Essence of the game

[dracosam]

I don't know if it's just me but i'm back to the game since nearly 2 year well since master lv.
(i been playing back in 75 era till lv 85 cap then took long break and came back around 7 year ago with like a 8 month break, just before odyssey gaol came by)

AND i feel like my community is splitting up more and more.
I have that feeling that ffxi is runing away from is essence.
Here why:
ffxi is always been about community, trying gather ppl together, share up and have some fun. And the current end game have only 1 event for LS at this point. Ody and Sortie being party based make ppl get 6 ppl and hard to help other cause they go every night we don't have dynaD.
So when i came back there was 2 group of 6 ppl having static.
so i made a group with 2 of ls and 3 other friend that i find over time. (made 1 good friend yea that thing i like about ffxi)
Making progression on killing Ody NM higher vengeance feel a big accomplishment which is other essence that keep me in game.

But why those end game thing can't be 18 ppl based so we would have fun with Ls base and have more shout to gather ppl together. (Sortie and Odyssey A B C and maybe Gaoel) (would help asura for instance waiting list :P)

So yea just saying it's hard to keep ppl together when we exclude some out of event.

please if you agree reply so we can get visibility from dev ^^

[Sirmarki]

(would help asura for instance waiting list :P)

That's not really a thing to be honest now. I've never had to wait long to go in Sortie, and our group goes daily. Generally 1 min wait.

18 player content would encourage mercing/botting in my opinion. You would also have an added possible factor of lag.

[BobbinT]

game could probably use a more casual approach, maybe like FF14 does with alliance raids, at least it doesn't look like benefiting from the usual merc/botting.

Then again... not gonna hold my breath on this, even one of ultimate end game like master trial only requires full party. Can't really deny that ally parties nowadays are going towards what Simarki said, including Dyna-D. ^^;

[Stuzey]

It's different now, I would call myself semi retired, I don't do any group content anymore, when sortie was released I did team up, but got frustrated with the static wanting to go every day, so quit for a while, same happened with odyssey two years ago, unlocked all the bosses, but didn't want to RP every day so quit for a while, I've not been in dynamis since before covid struck.

I'm happy just pottering around, doing my own thing when I feel like it, I don't feel the need to have the BiS gear anymore, not bothered with prime weapons, if it's something I can do solo thats good, even if it takes me years.

I feel a lot of the player base are at this level now, gone are the days of playing every night, strict schedules (Monday Sky, Tuesday Dynamis, Wednesday Sea etc)

[Alhanelem]

AND i feel like my community is splitting up more and more.

The only way the community is really being split up is with the people that went to private servers IMO. Other than t hat, the community is whatever you make of it.

The biggest problem here is that most of that "community" was just chatter while spending endless hours grinding snippers and robber crabs and colibri.

As time went on, more and more of us ended up with less time to do those kind of things, so SE streamlined leveling and such.

As far as content, well it's a pain in the rear to gather large groups for large group content, more so now than it used to be and its a lot simpler to set up a 6 man party so SE has been favoring that. Also not everyone has a big linkshell with tons of friends to do 18 man contents, so that's why they're not that much of a thing these days. It's far easier to just grab a few friends and do contents like sortie spur of the moment.

There's already a thread about this elsewhere that's active, but sorry to say I cannot support it. Content needs to be designed from the ground up for 18 ppl for it to work, sortie will never be changed to be 18 because it would really just be 6 actual people/bots and 12 leechers multiplying the gallimaufry. It simply cannot work without a major rebalancing which takes time the devs don't have. And despite people continuing to repeat this, I don't really see the issue. Are all of your friendships so shallow that you have to do the content with just those friends every day or they wont be friends anymore or something? Sortie was designed to be PUGgable, not something that a big group needs to strategize with before hand and make careful preparations.

[Pixela]

You should fashion your product for the needs of your customers.

Most people want smaller group content, also the game and 3rd party apps have evolved to meet the 6 player version of the game.

The reason alliance content worked decently in the past was because we had less gear, we had less apps swapping stuff and there was just generally less data being thrown around than there is today.

Doing Dyna D with a bunch of casual players vs doing Dyna D with a group of min maxers and you'll quickly see what I'm talking about, the lag is outrageous with the min maxers swapping gear all the time.

[Sp1cyryan]

AND i feel like my community is splitting up more and more.
I have that feeling that ffxi is runing away from is essence.

please if you agree reply so we can get visibility from dev ^^

I wrote a brief post—given the subject matter—the game is dying a slow and earned death. That is because it is. People don't respond terribly well to it in general, of course.

Now to watch the same few people respond. One with "Doomer!!11 Best game ever. XI forever and ever. Woe is FFXIV." Another with a paragraphs of mature, but disinteresting takes while never tiring of a monotonous back and forth. Yet one more the mods refuse to deal with that is always spamming something about bots and hating on the staff. Finally, one who is easily distracted and overly confident that will feel the need to go to marked lengths of silliness—unbeknown to them—in their gossip. Bonus points for feeling they are being seen by the team and influencing them meaningfully.

[Alhanelem]

Thanks for the analysis.

[VoiceMemo]

Are there even large linkshells out there anymore? Because of the changes with being able to equip linkshell2 and the yell feature, I thought that most large linkshell's died out. I know in mine, I really only have some 8 core members. Not that we use linkshell that much anymore, running events though discord is superior since we can leave messages.

Since we are older now is why I think SE changed focus to more 6 man content. To me odyssey and sortie is made for older people that have played the game a long time since it's only 30min a day(if you do 1 seg farm) or 1h a day(if you do 1 sortie). The caveat is that you had to have kept up playing to now and were already end game geared. To me since I kept up with my gear, these 2 events fit in my daily schedule. I could see these events being harder for those that are still catching up to endgame level gear, but everything in game takes time, gil, luck or a combo of the 3. To decrease any 1 of them, increases the other.

[Pixela]

The problem is lag, have you tried to do Dyna D with 18? Not only did they add more features over time but the addons and min maxing nature has exploded. Too much data being sent over 56k cap connection.