Interim Report – Sorry to keep you all waiting!

[Prrsha]

A lot of people spent far more time trying to get a group to exp with than they did actually exping back in the day and I think that is far more of a turn off than the current state of leveling.

Did you read my ideas about revamping the LFP interface and making into more of a GUI. That would solve many of those old problems.

[Arcon]

What saddens me is that most of the naysayers complain but don't offer new ideas and feedback on how to fix FFXI.

That is very untrue. We offer constructive criticism all the time. Only we don't do it in a thread about EXP, because there is nothing wrong with EXP. The problems start in content that's relevant, which this doesn't fall under. The only people I've seen complain about EXP were people who miss the old days because of nostalgia.

Did you read my ideas about revamping the LFP interface and making into more of a GUI. That would solve many of those old problems.

If you say so. I would have absolutely nothing against it, and in fact, I hope they introduce many changes of a similar nature with their announced UI revamp. However, I still refuse to see how the interface had anything to do with not finding people to EXP with. /inv if you want to EXP. /sea all inv <level range> if you're looking for members. It was that easy, and it worked. The problem was not that you couldn't find people who wanted to EXP, but that there were no right people who wanted to do it (right job combinations for a party) or no camps were free, or, in the days before Level Sync, no right levels within your accepted range. And no changes to the UI could have fixed that, and even less today.

[Eyeballed]

Off topic post: (because there's no PM's on these boards)

Prrsha, I sent you an email at the address you gave about 5 days ago. The message is as follows:

Without trying to jump the gun too quickly before I move over, just a few questions.

What times is your LS most active? I live in the UK and we're 5-6 hours ahead of CST/PST. Not that I'm too heavily bothered about that in my own right, but I won't be around to get to know and help other members.

When you get your numbers up, what's your primary focus? Social/fun or hardcore/endgame? It probably goes without saying that I'm not willing to devote anywhere near 100% of my time to the game any more, but when I do log in, I am serious about what I'm doing. If I do come, here's what I have to offer:

Top Jobs:

Lv.63 RDM
Lv.51 BST
Lv.49 NIN
Lv.47 WHM

Most jobs unlocked and at least Lv20. Proper gear/spells for all.

Crafts:

Woodworking 50
Alchemy 40
Smithing 20


I've been using my spare time to concentrate on C++ and character modelling and animation, so if I'm not online I'm doing that or playing co-op games with my better half. My wife actually rolled her first character ever back in April, but lost interest in a few months, and I'm pretty sure she'd want to come also but whether it would revive her interest I'm not sure. It's doubtful - she'd just want to come because she always has to be near me anywhere I go lol.

[FrankReynolds]

Did you read my ideas about revamping the LFP interface and making into more of a GUI. That would solve many of those old problems.

I'm all for revamping the LFP interface. I don't think it will do what you think it will though.

[Rustic]

A lot of nice ideas there Rustic!

What saddens me is that most of the naysayers complain but don't offer new ideas and feedback on how to fix FFXI. The devs have already admitted that FFXI needs a lot of work. I hope to see good things though...

That's the thing about an engine that's been proven. The foundation is still solid, even if the roof needs work. "Retro gaming" may be a catchy term, but there's a reason games like this still persist. As long as the devs are willing to give the game some TLC, it'll have players and turn a profit for S-E, considering the big investment in developing FFXI was made and paid for a decade ago during the initial JP/EN rush of subscribers.

And yes, I think that means that we throttle back the rate of exp gain from mass AoE killfests. That has to be the first step. Without it, any changes to progression are meaningless, as there literally is nothing better by a few orders of magnitude.



This needs to stop if you want to have any kind of exp gaining system other than "scoop up pack of easy targets, Cleave, repeat"- especially since delivering damage via TP attacks is by far the easiest method of sustainable AOE.

Give AOE attacks a damage reduction effect if they hit more than X number of targets (I'd suggest four, and cut the damage on the group by 10% for 5, 15% for 6, 25% for 7, 40% for 8 or more), and reduce the exp gain by half for each mob past the second- so #3 gives 50% exp, #4 25%, #5 12.5%, #6 6.25%, #7 3.1%, #8 1.6% (and #9+ don't give exp in any case if killed simultaneously).

In the pic above, that single Cleave delivers exp (limit points in this case) as: 245, 234, 234, 228, 234, 228, 234, 228, 228, 228 = 2,321 limit points. Even assuming that with damage reduction the Cleave managed to kill all 8 (since it'd deal 60% normal damage), the exp rate would instead be 245, 234, 117, 57, 29, 14, 7, 3 = 706. Voila, we've just managed to cut Cleave-fests down to less than one-third their prior efficiency, and that's assuming you manage to actually kill everything with AOE damage reduction. Or you're pulling less into every AoE to get more exp per kill- again, that effectively nerfs mass exp-production, as it still takes more time to set things up and rebuild enough TP to hack through targets.

Abyssea zones are still going to be very, very good for exp gain- but combined with the beasties I mentioned in the end of the prior post, you can control mass-slaughter leeching alliances and have folks actually needing to contribute vs. being along for the ride.

[FrankReynolds]

Then, I would say this: Why not? Compare what your first artifact armor was like compared to your Dynamis gear. One was traveling across the entire span of the FFXI map, battling NMs and finding your way deep into dungeons to gain your signature "job gear" in a story related to your specific job. The other was slapping mobs around endlessly hoping your Duelist's Chapeau (or insert PITA AF2 drop) would fall into the treasure pool. Which was more fun and felt more rewarding?

Dynamis used to last way too long and require too much scheduling. Other than that and the shitty drop rates, I found it to be a fun and rewarding event. The AF quests had some cool story lines and stuff, but I didn't enjoy the excessive amount of running around to places that were intentionally made annoying to travel to / through. I'd say I felt pretty well rewarded when I finished my first set of af. When I went to start on a set for my next job, it didn't feel nearly as rewarding. I feel like they could have made the finding of chests portion into a one time thing that didn't have to be repeated for subsequent jobs. I'd say it's sort of a wash honestly.

And here's another flaw. The idea that one needed to level 10-20 different jobs? For serious? How high?

That only sounds crazy because of how long it used to take to level jobs. In reality it's stupid for them to keep adding jobs if no one has time to level them. Which also means that they can't really build content around those jobs unless they find a way to get more people to use them (faster leveling process). Besides, who want to pay a company to design stuff that is too inaccessible for them to ever use? If there are going to be 22 jobs, then I want to use them all at some point.

And here's something that exists even at 99: Gear coming from sources that X job requires to progress, but isn't useful for getting said gear. Even now, you see that with jobs who aren't generating the staggers needed for optimal drops = sorry, {No thanks}. If it's a process that results in gear that is ideal for X job, that job should be able to perform in some manner that makes it easier to come by. For example, if it's RNG/COR gear, give it weaknesses to a RNG WS or a specific Quick Draw.

They did that to force people to level more jobs.

Need gear from X event? Level X job ==>
Now you need gear from Y event to gear Y job ==>
That event requires Z job ==>
Now you must level Z job to gear job Y ==>
During the course of all this you acquire extra gear for R job so you decide to level that too

This all leads to job diversity and longer play time. It's a vicious cycle, but it's pretty brilliant if you think about it.

Of course, HNMLS as we knew it no longer exist, and we have a world now where even soloing EP's, you actually make a respectable chunk of exp per kill- especially when combined with training regimens that tack on an effective xp bonus with each cycle of dead beasties, and killing piles of bad guys also results in treasure chests dropping hither and yon. The old bad days of being unable to make appreciable progress without a PT are dead and gone. The problem lies in that the replacement has become sitting in place while someone spams AoEs with a greataxe. There isn't even that 10-20 levels of party play to learn your job anymore. I don't want to see the days where a character took a year to hit cap. I'd be happy with seeing people go 1-99 in 30-60 days played- where 30 is someone who pushed hard and partied constantly for maximum exp gain, and 60 for people who played casual and soloed much of the way instead. FoV could even be easily retuned to this- by offering training regimens that worked for parties and ones that worked for soloists.

I actually agree for the most part. I think it would be cool if they made it so that some zones had books and people could burn like they do now, while other zones had no books, but offered far higher exp per kill, so that a traditional group of 6 could exp outside just as fast as an abbysea burn group does inside (or at least close to that). I doubt that many people would choose it over abbysea, but it might make a few nostalgic cats happy. I think 2 weeks per job should be tops though. Even at that speed, we're still talking about almost 6+ months of just straight leveling for people that want to take all the jobs to cap.

the system by which this is easily done is an error in FFXI that needs to be removed.

I would agree with you, except that I think they would make something far worse if they did. I just don't like the idea of changing things in a way that will make people feel like they missed the boat.

Heck, make characters gain exp bonuses from having leveled other jobs that level out as you get nearer your "top jobs". I've got a jobs I've already leveled? Awesome, give me a exp bonus of (50- current job level + number of jobs with a level higher than current job) x .(highest job level)%.

Not a terrible idea. I'm not gonna lie though. I'm fine with how abyssea leveling works. I don't mind having lot's of people with lot's of jobs leveled. I don't miss the days of playing red mage at every event because we already had a mandau thief in the shell and I didn't want to spend 9 months leveling Samurai. Or spending hours shouting for a bard so that I could merit for 30 minutes before he D/Cs. I was especially thankful for it when SE decided to block me from paying the bill on my 8 year old JP account because I live in NA thus forcing me to turn my mule into my main and reroll another mule.

Funny story. When I was attempting to finish CoP, I actually joined a group with a guy that was shouting at about 7:00pm one night. I sat and watched Netflix and drank beer while he shouted for the next several hours. I passed out in my chair and woke up about 2:00am. I looked and we still only had 3 people. I went to bed and woke up about 9:00am the next day. The guy had just gotten the sixth member. I hopped on and did the mission. I can't remember what job it was that we so desperately needed for that specific mission, but I can tell you that I'm glad that that sort of thing is such a rare occurrence these days.

The problem with slowing down exp, is that most people find collecting gear on high level jobs through various different types of events more fun / rewarding than just leveling a job (not all people, but most) and by limiting the speed with which people can level jobs, you limit the amount of gear collecting they can / will do.

[Eyeballed]

Funny story. When I was attempting to finish CoP, I actually joined a group with a guy that was shouting at about 7:00pm one night. I sat and watched Netflix and drank beer while he shouted for the next several hours. I passed out in my chair and woke up about 2:00am. I looked and we still only had 3 people. I went to bed and woke up about 9:00am the next day. The guy had just gotten the sixth member. I hopped on and did the mission. I can't remember what job it was that we so desperately needed for that specific mission, but I can tell you that I'm glad that that sort of thing is such a rare occurrence these days.

You mean to say that 3 people stayed in the same group for 14 hours and you just happened to wake up the moment he got the last member? What are the chances of that? - Like 1 in a couple thousand trillion? At any rate, if you want to do the mission also, shouldn't you help look for members too and not leave it up to the leader and then complain later on how long it took to get the mission started? Wait, I forgot who I'm talking to; Nevermind.

[Rustic]

Dynamis used to last way too long and require too much scheduling. Other than that and the shitty drop rates, I found it to be a fun and rewarding event. The AF quests had some cool story lines and stuff, but I didn't enjoy the excessive amount of running around to places that were intentionally made annoying to travel to / through. I'd say I felt pretty well rewarded when I finished my first set of af. When I went to start on a set for my next job, it didn't feel nearly as rewarding. I feel like they could have made the finding of chests portion into a one time thing that didn't have to be repeated for subsequent jobs. I'd say it's sort of a wash honestly.

And they've adjusted Dynamis to a once-a-day thing, and in addition, it's even soloable to an extent. Mind you, they've also managed to successfully cut out the massive travel time part as of this patch with the proto-waypoint quest. Given how much this will cut out of to-and-froing about on running around, does that change your opinions?

That only sounds crazy because of how long it used to take to level jobs. In reality it's stupid for them to keep adding jobs if no one has time to level them. Which also means that they can't really build content around those jobs unless they find a way to get more people to use them (faster leveling process). Besides, who want to pay a company to design stuff that is too inaccessible for them to ever use? If there are going to be 22 jobs, then I want to use them all at some point.

Which, incidentally puts you in a rare spot. Most games, people gravitate towards what we'd consider just specific jobs- some people like playing support, others like being tanks/melee DD, still others prefer being the backline bombadiers raining down bullets, bolts, and elemental blasts. I'm suggesting about 1-2 months per job if you wanted to level them up, rather than 1-2 days (as soon as you have Abyssea access and can sit there going 30-99 without breathing heavy). Again, I don't want jobs to be inaccessible- but I do want there to actually be a low-mid-high-end process of advancement that actually involves going out there and playing.

They did that to force people to level more jobs.

And then made a system in which leveling said extra jobs is a trivial process. Counterproductive, you think?

Need gear from X event? Level X job ==>
Now you need gear from Y event to gear Y job ==>
That event requires Z job ==>
Now you must level Z job to gear job Y ==>
During the course of all this you acquire extra gear for R job so you decide to level that too

This all leads to job diversity and longer play time. It's a vicious cycle, but it's pretty brilliant if you think about it.

Mind you, I was one of those players that had a whopping -two- jobs leveled up to endgame points. RDM, and COR. While you'd think it was true...it wasn't. Now, I had plenty of jobs in the subjob (37 then, 49 now) range...but those jobs don't and never have taken the level of gear investment a 75-now-99 job does. Sure, I leveled BLM, WHM, SCH for my Red Mage. I leveled RNG to go with my Corsair. But those investments in time and gear were nothing compared to main jobs- even today, you wouldn't even go into your AF1 stuff to be properly geared going from 1-49. In Dynamis, sure I could end up with random AF2 drops as I went along...but it was like anything else. If I wasn't interested in doing it, I didn't need it, I didn't take it.

The flaw was in making jobs "junk" for any given event or "required" for same. With the level cap gone, this became a lot less painful for earlier content as it became either "Doable at X level with job A, or Y level with job (B,C,D...)." That is, content no longer became barred to anything but specific jobs because they're the only ones that can do things at that level- instead, people can engage that content by getting more powerful in another direction and fighting the fight later. Can't take out Ultima/Omega? Get some more levels and take it on again. Alexander? You get the idea. If it's not endgame content, you can train up on ordinary monsters and take it down, and that process is (at this point) beyond painless- and basically, anything up through WoTG can be done in this fashion. I'd honestly say that the same should apply for Abyssea with Adoulin. If you're finding yourself stymied on doing endgame content on it, the next expansion should allow casual players to break through that barrier with "regular" content.

I actually agree for the most part. I think it would be cool if they made it so that some zones had books and people could burn like they do now, while other zones had no books, but offered far higher exp per kill, so that a traditional group of 6 could exp outside just as fast as an abbysea burn group does inside (or at least close to that). I doubt that many people would choose it over abbysea, but it might make a few nostalgic cats happy. I think 2 weeks per job should be tops though. Even at that speed, we're still talking about almost 6+ months of just straight leveling for people that want to take all the jobs to cap.

Two weeks is basically saying "Just give me a level in every job as soon as I get it in any one of them.". Double that. Make it a month of hardcore leveling if you want that job 1-99, two months if you take it easy. Getting a job to 49? Sure, quick and relatively easy for all those subjobs you want. 50-99 should actually take more effort- that's someone who's leveling a job to the top.

And honestly, S-E should have learned it's lesson when we started going "colibris or GTFO" with ToAU- one zone shouldn't be superior exp over another, and FoV gave them the tuning tools for it. Not Abyssea, not nothing.

I would agree with you, except that I think they would make something far worse if they did. I just don't like the idea of changing things in a way that will make people feel like they missed the boat.

Once upon a time, HNM's were something fought over for spawns and controlled by RMTs who used their access to easy power to get a virtual lock on the game and it's economy. We changed that. Now we have a system by which RMT are getting their grasp once again on the economy- via selling powerleveling instead. One chunk of the RMT engine was knocked out when blinkers got nerfed. Now we need to take out the other one- the powerleveling engine that channels buckets of the gil in the economy into the hands of RMTs who just have a 24/7 PL team good to go by the hour, times up to sixteen, with a multiboxed healer keeping the whole thing rolling along while you sleep and dream of 9's. Congratulations, you have experienced the Cirno method of "I'm the Strongest!".



Behold, the Fairy of 9_9 for Final Fantasy 11

In effect, the way exp is gained is not only damaging the whole cycle of people leveling jobs, but it's acidic to the economy as well. Prior to this, since it was pay cleave party -> Take It Easy -> enjoy L99 -> turn results of leech mode into Gil, we turned both the exp and the money pumps up to maximum, feeding plenty of cash into the system. Heck, the RMTs doing all the work even got payola in the process, reducing gil-farming to the most mindless level ever.

Now we're in a habit of looking towards those pay-to-play alliances as the method of choice. Just like HNM access of old, now it's "Hey, those guys are always ready to make my leveling experience a breeze, and the rates are what I'm used to, so..."...as you hand the money straight into the nice bot-teams hands, who in turn launder it through AH purchases (just like the old days, oopsie I paid 1,000,000 for that 1,000 Gil AH item nobody else buys, clumsy me!) and into accounts ripe and ready to both manipulate the economy into higher levels of inflation and feed your need for Gil in exchange for your dollar bills or currency-of-choice (credit cards accepted). The flow of Gil may be lower into the system, but we're still channeling it into the hands of RMT-friendly characters.

Not a terrible idea. I'm not gonna lie though. I'm fine with how abyssea leveling works. I don't mind having lot's of people with lot's of jobs leveled. I don't miss the days of playing red mage at every event because we already had a mandau thief in the shell and I didn't want to spend 9 months leveling Samurai. Or spending hours shouting for a bard so that I could merit for 30 minutes before he D/Cs. I was especially thankful for it when SE decided to block me from paying the bill on my 8 year old JP account because I live in NA thus forcing me to turn my mule into my main and reroll another mule.

And here's the fun part. If S-E poured napalm on the Abyssea zone servers and reduced them to slag, we'd STILL never see those days again. The other changes S-E put into the system would have resulted in a much, much more gentle hill to climb from 1-99 vs. even what ToAU players had from 1-75, thanks to FoV. Not only that, if Abyssea wasn't the exp fountain it is, S-E could literally tweak XP gain by zone simply by dropping training pages into the appropriate zone books. It would be that simple.

1) Pick EP-level monster X job can take down without going insane.
2) Put in page that involves ganking said monster.
3) Watch players zip in and level solo at precisely the speed S-E desired.
4) Profit.

Want monsters for parties to kill? Same deal, only you're looking at even-match+ targets instead for however and whenever you want those parties there. Monsters are tougher? Better reward for training so page + party = good exp, regardless of where said party is taking out monsters. A more simple way to get people to go from zone to zone could not have been put in short of applying a nose ring everyone would have to wear when playing FFXI that would tug them painfully until they zoned where you wanted them to go next.

Funny story. When I was attempting to finish CoP, I actually joined a group with a guy that was shouting at about 7:00pm one night. I sat and watched Netflix and drank beer while he shouted for the next several hours. I passed out in my chair and woke up about 2:00am. I looked and we still only had 3 people. I went to bed and woke up about 9:00am the next day. The guy had just gotten the sixth member. I hopped on and did the mission. I can't remember what job it was that we so desperately needed for that specific mission, but I can tell you that I'm glad that that sort of thing is such a rare occurrence these days.

See above. Caps are what caused this issue- by the point we hit ToAU, people should have been able to go into Assault, gear up, and get through their CoP missions without agonizing barriers built out of "Your level has been reduced to 40" and tightly pigeonholing the battles to specific jobs or GTFO. When content is no longer the newest, the newest should hold the method by which players who are behind can catch up to the current state of affairs.

The problem with slowing down exp, is that most people find collecting gear on high level jobs through various different types of events more fun / rewarding than just leveling a job (not all people, but most) and by limiting the speed with which people can level jobs, you limit the amount of gear collecting they can / will do.

Except that the reason people are going "Glee! High level gear collect time, go go go" is because they get no use out of lower level gear whatsoever now. What you're stating is untrue- if it was, I wouldn't have seen people making a killing selling white-box bits or NM-related bit of gear they came across- because being in best gear, regardless of level was an addictive feeling. Ask every player that had an Emperor/Empress hairpin if it wasn't. Gear was treasured because it was rare, potent and useful- and because it was more powerful than average, it was useful longer. Now, when you might only wear a piece of gear for a day on the way up no matter how good it is, why bother?

The reason people are going towards high level gear is because thanks to the current system of advancement, it's all that matters- you aren't low level long enough to feel that anything save the budget basics matter. If that. And again, this does a number on the effective content of FFXI- who cares about content that rewards you with stuff you find meaningless in the long run? That helps to indeed effectively reduce the game to "collect gear on high level job, repeat", and that in turn massively reduces player lifespan and increases the burnout rate for good measure. This, too damages FFXI.

Narrowing the game to 99 is indeed effectively making the game all about "9"'s. A bad thing.

[Arcon]

Narrowing the game to 99 is indeed effectively making the game all about "9"'s. A bad thing.

No .

[Rustic]

No.

Okay, then. Why do we have level 1-98 then at this point? Explain.