Your opinion on the level cap being raised/Abyssea

[fredjanx]

I'm no SAM (also, lolhagun), but why is RNG so up there?

[Taruking]

Don't think that we've seen the last of Abyssea. With just about every actively playing person dropping $9.99 every few months, they'd have to be IDIOTS not to continue the series in some way, shape or form.

I actually think certain aspects of abyssea expansions cause more harm to this game than good. The concept of making old gear obsolete works for WoW because it was introduced at early stage of the game development, long term WoW subscribers are used to the system and new players will be able to catch up pretty fast. FFXI is not getting any new blood because the game is extremely unfriendly to new players and it's not going to change simply because endgame rewards are now more accessible to new comers. The only way to progress in this game past level 75 is to get the abyssea expansions. Ppl probably quit the game because they are tired of being forced to pay to get into reskinned zones with highly inflexible time restriction and having to start the grinding process all over again.

SE should have added Atma/abyssia system to all pre-existing FFXI zones, adjust the rewards of dynamis/salvage/limbus/NI/einherjar and add !! weakness system to increase the drop rate. Selling abyssea expansions probably helps SE raise some instant cash but it's really more like killing the goose for its last golden eggs.

[Clash Perez]

I agree with some aspects, but not others. I know more people for whom the recent changes rekindled their interest in the game than those for whom it killed it.

As for revamping old events, I don't think drastic changes are required, but lessening some of the restrictions (salvage for three people please) and boosting the drop rates for certain things to make the benefit from the time invested proportional.

For instance, I'm shy of full Usukane by 35 hands; I'd love to finish it if it didn't mean having to spend another several months begging to get six people together for such a minuscule reward. Hell, make me proc blue !! if I have to.

Maybe I'm overly optimistic or just white knighting it, but it seems to me that we've got at least two more updates after the one next week. There's still a fair amount of time for the new dev team to work things out. If the last few updates are any indication, I don't think the optimism is terribly unwarranted.

[Byrthnoth]

I think FFXI has a single digit number of notable updates remaining.

Recent things:
1) Abyssea - Very good. Being able to level jobs while doing something for the advancement of your character is a huge step forward for FFXI. The xp/hr is a huge bonus, but even if it topped out at 40k/hr it would have been a big step forwards.
2) Atmas - Good for the moment. They make us gods in Abyssea. Downside (of course) is that playing the game without them will suck.
3) Outdating all your old events - Good in general. I was tired of them anyway. Now I just wish there was some way to pay an NPC for the last piece of AF2 so I could complete the four 4/5 Dynamis sets I have.
4) Magian trials - Bad, with occasional good-showers. Grinding =/= fun. Whoever told you guys otherwise was lying. The DA/OA2-3 path's kill requirements should be reduced by 75%. Relic/Mythic weapon requirements should be cut by 90%. Elemental paths are okay, but you should make it 1 credit per kill without weather or day, 2 with day, 5 with weather, 6 with day and weather. Some people get cockblocked by their playtime, which isn't constructive at this point in the game. Even if you play for the same 2 hours every night, you would miss Firesday for 5 days in a row and then catch it for two. Not constructive, especially considering you only get 1 point per kill and it'd take 3-4 days to finish later trials.
5) Walk of Echos - lolWoE. I guess it's an alternative to Abyssea, but it's less fun and less rewarding.

[blowfin]

Level cap being raised is fine, i'm just worried about what they're going to have us doing at 99. Honestly I don't want to still be in Abyssea then. I can't see how they're going to give us decent events to replace Dynamis, Limbus, Salvage, Nyzul Isle, Assault, Kings, etc. etc.

5) Walk of Echos - lolWoE. I guess it's an alternative to Abyssea, but it's less fun and less rewarding.

WoE is such an abortion of an event it's not even funny. I wonder if people would even bother if it weren't for Empy weapons.

[Nightfyre]

I'm going to disagree with you and say atmas are fucking terrible. They broke the game more than any update I can recall. If we'd been limited to one lunar abyssite I think it wouldn't have been quite so bad, but even then I'm not entirely sure I'd be happy with the state of things.

[drwaffles]

I'm going to disagree with you and say atmas are fucking terrible. They broke the game more than any update I can recall. If we'd been limited to one lunar abyssite I think it wouldn't have been quite so bad, but even then I'm not entirely sure I'd be happy with the state of things.

Atma isn't a bad system, they just made some of them excessively powerful. I really hope they scale down the potency of a few of them a bit before Heroes comes out, but I think that's very unlikely since most people don't see it as a problem.

[Yugl]

I think atmas are good because it enables SE to do more crazy shit without necessarily revamping the whole system. They don't have to radically change the skill level/HP/MP/Spells/Stats per level; instead, they can use atmas and cruor buffs to compensate. This has the dual effect of limiting the impact of this change to specific areas (As for areas where it would still be relevant: Magian staffs; I wish I had Minkins outside Abyssea) and making them more consistent with upgrades per level. Overall, I like the path SE has chosen. I also like Byr's idea of fixing magian trials. Even elemental staffs can be annoying when the weather you need has almost no EP+ outside of level sync. Furthermore, killshot trials still stink despite the fact that you can team up.

Edit: Rather than hope for nerfs in the future (Seriously, people haven't learned their lesson?) if would be better if you asked for mobs that could withstand the newly buffed players. I personally like how it is, so I'm just throwing that out as a suggestion for those crying about atmas.

[Byrthnoth]

Atmas and Abyssea have brought us into an environment where players are limited by caps rather than their own gear progression.

Caps we didn't deal with as much before:

Spoiler: show

1) 80% Delay reduction
2) 50% Critical hit damage bonus
3) 24% Crit rate cap (pre-Abyssea, very few people hit this on most mobs in their TP gear)
4) -50% Cast Timer reduction (I think every casting job but BLM can hit this now)
5) +50% Cure potency (plenty of space to swap stuff around now)
6) -50 Enmity (people still don't care)
7) Attack cap (not frequently hit pre-Abyssea on most things)
8 ) fSTR (not frequently hit pre-Abyssea on most things)
9) JA/JT DA cap? - I still don't know. Freaking Saber Dance.
10) Hit rate cap (on all jobs)

If this continues, people are going to be stuck whoring the only remaining stats not known to be capped (Double/Triple Attack, STP, Crit hit rate, and occasionally normal Attack). Gear options would have to perfectly offer those stats without waste for low drop-rate items to even be worth getting. Right now, those stats aren't plentiful enough for us to have a productive way to spend new slots.
Example: Imagine how inefficient it would be if SE gave Ninja a pure 10% Haste body. They'd probably use it over AF+1 and switch to using Nusku's and Bandos in a no-Samba build, but overall it really wouldn't help their damage very much. They'd pick up like 13 Attack, which would matter on non-crits when Berserk was down and they didn't have Stalwart's on, but likely it wouldn't be a parsably different increase in their damage.

[Nightfyre]

Rather than hope for nerfs in the future (Seriously, people haven't learned their lesson?) if would be better if you asked for mobs that could withstand the newly buffed players. I personally like how it is, so I'm just throwing that out as a suggestion for those crying about atmas.

My issue with atmas isn't how easy it makes NMs, it's how badly it's affected job balance. Notably, RR and MM.

[mactabilis]

I've always seen it as the changes are long overdue and half the ppl that quit would still be around had this all taken place back in say 07. This is the first time the pace of updates is outdoing how quickly i become bored with something new since like...1st or 2nd update after toau release. I look at collecting the atmas KIs and even triggering !! as breaking up the monotony. Well, i do know a few that quit after this last update when they jumped to the conclusion that you can't solo/duo all the new content and they had no intention of joining some huge LS. Abyssea is just what you make of it. It seems the most flexible of events they've added maybe ever. You can spend all day in there a few times a week or everyday, or a few mins on sausage quest or bastion or w/e. You can try to low man or join PUG or a static to be more efficient, or yeah, even bigger LS can be efficient with the +2s and everyone capping on seals so quickly. The only gripe i have with this is some of the quests have vastly different annoyance levels and like someone said, breaking up nm farming to farm TEs gets boring. Hopefully with more frequent stones next week ppl will not mind losing time so much. Pointing out that there was more variety of events before, this is true, but honestly if they're going to overhaul the gear they aren't going to invest in adding several different events and zones all at once. It's just more convenient for us as well to place all the nm and quests in a few zones, though competing for bat/frog/amun does feel a bit like return to kings for now. Those events are still there, if anyone wants to bother.

Since it takes a while to reach exp cap it tends to encourage botting in actual exp ally. From what i've seen, once your main assist leaves or d/c forget it, half the melee who are asleep just stop. I've also seen more than i care for of leeching on nm farm, yet it's more obvious and easier to call them out than past events. Perhaps because they "cant" leave the zone, ppl find it acceptable to run from pop to pop and not cast a single spell for 2 hours, or can't outperform a basic cor roll script ever...But it's still vastly preferable to what we dealt with before. Yeah it sucks for pre 70 jobs now, except for some jobs and of course key bitch. I had given up on whm 75 before aby cause every normal pt (merits included) was such total shit. Then i got invite to aby as 60s and reached the lv80 cap the same night. Because after so many years leveling is just means to an end, i much prefer reaching a new cap in one sitting, whenever i feel like it, or even while seal farming. So basically ppl pointing out that lowb exp is dead now or say the economy is dead now, it kind of was before aby.

As far as the cap itself and obsoleting old gear, good riddance. That's the only reason many of us returned in the first place. Doing the same shit over and over for years is too damn boring. It's nice to actually be excited about a coming update. If you knew to draw the line to not spend 4 years camping an ebody or 200 kills for one usu body (or got banned in process) or 100 mil+ on a single weapon, you won't give a crap now. Still, i'll grant that the worst aspect of it is the players who grew up on aby only and have no basic knowledge of their job or they don't know where the hell kuftal is or have no appreciation for the game's history and so on, but they can be avoided like anyone else.

[Velocy]

Personally I welcome the changes.

1. I'm happy to say good bye to the 4h+ camping NMs that are going to be claimed by officially botting shells with STF giving sh*t about it.
2. Magian Trials keep someone busy ^^
3. XP loss is no longer a problem.
4. XP camps are no longer a problem.
5. New Gear and Weapons are obtainble by everyone, even if not in a Super-Botting-HNM Shell.
6. Any job is welcome in abyssea

Also I think there should be some more adjustments:
- Either Lower the Alex and Coins cost to upgrade a Relic / Mythic weapon, or provide alternative ways to obtain coins and Alexandrites (no, Campaign doesn't count). Since Dynamis and Salvage are almost dead people have a hard time gathering the required ammount of currency to upgrade. Since in the past most coins were farmed AND bought.
- Provide upgrades (magian trials) for chosen old equipment. Personally I would say Salvage & Nyzul equipment. Not really for HNM equipment. No way I want to go back to camping Faf for more Ridillz lol.

-------------------------------

Well many people see the Atma System as broken, cause several jobs gain a huge benefit. But it was time for a change again kinda Over my 6 years in FFXI I saw DDs come and go. All jobs had their up and downs. Remember everyone being a Ninja... or everyone being a RNG (even XP parties disbanding if there was no RNG available)... more and more things happend with haste nerf, 2-hand bufff, dual wield TP nerf, haste nerf. So this is just another change in the league of DDs. Well I'm happy to have my Ninjas back on track, even leading some parses

My onliest fear is that level 99 will probably break some "old" Abyssea content. A level cap of 90 or even 85 would have been good for at least a year. The cap raise comes rather quick.

[Altariel]

I stopped playing just before the second Abyssea expansion came out (due to SE no longer accepting my bank's card with their stupid SecureCode non-sense.) But from talking to my friends that still do play I am not particularly enthusiastic about the idea of returning. Maybe someone will make some arguments that will convince me otherwise but these expansions sound rather disappointing. Things were certainly bad before the cap increase and needed changed; there were very few goals left to pursue and the relative effort needed to optimize your build from 99.9% complete to 99.91% complete was for the most part not worth the time and effort. That being said, it sounds to me that they have changed it from a game of chess into a game of checkers.

Much of the endgame content had been so static for so many years that it is often easy to forget, but old content used to require quite a bit of skill and coordination. You need to be able to deal a back-to-back-to-back Gates of Hades. Now when you have healers with essentially limitless MP and DDs that can generate ridiculously huge amounts of damage in a short amount of time, where is the challenge after a while? It seems that it would be just as exciting to go beat on bunnies in Ronfaure after a few weeks.

It also seems like this "new" way of doing things encourages the game to be even more cliquey than they already were. If you're a NIN and have a good friend WHM, why would you even have any reason to work together with other people? I do agree that when our focus had so much become optimizing strategies and accomplishing tasks with fewer and fewer people that it is no surprise that it would be taken to the far extreme in Abyssea. But the way it is designed lends itself even more to that approach. Additionally, it seems that the non-linearity of the Abyssea content seems to work against rather than toward shared goals of a linkshell. At least before you could know you were building toward an Omega or a Serameya or whatever. Now, it just sounds like it had enabled people even more to only do their own stuff and if you're not "in with the in crowd" then you're out of luck.

But, what seems silly to me about that is that they just made everything super-gimicky. Take "x" action, get "y" result at with extremely high frequency is a complete turn around in direction of low drop rates. There is some middle ground between their old scarcity mentality and their new approach and they missed that point by a mile. Had there been a special way to use so otherwise irrelevant weapon skills or spell or ability that triggered instant Ridills and E.Bodys to always drop, I don't think the game would survived as long as it has.

I do rather wonder if in the efforts to keep old content relevant whether they will eventually try move to a free to play model like some of the other older games have done. Free to play Zilart zone content, buy add on packs of CoP and ToAU and the paid subscription is for WotG and Abyssea and 80+ and any new content.

[drwaffles]

Edit: Rather than hope for nerfs in the future (Seriously, people haven't learned their lesson?) if would be better if you asked for mobs that could withstand the newly buffed players. I personally like how it is, so I'm just throwing that out as a suggestion for those crying about atmas.

Like I've said before, it's not really the potent melee buffs from RR/VV etc. that bug me, because the boost they provide can be countered by, as you say, introducing more resilient mobs. My main problem lies with the insane amount of Refresh available. When a WHM/SCH can solo heal a MNK/WAR vs. most mobs in Abyssea, that indicates a lack of balance that needs to be addressed, at least in my opinion. Creating mobs with more HP/defence to reduce the effectiveness of melee Atma doesn't solve the "problem" of mages having unlimited MP. I'm repeating myself here, but I believe that a lot of the game's strategy and "challenge" (again, let's not get into that discussion here) is detracted from when the concept of MP management goes out the window. I still think the game is fun even with God mode, but I can't pretend that I don't think it'd be better without such extreme player buffs.

[Plow]

Like I've said before, it's not really the potent melee buffs from RR/VV etc. that bug me, because the boost they provide can be countered by, as you say, introducing more resilient mobs. My main problem lies with the insane amount of Refresh available. When a WHM/SCH can solo heal a MNK/WAR vs. most mobs in Abyssea, that indicates a lack of balance that needs to be addressed, at least in my opinion. Creating mobs with more HP/defence to reduce the effectiveness of melee Atma doesn't solve the "problem" of mages having unlimited MP. I'm repeating myself here, but I believe that a lot of the game's strategy and "challenge" (again, let's not get into that discussion here) is detracted from when the concept of MP management goes out the window. I still think the game is fun even with God mode, but I can't pretend that I don't think it'd be better without such extreme player buffs.

I'll give the same reaction here as my reaction to the devs in WoW talking about Cata healing changes:

Fuck that.

Why should healers be required to master the incredibly challenging technique of standing (or sitting, in ffxi's case) around doing nothing?

It's not like anyone else is... even mana using dps classes have long been limited (in group situations) exclusively by their threat, why is it that when it comes to healing people go "oh, well they should have to worry about eventually becoming worthless if they use all their abilities to the fullest"?

Same goes for BLU as the outlier really, honestly if it were up to me I'd give BLU a massive auto-refresh so they can use atmas other than MM.

[Darkyrm]

Atmas are fine as they are now because they only work inside abyssea, its a neat way to break the game without breaking it, the neat thing about that is that the game outside abyssea its still untouched and SE still has the posibility to slowly break the game outside with new content or reworking old content, of course newer gear and caps allready break outside-abyssea content but not to the point Atmas can. IMO if Atmas could be used outside abyssea it would be a good laugh for a bit but would make the game wear off very very fast.

[shepardG]

I think atmas made it possible for mnk+whm or rdm to kill 90% of the stuff in abyssea, but why the hell would you want to other than the challenge of the fight itself? your sure as shit not getting any drops with that setup unless you get stupid lucky.

No I think the hardest thing the player base needs to realize is god damn patience.

hell yeah you can drop a 4k nuke or Weapon skill! Awesome! ....guess what we still didn't fucking proc red or yellow, so were back to square fucking one. or you killed that ephermeral with ruby light.
When I come to proc things on my blm, I DONT BRING GEAR. There isn't a point when my warp cudgel equipped MM+(the other 5/tic refresh atma) can drop 1100-1500 dmg nukes. when I land a fire IV, i want it to deal sub par damage, not take away 8% of the mobs life. That's 8% less where a DD can proc blue, or i can proc grellow.

Going big is fun, don't get me wrong, but actually playing with a proper mindset on the task at hand is much more valued in my opinion.
Having limitless MP isn't an issue when you realize that a bajillion MAB dosen't really help you out in the long run of gear collecting.
Low man situations or solo, fuck yeah pile it on, your the only source of dmg, but in a group of 4-8 there isn't a need to shit out a 6k Weapon skill unless the "!!'s" have shown up, and even then, You probably pulled hate, and are tanking now, so .... hope your ready.

As for Challenging NM's the fucking catarae are bitches, no doubt about that, but when most of the players that can handle those type of mobs have fought it before it's going to be very hard to balance out "To damn weak sauce" with "OMG this bitch trumps AV" We are skilled, we understand this game, it's been 7 years. /shrug

[Guitarman]

Like I've said before, it's not really the potent melee buffs from RR/VV etc. that bug me, because the boost they provide can be countered by, as you say, introducing more resilient mobs. My main problem lies with the insane amount of Refresh available. When a WHM/SCH can solo heal a MNK/WAR vs. most mobs in Abyssea, that indicates a lack of balance that needs to be addressed, at least in my opinion. Creating mobs with more HP/defence to reduce the effectiveness of melee Atma doesn't solve the "problem" of mages having unlimited MP. I'm repeating myself here, but I believe that a lot of the game's strategy and "challenge" (again, let's not get into that discussion here) is detracted from when the concept of MP management goes out the window. I still think the game is fun even with God mode, but I can't pretend that I don't think it'd be better without such extreme player buffs.

Wait what? A problem? I call it a solution. For years DD have been forced by the community mindset to /nin only. Finally there's freedom. I can /war with minimal worry now. And believe it or not, you can still get jacked by a NM. There is still an element of danger. People have a tendency to waay overstate things. It's simpler now, yes, but far from god mode.

[Vincento]

Agree with guitarman here, also wtf at shepardg not knowing about mnk and blue !!.

[Neisan]

Whm and Mnk can't proc grellow or Red obv.

EDIT: Abyssea was a good change, being able to shift from having to play 'safe SJ' all the time to being able to use more DD Oriented SJ on pretty much any DD job is progress in it's own way. All mage jobs are heavily reliant on MP, ,without it they're effectively useless, how is that good for the game? for them to spend minutes healing their mp slowly while the DD are still getting wailed? Even in Abyssea you still have people who run out of mp (due to their own fault but w/e) and then things are going downhill from there. A Rdm designed for enfeebling/support/curing mostly in mind being better than the job which was created from the beginning as a healer, you don't call that imbalanced? In abyssea I can have the whm cure and fucking DD on Rdm if I gdamn feel like it to help speed up kills, or enfeeble/nuke more often rather than being curebish all the time. Now some things are in my opinion, back to where they should be, aside from the issue of PLD DRK and SAM pre-Fudo needing some help to keep up .