Has the new content direction spoiled ffxi for anyone else?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by detlef

Are these are your only complaints? What about:

-Not being able to store more than 1 KI,
-Only earning cards on your current job
-Low HP trash mobs make certain objectives way more difficult than necessary

---

Pretty much. I have no issues w/ any of those. Lockout and card restrictions are both only annoyances at worst, and can be gamed a bit already. The mob HP issues might need a look at since you are right that it's currently pretty easy to overshoot the target numbers. I rarely am able to complete many objs solo/duo tho since I'm going BST and pets don't count for jack, so forgot to consider them. ^^;;

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Elexia

2. [cards per job] could have been done better but it actually makes sense from a design perspective. XI has always rewarded players that were versatile be it community or game system wise.

---

Versatility rewards versatility. People didn't need job-specific rewards in virtually any past content to go on useful jobs (Loot dropped independent of the job).

You need certain people on certain jobs, regardless of if they want the cards for those jobs. Further some jobs just underperform.

As a best-in-slot paladin, I can't actually find a reason to bring paladin to anything I've fought so far in Omen. PLD is less DPS than run, by a mile (hey, more time is more time), needs Haste II more than Runefencer (Vallation/Valliance) and offers little group support (neither the fast cast or protection from Valiance). You might never kill a paladin tank but there's not much he can do to help with enemy aoes (past rampart).

So yeah, my friends would let me bring my Paladin over my Rune Fencer, but even I know it's probably the suboptimal choice. Some groups are using DD-tanks (which is how I use my rune fencer in there, but it needs a little more and to AG Epeo).

TL;DR: Up until this content, my versatility of jobs was it's own reward. I could come whatever was best for the task.

So is ambuscade finally done? No new rewards except adding the other sets to spend metals on? It'll be more manageable at a slower pace now if it's just vouchers for the existing gear every month.

Quote:

---

TL;DR: Up until this content, my versatility of jobs was it's own reward. I could come whatever was best for the task.

---

Frankly, versatility went out the window the moment they introduced job points and their unseemly grind. Omen is just another nail in that coffin.

Otherwise, the talk of rewards/punishments I've seen going on in the thread is splitting hairs with the usual dash of, "It's an MMO, play with others!" sophistry. No one likes dailies/weeklies/monthlies/whatever and Omen is an unfortunate callback to that system. Dead servers are a thing, and people don't want to drop money on transfers with no guarantee they'll find a suitable group of players on the other end and possibly lose what few friends they did have on their home world. Elitism is strong as ever in XI, where no amount of personal skill can overcome certain mathematical requirements like needed ACC for harder content. As well, many aren't keen to getting stuck on jobs they have no real interest in just to maybe possibly play the one they really want in the distant future. The Ambuscade infrastructure is also a bust, as evidenced by all the complaining lobbied against soloists just trying to get their bone because no one invites or their schedule is random/limited. No amount of telling them to just make their own groups guarantees bodies, assuming cooperative jobs and a tolerance of available gear levels.

There's a lot of dead content in XI, but the unfortunate reality is some of it at level cap is still needed for up-and-comers just to even get a glance from the more established players. Sparks gear doesn't cut it. Depending on the job, not having your Empyrean WS is a detriment, which means slogging through WoE or possibly Abyssea itself if the weapon path is soloable. Odds are any and all Skirmishes done, be it Yorcia or RoE objectives, will have to be soloed because there's zero incentive for anyone to backtrack. They're miles behind on Job Points with no catch-up mechanisms at play, and heaven help them if a double CP campaign isn't going on. SE may have intended Ambuscade to be the catch-up content for gear, but the fatal flaw in their intention is that, bluntly, their players are jerks. And I can't fault anyone who wants to avoid the headache of interacting with others because PUG rules are always changing, the game isn't their life, they don't subscribe to the cookie cutter, etc.. And if the resultant logic is that sub-optimal play deserves less rewards, then yeah, it looks more like a punishment to me. And no, I don't mean something like a WAR/WHM should have everything handed to them, to preempt the snowflake argument. Rather, reasonable effort warrants reasonable reward, and not things kept out of reach (like the Ambuscade party currency) solely because someone doesn't fall in line and drink your flavor of kool-aid.

Versatility should be one of XI's strengths. Sadly, this meets conflict between various design choices or how players are more apt to play MMOs now relative to the past. No amount of pining for the past or trying to force things isn't going to change the latter, either. The genie's out of the bottle, there's competition, people have grown up, people have learned. And if the game is really, truly supposed to be about people coming together for common goals, SE is failing miserably in making that task easy by sticking to paid world transfers, no matchmaking services, and no cross-server functionality. That's all before getting into things like job balance or the actual worth and difficulty of events, themselves. XI could and should be better, but for whatever reason, we have what we have. And it's more than just XIV being a thing.

I haven't been subbed for months because of the new direction of the game. Making it less and less pick up friendly and the inability to work at my own pace on ambuscade gear, which was just about the only gear upgrades available to me... yeah. I just got done with it. It felt like if I didn't spend all my playtime spamming ambuscade I was screwing myself... just not fun.

Quote:

---

They're miles behind on Job Points with no catch-up mechanisms at play, and heaven help them if a double CP campaign isn't going on. SE may have intended Ambuscade to be the catch-up content for gear, but the fatal flaw in their intention is that, bluntly, their players are jerks. And I can't fault anyone who wants to avoid the headache of interacting with others because PUG rules are always changing, the game isn't their life, they don't subscribe to the cookie cutter, etc.. And if the resultant logic is that sub-optimal play deserves less rewards, then yeah, it looks more like a punishment to me. And no, I don't mean something like a WAR/WHM should have everything handed to them, to preempt the snowflake argument. Rather, reasonable effort warrants reasonable reward, and not things kept out of reach (like the Ambuscade party currency) solely because someone doesn't fall in line and drink your flavor of kool-aid.

---

All of this pretty much. The game just stopped being fun for these reasons. I couldn't put in steady effort and get steady reward consistently.

while i admit your right on people choosing not to help people.... i don't get all the stress over welfare gear of ambascade. ill admit some pieces are nice. but so are ones from Reisenjima and HQ pieces and while i don't mind helping people who need help. i am not about carrying people. i do not help people who wanna go from a sparks sword to colada. while i understand why they wanna go that way i believe in progression and if u cant hit the mob your not ready for the drops (not talking about 130+) but like 125 128 so on.

I guess it depends on what you want.
I'm back in the game and it just reminds me why XIV will never be able to approach the greatness of XI.

The way this game was back in '07, sure, it would be nice if it still was that, but it couldn't be that, and i give full credit to the devs for using what little manpower and time they had left over the last few years polishing this game into an operable offline entry that stands as one of if not the best entry in the franchise.

Just... leave out all the end game issues for the moment and the 'online' concept and take the game as just an offline entry into the franchise sold on steam for a few bucks. New player poops out the cash to try out the game they haven't tried before and lands in one of the starting cities fresh. Ok, the UI is terribly dated, but it's well enough, and not unlike what you would expect from going back to any game of the era. Perhaps the lack of direction can be difficult, but also exciting, provided the player has a will to explore, and who wouldn't given the gargantuan world available to explore?

The game as designed today, makes it practically impossible to miss the first Rhapsody Mission, which ultimately points you towards all the other Missions in the game, and the help NPCs are clearly marked on the map, leading even the densest of players to discover the sparks system. This serves as a perfect notepad for any player to track their progress through all the core content and not miss ANYTHING. Also, the NPC summoning. So they effectively get to party with the main storyline characters while getting to explore an absolutely massive world filled with gorgeous art design, classic music, oodles of great storytelling and other contents to discover all while moving up the level chain without ever really having to grind so much. It's immense, and it's a masterpiece, flowing reasonably seamlessly from a defined start to a finishing point.

And then there's endgame, like a lot of modern games will just poop you back out into the world to do whatever else you want to do when you're done the main story. In this case i suppose you could do it before you finish parts of the story too if you want. There IS an absolute freedom to just go any which way, and frankly, that's how i plan to play the game, personally. If i make social connections along the way, all the better.

I give the devs credit. The game couldn't be what it was infinitely. Unchanged, it would have no way to exist today. Imagine i had to shout for Valkrum parties in 2017? Or try to find people to help me through Chains of Promathia? Yeah right. I very much doubt it. All the oodles of great content are still great. At least this way they are accessible. Might i have trouble getting through the door on elite stuff? Sure. Do i care? Not a damn bit. It's a tiny fraction of the ultimate product that equates to little more than any games equivalent to super bosses.

Now all that said, the community was one of the greatest things about this game for long time. Maybe some things have changed, but if another 10 years go by with little new content and a few thousand people are still gathered about on servers that SE keeps active on a skeleton crew, that says something on its own. Back in 2000 i spent a great deal of time every night after school on some rolyplaying message board. A bunch of the people from those days still haunt that board. It's a community. Again, i don't give a damn about if i do or do not have trouble finding a party for some uber boss. If i find a linkshell with some good people that i can afk around in some corner of the world and make connections with, that's what counts.

And if not, i'm still left with maybe the greatest game in the Final Fantasy franchise to play freely at my own pace.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by zataz

i am not about carrying people.

---

While I get this, attempting to analyze content progression yields an ever increased likelihood of that happening or the player in question giving up. Looking to the JSE Oboro weapons, for example, a returnee will likely have trouble finding the bodies for a high-tier BC clear even if the content is pretty easy. From there, they may have issue getting the base crafted weapon. After that, it's dumping millions in upgrade materials for things both not meant to be permanent with no means to recoup the cost. It's an arguably insidious time and resource sink just to jump to something between sparks and escha-zitah stuff. The augmented WKR weapons are decent in their own ways, but the big problem is just having others help to kill the darn things. Assuming a WKR campaign is going on, it's likely the server is only cycling through the bee, shark, and trex. Yumcax is most assuredly the worst of the lot between the small safe space and its ability pool, which further translates to people avoiding it as much as possible.

Meanwhile, when I think back to when Magian Trials were a thing, you a wide assortment of weapons that could be done solo and weren't total junk. Sure, some were never made (or at least I hope they weren't!), but if you were a PLD who want a -DT sword and couldn't snag a Hautclaire because HNMLS and all that, you had an option with the Earth path. This isn't to say magians were perfect, but they ultimately did a decent job in giving players lots of little things to do at their own pace while not being implicitly locked to party/alliance play.

What this really tells me is that there needs to be a sort of Sparks+1 equivalent of gear within reach so you're not left feeling like you'd be carrying people who want to both participate and advance. I somewhat inferred that Ambuscade's gear could play this role, but the stuff is obviously hit and miss depending on the sets, and even the good ones still lack something to make them suitable full-time pieces until swaps can be wiggled in (Jhakri's lack of haste making it a potential entry level melee set for BLU or RDM comes to mind, for example). This still leaves room for cursed gear and the Reisenjima lottery to be better, but getting invites to those groups should be more feasible.

Quote:

---

Again, i don't give a damn about if i do or do not have trouble finding a party for some uber boss. If i find a linkshell with some good people that i can afk around in some corner of the world and make connections with, that's what counts.

---

Everyone is going to have their preferences, for sure, but I generally caution that someone shouldn't let their own be the sole justification for content (or the lack thereof). For example, while I don't shy away from conversation, I don't exactly look to the internet as my source of friendships. Rather, if I'm logging into a particular game, it's because there's something in it I want to do. It might be taking down a specific boss. It could be working on craft skills. It could be just lazy farming whatever. Odds are I just want to "turn my brain off" because RL has sucked with its own needs and obligations. However, every time one encounters a barrier that basically says, "Nope, can't do that!" you risk losing that player to another game that will scratch that itch, especially if the reason why they can't is due to means beyond their control. I'm against hardcore content largely for this reason, as it thrives on exclusivity instead of inclusion. And whether we want it to or not, the genre has been kicking and screaming in its transition from the former to latter the past decade+, complete with the usual rhetoric about welfare and the like. In the end, I too frequently see focus on how things were instead of how they could be, learning from both successes and failures.

My own approach aside, yes, absolutely. If there is a gap between what a player can reasonably accomplish solo and the point at which they are able to reasonably find invites to groups, that is a design flaw that needs to be addressed.