Final thoughts

[OmnysValefor]

I've recently quit (this isn't a farewell or anything). I was killing everything I wanted to kill (I never tried Master Trials, had no interest), I wanted to leave some final thoughts. Maybe they'll be taken into consideration, or maybe they'll slide into oblivion.

- I was "at the top of the game". I had killed everything I wanted to except Fu (hadn't tried yet). This may sound silly but I felt no motivation to improve. I didn't need more accuracy vorseals as I could hit anything I needed to and I didn't need more gear. I guess more refresh vorseals are always nice, especially for BLMs but I never really thought highly of regen for anything but GEO. It's unlikely to be the reason you recover from an aoe or survive the next hit.

Most of the Aeonic weapons aren't impressive, either because they're outclassed by (at first) harder (edit: tedious)/expensive to obtain RME or their use is questionable in the first place (PLD shield)

- The fun of Ambuscade never improved, the chore that it became only improved with Frog month when we could take almost any group and win. Doing content dozens or a hundred times isn't fun but it's the only way to farm some frustrating materials (unless you quad-box+). I could take my idris and mythic friends or I could take my Dunna and Taming Sari friends. In place of geo, especially since geo-debuffs didn't work), I could take corsair. I didn't have access to any Bards at the time, honestly.

And yes, absolutely, 100%, I liked frog because it was easy. I have no shame in admitting that. Ambuscade's fights are fun for the first round or two but then it's just the same grind. I'm really well geared on anything I'll bring, but what about people who aren't?

We presented some good ideas to improve the grind, like varying the content (you could choose what you went into) and some sort of daily that rewarded you 1000 points. They never got replies.

- Some of the strangest disparity was never addressed. In older content, content in certain zones, enmity produced is too high. Especially by melee.

I can produce enough enmity that will hold Warder of Courage (AV2) off insane melee doing insane DPS, but I can't hold a tier 1 off an unbuffed good dps' first, maybe second, weapon skill.

We had some timeouts on WoC (gotta love benediction) in Death-setups and mages would never pull enmity off me. In hate-loss situations (say charm got off), popping something like Flash >> Palisade >> Shield Bash (I prefer to save Sentinel, just in case) would glue enmity back to me. Flash alone was usually enough to draw it but I like to cement hate. When we had the long ones, I'd sometimes ask the BLMs to Enmity Douse preemptively because surely all those 99k Deaths had to mean something (probably not)

HTBF? Don't even bother bringing a tank to melee setups unless you're strictly using THF. I never did try it but DD RUN doesn't count.

I love the complexities of XI's enmity system but I will say that with no enmity meter, it can be frustrating: You either have hate or you don't (you have no idea what your lead is). Emnity on gear is supposed to slow the decay of Cumulative Enmity loss when getting hit but I never noticed a difference tanking in my "casual" set (1k less hp, dt-capped, 0 enmity, swaps to enmity for tanking actions). I did notice a difference in my survivability, but that's it. If my tanking set could hold hate, my casual set could. In content where it couldn't, my casual set couldn't. Once something has turned from a PLD, his TP gain crumbles.

I do understand that an enmity meter would probably add bloat to the game's client<>server communications and would be a problem. I understand why it's not there, I just miss it.

In Avatar setups (PLD, SCH, COR, BLMx3 was my preference), Cor would pull hate after a hate reset before the sch and the sch would get it before the BLMs, even if the SCH wasn't nuking and the BLMs were doing the lion's share of the damage.

In short: Why the incredible disparity? Why does level of the enemy actually matter? If you want to take a turtled Paladin to 75 Behemoth (lol), why not?

Two friends and I did a test just as Kaeko used to, just to illustrate this disparity. We went outside Adoulin to level 99 mandragoras. WHM slept the mandragora. PLD Provoke > Flash, naked SCH (just staff) nuked for 500~. According to Libra, SCH had 5% of PLD's enmity

We went to level 40 crawlers, did the exact same thing (nuke landed for 700~) PLD had 25% of SCH's enmity (or SCH had 400% of PLD's).

Obviously I don't care about tanking level 40 crawlers. Just an illustration for the unaware. It's easier to test these numbers on something that can't actually hurt you.

Omen was a breaking point for me. Floor 3's random boss was a real problem for certain setups especially if your group was weak in that setup. It's preferable to mana-burn Kei but getting to him can be an issue I guess I could have sat people in my static, because their jobs weren't ideal, or well enough geared that others couldn't at least compensate. I have to say that floor 3 boss should have been selectable too.

Omen's other significant problem, the most significant actually, is the sheer number of cards needed to obtain improved JSE for one job (I think it's 239 for one job for 5/5 pieces). That's 80 runs if you get 3 cards a run and always succeed. Hopefully you want to gear a preferential job. I believe card-trading should be universal and 1:1. I believe the cost of items should be lowered.

Yeah SE is adding the trash route so that the monks get some love, but if you're in a static, everyone has to skip bosses to take people's non-ideal jobs.

Certain content, like Omen, rewards versatility in jobs, but certain content, like Omen, makes you pick your favorite job. Doesn't that seem flawed? What about content after omen? My off-jobs are certainly never coming to that, and neither are anyone else's. I had no delusions that my very good BLU or pretty good DNC would ever get cards, not if I wanted to keep my static. We had no other real tanks and I'm fine with that because I like to tank.

Bead farming This was the worst. I always talk about how Valefor is dead (which really only affects me at the auction house), but all 200 of the active people online seemed to show up for dragons during dragon week and so the dragons were dead in 30 seconds. Why did they do this? Because outside of campaign, dragon and bead farming is terrible. The easy solution, just like the CP campaigns, is to make the accelerated rates full-time and just leave it at that.

The other simple fact is, while /hidetrust helps, this game cannot handle mass battles. It just can't and without some major updates, it never will. I think part of the problem is, and this isn't easily remedied, even if you have it filtered, your client is still receiving log data of every other person and trust in the vicinity. As a programmer, I respect that this might be a difficult thing to fix.

Give me a scaled dragon that caps at 3 or 6 parties (whether in alliance or not) and I'm all for that.

Naga Raja (Ru'Aun) is usually pretty calm but to this day Azi Dahaka and Quetz can be all but impossible for one or two people to take down. Especially when you're terrored or slept so much of the time. I only tried twice but I wasn't able to resist Quetz' terror, with pflug, on RUN.

It's probably hard to get a read on what campaigns people consider good but it's frustrating when there's 2 or 3 great campaigns going on at the same time and then, the next period, there's nothing worth doing.

Thank you for the AGI nerfs and thank you for the AOE nerfs but the very next content you gave us were still doing strong AOEs. I feel like there were never any plans to address the tremendous advantages that a mana burn setup brings (which, by the way, can be done without nerfing ANY of those jobs--and certainly without significant nerfs).

Lastly, I love XI and that's why I wrote this. Thanks for keeping probably the best MMO online.

[Diavolo]

I let my account expire yesterday, too. I'm not sure what exactly became the straw that broke this camel's back, but the reliance on campaigns month in and month out played a major role in my dwindling interest along with both Ambuscade and Omen practically becoming end game content one is expected to take part in daily. The satisfaction of an earned reward will always trump instant gratification.

[Aysha]

I feel that there should be a happy medium between "work for long hours" and "instant gratification".

On the one side, as you said, to be handed something feels a little cheap, you don't treat it with gratitude and respect.

However, on the other side, make something too grindy, too difficult to get and a lot of players will just shrug and go "what's the use?" when they don't feel like putting 500+ hours into getting (insert thing here). Or, they will go "Meh, not worth it..." and "What I have is good enough." when the reward doesn't justify the time spent.

I will admit, though, that while the campaigns are huge boons to newcomers and returnees, they are also very stressful too. They force you to do certain activities at certain times, and they cause flooding of people.

For example, I made a thread awhile back about rude and inconsiderate people flooding Cirdas Caverns because of the XP+ and CP campaigns. The campaigns are so ridiculously OP that it'd be crazy to pass it up!

Oh wait, the first XP campaign ALSO had Crafting Skill+ Campaign, so that means a void of any crafting mats on the AH, so if I wanna do crafting and I need something off the AH.... nope. Everything is sold out and the prices are jacked through the roof. Now obviously, if you're a farmer, that's awesome because you make lots of money.... but yet, what if I didn't wanna farm and needed the XP/CP?

And then there's the Geas Fete/Domain Invasion campaigns. "These rewards are not to be missed!" (exact words from the announcement) unless, of course, you spent all campaign killing the stupid mobs and getting absolutely nothing but Eschalixirs and Beads (or, God Help You if you get the wrong weapon/item), that is. And from some of the things I've read, some people can't even DO the event because of the horrendous lag. Thankfully, I've got a rather strong computer and I can (somewhat) handle it, and I'm on a lower population server, so there's enough people there to kill it, but yet not so many people that the lag makes it unplayable. It would be nice, though, if I could SEE what is hitting/healing me, but meh. Whatever.

Either way, dangling a carrot in front of our face, saying we've got one week to get the carrot and then put a .00001% drop rate on it is just.... that's a gut punch. This game has been absolutely loaded with ridiculous RNG, do we seriously need time-limited RNG ontop of that? It'd been better if you could, say, buy the weapons with some currency that drops off the dragon, that way you know that by the end of the campaign, if you work enough, you'll have that weapon you've been wanting but yet you'd have put in a reasonable amount of work to obtain the weapon, AND it'd be fair across-the-board (unlike the current system where one person could get the weapon they want from the very first kill, and someone else could kill the dragon 100 times during the event and get absolutely nothing but 'lixirs).

I get the idea behind the campaigns: they want to advertise various systems for newbies and returnees, and give them a leg up, but yet at the same time as others have said, the limited-time nature of the thing sucks. What about returnees who return to Vana'diel Feb 1st? I bet they'll feel real great about the game when they log on for the first time, and see the "Returnee Campaign Fiesta" on the website, and then discover that it ended the day before they logged on, or worse, a returnee who is returning from before RoV was implemented a day or two before the Campaign ends. By the time he gets to the dragon, he might get a couple kills in, and he'll see that he missed out on XP, CAP, and crafting skillups. I bet such a player'd be real happy to find THAT out.

Dunno about anybody else, but I'd be tempted to just quit again after that, if I had joined under such circumstances.

[Domille]

Can't really argue with anything you put omnys. A break is always a good thing. a month, a year, etc.

Player life has really soured over the last while. It's always been "the grind" but now it's JUST the grind. and it's terrible for the game.

Being on valefor absolutely blew too, sorry about that, they desperately needed a merge more than a year ago.

[detlef]

Yeah I pretty much agree with all of that, especially the Ambuscade and Omen critiques. Ambuscade is just a band-aid that ensure that Ergon and Empyrean weapons are still being made on the regular while Omen has too many flaws to describe in one breath.

[OmnysValefor]

Okay, wow, I made a lot of typos. And I said "Give me a scaled dragon fight and didn't even realize it! :P

I don't personally mind being on a server like Valefor except when visiting the Auction House but new/returning players feel helpless. The populations just aren't healthy enough to sustain a stream of incoming players trying to gear up especially when the pool is thinned by some people that are carried, wait to be carried, or pay to be carried (if you have the gil, ls's will take your eminent <job> all the way through Aeonic. If you have more gil, they'll let you have every drop along the way).

In the several dragons I did do this week, I don't think I got any bodies (that's okay, I already have them) but I feel bad for people hoping for an RNG drop. It's hard trying to gain a spot with an LS and convincing them to backtrack and help you get even most the things you need, when there are plenty of people that already have all or most of what they need.

Once we bit into it, the Aeonic grind wasn't that bad. I have no doubt we could have gotten it done months earlier had our second tank come back earlier. We had the gear and skill ourselves and had things like key research from other players (like Schah's unique hate mechanics, being the biggest one).

[Dekusuta]

Omen as a concept is actually really interesting, but they dropped the ball in keeping the difficulty spike too high.
The grind and the bosses are out of reach for what is actually not the best rewards, though the event does offer at least one BIS pieces and accessories for several jobs, many of the +3s are not that great.

Before Omen, lots of BIS pieces were gated behind more attainable events like Unity , Delve, Skirmish, Merit fight, Escha or Sinister Reign fights

With Omen, if you have a group that can't kill the final boss, you basically have very little chance to get any of the good drops. Whereas before that, because the BIS pieces are often spread over different events, a combination of luck, finding a shout group , or having the right set-up meant, most people get at least some of what they wanted, while dreaming for the 1 or 2 unattainable piece. It drove people to do better.

Omen just shuts that door, and like Abyssea before it, puts huge strains on groups and set-ups that have developed over the last 24 months to clear a variety of content that they've given us. Omen just stands out like a sore thumb.

I sincerely hope they add in a Easy, Difficult, Very difficult mode to this event, so any set-up can clear, with a good amount of risk/reward, but ultimately, with enough tries and clears, a group doing it on Easy could still attain their +3, it will just take them much longer. This is how the merit fights worked after all.

If no difficulty setting is ever intended, The difficulty in Omen only makes sense if there are major content updates and events to be added that will power up most players sufficiently to handle the event, in the same way Unity, Skirmish , Merit Fights and Delve became easier over time.

[Stompa]

Lastly, I love XI and that's why I wrote this.

XI loves you too. And I have always loved reading your well thought-out and eminently reasonable posts on this Forum. I won't speak for you, but people often quit for a while and come back. Taking a break from FFXI, or from anything else, gives you a fresh set of eyes when you return.

I was never as well-geared or godly as you, but I felt the distant approach of God Complex, when you have basically beaten everything at end game, and you start to hate it because of the limitations.

To avoid this end-game fatigue scenario, I started levelling a new mule character, new server, new race, new main job. And I played the whole old areas game on locked level 75, no 76+ jobs. I had a blast fighting hard level 75 content with my trusts, and playing all the old areas again, and experiencing the shocking blood-on-the-walls moments that level 75 still provides.

Vana'diel is an incredible place, it is just amazing. But we forget this when we spend our lives clicking on the Ambuscade book or w/e.

When I started playing the old areas again, on level 75, I hear the true voice of Vana'diel calling to my heart again. I was entranced again, just as I was in 2004 when I first loaded the game. There is a deep cultural memory in me, Vana'diel is a central part of my life, it always was and it always will be until such time as it is no longer online. But I truly cherish every day in Vana'diel, it is my home, and whatever criticisms I have of event structures and job mechanics and w/e, this will never change the deep cultural bond I have with my spiritual home, Vana'diel.

I totally agree with you about Ambuscade, and several of your other criticisms. As usual, your points are deeply thought-out and eloquently worded. I have always enjoyed reading your posts!

Thanks for keeping probably the best MMO online.

This. This is everything. Yes, yes, yes. Yes three times.

[OmnysValefor]

Stompa <3,

I've been wondering recently where you were at. I'm not saying you quit/took a break but you seemed like the type to never do so.

Thank you for the kind words. I'm glad that, if this is goodbye, I got to say goodbye. You always tried to be bright light.

[Stompa]

Stompa <3,

I've been wondering recently where you were at. I'm not saying you quit/took a break but you seemed like the type to never do so.

Thank you for the kind words. I'm glad that, if this is goodbye, I got to say goodbye. You always tried to be bright light.

No I never took a break from FFXI. I have logged in every day since 2004, with the exception of the Click&Buy Tragedy era, when I tried to pay my subs with C&B and my bank immediately cancelled my debit cards and froze my account, because C&B are on their red-flag illegal criminal website list. So I was locked out of the game during the C&B Tragedy Era, but apart from that, I haven't taken a break from FFXI in 13 years.

In the last year, I have been working back-to-back shifts, and my limited free time means that I haven't been posting on the Forum. I want my free time to be spent in Vana'diel!

Truly, there is no sadder moment for a stout Adventurer than to feel their adventures are all behind them. And this is why I play level 75 mules, they still have all the promise of further adventures ahead of them, unfinished quests / missions, and the possibility of going further, to 99 and 119 again.

Playing 75 characters again, after being 99/119, is like you got used to taking huge leaps and strides every day, but now you are back to taking tiny cautious steps in a big ferocious world of merciless NMs and constant aggro.

And the best thing about playing lvl 75 mules, is that you can decide to go back to your original lvl 99/119 Godly character, after six months of level 75 cautious fear, and suddenly you are playing your shiny old 99 god character again, everything is so fast and shiny, and you really appreciate the godliness again. You never complain about gimped Dimidiation again, after you've just spent a year spamming Ground Strike.

So I think that, as the ancients told us, "variety is the spice of life" and there's nothing worse than doing the same thing all the time. We need to alternate our gaming patterns in FFXI. This is a natural and healthy way to enjoy this wonderful world, our world, Vana'diel.

I pray you will return to Vana'diel again in future, and post more of your fascinating insights on the Forum. In either case, I wish you and your family a truly joyful and prosperous Real Life.