Legion still sucks.

/thread

How many more nerfs until this becomes doable by alliances not using Perfect Defense and Embrava to stay alive?

When they remove Abyssea and people learn how to play the game properly? Who knows, it's just too hard for some people after 2 years of handholding.

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Originally Posted by Elexia

When they remove Abyssea and people learn how to play the game properly? Who knows, it's just too hard for some people after 2 years of handholding.

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looking forward to your full clear video mr.1337

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Originally Posted by Elexia

When they remove Abyssea and people learn how to play the game properly? Who knows, it's just too hard for some people after 2 years of handholding.

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"Abyssea was too easy" is a poor excuse given Legion has a laundrylist of flaws that have very little to do with handholding and everything to do with bad decisionmaking.

Legions main flaw is the drops are absolutely crap i'm in a group 18 man static we do legion but the drops are just abysmal.

All the stuff that drops in provenance should drop in legion and vice versa. SE cannot stick a bunch of rehashed nms in the horototo ruin, add a bunch of crap drops then expect everyone to do it. Not to mention the 360 k entry fee.

Another dead contents - let's hope they are not abandoning this and actually willing to make fun, accessible and enjoyable. As it is now is one of those why bother to do. Still learn absolutely nothing after creating blockbuster content that is Abyssea - even void watch is mildly successful after tweak.

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Originally Posted by Cahlum

Legions main flaw is the drops are absolutely crap i'm in a group 18 man static we do legion but the drops are just abysmal.

All the stuff that drops in provenance should drop in legion and vice versa. SE cannot stick a bunch of rehashed nms in the horototo ruin, add a bunch of crap drops then expect everyone to do it. Not to mention the 360 k entry fee.

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Some of the lower-wave items are indeed stinky ;; Looks like they backloaded all the good stuff in the final waves and final chamber.

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Originally Posted by Elexia

When they remove Abyssea and people learn how to play the game properly? Who knows, it's just too hard for some people after 2 years of handholding.

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I never get tired of people saying Abyssea = hand holding. Nor will I understand the anti-Abyssea crowd.

I will never understand that backwards logic, no matter how hard I try.

Abyssea does not equal hand holding. What Abyssea did was make the game fun and accessible for the majority of the players. It removed the epic time sink the game had become and enabled everyone to work in smaller groups. Smaller groups are easier to manage and people can get things done faster.

18 man alliances are cool in theory, but horrible in application. It always takes forever to get people together and then controlling 18 people is a pain like you wouldn't believe. You really have to take a militaristic approach to those sort of events in certain cases.

Quite frankly, I pay to play this game not wait for 18 people to gather, or camp out in DA waiting for Faffy/Niddhog to spawn- the list is endless and by now we've all heard it.
Most importantly, I pay to have fun.

If anything, SE should be exploring what worked with Abyssea and implementing it throughout newer content as well as older content.

Totally agree with your point of view!! Awesome observation btw on how amazing Abyssea content is. For me it is hands down the best content for FFXI and a fitting swan song, until they realize how shitty FF14 at launch, and now they have to do a lot of backpedalling and creating content that just feels like a drag with super low drop rate and you need to do 30-40 mnts shout just to get it started.

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Originally Posted by Mahoro

Some of the lower-wave items are indeed stinky ;; Looks like they backloaded all the good stuff in the final waves and final chamber.

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It was done this way to delay people from farming them. Think AV / PW back at 75, except instead of making a single ridiculously hard nigh invincible NM, they make a series of ridiculously hard NM's with a nigh impossible time limit. The fact that people are even discussing having one SMN per NM to get a clear is enough to prove the previous point. Legion is a carrot for the EGLS's who want "something" to accomplish. They can keep throwing themselves against the brick wall until a future time when SE decides to allow you to win.

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Originally Posted by Elexia

When they remove Abyssea and people learn how to play the game properly?

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Maybe you could produce a guide on what constitutes proper play?

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Who knows, it's just too hard for some people after 2 years of handholding.

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Maybe it's just overtuned content and even those who play "properly" are having trouble with it.

FFXI is not hard at all, if you think it requires much skill then you obviously haven't played many other games. But still I have to see any Legion shouts for groups forming. Seems people in FFXI don't like doing it. I wanted to try it out but that's impossible when nobody even wants to make group for it.

While I don't like people blaming abyssea for people not being able to do the impossible event called legion, you're full of shit if you think for one second abyssea wasn't full of hand holding.

We went from epic battles that required teamwork, knowledge, and a plan, to "Throw DD+WHM at it".

Massive HP boosts. Infinite MP. 2hr spam. Superpowers. Infinite RR Zombie Assault.

That's the epitome of handholding and dumbing shit down.


Abyssea seems like a bigger success than it actually was. The people who liked it stayed and are very vocal about it, while the people who left in mass exodus have no voice. Far more people left because of the abyssea styled content than people who stayed. There's a reason SE considers Abyssea a failure: It hit them in the pocketbook. Abyssea changed some things for the better, but it messed up horribly far more than it helped.

Did right:
Ease of travel
Loot pools
Removed discrimination in EXP
NM and ??? respawns

Did wrong:
Proc systems
Superpowers making gear less important (The purpose of the game is story and gear, Abyssea lacked much of one and devalued the other)
EXP TOO FAST/EASY
Removed social justice
Removed any sense of teamwork/accomplishment (Not one thing in abyssea CAN'T be beaten easily with MNK+WHM)
Excessive temps
Increased job discrimination in everything else
Devalued low level gear and gil
Promotes something for nothing mentality to an extreme level


Let's just be honest here.

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Originally Posted by Elexia

When they remove Abyssea and people learn how to play the game properly? Who knows, it's just too hard for some people after 2 years of handholding.

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Abyssea has absolutely zero to do with people sucking. Sucky people are going to suck, abyssea or no abyssea. It's not like once you hit level 99 and you stop EXPing, that you're unable to learn anything. Such people would be like that anyway.

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We went from epic battles that required teamwork, knowledge, and a plan, to "Throw DD+WHM at it".

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"hand holding' and 'easy" aren't the same thing. Holding ones hand is an act of guidance. Abyssea isn't easy because anyone or anything is guiding you through it. Abyssea has almost no structure to it whatsoever, there is no 'hand" holding you and telling you what to do next. The difficulty level is generally pretty low, but that's not what hand holding is. hand holding is directly guiding and teaching the player and assuming they wouldn't be able to figure it out on their own. It would be the game telling you something like "Congratulations on beating <NM>. Now go here and beat this one!"

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Devalued low level gear and gil

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This isn't a bad thing. Low level gear shouldn't be valuable. The only problem is possibly higher losses while leveling up a new craft.

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Originally Posted by Elexia

When they remove Abyssea and people learn how to play the game properly? Who knows, it's just too hard for some people after 2 years of handholding.

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Originally Posted by Return1

While I don't like people blaming abyssea for people not being able to do the impossible event called legion, you're full of shit if you think for one second abyssea wasn't full of hand holding.

We went from epic battles that required teamwork, knowledge, and a plan, to "Throw DD+WHM at it".

Massive HP boosts. Infinite MP. 2hr spam. Superpowers. Infinite RR Zombie Assault.

That's the epitome of handholding and dumbing shit down.


Abyssea seems like a bigger success than it actually was. The people who liked it stayed and are very vocal about it, while the people who left in mass exodus have no voice. Far more people left because of the abyssea styled content than people who stayed. There's a reason SE considers Abyssea a failure: It hit them in the pocketbook. Abyssea changed some things for the better, but it messed up horribly far more than it helped.

Did right:
Ease of travel
Loot pools
Removed discrimination in EXP
NM and ??? respawns

Did wrong:
Proc systems
Superpowers making gear less important (The purpose of the game is story and gear, Abyssea lacked much of one and devalued the other)
EXP TOO FAST/EASY
Removed social justice
Removed any sense of teamwork/accomplishment (Not one thing in abyssea CAN'T be beaten easily with MNK+WHM)
Excessive temps
Increased job discrimination in everything else
Devalued low level gear and gil
Promotes something for nothing mentality to an extreme level


Let's just be honest here.

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First off, not picking at you two solely, but more at the whole "Abyssea was too easy" crowd.

Have you guys ever thought about not using all the things that made Abyssea too easy in your opinion? You know? No Atmas, no cruore buffs, and no keys for chests. No using fluxes. No using temp items, especially brews.

Well?

And please, let's not use the old "well it'd be silly to not use that stuff since its readily available" answer.

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Originally Posted by Return1

While I don't like people blaming abyssea for people not being able to do the impossible event called legion, you're full of shit if you think for one second abyssea wasn't full of hand holding.

We went from epic battles that required teamwork, knowledge, and a plan, to "Throw DD+WHM at it".

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Oh please, the old battles weren't any more complex, and in many cases were less so than Abyssea NMs. The difference was you needed more people.

Only real problem I have with Legion is that once you fall, you're done. There's no time for recovery, and good luck going a full 5 minutes without one of the wandering NMs still left up not aggroing your whole ally.

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And please, let's not use the old "well it'd be silly to not use that stuff since its readily available" answer.

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But it's true. Good content should be challenging by design, not because you're horribly, horribly gimping yourself. I find amateur boxing fun, but I have no challenges here. However, I don't cut my arm off so these losers stand a chance, I seek out more challenging opponents. Holding back because I have no competition isn't fun. Fighting competition that's worth my time is. This is the reason Abyssea was a massive failure. People felt the same boredom I'm describing and they left.

And now Alhanelem, semantics doesn't really change the point. It was easy to the point of being insulting, and there was more handholding in the sense you're using it in, they made a lot more guidance for abyssea in game than any other event. It flat out says "kill this guy" "get that and bring it here" "this is how this works in more words than you need".

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This isn't a bad thing. Low level gear shouldn't be valuable. The only problem is possibly higher losses while leveling up a new craft.

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ITT: Marginalizing the games currency and eliminating the importance of a large section of the economy isn't a bad thing.

That's one of the dumbest things I've ever read on this forum, and I've read suggestions for DRK abilities.

Believe it or not you can wear gear before the 90's.

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Oh please, the old battles weren't any more complex, and in many cases were less so than Abyssea NMs. The difference was you needed more people.

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They were more complex because concepts like distance, TP-moves, timing, two-hours, etc actually mattered. Abyssea nms showed a new level of creativity and complexity, but it didn't matter because you could just curbstomp their pathetic asses.

I want nms outside of these stupid super-powered, temp-fueled zerg-fests like abyssea and VW. Imagine level 99 content that functions like sky or sea, or even better yet, limbus (Please don't let them screw up new limbus...) and has battles with wide ranging strategies and individual gimmicks like many abyssean NMs. They've already shown they can have interesting battles, but they ruined it by making players far more powerful than monsters can hope to handle.

All I want is abyssea -with- competition.

You also need to realize that we are at level 99 now and Abyssea first came out with the 80 cap. Things were harder back when the content was relevant. Sure, atma made it easier, but you can't compare 80-90 content to 99 content as far as difficulty goes at level 99.
Abyssea WAS sort of easy all the way through, but the difficulty was different when it was actually relevant.

Anyway, I agree wholeheartedly that Legion needs changes. For one, I literally lol'd when I saw the 'points' gear when I did Legion the first time. The difficulty is another thing altogether.

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Marginalizing the games currency and eliminating the importance of a large section of the economy isn't a bad thing.

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Since when was low level gear a large section of the economy? It's been years since anyone's given a damn about low level gear.

Low levels go by fast. Especially with the removal of level caps on nearly all content in the game, there's no reason to keep low level gear. Gear that you're only going to use for a short time shouldn't be costly.

Low level gear mattered before abyssea. By low level I mean all the levels leading up to endgame to make that clearer.

Before abyssea people wouldn't let you join their parties in full af and come leech, they expected half-assed gear and decent effort.

STR/DEX/AGI/ACC/RACC rings of all levels were desired, Hauby, SH, Sipahi, Kingdom/Republic/Federation gear, Eisen/Kampf, Seer's gear (especially +1), amemet mantles, colored capes and cotahidre, devotee's, austere, raven, refresh cloaks, nobles, blessed, barone, dusk, black, tarasque, arhats, hachiman, assorted weapons, and other general sub 75 gear, was bought and sold at decent prices up until abyssea took off. That's not even half of it or even NM dropped gear.

Before abyssea that was a gigantic part of the economy,you probably just don't want to remember.

GJ shitting up a thread about Legion being terrible with nonsense about abyssea. Legion is stupid and it has nothing to do with abyssea. There's 50 other threads to argue about abyssea in and everythingyou are saying has been said 1000000 times already.

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Originally Posted by Return1

Low level gear mattered before abyssea. By low level I mean all the levels leading up to endgame to make that clearer.

Before abyssea people wouldn't let you join their parties in full af and come leech, they expected half-assed gear and decent effort.

STR/DEX/AGI/ACC/RACC rings of all levels were desired, Hauby, SH, Sipahi, Kingdom/Republic/Federation gear, Eisen/Kampf, Seer's gear (especially +1), amemet mantles, colored capes and cotahidre, devotee's, austere, raven, refresh cloaks, nobles, blessed, barone, dusk, black, tarasque, arhats, hachiman, assorted weapons, and other general sub 75 gear, was bought and sold at decent prices up until abyssea took off. That's not even half of it or even NM dropped gear.

Before abyssea that was a gigantic part of the economy,you probably just don't want to remember.

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All that mattered before Abyssea were SMNburns, Moblin Maze Mongers set to 55 or 75, Colibri in ERon(S), Colibri in Wajoam Woodies, Colibri in Bhaflau Thickets and Colibri @Nyzul where dicks collided. The so called economy you laud was already well on the slide with level sync leaving only a fraction of gear useful to most players.

Take your Abyssea shit out this of thread because with or without the wonderful world of Razed Ruinga, Legion is pretty terrible across the board.

You're tasked to gather up 18 people, fight multiple NMs that spam their most powerful attacks out of the gate with no time extensions while receiving little to no incentive to throw yourself against the wall that is the event.

Is the gear good? Sure, a few pieces are collectable and have some value but nothing is 'wow' enough to deal with an alliance event where one ill-timed Fulmination means you've just wasted everyones time.

What is the incentive for strangers to team up? There is none. FFXI isn't the clique-fantasy it used to be and much of endgame now centers on pick-up groups yet the developers are creating content like its 2009. Why? So the handful of linkshells that can bother to cater 18-36man events can have fun? Is that a good use of dev resources? No.

Why is everything centered on abusing Embrava and Perfect Defense?

I know these abilities are powerful but seriously? Players ask for old school battles (largely turtlefests to make RDMs and PLDs feel good) and instead what we're given is an event where you can't inhale the content before monsters are launching off AOEs that oneshot everyone.

So lets sum up this joke of an event and end on a constructive note:

-If you're going to require 18 people then make the rewards worth it. Heavy Metal, Currency, Rare synthesis materials amongst other valuable loot or no one will care. This event has been dead since day1.

-This idea that hardmode = massive AOE dmg everywhere isnt challenge, it just winds up being brava, alex and zerrrrg till you run out of steam and wildcard it back. Abyssea had more finesse for crying out loud.

If Legions HNMs even rare dropped items of value like say...

Wyrm dropping a Honey Wine or Sweet Tea (because wyrms love it and players love wyrms)
Zilant dropping VNM materials (currently asked for in new 100+ synths and a nod back to Yilbegan)
Harpeia dropping items related to previous harpy battles (another shot at obtaining Anhur Robe, Ephemeron, Athos' Tights)
Dweorg dropping pops related to the ZNM system (he is a pandy warden clone afterall)

people would at the least be interested in giving it a try but who cares about that? Lets just make content that fails to fail.

In summary, a video of Legion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7wBN-U2KXI

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Low level gear mattered before abyssea. By low level I mean all the levels leading up to endgame to make that clearer.

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Low level gear stopped mattering when the level restrictions were removed. You bought something, you wore it for a few hours, you NPC'd it or sold it back. Nobody has kept or invested in low level gear in years. leaping boots? <insert low level NM drop>? What do I need those for?

All that aside.... my word, that's probably one of sparthos' best posts ever. Too much effort required (Not just for the battle itself, for for too little reward,

It was fun on the test server during the event, because we had a big pool of players to form a group with and we deliberately spent time hammering out a strategy. But stuff like that doesn't just fall into place on the live game. You have to go out and recruit people for it, and when everyone hears how hard it is and how much stuff it drops, they're just like, "screw that." If it's going to be that hard, then it needs to have fittingly good rewards.

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Originally Posted by Return1

Low level gear mattered before abyssea. By low level I mean all the levels leading up to endgame to make that clearer.

Before abyssea people wouldn't let you join their parties in full af and come leech, they expected half-assed gear and decent effort.

STR/DEX/AGI/ACC/RACC rings of all levels were desired, Hauby, SH, Sipahi, Kingdom/Republic/Federation gear, Eisen/Kampf, Seer's gear (especially +1), amemet mantles, colored capes and cotahidre, devotee's, austere, raven, refresh cloaks, nobles, blessed, barone, dusk, black, tarasque, arhats, hachiman, assorted weapons, and other general sub 75 gear, was bought and sold at decent prices up until abyssea took off. That's not even half of it or even NM dropped gear.

Before abyssea that was a gigantic part of the economy,you probably just don't want to remember.

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something's weong with your reasonning. It is not abyssea that changed what you are talking about, it's LEVEL SYNCH. I'm sorry, level synch came what, 3 years before abyssea? A few month after they introduced level synch I was getting sam to level 75. Doing it the old school way, buying all the relevant gear right before getting the level (snipes rings, O.kotes, SH...). Oh look, everyone and their mother level synched to 20 in qufim until level 55, then level synched at birds @55 until 75, and then merit pt on birds at 75, I could never use any of them properly. Once Ireached 60 i stoped caring and leveled with crap 55 cap gear all the way to 75, and most people did.

Abyssea didn't change anything people have been doing that forever. Once upon a time exping on crab and whatever level you were, was the shit (remember cape terrigan parties...?) Then Eaht Urghan came and people exped on colibris 55+. Then WOtG came and it was colibris 30+. Now it's sandsweeper 30+, but nothing really changed.

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Originally Posted by Sparthos

Take your Abyssea shit out this of thread because with or without the wonderful world of Razed Ruinga, Legion is pretty terrible across the board.

You're tasked to gather up 18 people, fight multiple NMs that spam their most powerful attacks out of the gate with no time extensions while receiving little to no incentive to throw yourself against the wall that is the event.



What is the incentive for strangers to team up? There is none. FFXI isn't the clique-fantasy it used to be and much of endgame now centers on pick-up groups yet the developers are creating content like its 2009. Why? So the handful of linkshells that can bother to cater 18-36man events can have fun? Is that a good use of dev resources? No.

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and that 100% because of abyssea. Legion is a failure because Abyssea destroyed need of LS.

Holy crap... Who cares? That has nothing to do with how stupid legion is. The content time line could have jumped straight from VNMs to Voidwatch and Legion would still be stupid. Even in the LS only content world of yesteryear, legion would still be stupid. The content and rewards are poorly designed independent of any outside factor. It's more content where if you aren't invincible you just die. People wanted content that required a tank and mage party. Not Voidwatch without temps.

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Originally Posted by hiko

and that 100% because of abyssea. Legion is a failure because Abyssea destroyed need of LS.

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I don't think a lot of LS out there would have survived through 2011 without Abyssea. If there were no Abyssea, what would people have done in its place?

No matter what you think about Abyssea, there's no way Legion could be successful to the extent SE would hope in 2012.

The thread may be about legion, but you've said all that can be said about legion as it stands. The mobs they want killed aren't consistent with the time they've given to kill them. it's turned into who can wave the most PD/Embrava zergs at the chamber. Just make the event much longer and the problem's really solved. Everything said after that's either going to be a rehash parroted endlessly or stupid.

ITT: Because people say it, it must be true!

Level sync didn't ruin low level gear, and while popular, it was not the only way to exp outside of soloing. SMN burn wasn't as big as people like to remember either. Since I did a lot of them, I can tell you it was freaking impossible to do them at any large scale because there were so few camps actually done and the gathering process/respawn/party size limits made it impossible to do it on a scale large enough to significantly cut into actual exp parties. Also, there were far more camps than those listed, and those camps were actually pretty spread out through 1-75.

Listing a few popular ones:
12-16 The dunes on goblins and crabs was popular for syncing.
20-25 Crab Burn
25-30 Mandy burns
35-45 Colibri/Bugs [S]
55-62 RRT Bats About the same levels, less hp, and same piercing weak status as a certain squishy pink bird w/o Flurry.
55-62 Lesser Colibri The original "colibri onry"

It's a decent spread of level ranges. And there were actually more. People would sync to colibri/birds/giant bats mostly as they were all squishy, piercing weak, and low hp. Triple bats were considered not as popular because of aoe attack down and jet stream. Citadel and KRT were popular. Beetles in Altepa were done too. Crawlers were done if you had dispel. Same for Crabs. Goblins were done because they could be squishy and suicides made for fast kills. The colibri camps were just first choice, but there was only enough birds to support 2 decent-good parties at any level range. While some people may have refused to party outside of those camps, the majority would move to the next best thing.

Also a lot of gear was good for long stretches of time, like said leaping boots. Level sync lowered the standard a bit, that's true. However, Abyssea removed any standard at all. You can exp in abyssea while naked and afk and come back to a gil profit from cruor and npc fodder.

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I don't think a lot of LS out there would have survived through 2011 without Abyssea. If there were no Abyssea, what would people have done in its place?

No matter what you think about Abyssea, there's no way Legion could be successful to the extent SE would hope in 2012.

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Abyssea gutted far more lses than it kept together.

Legion could be very successful if SE would just raise the time limit to 1hr+. If SE made the battles time limits 2hrs long, the lack of fear of timing out would see Legion progress beyond mere zerg fest. Battles should be about if you can kill the monster, not if you can kill it before being magically whisked away for no real reason whatsoever.

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Originally Posted by Return1

Abyssea gutted far more lses than it kept together.

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I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I think he's saying that without Abyssea people would have simply got sick of the same old grind and quit much sooner.

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Legion could be very successful if SE would just raise the time limit to 1hr+. If SE made the battles time limits 2hrs long, the lack of fear of timing out would see Legion progress beyond mere zerg fest. Battles should be about if you can kill the monster, not if you can kill it before being magically whisked away for no real reason whatsoever.

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That sounds perfectly reasonable to me. If only SE had real instancing in place they wouldn't have to stick time limits on everything. I assume that's part of the reason there's a limit. The other/main reason is obviously to stifle progress and gear acquisition.

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Originally Posted by Sparthos

You're tasked to gather up 18 people, fight multiple NMs that spam their most powerful attacks out of the gate with no time extensions while receiving little to no incentive to throw yourself against the wall that is the event.

Is the gear good? Sure, a few pieces are collectable and have some value but nothing is 'wow' enough to deal with an alliance event where one ill-timed Fulmination means you've just wasted everyones time.

What is the incentive for strangers to team up? There is none. FFXI isn't the clique-fantasy it used to be and much of endgame now centers on pick-up groups yet the developers are creating content like its 2009. Why? So the handful of linkshells that can bother to cater 18-36man events can have fun? Is that a good use of dev resources? No.

Why is everything centered on abusing Embrava and Perfect Defense?

I know these abilities are powerful but seriously? Players ask for old school battles (largely turtlefests to make RDMs and PLDs feel good) and instead what we're given is an event where you can't inhale the content before monsters are launching off AOEs that oneshot everyone.

So lets sum up this joke of an event and end on a constructive note:

-If you're going to require 18 people then make the rewards worth it. Heavy Metal, Currency, Rare synthesis materials amongst other valuable loot or no one will care. This event has been dead since day1.

-This idea that hardmode = massive AOE dmg everywhere isnt challenge, it just winds up being brava, alex and zerrrrg till you run out of steam and wildcard it back. Abyssea had more finesse for crying out loud.

If Legions HNMs even rare dropped items of value like say...

Wyrm dropping a Honey Wine or Sweet Tea (because wyrms love it and players love wyrms)
Zilant dropping VNM materials (currently asked for in new 100+ synths and a nod back to Yilbegan)
Harpeia dropping items related to previous harpy battles (another shot at obtaining Anhur Robe, Ephemeron, Athos' Tights)
Dweorg dropping pops related to the ZNM system (he is a pandy warden clone afterall)

people would at the least be interested in giving it a try but who cares about that? Lets just make content that fails to fail.

In summary, a video of Legion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7wBN-U2KXI

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I agree with most of your points about the problems with Legion. The effort:reward ratio is one of the biggest problems to me, and I would love if they put in the rewards you suggested (mm Anhur Robe!). Someone on another forum counted up every single current Legion drop that can be classified as useful or great, and came up with only ~20%. Which I guess is in line with events like WoE and VW, and if these drops were in those events people would eventually go after 'em to round out their jobs. Except they put these particular drops behind what is hands-down THE hardest event in the game, and which requires THE most boneheaded of strategies (PD/Embrava zerg). Their dev notes of "oh you must change strats and adapt based on what happens" is simply not borne out by reality when you have an incredibly restrictive time limit for 7+ HNM.

I am actually getting really sick of their time limits on events lately where their balance justification is "oh well, the drop rates are better, but we just designed it so you will hardly ever reach the final mob". It's not even like Legion drop rates are as good as Nyzul. They are better than VW but sufficiently behind Nyzul. And for the amount of effort required for Legion, by all rights the Nyzul drops should be in Legion and vice versa.

I disagree, however, that the devs shouldn't have devoted resources to this event. People complained about individual loot pools in Voidwatch and people asked for this sort of content, and they catered to this demand. While I won't get into the Abyssea/LS debate, I will say there are a significant number of LS's left in both NA and Japan (moreso in Japan if you ever hang out in Provenance for an extended period of time) to justify at least the IDEA of the content. However, I WILL agree that if they wanted to increase its popularity to PUGs, they should add individual chests at the end in addition to the pooled loot (i.e., to make it like Prov Watcher).

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Originally Posted by hiko

and that 100% because of abyssea. Legion is a failure because Abyssea destroyed need of LS.

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LS' were already on the skids due to lack of content pre-Abyssea. Endgame forums like ZAM and BG were dead because the only thing SE could manage to release were Evoliths (fail), VNMs (fail) and Fomor HNMs (fail). You say Abyssea destroyed LS' and I'll say that poorly received content had already boiled FFXI down to a handful of events that most people were never going to do. Casuals had already been given the middle finger where you either logged in to do merits, level a new class, do something PUG friendly like Nyzul or BCNMs or you were forced to log out because the newest content was all rubbish no one would dare try to PUG.

Sandworm, Ixion, Salvage along with meriting until your face went numb. Which was your favorite? I was quite fond of putting my flag up for hours with no progress myself or doing Campaign battles because EXP dictated you need specific setups and guess what? No one had X job throughout X level span. Fun times.

Legion is garbage tier content that makes the design of Yilbegan blush from it's sheer lack of focus, rewards or purpose for existing. Legion is like the developers equivalent of a kid typing a paper full of disjointed crap just to have something to hand in on Monday morning.

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Originally Posted by Mahoro

I agree with most of your points about the problems with Legion. The effort:reward ratio is one of the biggest problems to me, and I would love if they put in the rewards you suggested (mm Anhur Robe!). Someone on another forum counted up every single current Legion drop that can be classified as useful or great, and came up with only ~20%. Which I guess is in line with events like WoE and VW, and if these drops were in those events people would eventually go after 'em to round out their jobs. Except they put these particular drops behind what is hands-down THE hardest event in the game, and which requires THE most boneheaded of strategies (PD/Embrava zerg). Their dev notes of "oh you must change strats and adapt based on what happens" is simply not borne out by reality when you have an incredibly restrictive time limit for 7+ HNM.

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Legion should have been one HNM at a time with either randomizers in play or special mechanics that gave each HNM it's own flavor and thus appropriate strategy. Something like:

Lofty Zilant - Randomizer: Your foe has increased attack power.
Lofty Harpeia - Randomizer: Your foe is suffering from a defense penalty.
Lofty Adamantoise - Randomizer: You are benefiting from a substantial HP boost.
Lofty Elasmoth - Randomizer: You are suffering from a powerful plague. (-2mp/tp tic)

Such a setup keeps the focus on one mob at a time which relieves the feeling that if one thing goes wrong you're going to hit the floor along with 17 other people within the span of 30seconds of a tank dying. You keep the SE fetish of 'random things!' along with the potential for an easier or harder time depending on where the dice happen to fall.

Mechanics like the Behemoth using Meteor only when he's Flame Armored require some level of strategy and border on fair if you happen to catch the pattern before it's taken out on your alliance. Things like the Zilant only using Abyssic Buster if he manages to have a Varanus up (the gyre lookalikes) or Khimaira attempting to Fulmination after a cued Dreadstorm or Mist would be fair and cut down the amount of "haha, you lose" cards an HNM could pull.

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I am actually getting really sick of their time limits on events lately where their balance justification is "oh well, the drop rates are better, but we just designed it so you will hardly ever reach the final mob". It's not even like Legion drop rates are as good as Nyzul. They are better than VW but sufficiently behind Nyzul. And for the amount of effort required for Legion, by all rights the Nyzul drops should be in Legion and vice versa.

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45mins-1hour would have been fair if it was one HNM at a time because you'd have alliances focusing on the one target at hand and under favorable conditions getting a sample of many different HNMs before timing out. The whole point of Legion was "slay as many foes as you can in X time" yet what we got was "slay 7 foes or you aren't getting the clear credit". Why?

The points and loot off individual mobs should have been enough to keep the event 'fun' while giving people something to do with their time. Like I posted before, seeing some rare items like:
-Honey Wine drop off a Wyrm.
-Red Pondweed drop off a Ferromantoise.
-Ethereal Squama off Zilant.
-Vinegar Pie off Dweorg.
-Heavy Metal Pouches off the Ironclad.

would have been excitement to get people repeating the content while getting points along the way. Things like those new crafting materials that only drop in Voidwatch could have been thrown into point pool along with augment items for new abjuration gear once you managed to clear the 'final' chamber of the event.

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I disagree, however, that the devs shouldn't have devoted resources to this event. People complained about individual loot pools in Voidwatch and people asked for this sort of content, and they catered to this demand. While I won't get into the Abyssea/LS debate, I will say there are a significant number of LS's left in both NA and Japan (moreso in Japan if you ever hang out in Provenance for an extended period of time) to justify at least the IDEA of the content. However, I WILL agree that if they wanted to increase its popularity to PUGs, they should add individual chests at the end in addition to the pooled loot (i.e., to make it like Prov Watcher).

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The problem is at this phase of FFXI you can't just design events for a handful of players that have an HNMLS capable of doing the content - not after we crossed the bridge into lowman events and mostly PUG affairs. Things like Legion should be doable with a PUG and thus doable by members of a linkshell in a way that both parties stand to benefit just like Voidwatch is right now.

The current Legion is almost completely PUG unfriendly meaning 95% of the base will never touch it and thus my argument of being a waste of dev resources. The few LS that do manage to get 18 together aren't even going to be rewarded for the effort and that makes the entire event a huge waste of SEs time if no one is going to attempt it. The 36man chamber is a joke and should have just been more duplicated chambers for 18man parties to run if congestion is going to be an argument.

Also, a question I've always had regarding to how SE does BCNMs. Couldn't an event like Legion just warp you to one of the many BCNM arenas that see virtually no use? For instance:

-Bearclaw Pinnacle
-The Shrouded Maw
-Navugo Execution Chamber
-Empyreal Paradox
-Mamool Ja Training Grounds
-Talacca Cove
-Monarch Linn
-Full Moon Fountain

are all BCNMs that see little to no traffic. Couldn't the battles simply be held in these regions instead of the Legion battlefield if things filled up? I understand I don't know the specifics but couldn't the code for the monsters be copied into these zones? It isn't like the monsters make special use of the Legion arena or Nyzul where the specific zone is needed for the functionality of the event. All you need for Legion is an arena (most listed above are huge arenas) and the monsters.

The lore explanation? Your memories are being projected to create the magical arena. You'd also axe the commentary that the Legion arena is boring as and looks about as interesting as plaid wallpaper.

The 95% figure is mostly speculation to prove a point, and neither you nor I have any serious data on the issue. You would have to count the total population of NA EGLS's, JP EGLS's (of which there are significantly more), and miscellaneous groups like social shells that run "EGLS-lite". With respect to the latter, note that several "social shells" have popped up on Lakshmi which run group events like VW. They start with a core set of people and /shout for any job holes in their group. One of them even locks Prov Watcher drops under the guise of "doing the work" to organize the event, essentially rendering them an EGLS for that one event.

Some or all of the above groups are capable of DOING Legion. Of course, SUCCEEDING is quite another matter because of SE's design choices. But I simply do not believe the original idea of the event was flawed, just the horrible execution. Historically, the devs have always mixed design choices for 100% of the playerbase (Abyssea, missions) with design for a miniscule fraction of the playerbase (Mythics, Arch Dynamis bosses like ADL, etc.). Even if the PUG:LS ratio is 75:25, that still can fall in line with previous allocation of their resources. Of course, I would agree that they need to allocate some more resources to the game to stave off player attrition and interest.

A corollary argument is that just because the majority of the playerbase "crossed the bridge" into lowman and PUG events does not mean they won't ever want to form LS's again....IF, of course, the content demands it and player interest justifies it. I am not foolish enough to assert that Legion will cause ANYONE to form an LS due to SE's shitty design. But post-Abyssea, there HAVE been many new LS's or private groups that pop up to do events like VW. When they revamp Einherjar over the next couple months, it will likely not be PUG-able if it's pooled loot and revised to challenge Lv. 99s. If the revamp of Limbus takes off, well, that was never a PUG-friendly event to begin with so people will have to adapt. Dungeon Crawling might be PUGable or small-static based, who knows? People are just used to doing content a certain way because the content thus far has served it, but that can change based on the popularity of an event.

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Originally Posted by Camiie

I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I think he's saying that without Abyssea people would have simply got sick of the same old grind and quit much sooner.

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Exactly. One way or another, the old style LS was going to go. The only question was how.

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Originally Posted by Mahoro

The 95% figure is mostly speculation to prove a point, and neither you nor I have any serious data on the issue. You would have to count the total population of NA EGLS's, JP EGLS's (of which there are significantly more), and miscellaneous groups like social shells that run "EGLS-lite". With respect to the latter, note that several "social shells" have popped up on Lakshmi which run group events like VW. They start with a core set of people and /shout for any job holes in their group. One of them even locks Prov Watcher drops under the guise of "doing the work" to organize the event, essentially rendering them an EGLS for that one event.

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You're right, none of us have the hard numbers however that doesn't change the fact that this event is all but a failure coming right out of the gate. Failure by my own definition is the event being catered to so few individuals that the effort expended by the developers designing the event goes completely unnoticed by the common player.

Running a search of the Legion zone during any time of the day will more than likely result in a 0 lending evidence to the argument that something is fundamentally wrong with this event, the BG discussion (the most poplular endgame website with a healthy collection of hardcore endgamers) has the accounts of one group that has gotten relatively far in the event while everyone trashes run viability and even if this was merely an NA issue (like WOE) we'd be seeing some of the sellable drops appearing on the AH from JP or EU shells doing this event - we haven't.

FFXI has had flops before and this ranks as a huge one, especially in an era where Voidwatch is the leading content followed by the 2hours/day Dynamis offers. The sheer enormity of this events failure is something I feel we haven't seen since Evoliths.

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A corollary argument is that just because the majority of the playerbase "crossed the bridge" into lowman and PUG events does not mean they won't ever want to form LS's again....IF, of course, the content demands it and player interest justifies it. I am not foolish enough to assert that Legion will cause ANYONE to form an LS due to SE's shitty design. But post-Abyssea, there HAVE been many new LS's or private groups that pop up to do events like VW. When they revamp Einherjar over the next couple months, it will likely not be PUG-able if it's pooled loot and revised to challenge Lv. 99s. If the revamp of Limbus takes off, well, that was never a PUG-friendly event to begin with so people will have to adapt. Dungeon Crawling might be PUGable or small-static based, who knows? People are just used to doing content a certain way because the content thus far has served it, but that can change based on the popularity of an event.

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The idea of creating large-scale 36man battles at this phase of FFXI (steady decline) is not only foolish but also shows just how out of touch they've gotten from the base. Instead of focusing on the masses with cross-appeal to linkshell activity (better organization, run smoothness, helping friends) we have an event that fails to appeal to anyone while offering 36man access like it's a selling point worth mentioning. The rewards aren't even properly scaled for bringing 36 people to the run which licks of backwards design for the game on the whole.

Newsflash SE, this isn't 2005 Dynamis.

Ideal content at this phase is something that PUG can do with some moderate (emphasis on moderate) level of success and also an event that linkshells can do with greater success due to the boons that a good LS offers. The idea of locking out PUG not only isolates popularity but also leads much of the base to announce XI has nothing worth doing and desub which hurts SE, hurts the linkshell populace and further sends the game into the icy abyss. Many of the old guard endgamers aren't looking for the old school hardcore "you must suffer" events but something thats harder than Abyssea but not so difficult that you must be Embrava'd/Alex'd or you might as well log to POL.

Legion again fails on this front.

Remember all those people who were like "I want a challenge. I don't care about the drops. I just want a challenge. FFXI is too easy now..."

Thanks guys. Have fun.

I agree with Legion being a flop for the reasons you cited, Spart. They went too far out of the realm here as even their target audience has trouble clearing it. But I guess I don't think every event has to be PUG-friendly. Yes, I accept the premise that there should be popular, PUG-friendly events in the game in order for it to survive. But I think if you make a well-designed, well-rewarding event, the playerbase will tackle it regardless of whether it is by LS, PUG, or static group. Legion will never reach the heights Einherjar or Limbus did unless they fix it fast.

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Originally Posted by FrankReynolds

Remember all those people who were like "I want a challenge. I don't care about the drops. I just want a challenge. FFXI is too easy now..."

Thanks guys. Have fun.

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I never understood that. I like easy things.