Free hand-outs?

[Diavolo]

So what?! If that is the reason they're still playing, let them!
They are also part of the reason that you and them and me are still able to play and enjoy this game. It's also their subscription that keeps this game going.

You think casual players paying for stuff to be handed to them are what's keeping the game alive? Interesting.

[detlef]

You think casual players paying for stuff to be handed to them are what's keeping the game alive? Interesting.

Heh every one of your posts is dripping with condescension. Is that intentional?

Unity drops are like what, 3rd tier and dropping? I had some misgivings with the abjuration dial, but in the end body drops were far more uncommon so really it was just a nice treat for a handful of lucky players. Those free dark matter augments probably ruined the game in your eyes.

I'm not understanding who is actually hurt. Is there a better argument than some casual getting a Jovian Body abjuration won't join a Pakecet shout group?

[Pixela]

You think casual players paying for stuff to be handed to them are what's keeping the game alive? Interesting.

It's amusing you think it's not, as a now filthy casual I spend more on this game than you in a month by a large margin (my level 1 alts that exist purely for gobbie boxes alone probably put more money into the game than you do with your min/maxed characters). Also it's worth keeping in mind that with my massive amount of characters all getting "hand outs" I still don't have even 1 single set of abjurations complete or even 1/10th of UNM drops I want (and I lose no sleep over that fact either). What keeps this game alive and getting updates is money, updates are what keep people playing. Nobody is going to get all the items they want from hand-outs, the only way you'll do that is by doing the content and if your friends are all capped out it's because of double drops which you take full advantage of and not gob events.

The "hand outs" are for fun, little more than that. You can't gear a character with any of them and you sure ain't capping out, if I can't with my little army of characters than nobody can (outside of immense luck).

[Diavolo]

Those free dark matter augments probably ruined the game in your eyes.

Viewing the issue in black and white as you just did there is why you have trouble understanding the other side of the argument.

This isn't about one person (casual or otherwise), one drop or one specific type of content. It's thousands of items given away daily, affecting everyone to some degree, both positively and negatively, like the brief examples I mentioned earlier in the thread.

If those goblin NPCs were handing items from outdated content no one plays anymore or crafted gear no one bothers making anymore that's one thing, but they've been handing out rewards from the newest areas of the game. Ask yourself, does Final Fantasy XI need to be doing this to keep its subscriber numbers up? If the answer is yes, why? I'm genuinely interested in your response.

This topic brings to mind the old proverb about giving a man a fish vs teaching him how to catch it. The dev team is giving us all a fish (or chunk of rock salt) every day.

It's amusing you think it's not, as a now filthy casual I spend more on this game than you in a month by a large margin (my level 1 alts that exist purely for gobbie boxes alone probably put more money into the game than you do with your min/maxed characters). Also it's worth keeping in mind that with my massive amount of characters all getting "hand outs" I still don't have even 1 single set of abjurations complete or even 1/10th of UNM drops I want (and I lose no sleep over that fact either). What keeps this game alive and getting updates is money, updates are what keep people playing. Nobody is going to get all the items they want from hand-outs, the only way you'll do that is by doing the content and if your friends are all capped out it's because of double drops which you take full advantage of and not gob events.

Again, black and white - you assume that if you get all the gear you want from the goblin dials then it has a negative impact on the game, but if you only get a select few pieces it has no impact whatsoever.

This isn't about me vs you either (re: money spent). This game only exists today because of the millions of players that it has attracted over its almost 14 year existence. While the population numbers today are a far cry from where they once were, it's probably safe to say the vast majority of active accounts are played by people who would continue playing even if the hand outs came to an end.

[Pixela]

Again, black and white - you assume that if you get all the gear you want from the goblin dials then it has a negative impact on the game, but if you only get a select few pieces it has no impact whatsoever.

This isn't about me vs you either (re: money spent). This game only exists today because of the millions of players that it has attracted over its almost 14 year existence. While the population numbers today are a far cry from where they once were, it's probably safe to say the vast majority of active accounts are played by people who would continue playing even if the hand outs came to an end.

Of course but ending the events would lead to a large drop in profits, or are you saying ending them would usher in a large wave of new players?

[detlef]

Viewing the issue in black and white as you just did there is why you have trouble understanding the other side of the argument.

This isn't about one person (casual or otherwise), one drop or one specific type of content. It's thousands of items given away daily, affecting everyone to some degree, both positively and negatively, like the brief examples I mentioned earlier in the thread.

If those goblin NPCs were handing items from outdated content no one plays anymore or crafted gear no one bothers making anymore that's one thing, but they've been handing out rewards from the newest areas of the game. Ask yourself, does Final Fantasy XI need to be doing this to keep its subscriber numbers up? If the answer is yes, why? I'm genuinely interested in your response.

This topic brings to mind the old proverb about giving a man a fish vs teaching him how to catch it. The dev team is giving us all a fish (or chunk of rock salt) every day.

You completely ignored that part of my post and focused on my comment on dark matter. Let me get this straight then. Adoulin dial is okay because Delve and Skirmish are outdated. But Unity is pretty much outdated too. I'm sort of with you on abjurations but I think the body abjurations were sufficiently rare to render the argument moot.

Now, as for whether FFXI needs to be doing this to maintain subscriber numbers... Who knows? I think people appreciate these campaigns not only for the free gear but also as a reassurance that the game is still alive. When the dev team comes up with something new and inventive, I like that. Maybe that thing is new content like Ambuscade, maybe it's something that's arguably worthless like the patio. Maybe it's something that a small minority will appreciate like mounts. And maybe it's a new way of giving treats to the playerbase. I don't personally need any help getting abjurations, but somebody out there was genuinely happy to get something. I ignored dark matter augments, so 6 free ones per day was amazing (and let's be real, no reasonable person was already doing dark matter augments so that didn't negatively affect anybody).

We all know the saying about giving a man a fish versus teaching a man to fish. How about "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink." Okay, you hate the idea of a Jovian Body abjuration loading for a random person. So how would you get that person to farm Pakecet instead? Maybe instead of giving out abjurations, SE could give out NM triggers. But now I ask you, is that really going to make people do the content? It's not that I think giving people free stuff will get them to do content, I just don't think anything short of nerfing things will get people to do things they wouldn't otherwise do. So if a given player was never going to do Pakecet anyway, then sure, give him a chance for a Jovian Body. What's the harm?

[Diavolo]

Of course but ending the events would lead to a large drop in profits, or are you saying ending them would usher in a large wave of new players?

I don't know that it would make a large drop in profits, but it surely wouldn't usher in new subscribers without a change in direction for the game. Right now it seems like we're constantly being bombarded with free stuff and campaigns temporarily making outdated content more enticing: login points, Adoulin dial, abjuration dial, Wanted dial, WKR campaigns, Voidwatch campaigns, hard mode battlefield campaigns and on and on... as a hardcore player it's easy to sit back and say, "Ahh, this is the life!" but they're essentially acting as temporary "solutions" for what is outdated content. The fact that many players now say "I'll wait for the next campaign before I do X event" is terrible to me. Having lots of choices was one of this game's strengths in the pre-Abyssea days. Today everything becomes the flavor of the month (or week during the Rainbow Campaign) and activity for most everything else drops off.

Have you noticed how much easier it is to enter Ambuscade? That's not because they added more rooms/"instances", it's simply because the current campaigns pulled people away. It should be like that everyday, except the content those campaigns are promoting should be updated to be more approachable in this day and age. Let's be honest, farming a level 119 Empyrean weapon is ridiculously difficult in comparison to a relic or mythic - without capped lights and boosted cells Voidwatch still requires a party/ally covering many jobs for triggering weaknesses, it's just not realistic anymore and there's a decent sized thread here covering this. Likewise, good luck making any real progress on that Idris or Epeolatry outside of a WKR campaign, not to mention the 6 months or so it takes just to make your way through the coalition assignments. A couple of great players I had the benefit of playing with recently got stuck there and after endlessly grinding through WKRs decided to quit the game.

I used to hate CP campaigns too (not so much the XP part of 'em) because it got a lot of people to 2100 JP in a hurry, some of whom have no idea what they're even doing on those jobs (so much for that "master" title). With so many people having multiple master class jobs now they're losing incentive to go out and CP, making it more difficult to find parties, at least on the less populated servers, so good luck to new or returning players wanting to progress through the ranks unless they permanently increase CP gain a bit. A good friend of mine who only logs on two or three times a week has been having a hell of time trying to make pogress with BLM JPs since everyone else is busy taking part in campaigns and the one CP party that might be online at that time doesn't want to take the hit for adding an extra player. The way things are right now he likely won't be around much longer either.

I take full advantage of campaigns myself, I'd be silly not to, but as I've mentioned elsewhere, it's like throwing cocaine in front of an addict. A lot of players wind up grinding that content hardcore because it's a limited time event and we wind up losing one or two players when it's over. They burn themselves out. I guess I just have a higher tolerance.

This turned into an off topic rant, but again, I don't mind the goblin dials so much as the quality of items they're giving us. Like the OP I think the hand outs have gotten out of hand. A little more time spent recalibrating older content for today's players would go a long way to retaining membership (an LS member is calling it quits as I type this). Stuff like more mobs with quicker repop times (waiting 10+ mins for some mobs to repop kinda made sense in 2004, not anymore), new high level mobs in old zones like Meriphataud Mountains, adding plut/beit/boulders as 1-2% drops to mobs yielding XP/CP (similar to seal drops)... just some ideas off the top of my head. They're the type of changes that wouldn't be difficult to implement and would bring a little life back to completely ignored zones.

You completely ignored that part of my post and focused on my comment on dark matter. Let me get this straight then. Adoulin dial is okay because Delve and Skirmish are outdated. But Unity is pretty much outdated too. I'm sort of with you on abjurations but I think the body abjurations were sufficiently rare to render the argument moot.

Unity Wanted battles still provides players with gear useful at end game, such as Loricate neck, and while true that body abjurations were rare from the abjuration dial campaigns I don't see any reason why they, or any end game abjurations for that matter, should be thrown out for free. A lot of that stuff can be acquired with as few as 2-3 players, some of it can even be solo'd fairly easily provided you have decent gear, vorseals and trusts. I was getting myself abjurations using 119 relic/artifact gear with the odd piece of Escha Zitah gear I also solo'd.

Now, as for whether FFXI needs to be doing this to maintain subscriber numbers... Who knows? I think people appreciate these campaigns not only for the free gear but also as a reassurance that the game is still alive. When the dev team comes up with something new and inventive, I like that. Maybe that thing is new content like Ambuscade, maybe it's something that's arguably worthless like the patio. Maybe it's something that a small minority will appreciate like mounts. And maybe it's a new way of giving treats to the playerbase. I don't personally need any help getting abjurations, but somebody out there was genuinely happy to get something. I ignored dark matter augments, so 6 free ones per day was amazing (and let's be real, no reasonable person was already doing dark matter augments so that didn't negatively affect anybody).

We agree here, Dark Matter augments are ridiculous in that no reasonable person is spending 1M a pop, but instead of asking for free augment campaigns we should be asking for them to improve the augment system or at least find a way of making dark matter a little more accessible. I'm surely not going to spend 1M on an item that has a very high likelihood of giving me an augment serving me absolutely no purpose, like -3 Blood Pact ability delay on Odyssean boots.

I have no doubt most people appreciate free stuff - I wouldn't turn away a million dollars if it was dropped in my lap tomorrow - but the question is why is it needed? Do they believe its necessary? I guess I'm just too old school to see the benefit here as I still believe there is a large enough segment of the gaming market that appreciates a good challenge within a large scale, social atmosphere. There was a far greater sense of accomplishment and satisfaction tied to this game back in its early years because it was so difficult and gave you nothing for free.

We all know the saying about giving a man a fish versus teaching a man to fish. How about "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink." Okay, you hate the idea of a Jovian Body abjuration loading for a random person. So how would you get that person to farm Pakecet instead? Maybe instead of giving out abjurations, SE could give out NM triggers. But now I ask you, is that really going to make people do the content? It's not that I think giving people free stuff will get them to do content, I just don't think anything short of nerfing things will get people to do things they wouldn't otherwise do. So if a given player was never going to do Pakecet anyway, then sure, give him a chance for a Jovian Body. What's the harm?

It simply isn't deserved. If I'm not going to make the effort to get myself a university degree and high paying job do I deserve that Lamborghini sitting outside my driveway?

If a player won't take the time/effort needed to obtain end game gear they should go on playing the game without it, until which time someone or something motivates them to go after it. This is still an MMORPG where players from all sorts of different backgrounds come together. Maybe that well geared person a casual player holds in high regard one day asks why they aren't wearing Adhemar jacket and after a brief conversation convinces them it's time to start working up to it. Or maybe they just don't care enough. It's up to you to decide what you do/don't want. Not everyone has it in them to make it to the top and there's nothing wrong with that, but rewarding them for showing no interest/effort? I do find something wrong with that - it sends the wrong message.

[Stompa]

I don't know that it would make a large drop in profits, but it surely wouldn't usher in new subscribers without a change in direction for the game. Right now it seems like we're constantly being bombarded with free stuff and campaigns temporarily making outdated content more enticing: login points, Adoulin dial, abjuration dial, Wanted dial, WKR campaigns, Voidwatch campaigns, hard mode battlefield campaigns and on and on... as a hardcore player it's easy to sit back and say, "Ahh, this is the life!" but they're essentially acting as temporary "solutions" for what is outdated content. The fact that many players now say "I'll wait for the next campaign before I do X event" is terrible to me. Having lots of choices was one of this game's strengths in the pre-Abyssea days. Today everything becomes the flavor of the month (or week during the Rainbow Campaign) and activity for most everything else drops off.

Have you noticed how much easier it is to enter Ambuscade? That's not because they added more rooms/"instances", it's simply because the current campaigns pulled people away. It should be like that everyday, except the content those campaigns are promoting should be updated to be more approachable in this day and age. Let's be honest, farming a level 119 Empyrean weapon is ridiculously difficult in comparison to a relic or mythic - without capped lights and boosted cells Voidwatch still requires a party/ally covering many jobs for triggering weaknesses, it's just not realistic anymore and there's a decent sized thread here covering this. Likewise, good luck making any real progress on that Idris or Epeolatry outside of a WKR campaign, not to mention the 6 months or so it takes just to make your way through the coalition assignments. A couple of great players I had the benefit of playing with recently got stuck there and after endlessly grinding through WKRs decided to quit the game.

I used to hate CP campaigns too (not so much the XP part of 'em) because it got a lot of people to 2100 JP in a hurry, some of whom have no idea what they're even doing on those jobs (so much for that "master" title). With so many people having multiple master class jobs now they're losing incentive to go out and CP, making it more difficult to find parties, at least on the less populated servers, so good luck to new or returning players wanting to progress through the ranks unless they permanently increase CP gain a bit. A good friend of mine who only logs on two or three times a week has been having a hell of time trying to make pogress with BLM JPs since everyone else is busy taking part in campaigns and the one CP party that might be online at that time doesn't want to take the hit for adding an extra player. The way things are right now he likely won't be around much longer either.

I take full advantage of campaigns myself, I'd be silly not to, but as I've mentioned elsewhere, it's like throwing cocaine in front of an addict. A lot of players wind up grinding that content hardcore because it's a limited time event and we wind up losing one or two players when it's over. They burn themselves out. I guess I just have a higher tolerance.

This turned into an off topic rant, but again, I don't mind the goblin dials so much as the quality of items they're giving us. Like the OP I think the hand outs have gotten out of hand. A little more time spent recalibrating older content for today's players would go a long way to retaining membership (an LS member is calling it quits as I type this). Stuff like more mobs with quicker repop times (waiting 10+ mins for some mobs to repop kinda made sense in 2004, not anymore), new high level mobs in old zones like Meriphataud Mountains, adding plut/beit/boulders as 1-2% drops to mobs yielding XP/CP (similar to seal drops)... just some ideas off the top of my head. They're the type of changes that wouldn't be difficult to implement and would bring a little life back to completely ignored zones.



Unity Wanted battles still provides players with gear useful at end game, such as Loricate neck, and while true that body abjurations were rare from the abjuration dial campaigns I don't see any reason why they, or any end game abjurations for that matter, should be thrown out for free. A lot of that stuff can be acquired with as few as 2-3 players, some of it can even be solo'd fairly easily provided you have decent gear, vorseals and trusts. I was getting myself abjurations using 119 relic/artifact gear with the odd piece of Escha Zitah gear I also solo'd.

We agree here, Dark Matter augments are ridiculous in that no reasonable person is spending 1M a pop, but instead of asking for free augment campaigns we should be asking for them to improve the augment system or at least find a way of making dark matter a little more accessible. I'm surely not going to spend 1M on an item that has a very high likelihood of giving me an augment serving me absolutely no purpose, like -3 Blood Pact ability delay on Odyssean boots.

I have no doubt most people appreciate free stuff - I wouldn't turn away a million dollars if it was dropped in my lap tomorrow - but the question is why is it needed? Do they believe its necessary? I guess I'm just too old school to see the benefit here as I still believe there is a large enough segment of the gaming market that appreciates a good challenge within a large scale, social atmosphere. There was a far greater sense of accomplishment and satisfaction tied to this game back in its early years because it was so difficult and gave you nothing for free.

It simply isn't deserved. If I'm not going to make the effort to get myself a university degree and high paying job do I deserve that Lamborghini sitting outside my driveway?

If a player won't take the time/effort needed to obtain end game gear they should go on playing the game without it, until which time someone or something motivates them to go after it. This is still an MMORPG where players from all sorts of different backgrounds come together. Maybe that well geared person a casual player holds in high regard one day asks why they aren't wearing Adhemar jacket and after a brief conversation convinces them it's time to start working up to it. Or maybe they just don't care enough. It's up to you to decide what you do/don't want. Not everyone has it in them to make it to the top and there's nothing wrong with that, but rewarding them for showing no interest/effort? I do find something wrong with that - it sends the wrong message.

I want to say that I've enjoyed reading all your posts in this thread, you write well and make your points clearly. Also I really did respect you for reading the poster who said "UNM Dial made me realise that there are so many Unity NMs that I'd never heard of, and made me research UNM properly" [paraphrased] which, to your credit, you highlighted that point and accepted it as a valid counter to your own arguments. So I'm really not battling you, I think you make valid points and you acknowledge valid counter-arguments.

This post [quoted above] is full of contradictions. You say that all the Freeby stuff is killing the authentic achievement feels, but then you say Empys are almost impossible without bonus events, and Jobmaster is too much without bonus events. This is a contradiction, and also not true.

I got Jobmaster without using rings or capes, and most of my 2100 points was gained outside of Double-Cap / Chain-bonus events. I never partied for jobpoints, I just went and solo'd them. It is perfectly simple enough to do. You say your friend is quitting because they don't want to solo Jobpoints slowly, I think this is a shame, because soloing Jobpoints slowly is a great sense of achievement, and a good test of how you can streamline your job for efficiency.

I got Empy finished before the capped-lights-VW existed, and so did many other people. It just takes a lot of dedication, focusing on that one weapon and not being distracted by Mythics/Relics. I don't have Mythics or Relics at 119 stage, because I focused on Empys instead.

And by contrast, I have been able to farm Jobmaster and Empy weapons without any bonus events / help. At the same time, I have not received a single piece of gear from UNM dial, or anything useful from ABJ/SOA dials. So this goes against what you are saying completely.

As your post shows, SE have a hard job trying to balance this game, to make it just right and acceptable to everyone. In the same post you are saying that bonus events / free stuff is bad, because it discourages people from farming and making an effort, then you go on to say how farming / making an effort in Jobpoints and Empys is driving people away. So clearly you are answering your own questions here, you are highlighting that some people find some content too hard and some people find it too easy. And it seems to vary from person to person.

I think Jobmaster is a bigger achievement if you are grinding out the small numbers over a longer period of time, and I think Empys are desirable because they require so much dedication in the face of loot-pool randomness. So I am happy if those Jobpoints / VW Lights events didn't exist.

I would however prefer a static base drop-rate in VW, a structured attainment system, the abolition of random loot reloads. But that would be a change to the system, rather than a bonus event.

Similarly with Ergons, a lot of people did farm Ergons before the WKR bonus event existed. It is possible, it just requires a lot of dedication.

But at the same time, I see no harm in Gobby Dial stuff, because it is a fun bonus event which is especially User-Friendly and exciting for new / returning players.

So I don't think there is a right/wrong here, only personal preferences, which not only vary from person to person, but vary a lot in a single person too. I think SE deserve great praise for trying to balance a game with so many different players who have so many varied requests and preferences. I admire SE greatly for trying to maintain this balance, and improve QOL for players of all stages, from New Adventurers all the way to seasoned Pros.

[detlef]

Today everything becomes the flavor of the month (or week during the Rainbow Campaign) and activity for most everything else drops off.

So you’re complaining that interest in things drops off while also complaining that interest in something picks up. I mean, that’s ridiculous right? Interest in every event in the game has to be maintained at some level that you’re happy with? On low population servers, SE saying “hey you guys may want to focus on X even this month/week” helps to focus peoples’ efforts so things can actually get done.

Have you noticed how much easier it is to enter Ambuscade? That's not because they added more rooms/"instances", it's simply because the current campaigns pulled people away. It should be like that everyday, except the content those campaigns are promoting should be updated to be more approachable in this day and age.

Wait, isn’t pulling peoples’ attention away from Ambuscade and making the event tolerable (if only temporarily) a good thing?

I used to hate CP campaigns too (not so much the XP part of 'em) because it got a lot of people to 2100 JP in a hurry, some of whom have no idea what they're even doing on those jobs (so much for that "master" title). With so many people having multiple master class jobs now they're losing incentive to go out and CP, making it more difficult to find parties, at least on the less populated servers, so good luck to new or returning players wanting to progress through the ranks unless they permanently increase CP gain a bit. A good friend of mine who only logs on two or three times a week has been having a hell of time trying to make pogress with BLM JPs since everyone else is busy taking part in campaigns and the one CP party that might be online at that time doesn't want to take the hit for adding an extra player. The way things are right now he likely won't be around much longer either.

Your complain is a familiar one. I think people have been saying that players don’t learn anything from XP/merits for at least a decade. Being good at XP never made us good players and even players who were horrible at XP still advanced, whether it was 2004 or 2016.

As for your friend, yeah it sucks that the playerbase has decided that only double CP is worth doing but it’s also a sign that a lot of people have capped their favorite jobs by now. I don’t think a PT taking an XP hit for adding another player is really relevant.

This turned into an off topic rant, but again, I don't mind the goblin dials so much as the quality of items they're giving us. Like the OP I think the hand outs have gotten out of hand. A little more time spent recalibrating older content for today's players would go a long way to retaining membership (an LS member is calling it quits as I type this). Stuff like more mobs with quicker repop times (waiting 10+ mins for some mobs to repop kinda made sense in 2004, not anymore), new high level mobs in old zones like Meriphataud Mountains, adding plut/beit/boulders as 1-2% drops to mobs yielding XP/CP (similar to seal drops)... just some ideas off the top of my head. They're the type of changes that wouldn't be difficult to implement and would bring a little life back to completely ignored zones.

Sure we’d all like that but what does it have to do with hand outs?

Unity Wanted battles still provides players with gear useful at end game, such as Loricate neck, and while true that body abjurations were rare from the abjuration dial campaigns I don't see any reason why they, or any end game abjurations for that matter, should be thrown out for free. A lot of that stuff can be acquired with as few as 2-3 players, some of it can even be solo'd fairly easily provided you have decent gear, vorseals and trusts. I was getting myself abjurations using 119 relic/artifact gear with the odd piece of Escha Zitah gear I also solo'd.

That you only came up with Loricate Torque as an example is pretty indicative of how weak Unity drops are as a whole right now. It’s barely better than Twilight Torque. I’m sure there’re other things that are extremely situationally useful but if we tried we could probably find some Abyssea gear that’s still equally useful.

I’m not really against your approach with body abjurations. If it were up to me, yeah, it’s probably too powerful to just give away. But then, if it’s rare enough then I’m not really seeing a problem and it’s not worth protesting to me.

If a player won't take the time/effort needed to obtain end game gear they should go on playing the game without it, until which time someone or something motivates them to go after it. This is still an MMORPG where players from all sorts of different backgrounds come together. Maybe that well geared person a casual player holds in high regard one day asks why they aren't wearing Adhemar jacket and after a brief conversation convinces them it's time to start working up to it. Or maybe they just don't care enough. It's up to you to decide what you do/don't want. Not everyone has it in them to make it to the top and there's nothing wrong with that, but rewarding them for showing no interest/effort? I do find something wrong with that - it sends the wrong message.

Going back to your “teach a man to fish” platitude, I don’t think you can get people to want to learn to fish. So I don’t see the harm in giving players a random shot at a rare fish, especially when there’s only a small chance that it’s a best-in-slot fish.

[Diavolo]

This post [quoted above] is full of contradictions. You say that all the Freeby stuff is killing the authentic achievement feels, but then you say Empys are almost impossible without bonus events, and Jobmaster is too much without bonus events. This is a contradiction, and also not true.

It's all about balance and I see none where the R/E/M weapons are concerned because Empys are so much more difficult to build than their counterparts without offering any clear advantage to justify it (won't even bring up that poor Ochain). Dynamis has seen many changes which have made farming currency much easier over the years. Likewise, Assaults and Salvage can now be done far more frequently thanks to Rhapsody key items. What changes has Voidwatch received to make farming Empyrean weapon items easier? Lowered atmacite enrichment and Phase Displacer costs as well as the recent voidstone change, which are great, don't get me wrong, but Dynamis and Salvage have been solo-friendly for a long time now whereas VW most definitely is not. Using the /fume emote every 5 minutes wasn't a very practical solution. There's a relatively long thread about this here in the forum which you're a part of, so I trust you understand the community's frustration.

I'm right there with you on CP - I solo'd practically all of mine across several jobs, both with and without CP campaigns active - but with so many of those campaigns having passed now, the population on a lot of servers being so low and having absolutely no incentive to continue CPing jobs we already have at Master it again becomes a question of balance. How do you get those who already have their jobs at Master to go out and help others reach that goal? The easy answer here would be to allow the use of your JP across all jobs, like merit points. Still hoping this becomes a reality at some point in the not too distant future.

In the example I brought up about my friend's situation, it's compounded by the fact that he's excluded from pick up groups and end game content the LS is tackling because he isn't able to get those important JPs/Gifts he needs. So Player A takes part in CP campaign and gets into every event he wants, while Player B misses out on a party or two during campaign and is forced to solo. Obviously it's slower when solo and it's made worse when the campaign ends because that divide between Player A and B requires a whole lot more work to overcome. While this has no real effect on me personally because I login practically everyday, it does affect those of us who aren't able to do so and reinforces my belief that campaigns are bad idea. If the dev team believes we need this many XP/CP campaigns then it begs the question, why? Like you, I'd be happy enough with the regular XP/CP limit. Reaching Master rank should not be an easy endeavor done in the span of a weekend, but this is what it's come to.

I got Empy finished before the capped-lights-VW existed, and so did many other people. It just takes a lot of dedication, focusing on that one weapon and not being distracted by Mythics/Relics. I don't have Mythics or Relics at 119 stage, because I focused on Empys instead.

While FFXIAH's website doesn't account for all subscribers, it does represent a good portion of the population. I urge you to go use it to search for and compare the number of level 99 Empyreans versus the same weapon type Relic and Mythic across all servers. It's lopsided by a significant margin. In sword's case: 60 Almaces vs 471 Excaliburs vs 312 Burtgangs which is quite telling considering Almace is available to more jobs, one of them being very popular right now.

I have been, and remain, a proponent for challenging content. The problem with Empyreans is that their counterparts have become far easier to obtain and their stats really don't reflect that, especially in Ochain's case now that it's been rendered almost useless against level 130+ content.

And by contrast, I have been able to farm Jobmaster and Empy weapons without any bonus events / help. At the same time, I have not received a single piece of gear from UNM dial, or anything useful from ABJ/SOA dials. So this goes against what you are saying completely.

Only if you're suggesting your personal experience reflects that of every player. I've received mostly low level Wanted battle items, both gear and "special items" for upgrade purposes, which I just send to my mules. You can't use anecdotal evidence of one player receiving no gear whatsoever to make the point it's having no impact on our worlds, which completely disregards the upgrade items. There are screen shots of players getting Tumult Curator's drops from that dial (I got its blood today), so if I was using your argument I could say everyone's getting that content's best items (obviously not true ).

We've been receiving these campaigns for so long that we've come to expect them, so regardless of how good/bad they are for the game removing them entirely now would come as a shock to the system, unfortunately. We're forced to deal with them whether we like them or not. I just hope going forward a little more thought goes into their impact on the game and even each individual server, as your experience on one server to the next varies far more today than it has at any other point in this game's life. I'm not sure the development team has come to understand this yet.

Wait, isn’t pulling peoples’ attention away from Ambuscade and making the event tolerable (if only temporarily) a good thing?

That's precisely what I meant when I said "that's how it should be every day." It shouldn't be temporary. If Voidwatch, Wildskeeper Reives and other content like Vagary and Delve were made more tolerable/accessible just as Dynamis and Salvage were; if CPing a Master'ed job allowed you to transfer earned JPs to unused/unwanted jobs; if high tier battlefields always dropped more plut/beit/boulders... if all that was done we would have a wealth of options available to us every single time we logged into the game and we wouldn't have to worry about entering newer content like Ambuscade. We wouldn't have to worry about missing out if we had real life responsibilities to attend to that week/month. We wouldn't feel forced to grind like today was the last day on Vana'diel.

That you only came up with Loricate Torque as an example is pretty indicative of how weak Unity drops are as a whole right now. It’s barely better than Twilight Torque. I’m sure there’re other things that are extremely situationally useful but if we tried we could probably find some Abyssea gear that’s still equally useful.

I'm not Unity's biggest fan, but I think you're selling it short. We're playing a game where people pay huge sums of gil for a marginal stat increase and Loricate Torque +1 was an obvious example for me to use as it's best in slot for -damage taken. I don't play BLU much, but Tanmogayi +1 made for a really nice sword I could shoot for, as well as Celine's earring for those rare occasions where I'd benefit from a HP+ gear set. Unity is easy enough for players of any skill level to attempt as they make the climb up the ladder and can be a fun diversion even for the more hardcore players, but the point here is that they should be encouraged to take part in Unity and not be handed the rewards just for logging in.