sortie or Ody......So there is that. XI kind of feels like "Those MMO Just Like it..." in which a couple of fans changed things around so much, it feels nothing like the 75 era those hardcore claim to love so much.

My consensus of XI, is it is an MMO that is all over the place.......I don't crave no life 75 era, but crave simpler times.

Solo to lvl 10-13
Grab a party
Get sub job items
Party all the way to 75 and do your genkai in between
Merit your job
Do Sky or Dyna if you want......

The objectives were "Boom > Boom > Boom" all aligned, and felt sequential. Imo, the endgame structure needs to be redone. It is a mess imo........all over the place.......

[radar]

Sortie, DynaD and Odyssey need to have the roadblocks removed / lowered so more people can engage with the progression.

They really need to allow players to grind stuff out without having to kill every major boss or whatever. The whole point of the game is to have stuff people can do to keep busy, and keep paying the sub. If they can't kill the major boss to unlock the new tier of grind they won't keep playing, they have nothing to grind.

Even when they do this sometimes it's not done well:

with Dyna D they added a way to unlock +3 relic by killing 100 monsters, if someone can't kill the mid boss then you really think they can kill 100 monsters where each statue spawns multiple monsters that need to be slept? It should be 20-30 at most.

The Vagary one is slightly better with BCNM fights, but even that has the enemies being far too high level for the intended players who want 119 emp and it ends up being the player that needs the clear being carried by some BIS player/s.