Dev Tracker

[Ocara]

Say what? Something about making black belt easier to obtain and/or buff black belt? New belt?

I think they were saying they weren't planning on making black belt easier to get at the moment, because the level cap increase makes it easier to get through the old means anyway. And then if they ever added something stronger than black belt they'd look into making BB easier to obtain.

[D44kpunk]

don't understand logic, surely this game is making enough money to pay devs to actually come up with new content instead of rehashing old content. guess ff14 was a bigger flop than expected

[Byrthnoth]

don't understand logic, surely this game is making enough money to pay devs to actually come up with new content instead of rehashing old content. guess ff14 was a bigger flop than expected

They don't have to though. We're incredibly grateful if they give us anything new to do.

[D44kpunk]

They don't have to though. We're incredibly grateful if they give us anything new to do.

?

[solanis]

don't understand logic, surely this game is making enough money to pay devs to actually come up with new content instead of rehashing old content. guess ff14 was a bigger flop than expected

they're being idiots. ffxi still makes profit, so they cram us together on even fewer servers that will now have peak populations of 4-6k. ffxiv has failed, but they get to keep their literally deserted servers of less than a thousand people. fucking dumb. :S

[Absolutely Virtue]

I wonder what the marginal costs for keeping additional FFXI servers are like. Beyond the salaries of a handful of GMs I doubt they're actually that high, as the development costs surely benefit from economies of scale. I don't think closing servers is a cost cutting measure at all. I think the devs actually want severs to be crowded. They view the game as social and community-based, and there is some critical factor that triggers the "time to merge these assholes" response.

I have made this argument one billion times, but nobody seems to listen. Contrary to what BG thinks, the average player is not working on the later stages of an Empyrean weapon. Shit like congestion for pops is a low priority for the devs. They care more about casuals, and the things casuals do. You may love it that your server only has 1,200 people on at peak, because it makes it easier for you to farm your 9th set of AF3+2. But you're the minority. For every one of you there are ten casuals who can't get anyone to help them finish ToAU, Nyzul, or limit breaks. More people on the server means more people doing stuff like that.

The hardcore endgamer is likely the dev's least favorite player. You're online all the goddamn time, you're constantly looking for exploits that end up costing money to fix, you're constantly bitching for new content that costs money to develop, and you're constantly crying to GMs that cost money to staff. Yet you pay the /exact same/ amount of money as the casual.

If you were SE, who would you cater to? The expensive, annoying minority or inexpensive, easy-to-please majority?

[Divinius]

[...lots of stuff...]

If you were SE, who would you cater to? The expensive, annoying minority or inexpensive, easy-to-please majority?

If I could sig your whole post, I would. I believe this is exactly the issue, and something I think most people don't realize. Well said.

[Gwynplaine]

It's not even that exactly. Competition for NMs or other things with limited use is the only drawback to high population servers. And if that's taken care of then there are a lot of benefits to having a high population. So hopefully the congestion fix will work.

It seems like they've been freeing up a lot of server space/resources lately though. Consider all the servers from the first merge, the servers from this coming merge, the Tetramaster server, and the resources required for all the individual Bastok/Windurst/Sandoria AH. I'd assume this helps lower the costs of maintaining FFXI by a pretty significant amount.

[Toth]

I wonder what the marginal costs for keeping additional FFXI servers are like. Beyond the salaries of a handful of GMs I doubt they're actually that high, as the development costs surely benefit from economies of scale. I don't think closing servers is a cost cutting measure at all. I think the devs actually want severs to be crowded. They view the game as social and community-based, and there is some critical factor that triggers the "time to merge these assholes" response.

I have made this argument one billion times, but nobody seems to listen. Contrary to what BG thinks, the average player is not working on the later stages of an Empyrean weapon. Shit like congestion for pops is a low priority for the devs. They care more about casuals, and the things casuals do. You may love it that your server only has 1,200 people on at peak, because it makes it easier for you to farm your 9th set of AF3+2. But you're the minority. For every one of you there are ten casuals who can't get anyone to help them finish ToAU, Nyzul, or limit breaks. More people on the server means more people doing stuff like that.

The hardcore endgamer is likely the dev's least favorite player. You're online all the goddamn time, you're constantly looking for exploits that end up costing money to fix, you're constantly bitching for new content that costs money to develop, and you're constantly crying to GMs that cost money to staff. Yet you pay the /exact same/ amount of money as the casual.

If you were SE, who would you cater to? The expensive, annoying minority or inexpensive, easy-to-please majority?

Very well said, AV.

Plus, why are people thinking Abyssea is the 'end' when they specifically announced the level cap would be going to 99 (and I believe have stated they could go as high as 120???) ? They clearly have plans for more content but what that entails is still a bit shrouded in mystery. Just wish they would let us know what they have planned for this year...

[solanis]

That's an excellent post AV, but you're forgetting that congestion in abyssea hurts the casuals more than anyone. it kind of limits the validity of your argument.

[Kaslo]

I love how people who quit love to come into these threads and just be like "see this is why I quit!" while we just don't care about their opinions.

[Necronus]

I wonder what the marginal costs for keeping additional FFXI servers are like. Beyond the salaries of a handful of GMs I doubt they're actually that high, as the development costs surely benefit from economies of scale. I don't think closing servers is a cost cutting measure at all. I think the devs actually want severs to be crowded. They view the game as social and community-based, and there is some critical factor that triggers the "time to merge these assholes" response.

I have made this argument one billion times, but nobody seems to listen. Contrary to what BG thinks, the average player is not working on the later stages of an Empyrean weapon. Shit like congestion for pops is a low priority for the devs. They care more about casuals, and the things casuals do. You may love it that your server only has 1,200 people on at peak, because it makes it easier for you to farm your 9th set of AF3+2. But you're the minority. For every one of you there are ten casuals who can't get anyone to help them finish ToAU, Nyzul, or limit breaks. More people on the server means more people doing stuff like that.

The hardcore endgamer is likely the dev's least favorite player. You're online all the goddamn time, you're constantly looking for exploits that end up costing money to fix, you're constantly bitching for new content that costs money to develop, and you're constantly crying to GMs that cost money to staff. Yet you pay the /exact same/ amount of money as the casual.

If you were SE, who would you cater to? The expensive, annoying minority or inexpensive, easy-to-please majority?

Pretty much this. I also believe that any MMO would love to have every player on a single server, and not just for cost saving measures (single game server doesn't necessarily mean single physical server). EVE Online is basically an example of how this can work, but unlike EVE which is an open world space game (i.e. lots of black empty space and a ton of realtively indistinguishable star systems) most MMOs don't have the luxury of a world that was literally made by a random placement generator. While looking at any one star or planet the first time might be pretty, it copy paste across the entire galaxy ... whereas in WoW or FFXI or CoH or Aion or whatever, places need to be unique, hand designed, and have character all their own. And now that you have that unique readily identifiable place you have to put shared resources there (AH's, NPC's, actual resources) and suddenly even if you COULD fit 100 or even 10,000 players no lag, they all need to share those limited resources at that specific location. Short of making carbon copies of everything (much how Horst/Joachim are about to be cloned) its not as easy for most MMO's.

FFXI is at a point where there IS plenty of room for people. I mean honestly, the peak number of players per hour is still about the same it was when CoP was new and Sea wasn't even released. We now have a ton more zones and likely have a MUCH higher capacity per server (although I know we've seen zones like Whitegate hit caps, I have no idea what the server cap itself would be even if we spread out as much as possible). The point being, its in SE's best interest to spread us back out again and make it so that we get closer to that "one server" paradigm while still managing to make the content meaningful. While I've aboslutely loved Abyssea, its really sad that 80% of the zones in this game are as empty as Dangruf Wadi.

In the end if SE is successful and can make Abyssea remian great AND revive old content AND add more new content heading into 95 and 99 caps, we could actually LIKE seeing 4-6k people online as opposed to 1-3k. But yeah, I'm probably being idealistic, but then again this post was about reaching optimal configurations and not about what SE will actually achieve.

Edit: Oh, and just before anyone jumps on it, single server isn't the only paradigm. Some other games (even if they sucked) have had other solutions to unify player bases.

Runescape: Multiple servers, but you could hop between them so essentially there was a single player base (I could totally see this working for FFXI, uh, maybe)

CoH: Clones zones when they hit capacity. Very similar to Runescape above but on a zone to zone basis. Unfortunately CoH still has disjoint servers, but this would solve specific problems like Abyssea, making temporary copies of a zone when demand justifies it.

CoH/WoW: WoW recently (i think, i don't play) added raiding with people from other servers. While still not a unified player base, this is the kind of thing that would solve specific problems like Missions. CoH is currently adding an identical system for Task Forces in their next Version Update.

[Siatdiat]

In the end if SE is successful and can make Abyssea remian great AND revive old content AND add more new content heading into 95 and 99 caps, we could actually LIKE seeing 4-6k people online as opposed to 1-3k. But yeah, I'm probably being idealistic, but then again this post was about reaching optimal configurations and not about what SE will actually achieve.

This sounds fair enough, but what about when 2k of those people are semi-afk in Jeuno waiting for a shout they need? many people are too lazy to make groups for things and like to do other shit while waiting for things to happen.

[Gergall]

For every one of you there are ten casuals who can't get anyone to help them finish ToAU, Nyzul, or limit breaks.

As an MMO ages, the percentage of hardcore endgame players rises. Not because players reach the level cap (max level is not the same as hardcore, of course), but because casuals tend to either quit or become hardcore as time goes on. Comparatively speaking, hardcores rarely change back to casuals. 10 to 1 sounds a bit exaggerated and in any case, I would say that the ratio will continue to swing towards hardcore players slowly but surely.

[Zeno McDohl]

2nd post in http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...Dynamis-Reborn!

Here is some additional info!
Monster claim and item drops will work as usual.

Treasure:
There are no plans to change the drop rate of Relic equipment.
Along with the reduction of the entry time restriction, the amount of Ancient Currency earned per session will be lowered. Overall, this change should increase the Ancient Currency distributed across the World.

[Necronus]

This sounds fair enough, but what about when 2k of those people are semi-afk in Jeuno waiting for a shout they need? many people are too lazy to make groups for things and like to do other shit while waiting for things to happen.

There's one good solution for this, cross zone global chat channels. Many MMO's have one or more of these (for example CoH has "Requests", "Arena", and "Help", plus the ability for players to create CROSS SERVER chat channels which have all number of uses and the ability for channel owners to block/mute morons, basically like an IRC or Ventrilo or whatever). Then those AFK morons blocking the mog house can sit inside it, or in their home nation, or wherever. Or they can be lazy and still stand there while I move somewhere less crowded, either way I win.
Heck, thats my one sorta fear on the cloning of Joachim/Horst. Yeah, its AWESOME I can homepoint in Bastok again .. but will I still have to drag my ass to Jeuno for random shit? Yeah. Global chat channels ftw!

[Zag]

well I was from seraph and when we merged with bismarck, it was the best thing that ever happened to ff11 besides abyssea. You don't have to look for heads anymore on anything and I only have to shout once or twice for a response and not 6 hours like back in the day with a server of 800-1100 ppl.

Dynamis is now a free zone that you can do all day everyday and one of the previous updates during the mini update articles said the next major version update is decreasing HNM and NM pop timers of most monsters significantly.

Does that mean king behemoth pops every 24 hours now and the NQ pops every 6 hours?? noone knows, but one can have hope... more chances at a d-ring dropping if thats the case.

[TehKerm]

2nd post in http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...Dynamis-Reborn!

ffs does this mean dynamis is going to keep the zone wide loot pool? fuckin fail.

[Isiolia]

I have made this argument one billion times, but nobody seems to listen. Contrary to what BG thinks, the average player is not working on the later stages of an Empyrean weapon. Shit like congestion for pops is a low priority for the devs. They care more about casuals, and the things casuals do. You may love it that your server only has 1,200 people on at peak, because it makes it easier for you to farm your 9th set of AF3+2. But you're the minority. For every one of you there are ten casuals who can't get anyone to help them finish ToAU, Nyzul, or limit breaks. More people on the server means more people doing stuff like that.

While I don't disagree on the overall premise of your argument, I do think that this is slightly off base. Yes, SE is understandably targeting the majority, which are not the hardcore players. However, if things like congestion issues aren't addressed, then it only serves to drive all but the hardcore players away from the affected content. They'll put up with it, others won't. Or maybe can't, due to playtime.

The basic idea that a given player can log on, group up, and just go do whatever it is they want to do without being impeded by other people on the server is pretty universal.

[Gwynplaine]

2nd post in http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...Dynamis-Reborn!

Ugh, ok more ambiguous English translation. What does "usual" refer to? Usual drops inside how Dynamis works now or usual drops in the rest of the game? Needs original japanese translation.