For those who keep resurrecting that dead topic....

[Demon6324236]

Yes a lvl 30 character with the use of one temp item laying waste to the highest lvl NM is flawless game design. Infinate auto reraise 3... Bottleneck after bottleneck designed to create artificial challenges is flawless game design. Even the dev's now understand how bad abyssea was for FFXI.

Brews were the weakening items for Abyssea. Just like VW, if you couldn't kill it by normal methods it allows you to still fight the enemy but the difference was brews took it to far without any moderation. Brews were a bad thing because they took you from whatever you were to a complete god for 3 minutes so long as ailments didn't destroy you.

Reraise was ok, number of times I would be out doing something and get killed for a random reason, then have to travel back which was highly annoying. Apoc was a good idea for that part, however the ability to zombie everything was not, because of it things were made to simple.

VW ... really!? Yeah I really enjoyed watching bodies LS members of mine needed rot in a box because I couldnt simply "add to pool". Now the gimp in the alliance that failed up the entire fight (or being afk) leeching off others getting the drop instead of my buddy who carried both their weight, thats just icing on the cake.

VW has this problem because they failed to do what Abyssea did, which was make rewards that you could obtain with effort. A topic that has been beaten down so much, but yet is completely true. VW drops are just Abyssea, but made with old style torture of trying to get things you want.

Hey though if 5 people who already got the drop get it again, before he does, they can sell their tickets for millions upon millions each and he can pay 15-50M for it.

This is because SE has their mind set of not listening to players. We told them as soon as they announced how tickets would work, that is was a bad idea. They actually think they fixed it I guess, because they did change from their original plans of making tickets R/EX. This was a massive problem SE created by not listening to the players, and chances are we will see it again with the new 2-hours, one can only hope I am wrong.

That or he can spend more time doing VW than people used to spend camping HNMs yet still no closer to getting the drop. Meanwhile I go 1/1 on a body I'll never use that someone else just popped for the 300th and counting time. All this sounds like a dream come true.

Simply because thats what VW was made to do, everything about VW screams time sink. Low drops, no sharing drops, 1500 Heavy Metal Plates that drop 1/5 fights. The entire event was made like that, and has screwed players since its creation because of it.

People act like Abyssea and VW are so similar and designed the same. In honesty the only things they really share are procs, atma, and abyssite. When people complain about Abyssea they say it is to easy, leveling is fast, you can actually get gear without taking to long, things like that. VW is the exact opposite, VW is that it takes to long to get things because its luck based, anyone can get any piece of gear at random, want it or not, while anyone who wants it can be just as well of, and get nothing for the trouble.

Not just from you but all I read here is FFXI was too hard QQ easy buttons FTW!

All I read from you is complaining that people have it easier now, and want to enjoy it. Rather than wanting to have to play the game like a life style to get good things in it. Just because you play it to relax or have fun doesn't mean you don't want good gear, weapons, or to play it well. Sorry to tell you but sometimes, easy, is funner than wanting to rip your hair out of your head because something is annoying or a pain in the ass to do.

[Arcon]

Abyssea is like a mini-game within FFXI. The rules of regular FFXI don't apply. It's a subsection, enclosed within its own set of rules. The talk of fanboys like Luvbunny just taints the arguments other people are trying to make. The point is, this issue has nothing to do with easy vs. hard. It's about accessible vs. not. Old FFXI didn't let you play the game unless you put lots of hard and annoying work into it. That doesn't mean it wasn't amazing at 75, even if it was still hard. But the fact is, you had to work first to be able to play it. Working, however, is not what I play a game for. When I log on FFXI I wanna play. I don't care if the content is hard, personally I quite prefer it. But it should be accessible.

I for one hate Abyssea and VW almost as much (same things apply to VW as what I said about Abyssea above). Abyssea ruined quite a large part of the game to me some of the effects I still feel today. But I still appreciate what it did right, which was making an even ground for Lv99 content. Now everyone who wants to participate in Lv99 content can actually do so. That does not mean they will succeed at it. Try throwing a bunch of noobs at Odin or Legion and see how far it will get you. Content is still hard, and that's good. But finally people actually get to experience it.

[Luvbunny]

I don't get what are you complaining about. The game is better because now there are myriad of options of things to do. Abyssea, Voidwatch, Walk of Echoes, Neo Dynamis, Neo Nyzul, Neo Limbus, Neo Einherjar, and Legion. Each cater to different group sets of people. We no longer have to be put in one box and cornered to do a few things but can choose how hard or easy we want to play our game. The majority want easy buttons so brew and displacer are introduced. Guess what, most do take the bait. And yes we both same to agree on accessibility part, and the developers did good on that. They can't please everyone. So far they are doing good even with the skeleton crew and the occasional WTF they were thinking moments like the new 2 hours.

But I do applaud your abyssea hating opinion though, please please let this be the norm, influence other people to abandon abyssea especially the ones in bahamut server. I really need to have everyone in Bahamut to avoid abyssea like plague and leave the whole content alone just for me so I can have all the fun with no competition, finish plus 2 on every single jobs, and never have to deal with congested camp, competition camping NMs, etc... Will everyone please just do old school GoV, ToAU camps and just get the hell out of abyssea :P

[Ezikiel]

if i post on this thread will it move to page 1?

[Mirage]

Bottleneck after bottleneck? Sure, I'm not going to claim there weren't bottlenecks in Abyssea, but they are far from as bad as what we've experienced earlier in the game's life.

Abyssea wasn't flawless, but it had rewards for almsot every type of player. You had low-level stuff for people who don't play that much and just don't want to completely suck, gear that takes a bit more time to get and is relatively good, and gear that takes either a lot of time, or a very high degree of efficiency to do. You had stuff that could be killed with 3 or less people, stuff that could be killed with 6 or less, and stuff that required relatively large groups (at their respective level caps, of course. Naturally, latheine NMs are going to be easy at lv99 when they were designed for lv80 characters).

The dev team actually listened to the players when complaints about bottlenecks popped up, by adding more ???s to spawn things at, and by adding lots of pop items to chests instead of having to do the lower tier NMs.

You say "even the devs understand how bad Abyssea was for FFXI", but fail to realize why they said this. It's not because it rewarded players well, but because it raised the bar on how much content they have to pump out to keep the players satisfied. It's bad in terms of how many resources they have to spend on the game, not in terms of how the player base reacted to it.

My opinion on the whole abyssea dealie: What Abyssea did was good, but it happened too fast for SE to be able to deal with the inevitable problems that occured. Had they instead started increasing the level cap in like 2008 and then 5 levels a year until today, I think they would have been able to balance things out a lot better than they did, and make the transition from lotsoftime=tinyrewards to averagetime=greatrewards much smoother than what Abyssea did.

Also, a non-gameplay issue I have with Abyssea: "Lol dimensions and shit crashing together" just makes me think the writers ran out of good ideas and had to make up some bullshit to use as an excuse to build new game mechanics around. That is however very unrelated to this thread.