Rant About Current End Game - ADL and Voidwatch = Old FFXI, No Thanks

[Karbuncle]

Having good gear doesn't make you a good player.

Nor does hitting 4, 6, and Enter for 100 Hours.

Just sayin', I don't know MDK Personally or how he plays, But a trained monkey could get the gear you listed with enough time, Doesn't mean the monkey will play good.

[Natenn]

I wish i had this derp on my server back then

[Kitkat]

Wow, is this a discussion about how stupid game mechanics are currently, or just a bunch of people tossing their epeen to and fro hoping to mushroom smack the other in the face hard enough? Seriously, no body gives a flying shit about your little spats of who is or isn't gimp because of what you did or didn't do to get what you do or don't have.

The point of the matter is that people are sick of a system that makes them slave hours and hours at redoing a fight over and over again with greater and greater amounts of luck deciding on whether they will get something. VWNM has you doing a fight time and time and time and time again just to see someone with the item already getting it again while flooding peoples inventory with tons of synth items. I don't think the drop rate is broken on VWNM, I think the distribution is. This is put on a system with the following artificial blockers to slow the individual down already: 1.) Long cool down on Void Stones and moderate cost for Void Dust via cuor/cp/is/gil 2.) Able to only pop a max of 4 before needing more KI to pop again. 3.)Distribution system that has no rare/ex check to appropriately pass it to someone who doesn't already have it. 4.) (not yet instated) The need to gather x amount of tags in place of said drop to get desired drop (personally this should be a 1:1 ratio not 3~5:1 ratio if they refuse to make a rare/ex check system that dictates if X Player has X Item already then it should cycle through X equation on if it roles over to another person or at all.)

Same goes for Nyzul with artificial blockers on top of luck, but they are at least trying to fix that too. Too bad they expect you to then reach the floor 25 times (from what I last saw, would prefer 10-15) before getting the item. Already have limited tags that refresh a 1/day, random floor progression, random floor objectives (none 'hard' but take various degrees of time to accomplish) and an already high chance of not even seeing a single drop off he floor boss. Can't argue the 1/3 chance it'll be the one you want since that 1/3 chance can be doubled since it is possible to see multiples drop too.

My issue isn't that the content isn't fun, or that it isn't challenging (it isn't particularly challenging if everyone does what they need to). It is the fact they place Luck on top of a list of artificial blocks already in place to make the content last that much longer when there really isn't a need for it.

Just feels like SE is adding tons of hoops then latching on shitty luck to fill out the rest of the gap instead of putting any other alternative options/choices in until people bitch about it. Maybe the marketing branch is making them do it to garner more time from everyone and we all know time=money in their pockets, but you can only do that so much before people finally say "you know what, fuck this...I used to have a better chance of getting something good..now I just see this endless row of doors I need to find the key to...and it might only turn the lock 1/4 of the way before breaking so I have to get another key."

Has Endgame always relied on luck? Yes, but it was a little more manageable than it is now. Old endgame I could cut up with friends and have fun with the content while doing it knowing that my chances of getting something was fairly decent. Now instead of having 1 Luck roller you got 2-3 of them going, but SE justifies this by adding "boobie-prizes" in the forms of tags or reach set objective x amount of times then you can have the item. ~golf clap~ I'd have better chances at taking my subscription fee and feeding the dime/nickle slots at a casino each month.

[Phogg]

This was fun. I hope SE keeps making these ridiculous quests so I can continue reading both sides of the "You suck, No you suck" chronicles.

[Sp1cyryan]

lol at noobs crying about bots, not everyone botted. Just trying to make excuses for not claiming. I really do hope they bring back HNM so ppl like braegoface over there can QQ about being gimp some more.

Crying? Naten, you have been crying about the HNM change since the day it was announced and every time the topic arises ever since. Then turn around and spout how you were so pro and others are just whiners who couldn't claim. It is truly sad how you act so smug and shamelessly stroke your ego in front of everyone (honestly what does a 300m bank have to do with anything, and why bother saying it..?)

You sit there and say its so much harder to get items from the kings now. Really? Considering you can pop KB (not to mention all the force pop HNMs..) more times in a day than he would in a week on his own (assuming you got the claims on him) that is purely a line of bitter and willful ignorance.

The game can be harder without something based on ridiculous claiming once a day or few. What does difficult to claim amount to compared to something difficult to fight? Sure you can make the mob both, but why? There is no good reason besides creating a time sink to sit there and make something so much of a claim battle.

HNMs were ridiculous and will always be. People who had a life outside the game didn't need to be called in at inconvenient times. People didn't need to sit there for up to three hours waiting.

While I will not question your integrity as it is silly to do. The idea you never had any people botting in your LSs over the years helping you get the claims you then proceed to turn around and rub in peoples faces is just silly.

You still have Sandworm, DI, and Tiamat to sit there and be nostalgic about some nonexistent "glory days". Maybe you should make a thread asking SE to give them new drops and raise their levels to 130.

[Alkimi]

There is a line between difficulty. And definately it's out of wack in ffxi. Abyssea = bit too easy, then they introduce voidwatch and it's way stupid hard and demanding. Needs to be an in between and it will be just right. Along with decent drop rates (1% shit = needs to go). ADL is the same thing. Too difficult to be called (quote by SE), "majority of people can do this content"....sorry SE...no. Dunno where their head is.

I wouldn't say voidwatch is stupid hard. As it stands Botulus Rex is by far the hardest of them and we went 4/6 kills last night, problem is you are completely reliant on staggering and temp items to take him down. If you can't hit a stagger then he will wipe the floor with you no matter how good you are. Kalasutrax and Ig-Alima can also give you problems if you can't stagger them but all the rest are pretty straightforward.

There's what looks likes a version of Rex in the dats for Legion and if it's the same mob then killing it with no atmacites or temp items is going to be pretty much impossible. I'd like to think SE would at the very least remove chainspell-meteor from his abilities.

I'd say ADL IS killable by the majority of people. Even a pick-up alliance should have at worst a 50% success rate, strategies for killing are pretty much known by now and you just need a bit of luck on your side. SE said the majority of people can do this content, but never said anything about doing it quickly.

[Vold]

It isn't as out of reach for the average player as one has been led to believe from reading these forums.

Few people would even have a problem with the whole thing if they weren't restricted to 2 bloody hours per day to work on it. I stress the real issues here. It's not ADL difficulty. It's not anything perfect broken defense can't solve. It's everyone killing it probably wanting the marrows for one reason or another and the fact that it's in a time restricted zone AND you have to farm pop items for it. If you have doubts on ADL being reasonable or not reasonable then pay attention to your /checks and let me know how many lv99 relics you come across. I haven't seen any yet but I know at least 3 exist on my server from chan's ADL rants alone and relics are beginning to become what emps were a couple months after heroes was released; few and not so far between but no longer super rare. So I'm seeing a fair share of relics right now and I've seen exactly 0 99s.

ADL is incredibly easy with PD. The problem with getting a group, if you're not already in an established LS, is forming a group these days with members whom can be trusted. It's obviously a problem right now and it may not be so much that people can't be trusted, it's people themselves not willing to trust anyone else because the playerbase is scared to death of being screwed over because they read a story once in a blue moon of it happening and are preached to about not trusting anybody and that everyone is out to screw each other out of greed. Such matters as this and what I said earlier about time restrictions and so on is why going through turn in items from a wild card NM for magian trials is a bad idea. In a perfect world it would not matter and hundreds of players on every server would already have their lv99 relics.

But hey, SE claims they did it for the stats that are on them. That's fine. Better stats are better than inferior stats, period. The trial has been justified. It exists to further the DD hierarchy agenda. It's not going to change. Either you deal or not deal. Most are not dealing. A lv95 relic is still far superior to wielding anything under it so it works for people. Hardcore players are getting their lv99 relics thereby pushing themselves up further along the DD hierarchy. Relics have seen their justice now unless you want to whine that they aren't uncontested as #1. Stuff is working as it's intended by SE. You, I, everyone can argue until they're blue in the face about why we too should get our lv99 relics. But SE believes what they believe. And it's very clear to me they are furthering their own agenda, as usual. Either you suck it up and do the work or buy your 99 relic for another 100 million+ gil.

Can we move on yet? or fancy another round of repeating ourselves? Again.

[Mahoro]

Few people would even have a problem with the whole thing if they weren't restricted to 2 bloody hours per day to work on it. I stress the real issues here. It's not ADL difficulty. It's not anything perfect broken defense can't solve. It's everyone killing it probably wanting the marrows for one reason or another and the fact that it's in a time restricted zone AND you have to farm pop items for it. If you have doubts on ADL being reasonable or not reasonable then pay attention to your /checks and let me know how many lv99 relics you come across. I haven't seen any yet but I know at least 3 exist on my server from chan's ADL rants alone and relics are beginning to become what emps were a couple months after heroes was released; few and not so far between but no longer super rare. So I'm seeing a fair share of relics right now and I've seen exactly 0 99s.

But the "average player" also complains about having to devote more than 2 hours to something in this game. If the forums were to be believed, the average player is somewhat casual with a full time job, wives/husbands/kids, and no more than 2-3 hours to devote to FFXI per day; thus, Abyssea was their second coming because they could log in, do something quick, and log out. I fail to see how the 2 hour time restriction is a huge bone of contention to the "average player". I agree with your other point regarding how 99's are few and far between, likely because people either have just opted not to even try and/or they aren't in a LS that can do ADL. As for the number of 99's formed, I wouldn't rely on anecdotal /check evidence. A better resource at least for NA completed relics is the BG thread entitled "Completed Relic/Mythic weapons list" (which I won't link to here for various reasons).

ADL is incredibly easy with PD. The problem with getting a group, if you're not already in an established LS, is forming a group these days with members whom can be trusted. It's obviously a problem right now and it may not be so much that people can't be trusted, it's people themselves not willing to trust anyone else because the playerbase is scared to death of being screwed over because they read a story once in a blue moon of it happening and are preached to about not trusting anybody and that everyone is out to screw each other out of greed. Such matters as this and what I said earlier about time restrictions and so on is why going through turn in items from a wild card NM for magian trials is a bad idea. In a perfect world it would not matter and hundreds of players on every server would already have their lv99 relics.

I agree that making a group of trustworthy people is a roadblock, but when was it ever not? But the game has a long history of people forming statics for things they want. If you aren't already in an established LS, forming a group of about 10-12 people or an ADL-based LS is probably the best alternative. I know of at least one ADL LS that was recruiting on Lakshmi (ironically by someone who trashes the idea of LS's). When people made Salvage groups, they lasted for on average 1 year due to crippling low drop rates. ADL drops a Marrow 100% and a second one at around 10% rate. The "endpoint" to every group formed is in sight. Sure, there is the matter of what happens when 6-7 people have their Marrows and the unlucky 4-5 left still need, but that was always an issue with statics formed for anything. That ties back into the trustworthiness issue, which again don't get me wrong is a concern.

But hey, SE claims they did it for the stats that are on them. That's fine. Better stats are better than inferior stats, period. The trial has been justified. It exists to further the DD hierarchy agenda. It's not going to change. Either you deal or not deal. Most are not dealing. A lv95 relic is still far superior to wielding anything under it so it works for people. Hardcore players are getting their lv99 relics thereby pushing themselves up further along the DD hierarchy. Relics have seen their justice now unless you want to whine that they aren't uncontested as #1. Stuff is working as it's intended by SE. You, I, everyone can argue until they're blue in the face about why we too should get our lv99 relics. But SE believes what they believe. And it's very clear to me they are furthering their own agenda, as usual. Either you suck it up and do the work or buy your 99 relic for another 100 million+ gil.

You said it yourself. Most are not dealing. That's why you aren't seeing many 99's. Sadly, I agree SE believes what they believe and they won't change things now. I don't want a Relic for my main jobs (WHM + SMN) and never did, but I accept the reality of the design choice and I don't mind organizing ADL runs for the Relicholders in my LS. For better or for worse, the only alternatives to people not in an established LS who can do ADL is: 1) Form your own static or ADL-specific LS; 2) Join said established LS; 3) Buy Marrows you see in Bazaars (if people can make 2-3 mill per Dyna run as they say they can, would only take you 10-12 days to raise the money for a Marrow); or 4) Opt out entirely and stay with the 95, which as you said is still a superior weapon.

[Kiyara]

I honestly don't mind the forming of groups to do ADL but the major problem lies in the fact you need 5 of the marrows per person. If it was 5 ADL kills, the problem wouldn't exist because everyone benefits from it. No one is going to help you freely get 5 ADL items, especially 17 other random people. This is just plain fact/reality. And most people will not stay around once their relic is achieved. This is the biggest flaw in ADL. Pickup parties would abundantly exist and therefore ADL would be more realistically doable if it was like the other trials and just number of kills.

[Natenn]

I have no clue what im talking about.

Noted. I rarely saw you at you anything if at all but here we are again, more made up stuff from ppl still sore from pre abyssea days. SW/DI are far outdated and don't even sell enough for me to bother with em. Nothing has changed if you look at the big picture. We're all still sinking hours/days/weeks ect into getting gear, just that theres really no "competitive" factors left. You wanna talk about being smug? When HNM were still endgame ppl like you didn't make a peep, now since SE has the game at the "lets all hold hands and not be competitive" you're the ones being smug cause you think you're good now or w/e. Let me tell you something, theres nothing left to be "good" at, all content is zergbased or laughably easy, till HNM are back it will probably remain this way, unless they finally rework the enmity system and add content that doesn't let ppl crutch on Atma/staggers/2hrs to win.