Sortie is too stressful

Sortie requires a static/group of players if done seriously, it is fairly difficult, has a time limit and allows players to access it 7 times a week.

This means players can burn out, or the static can fall apart due to 1-2 members not being able to do runs 7 times a week (while everyone else wants to) and this causes friction and stress.

If you allowed players to do Sortie 3-4 times a week, and increased the rewards so that they get the same reward for less work it would be far less stressful, would ease congestion and players could enjoy it more.

Sortie is good but you're allowing players to do it too much and they are burning themselves out, or their statics are breaking apart.

I don't think a daily content should be an hour+. Respect the player's time. I wouldn't mind it being more like Dynamis a few times a week with a proportional increase in galimaufry.

I don't think there should be daily content. Omen was a good system, why couldn't we have just kept going with that "gain an entry a day, store up to three entries" model?

For one, sortie is a full hour. Omen is 10 minutes. Fundamentally different content. One is a rush to the end, the other is a spend the full time, every time.

If you let everyone take 3 straight hours of instance, it's going to be a problem.

So let's force players to spend an hour in this content every single day or lose out on it. A+ design, no notes.

How about making Sortie less of a soul-crushing slog and letting people bank entries? Maybe make it a 20 minute event, with 10 minute time extensions available for locking the boss rooms in each hall (and its basement equivalent)? Or let more people occupy each instance at once, by setting up some kind of system where multiple parties - let's say maybe three of them? - can band together into some kind of super-party, an alliance of parties if you will, to take on the content together.

Yes, that would require a significant redesign. There might be a reason there; has anybody heard anyone anywhere saying "wow, Sortie sure is enjoyable content"? It had some nice ideas, but the execution was just generally not good.

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Originally Posted by Zenion

Yes, that would require a significant redesign. There might be a reason there; has anybody heard anyone anywhere saying "wow, Sortie sure is enjoyable content"? It had some nice ideas, but the execution was just generally not good.

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Actually, when I play Sortie, my question is always, "Was this music leftovers from a different game?"

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Originally Posted by Zenion

I don't think there should be daily content. Omen was a good system, why couldn't we have just kept going with that "gain an entry a day, store up to three entries" model?

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I don't mind daily stuff but it should be things that can be done reasonably quickly.

Soul Crushing slogs are what you're specifically paying for. That is the game. No more accurate description exists.

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Originally Posted by Uroah

Soul Crushing slogs are what you're specifically paying for. That is the game. No more accurate description exists.

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No, soul-crushing grinds are the game. Things that are tolerable for a while but need to be done a whole lot to get to what you're trying to accomplish.

Sortie is never tolerable. It's always too much of whatever it is. If it only took up a half hour, maybe, but... look, speaking as someone who has literally pounded out two stages of empyrean weapon trophies in back-to-back marathons just so I wouldn't have to feel bad about letting someone else help me with it, Sortie is the one content that I simply can not force myself to engage with, even knowing I could easily collect something like 5000 galimaufry a session without trying to figure out bosses. That hour feels longer than a three wave Dynamis - Divergence run.

The problem is that this content requires a static friend group if done seriously, and if even one person burns out cause they have a job or family commitments you're in a real headache to replace them.

Allowing people to do such difficult content so many times a week is a huge mistake and people have quit over it, because many serious XI players will try to do it as much as you let them do it. Even if others in their group cannot keep up with them.

Xi players like grind, but not like this. The easiest fix is just to let people do it 3-4 times a week, and boost up the rewards so nobody complains. Like Dyna D.

Sortie 7 days a week is making people quit.

I agree.

Everyone I asked would definitely enjoy sortie more if it was 30 minutes instead of an hour. Maybe SE can double gallimaufry but without changing the maximum?

This gives folks the opportunity to leave after 30 minutes without feeling guilty....

Just something to think about it....I would still do Sortie daily from 4/week to 6/week ....but I would get back 30 minutes of my life each day. I would use the 30 minute savings to make healthier choices and exercise.

Making the event itself shorter would likely require a significant redesign, especially for less well prepared players to do it and get anything out of it, so I think it would be better to just make it not an every day event, and get more muffins per run.

They just need to treat it like Dyna D and reduce how often people can go into it, while boosting the rewards.

I think the best solution would be to simply double the rewards and have the re-entry cool down for Sortie be 40 hours instead of 20 hours. That way, people can take at least a day off and do it every other day. I do 8 Boss Sorties or Aminons every day on top of attending an tri-weekly odyssey static, Linkshell Omens, and Linkshell Dynamis Divergence which all of that combined together sometimes feels like a second job and it is a bit too time consuming.

I don't believe it's a good idea to reduce the amount of time within Sortie because it wouldn't render players enough time to complete what are now standard 8-9 boss Sortie runs.. Even Aminon runs can take a new groups the entire hour to clear it, so it's important that the entire hour always remains available for newer groups to comfortably practice the boss. However, reducing the amount of times you go in per week, but still earning the same amount of gaullimauphy as you would the way Sortie is currently set up daily would make Sortie a bit more reasonable for players to keep up with while balancing real life obligations. Heck, I would even say a 60 hour time out with triple the gaullimauphry would be an even healthier quality of life change, but the only downside to entering every three days is that players won't get as many oppurtunities to practice and learn Sortie quite as frequently which is pretty critical to being able to eventually work up to 8-9 Boss runs.

No one forces anyone to do sortie daily, that is freedom of choice. It is mostly do to the Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO), which is why many do sortie daily.

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Originally Posted by VoiceMemo

No one forces anyone to do sortie daily, that is freedom of choice. It is mostly do to the Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO), which is why many do sortie daily.

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Yeah wel "tehcnically" no one is forced to, but FOMO is powerful, and people see every day they don't do it as lost progress towards a prime weapon. Where's the harm in making it a less frequent event while still accomplishing goals in the same amount of time? There's so much more of the game to enjoy, I don't think it's unreasonable to lower the pressure on players to do it constantly when there are so many other things to do as well.

Because this content is so difficult, it requires a static friend group of players. Not everyone can do this every day and so the static will end up falling apart when 1 or 2 people leave, this hurts everyone because now the most driven players can't replace those people and will quit and they will fall behind and get demoralized.

It's fine to allow players to have lots of access to certain content that is fairly easy (like ambuscade) or solo, but not really difficult and time consuming content that requires a static.

I know lots of people who have stopped playing XI over Sortie specifically.

Either double rewards and allow people to enter half as much or just allow players to buy a ring with their entry on off days, that when used doubles the reward when they do. This way if someone in the static wants to watch a movie tonight, everyone can get the ring and nobody is made to feel bad cause they double up the next day.

Personally, rather than FOMO, some felt contents like this more intimidating, only those who already has better gears would enjoy. There's also the example of personal worries whether tried solo for at least getting some gallies, or wait for opportunities to group up for better payout.

That said, there's still plethora's of content to enjoy, hence up to now doesn't see reasons for a change, but I might be wrong. One thing personally felt could be a bit eased, is the amount of grind needed to get final step of prime weapon. From what I gather, a single weapon would take at least half year average to finish, which imo kinda brutal, & that's probably mostly (and again) for those with better geared, which left rest of more casual players taking way longer, if they even planned to finish one. I personally took quick pick of mine prime weapon way back then (which is the dagger), only to able to finish TVR story, though I might kinda regret my choice, especially after finding the amount of grinds required & the prospect of end result might not be as enticing as I expect.

SE Logic has said they don't want to make ultimate weapons because they don't want players to "feel like they HAVE to make them" ...but let's face it, many players FEEL LIKE THEY HAVE TO DO SORTIE 5-7 days/week.

My group would be happier if we could store 3 KIs and get ~56k (8-boss amount) gallimaufry in 30 minutes vs 60 minutes.

Bonus points if we could save KIs and do 3-4 runs in a day.

There we go, no more burnout. People keep playing and enjoying the grind.

Also, please please, no more 25% time charges via Ruspix Plate or Dynamis-D Empty Hourglass. No one feels like they're getting ahead with 1/5th recharge rate. The extra KI that is built from this is almost exclusively used as a one-off.

The fix that is most likely to be done is the one that take the least amount of dev time.

The easiest fix it to just allow players to buy a special Galli Boost ring with 2 entries (1 in debt so you are locked out for 2 days), and when you enter Sortie next you then get 3x the Galli.

So get the ring on mon, locked out till wed and when you enter you use the ring to get 3x the gali.

Players that still want to do it every day can do so, people who want to do it less and not be left behind can do that by getting the ring. People who have a static, and the member can only do it twice a week can do Sortie with them and still do single runs with others on off days.

Sortie is also 70% running around hallways.

The problem is Sortie is literally leading to hardcore players unsubscribing, and has been for a while now. They are not seeing the player drop because of the ff14 players checking out the game, but it is happening.

They need to lower how often people can do it and increase rewards, it's way too stressful on hardcore players.

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Originally Posted by radar

The problem is Sortie is literally leading to hardcore players unsubscribing, and has been for a while now. They are not seeing the player drop because of the ff14 players checking out the game, but it is happening.

They need to lower how often people can do it and increase rewards, it's way too stressful on hardcore players.

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Frankly Newbus has been a bit of a breath of fresh air for me, though this is in part because I haven't really bothered with prime weapons at all (and won't even try unless a static just drops in my lap which probably won't happen as my main jobs aren't really wanted for this kind of content). I was more after the empyrean armor (which honestly requires way too much currency IMO- While I can farm solo it's incredibly slow, and people shouldn't HAVE to multibox to make progress). In Newbus while my grind is still slow, it's much more doable and it even has the perk of being able to come and go as I please, so I don't have to really devote any specific amount of time.

They could keep sortie the same and just open it up for a whole alliance to enter and get credit for all the things anywhere in the instance and it'd probably fix the whole issue.

Instead of being stressed for the the whole event, split off and do 3 tasks at a time. farm objectives once you run out of NMs.

I don't really like "make it alliance" as a solution because the content isn't designed to require an alliance, so you could do as you described, or you could bring a dozen alts or buddies in and let them all get credit for doing nothing, which is how most current alliance content ends up playing out. Content for an alliance should be designed for an alliance, such that it is difficult, at least at first, to reduce the number of players required.

I'm very much in favor of the first solution of just increasing the rewards while making it less frequent.

SE needs to massively increase the gallimaufry given by all mobs so we can properly farm it when we need to so then people can warp out whenever they feel like, say after 30mins. If they want, they increase the gal needed for prime weapon stage 5 but running around there for an hour got so tedious once I've finished upgrading my empy gear to +3. What they also need to do is after a mob is killed, 1 second later, a movement speed+30% effect becomes active so we can then leg it to the next mob.

I disagree, sortie is a CASUAL event, it only takes an hour out of your day. The caveat is that you have to already be geared to a high level and know 5 others that want to do it at the same time, but time wise, an hour a day is perfectly acceptable, maybe 1.5h with gather time.

The design of Sortie was that they thought they were going to stop development when Matsui left, so they created hard grind / long term content to keep people busy. I understood it at the time, the problem is a) they allow people to do it too much and so they burn out and b) they are making new content now, they should not allow people to still do sortie so often when it's so draining.

Just as they said they were worried about the developers burning out, they should worry about players burning out cause when they do they stop playing.

I think becasue there are so few developers now, they have a mindset where even if they do want to change this they want to just fixate on Limbus for now. Even if they do change it, it will probably be after that is finished I guess.

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Originally Posted by VoiceMemo

I disagree, sortie is a CASUAL event, it only takes an hour out of your day. The caveat is that you have to already be geared to a high level and know 5 others that want to do it at the same time, but time wise, an hour a day is perfectly acceptable, maybe 1.5h with gather time.

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to me a "casual" event is either not very difficult, or doesn't take much time. I don't consider an hour to be short. Going by the time standard, Odyssey is much more "casual."

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Originally Posted by VoiceMemo

I disagree, sortie is a CASUAL event, it only takes an hour out of your day. The caveat is that you have to already be geared to a high level and know 5 others that want to do it at the same time, but time wise, an hour a day is perfectly acceptable, maybe 1.5h with gather time.

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To be honest with you, even if the rewards stay the same. I would be so happy if SE made Sortie easier to complete. I'd love to get 25-30 minutes of my day back.

Only thing I care about as far as Sortie is concerned, is being able to trade in +1 earrings for another +1 or +2 , I've gotten almost every job at +1 but for the life of me can't get the +1 for the 2 jobs that I have at Master Levels

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Originally Posted by Teraniku

Only thing I care about as far as Sortie is concerned, is being able to trade in +1 earrings for another +1 or +2 , I've gotten almost every job at +1 but for the life of me can't get the +1 for the 2 jobs that I have at Master Levels

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While I like the idea on paper, the number of earrings I have NPC'd due to inventory concerns makes me opposed to this idea. If they had signalled clearly earlier on that it might be possible in the future I would be okay with it, but if they made that change now it would be very disappointing.

Perhaps they are trying to give "Hardcore players" something to play with......but those ppl are probably 40 or 50 years old by now, and simply want to casually progress.

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Originally Posted by Beastorizer

Perhaps they are trying to give "Hardcore players" something to play with......but those ppl are probably 40 or 50 years old by now, and simply want to casually progress.

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If they want to "casually progress" they're not really hardcore now are they?