Alliance based content

[Selindrile]

?_?
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...

And Camiie, you basically described the functions of the WKRs.

I also used the word "more", let me put it this way, on FFXI, when I'm doing any sort of content, I'm in a group of some type over 50% of the time.

In WoW it was probably about 30% of the time, XIV probably more like 25%, I will say there are some MMOs that are more group oriented ones though, I was probably in a group in Neverwinter over 70% of the time.

At any rate, I stand by the statement that FFXI isn't a solo-oriented MMO, the most efficient way of meriting at 99 is yes, solo with trust (And the ONLY reason that this is is because I only can store 30 merits, if I could store 500, abyssea would be the better meriting spot in an alliance, but you use so much time building up chain and lights in an alliance, it makes it less efficient when meriting for only 300k xp total, if I needed more exp, Aby parties would blow trust soloing away). But at lower levels, grouping and doing GoV pages or levelling in abyssea is still more efficient, and for gear options, group activities are almost always more efficient than solo ones.

Trust definitely made me lean towards soloing more for merits, but that's the only activity it changed, and I hope when they allow the use of Trust in groups and that they will change exp so that's no longer the case, but even with trust how it is, it's not nearly enough of a change for me to consider FFXI a "solo-oriented MMO" by any means.

[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.

[saevel]

Somebody has to play support jobs or the group won't succeed, 18man or 6man. If you don't have the time to sink into an MMO, you can't expect to be the best. You should be content with eminent gear and reforged AF, the low tier gear was created for players like you. The top end gear should be to the people who are most dedicated and are able to field the things necessary to win it.

Unfortunately MMO's don't work that way. The "high end" players don't contribute enough financially to justify keeping the servers going, it's the casual players that are actually footing the bill for the game's development. Creating content that they are, by design, locked out of is not only ethnically wrong but will eventually result in a loss of total subscriptions and money. There should never be any content / reward that is out of reach of casual players. The separator between "hard core" and "casual" should not be the gear that is obtainable but rather the speed at which it's obtained. Hard core folk will simply get the gear faster then the casual players, but the casual players should still have the chance at obtaining that gear, provided they put in the time. 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. Abyssea was the closest they got to getting it right, casual players could still get their stuff eventually, hard core folks with plenty of time and access to lots of resources would have it done much faster.

If every "hard core" player in FFXI quit tomorrow, the game could easily continue on and the developers would end up adjusting it down. If every "casual" player quit tomorrow, the game would shut down within a month. That is how little hard core players actually matter to non-competitive MMO's.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[detlef]

If every "hard core" player in FFXI quit tomorrow, the game could easily continue on and the developers would end up adjusting it down. If every "casual" player quit tomorrow, the game would shut down within a month. That is how little hard core players actually matter to non-competitive MMO's.

I don't necessarily disagree with the basic point of your post, but I want to point out a typical hard core player very likely pays for more accounts and mules and is much less likely to deactivate any account(s) on a whim. Using myself as an example, between my GF and myself we have 4 accounts with dozens of mules. I personally haven't ever deactivated for ten years.

While I agree that SE should always keep casual players in mind, losing the hardcore players (and hardcore is a subjective term) would have more of a significant impact than you imply. With that said, I'm happy with the direction and current state of the game. My only current frustrations are the end of double XP, the apparently huge time sink of job points, and Ark Angel congestion.

[Draylo]

Unfortunately MMO's don't work that way. The "high end" players don't contribute enough financially to justify keeping the servers going, it's the casual players that are actually footing the bill for the game's development. Creating content that they are, by design, locked out of is not only ethnically wrong but will eventually result in a loss of total subscriptions and money. There should never be any content / reward that is out of reach of casual players. The separator between "hard core" and "casual" should not be the gear that is obtainable but rather the speed at which it's obtained. Hard core folk will simply get the gear faster then the casual players, but the casual players should still have the chance at obtaining that gear, provided they put in the time. 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. Abyssea was the closest they got to getting it right, casual players could still get their stuff eventually, hard core folks with plenty of time and access to lots of resources would have it done much faster.

If every "hard core" player in FFXI quit tomorrow, the game could easily continue on and the developers would end up adjusting it down. If every "casual" player quit tomorrow, the game would shut down within a month. That is how little hard core players actually matter to non-competitive MMO's.

MMO's do work that way, what are you smoking? If you look at any MMO, the people who play two hours a week don't have the best gear in the game. I'm not sure how you can think otherwise, its clear as day. If you play with such little playtime, you shouldn't need to have the best gear in the game. This has been true for almost any MMO I've ever played, even FFXIV where you need ilevel gear to even enter some of the instances to do the fights. You can work towards the gear in FFXI just like the others though, even with minimal play time but it takes a lot longer. There are shouts for Delve all the time, and plenty of people who sell the wins to others where you can buy one and use the items mobs drop in the field to obtain plasm. None of the content in this game is out of reach of players, NONE, it is simply an issue of laziness or unwillingness to participate. How is it my problem that you have two hours a week to play? Why should I be penalized with dumbed down easy content just so you can obtain it? One guy even posted he doesn't have a win because he is a DD meathead who refuses to play support to help a party. Catering to people like that is ridiculous. I also think you are quite wrong about the hardcore players. If you haven't noticed, this game has a very niche userbase and the sub numbers aren't exactly super high. If all the hardcore players quit, I doubt you would have a game left.

[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.