Seriously devs - the balance

[Xellith]

I honestly don't see why almost 90% of every thread that asks for adjustments get a reply back (if a reply at all) basically saying "OH if we did that we would have to make something else about it harder".

I really don't see why most things HAVE to have something detrimental added to them when we ask for something to be fixed.

One of the main things I don't think the dev team understands or maybe we are just dumb on is that when we ask for these adjustments - we are asking for them because currently they could be made better or are currently stupid. Sure some people ask for some dumb things around here - but that doesn't mean that every idea has to have a negative added onto it.

Like we asked for popped HNMs or something to ease the spawn conditions. The dev team trolled us with a 99 kindred seal requirement. That was pretty unnecessary.

Then you get stuff like WOE. We ask for better drop rates and we are told that increasing the drops for some items would lower others when you can easily just stop the random garbage drops like ores and logs from being in the loot pool in the first place.

You get stuff like einherjar - many people expressed the view that they wanted to buy abjurations with ichor. Even if the prices were high. Yet you pretty much flipped us the bird.

Then you get stuff like voidwatch. Almost everyone thinks the battle system rocks our sox off. Yet the dev team always feels the need to give ruin something SOMEHOW - with voidwatch we get the annoying STUPID drop system and yes most everyone agrees its really retarded.

I just don't see why things that the playerbase see as something that should have been a certain way in the first place pretty much requires a harsh detrimental ball and chain attached to it.

It's 4:33 in the AM. My rant is over.... till later >.>

[OgreBattle]

Because FFXI is made with the Everquest 90's western MMO mentality.

I'm pretty sure the makers of this game have never played a Final Fantasy game before lol...

[Muras]

I feel the devs often don't make the "fun" factor a part of their designs. But no matter how fun an event itself can be, it losses it's charm when you don't make progress at a steady pace. This is why Abyssea was more or less successful. It gave players goals that were actually possible to complete within a reasonable time frame.

From what I understand, the reasoning behind stupid low drop rates is that people will complete their goals and run out of things to do, thus quitting out of boredom. This logic is terribly flawed, because most normal people don't play all day long every day, forever. Only a very small few do this, and I don't care if they become better geared because they have more time to play than me. Good for them. You also need to remember that they want to USE their new found shinies and show them off. Can't do that if you quit.

Yoshi-P of FF14 at least understands this as he once said that he wants those few players to be examples to those who play less, so they can see what they're playing and working for. That's why having low drop rates and daily limits on events (Dynamis, Salvage, Assault) are retarded.

As someone who studies game design, I'd like to send a message to the devs as follows. Some of you might've heard this saying before. When you cook food for others, you need to take into account the tastes of those you're cooking for. They might not like the same things you do, so you change and alter your recipe to suit their tastes.

Game design is a lot like cooking. You're creating a work of art for others, and you need to take into account what they like. They might not like the designs you yourself like, so you change your design to suit their tastes. This is good game design, and a pretty good business practice to boot.

Your players have voiced their opinions on the bad loot system for Voidwatch. They've told you Scarlet Delirium sucks. They've told you Walk of Echoes is painfully depressing when it comes to drops. They've been saying for years that 30,000 Alexandrites for a mythic is ridiculous. They've told you 1500 heavy metal plates is unreasonable. The list really just goes on.

They also told you that lowering SCH's helix spells to be subbable was retarded too. Why did you add the test server if you aren't going to listen to our opinions? That whole helix thing was flat out rejected by virtually everyone. On the subject of the test server, I thought it was supposed to increase the rate of version updates. I know I read SE saying it somewhere. But so far the updates are just as far apart as ever. Also, can we get a real roadmap? Knowing when the test server gets content is great and all, but doesn't really do nobody any good when we don't know when the REAL game gets said content.

I'm pretty sure the makers of this game have never played a Final Fantasy game before lol...

Funny enough, a lot of the people involved with FF11 were involved in many other popular games. In particular, Hiromichi Tanaka was the producer for Chrono Cross/Xenogears, game designer for FF1-3, Director for Seiken Densetsu 3 (Secret of Mana 2). They make some classic single player RPGs, but their MMO design is a little questionable in 2011.

[Alhanelem]

Because FFXI is made with the Everquest 90's western MMO mentality.

I'm pretty sure the makers of this game have never played a Final Fantasy game before lol...

I wouldn't go that far with how ridiculously easy leveling up is these days. no corpse runs or perma losing gear when you cant get to your corpse.

[Rie]

I know a few people who quit when the last Abyssea expansion came out, because they felt all the gear they had worked for previously was outdated by the new +2 gear and sets.

They didn't want the best gear to be so easily obtainable by 'casual' players, whereas the old way of Einherjar/HNM dropped all the more exclusive gear that not everyone was able to get by joining a random shout group.

I see the point in some of the obstructions/limits, I also see the positives of changes, and lifting of restrictions.

Dynamis - Judging by the sheer amount of new relics on the server, and currency prices rising, Dynamis has become one of the best ways to make gil easily, and relics aren't out of reach for anyone not in a linkshell with scheduled, regular runs. I'd say that the way Dynamis is now, the 'old way' of doing Dynamis (smashface everything, as fast as possible) is pretty inefficient with the new proc system. It's been redesigned to suit lowmanning or soloing, you can search any of the Dynamis zones now and there's almost always someone there, usually a BST/DNC, DNC/THF or BLU's soloing the MA proc mobs. Major changes, but more popular than ever (seems to me to be anyway, would be neat to get a census from SE on participation numbers before and after changes), due to not needing an organized group.

Walk of Echoes - Yes, the current system is pretty dumb, however, it is far better than how it used to be. Speaking as someone who was in one of two groups able to clear confluxes when WoE was first introduced, leeches were a major issue, and would cause a lot of aggrevation and ruined runs due to them not wishing to listen to our instructions, but rather run off and grab as many mobs as possible. They would die repeatedly, somehow qualify to lot (probably through taking dmg?), and walk off with things they didn't work for, that they would never have had a shot at if our group hadn't done all the work.

The new system gives you a lot of dumb crap, and along with it comes a lot of dumb people doing dumb things, but the re-opening time for confluxes has been shortened, the time limit has been extended, and you ARE guaranteed 5 items, crappy or not, for participating. The introduction of Primeval Brew temp items has also made the chance of success with a lower number of participants a lot higher, if someone ends up getting one.

I think they listened to a lot of our complaints about WoE and did what they saw fit to accomodate our wishes, although they didn't quite get the whole "NO MORE LOGS, NO MORE ORES, PLEASE PLEASE OH GOD PLEASE" idea quite right. Their changes has eliminated the leeches, and made it easier for people to want to work together to achieve a common goal, clearing the conflux, despite not actually knowing each other. In the old system, fights would often break out in /sh about leeches and how people felt about them. It's more peaceful and not as frustrating anymore, outside of the damn synth items. I prefer the new way over having to pray that any leech lots low, I now know that as long as we clear the conflux, everyone gets something. I guess we can only hope that they'll remove some of the most useless synthesis items. Sorry for long sentences and rambling etc!

Voidwatch - The loot system is pretty dumb, and I know a lot of people think it's completely unfair when "he got that item, but this is the first time he's done VW with us, THIS SUCKS". I think there should be an option to add certain items to the treasure pool, but only if you already have the same item in your possession. This would discourage leaders from 'forcing' people to add their loot to the treasure pool if they didn't want to, and ensuring items didn't go to waste, which is the current issue with, for instance, Fajin Boots. Lots of people want them, and of course people are going to be annoyed when a person without the jobs on it gets them, when they have 0 use for them. This could be SE's way of forcing everyone to level every job of course!

HNM changes were retarded, that's pretty much all there is to it. If they had just left the NQ to spawn as normal, with a small chance to drop the HQ pop item, while at the same time introducing the KS99 changes, I think it would have been a lot more reasonable. As it is, it can be very hard to get a Black Belt if you're not extremely lucky and/or have a lot of friends with orbs and no need for BB items. I can understand SE wanting people to stop sitting in Dragon's Aery for 3-4hrs a day, but it could have been done in a better way.

I think they realized that some of the changes were a mistake, because they added in the option to convert seals and crests into KS/KC/HKC or whatever you needed. KC/HKC are so much easier to obtain than KS, so it works out about the same KS gain rate once you've converted them. It still sucks having to rely solely on KS99's for BB items, whether it be from NQ -> HQ pops or the actual drop from the KS99.

Anyway, I apologise for the wall of text, I tend to go on once I get started.

tl;dr: Some changes suck, some have made things better, please remove synth mats from WoE, they're all crappy!

[Hashmalum]

This. A thousand times this. I am so sick of this. When we ask for something and they say they will take something else away to maintain "balance" when what they don't get is that it was never balanced in the first place and that is what we were complaining about. We point out flaws and they don't listen--they either didn't hear us, or think we're wrong but won't say why. They tell us that something can't or shouldn't be done without telling us why. I don't expect (or want) the dev team to do everything we say but there does need to be a better dialogue, a reasoned back-and-forth process that leads to mutual understanding.

[Alhanelem]

When we say we want everything to be faster and easier, the reason they say no is they want you to play longer. Part of the problem though, is because they're somewhat limited in their ability to add completely new content, that they need to make sure the content they do have lasts long enough that you will continue to subscribe X more months. It's a business thing, really.

Perhaps, though, they don't realize that they could make more content instead of longer content and keep the subscribers just as long if not longer.

Even with how fast they've made the leveling, this is still one of the "slowest" MMOs out there.

[Tohihroyu]

The answer is simple.

You are not Japanese. Therefore you wont get answers.

[Malamasala]

I just wish they'd grant the wishes of the wisher and not random people.

Like I know CORs asked for a way to keep their own rolls while rolling other rolls on others... and then BRD gets the ability. I don't think I've ever heard a BRD complain they had to swap out their ballad for march.

Another classic I know of personally is asking for a minimum of 5 min support buff duration on wards... and then COR comes along with 5 min duration rolls.

Sometimes I've played with the idea of making threads like "Please give DRK an ability to attack faster with a staff" and see if it accidentally ends up on SMN instead. Or stuff like "lower the recast of chakra" and see if waltz timers get cut short.

[Sparthos]

When we say we want everything to be faster and easier, the reason they say no is they want you to play longer. Part of the problem though, is because they're somewhat limited in their ability to add completely new content, that they need to make sure the content they do have lasts long enough that you will continue to subscribe X more months. It's a business thing, really.

Perhaps, though, they don't realize that they could make more content instead of longer content and keep the subscribers just as long if not longer.

Even with how fast they've made the leveling, this is still one of the "slowest" MMOs out there.

Business is no excuse as point systems could be added with large enough requirements to keep people on the wheel till the next version update. This boils down to the devs wanting to do it their way, ideas of the players be damned.

Heavy Metal Plates being redeemable with "voidwatch points" would take the ores and logs out of every run and actually get some reasonable amount of people doing the content especially with the prospect of 99 around the corner. What do we get instead?

A completely random grind hated by 99% of individuals for the sake of "balance". Is it really that insane to make something like the rare VW drops something you can get within 50+ repeats of a certain NM? The idea of knowing you're going to get something rather than spitting into the wind every time makes all the difference.

This same system could have been expanded to WoE but instead we get more logs and ores courtesy of the devs.