The Perfection From Before, The Flaws Now

In the design of this game, we have seen the emergence of three perfect systems for effort vs reward and game balance.

In the last four updates we have seen the intention to move away from these systems for unknown reasons.

I hope that through either consensus or argument, we can bring enough attention back to what made this game best, and see more of it, as well as showing why the current direction, though well intentioned, could be improved.

Our first perfect endgame system was Zeni Notorious Monsters, which we will call ZNM. Regardless of if the rewards/droprate, entry system, or even bosses themselves, were good enough, the system worked. Players undertook small questlike tasks to spawn NMs, got progressively better gear as they defeated these NMs, and only one player needed to do this at a time. It could be slow at times, but the core system, that of 'defeating monsters in order to fight stronger monsters', is sound.

In contrast the current system only 'suggests' that you do this, and requires far more players for the early stages. There is no variance in options. When you have to gather a full group of skilled players on their best jobs anyway, the time cost of organizing these players means that they are more likely to skip straight to whatever they think they might defeat, just to save time and make faster progress.

Conclusion: Paths such as ZNM work well because it allows players to make good use of their organizing time vs their rewards for that time.


Our second perfect system was the Trial of the Magians. Conceptually, ignoring the somewhat harsh early execution and high trial requirements, this system allows players to get customized assured rewards for effort. It also encourages them to work together for 'kill' based trials and meet new people. Players who are not at the 'end' of the trial chain may still receive help from those further along for other reasons, or just to spend time with friends. This system could have been combined with others to give even more customized rewards. Titles, Battlefield Notorious Monsters, Quests, etc, to give older content more relevance and expand the number of things people do in the game without necessarily pushing too hard on development.

By contrast our proposed current system, while offering powerful equipment and upgrade paths, is bottlenecked, and somewhat focused on either large groups being necessary, or competition being necessary. Since equipment is only slightly required to follow any effort based path or tiers, players can easily decide that there is no purpose in dealing with content that grants them no meaningful result. More importantly though, during the time that a player is upgrading a weapon or armor in Magian Trials, they may seek other options that are more powerful than the current form but weaker than the finished product. If these options are crafted, there is a least some stimulation of that.

Conclusion: If you want players to follow paths through stages, make the gear itself either have stages or foster more longer term cooperation. Casual players are brought together, dedicated players are already there.


Our third perfect system was specifically the item upgrades used in Empyrean Weapons/Armor. By spreading the condition for full success over multiple kills, (despite the fact that some may consider them too many), we achieved a state where players would develop strategies and hone skills, as well as making do with different options in many cases to get the job done. It also somewhat removes the likelihood of players getting too lucky or unlucky, often seen in previous 'low droprate of finished item' content. It does this without causing too much direct conflict, particularly in the way the drop tables were set up. Technically this system combines aspects of the previous two, giving players a relatively clear path (difficulty in defeating higher level monsters being far greater without the equipment provided by the lesser). This sort of visible progression also keeps players engaged.

In contrast the current system, despite allowing players to earn 'points' for their item upgrades, encourages stricter groups, specialized jobs, and mercenary activity (possibly because of the difficulty of the bosses, but a 'relatively difficult' boss that you must defeat multiple times is more of a 'stepping stone' than a highly difficult boss that you need to defeat once).

Conclusion: Taking time to design bosses that people only need to defeat once or twice is wasted energy, and every boss that can be skipped altogether is moreso. While some people may have disliked Abyssea overall, this particular system was, for all intents, perfect. Any flaws in it are flaws that are not specific to it.

I have no idea what resources are available on the development side. I have no idea what the plan is, but I believe that doing more of the same, when 'the same' is a core reward-to-effort mechanic that was largely successful, will also be largely successful.

I therefore somewhat arrogantly ask that the Developers consider altering the execution of their current apparent plans and shift back to the systems we had that were objectively the best for the community in terms of solving issues that can be solved. Please waste no further time trying to 'solve' human nature.