Let's look back at all the FFXI content blunders

[Riposte]

Not everything can be as popular as abyssea, but SE could have done things a lot better with a lot of things they added over the years. In this thread lets list all of the activities which never hit, either because of poor execution from SE or lack of interest from us. Or maybe they forgot they ever added it. Note outdated content doesn't really count. If something has been done as endgame for years, it wasn't much of a blunder. In no specific order...


Evolith
A very cool system and perhaps one of the most developed ones they ever released. It even had many models of (cool) armor, all with different colors, created for it. However the actual evolith bonuses were either very situational or situational to the point of uselessness. And implementing them was very demanding considering what people were getting.

Ballista
I am conflicted putting this here, because Ballista has shared a lot of success and even a boom with the Ballista Royale event. However SE lack of interest in PvP is obvious. By the time ToAU came out the entire thing was all but completely forgotten. It struggled on(perhaps still does on some servers) in small numbers, mostly JP? There never was another Ballista Royale despite having great potential as a yearly event. So odd, because they spent a lot of time updating it.

Brenner
Now if this was ranked, by lets say 1-10... Ballista would be 10, Brenner would be 1. Brenner was forgotten the day it came out. I personally played 1 great match(18 vs 18), 2 good matches(12-8vs), and 2 bad matches(2-3vs, the orbitals won), all on the first two days. After that it was through. When I asked people about Brenner, I found that 85% of the population didn't even know it exist(while knowing Ballista did) - this was as true one week after the update as it was 3 years after. Replacing Ballista Royale was the regular LS vs LS league system - "LS Liga". Never used. Changes to the accessibility to Ballista weren't even applied to Brenner.

Pankration
Rounding out the PvP cycle is Pankration. Pankration was a huge success, so much so that it was almost unplayable. At some point things cooled down enough so that it could be enjoyed by a smaller community. SE did get out one good update of it, if I recall, and added more and more monsters to use. However, they didn't build on what they implemented and it seems like there is a ton of shit in the .dats that remained unused. Pankration soon suffered a fate similar to Ballista, in much quicker time too.

...remember Colosseum?

Expeditionary Forces / CONQUEST
As yes, what was perhaps a main mechanic of the game at release and during RotZ. It was very simplistic system that to this day hasn't received a major update. The main way to shift influences, EFs, were mostly ignored saved for a few nation-based linkshells. Those seemed to fall apart as people became higher level and more end-game centric. After ToAU came out, the system basically died out completely. For awhile now it is mostly used for people getting easy teleports to rival cities. When SE created Fields of Valor, they decided that it had nothing to do with CONQUEST, perhaps throwing away any chance of the numbers on /rmap ever mattering.

Feel free to join in.

[Bingbong]

Jueno still has gaming tables... WTF is is called... Venture Dice?

[Byrthnoth]

The Norg lottery.

The FoV Augment system.

The "Return the Chocobo to XX city" game.

[Falaras]

Pankration was a success? Shit was just a good way to waste peoples time for ZNMs.

[Hyan]

I feel they could have done a lot better with Eco-Warrior. I think it was too hard for the new people. The rewards were so-so, but were not worth the hassle after some time.

Chocobo racing... come on, how many people are even aware about the zone created just for this event?

Even the BCNM system... it only encouraged doing the BC's with the best rewards, and many were left to collect the dust. I personally felt that ISNM and ANNM handled this a lot better.

[Antithesis]

Does anyone even remember Garrison?

[Byrthnoth]

Chocobo racing... come on, how many people are even aware about the zone created just for this event?

Even the BCNM system... it only encouraged doing the BC's with the best rewards, and many were left to collect the dust. I personally felt that ISNM and ANNM handled this a lot better.

Chocobo raising is even less likely these days.

Also, ISNMs aren't exactly better than BCNMs. Shadows of the Mind was the only spammed ISNM. ANNMs were forgotten after a month or two.

[Hyan]

ANNMs were forgotten after a month or two.

I wonder why... the rewards weren't that bad were they?

[Siatdiat]

I think the first 3 add-ons in comparison to the abyssea add-ons are a huge amount of fail. Not even the storys in them are a saving grace. Another area where it's apparent the team who made the first 3 add-ons are now doing a very poor job working on FF14.

[Siatdiat]

I wonder why... the rewards weren't that bad were they?

Shitty augmented gear. Also the ones that had good drops had a very low chance. I also believe that everyone had to use AN to participate in it, so it was hard to get people to do that? I'm not positive about that but I remember coming back to the game about this time and wanting to do these and everyone saying they were shit.

[Antithesis]

I think the first 3 add-ons in comparison to the abyssea add-ons are a huge amount of fail. Not even the storys in them are a saving grace. Another area where it's apparent the team who made the first 3 add-ons are now doing a very poor job working on FF14.

Whoever designed the final boss battles of the 3 Add-ons was good man though. All three of those fights were pretty cool and interesting. MKDT fight is easily my favorite fight in the whole game.

[Hyan]

Another area where it's apparent the team who made the first 3 add-ons are now doing a very poor job working on FF14.

I think it's the same team doing all 6.

[darkepyon]

Campaign.

[Purrrfect]

Not sure you would call it "content", but the Mentor system or w/e it was?

[Riposte]

Jueno still has gaming tables... WTF is is called... Venture Dice?

There was a table at the Marble Bridge (talk about ignored content, lol) that is like a 32k or 64k bet per player and it is a four-man table. I played it once, after dragging people there, and ended winning. Think I've made more money playing Venture Dice than anyone else in the world because of that lol.

Campaign couldn't be called a blunder. Campaign ops alone, maybe, but that is a stretch.

[Neisan]

Campaign Ops that require control is the reason certain highly sought after pieces don't exist on servers.

[vagus]

Pankration was the real reason why people don't do Mythics. Lol. If SE would let us skillup in Campaign, people would start doing that again and maybe the Ops will re-open.

[nekura]

Pankration was a success? Shit was just a good way to waste peoples time for ZNMs.

I'm not sure if I'd call it a "success," but I remember it being very popular when it first came out. Like most FFXI events, that stopped after people realized they weren't going to get any good rewards from it.

[ronin sparthos]

All PVP was fail because SE pussied out on it. If they had rewards, people would have tried it but then that'd force SE to do patch updates related to PVP only which would be resources they care not to use.

Content Blunder? How is Yilbegan not on your list....

SE creates this anti-zerg, long investment monster to battle, puts it in 20ish zones, uses a new model at that and in the end his drops resemble a fucking BC40. Boy, did they drop the ball on Yilbegan.

ANNMs failed because everyone had to drop AN to only go once. Had it been like normal BCNMs, it'd have been far more successful. The drops were good at the time (2 star sapphires when they were 4-5m each. imp wootz ingots etc) as well as the augmented items.

[Missnasty]

How about those Fomor NMs in the past zones?

The mobs leveling up mid fight was a cool but their drops are pretty much worthless.