Possible upgrades to older hard-to-obtain gear?

[OmnysValefor]

Which is an easy conclusion. You are ignoring how technology has advanced in the past 11 years. How competition between gaming industry is now struggling with Smart phone companies. How a portion of FFXI players are still playing on older consoles such as PS2. How much time and money it would cost to recode FFXI down to the last expansion.

How can you talk about technology advancing in the past 11 years and simultaneously support that they keep themselves tied to the PS2?

For the upteenth time, PS2 limitations did not cause the lack of foresight that created 130 dmg swords or 240+ damage 2h weapons. No imaginable amount of old code required Adoulin to go like this.

[Daemon]

How can you talk about technology advancing in the past 11 years and simultaneously support that they keep themselves tied to the PS2?

For the upteenth time, PS2 limitations did not cause the lack of foresite that created 130 dmg swords or 240+ damage 2h weapons. No imaginable mount of old code required Adoulin to go like this.

You are combining 2 different points. I never said PS2 limitations has anything to do with creating a 130 DMG sword or 240 damage 2H weapons.

I agreed the level difference is significant. But are you seriously going to hold a grudge of the DMG of an item? So for another 11 years do you think 130 DMG sword is meant to last?

Am I the only one who thinks such increase in DMG on a weapon and such increase in stats are being addressed to to the complaint many of us fed the Devs for several years???

What part of trading in for convenience at the cost of sacrifice are you not understanding? Unless you want to stay depending on 18 man alliances to do everything, I see the cost of sacrificing old weapons for the new, old gear for the new gear allows us to be much more low man friendly if not solo friendly.

And in the future carry less gear saving more inventory space.

They already said they are going to revise REM due to so many complaints so what's the problem? It's just not that time for it to happen yet and I already believe they cannot ignore this. Too many people are upset ready to quit if this particular part of the game is not addressed.

I don't expect them to throw out a quick fix just to keep everyone happy for the moment. In fact I'm expecting them to take their time implementing REM better with thought to actually show they do care than a quick temporary fix.

Although they could just not care at all and make a quick minor adjustment only to add more insult to injury.

[Daemon]

The game is evolving everyday and that's why promises cannot be kept or thrown out into the wild. What might sound like a good idea now, 2 weeks later the progress of the player base might surpass the original idea. So if they announce REM today, 1 month later they may be worthless and need revision.

That's why I'm not holding it against them for not announcing REM.

Especially at a moment where they are constantly implementing new gear. Which is not something that will happen every update but at some point when they do stop, at least that gives time to make better observations.

It makes it harder right now because these new items being implemented change the overall power not just from 1 player but all players which after awhile will effect the overall rate in difficulty to do the current content.

Even if 20 players received 1 Nakuul weapon per day. That's 20 players making the content easier as a whole. 200 players to 2,000 players will change the difficulty of the overall content being played.

As the number become higher say 10,000 to 50,000, to 100,000 players, making an overall estimated guess becomes even much more difficult since these estimates do not conclude to just 1 server. But all servers with various amounts of people.

Whose to say an estimated guess is easy when the amount of time a person obtains a Nakuul weapon could vary at any given moment based on random chance?

Simply releasing stats on REM and waiting up to that point changes everything because how the difficulty of the overall server evolved makes it harder for them to just throw out a simple answer only for that answer to become irrelevant.

Statistics of the server and the content also is not an overnight observation. You can simply complain that they need to inform us but at any given moment certain conditions changes that answer.

Which all comes back to "Balance is not easy."

[Stompa]

The game is evolving everyday

Or devolving.

Please compare battlefields. Campaign battles ; NPC troops and Heroes that use /say with their own unique chat styles and their own unique WS, enemy troops that have names for all the units and enemy Generals that look uber and are fun to battle, mobs that arrive in waves storming across the map toward the ruined castle on the hilltop in a very atmospheric way. Lots of room to spread out and fight the enemies in groups away from the main force, so no Lag problems, and fun solo heroism moments like kiting the Bosses while you waited for more Heroes to arrive etc. And there were medals awarded with a CS that made you feel you were a brave soldier in an immersive and atmospheric storyline. Then you /check map and see every campaign battle going on around the world and warp to it, instead of standing around waiting for the rieve lump of wood to appear. This existed 5+ years ago.
Now fast forward five years to colonisation rieves where you bash the same four boring rabbits/raptors/etc. (in small, crammed and laggy space) over and over, then enjoy the thrill of hitting a lump of wood for a few minutes until the "battle" ends, where you run across the map hoping you've guessed where the next lump of wood will be, and repeat the process. And then spending the 60k+ bayld you earn from grinding those lumps of wood for whole entire Earth days, on the new and powerful Karieyh armor set [aug] which you are totally happy with and put it in your ws macro, only to be told by a friend two weeks later that this brand new armor set is now worthless junk because they just released a different colored version that has like +8 to most stats and extra haste etc. So its back to hitting those lumps of wood for you, and toss that set you just farmed.
If you seriously call the the change from campaign to rieve, which took them five years to think up, is "evolution" then <I don't have anything to give you>. I was really happy to login for campaign battles around 2008, even though I would die twenty times a day in campaign it was fun and excitement, and rieves aren't.
Gear isn't evolving either, Magian Weapons had better job specific bonuses than SoA weaps, with pet-PDT, Store TP, TP Bonus +100, things that you could use to improve your game in subtle but useful ways. SoA weaps are just Tarzan going wild with mega DMG and no finesse. Hardly evolution.

[OmnysValefor]

Incredibly sensible post. I've compared reives and campaign before, but ever with such description.

That was great.

And yeah, I was a campaign junky.

[Daemon]

Personally I'm on the same boat as you guys with a paddle in hand. I mean It had more meaning earning items so hard to obtain something that not everybody has the drive to earn like REM. you actually felt like you put effort into earning something that could last. And yes I come to FFXI for that.

The power you earned was effort seen by such an accomplish that took so much effort.

But that never addressed inventory issues, solo capabilities, and takes too long to get things done when its hard to find people to help you.

So in a way this trade off doesn't leave much room for options the way I see it.

[Daemon]

Or devolving.

Please compare battlefields. Campaign battles ; NPC troops and Heroes that use /say with their own unique chat styles and their own unique WS, enemy troops that have names for all the units and enemy Generals that look uber and are fun to battle, mobs that arrive in waves storming across the map toward the ruined castle on the hilltop in a very atmospheric way. Lots of room to spread out and fight the enemies in groups away from the main force, so no Lag problems, and fun solo heroism moments like kiting the Bosses while you waited for more Heroes to arrive etc. And there were medals awarded with a CS that made you feel you were a brave soldier in an immersive and atmospheric storyline. Then you /check map and see every campaign battle going on around the world and warp to it, instead of standing around waiting for the rieve lump of wood to appear. This existed 5+ years ago.
Now fast forward five years to colonisation rieves where you bash the same four boring rabbits/raptors/etc. (in small, crammed and laggy space) over and over, then enjoy the thrill of hitting a lump of wood for a few minutes until the "battle" ends, where you run across the map hoping you've guessed where the next lump of wood will be, and repeat the process. And then spending the 60k+ bayld you earn from grinding those lumps of wood for whole entire Earth days, on the new and powerful Karieyh armor set [aug] which you are totally happy with and put it in your ws macro, only to be told by a friend two weeks later that this brand new armor set is now worthless junk because they just released a different colored version that has like +8 to most stats and extra haste etc. So its back to hitting those lumps of wood for you, and toss that set you just farmed.
If you seriously call the the change from campaign to rieve, which took them five years to think up, is "evolution" then <I don't have anything to give you>. I was really happy to login for campaign battles around 2008, even though I would die twenty times a day in campaign it was fun and excitement, and rieves aren't.
Gear isn't evolving either, Magian Weapons had better job specific bonuses than SoA weaps, with pet-PDT, Store TP, TP Bonus +100, things that you could use to improve your game in subtle but useful ways. SoA weaps are just Tarzan going wild with mega DMG and no finesse. Hardly evolution.

Yeah I miss those days where kiting bosses were possible. When job such as RDM had its own unique abilities no other jobs could use. I miss those days where you actually spent time with people for long hours rather than a temporary quick moment to get something done. When you actually made friends and could talk for hours end getting to know people on a more personal level.

When people didnt care about items and no one was so fixated on statistics and ignore you based on snap judgments of what you have and what you don't.

A time where we could sit outside town on the grass with others and chill. Explore different areas of every map together. When you got lost or needed help, people were all around willing to walk you there.

Its fun when everyone was on the same level and when not too many others were far apart and rather than focus on playing events for items, we all played together to accomplish different missions, do stuff together. Learn the game together, leveling in areas unknown. Sometimes do silly things like dying next to each other and take snapshots in a line.

When I came back to FFXI all that was gone, a world that has died out and now doing speed runs to accomplish moderate goals.

Then of course FFXI has evolved to playing the game for items rather than play the game with each other caring about the group rather than caring about yourself and how you can hurry up and grab the cookie before the event evolves and the crowd shifts to the next area of the game.

FFXI has changed, and times have evolved and although I miss the old days. There's nothing much of that left but to ride it out the way it is now.

[Zohno]

The problem is that they scaled this vertically instead of horizontally and there is no other objective ahead.
They already released Delve and we know that it will be the top drops event. Meanwhile they are releasing Skirmish to reduce the gap between the events waiting for the last 2 Delve bosses to be added.
And that's the main issue!
Why should I waste my time with Skirmish to get equip that will get replaced right after from a Delve drop, with the same stats as the previous item, lightly boosted, plus some new ones added to it. Hell, I'll just go for the Delve drop and equip myself with Bayld gear until i get it.
They are not giving you an alternative event. Delve is not on par with Skirmish, neither for difficulty nor drops quality. Delve won't require something that you find only on Skirmish's equip to be won, and viceversa since Skirmish is doable with lower quality equip.
By Matsui idea, it's mandatory to follow a predefined track just for god knows why, because it's there. But it has no reason to be there and it's boring. Simply, painfully, boring.

Before we had:
1. levelling in gusgen up to 30
2. levelling in abyssea up to 99
3. build your emp equip
4. REMs, VW, NNI, Salvage, Legion and ya, Skirmish when was worth it

Now you can replace 3. and up with:
3. AFK in Reive to buy Bayld gear
4. Reive, Delve

Have fun.

[Daemon]

I just think making such powerful items easy to obtain so the majority can grasp hold of them is like a quick fix for a junkie. The thing about making things like REM separated everyone in a controlled way. What do I mean?

People at end game with nothing else to do or players who are at the level or moment of the game had such difficult objectives to do on their own.

Which drove attention of others not on the same level to do other parts of the game.

But since Voidwatch to SoA the direction is forcing players to step all over and kill each other over who has a spot to play events to get these items. Which making these events easy seem to draw too much focus on these events than everyone being open to doing stuff that's moderate to the level of the player.

Long quests like REM separated serious players from everyone else.

This is not about elitism by no means. It just had a more sense of control over who's ready to earn certain items over others.

It took gear to earn gear making all content relevant. Now it barely takes effort to earn certain gear to make all other gear irrelevant in order to go for higher gear that requires less effort.

Which is speeding up the gameplay too fast. In a way I think its a lazy approach or a desperate one to keep people interested.

[OmnysValefor]

For the record, we don't know whether new skirmish augments that have been shown are best, worst, or average.

Even still, some of the new skirmish pieces are very attractive to delved out players. I'm not a samurai, but I know every sam I know is drooling over the new gloves.

New Delve's armor will be higher item level, but there may not be plate hands, or it might not have store tp, or haste, or whatever and may not be ideal in sets.

The new delve stuff is also very attractive to paladins in DT sets.

Also, all of it seems to have -DT as augments making it very attractive hybrid gear. If SE releases this tier properly, new skirmish may have plenty of life.