Starting to lose interest in the whole game...

[OmnysValefor]

I'd disagree completely. I ONLY go to delve because I need plasm. People can lol about aby all day long, but at least you can have fun times in aby doing retarded things because you're in godmode.

Every bit of Adoulin's content, I'd say, once I was done with it, you couldn't drag me back. I've had more exciting times farming dynamis.

[Karah]

I agree, except that there were some worthwhile pieces in Limbus II.

Enif Cosciales, with 5% haste and 8% fastcast come to mind.

Usukane +1 also has a few gems still afaik.

Edit: Adoulin is surely the biggest single gear reset in this game but there's a lot of gear that isn't obsoleted yet.

Mekira and Heka's still have their place, as well.. several pieces collectively.

I do typically write with Hyperbole, of course there is some things still worth using, the pieces of usukane+1 ares+1 mekira mainly, but as an overall, you get what I mean, without technicalities. If 99% of something is effectively outdone, I can (we can) go ahead and say 100% (even though it's not entirely true).

[kylani]

Over the last week or so, I've been playing Guild Wars 2 on the Mac side of my laptop and I get the feeling that ArenaNet got things right where S-E missed the target badly. It seems ANet's philosophy from the jump was to make the game challenging but not unforgiving. Even after only a short period of time, I got the sense that that game wasn't trying to replicate an Ironman Triathlon or some other hardcore activity that excluded a high percentage of its customers.

If they haven't already, S-E would do well to take some pointers for ArenaNet as far as designing FFXIV 2.0 updates in the future.

I played GW2 along with several others who had played FFXI. We loved it initially, but it gets old. It has nowhere new the depth of FFXI. There's no feeling of accomplishment like FFXI. Since you buy GW2 one time, it was worth it for the break, but I hope no MMO maker follows GW2's example of trivializing everything.

I do get frustrated with FFXI at times, mainly because after my friends left, I don't have the ls to do a lot of stuff unless I can solo or duo it, and as you say, the drop rates can be a pain, I hate trying to get the procs with bst, etc. There is so much to do, it's easy to get sidetracked with what I can't do instead of enjoying what I can. GW2 just dies after you hit cap unless you like to PVP, and even my friends who like PVP still left it.

[OmnysValefor]

I do typically write with Hyperbole, of course there is some things still worth using, the pieces of usukane+1 ares+1 mekira mainly, but as an overall, you get what I mean, without technicalities. If 99% of something is effectively outdone, I can (we can) go ahead and say 100% (even though it's not entirely true).

Yeah, just a pet peeve when people speak in absolutes but don't mean them^^. Not to split hairs but if you's said "Enif/etc was a massive letdown" or "regulated to macro pieces", I wouldn't have made a peep.

Limbus II showed us (me) what a complete and utter waste of time was. Not one single piece of EnifMurzim/ nor the mage set ( i dont even know the name its so bad) was even remotely worthwhile.

[Spectreman]

FFXI was always know to be an extremely punishing game towards players since its start. Abyssea was the epitome of evil. Procs that excluded many jobs from being useful and their players, 30minute stones that would require you to farm time before hand for hours to just start your damn event, bad drop rates...

FFXI devs always created content with this sort of punishment toward drops but Abyssea brought the punishment to a whole new level. So many years after its release for a group of players that got married, jobs and families to take care of. This is one of the reasons that FFXI didn't refresh its playerbase. Too much time required for too much punishment.

Of course someone will come here and say everything in abyssea is easy when he/she/it had a full linkshell working towards the same objective, but today its basically a dead zone that small groups do it for this or that specific content.


But the level of punishment is the same. So you can pretty much admit that doing Abyssea content from the perspective of a new player is impossible nowadays unless he forms a successful linkshell dedicated to this purpose. Considering the low amount of new players, the fact that many are casual to the point of hindering progression through Abyssea this just won't happen.

[Demon6324236]

Abyssea was the epitome of evil. Procs that excluded many jobs from being useful and their players, 30minute stones that would require you to farm time before hand for hours to just start your damn event, bad drop rates...

Procs were actually a reason to include most jobs, stones build up quickly and Abyssites are not to hard to get so you get extra time or stones more quickly, and drop rates are amazing on most items if you proc it and throw some TH at it, if you do not proc it then yeah, drop rates are more annoying.

FFXI devs always created content with this sort of punishment toward drops but Abyssea brought the punishment to a whole new level. So many years after its release for a group of players that got married, jobs and families to take care of. This is one of the reasons that FFXI didn't refresh its playerbase. Too much time required for too much punishment.

Seems to me the fact that all Abyssea needed for some of the best armor in the game, Emp +1/2, was a BLM, NIN, WHM, THF, and possibly WAR, would have the opposite effect, because you could go and do almost anything in Abyssea with a couple of friends. Besides that, those people you mention would be better off with the leveling speed that Abyssea brought as well, where as before it would take them much longer to get to the same level.

Of course someone will come here and say everything in abyssea is easy when he/she/it had a full linkshell working towards the same objective, but today its basically a dead zone that small groups do it for this or that specific content.

I never had a linkshell to help me, the majority of my seals were gotten in shout groups. I understand today its less popular, but with all of the people who complain about this issue you would think that there would be enough to make some seal parties and get each other their stuff. Unless people are looking at seal shouts and ignoring them because its not the seals they need, in which case, your just making it harder on other people like you.

But the level of punishment is the same. So you can pretty much admit that doing Abyssea content from the perspective of a new player is impossible nowadays unless he forms a successful linkshell dedicated to this purpose. Considering the low amount of new players, the fact that many are casual to the point of hindering progression through Abyssea this just won't happen.

You are right and wrong. Yes, its hard for a new player to do this content without assistance, or flat out harder now than ever before. No, no one has to form a linkshell to do this, a few shout groups, a static with some friends you make while leveling, or any other small group can easily be made to do this, a linkshell just for Abyssea would not get anywhere, it would get laughed at.

[Rustic]

Funny thing about Abyssea was this: If it hadn't been L30 to enter most of the (read: exp-giving-fountain-of-stupid) content, but only to start the stone-building process AND alliance-page exp hadn't become so incredibly stupid easy, by the time you'd actually be able to reasonably contribute in Abyssea (65 at worst, more like 75) the time taken would have been enough to build up a massive amount of stones.

But I'm in the "Abyssea shot the rest of the game in the foot" category here. If the earlier content hadn't been trivialized, we might now be crying so much about what we've got now.

[Edyth]

[Tamoa]

I still cannot fathom what went through the developers' brains when they introduced Delve, effectively making almost all other content obsolete.

[Babekeke]

The ONLY reason that people are losing interest now is because SE messed up with the Delve NMs not de-popping to start with.

Had this been implemented in the beginning, people might still be doing skirmish for the 'quite good' upgrades to the pre-adoulin weapons.

People would also still be spamming reives so that they could get enough Bayld to enter Wildskeeper reives, just for the weapons, rather than just doing each one once for the win.

Due to the NMs not de-popping after 20 mins initially, people endured long and drawn-out fights and got the KIs to unlock delve weapons/equipment.

This meant that they could then farm plasm until they could afford to buy a delve weapon, and delve equipment.

They then bought delve weapons/equipment and started to upgrade them.

By the time that the 20 min limit was implemented, enough people already had delve weapon to make the delve NMs easy to kill. People who had missed the bus on the drawn out fights were able to join people with delve weapons on WHM, SCH, BRD and SCH to get their KIs and then buy their own delve weapons.

Adoulin content was designed to be progressive, but they messed it up and everyone skipped the majority of the content. We currently rely on those who have got a wildskeeper reive KI to take us into fractures, because we can't be bothered to do reives to get enough bayld to spend hours trying to find enough other people who also can't be bothered to farm bayld because they don't have to, so that we can get our own KIs to enter.

Once the KI cost to enter WK reives is halved, maybe people will be more inclined to get their own KIs, so there will be more shouts and more people willing to join, for a week or so. Hopefully after this happens, there might be a few more shouts for delve plasm farming too.

The only progressive part left is that people are still doing the NMs to get KIs to unlock weapons/equipment or a chance at gear drops. They are still farming plasm to buy/upgrade gear so that they can attempt to kill the bosses.

Once a group kills a boss, they are still farming plasm so that they can buy the boss drops, which are reassuringly expensive enough to at least guarantee the content not to drop off for maybe a year.



TL; DR:

Is Adoulin content bad? No. They all have good reward:effort ratio. Reives and Skirmish good for small groups, WK reive good for large groups. Delve good for more experienced groups.

Is all Adoulin content worthwhile? No. The playerbase beat Delve before it's time, making all of the rest of the content obsolete.