Quote Originally Posted by Kincard View Post
I'm noticing that you have a bad habit of confusing one group of players with another group of players. The group of players that leave their characters at rank 6 and the group of players that are apparently so casual that can't complete Skirmish and somehow were able to clear the story missions that basically require groups to be able to complete are not the same people by your own admission. Why are you confusing these two groups?
Because you're trying to argue they're the same group of people. I'm trying to point out the absurdity of your claim that a player that is able to figure out which end of their weapon to hold in a Skirmish has any real reason to not reach rank 7+ other than "don't want to." Any level 99 job, any nation, any gear, can reach rank 7 without joining a single party, ever.

You seem to be forgetting that your initial complaint is some nonsense about how people that collect gear and people that enjoy the story don't have an overlap, when in fact there's lots and lots of players (I'd dare say the majority of them) that enjoy both.
My argument is that the overlap isn't significant. 1/6 of the level 99 characters are showing the most blatant (but not the only possible) evidence of caring about endgame exclusively. All you've offered is attempts to discredit this with suggestions of highly implausible scenarios.

You go on to say that because of this the AF should not be designed with ilevel105 in mind because the new quests won't please anyone.
No, I'm quite sure that the people who obtain the rewards of the level 99 quests will be pleased with the equipment (depending on stats) and/or the challenge to obtain that equipment. But the people who finish this content are more likely (not all, but more likely) to be the kinds of people who skip storyline content, which has historically been a major part of Artifact quests (and nowadays about the only reason to pick up the quests for many jobs). They got their fight and their gear, they don't care one way or the other if they were shown Adoulin backstory in the process, or simply had a Magian Moogle drop a star on their head.

The players who are not up to completing a level 99 challenge (for any reason) are most likely not paying $12.95/mo because they love beating their head against a brick wall; the most likely reason for them to still be interested in FFXI is collecting bits of lore, making them the ones most likely to be interested in the storyline of these JSE quests. But because they're not up to the task of completing the challenge (for any reason), this bit of lore will be inaccessible to them, just as the storyline around building a Mythic weapon is out of reach for most of us.

I counter by saying that not only is ilevel105 actually a pretty low difficulty setting
"Pretty low" is a relative qualifier that gets tossed around often in these forums. For example, go over to the PLD forums and you'll see plenty of people posting "Anybody can get an Aegis or an Ochain," and then of course start tacking on plenty of caveats like "If they level BST first" or "If they have a decent group supporting them" or any number of such backpedals, where "anybody" stops actually meaning anybody. So can anybody do Skirmish, even if they have no gear higher than level 75 (e.g. NQ relic armor)?

(Your counter of "they suck at game design anyway" is a conversation ender because you can apply that even if the quest was designed for a far lower level- the BLU AF3 Soulflayer was ridiculously difficult at the 75 cap for example, very few 75s could solo that thing),
Today, if you reach 99 in job X, you can solo your Artifact quests as job X, full stop. WAR99 with an Onion Sword, DRK99 with a Chaosbringer, whatever. This is because you are level 99 doing level ~60 content. But I doubt a RUN99 rockin' a Sowilo Claymore will get very far in the level 99 content he'll be expected to face. The threat of making Artifact content level 99 for these new jobs is a step backwards to the days of not being able to solo Artifact quests.

This is S-E saying that RUN and GEO are endgame-only jobs. If you're a bit behind the curve (for any reason), you can only get the full story for 20 out of 22 jobs. Abyssea marked a separation between access to story and the need for skill/gear. This news about the new jobs marks a reversal.