Bringing back the party

[Mikarara]

Mr. Matsui, we need to talk.

There have been quite a few grumblings since Adoulin has been released. Some people because it wasn't what they thought it'd be, others because they felt it has somehow robbed or invalidated them do to certain aspects. But lets talk about the real underlying problem. Adoulin was created to bring back the party. This in itself is a commendable endeavor. FFXI is at its heart about adventure and the people you share it with in those distant worlds. What seems to have gotten lost in the flurry of new content and the other project SE has been working out it seems, however, is the very target its been trying to support. I am talking about low-man parties.

Lowman content has been lacking not just in reives, but the older party content that was intended for the groups Adoulin intended to promote, has equally fallen to the way side. Great NM's that used to be camped by bigger groups has fallen by the way side for the lack of accessibility such as the Sandworm (which leads to equally great content) and various Voidwalkers. No one wants you to make these fights really easy for larger groups, to make this content relevant to low man teams. That not only makes things fairly boring for larger groups, but it goes against the very group dynamic that we want revived.

I know things are busy and I honestly don't expect these things to be fixed immediately, but what needs to happen is pretty simple for some of the older content and slightly more intricate:

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1. There is so much good battle content that is currently hiding behind long spawn times, like Sandworm and Voidwalkers. Lets lower the spawn times so smaller groups can actually get a shot at these awesome battles.
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2. Reives need to be made so that it allows all players to progress without completely winning the fight, and have enemies respond more aggressively as the damage done to the target increases (enemies spawn every X minutes but spawn depending on current HP of Lair, etc).
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The difficulty of completing Reives limits single parties and smaller groups of friends who want to move through content together, without necessarily having the absolute best gear or a large group to team up with every time. By changing the difficulty so that it starts lower, and ramps up over time, you will allow players to receive credit for what they ARE able to accomplish with their party of friends, while still continuing to challenge a group of any size or power at the higher end, and rewarding players for forming larger alliances as intended by rewarding them for managing more of the event. At the same time, the content will remain extremely difficult to solo, simply because you would not get far enough in to collect meaningful reward.

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3. We also need a system where certain items from completing Lair Reives are granted, other than Bayld. Given the fact that it is quite possible for members of the same group to get uneven rewards for Reives, groups of friends are limited in terms of their ability to advance in the content if these reward rates are consistent by role. A group of friends will have to wait for all of their members to be able to afford to advance to a Wildskeeper Reive, despite the fact that some others may earn sufficient Bayld several times over! By creating some drop items that are able to help players afford to enter Wildskeeper Reives sooner, you will allow these smaller groups to drop them to their less fortunate members, enabling the group as a whole to advance sooner and more easily, without having to waste time repeating the same Reives continuously simply because one member has been getting low rewards.
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People definitely want a challenge. People want fun content, and both Reives and older content can definitely be a driving force to bringing parties together again, but as it is right now Adoulin and the game itself needs to get back to its intended goal of bringing back the party dynamic.