Thank you Devs

[Creelo]

Finally! A thread praising SoA content!!

Personally, I feel that Delve should be the only content truly praised though. Regular Reives were fine and could be lots of fun to do low-man. Wildskeeper reives were exciting too at first, but they quickly grew into tiresome timesinks with poor rewards (I know some people who are 0/15+ on the Chocaliztli Mask, which is totally ridiculous considering the avg fight times). I also feel the Wildskeeper reives were poorly mapped out for the future since less and less people are going to need their clears or want to do them, and even if people did want to do them, colonization rates have dropped tremendously low, placing even greater odds against the few people who do need them.

Skirmish was simply phased out too quickly by Delve to be truly worthwhile. Had building simulacrum been easier like it is now rather than when Skirmish was implemented, then Skirmish would have been received better. Although probably not that much better because random augments are still just bullshit. I honestly don't know if I can look forward to doing Skirmish II because of the random augment system.

Then finally we have Delve, which easily has been FFXI's best event since probably... ever? Delve provided amazing rewards for all jobs, and you could choose your own augment paths for your armor and weapons. I do think they should've added 1-2 more augment paths to provide more flexibility (Manibozho set not having a Acc/Dex path was rather unfortunate for some pieces), but the rewards were still spread out wonderfully so that inexperienced players and groups could still receive awesome rewards (non-Mega Boss equipment, essentially) along with the veterans (non-Mega Boss equip and then eventually Mega Boss equip). The difficulty for Delve was set well too imo. Strategies, along with party coordination, needed to be discovered and understood to really gain an upper-hand in Delve battles. And while 5NM+Mega Boss runs can be done now by some groups, you can still lessen this difficulty through removing up to 3 NMs with their respective beads. I also thought it was a nice touch that they gave players the option to "eat" shards/beads for plasm, providing players with an option of solo farming shards. Obviously not as good as a plasm farm but it still exists.

So although I have honestly enjoyed SoA so far, I would say only Delve was the one event that was truly successful. Some may argue and complain about it phasing out DD REMs, which I understand. But for me, Delve really shook up FFXI and gave it a refreshing jolt. I also like how for SoA they've gone with this theme of players stepping up their game to complete its content. To me it comes off like a lot of sub-par players are complaining about not being able to complete all of SoA's content. A lot of these players I feel are also the ones complaining about their lvl 85-90 Empyrean weapons being easily outclassed. The fact that certain groups are able to clear Delve Mega Bosses while pick-up/small/underskilled groups can't I think has really exacerbated the already bad rift between the good and bad FFXI players.

Idk, I'm just sick of some players complaining about how they can't complete new content without ever having completed previous non-SoA content, or not being content with the generic Delve weapons/armor (as opposed to Mega boss equip). Then they complain about how Delve Mega Bosses require an alliance to be successful. Well, no shit. Then they never even try to network themselves or their smaller groups with other groups to team up against this content.

Clearing Delve Mega Bosses has easily been some of the most exciting content our shell has ever done. Personally, I'd rather they skip Skirmish II and go straight to Delve II, but w/e. Sorry for the looooooooooooong post lol, but yes, thank you Devs for Delve.

[Alhanelem]

Oh, it's fun... just something needs to be done to ease the curve towards participating in it. Colonization went to hell in a handbasket so getting bayld isn't as easy as it used to be and the Naakuals (sp) aren't done at all, so that leaves only skirmish weapons, which aren't really good enough to bridge the gap to delve. Without at least a wildskeeper reive weapon, you have a snowball's chance in hell of getting into a Delve NM fight unless you go as support, but then you have to compete with all the other people in the same boat to get into the runs.

Don't get me wrong, the content IS fun- it's just not accessible at all unless you were already on the bleeding edge when it came out. I like the new monsters, the systemic design of delve itself is good, once you get your foot in the door you can get what you want without too much stress. So I like it, but it needs tweaking- I know some adjustments are on the way, but time will tell if they accomplish the results I'm looking for.

[petezag]

Wow a thread of newbies who are happy with the new content that are paid by the developers. There is a reason why ppl are leaving in droves. IT's because all the new content is too easy and sucks balls!!! Point, case, match

[Demon6324236]

Really, the ease of the content is the reason you think people are leaving?

[petezag]

Being able to get a weapon in 3 hours that severely outclasses anything else in the game, or have crated weapons you can buy when people have done all their work for their past weapons including trial of the magian weapons is a slap in the face. We don't really give a damn that you decided to outclass them as much as to get these weapons takes you 2-3 hours max. It shouldn't have happened and the only reason it did is because the the guy does not understand the game like Tanaka did. Tanaka never had 10k+ jp's quit in a week because of his actions. Yes some were called retarded, but they are not half as retarded as this expansion which shy don't we just call it WoW SE style :P

[Tsukino_Kaji]

Yeah, I'd like to see you pull down 30k plasm in 3 runs without any bosses.

That aside, just because soemthing takes longer or costs more money dose not make any intitled to anything more.

[Demon6324236]

I think the reason why people are leaving is not because the content is to easy, its just that the rewards are much to powerful and the fact that their hard work went to waste anyways. If they outdated RME weapons but it took Mythic like proportions of work to make an Adoulin weapon on par with Boss weapons we would still be complaining about it because the RME weapons we made and took to 99 are still nothing now, all of the time and gil put in is nothing now. The reaction would be smaller, that's true, but in the end it would happen still I think. I don't know, saying its the difficulty just doesn't seem right to me, cause it seems just as hard or harder than what I have seen from any other content really, I would say its more or less just the rewards themselves that are the real cause of the issue.

[Demon6324236]

Yeah, I'd like to see you pull down 30k plasm in 3 runs without any bosses.

4 runs, if you exclude the gather times, since 45 minutes times 4 = 3 hours. I see 7.5k runs fairly often so not to unreasonable tbh.

That aside, just because soemthing takes longer or costs more money dose not make any intitled to anything more.

So if you take 30 hours worth of Abyssea time to make a level 90 Emp you do not feel as though it should be better than half of the damage a Delve weapon you can get in 3 hours, or lets be fair, say 6 hours to count run times and NM win, or if you count failures as well, 10 hours. I myself think the weapon that takes at least 3 times as long should be better, it seems messed up for it to be otherwise. The same thing goes with Relics and Mythics, but they take much longer, and I was only talking about a 90 Emp. Depending on the weapon it can take longer or shorter. I can not say there is ever a perfect balance here but I truly think that RME weapons being this badly screwed is stupid, because at this point you would have to be an idiot to make one of the damage weapons and seriously think its worth using if you have access to a Delve weapon. Why should these weapons, and their WSs, be nothing but trophies? Even if they let us learn the WS, yay, still a trophy weapon. That is all going by the idea that they wouldn't update the weapons though, which they are, so pointless conjecture I suppose.

[svengalis]

Yeah, I'd like to see you pull down 30k plasm in 3 runs without any bosses.

That aside, just because soemthing takes longer or costs more money dose not make any intitled to anything more.

I hate to burst your bubble but him and his buddies do 10k plasma runs on a regular on our server...

[Tsukino_Kaji]

4 runs, if you exclude the gather times, since 45 minutes times 4 = 3 hours. I see 7.5k runs fairly often so not to unreasonable tbh.

I am aware of what your calculations was, gather times acannot be excluded as it is part of the process.

So if you take 30 hours worth of Abyssea time to make a level 90 Emp you do not feel as though it should be better than half of the damage a Delve weapon you can get in 3 hours, or lets be fair, say 6 hours to count run times and NM win, or if you count failures as well, 10 hours. I myself think the weapon that takes at least 3 times as long should be better, it seems messed up for it to be otherwise. The same thing goes with Relics and Mythics, but they take much longer, and I was only talking about a 90 Emp. Depending on the weapon it can take longer or shorter. I can not say there is ever a perfect balance here but I truly think that RME weapons being this badly screwed is stupid, because at this point you would have to be an idiot to make one of the damage weapons and seriously think its worth using if you have access to a Delve weapon. Why should these weapons, and their WSs, be nothing but trophies? Even if they let us learn the WS, yay, still a trophy weapon. That is all going by the idea that they wouldn't update the weapons though, which they are, so pointless conjecture I suppose.

By the same logic, the earrings you get from ZM should have +10-30 stats on them because of how long it takes you to finish the story line. Why shouldn't my moonshade earring give regain 5 because of how much effort it takes? You are simply feelign self intitled because you put some effort into something.