Rumbles of a New Version Update in the Distance (09/20/2013)

[fantasticdan]

For years the game didn't even progress vertically at all, was my point. The early years was when it was crucial to do so. Just side-grades for years and years. Why wouldn't people become attached to their relics and gear? We all know about Armadaberk. Why did it have to be so damn good and have utility for 7+ years since it was released?

And my point was the game never could have. You can't have WoW style vertical progression in a game that puts out endgame content so slowly and so meagerly; people will run out of things to do and quit not long after every content update, exactly as they are now. Outside of FFXIV, that's why most people are quitting; because there isn't anything to do now outside of delve, yorcia skirmish, and monstrosity, and if you don't enjoy those/are sick of them/capped out on the gear/whatever, there is shit all to do, because nearly all other content was made obsolete due to vertical progression.

In terms of volume of endgame content to do, FFXI only stood up to other MMOs because it kept its legacy content relevant. Without that, it's a joke.

[Malithar]

I mean if you want to get really technical you can't say XI was always completely horizontal, stuff usually got outdated bit by bit.

With how stuff used to get "outdated" though by those tiny upgrades, it didn't really tranche your previous gear, there was just slightly better available. +1-5 att, +1 MAB, +a few skill, etc. It was typically so little of an upgrade, that while you'd strive for it and get it when you could, you weren't considered gimp previous to it. The only upgrades that really felt like large leaps ahead in quality of gear was when we began getting large amounts of haste, STP, multiattack, cure pot, and FC. Prior to that, the upgrades hardly outdated previous gear.

Now though? Aug. Hag gear has more MAB, MAcc, pet stats, etc, than anything ever, by far. Hag legs alone with MAB aub has more MAB than the entire Morrigan's +1 set, and only like 13 behind the Int. This is a single piece compared to an entire set, nevermind if you were to get MAB on all the pieces, or Pet: MAB, or FC, or whatever your heart is set on. Even the pieces by themselves are ridiculously powerful. Any oldschool WS piece just can't survive in this environment of inflated stats as well, and TPing in oldschool gear will soon become risky business, once we're in content that requires us to be wearing ilvl gear for its defensive bonuses.

I'm not a huge fan of their vertical system, but it doesn't seem to do much good complaining about it, so it is what it is. The vast degree of upgrades that they've released though is shocking to the system compared to the "upgrades" we used to get. I suppose if anything, rather than succeeding at a vertical upgrade system, they've succeeded in segregating the population of the game via the equipment, as the difference in ability from tier to tier of gear is pretty staggering. Enough to not look at it and be like meh, +3 att, whatevers, but now, its mouth gaping open, trying to understand how gear can have so much.

I do hope the vertical progression is temporary though. Perhaps say, get all the Naakuals and areas released, cap ilvl out at whatever, then fill in from there. We've got enough filler content tiers for now, lets focus on the higher end of things and get to a solid place that they can continue to build outward from like they did the previous 10 years. Not in a sidegrades for a decade way, but in a more pieces for different situations sort of way, all out DPS sets, hybrid sets, full on -DT sets, etc. Give us more tools, rather than anything other than highest ilvl is gimp and a waste of time.

[Tymon]

And my point was the game never could have. You can't have WoW style vertical progression in a game that puts out endgame content so slowly and so meagerly; people will run out of things to do and quit not long after every content update, exactly as they are now. Outside of FFXIV, that's why most people are quitting; because there isn't anything to do now outside of delve, yorcia skirmish, and monstrosity, and if you don't enjoy those/are sick of them/capped out on the gear/whatever, there is shit all to do, because nearly all other content was made obsolete due to vertical progression.

In terms of volume of endgame content to do, FFXI only stood up to other MMOs because it kept its legacy content relevant. Without that, it's a joke.

This is pretty much dead on.

The developers are divorcing their wife without a prenup. Once you establish the content like that for as many years as you did, you're married to it. You can't just decide to change everything suddenly and expect it to work out. Especially not the way they did it, which may have been the worst possible execution of such a plan I've ever seen.

[Lucavi]

So, pretty much par the course for SE. Good to see that nothing's changed.

[jimbobsonofgod]

The problem is not what they implemented its how they implemented it. If they would have just done Bayld +WKR 1 > skirmish > bayld 2+WKR2 > skirmish 2 + delve > Delve boss gear (ya'll gonna hate this part but...) make it so you couldn't purchase boss drops. I am sure there would be twice as many people playing today.

[Draylo]

So, pretty much par the course for SE. Good to see that nothing's changed.

Yet you are playing 14.

[NynJa]

People getting mad at a change in vertical progression?
Guess what I was told when the thief's knife that I probably spent close to 300 hours camping for got turned into a 10k pop item NM with a 100% drop? get with the times. So the advice is being pushed forward.


Dont twist words though and think I'm saying that releasing content, and then releasing filler content thats meant to bridge for those who cant do the previous content is good. If you release ilvl119 content, what you release next should be tailored to a minimum of ilvl119, and find another way to ease the previous content for people who havent quite made it. Releasing ilvl 119 content, then releasing lvl113 content with nothing new for those have beaten ilvl119 content is bad for business.

[Jem]

Delve was already too easy before they started going back with ilvls and throwing stupid numbers on everyone weapons/gear. Yes not everyone could clear the bosses but no way should it have all been 5 NM'able by so many, so easily (it shouldn't have been 5 NM'able at all at that stage imo).

That was pretty much why I stopped playing. The existing content was already too easy and then they went and gave everyone a ridiculous boost whilst adding content of an even lower ilvl. That along with a lot of my friends quitting in the R/E/M crying a few months prior (Them being replaced didn't bother me but it did drastically reduce the number of people I had to talk to)

I's kinda sad because I still check in on all the dev/update notes and my wife still plays. I just haven't been able to bring myself to log in anymore or cancel my subscription over the last few months.

[Fwahm]

According to SE, they expected Delve to be 5 NM + Boss clearable once you got a good amount of Delve gear, and hey, people didn't start doing 5 NM + Boss runs until everyone had T4-5 Delve weapons for their melees. That sounds about what SE predicted.

FFXI's endgame isn't supposed to be this super-difficult, only the top tier of players can clear content. It never was, barring a few small exceptions, like Legion at release. SE has always designed FFXI to have everything clearable (difficulty wise, if not time wise) by a group of moderately skilled players.

[Alistrianna]

Absolute Virtue, Pandemonium Warden and early Einherjar days beg to differ...

[Slycer]

SE has never put out content fast enough to sustain this level of vertical progression.

This right here is exactly the problem. Never mind the fact that all old events are useless and the gear that you worked so long to get is nothing more than mannequin trash now. Continued vertical progression with minimal content updates every three to four months is totally unsustainable, and going back and forth between increasing the maximum and filling in the gaps, which is apparently their current plan, is even less sustainable, even for a game with a fully staffed development team, which FFXI is clearly not. From what Matsui has said in the past, though, I feel like they really did think this out thoroughly and they just wanted to generate a burst of excitement (= $) with the knowledge that it might hurt them long term.

Also, I know that people are constantly slamming the game right now, but if you rewind to mysteries of ROM9 and the announcement of Seekers of Adoulin, the excitement around here for FFXI was palpable. It wasn't that long ago. On release, too, people were plenty excited about Seekers as it was an injection of new stuff to do, and the new Skirmish, Naakual, and Bayld equipment that was introduced were reasonable (but still "wow") upgrades over what we used to use, without blowing everything out of the water completely. Then Delve came and created a huge rift in endgame with the haves and have-nots, and the gear created a real problem with effort/reward ratio in comparison to old gear (specifically RME weapons). The item level update after that was the real nail in the coffin, and the kind of shortsighted choice that I feel like they really couldn't afford to do. I remember when I was translating all of those DAT mined pieces from the test server with the new stats for the item level upgrade and I was just thinking to myself "I hope they know what they're doing." (Even within the the item level system, stuff is all over the place, with item level 113 gear beating out item level 119 gear, etc.)

I still do hope they know what they're doing, but I lost a lot of hope with Skirmish 2 stuff, and the release of ARR (and/or the lack of content) had an extremely noticeable impact on the player base, at least in NA primetime, in the range of maybe 20-30% of previously active players. I know personally I'm still subbing but I really haven't played much at all since ARR because there's just nothing to do for me right now in XI in which I feel like I can advance my character. I never felt that way before as even during Voidwatch and the terribad year those expansion scenarios were released, there was still all of the old content to fall back on. I want them to turn things around in November. Forget the new Adoulin crap... hard mode battlefields and RME/AF upgrades, if done right, could do it for me alone. Adoulin stuff would be icing on the cake, as long as it's nothing as shallow as Yorcia Skirmishes.

[Toth]

They do have have one more chance to learn from all of this. When the next area and delve content come out, there cannot be 120+ item level items from delve bosses and then underwhelming items from bayld or whatever system is in place. One solution is too make more job specific equipment that augments abilities for end game areas. The second is to make the new delve NM items 119 ilevel as before and then start offering items of 120+ outside of delve.

[Dominico]

They do have have one more chance to learn from all of this. When the next area and delve content come out, there cannot be 120+ item level items from delve bosses and then underwhelming items from bayld or whatever system is in place. One solution is too make more job specific equipment that augments abilities for end game areas. The second is to make the new delve NM items 119 ilevel as before and then start offering items of 120+ outside of delve.

More than likely I assume that all Delve gear will cap at ilvl 119. It wouldn't make sense if they suddenly announce the next tier of Delve gear to be ilvl 130 or some bs and in one quick shot just make the other Delve boss gear obsolete. Then again, this is SE. Either way, didn't they say that Adoulin content would eventually cap at lvl 140? I'm assuming they're saving that for some new unannounced event, but who knows.

[dasva]

Also should point out that it's not just SE that doesn't have the manpower/time to support the vertical progression but large parts of the player base as well. There is a large undercurrent of if you aren't in a decent big ls which on some servers don't exist in your time zone you will end up spending most of your time trying to get gear only to have it completely trashed before you get even a small portion of it let alone have time to play around with it and experiment with builds and such. And while there are players still that like that the past 10 years of not doing that has weeded most of them out.

And really what were they thinking adding all that work load on? I mean seriously first expansion in 5 years was enough to rejuvenate the game and probably pushed the staff to the limits as is. Take out delve and the ilvl item update and redirect that energy to expanding the expansion and this would have been an awesome expansion with lots of excitement in the game. Can't but wonder about the timing of ARR and ilvl.

[NynJa]

Absolute Virtue, Pandemonium Warden and early Einherjar days beg to differ...

The first 2 werent killable at all
The latter was never nerfed skillwise really (other than breaking the full forced family link, which most of the time happene anyways), but made it so you dont need 9/9 to participate in odin.

[Jem]

The first 2 werent killable at all
The latter was never nerfed skillwise really (other than breaking the full forced family link, which most of the time happene anyways), but made it so you dont need 9/9 to participate in odin.

Mob strength was toned down for Einherjar at some point too. Not just the mass linking. I remember at the time we actually hated the removal of linking as it slowed us down and also increased the likelihood you'd aggro the boss by mistake.

And we definitely had issues with Einherjar at one point. There was a patch before the linking removal that made us going from winning like 25-33% of the time to winning 95% of the time (Chair dude gave us issues for a while until we figured out how to handle him)

[Outlaw]

Then Delve came and created a huge rift in endgame with the haves and have-nots, and the gear created a real problem with effort/reward ratio in comparison to old gear (specifically RME weapons).

This. I have tried to get into Delve groups before and they won't let me cause I don't have gear that comes from Delve, and I can't get it if they won't let me join. >_<

[Damane]

This. I have tried to get into Delve groups before and they won't let me cause I don't have gear that comes from Delve, and I can't get it if they won't let me join. >_<

this is the mindset of current dumb mmo generetion you have that in 14 too. we have let people join delve runs with non delve gear, not saying trash gear but good pre SoA gear. especially now with the skill in weapons it should be np considerin you can clear all delve runs with 12 people (some with less). soyeah we had people come with us to get a win if we couldnt fill the ally with our own people. sadly leader is on vacation for 3 weeks and rest is playing 14 so no idea if we even have enough for lowman runs later on

[dasva]

Dammit Dam wish your server actually was Bahamut lol. Still looking for some wins. Kinda funny lately I've been seeing shouts for tojil asking for mnks with Oatixur.

Think I'll probably just bite the bullet and actually peice together some random gear sets for my geo and make some maccros. I get so bored on geo though. And alot of groups tell me to stop nuking when I get bored

[Damane]

Dammit Dam wish your server actually was Bahamut lol. Still looking for some wins. Kinda funny lately I've been seeing shouts for tojil asking for mnks with Oatixur.

Think I'll probably just bite the bullet and actually peice together some random gear sets for my geo and make some maccros. I get so bored on geo though. And alot of groups tell me to stop nuking when I get bored

dont misunderstand, the same dumb mindset is found here too. our leader just is very nice. usually those people that joined were on non important task jobs such as cor brd geo or rdm or additional whm, melee if people from LS knew them.