Solo Accomplishments, Party Barriers, and Enhancing the Community

[Puck]

As there are a variety of different play styles, I understand that there are players who are not able to join parties, and as such we are currently looking into a route that will allow you to reach item level 119 solo by gradually spending time working towards it.

That's cool, thanks. Maybe halve the sparks cost for all chapters, and more add ways to acquire expensive upgrade materials? A lot of the people who're being left behind and unable to play often also don't have steady sources of income.

Due to the nature of pick-up parties, there is a trend of increasing the requirements for joining so that the success rate can be boosted, and I feel that this cannot be avoided.

As was already pointed out, the devs still don't really understand the actual reason people are being left out. It's not because they can't get decent iLvl gear, sparks gear is good enough to get your foot in the door. No, it's about the restrictive nature of group content that encourages players to only bring certain jobs with certain gear. The community leaves them out because people don't like wasting time. Even among linkshells, groups tend to only bring jobs that give them the highest chance of success.

If you want a good chance at joining an event, you need to be playing one of a handful of desired jobs, and even then you need certain pieces of gear that are very time-consuming to acquire. Why spend hours collecting people for Delve and settle for a PLD that doesn't have Ochain or Aegis, thereby decreasing the chance of success? Or settle for a BRD with only 2 songs, when the BRD with Daurdabla is basically worth a BRD an a half or TWO BRDs just by having extra songs? Yes, success can be achieved with less-than-optimal setups, but with each concession the chance of failure increases.

Surely there must be a way to adjust content so group content isn't so restrictive. But no, I don't think Voidwatch is a good example. I don't think forcing groups to bring as many different jobs as possible is the way to go. All that did was made forming groups take longer and encouraged people to level jobs they didn't care about just to get those procs.

Content that rewards every player every time they participate is great, like the personal rewards chests in VW and WoE, or the guaranteed chapters in AA battles. Systems involving reward points are good, too, since it allows players to get closer to their goal even if they didn't get the drop they wanted, such as plasm. What if there were optional objectives that gave everyone in the party extra plasm or other rewards for bringing along a few people playing not-so-optimal jobs?

Or better yet, just adjust those jobs. Make them better. Make it so a job isn't completely useless without one or two specific pieces of gear. The devs should be studying pick-up /yells and gathering data on the party and gear set-ups used in every successful run, then look at that content and figure out why only certain jobs are used and adjust that content and those jobs accordingly.

[Rubeus]

I literally had to go through the tedious process of logging in to the forums JUST to like your post... and it was worth it.

[Demonjustin]

Something that caught my attention.

We’ve also been receiving a lot of feedback about the high costs associated with entering content, and we will be looking into reducing entry costs gradually for content after a certain amount of time passes from implementation.

You're looking into reducing entry costs gradually for content, but what content? Adoulin content is all fairly unchanging. You need 3 items to create the KI for entry to Skirmish, you can't really remove any of the 3, nor can you reduce the cost since it's market based. Delve requires a single stone, similar situation. The only current content I can think of with a variable cost are the Merit Point fights. But to get to my point, what content is being thought of here? Merit Points? Assaults? I'm interested. Assaults, Meebles, and a few other events could very much use these and the time past implementation is far gone.

[Byrth]

It's being cast as a community issue, but really it's not.

* You want a job that can survive essentially anything? You want an Ochain and Aegis PLD.
A PLD with a 50% shield block rate has a 50% chance of taking the same damage as any other melee. A PLD with a 100% block rate experiences a massive decrease in the odds they'll be oneshotted. Similarly, a PLD with -87.5% magic damage taken... well, doesn't really take magic damage. Pirwen is pushing towards closing this gap, but it's not really there yet.

* You want to fit two buffers into one party slot? You want a Daurd/G-horn BRD.
This is important because things like Delve bosses scale based on number of players. Daurd/G-horn BRD has a big advantage. The recent update where they let songs overwrite regardless duration and added an easily obtained 3-song instrument that went a long way towards closing this cap. It widened the gap between BRD and every other buffer, but that hasn't been a serious competition in forever.

* You want a competitive DD that won't pull hate off a Paladin? Your options are either a Yoichi RNG or Anni RNG.
OR THE DARK HORSE, PUP! (jk) If you don't have Yoichi or Anni, you're going to substantially gimp your DPS on Ranger to avoid pulling hate. Is it still possible to avoid pulling hate without these weapons? Sure, but you miss out.

[Kraggy]

Hello,

We've been receiving a lot of feedback lately with the influx of new content in regards to difficulties joining parties, the ability to accomplish things solo, and other requests to make the game more enjoyable. I'd like to share the below comment from Producer Akihiko Matsui in response to this feedback.

How about foloowing through on something which was brought up two years ago .. make the level 95 limit break soloable?

Still stuck at 95 because I don't have the gil to pay what people demand to 'help' and I'm damend if I'm standing in Jeuno for months shouting. Make it possible for me to get past 95 and I'll re-sub.

[Sapphire]

How about foloowing through on something which was brought up two years ago .. make the level 95 limit break soloable?

Still stuck at 95 because I don't have the gil to pay what people demand to 'help' and I'm damend if I'm standing in Jeuno for months shouting. Make it possible for me to get past 95 and I'll re-sub.

You can bring unlimited weakening items AND three trust NPCs to that battle. How much more soloable do you need?

I'm just curious.

[Marada]

How about foloowing through on something which was brought up two years ago .. make the level 95 limit break soloable?

Still stuck at 95 because I don't have the gil to pay what people demand to 'help' and I'm damend if I'm standing in Jeuno for months shouting. Make it possible for me to get past 95 and I'll re-sub.

I'd be glad to help you if you were on my server. I don't understand why people require you to pay for such things like that, then again I'm so far behind in gear and even trying to get my mythic that I don't have anything decent on my character. But I'm always willing to help with thing when people need it.

[Rwolf]

I agree, it's not a community issue. It's a game balance issue. The community is not perfect and never will be. There will always be someone who will want more than is required. However, when they design content with devastating area of effect abilities and a broken enmity system. Players are naturally going to gravitate to the strategies used as of late.

Even if Paladin could hold hate against close range melee jobs with no assistance, melee jobs get plastered with area of effect damage. Which is why Relic weapon Rangers are so attractive right now. They get around the broken enmity system, they have high survivability and most of all high damage. It's the same reasons Monk is so popular, high survivability and damage output. A lot of "damage dealers" don't have the accuracy, defense, or buffs (especially for pet jobs) to justify their slot, you'll easily time out with a lot of jobs unless they were perfectly geared. Which defeats the purpose because most of it comes from the fights, some jobs are trying to get invited to.

Matsui needs to relinquish this vision that it's community responsibility to assist damage dealer jobs that are both not as durable or powerful, and support jobs that can't get close to White Mage or Bard. Why should any job be a help case? Shouldn't they all be equally helpful even if it's a different combination of jobs? It's one thing to help a friend, linkshell member or even a stranger get something that helps them be a better player. But it's entirely another to say the community is to blame that certain jobs are excluded from content. When the simple fact is certain jobs are just designed to best new content.

I honestly think they can't figure out how to make balanced challenging content without making it grossly overpowered. I don't claim to have all the answers but a few things would help:

Enfeebling effects need to matter more. (Example: Things like Blind should lower accuracy by a percentage. Attack Down should be more prevalent like defense down)
Look into expanding instanced areas and increasing/removing timers. (Timers are obviously put on content to throttle congestion. However if everything is a time race, there is no room for defensive groups. Just pure offense)
Give some alternative types of goals to high level content. (With expanding instances being unlikely: High level content with unconventional goals would expand job desirability. Meeble Burrows, Moblin Maze Mongers, and Assault are great examples of alternative goals)
Unpopular jobs need a boost. (Figure out what direction you really want Red Mage to accel at and finally do it, make pets more attractive to compete in high level content, Dancer needs a better way to spam status removal to be any semblance of a healer)
Magic Accuracy - There are so many awesome abilities and spells that could compete with other jobs if their magic accuracy didn't suck (Blue Mage, Dancer, etc)

It's not a compendium of the issues in the game, but just some suggestions on opening the currently severely limited way content difficulty is produced.

[Mefuki]

Crosspost from BGForums:

Low NA or EU population wouldn't be as big a problem if SE correctly implemented a sliding scale, from solo all the way up to 18-man, where monster statistics, reward quantity and drop rate/points earned(if it's a point/gear exchange system) scaled with how many you choose to bring. This way, you can log in and start playing any part of the game you want, shout for as much or as little as you want, while still giving incentives to partying up.

Either that or maybe make it so you can acquire the same gear from different sources. So, I don't know, maybe we could have the ability to buy fragments of Delve/other content weapons and armor as a Monipulator with PvP wins + Infamy? This would be important to give incentive to not only collect Infamy but also to stick around and fight battles to the end. And then, in order to fuse the parts into something usable, we'd have to challenge a version of the NM that drops that particular piece of gear that is scaled for MON Vs. MON combat? Or maybe introduce RoE AMAN vouchers for different gearsets and weapons that can be obtained from killing monster types/NM's that relate to that gear?

[Vivivivi]

Hello,

....We’ve also been receiving a lot of feedback about the high costs associated with entering content, and we will be looking into reducing entry costs gradually for content after a certain amount of time passes from implementation.

This is great news, I would like to mention one important consideration when making these adjustments.

In Final Fantasy XIV, there is very little cost associated with entering battlefields. One one hand I absolutely love it. On the other hand, because there is little cost there is very little risk and as a result players frequently drop in the middle of a dungeon. The impact isn't so great because the duty finder system there allows for a replacement without having to restart the content.

In FFXI I would like the dev team to consider the fact that there is no Duty Finder, and the cost of entering content has some value in preventing other players from dropping in the middle of content because there is something at stake (whether it's merit points, skirmish segments, pop items, etc).

If the adjustments being considered are simply lowering merit points from 20 to 15 or 15 to 10, making skirmish segments more accessible, or slightly increasing the drop rate of trigger items, I'm all for that. But please please please do not create a situation where players joining pickup groups are likely to drop five minutes into content without a system like the duty finder in place to replace them. Whether or not it's intentional by design, FFXI (in general) has a nice balance of risk versus reward for challenging difficult content that I actually do miss when I play XIV and appreciate quite a bit when playing FFXI.