Alliance based content

[saevel]

Agreed. Monster statistics, reward quantity and drop rate should simply be on a sliding scale with how many people you choose to bring to that content.

Unfortunately that's not how the difficulty works on Delve. NM's have less HP but their other stats remain the same, they still hit just as hard and require just as much attack / acc to hit cap. This results in 6 man being much harder then 18 man. In a 18 member run you can bring 2 NQ BRD's which are easy to find and require no time consuming gear along with 2 COR's. You rotate them for four songs and four rolls on each of your six DD's. You'll be using Dia III and / or Geo debuffs to compensate for the NQ BRD's with an extra slot or two to spare. Go to six man and now your down to three DD's each receiving two songs (assuming WHM BRD SCH) if you bring one of those same NQ BRD's. You won't be having as many debuffs and your stunner won't have another person to share recast timers with. This results in your damage being cut by far more then the HP of the NM's and you end up having to be really picky who you bring, only top end people who already have all the gear that drops. The MNK's your bringing to Tojil better already have the knuckles that drop from Tojil, and any other DD's your bring also need the best respective weapons.

That is something lots of people don't realize and why so many are failing on the six man. If you have a bunch of folks that need the KI, put together a 18 man run and win / farm plasm that way. A six man group can take one weak member and only if they have COR leveled.

[Mefuki]

This is one are that SE is really struggling with, they can't seem to find a balance with accessibility and are really afraid of allowing gear from hard event A to become accessibly through easy event B at a much slower rate.

...you end up having to be really picky who you bring, only top end people who already have all the gear that drops. The MNK's your bringing to Tojil better already have the knuckles that drop from Tojil, and any other DD's your bring also need the best respective weapons.

Indeed, both major problems. SE seemed to get the former correct with revamped AF/Relic. Collecting Chapters in these different ways was a really great idea. I'm totally OK with the idea of taking much longer then people with connections. So long as I can actually make progress and I'm not just told, "Oh, you don't know X person or Y people? Well, you can't do it". Because the issue here isn't that I don't want to put in effort (I slowly grinded gil for 2 months everyday to get enough to buy my HMP last year), it's that I want to actually play the game: Without being told to wait 2+ hours before I can start making progress or that I'm just not allowed to have X gear because I don't really know certain people in game.

Basically, this:

The separator between "hard core" and "casual" should not be the gear that is obtainable but rather the speed at which it's obtained.

[Draylo]

Indeed, both major problems. SE seemed to get the former correct with revamped AF/Relic. Collecting Chapters in these different ways was a really great idea. I'm totally OK with the idea of taking much longer then people with connections. So long as I can actually make progress and I'm not just told, "Oh, you don't know X person or Y people? Well, you can't do it". Because the issue here isn't that I don't want to put in effort (I slowly grinded gil for 2 months everyday to get enough to buy my HMP last year), it's that I want to actually play the game: Without being told to wait 2+ hours before I can start making progress or that I'm just not allowed to have X gear because I don't really know certain people in game.

Basically, this:

I have no idea what you mean by "you don't know x or y person"? Are you trying to say that if you don't know specific people you are locked out of content? That is hardly true, you can do anything in this game lol. You just need to put forth the effort in getting the people together, which is something people like you don't do. Then you blame it on game design because you can't participate when that is your own doing. Of course you don't want to put in effort, you are the type of player holding this game back. This isn't WoW and obviously SE didn't intend it to be that, they did that with XIV.

[Camiie]

So it was announced that the new Delve will be 6-18 man and an adjustment of HP accordingly, as noted here:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...e-new-Delve-II

My question is, what incentive is there right now to have a fully functioning linkshell when there is nothing to do with them that requires it? Why would I want to have 18 people for the new Delve when it is POSSIBLE to beat it (I know it will be, or why would they have included that adjustment to do it with 6 people) when I can do it with 6 people? Why do I drag 18 people into this content when I can clear it faster with 6 people with secondary characters and not have to split the loot at all? The loot is the same regardless of players entering, what sense does this make!? If this is going to be just like the adjustment to the original delve, like was said in that post, the rewards system wont be like Divine Might. There is 0 incentive to bring an alliance.

With the implementation of item levels they had the perfect opportunity to differentiate between "Normal" and Heroic" difficulty modes or "Dungeons" (party) and "Raids" (Alliance). Yeah I'm using WoW terminology, because I can't bear to agree with you without also getting your goat, but I digress. They could have had 6-man delve drop gear in the 115-117 range and have 18-man drop all 118-120. That's probably not as big a gap as you might hope for, but it would differentiate the content without totally alienating small parties. The gear from the 6-man version would have to be of a caliber that would allow the participants to step up to the alliance version. You have to have some sort of progression between the two. I guess all that would have been too much work though.

I've seen this once before and it was with Abyssea. This caused a splinter in all linkshells and pretty much destroyed them. So then after Adoulin came out we were forced to once again gather people up to do the original Delve because it was balanced around 18 people. Then you had everyone quit for XIV and come crawling back because its boring and the people who still had a linkshell are penalized for it.

In my case I was in a shell where the leadership decided they would just 3-man everything for themselves and left the rest of us to our own devices with a lot of excuses. The ties of friendship and trust that were forged through the previous 18-man only content proved to be extremely weak, so I guess you do have to force people to tolerate each other. God forbid that people would be social and helpful in an MMO without being forced to do so. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” But it is what it is I suppose.

[Camiie]

WKRs are free-for-all world bosses. Technically it's group content, but there's no coordination or teamwork except by happenstance. There are many people in the same place with the same purpose, but all acting individually. That's not the same sort of content Delve is. Delve involves planning and communication. Comparing WKR to Delve is like comparing rush hour pedestrians to a marching band in a parade.

[FaeQueenCory]

It's a LOT different on Odin than it is on Fenrir it seems.
Because there are no GoV exp parties anymore.
And ever since Trust hit, from 1-75 had been 99.999% solo.
At least on Odin.

It's actually the other way around from my experiences:
1-75 solo
99 party randomly like before Trust.
(I don't abyburn because I don't want to have to spend months ungimping my lv30 stats at 99.)

So your argument of "well it's this way for me" just doesn't really hold water.
Now, if you then support your argument with "this is what I see on SERVER" then you have some credence...
And on Odin, there are no GoV parties anymore. You're more likely to find a Valkrum Dune exp party.
On Odin it's Trust-solo until whenever you want to go to abyssea.
There's actually not a whole lot of "sorry I'm using Trusts" on Odin at 99... Cause the Trusts kinda suck compared to real people... So I see a lot more of people dumping Trusts to party at 99... And I see a lot more "no rather solo" at <99.

Maybe it's different on Fenrir, but partying before 99 is dead on Odin.

And I've never argued that this makes FFXI a solo oriented game....
But it DOES make it a MORE solo oriented game.
(Do people just no comprehend the meaning or comparatives? Jesus Christ... More =/= absolute)
If Trusts worked like Fellows, then everything would be normal.
But with the Trust function demanding solo play to be used, that gives incentive to play solo, thus making the game's experience MORE solo-oriented.

Making Trusts solo only was fine until the bugs for partying were worked out... But to always have it that way is just stupid.
Making them partyable allows for a person to play solo if they wish, and for random people to party together and not lose anything.
In other words: everyone benefits from such a change 100%.

[Selindrile]

There are still GoV parties here, reguardless, even if there actually are none on your server anymore, you can't argue that it's not still more efficient to GoV rather than solo with trust at least by the way the system works.

And that seems very odd to me that at 99 people are more willing to party, because while yes, players are stronger than trusts, for raw exp, other players don't make up the lower percentage of exp per kill they remove for grouping, as I said, if there were locations that were more optimal for grouping, this wouldn't be the case, but it's the way it is at the moment.

Also, I can assure you if you factored in Abyssea, I'm sure 1-75 is not 99.99999% solo for most people, so your argument of "well it's this way for me" just doesn't really hold water.

Also, I dunno about you but most people have the capability of levelling 30-99 in abyssea and then capping skills well before they could've levelled from 30-99 outside of abyssea while capping their skills but I'll cede that capping skills while already at 99 is a more boring endeavor, to each their own.

?_?
I don't understand your last statement...
How does favoring single player gameplay (at least from 1-99) not make something "solo-oriented"?
Cause.... That's kinda the definition... Of those words...

This sounds like an absolute, there is no use of the word more or anything comparative.

"And I've never argued that this makes FFXI a solo oriented game....
(Do people just no comprehend the meaning or comparatives? Jesus Christ... More =/= absolute)

My argument was comparative through and through, it sounded as though yours was not.

With the existance of GoV and Abyssea, FFXI as a system itself does not favor or reward single player gameplay over multiplayer for experience, though some players, like yourself eschew these options. And it never really has been terribly solo oriented for gear.

All that said, I do agree we should be able to use trust in a group, and also think that group exp penalty should be lessened to encourage grouping, I just took issue with the exact things you said.

[AppropriateName5786]

My question is, what incentive is there right now to have a fully functioning linkshell when there is nothing to do with them that requires it? Why would I want to have 18 people for the new Delve when it is POSSIBLE to beat it (I know it will be, or why would they have included that adjustment to do it with 6 people) when I can do it with 6 people? Why do I drag 18 people into this content when I can clear it faster with 6 people with secondary characters and not have to split the loot at all? The loot is the same regardless of players entering, what sense does this make!? If this is going to be just like the adjustment to the original delve, like was said in that post, the rewards system wont be like Divine Might. There is 0 incentive to bring an alliance.

The answer to all of the above questions is clearly, "No one knows! Why the heck ARE you doing that to yourself?" These are all leading questions and hardly deserve a serious response from the development team. Besides, a linkshell with only six people in it is fully functioning. I'm not sure how you came up with the strange idea that only a linkshell with 18 or more members is "fully functional."

I've seen this once before and it was with Abyssea. This caused a splinter in all linkshells and pretty much destroyed them. So then after Adoulin came out we were forced to once again gather people up to do the original Delve because it was balanced around 18 people. Then you had everyone quit for XIV and come crawling back because its boring and the people who still had a linkshell are penalized for it.

The fact that linkshells broke up so readily was a testament to how much people hated being in them. After all, if you didn't have to deal with 17 a--holes to accomplish something fun and worthwhile, why would you force yourself to? There was a general reluctance to get back into large linkshells when Delve was released, but it had to be done to make things easier. As someone who plays several highly desired support jobs I've seen my fair share of endgame linkshells. I don't think I'm the only one who has noticed that all of the big ones are, without exception, really just a loose collection of small cliques who would break away in the blink of an eye if alliance content didn't give the best rewards anymore.

My question is, will there ever be an incentive to do alliance based content that justifies having more than 6 people in our linkshells? Everything in this entire game can be 6 manned aside from VD Divine might. The new battles they have planned will probably all be 6 man as the originals were (Shadow Lord etc.) One event in the ENTIRE game that requires more than 6 people. This is an MMO?

What part of an MMO says that you have to play with 17 others to get anything done? If you have more than 6 friends in the game and you play with them often, isn't that enough "justification" to have more than 6 people in your linkshell? Isn't the ability to interact with everyone on your server, group up with anyone, participate in WKRs with anyone, quest with your friends/anyone, and compete for mobs/NMs with everyone what defines an MMO and what single-player games lack?

I personally hope they never make content as dead-on-arrival as Legion again.

[Draylo]

The answer to all of the above questions is clearly, "No one knows! Why the heck ARE you doing that to yourself?" These are all leading questions and hardly deserve a serious response from the development team. Besides, a linkshell with only six people in it is fully functioning. I'm not sure how you came up with the strange idea that only a linkshell with 18 or more members is "fully functional."



The fact that linkshells broke up so readily was a testament to how much people hated being in them. After all, if you didn't have to deal with 17 a--holes to accomplish something fun and worthwhile, why would you force yourself to? There was a general reluctance to get back into large linkshells when Delve was released, but it had to be done to make things easier. As someone who plays several highly desired support jobs I've seen my fair share of endgame linkshells. I don't think I'm the only one who has noticed that all of the big ones are, without exception, really just a loose collection of small cliques who would break away in the blink of an eye if alliance content didn't give the best rewards anymore.



What part of an MMO says that you have to play with 17 others to get anything done? If you have more than 6 friends in the game and you play with them often, isn't that enough "justification" to have more than 6 people in your linkshell? Isn't the ability to interact with everyone on your server, group up with anyone, participate in WKRs with anyone, quest with your friends/anyone, and compete for mobs/NMs with everyone what defines an MMO and what single-player games lack?

I personally hope they never make content as dead-on-arrival as Legion again.

I think you misread my post. I enjoy leading an LS with more than 6 people. The battles that are designed around 18 members are allowed to be more diverse and difficult than 6 man, that is a fact. We all don't live in fairytale land, 18 people aren't all going to get along with each other 24/7. People hate work or having to share, its human nature. Does that mean we should dumb all content down so we can do it with our trust npcs? Why is it so hard to understand some people like content that is difficult and requires an alliance which allows for more complex battles? My question was, is there a point to continuing an LS or can we just stick with 6~9 people for future events. They keep going back and forth between the two and it sucks.

[Draylo]

You don't need four song bard to do current content. They have bards with three songs with the new one hour that is more than efficient. You can keep three songs up full time with proper application. There isn't anything hard about stunning on SCH, so I'm not sure why that is hard to get. You don't need gear from Delve to do Delve, there are reforged relic and AF that is more than adequate. You have to look for more people instead of saying "Oh guess I'm not doing that today." I used to shout all the time back in the day before I started to lead my own LS and do things I want after hard effort. I agree with you, 6~18 man Delve is fine for people who are incapable of putting forth effort, I stated that in my OP even though it sucks since they design the content with that in mind. What I am not fine with is having the rewards be the EXACT SAME. It should slide just like you said.