Adjustments to Embrava and Perfect Defense

[Rubicant82]

So... The Dev team wants us to have a challenge. That is okay, but there is a huge difference between a challenge with adequate awards, and rending jobs useless. By changing the mechanics of the game, sure we will be challenged, but more adversely two jobs are essentially getting their best attributes taken away. I've been playing sense NA release... and this seems to happen every time we as the players find a way to use the mechanics of the game to our advantage. It saddens me greatly that the game has fallen as far as it has. Maybe it is time to get a new dev team, we have a new project manager. At the rate this team is going, unless the new expansion is something that renders everyone speechless, FFXI will fade away. There are plenty of games that one can play that are FREE that have just as good if not better customer support, Devs, and content. One of the huge advantages that FFXI has over all these other games is the history and the fan base it draws on. As several people have mentioned in this thread that the gear from the new content is not worth the risk, they are partially correct. Everyone has their own style of play, but honestly not everyone has the skill to do the events. Does this mean that those players should have to go with out the good gear? What if someone falls in with a lower skill crowd, and can't get in to a higher skill group because those who normally have the higher skills tend to stick together and not include new people. The dev team has basically just given every casual player the middle finger. WAY TO GO TEAM! This sure is how you get people to stick around and pay you money every month. Tell them "well because you don't have the skills you can't do this."

[Afania]

So... The Dev team wants us to have a challenge. That is okay, but there is a huge difference between a challenge with adequate awards, and rending jobs useless. By changing the mechanics of the game, sure we will be challenged, but more adversely two jobs are essentially getting their best attributes taken away. I've been playing sense NA release... and this seems to happen every time we as the players find a way to use the mechanics of the game to our advantage. It saddens me greatly that the game has fallen as far as it has. Maybe it is time to get a new dev team, we have a new project manager. At the rate this team is going, unless the new expansion is something that renders everyone speechless, FFXI will fade away. There are plenty of games that one can play that are FREE that have just as good if not better customer support, Devs, and content. One of the huge advantages that FFXI has over all these other games is the history and the fan base it draws on. As several people have mentioned in this thread that the gear from the new content is not worth the risk, they are partially correct. Everyone has their own style of play, but honestly not everyone has the skill to do the events. Does this mean that those players should have to go with out the good gear? What if someone falls in with a lower skill crowd, and can't get in to a higher skill group because those who normally have the higher skills tend to stick together and not include new people. The dev team has basically just given every casual player the middle finger. WAY TO GO TEAM! This sure is how you get people to stick around and pay you money every month. Tell them "well because you don't have the skills you can't do this."

No, they give every hardcore middle finger, not casual. It's perfectly FINE if you don't have the skill/gear to beat certain content.
Out of ALL the game content atm, only legion is harder content. Every content is for casual and very easy. So if you're casual, you got plenty of content to play with. And I'm against the idea of every content being casual, because once every content is beaten, ppl quit. There should be at least 1 content that's hard.

So why casual so unhappy? You got easy Nyzul, easy dyna, easy limbus, easy meeble, easy abyssea and easy VW. And majority of gears from those event are very good.

Why is it a problem that "lower skilled" player can't get into a "higher skill" group? It's more of fundemental mechanic of human society than game design. Irl ppl group with like minded ppl with similar background, make friends with like minded ppl too. If you're rich and educated, you make friends and work with rich and educated. If you're poor and not well educated, you make friends and work with same group of ppl too. That's just the way it goes, no matter where you are, in game or irl. If you're "lower skill crowd", want to be in "higher skill crowd" group, want them to accept you, then improve skill and become one of them? Or deal with it.

Same goes irl too, ppl like lawer, doctors don't make friends with a 7-11 cashier or street person, if you want to make friends with lawyer/doctor, try to be a lawyer/doctor, or don't make friend with them, simple.

However, the problem with harder content is that the reward isn't as attractive as easy options. If you log on to the game now, 95% of player are doing nyzul for nyzul gear, abyssea for abyssea gears, meeble for meeble gears or just farming dyna for relic. Those content is less effort with better reward. Legion is really for those who've done everything from everywhere else. And the population that really want to do it regularly, is pretty small.

This is sad, really, like a middle finger to none-casual players.

My suggestion is to add some sort of cross server group search function for 18~36 person endgame event like this, or allow ppl to team up cross server. Or just straight add super epic reward in legion to keep ppl around, so ppl don't just quit and left the group when they got Mul clear. Atm there are like 0 incentives for ppl to keep doing Mul after clear depending on your job.

[Karbuncle]

I actually... Kinda agree with them here. They don't want people to just hop out of Abyssea, Skills uncapped in full Perle/Aurore/Teal being able to win all the contents. Its just not logical or reasonable to assume. Its an MMO, with that territory comes the absolute knowledge if your ass wants anything good, You'll need to invest time in it. If you don't like investing time in the game and think you should be able to take on the world in crap-tier gear, You're in the wrong genre. Any good reasonable MMO has a gear check, Its what actually keeps people working for that next tier of gear.

Their only flaw in logic is that well, 99% of Legion armor is crap-tier, so the event is meaningless... And that Luck based content is not okay. Not even a little bit. If you get the best bros ever together and they have the best gear and communication, They should have an extremely high win rate, It should not be 50% Skill/ 50% Roll of the dice in events. Some amount of luck could be interesting, But such a severe amount of luck involved makes it unfun, and any strategy you may have come up with without the luck based factor, just becomes "ZERG ALL THE MOBS". Its simple. The more luck you include, The more Simple the Strategies become, Hence, Zergs on ADL and the Zergs/Rush in NNI.

If you throw in a "F*ck you" Button to a mob, People will adapt the strategy "Kill it before it kills us" because dealing with the luck factor is not worth the planning, Especially when that "F*ck you" button is a 30' Range AoE Death.

Over all, Long story short, I agree with their Idea "Gear Progression Bro, Perle to Emp+2, to Phorcys!", But its kinda like going from Volume 1, Volume 3, Volume 11!!!!(BRRRRZZZT) in that regard, and while I cannot and will not say NNI Gear is "Sidegrade" because its not, Even to the Almighty Master Monk Race... Its true that Empyrean+2 Armor is very solid for most jobs. Even as a THF I still wear my Empyrean+2 Head, and my Hands and Feet still get use. I admit my Body and Legs are floating away due to Thaumus though.

I think that, The content in the future needs to include the same level of Gear checks, But a lot less luck. Content absolutely should not be doable by any group of Perle Beasts, It just shouldn't. You're investing time into an MMO, With that territory, with that Game Type, Comes the fact that there will be gear checks. If you could jump out of Abyssea in your Aurore and tackle all the content, No one would play, because it would be boring, None of the gear you were collectin would have meaning. So we have to accept that Gear Checks will keep us seeking better gear...

But again, Drop the Luck factor entirely, or at least severely reduce Lucks role in the games Future Content. Please. Its not good and we don't want or need it.

[Monchat]

Problem is gear check does not exist. There is no clear gear progression post abbysssea, mostly sidegrade and situatioal gear/ If you compare level 75 cap gear to level 90 cap there was something like 25~50% improvement on gear efficiency. then suddenly crap tier upgrades from 90-99. Abbysea gear is for the most par level 85 cap gear lol and still good, while not the best.

[Gaspee]

When a universal strategy that we have employed to beat high end content is nerfed, it's natural for this type of reaction from the playerbase. Square Enix is essentially blaming us for using Perfect Defense and Embrava for the way it was intended to be used from their inception.

I find this tone from the development team distasteful and disrespectful. The game's population is overwhelmingly casual and older, so being ok with content that cannot be beaten and/or exceedingly difficult is, in my opinion, the wrong direction.

[Quetzacoatl]

Meh, Seekers of Adoulin will come out with gear that will be on par with Nyzul Uncharted/Legion gear anyway.

Wait. Waaaait a minute. I'm watching a sharp decrease in subscribers right now. No, I'm serious, it's actually happening. You might want to make some Intermediate content between Abyssea/Voidwatch and Legion/Nyzul Uncharted. ASAP.

and no, Arch-Omega/Ultima & Arch-Odin don't really count as intermediate. <_<

[Phogg]

Hope the devs realize they need to create content faster then the current snails pace if they expect to maintain a base of subscribers beyond the incredibly small cluster of people they are apparently catering end game events too. Like others said, there is no middle ground. It's pretty astounding how well the devs screw up in the eyes of their player base, and so consistently. I mean, why is there such a limit on meebles? Its a 15 minute event ffs, why can you only do it so infrequently? How long do you expect people to do VW and abyssea? A lot of people I know have fully geared upwards of 5-6 jobs by now through that content. People are leveling jobs they dont even want to play just to try Legion and Neo Nyzul because it's so restrictive strategically. Essentially, wtf are people supposed to do otherwise?

And btw, we have 18+ skilled and well geared people showing up for legion every week, and its still a ridiculously unforgiving event. There is a difference between challenging and arbitrarily difficult, and legion and neo nyzul both fall into the latter.

[Zagen]

Simple changes to NNI that would make it take longer to obtain while still giving players a good feeling of progress:

Clear floor 20 = NQ gear
NQ gear and KI from level 40 clear = +1
+1 and KI from level 60 clear = +2
And so on.
I just came up with a legit reason to waste time getting the NQ/+1/+2/+3 versions of NNI gear. Because let's face it people aren't looking at those sets and seeing "if I get those getting higher clears will be easier" because NNI is reliant heavily on luck far more than skill or gear.

Bump the time to 45 minutes or just increase the jump range to something like 5-9 and that heavily reliant on luck factor gets toned down and allows for skill/gear to make a bigger difference.

As to legion if you want it to reward the most hardcore players then maybe if you gave a body like this:

DEF:70 STR+16 Attack+5%
"Mag. Atk."+7 "Store TP"+6 "Dbl. Atk."+3
Increases weapon skill damage
Set: Increases STR, VIT, INT, MND

Instead of this:

DEF:79 HP+50 MP+50 STR+13
VIT+13 Attack+23 Damage taken -7%
Magic Defense Bonus+5~6

You just killed off Phorcys korazin but getting that is easier than clearing Legion so it becomes a stepping stone to epic gear. At that point there might be a large enough desire to spam legion. I mean Huginn haubert isn't even a side-grade for anything.

[Rezeak]

I love this debate SE has with it's player base.

Catering to only one type of player divides your player base making the game a little less social and the ones you excluded one step closer to quitting.

Honestly, there really is no harm in making different difficultly mode for different events so that we can all play the small amount of new content you put out each month.

Example...
Easy mode NNI (random 5-15 jump but floor 100 doesn't give KI (so only drops 1-3 random peices))
Easy mode(12 man) Legion (mob lose 50% hp and drops rates are halved)

Really, it isn't that hard and it's a nice way for newer player to get to learn events and eventually get to the more rewarding hard mode and of course the hardcore players still get everything first cause they started on hard mode.

Either way, whatever, if you wanna split content into casual/hardcore i'm sure each player base loves paying $70 for the one peice of content you give because you've decided it's ok to excluded them. /longsigh

as a side note : it was fine to exclude player when SE acully added things like
Campaign at the same time as Fomor kings
New jobs/Missions at the same time as Dyna/Limbus/Salvage
because there was always something to do but now when content comes out lets hope SE decide your the lucky one that it's designed for or you'll have another 3 month+ wait to the next peice.

[Mifaco]

Well, its nice to see the bald faced contempt the devs have for their playerbase. Emulating the success of Abyssea? Perish the thought. Lets make new content so difficult people will quit.