triggering weakness

[Lanette]

I'm sure many of you have noticed the direction end game has gone for FFXI. Hunting NMs and standing around till the weakness is triggered then kill if it hasn't died already for even killed the party. Many of you are angry that your Main job can't trigger anything so you just stand there until you are given the go to kill. Small groups with only the jobs that can trigger, so expect to level one of those and make it your main. We have to do this to get the gear we want so expect to do this alot....... how do we all feel about this?

[rog]

I think it is great.

[Arcon]

Almost everyone hates it, as almost everyone said in almost every other thread about this.

[Lanette]

Then again as the population starts to drop and servers consolidate due to the popularity of FFXIV, it will all work out fine. :/

[Runespider]

In old endgame in FFXI it took years to get your gear..killing over and over and over again, now they make it easier and you complain? It took me 2 years camping HNM to get the then best endgame gear, enjoy just having to bring a specific job to proc a !! and get your stuff in a fraction of the time.

[Zyeriis]

Then again as the population starts to drop and servers consolidate due to the popularity of FFXIV, it will all work out fine. :/
Looks like it's never going to work out then D:

How you could say "popularity" in the same sentence that has "FFXIV" is a paradox. You forgot the "non-" part.

Anyway, we're screwed. Why are we collecting this gear we never get to use because they're for jobs...we never get to use...to get the gear...

Two paradoxes, one post. They said it was impossible...Oh crap, that makes 3 paradoxes.

[Zeroth]

It makes complete sense,
level another job that can proc everything to be able to gear up the job you want to play but will never be able to.

[Runespider]

Then again as the population starts to drop and servers consolidate due to the popularity of FFXIV, it will all work out fine. :/

wat? FFXIV has like a tiny fraction of the players FFXI has, and struggles to keep hold of those..


popularity / FFXIV

These two words do not go together, at all..ever.

[Lanette]

LOL I know that "other" game is crap and should be scrapped. FFXI should have been given a face lift to bring it up to speed but.... (*cough* PS2 limitations) I can respect spending years going after gear because it took years for me to gear up my whm and smn. The areas where different and the battles engaging. Yes I was whm for most of it because I was good at it and it was needed more than smn. Not because smn could do nothing useful. I certainly didn't have to stand there and do nothing wile a monk tanked it wile we figured out who needed to poke an NM before we would kill it.

[rog]

Almost everyone hates it
I assume you have statistics to back this up?

[Arcon]

I assume you have statistics to back this up?

Indeed. Very official statistics:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/forum.php

[Akujima]

It makes complete sense,
level another job that can proc everything to be able to gear up the job you want to play but will never be able to.

Random New Player: "Alright... Hmm, I guess I'll level up PLD to max Lv, it's a fun job!"... Random New Player Hits Max Level! Congratz!

New Player: "Alright, time to do some endgame content with my max Lv PLD!"

Random "Abyssea Veteran": "Dude, PLD sucks. Didn't you know?"

New Player: "Uhhh, No. I'm new, how would I know?"

Abyssea Veteran: "Go level a useful job."

New Player: "Well, what are some 'useful' jobs then?..."

Abyssea Veteran: "Oh sry man, can't talk now. Busy. Gatta gear up for Apedemak farm session. Pop some Brewskies and 6-pack of Redbull to keep me goin all night. Catch'ya l8r bruh. P34CE 0UT~"

New Player: "Wait!... Wha?..."


1 Week Later...


New Player: "Damn I'm not getting invites as PLD... I guess that guy was right... /sigh... Ok I'll level up a DD job... Hmm... Time to LvUp RNG!!! Alright this is ganna be awesome!"... New Player Hits Max Level! Congratz...?

New Player: "Time for Endgame Content! Abyssea here I co..."

Abyssea Veteran: "Dude, RNG sucks. Didn't you know?"

New Player: "WTF?... This game is horrible..." /ragequit


~The End~

[Akujima]

...enjoy just having to bring a specific job to proc a !! and get your stuff in a fraction of the time.

So level up a specific job that is "useful" and farm some decent gear for the "useful" job, in order to farm gear for another job that is considered "useless" but is the job I actually want to play.

Question
What will I do with that "useless" job that is all decked out in nice gear?

[rog]

Question
What will I do with that "useless" job that is all decked out in nice gear?
Solo with it.

[Akujima]

Solo with it.


"Decked Out" RNG Solo'ing: "Alright let's do this..." /shoot... "Aww but dang, the 'sweet-spot' for ranged attacks is from further away ok, I gatta back up... Aww but sheesh, the mob keeps following me. Dang, dang, ok... Hmm. I'll just melee with mah Axe's... But wtf? Velocity Shot?... Aww man..."

..."Would be nice if I had someone to keep the mob on them, so I could play my job right."


*hint, hint* PLD is a Tank?...Wha? *hint, hint*

[rog]

"Decked Out" RNG Solo'ing: "Alright let's do this..." /shoot... "Aww but dang, the 'sweet-spot' for ranged attacks is from further away ok, I gatta back up... Aww but sheesh, the mob keeps following me. Dang, dang, ok... Hmm. I'll just melee with mah Axe's... But wtf? Velocity Shot?... Aww man..."

..."Would be nice if I had someone to keep the mob on them, so I could play my job right."


*hint, hint* PLD is a Tank?...Wha? *hint, hint*One time, as an accomplished rdm soloist, i wanted to solo an nm. I thought to myself "is rdm really the best job to solo this on?" And i quickly came to the decision that lolno, it is not. So instead i used my 72 rng, and ended up killing it in half the time it would have taken on rdm.









Goddamnit olla pots.


Also, gotta ask, wtf does having to deal wiht the sweet spot have to do with rng's ability to solo? Either you shoot from point blank range, or from further past the sweet spot. In either case you do less damage. But last i checked, damage output has little, to nothing to do with one's ability to solo.

[Akujima]

Also, gotta ask, wtf does having to deal wiht the sweet spot have to do with rng's ability to solo?

Nothing. Nothing at all. But you've successfully managed to bypass the original point I was trying to make. Congratz.

And now, I bid you Adieu~

[Greatguardian]

Almost everyone hates it, as almost everyone said in almost every other thread about this.

Qualifier necessary: Almost everyone who posts on the Official Forums and feels strongly enough about the Weakness system to post about it. You're still leaving out two important factions:

A) Players who do not post on these forums. There are tons, mainly because there is not a rule against stupid.

B) Players who post on the official forums, like the Weakness system, but do not want to deal with the absolute mess that "whining" threads become. I'm part of this group.

Really, the weakness trigger system is pretty awesome. To hell with going 1/100 on an NM drop (in old FFXI, I've gone 0/100 on multiple drops). Non-Abyssea weakness triggers can be proc'd by pretty much every job in the game, too. The mobs/NMs cycle multiple weaknesses, potentially even based on what is available to the group at any given time (still being tested), and there isn't any job that's "Left out in the cold" as far as triggers go in Neo Dynamis.

I will never understand all this complaining. It's like the people doing the whining have only heard that Weaknesses exist in Dynamis, tried it once or twice and didn't get any, and then assume that it's just exactly like Abyssea and their Favorite Job X is going to be useless forever. BS. If you don't want to trigger weakness, you don't have to. Drop rates will stay at their base level, which have always been absolutely horrible in FFXI. The only difference is now the people who are willing to try out proc spells/JA/WS smartly while killing things will increase their drop rates.

[Teakwood]

It makes complete sense,
level another job that can proc everything to be able to gear up the job you want to play but will never be able to.

So, basically, the same way it's always been, except now it's feasible to low-man things and taking a job to 90 is 500 times less painful?

Also I love how detractors basically like to assume that you're always procing red/grellow/blue all the time forever on every monster!

Also, pro tip: Voidwalker and Dynamis staggering seems to be almost completely different from Abyssea staggering! But that doesn't matter, because "everybody hates staggering", so doing research on it or anything scary and mathy like that probably isn't a good idea.

For what it's worth, I love the system - nothing's perfect, of course, but I'd much rather proc grellow than fight the same salvage NM seven hundred times and never see a thing drop.

[Kiroh]

I suppose it's too much to ask that we be able to use the jobs we enjoy playing for events and not have to kill something 700 times?

SE, meet middle ground. Middle ground, meet SE.

Also, rather surprised that anyone bothers responding to Rog at all when you all know the only thing Rog does is troll and berate people. Really...

[rog]

Trolls can be right too.

[Greatguardian]

I suppose it's too much to ask that we be able to use the jobs we enjoy playing for events and not have to kill something 700 times?

SE, meet middle ground. Middle ground, meet SE.

Also, rather surprised that anyone bothers responding to Rog at all when you all know the only thing Rog does is troll and berate people. Really...

Did you not read either my post or Teakwood's post? Let alone any of the other actually informative posts on staggering in other threads. Pretty much any job in the game can trigger weakness in Dynamis and Voidwatch.

[Ravenmore]

I enjoy the system. I duo with a rdm on my blu all the time. We don't get yellow on every seal mob or what ever we might be killing but we are having fun doing it. With the one spell per element now i can set all my proc spells and not give up much. Its been said so many times now but really get off your ass and put your own groups together if you don't what to level another job just to lolpugs.

[Lanette]

I assume you have statistics to back this up?

I would be interested in seeing statistics. I don't see SE polling to find out, but we can look and see other threads. Its more of the direction the game is taking. Raising the level cap so we can low man everything. Removing the level cap on events so again we can really low man everything, then see low lvl gear crash in price so no one bothers to make or sell. It really started when we started getting down loadable half ass expansions with reused zones and items. Its still fun, yes its easier to get high level gear but i was just thinking about the whole think when my LS was going after NMs and I was just standing there on my smn doing nothing until weakness was triggered and by then it was already 90% dead.

[Greatguardian]

I would be interested in seeing statistics. I don't see SE polling to find out, but we can look and see other threads. Its more of the direction the game is taking. Raising the level cap so we can low man everything. Removing the level cap on events so again we can really low man everything, then see low lvl gear crash in price so no one bothers to make or sell. It really started when we started getting down loadable half ass expansions with reused zones and items. Its still fun, yes its easier to get high level gear but i was just thinking about the whole think when my LS was going after NMs and I was just standing there on my smn doing nothing until weakness was triggered and by then it was already 90% dead.

see This post (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/8021-triggering-weakness?p=100892&viewfull=1#post100892).

Looking at threads on these forums for an idea of how "Most people in the game" feel about an update is like looking at a third grade classroom for an idea of how "Most people in the country" feel about foreign policy.

[svengalis]

I am loving the fact that PLD is not the only tank anymore. This game is the best it has ever been right now. If you feel left out in Abyssea then level a useful job it's not that hard.

[Ravenmore]

GG has a good point. Go look at other forum sites and see what they think of the offcial forums.

[svengalis]

GG has a good point. Go look at other forum sites and see what they think of the offcial forums.

Who cares what they think?

[Ravenmore]

Cause they also rep the player base so people saying everyone hates triggering weakness is retarded. So don't think for a sec that anyone posting here knows how everyone feels based this site.

[Akujima]

see This post (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/8021-triggering-weakness?p=100892&viewfull=1#post100892).

Looking at threads on these forums for an idea of how "Most people in the game" feel about an update is like looking at a third grade classroom for an idea of how "Most people in the country" feel about foreign policy.


Are you going to argue with me that over 60% of the initial population whom first joined FFXI, were NOT fans of the Final Fantasy series' previous offline installments? It's quite obvious to come up with certain situations that don't require statistics, such as "Most people will say: putting your hand in boiling hot oil, hurts"

She is not calling out Abyssea directly just because she refers to it, she simply realizes the direction this game has taken. There's no specifics or statistics needed when it comes "how a game feels". FFXI came out with actual expansions in the past, that offered new area's to explore, new Jobs to be played and detailed missions, involving intricate storylines.

Now what do we get? Re-hashed old zones with new monster placement and few throw together cut-scenes.

SE needs to stop worrying about putting money in their pockets, and start worrying about making a quality game.

And if you think these forums are meant to complain to SE all day, most of you need to skillup... Because I can complain better than 80% of you out there. No statistics needed.

[Greatguardian]

Because that's obviously the part of her post that I was replying to. You are so mad, Ninja man.

[Ravenmore]

LOL story lines, really. Didn't SE say them selfs that a large part of the player base hadn't finish CoP story line before the nerfs. The dev really laid everything out on that one even made it were you didn't have to be at cap to do and alot of people didn't even bother with it.

[Akujima]

LOL story lines, really. Didn't SE say them selfs that a large part of the player base hadn't finish CoP story line before the nerfs. The dev really laid everything out on that one even made it were you didn't have to be at cap to do and alot of people didn't even bother with it.


I certainly appreciated the time and care it took the developers to come up with such storylines. It proved that FFXI was a world apart from other MMO's that just had random farming quests, and were able to get by without a shred of depth. Laughing Out Loud and getting annoyed at cut-scenes, spamming your button to get through them, doesn't mean that people NOT of the "MTV Generation" can't recognize quality creations when they see them.

And "didn't finish" the CoP storyline doesn't mean that they weren't halfway through already, but were fed-up trying to look for help because everyone was too involved in Abyssea.

Yes I'll keep using double negatives in my posts, because 2 negatives = 1 positive. Let's see you argue that math.

[Arcon]

see This post (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/8021-triggering-weakness?p=100892&viewfull=1#post100892).

Looking at threads on these forums for an idea of how "Most people in the game" feel about an update is like looking at a third grade classroom for an idea of how "Most people in the country" feel about foreign policy.

In a way, that's a fitting analogy. The crowd selection in a third grade classroom is unbiased and numerous, consisting of people of all nationalities, confessions and parties. A college class, on the other hand, would then be the elitist minority hanging out in places like BG. Some smart, most just feeling smart, almost everyone feeling superior (and some are) with a very strong opinion.

The topic of discussion is different, though. It's not an issue that requires a "smart" decision; whether or not weakness staggers are appreciated or not is a matter of opinion. And the opinion of the average, unbiased mass is what counts most. These forums feature people from most of the other forums and people who aren't anywhere else. And everyone, even the people in the college class who do not actively participate here, knows that this is the closest they're even going to get to SE. If other people wanna make their opinion heard, they know that they need to post here. And the people who believe that SE doesn't listen anyway have no reason to complain in the first place.

[Greatguardian]

@Akujima: Reading comprehension must be a component of the MTV generation, then.

He clearly said that the majority of the playerbase, as announced by SE (and which I am inclined to believe as well), had never completed the CoP mission line before the nerfs which took place long before Abyssea had even been announced. Of those who did manage to complete them pre-nerf, of which I doubt you are one, most people completed missions so far apart from one another that the continuity of the storyline was lost in the shuffle.

It doesn't matter how good a story is if you're seeing it piece by piece over the course of months. WotG only aggravated this problem further, taking 3 years to complete the main mission line.

[Sama]

In old endgame in FFXI it took years to get your gear..killing over and over and over again, now they make it easier and you complain? It took me 2 years camping HNM to get the then best endgame gear, enjoy just having to bring a specific job to proc a !! and get your stuff in a fraction of the time.

SE made ffxi easy and people complaining over triggering are two different thing.

SE made A zones so easy that's comparing to old FFXI which you have long a$$ wait pop time for NM and thousands of competitor; by doing that, SE get more n00b to join; SE is happy.

People complaining that, for example, you spent hours for all KIs of an NM, pop'ed it with a few jobs that's already overpower, as soon as you find out the trigger ws/spell you realize you just don't have that in your group. There your pop goes to trash.

[Greatguardian]

In a way, that's a fitting analogy. The crowd selection in a third grade classroom is unbiased and numerous, consisting of people of all nationalities, confessions and parties. A college class, on the other hand, would then be the elitist minority hanging out in places like BG. Some smart, most just feeling smart, almost everyone feeling superior (and some are) with a very strong opinion.

The topic of discussion is different, though. It's not an issue that requires a "smart" decision; whether or not weakness staggers are appreciated or not is a matter of opinion. And the opinion of the average, unbiased mass is what counts most. These forums feature people from most of the other forums and people who aren't anywhere else. And everyone, even the people in the college class who do not actively participate here, knows that this is the closest they're even going to get to SE. If other people wanna make their opinion heard, they know that they need to post here. And the people who believe that SE doesn't listen anyway have no reason to complain in the first place.

Close, but unfortunately this topic of discussion most definitely does require an informed decision. How many people posting in all of these anti-stagger threads actually know how the stagger system in non-Abyssea zones works? Considering BG only has a couple working theories and raw information to comb through right now, I'm willing to bet no one does.

What we do know right now is that the system is not the same as Abyssea at all. It simply resembles it. This is what people dislike. They see staggers and instantly think that NIN, WAR, MNK, BLM, BLU, WHM are going to be the only jobs able to trigger anything in Dynamis and Voidwatch. I realize this is a broad generalization, but that is the general gist I get from reading through as many of those threads as I can tolerate.

However, given information BG has compiled thus far, it seems like Triggers could be determined by the ws/spells/JAs currently being wielded by the group in question. A solo player would be able to trigger everything, for example, because the trigger would always be something that they have available to them. This is why you see Nin/Dncs being able to trigger nearly 100% of mobs when they pull "JA Proc" type monsters.

Uninformed knee-jerk reactions are bad. You can ask a third grade classroom how they feel about the war in Iraq and they will give you an answer based on their impressions, or what other people think, rather than being able to give an educated reply. You can ask a college classroom and, assuming the students are informed, they will be able to give you a reply that accurately affects the situation and their opinions on it. Feedback from the former is useless to Developers because it has nothing to do with the actual system in place and everything to do with their preconceptions and misconceptions stemming from a similar system.

[Akujima]

@Akujima: Reading comprehension must be a component of the MTV generation, then.

He clearly said that the majority of the playerbase, as announced by SE (and which I am inclined to believe as well), had never completed the CoP mission line before the nerfs which took place long before Abyssea had even been announced. Of those who did manage to complete them pre-nerf, of which I doubt you are one, most people completed missions so far apart from one another that the continuity of the storyline was lost in the shuffle.

It doesn't matter how good a story is if you're seeing it piece by piece over the course of months. WotG only aggravated this problem further, taking 3 years to complete the main mission line.


I completed CoP from start to finish 8-4 in a period of around 2~ months. The storyline and difficult battles were the best part. I don't whine and complain about difficulty level. If I wasn't smart enough to figure out how to defeat a certain boss/battlefield, then it's MY mistake and I need to re-evaluate what I did wrong and figure out the solution.

Chains of Promathia: Climbing the Promyvions at Lv30 cap. Fighting the minotaur in the aqueducts. Heading into Riverne Site A and B to at Lv40 and 50 caps. Fighting the Dragon after the Bahamut Cut-Scene and using Mistmelts to prevent him from flying. The Attowha Chasm mountain climb with the Miasma Filter and then the Shikaree Mithra Battle. The Travelling to Oldton Movapolos. The Airship Battles. Ulegrand Range Snoll... So much...

All of them challenging battles and interconnecting the main plot very well.


Abyssea: "Oh shi-, the gates of Oblivion are open!... Uhh, I mean... the gates of Abyssea have opened!"

*Slash, Slash, Spell, Brew* The World is Saved~

[Arcon]

Close, but unfortunately this topic of discussion most definitely does require an informed decision. How many people posting in all of these anti-stagger threads actually know how the stagger system in non-Abyssea zones works? Considering BG only has a couple working theories and raw information to comb through right now, I'm willing to bet no one does. [..]

Some people are complaining about that, and most of them I'm guessing actually don't have a clue, simply because it's too early to have one (as you pointed out). Others, myself incldued, are simple annoyed with the system itself, not because it's easy or hard, because the truth is we don't know which one it is yet.

I just dislike the idea itself, having to to stagger weaknesses to achieve certain effects. I believe it's a cheap way out for SE to create an artificial challenge. I believe that rewards should be gained by overcoming actual challenges, killing certain mobs in a set time frame, popping harder mobs after that then beat a boss, something, anything like that, even miniquests within the zones would be nice, fullfilling certain objectives or something, like in certain limbus zones. As I said, this just feels like a cheap solution, disguising something boring and time-consuming as challenge, with a slight incentive to try by increasing possible rewards (which were never bad to begin with imo). Dynamis was always one of my favorite events, and they changed it completely, filled up random parts with ideas I dislike. That part is just a matter of opinion, and personally I'm annoyed by it. We already have Abyssea for easy and high end content, didn't need to turn Dynamis into a cheap knock-off as well.

[Soundwave]

This is no different Pre-Abyssea certain jobs always had the gold carpet. Making everybody happy in this is like trying to fix/balance pet jobs, Its probably not going to happen...however....always hope.

If they can just find a way for the jobs to participate instead of increases job triggering, there will always be an argument.

[Greatguardian]

Some people are complaining about that, and most of them I'm guessing actually don't have a clue, simply because it's too early to have one (as you pointed out). Others, myself incldued, are simple annoyed with the system itself, not because it's easy or hard, because the truth is we don't know which one it is yet. [..]

And I respect your opinion. It's definitely okay to dislike the weakness trigger system. I simply don't feel that these forums are a particularly good measure of the population as a whole, especially since the majority of the feedback tends to be a bunch of people with kneejerk reactions based on hear-say rather than an actual examination of the changes and their experiences with them.

[Ravenmore]

@Aku SE has nerfed CoP 3 times. I remember before they adjusted the promys mobs and the rest of that round of nerfs.
Now you don't even need a full party to do any of the missions. Duos and solos have beaten airship. I know of only one mission in CoP now the you HAVE to have 2 people to do and thats only to unlock a door(though you can do it solo but could get you banned). So getting help now cause "EVERYONE is in abyssea" is mistaken. What I was trying to get accross is the Devs put more work into that story line then any other and when they seen a large part of the player base hadn't finished. They did spam the crap out of Sky, ground and dyna which all you only could open in a day or two of mission progression. SE then did that with ToAU with all of its endgame opening up way before even the half way mark for missons. Even then they still had to go back and give a really big reward on top of the first reward for people to really want to finish it.

[Panthera]

In the course of this debate, some have confounded drop rates with the proc-ing system, when the drop rates aren't in dispute at all. Some have even taken proc-ing to be synonymous with Abyssea itself. No one disputes that the drop rates that proc-ing affords aren't beneficial to player effort and time. What is disputed is that if absolutely nothing dropped from proc-ing an NM, is proc-ing fun and enjoyable for its own sake? Proc-ing entails standing around and waiting for a notorious monster to use a TP move, and this only assumes that your job can in fact proc it. If not, you're standing around as the OP said waiting for the kill order. It's so much passivity either way that for gameplay's sake, doing something once every 30 minutes isn't much more rewarding than doing nothing at all for an hour. I myself have dropped a shell not because it wasn't successful, but because Abyssea just isn't fun.

The real problem is that Final Fantasy XI has forgotten that it's less about getting there and more about being there. It was once difficult, but that's exactly where the fun was! Perhaps it took two to three times to beat a mission, or in rare cases more like ten. But on that tenth time was the euphoria of doing the impossible. Having is dull. Any child can grow bored of a toy easily and quickly. An adult savors the chase of a dream, so long as the hunt itself remains invigorating. Chains of Promathia, for all of its difficulties--no,*because* of its difficulties--had a sense of tension and build-up to the final fight. It had characters to love and hate. COP rings were a badge of honor. Abyssea has a lot of stuff to do, but with no reason other than collecting so many trinkets and souvenirs, that any sense of the magic of storytelling is long since forgot. Good gear is simply a cheap brew away.

[Akujima]

says magical things in the post above...


Vote this as the greatest post of all time and to be added to the FFXI Forum: Hall of Fame.

Thank you, Panthera.

[Runespider]

The real problem is that Final Fantasy XI has forgotten that it's less about getting there and more about being there. It was once difficult, but that's exactly where the fun was! Perhaps it took two to three times to beat a mission, or in rare cases more like ten. But on that tenth time was the euphoria of doing the impossible. Having is dull. Any child can grow bored of a toy easily and quickly. An adult savors the chase of a dream, so long as the hunt itself remains invigorating. Chains of Promathia, for all of its difficulties--no,*because* of its difficulties--had a sense of tension and build-up to the final fight. It had characters to love and hate. COP rings were a badge of honor. Abyssea has a lot of stuff to do, but with no reason other than having so many trinkets and souvenirs, that any sense of the magic of storytelling is long since forgot. Good gear is simply a cheap brew away.

Although I personally agree with this there are many that don't and if given a difficult challenge will simply give up, well over half the playerbase never completed CoP. Many will complain how easy something is but if given something that is quite hard to kill, to the point of actually losing a few times simply won't do it again. Some people take failure very badly.

[Sama]

The real problem is that Final Fantasy XI has forgotten that it's less about getting there and more about being there. It was once difficult, but that's exactly where the fun was! Perhaps it took two to three times to beat a mission, or in rare cases more like ten. But on that tenth time was the euphoria of doing the impossible. Having is dull. Any child can grow bored of a toy easily and quickly. An adult savors the chase of a dream, so long as the hunt itself remains invigorating. Chains of Promathia, for all of its difficulties--no,*because* of its difficulties--had a sense of tension and build-up to the final fight. It had characters to love and hate. COP rings were a badge of honor. Abyssea has a lot of stuff to do, but with no reason other than having so many trinkets and souvenirs, that any sense of the magic of storytelling is long since forgot. Good gear is simply a cheap brew away.

I want to give you a kiss; you said exactly what I want to say.

FFXI is gone; now is FFaby; tomorrow is FFwow.

[Ravenmore]

So I guess you want it to go back to the old drop rates and lines for gear. No thank you. What that easy to get, don't take TH and don't proc. Want it to be "hard" and take forever don't use npc buffs and atmas.

[Sama]

So I guess you want it to go back to the old drop rates and lines for gear. No thank you. What that easy to get, don't take TH and don't proc. Want it to be "hard" and take forever don't use npc buffs and atmas.

There is no turning back; SE already made the move there is no way it will be reversed.

Then the rest of those n00b kids who started this game 4 days ago with 3 lvl 90 jobs and an emp weapon will just be complaining forever that the already-eased system are difficult because they never felt what's really challenging.

[Glamdring]

I created a thread about this in the gameplay section. However, it is my opinion that the !! proc system is in place simply to marginalize jobs... and give warrior new life. It adds nothing to enjoyment of the game... unless you like standing around to no purpose.

[Lanette]

In the course of this debate, some have confounded drop rates with the proc-ing system, when the drop rates aren't in dispute at all. Some have even taken proc-ing to be synonymous with Abyssea itself. No one disputes that the drop rates that proc-ing affords aren't beneficial to player effort and time. What is disputed is that if absolutely nothing dropped from proc-ing an NM, is proc-ing fun and enjoyable for its own sake? Proc-ing entails standing around and waiting for a notorious monster to use a TP move, and this only assumes that your job can in fact proc it. If not, you're standing around as the OP said waiting for the kill order. It's so much passivity either way that for gameplay's sake, doing something once every 30 minutes isn't much more rewarding than doing nothing at all for an hour. I myself have dropped a shell not because it wasn't successful, but because Abyssea just isn't fun.

The real problem is that Final Fantasy XI has forgotten that it's less about getting there and more about being there. It was once difficult, but that's exactly where the fun was! Perhaps it took two to three times to beat a mission, or in rare cases more like ten. But on that tenth time was the euphoria of doing the impossible. Having is dull. Any child can grow bored of a toy easily and quickly. An adult savors the chase of a dream, so long as the hunt itself remains invigorating. Chains of Promathia, for all of its difficulties--no,*because* of its difficulties--had a sense of tension and build-up to the final fight. It had characters to love and hate. COP rings were a badge of honor. Abyssea has a lot of stuff to do, but with no reason other than having so many trinkets and souvenirs, that any sense of the magic of storytelling is long since forgot. Good gear is simply a cheap brew away.

You couldn't have said it better. The gear that represented a badge of honor and coming of age is being put in storage and replace with gear that was much much easer to get. Being a smn and proudly displaying my YYrobe has been replaced by the new relic body. Each piece of gear I had prior to the abby had a story.

[Panthera]

So I guess you want it to go back to the old drop rates and lines for gear. No thank you. What that easy to get, don't take TH and don't proc. Want it to be "hard" and take forever don't use npc buffs and atmas.
No, I want to go back to when the game was "fun." Drop rates can be improved, and the proc-ing business removed.

In job creation, SE learned how to make FFXI more active. Most if not all jobs from ToAU and beyond are more engaging due to active gameplay; shorter casts and recasts for spells and JA's. The gameplay of Abyssea is less engaging and less active due to all the standing around, doing nothing and waiting. There's hope that future expansions will recall its former level of interesting gameplay. SE, I know you're reading this.

[Akujima]

No, I want to go back to when the game was "fun." Drop rates can be improved, and the proc-ing business removed.

In job creation, SE learned how to make FFXI more active. Most if not all jobs from ToAU and beyond are more engaging due to active gameplay; shorter casts and recasts for spells and JA's. The gameplay of Abyssea is less engaging and less active due to all the standing around, doing nothing and waiting. There's hope that future expansions will recall its former level of interesting gameplay. SE, I know you're reading this.


Totally hit the nail on the head... Again.

Dev's, Please listen.