On Ultimate Off Ultimate

[Rita1989]

Still does not change the fact that the world first group did not raid for 21 hours per day and that it was a rumor. Yoshida stated that raiding so many hours is not good thus they seemingly heard the rumor and not numbers. (Or somehow the world first group lied and did so many hours which I cant believe)

This decision to cancel it was probably made months ago though so its kind of irrelevant regardless, also I think they said they do look through the logs of world first to see how progress is going on the fight and make sure no bugs/cheats are being used, so they likely know exactly how long they put into clearing the fight.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

...does it matter? How many raiders have even beaten the first one, if not both?

Does Perform matter? Just because you don't enjoy a specific piece of content doesn't mean everyone shares your opinion. Plenty of people prog Ultimate even if they are miles away from clearing because it's a long-term goal. Certainly a better alternative to doing... what exactly? Ridorana and Swallow's Compass.

You should be worried they are going to break all the third party stuff due to ultimate raiders. Hopefully it wont be all content.

They're talking about Cactbot, which is a different tool than ACT. They aren't going to touch parsers because they know the backlash it would have.

Less than 7000, out of at least 2 million players. Do the math.

You weren't watching day one then. Xeno and MrHappy both broke 10k and maintained for several days, albeit with dips through the day. Both continued to average 4-5k, and have only dropped now that Ultimate's been cleared.

they also worry about player's health - when they hear stories of 21 hour/day prog and forgoing sleep to down these things that makes them rethink how many these they should put out.

Leith was meme-ing. Entropy progged roughly 12-14 hours until the last day when they were close to clearing. That's when they pulled 21 hours. That's hardly a health concern, especially it only happens once in eight months.

Sfia even went into some details on Frosty's podcast. They set up meal plans, purposely eat properly and get enough sleep to keep themselves focused. They're probably more health conscious than the majority of people whining over how "unhealthy" WF prog is.

Still, 21 hours one single day is not healthy. As far I know the norm was around more than 12 and less than 16 per day, so not that big of a difference.

Staying up playing a game for 21 hours every eight months isn't going to kill you anymore than going out on Years News Eve and getting hammered would. Are we going to worry about the health of party-goers now too?

Also makes up most of the player base. I don't think people wanting content like Ultimate do themselves any favours hating on the bulk of the player base

Many raiders become frustrated because the overwhelming majority of content is made for casual players. You already get virtually everything. Even Savage was watered down to better cater towards lower skilled players. Alas, that still isn't enough. People whine about Neo Exdeath and God Kefka being Savage exclusive. And they whine over Ultimate because how dare the raid community has one piece of content designed for them.

And if we're going to use the whole "well, not many people do it!" argument. PvP has been a near failure since its inception yet that hasn't stopped the devs from pouring huge amounts of resources into it; practically begging people to play.

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I haven't been banned yet. ;-;

[RiyahArp]

Does Perform matter? Just because you don't enjoy a specific piece of content doesn't mean everyone shares your opinion. Plenty of people prog Ultimate even if they are miles away from clearing because it's a long-term goal. Certainly a better alternative to doing... what exactly? Ridorana and Swallow's Compass.

1. Does it matter we do not have a third ultimate fight when barely anyone has beaten the first two? Is there a large audience that is really going to be hurt by the lack of this third fight specifically. It's not "get rid of ultimate" it's "how many ultimate fights can this playerbase complete or gain value from?"

2. No, perform doesn't matter. I rarely even see it used any more in town areas. I don't think devs get that if you have musical talent, you are probably going to choose a real instrument over this, and the main benefit of music systems are non-musical people who can use macros of popular songs.

3. If they obfuscate the data sent to the server, it can affect anything that relies on that data and maybe break it. All that stuff more or less works on the same principle.

[Lambdafish]

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I agree with everything said here. What I would love the devs to do is pour those missing resources back into raid content. I'd love it if we got the next Omega tier which didn't end with Omega himself, and then in 4.5 we get the Omega "trial" which is nowhere near on par with Ultimate, but difficulty wise would pretty much be a pseudo 5th tier to the raid (and would require completion of the raid). I feel like this would fill the hole that ultimate would leave, while also addressing the problems with having too many ultimate fights in an expansion.

INB4 people are triggered that I ask for more raid content.

[Paladinleeds]

INB4 people are triggered that I ask for more raid content.

To be fair, it seems we want similar things. As in more higher difficulty stuff. It just seems our approaches to how it should be done are different. That being said, them throwing more raid content at us isn't something I'm against. But I feel pushing up the difficulty of things (except Ultimate, that's in a good place already IMO) in the raid department would be good. But yes, let's bridge the difficulty gaps.

[Lambdafish]

To be fair, it seems we want similar things. As in more higher difficulty stuff. It just seems our approaches to how it should be done are different. That being said, them throwing more raid content at us isn't something I'm against. But I feel pushing up the difficulty of things (except Ultimate, that's in a good place already IMO) in the raid department would be good. But yes, let's bridge the difficulty gaps.

I disagree tbh, I think the difficulty of omega is perfect. If you want an example of why raid difficulty should not be pushed up, look at gordias. By adding a 5th raid tier that is on maybe brute justice level (i,e, more difficult than now, but not quite gordias), it will allow a much smoother (except chardanook but thats a different discussion altogether) difficulty curve throughout the raid tier, without it becoming inaccessible, stale, and impossible to PUG.

[polyhedral]

You weren't watching day one then. Xeno and MrHappy both broke 10k and maintained for several days, albeit with dips through the day. Both continued to average 4-5k, and have only dropped now that Ultimate's been cleared.

I watched enough the first few days to know that I personally never seen this, but then again, I personally grow tired of seeing folks fight the same fight days, weeks, and months on end. I low balled both numbers and tried to play devil's advocate, but since you brought it up, don't you think this game has more than 2 million active subs throughout the world? My point still stands I think.

I know some would like to see this game turn into an e-sports game, hell, it would make them money if that was so, but I cringe at that thought.

Like I said in an earlier comment ITT, I'd grab my pitchfork right along with ya, if I had seen even 50k people interested in watching those few folks fighting UwU.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I watched enough the first few days to know that I personally never seen this, but then again, I personally grow tired of seeing folks fight the same fight days, weeks, and months on end. I low balled both numbers and tried to play devil's advocate, but since you brought it up, don't you think this game has more than 2 million active subs throughout the world? My point still stands I think.

I know some would like to see this game turn into an e-sports game, hell, it would make them money if that was so, but I cringe at that thought.

Like I said in an earlier comment ITT, I'd grab my pitchfork right along with ya, if I had seen even 50k people interested in watching those few folks fighting UwU.

No, it doesn't. The closest public census we have puts the active playerbase at approximately 600,000. The game hasn't broke over one million since Heavensward. And even then, it only ever came close. At least according to these unofficial censuses.

And I loathe the idea of this game becoming an e-sports because the devs simply have no idea how to properly cater towards that market. We needs only look at the disarray of PvP for demonstrate that.

20k+ is still more than ten times this game ever gets on Twitch otherwise barring a new patch. Even then, it struggles. Ultimate and new tier releases are the only things that garner any attention.

[polyhedral]

Just to let you know, I'm not against having more ultimate at all. I welcome any content that is challenging. I just wish it was like it was in FFXI, and allowed more than 8 people to experience it at a time. I just wish my fears of elitism and toxic behavior wasn't as contagious as I've seen in the past, and currently happening because of said content. I just hope this game doesn't turn into e-sports cash driven toxic af atmosphere. I appreciated Eureka at launch a lot, because it finally felt like the community could gather together and play the same content together.

Hell, I've been through that whole end game struggle years back, and myself, don't care to go back to that lifestyle. I can't do that again, too old, maybe too apathetic. Or maybe I just don't see the rewards in this game for that lifestyle, but I can see why some people, the few that do this content, does it. It may be good advertising for SE on twitch.

I don't know exactly where the phrase "poopsocking" comes from, all I know is that someone actually did it fighting pandemonium warden in xi for 18 hours to win. I played for years without any LS being able to beat AV before I quit the game. Comparing to this game, well, I don't really know what point I'm trying to get at to be fair. At least it's winnable? Or maybe not near as challenging as it should be? How does SE include content like this, and make more people interested?

I'm not to blame for their decision, but I kinda can understand why they limit it? IDK, I really wish they'd dedicate more resources to this game also, so everyone can have their own slice and flavor of cake in game. This alone frustrates most players. Most comments I've read find it hard to understand the reasoning behind a lot of their decisions.

Maybe I'm just really salty this game isn't FFXI-2. Maybe I'm just wearing nostalgia glasses.

[KisaiTenshi]

They're talking about Cactbot, which is a different tool than ACT. They aren't going to touch parsers because they know the backlash it would have.

That is still ACT, and still using the ACT FFXIV Network module. I told you why this is a cheat tool, before, so I won't bring it up again.

The game sends the packets unencrypted is the only reason any of these tools work at all. Any counter-measures employed would break all the parsers. Now they could compress+encrypt the packets that spawn a monster, but that packet is still being sent, and if you know the mechanics of the fight, you wouldn't need to decrypt it, just know that "something is about to happen".

I don't seriously expect the dev team to change this because it would result in lag for everyone. The proper counter-measures would require randomizing the packet id's for every instance change, and that just adds a hurdle for the parser developer, not a wall. Applying and cycling an encryption key for every instance would be a higher hurdle, but not a wall, since the same network parsers can read the game client memory so digging a key out of the memory would not be an obstacle. That comes back to "you can't trust the client"

Obviously that means they need to consider that players are cheating by using parsers and thus they should not design a boss fight by pre-spawning anything.

Or you know, they could just ban players who use these tools in the first place.