Legion still sucks.

[Camiie]

That's the thing about personal goals. You get to pick your own goals. There should be different levels of commitment and different levels of achievement. I think there should be epic challenges for those that want to pursue them, why shouldn't there be? Because not everyone can do them, players who find them interesting shouldn't be allowed to have goals that cater to them? Just because some people perceive it as too hard, like an old school relic, doesn't mean it's out of their reach either.

My problem right now is that I don't see much of anything as obtainable, nothing I want anyway, other than maybe Magian trials. I've pretty much gotten what I want out of Abyssea. I can't seem to get anywhere in VW, as I'm well behind the curve and can't seem to find enough people to backtrack and help me get the clears and temps I need. I don't really want or need a relic for the jobs I have. I'm just totally at a loss right now except for the Magian trials which aren't exactly an enjoyable experience. That's my experience in my little corner of the FFXI universe. YMMV and all that.

There's also a huge gap between options you listed:

Legion: Currently retarded zerg fest that requires no strategy but PD/Embrava rotations. To my knowledge no one can make a full clear, but people have cleared first waves.

Neo-Nyzul: Not one single person has even whiffed floor 100 without their group using third party tools, dat modding lamps to show order, and out of game communication like skype/ts/vent.

110 Crafting: This is actually reasonably doable and it's a reasonable personal goal you can achieve all by yourself.

Afterglow weapons: These are just ridiculous time sinks and need some adjustments. The mythic one is actually pretty reasonable because of the changes to the zeni system and the fact PW was designed as 75 content. The ADL trial is stupid because he can just decide you're going to die, and it requires other people waste their runs to help you out, unless they're mercing them for you. Empyrean wouldn't be so bad if they increased drop rates by a hefty margin for plates/cinder/dross.

Good analysis of current events. Except for crafting which I find horrendously boring and painful, none of these are accessible for someone like me, and so for anyone like me all this work SE has put in is wasted. The community as I see it in general just doesn't want these sorts of things. Also, and most importantly, it isn't structured in way to do these sorts of events anymore. A small minority are willing and able to perhaps, but it seems as though that's all that's being catered to right now. Where do the rest of us come in? Are we supposed to realign our lives to fit SE's vision of Vana'diel? Shouldn't it be more like the other way around?

There needs to be a sliding scale of difficulty. There needs to be a wider range of events for different play styles as well, like there was at 75.

They at least need to ripoff WoW and have Normal and Heroic difficulties for every event and give us casual "dungeons" to go alongside the hardcore "raids" they seem to be fond of.

Not everything is SE's fault either though. Players need to have a paradigm shift as well. Players really have a sense of entitlement today compared to say, 2006. They are entitled to certain things, but they take it way too far these days, thinking that just because they pay for the right to play the game, everything should be theirs regardless of how well they actually play the game. They don't pick a personal goal anymore, they just assume they should have everything.

Most players aren't like that. They have no problem having to earn their keep, it's just I think many of us are running out of things we feel we can realistically earn.

Players should first pick a role that fits their style of play. Back in the day there were several type of clearly defined players, but these days it's blurred. Are you a social player, just in it for meeting new people? An explorer? A Roleplayer (I know, lolrpfags in and mmoRPG)? Are you a crafter? Do you garden/HELM? Farmer? Endgame player? Leader? A WAR? A MNK? A WHM? A <insertjobhere>? What are you? What is your in game CAREER?

That's true, although my experience pre-Abyssea didn't really involve being allowed to choose what role I wanted to play. In my heart I was and am a MNK and BST. Guess how far I would have gotten in endgame with those roles? I wouldn't even have made it through the application process. Now, though things are better in that regard, except for the ever piss poor job balance (or lack thereof).

Well, the game shifted towards everyone playing various roles, killed a lot of old roles, merged some together, and changed the playerbase. Many quit and left. Now SE admits they changed to much and unbalanced the game, and they say they want to rebalance it.

It's never been balanced. Ever. And people have been quitting the whole time the game has existed for one reason or another.

Now we got people who don't fall into clearly defined roles and everyone thinks they're more important and shouldn't have to pick a role.

I chose DD! That's mah role. Now what?

They need to try and meet SE half way, but SE needs to start be getting their heads out their asses and releasing content they doesn't suck (mostly due to artificial difficulty like time limits and RNG).

I agree with you on the SE part, but I think we players have compromised more than enough. It's SE's turn and it will be for some time to come.

[Return1]

Thank you for clearing that up sparth.

While most helm items are worthless, for harvesting at least, there's a pretty decent market for 100-110 items like Walnuts, Date, Dragon Fruits, and Reishi Mushrooms. AH history on Dates and Walnuts are crap but they bazaar way more in Windurst Waters, and you can probably get more since no one else is supplying them, at least not on my server. Is it profitable? It can be. It's just not the most profitable. Some people do enjoy it though.

People may find crafting horribly boring, but I knew/know people whose only real activity in this game is crafting or farming for crafting. Whatever floats their boat. If you got a craft to 100, I'm pretty sure you can get it to 110 with little to no trouble, at your own pace.

It's never been balanced. Ever. And people have been quitting the whole time the game has existed for one reason or another.

There was balance enough to have many roles and an economy that wasn't 100% for the top levels. There was life before maxed levels. And people quit all the time for various reasons, but there hasn't been any other period in the game where so many quit in such a narrow span of time. Abyssea really altered the game on a massive scale that has been bad for it from a larger perspective.

Now if I were to make some suggestions on rebalancing, I'd say add more incentives to CP and IS purchases. The easy to obtain nature of AN and the addition of Voidstones, really got a lot more people doing a dead event like campaign. With some creative uses of CP/IS and the new EXP values for outside zones and books, you could really make it worth people's time to EXP outside and to have participation in parties.

Actually, I have a few ideas that I think are pretty awesome, but since this is getting so far out of the legion subject, I'll just start a new thread.

On Legion:
I truly think that if they simply made the time limit 2 hours, the event would be a real success as is and a boon for linkshell based content. It's a very simple fix. It has some really good rewards amongst the lolworthy trophies, and the difficulty would be perfect if not for the retarded time limit forcing players into a zerg-or-don't-even-bother setup.

And a side not on VW, I think the ticket system will actually be a huge success if they're implementing it how I'm reading it. I'm all for having alternative ways to obtain rare drops for all events as long as they require a title showing you actually participated and the RNG just crapped on you.

[Insaniac]

I'm not saying there should be 0 "difficult" content. Just saying MMOs can exist without god mode battles and super elite gear that only a few people have. They can certainly exist without content that is unbeatable by 99% of the player base but we seem to agree about legion being terrible so I'll leave it at that.

[Luvbunny]

Let it be a reminder for you guys, if SE cannot even created a good solid 6 person group activities via Neo Nyzul, don't hold your breath about them fixing Legion. That is a disaster in the making. There is no challenge, all they been making is hamster wheel of death for us to run over and over. At the very least they are making effort on Voidwatch, and Walk of Echoes. As for Neo Nyzul, Legion and the upcoming Neo Limbus, Neo Salvage.... just ignore these, give it a year when they finally get to it and actually make it so that you do not need cheat programs or jobs xyz to clear it.

[Jerynh]

Warning, not on the subject of Legion at all.

I didn't mind the idea of the level shift. The overall goal was for everyone to be able to do everything they already did, in smaller groups. Less group management. But everything needed an overhaul if they were going to do that, and for some reason they didn't think about that. Instead of changing current gear, most of which was at least moderately situationally balanced (Even those +15 mind boots from sky still had at least one use, light bolts or something, right?), they decided to add new, only mildly difficult to obtain gear that came in the form of AF3 that rendered almost all previous content useless. Thats why everyone quit.

Take sky. Leave the bosses the same or roughly the same so they are easier. But change their drops to have a 99 requirement (or start with 80, then 85, etc). Change the stats to still be moderately situationally balanced. Change all the current existing drops to match. People will get over all of a sudden a stack of their gear becoming onwearable for a couple levels. They'll buy some cheap crap to level in.

Dynamis. Feel free to change the flow to make it more interesting. Then, instead of additional upgrades through a moogle, continue the relic storyline. Maybe not so many requirements. Not another 10000 piece or anything, maybe offer a new currency piece from ADL that the goblins wont trade for lesser values (to keep them from becoming instant-relics) in order to buy the upgrade and continue the story. The moogle stuff is super lame, lets be honest. "I know you spent 2 years in a netherworld working to obtain this end-all weapon... But go kill a few spiders. I got a better one in my backpack you can have when you're done."

Salvage. Add a 4th piece to each upgrade. Add new and interesting ways to obtain this last piece. Done. Break everyones 75 "finals", send them all 3 pieces and the materials to the delivery box. Thats just database space. It'd work fine.

Continue mythic quest line for final upgrades. Done.

Just ranting. I hate magian trials. So lame.

[saevel]

Instead of changing current gear, most of which was at least moderately situationally balanced (Even those +15 mind boots from sky still had at least one use, light bolts or something, right?), they decided to add new, only mildly difficult to obtain gear that came in the form of AF3 that rendered almost all previous content useless. Thats why everyone quit.

Umm no, just ... no. Not even close.

People quit because the develop team stopped caring after their A team got sent to FFXIV which left FFXI with a skeleton crew and an absolutely HORRIBLE guy calling the shots. During Abyssea era there was an actual increase in subscriptions, people came back and started playing again because the game moved forward, newer gear, newer things to do, more shinys and so forth. There were actual upgrades, not stuff that was inferior to the gear you got in 2005. People want better gear, they want better content, they want more stuff not sidegrades. Look at legion, prime example of a failed event. Entirety too hard for the crap it drops, crap gear that is sidegrade / downgrade from what we got in abyssea. Magian's is fine for upgrading gear and for providing a baseline set of gear that everyone can obtain without needing to give oral ministrations to a LS leader.

[Return1]

During Abyssea era there was an actual increase in subscriptions

That's actually a false. A shit ton of people quit because of the server mergers and 99cap announcement. Then handful rage quit over the gayness of abyssea (I only get to play 30minutes once per day WTF I QUIT!!1!). Subs picked up after Abyssea started to be understood, but after that, people have steadily left BECAUSE of abyssea.

Obsoleted years of hard work for many. Killed most big linkshells. Removed most of the teamwork and group dynamics people liked. Dumbed down playing. Could be blown through in a week or two and leave you with nothing to do. No worthwhile alternatives.

SE said they considered Abyssea a flop because it unbalanced things. Translation: People are jumping shit left and right because we pretty much obsoleted all endgame but one thing, and now people have nothing to do.

Now we get shit like Voidwatch, which is meant to take up more time than any other event ever, with the lowest drop rates the game has ever seen in an attempt to keep the addicted busy.

What's really sad is that Legion and Neo-Nyzul would have been great boons to this game if not for the stupid time limits on them.

[Neisan_Quetz]

People have been steadily leaving throughout the years before and after abyssea was released, this is nothing new nor is it exclusive to Abyssea.

Why is this conversation still going on again?

[SpankWustler]

So, what method of magical divination are people on both side of this pointless argument using to objectively determine the total number of people who left, exactly when they left, and why they left?

Honest question. I'll be out and about for a week, and I'm trying to determine if I should pack stuff for inclement weather or not. I just can't get a definitive reading from slaughtering these goats that I might gaze upon their blood splatter and entrails, and worse yet, I'm running out of places to store disemboweled goat corpses and buckets of mildly mystic goat blood.

Back to the topic on topic, I agree that Legion (and Neo-Nyzul Isle) are ridiculous with the current time limits. Legion briefly seemed fixed by the HP reduction adjustment, but after one or two groups announcing they had cleared it, I haven't heard much. More waves apparently just keep appearing after a "clear", so I doubt even the few groups who clear the Legion bosses at present would be unhappy with a longer time limit.

On one hand, most end-game content since at least Treasures of Aht Urhgan stuff has started out fairly unrewarding for one reason or another but improved with time. I assume they're fiddling with Legion somehow as I'm typing this, but...

On the other hand, their adjustments to Voidwatch have been akin to propping up a corpse with two sticks and announcing to a six-year-old child that "Grandpa is all better!" They barely even acknowledge the reason it's unrewarding, a reason which has nothing to do with the difficulty of the monsters. Also, Uncle Bertrand, I knew that old people don't smell that bad even when I was six.

I'm not sure how pessimistic to feel. Someone help me feel the correct amount of pessimism.

[Sparthos]

I don't see what Abyssea itself has to do with the change of attitude that occurred during the time that Abyssea was the centerpiece content of this game. We can wage verbal war over what Abyssea did to XI but there was a distinct change in company attitude that led to speedy fixes, player-centered problem resolution and steady improvements that ceased once Heroes concluded and we got to Voidwatch.

At one point I started to say to myself "wow this is overkill on the issue fixes" and that may have been true or false but what mattered is that SE was doing something and doing it quickly.

If that same behavior were displayed with Legion or Voidwatch, this thread wouldn't exist and people would be enjoying the content rather than picking it apart or ignoring it.