A Needless Indulgence, or a Lost Opportunity? (Devs?)

[Murugan]

No, it was a statement saying that the game seems to be going into "lol get this skill/use this class or you suck and you can't get a party" territory, which was by FAR the worst thing to ever come out of FFXI and NEEDS TO STAY in FFXI.

Have you fought Ifrit yet? I don't think the community is doing that at all, however it is a well designed fight in that unlike Ogre, and unlike Batraal in 1.18 you can't simply ignore large parts of the fight you have to deal with them in some way.

You don't need Sentinel.

• Sentinel is used so that groups only have to take down one spike during Hellfire. You can take down more to lower the astral flow's damage even further.
• You can still survive with full HP and stoneskin without using Sentinel even if taking down only one spike.

Lancer is not required for this fight either, this is not even a little bit on the level of "you need archers for Darkhold".

• You do need ~60-65 group DPS in order to counteract Ifrit's regen before your mages might start running out of MP (though it's possible to take the whole 30 minutes I'm sure).
• All classes in the game (including DD Gladiators and Archers) are capable of at least 15 DPS even properly avoiding all of Ifrit's specials.
  

This encounter is balanced just fine. Explore different options people, maybe don't have a nervous break down if you find out someone does the fight a certain way...

[Anonymoose]

Have you fought Ifrit yet? I don't think the community is doing that at all, however it is a well designed fight in that unlike Ogre, and unlike Batraal in 1.18 you can't simply ignore large parts of the fight you have to deal with them in some way.

You don't need Sentinel.

• Sentinel is used so that groups only have to take down one spike during Hellfire. You can take down more to lower the astral flow's damage even further.
• You can still survive with full HP and stoneskin without using Sentinel even if taking down only one spike.

Lancer is not required for this fight either, this is not even a little bit on the level of "you need archers for Darkhold".

• You do need ~60-65 group DPS in order to counteract Ifrit's regen before your mages might start running out of MP (though it's possible to take the whole 30 minutes I'm sure).
• All classes in the game (including DD Gladiators and Archers) are capable of at least 15 DPS even properly avoiding all of Ifrit's specials.

This encounter is balanced just fine. Explore different options people, maybe don't have a nervous break down if you find out someone does the fight a certain way...

I wish you understood English as well as you understood the game; or at least took the time to read it thoroughly if that's the problem here.

I'm not saying these are requirements set by Square Enix, I'm saying that due to the mechanics of the fight having easy work-arounds that allow for doing less work (i.e. if everyone has sentinel) a large chunk of the community perceives it as a requirement and treats potential party members as if it is. Recall in my past post how I specifically referred to the fact that when multiple options are present, they should be presented in a way in which the community is not inclined to take the easiest as gospel and shun the rest.

• I know that SQUARE ENIX didn't make materia required for the fight.
• I know that SQUARE ENIX didn't make sentinel a requirement.
• I LIKE THE FACT THAT THE FIGHT IS INCREDIBLY CHALLENGING.

I'm peeved that the mechanics allow for the community to act the way it did in FFXI; where difficult content allowed for multiple approaches but the easiest and laziest was the strat and anything else was not only ignored, to everyone else it was gimp.

And all of this still pales in comparison to the fact that it's not even my point - I had no problem admitting it was baseless QQ far out of my (or Square Enix's) control in the very first post of the thread.

Yoshida-san was a bit vague about what was coming in and what was going out. I don't imagine that the primals are something we're going to see disappearing; but at the same time the phrase "a majority of items and achievements will only be obtainable until 2.0" is disconcerting. My use of the Ifrit battle, which again, doesn't offer anything I'm after as a mage (since CON is mainly healing and Fire doesn't really do JACK compared to there rest of the wheel) is simply an example based on the current content. In truth, my question applies more directly to the Garuda fight, which I'll be going after with full dedication regardless of whether it stays or goes.

Now, Square Enix has a habit of kind of giving a free pass to anything that's going away. Remember when they thought FFXIV was going to rock and FFXI was probably going to be over-ish soon and they boosted the level cap to 99 and parties went to 150k an hour and pretty much all of the masochism of the last 8 years was replaced by easier sh!t where you could even solo the boss if you had a brew?

This brings me full circle to my only legitimate point here: Asking if the content that's going away (whether or not Ifrit is included, notice that in all of my big bold THIS IS MY MAIN IDEA paragraphs, he's not even f***ing mentioned.) will follow in that pattern and be easier to scoop up before it's deleted, or if achieving the limited-time achievements within a year is part of the challenge. Again, limiting the ability of loyal 1.0 players to receive 1.0's potential to artificially increase the E-Peen value of said achievements in 2.0 is a bummer - but if that's the point, so be it.

I just wanted to ask.

[Aenarion]

I'm not saying these are requirements set by Square Enix,[/U] I'm saying that due to the mechanics of the fight having easy work-arounds that allow for doing less work (i.e. if everyone has sentinel) [B]a large chunk of the community perceives it as a requirement and treats potential party members as if it is.

Frankly, that's something that will always exist in one form or another in any MMO. Unless you homogenize the various classes so much that they become indistinguishable from one another, some setups is simply going to work better than others, and guess what? the community is going to default to that setup for the most part.

[Wynn]

Frankly, that's something that will always exist in one form or another in any MMO. Unless you homogenize the various classes so much that they become indistinguishable from one another, some setups is simply going to work better than others, and guess what? the community is going to default to that setup for the most part.

^This. It really doesn't have anything to do with the mechanics. There will always be someone who finds the easiest way to do something and everyone will use that simply because people take the path of least resistance by nature.