One thing I will never understand are posters who oscillate between "Abyssea made everything easy, no one earns levels and players suck" and "Dynamis drop rates suck, make it easier to get stuff".

Like, they really should be mutually exclusive points. I don't get it.

The OP's complaints about just about everything just reek of crap. "Wah it took me 7 years to get a RDM hat". Is that because of the game? Or because of you / your linkshell? I've had RDM90 for, I don't know, 3 months now and I have a Duelist's Chapeau. A friend of mine just came back from the game after a 3 year break, leeched THF from 60 to 90 (ignoring his previous 75s of Rdm and Rng), and got Assassin Armlets free lot with my shell after like a month =/. Shit's not hard.

Lottery spawns. They suck. So what? New content has been moving further and further away from the bullshit that was Rise of the Zilart 72-hour NMs and PH/lottery spawns. Timed spawns in Abyssea respawn every 15 minutes, and everything else is force popped. ZNMs are all force popped. VNMs are all force popped. Voidwalkers look to be force popped. Is Leaping Lizzie really relevant enough in 2011 to warrant a change?

Drop rates. These suck too. Get over it. Abyssea's Weakness Trigger system has been the best thing to happen to the game's drop rates in 10 years. Thief has received huge TH bonuses as well. If you want something to drop, you can now manipulate the NM and make it drop. The game is moving forward. I could care less about the fact that I'm 0/100+ on Mee Deggi the Punisher, and 0/50+ on Poisonhand Gnagdag. Btw, I threw away my Moldavite Earring the second I finished my Novio/Hecate's pair .

Good lord. It's just completely ass-backwards to see the "Anti-leech" crowd complaining about time sinks. It's okay to make players level up at 5k exp/hour, but it's not okay to make them actually clear Dynamis zones with TH if they want drops? It's not like drop rates are low any more, either. My shell's basically been flooring Dyna-Tav drops that aren't THF hands or RDM hat. Heck, our last Hydra Haubert went to a guy who just leveled WAR like last week (no PLD at all), because we've gotten so many of them. I still have a screenshot of two Hauberts in the same pool, and it used to be one of the rarest drops in the entire game (my shell had something like the 3rd on our entire server waaay back in the day).

Skill affects your ability to get drops out of zones more than anything else. If you aren't clearing the zone, you're wasting potential drops. If you go in with too many people, you're screwing yourself by having to compete with 30 other people for drops. If you're wiping, or dying, or are unable to handle more than 1 Eye at a time, you're wasting time and potential drops.

There's nothing wrong with a game that rewards players with IQs greater than potato.

Edit: D'oh, beaten while I was typing this out.