From the Desk of the Community Team (11/19/2010) - Holy @#$% BlueGartr Shoutout Edition!

[Zubuis]

While Abyssea is a great event and one of the best to ever come out. One of the problems really with it, is that its made basically all other content in the game worthless or not worth the time/effort ratio. And while its a great event, I think it tends to get a tad boring when you do it all the time and thats all you really have left to do. Maybe with 3 more abyssea zones it will be better though.

Events such as Dynamis, while the pieces that used to be good are still good for the most part (mainly macro pieces) such as sorcerer gloves, duelist chapeau, assassin armlets, sam hands , etc. Spending 2-3 hours to get these items when 95% of the other gear is irrelevant, when you could spend 3 hours in abyssea where the 90% of the gear is relevant isnt really worth your linkshells members time. Yeah some salvage gear is still good but for the most part, the majority of the gear is outdated now. The list goes on with almost every older event in the game. Doing einherjar for 1-3 useful pieces that will probably be obsoleted by the AF3 bodies. This is generally one of the problems I see with the game now.

Beyond abyssea, walk of echoes, and magian trials the rest of the game is more or less meaningless. I'm not necessarly saying that older content should be adjusted, though in some cases it probably wouldnt hurt, because I've personally done enough Dynamis that I dont really want to go back there. Walk of Echoes while some of the weapons are good and some of the pieces are good, I just find to be frustrating event due to the way it was set up. Are there plans on making any new type of events (other than abyssea) or adjusting older content so that its more beneficial to do?

[Fiarlia]

Ya know, I gotta wonder. How do they read BG? Do they babelfish/google translate it into JP? Is their English good enough to read it? Do they have some NA or EU guy who sits and reads and then brings info they think is relevant to the devs - in a toned down manner?

No idea why but I really wanna know. And is that Square-Enix Community account the real deal? Those guys (any of them) post?

[pendragoon]

Well, If SE is listening... I feel the need to voice my disappointment at the mythics.

Obtaining Tizona was a tremendous waste of time. Look at the things I had to go through:

Spoiler: show

- Getting floor 100 disk (20 tags, up to 20 days worth of time, assuming no loses)
- Getting titles from 3 ToUA bosses. (We'll say I did all these in a single day, which I didn't)
- Getting titles from Salvage bosses (4 days minimum)
- Getting Captain Rank (50 tags, 50 days, assuming no loses)
- Obtaining 100k Ampoules (tier 1/2/3/Odin, that's 7200 per 12 days minimum time, 166 days, assuming no full loses)
- Redoing each Assault (50 days)
- Obtaining 150k tokens (Assuming floors 95-100 and making someone else use disk, 100 days)
- Obtaining or purchasing 30k Alexandrite (it's hard to quantify the days required to do this if you did not purchase ANY Alexandrite, but an entire year of taking each and every one from a single group?? OR Up to 90M in purchasing them)
- Obtain 3 ZNM boss trophies (This is somewhat easy, except that the drops aren't 100%)

Some of these objectives can overlap, some of them cannot, such as obtaining tokens/redoing assaults.

8 months later and 90M gil later:
FINALLY finished! Let's take a look at my reward:

- A weapon that from the time it was released until the minimum time it took to obtain has been matched and eclipsed in dps by other swords.
- A weapon that has an additional effect that is so marginal it's almost unnoticed. (10% proc for 5-15MP average)
- A weapon that requires you to use a weak weaponskill that has poor abilities to make a lvl 3 skillchain.
- A weapon that requires 300% TP to become equal to a Relics standard capabilities (Double damage/double attack)

Today
In comparison to Relics. Relics typically have a 2-3x damage proc always active. Additional effects outclass the additional effects of Mythics.

In comparison to Emp Weapons. Mythics have an extremely bad DPS disadvantage. The Empyrean weaponskills have ridiculous damage. While I wouldn't classify an Empyrean weapon as easy to obtain, it's certainly not something that can't be done with a single party's effort in less than 1-2 months.

As of now, I've only completed the first Magian trial. Added a whole +1 damage to my Tizona. Took me 14 hours with the help of a COR, BRD, RDM speeding up how fast I can WS. Sadly this was the EASY trial. I have 4 x 40hr trials awaiting me to finish upgrading my mythic. After this has been accomplished, I'd still be out classed by the Empyrean weapon. (What's the point?)


I'll be the first to point out that I'm /emo and QQing, with what I've said above I feel I've been served a great injustice.

Suggestions

I suppose I should list things that I think should be fixed/corrected/adjusted, otherwise this post is mostly just an emo rant. To be honest, these are pretty fair suggestions. It's not like I'm asking for en-Death or en-Meteor on mythics.

1. Mythics should have a standard 2-3x damage proc.
a. If I wait til 300% TP to WS, I should be rewarded with occ. double attack AND occ. 2-3x damage.
2. Trials (for both Relics and Mythics) should be 4-5x easier. I'm talking 500 WS kills MAX. We've already put in months and months of effort, why should we fight harder for marginal upgrades?
3. Weaponskills performed by a mythic should easily shine over the same WS done by a non-mythic.

Tizona specific:
For the love of God... at least show me the proc in the log when the additional effect activates.

[Jeryhn]

Kinda knew this thread would turn out to be a bunch of requests by players to "fix" X, Y, Z thing the moment I read the OP.

While its nice that SE has hired someone to play on the internet and read FFXI forums all day (how the fuck can I get this job, btw?), we still don't have any DIRECT CONTACT while SE, and its part of the reason why their MMOs don't stand up to the competitors'. Let me assure you, Square-Enix Community Team, that six years of pretty much completely ignoring the playerbase has not gone unnoticed. SE still has a lot to make up for, but its good that now they seem to be actually responding in some form.

I'll add in my own little request fix too I guess, in the hopes that they actually DO pay attention:
Update the auto-translator. There's a ton of stuff, such as Abyssea areas and terms, that could do well with being auto-translated. Also, fix the auto-translator in regards to the key item list. I don't see how or why getting 40 abyssites and 30+ atmas should disable my ability to auto-translate those items, and therefore lose my ability to communicate to other players effectively who might not speak my own language.

[Gergall]

Ya know, I gotta wonder. How do they read BG? Do they babelfish/google translate it into JP? Is their English good enough to read it? Do they have some NA or EU guy who sits and reads and then brings info they think is relevant to the devs - in a toned down manner?

No idea why but I really wanna know. And is that Square-Enix Community account the real deal? Those guys (any of them) post?

Pay close attention to their choice of words. It says that the Community Team reads BlueGartr. The Community Team is very small: I think it's 2 NA guys and 1 EU guy, based on the information they gave us about themselves leading up to Vanafest 2010.

The article also says that they relay feedback to the "appropriate people". So the sentence in your post that I bolded above covers it pretty well.

Finally, note that this series of articles is called "From the Desk of the Community Team". It is not written by devs, and anything written in the first person refers to the Community Team member who is writing it.

[Colenzo]

Leik omg hi DEVS lol /wave

[Fiarlia]

bah.

herp derp

[Gynin]

Wow a shoutout to Chilicheese? Jesus that's old school. Well played.

PS. Please fix low level leveling, kthx.

[Triplesea]

Race changing option for a fee. Free money {Do you need it?}. I can only hope...

[Fodder]

SE has always listened. You might recall that young fellow who, after a great deal of contemplation, asked for a cheese sandwich?

EDIT: His toon name was Bytor, and the 5000 other people who were present all wanted to kick him in the dick.

[Yabby]

Take off the glow effect off of shit.

[Byrthnoth]

The ultimate troll post trying to bring all the people who make elaborate game-overhaul suggestions out of the woodwork.

... well it's going to work, damn it! Will update when I compile my thousands of suggestions.

Suggestions:
1) Give Dancer a better weaponskill. 6-hit "Chance of Critical Hit varies with TP" with 60% DEX mod. It would be fabulous.
2) Please split Waltz into two categories (even/odd) so that Dancer can be a more useful healer. A Cure 6 Waltz would also be nice.
3) Ovni (A La'theine notorious monster) has messed up -% damage taken mechanics that don't reset when he's deagroed.
4) Tristitia has spikes that don't reset when it is deagroed.
5) Turul has been known to become untargetable and just run around the zone on the ground at times.
6) Please remove the Ex tag from seals. There have been so many times where I've gotten the seals my friends want and they have the seals I want.
7) Please provide high-attack cap meat options that don't involve HNM drops.
8 ) In line with #7, please add a fourth digit to Attack and Defense. Seeing 999 on my WAR all the time is cool, but I'd rather know how much attack I have.
9) Please fix the mythics and relics that received no noticeable trait upgrade with the increase in level cap (For instance, Spharai's Enhances Counter III is the same as the level 75 version, as far as anyone can tell. Mythic GKT's "Enhances 3rd eye" III is the same as the 75 version, as far as anyone knows. etc.)
10) Please reduce the number of kills required to upgrade Relics and Mythics. I have had friends who quit because they were unable to upgrade their weapons between updates and didn't want to be passed by a much easier obtained Magian weapon. At 50 kill shots per hour, 8000 monsters take 160 hours. For someone who plays 2 hours a night, that's 80 days assuming they do nothing else. I can see the logic behind it. You have outdated most of endgame, which means that hardcore players will "finish" Abyssea and run out of things to do unless you provide them with something that consumes their time (a grind). Still, those college kids who farmed all night and got relics are now dads and moms. It just seems a little excessive.
11) Please change the Corsair Mythic's upgrade trial against undead to any other type of monster. Their weaponskill is dark based, so getting killshots is very difficult because it's always 1/8 resisted.
12) Please find my character and make it win a Rank 1 Bonanza prize. \(^.^)/
13) Please make the relics competitive with Empyreals. They don't have to be universally better than them, but it would be nice if they were in the same league.
14) Don't let Atma die with the Abyssea expansion series or I'll cry hard;
15) Please give me a use for my Kindred Crests. I have over 250 right now and will get more with the next level of magian trials.
16) The ability to move backwards in the Magian paths would be very nice. I currently have an OA2-3 dagger, and I'd be very willing to trade it for a DA+9% Dagger if it didn't mean killings thousands of monsters again.
17) Can you guys explain what kind of influence you have over the creative process or game development? PM or whatever is fine and I'll keep it on the DL. If you guys have been reading BG then you doubtlessly could have predicted our requests, but they haven't been addressed. Do you get stiff-armed by the Japan branch whenever you try to contribute ideas? Thing is, I have to imagine JP players are requesting the same changes.
18 ) Give us something to do with merits
19) Increase the Adventuring Fellow cap
20) Re-work the WSNM system now that many jobs can access the required skill level
21) Make Signet bonus work on level 76+ creatures
22) Increase the Parrying skill up rate (Parrying is the bane of my FFXI existence. 5 hours in party = .2 skill.)
23) Allow Weaknesses to proc during animations.
??) Just has a beer.

[Kuroki]

If you are reading this, please consider

- Making relic weapons on par or stronger than empyreal weapons.
- Lowering by a lot the trials for relic, it's ridiculous and barely anyone would want to make a relic to then time sych hell a lot of time into the trials for a weapon weaker than an empyreal weapon that takes literaly 1 - 2 weeks to complete.
- Give a big boost to relic weaponskills.

Dream part

- Give mage stats to the relic staff

[Myrrh_Quetz]

Should we change the title of this thread to "SE is watching, Post your requests now!"?

[aers]

Hahaha wow that life belt gloves image is incredibly old.

[Draylo]

See and all the bitching about how people bitching made no difference was a lie!

[ronin sparthos]

See and all the bitching about how people bitching made no difference was a lie!

The difference is that SE has FFXI prioritized as second class now to FFXIV. This allows them to "have fun" with this game since they know it's well past its prime. Those pesky investors and suits are busy watching the progress of the new cash cow so the mid level people get to have fun doing what they knew should have been done years ago.

It's really no different than reaching endgame in any old FF game.

[Tagus]

lol

forgot to mention... give galka some fucking mp, my 85 blm has like 650 you racists

at this rate I won't even be able to cast lvl 99 nukes.

[Virg]

Metatron Torment V2.
That is all.

[Dimmauk]

That newsletter made me LOL. And that is what yall get for saying SAM sucks now. I fully expect SAM to get the hook up now.

Job specific Atmas? LOL