Dev Tracker

[Shenrien]

:/ I find myself wanting to kill the lower tier shit for the tradeable / sellables rather kill the high tier shit just to watch people get crap they can't even use, then complain about how they can't pass it off to other people that would actually use the crap, fuck the stupid distribution system, battle system is fine, why they refuse to change the distribution to what you can do with abyssea's boxes is beyond me, and it's not even the drop rates that are fucking stupid, they're fine and fair too.

[Damane]

My only hope at the moment are the updates for nyzul isle and salvage. I find those events still fun.

Voidwatch was fun at first but once you have your atmacites and your setup its just a regular fight.... With abyssmal shit droprates. I still didnt see in all those months a rare/ex body for myself ¬.¬. Seriously Fuck Voidwatch

[Khajit]

Fucking gimps keep on getting the bodies from VW. If SE wasn't so clueless about the game i'd think they personally for drops for gimps. It says here in our records that he cant defeat quilin and a lv 90 drk outdid most of his alliance of 95 empy/mythic/relic. Give this man a drop!

[Appie]

Is it just me, or has EVERY dev post in reply to something we've asked for a change to in the past couple weeks been a flat out "No." Or a "We're gonna leave that there and steer in this direction that makes little sense to everyone" while saying it all in a condescending tone?

Nope, isn't just you.

[Lordender]

Old SE is back in town.

Get ready for Fafhogg2.

It all makes sense, SE adds the last of the elemental wyrms on CoP wyrm timers but the twist is when you kill it everyone gets their own loot chests full of random crafting materials, ores, logs, trollface.jpg.

[NynJa]

Dude, this. As someone who has all the top tier stratums, I find voidwatch to be slightly fun with very low potential. God forbid they do more Abyssea zones with harder mobs. VW is not something that will keep the userbase playing. Abyssea-Riverne Site B01 is. I think they're done though, and VW couldn't be easier to implement so they toss some scraps to keep people clutching for as long as they can with the most minimal effort required.

Why not, its just like 2004 ffxi: Sit around in town for 3 hours, waiting and trying to make that perfect xp party so you can be the most effective pt.

Replace "xp party" with "VW alliance" and "effective pt" with "efficient procs" (I'm aware "so you can be the most efficient procs" isnt proper english, but you get my point).

[Julian]

My only hope at the moment are the updates for nyzul isle and salvage. I find those events still fun.

Voidwatch was fun at first but once you have your atmacites and your setup its just a regular fight.... With abyssmal shit droprates. I still didnt see in all those months a rare/ex body for myself ¬.¬. Seriously Fuck Voidwatch

Better hope those events don't get raped in the ass like dynamis did. (Not instacing dynamis was the most retarded fucking thing ever. Surely, they wont uninstance those events, either.)

[Isiolia]

Better hope those events don't get raped in the ass like dynamis did. (Not instacing dynamis was the most retarded fucking thing ever. Surely, they wont uninstance those events, either.)

Isn't there like only one copy of the initial Nyzul room or something? While I think you can have lots of people actually climbing floors, I remember getting stuck waiting for groups to enter.

[Genosync]

Isn't there like only one copy of the initial Nyzul room or something? While I think you can have lots of people actually climbing floors, I remember getting stuck waiting for groups to enter.

No; it was due to the number of people in the zones that their infrastructure for those areas handle. It was impossible to get in Salvage too when Nyzul was overcrowded. I don't know if non-Nyzul assaults areas were affected though.

Probably was hard to get in that area for that fight for ToAU missions too.

[Julian]

I remember trying to get into nyzul during jp time on odin. shit was a fucking bitch.

You spent more time trying to get in than you actually spent inside. -_-

[Damane]

Better hope those events don't get raped in the ass like dynamis did. (Not instacing dynamis was the most retarded fucking thing ever. Surely, they wont uninstance those events, either.)

Oh please dont get me startet on those fucktarded proc triggering. Fine for abyssea Even voidwatch but couldnt they leave that shit Out from dynamis?! (fuck my iPad autocorrecting Itself)

[Crab_Cake]

So they nerfed all the new weapon skills?

Well at least the world makes sense now - It has always been the cooler looking the WS the worse its stats (well with some exceptions).

Really silly decision because I know some said they considered resubscribing because of the new WSs.

[Appie]

Oh please dont get me startet on those fucktarded proc triggering. Fine for abyssea Even voidwatch but couldnt they leave that shit Out from dynamis?! (fuck my iPad autocorrecting Itself)

Which makes me wonder... didn't they claim Abyssea was a mistake? (also could anybody provide me a link to the interview in which they said that for the lolz?) If it was a mistake, why copy-paste the proc system everywhere?

[Gokulo]

Mistake as in of course ruining... balance Making players too powerful and so on. The proc system doesn't really have anything do to with that.

[Yukari]

Which makes me wonder... didn't they claim Abyssea was a mistake? (also could anybody provide me a link to the interview in which they said that for the lolz?) If it was a mistake, why copy-paste the proc system everywhere?

http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/story.htm...16&storypage=1

[Appie]

Ah I see, thanks.

edit: Oh man, this interview is pure gold.

[Toth]

http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/story.htm...16&storypage=1

They felt it was a mistake to give TOO much power to the players via the atmas and brews. I agree with them. Now people are too spoiled.

[ronin sparthos]

They felt it was a mistake to give TOO much power to the players via the atmas and brews. I agree with them. Now people are too spoiled.

So the solution then lay in going back to the old script? We can all concede that by Heroes things got too broken and Razed Ruins was complete overkill however SE believes that going back to .01% rates and crying balance for anything that surpasses the old is how you create content when the solution is in the middle.

On top of that, their PR is completely awful. Most of the flak SE catches is wholly self-inflicted and often could be easily sidestepped with better wording and communication.

[Toth]

I did not say I agreed with the step backwards they are taking but rather that Abyssea was indeed too broken and set the bar so high.

[arus2001]

Atma and Brews are fine, even at 200k cruor for the latter. While some want to speculate Abyssea was the swan song of XI and it was all meant to ween us into XIV, the undeniable truth about it all is that it was ultimately content for levels 76-90. Even if it came out in a slightly scaled back form, natural progression from 91-99 would make the areas even easier. So, in consideration it isn't the endgame, albeit an important place to spend time, making it stupid hard like some yearn for would've just repeated the crap of CoP days in needing perfect set ups for a given fight just to win, let alone negotiate the proc system.

Overall, how EXP granted EXP did wonders for that aspect of the game. If Abyssea "killed" FFXI like some want to say, I'll say things like colibri killed it first with Astral Burns putting the nail in the coffin. I can't think of many who miss the days of limited camps, the drama they could spawn, and being left out or stuck playing one of the less fun jobs just to make some merit progress. Meanwhile, graduating from 21-24hr NMs (or more) to mostly popped things did wonders for outfitting thousands upon thousands of players in a reasonable manner. If you thought DA was bad with 150 in zone with endgame population coming and going while spread over 7 years, imagine all those people over time crammed into the same few places if pop conditions were more brutal. Hell, we get glimpses of that with things like Guku's Aery.

Now, is Abyssea perfect? Nope. I will agree that the job exclusion the proc system stimulates is the worst of it. I appreciate the spirit of the system, though, in that it is a means to improve our rewards should we take advantage of it. Progress is still possible without, but without it being around, competition on things could still be much worse, if some people didn't quit in frustration maybe trying to camp things like Turul as a result for a Loki's. I dare not consider how horrid some magian trials would be without select mob families also available in abundance.

On the other end of the "Abyssea killed FFXI!" line of thinking, we get those who feel it killed alliance play. If my recent time playing Rift has been any indication, it's that people are willing to unite to accomplish a single objective. However, the trick is to fairly reward everyone and make the process of participation easy. Like Voidwatch, participating in a world event will get you a personal treasure pool as you kill invasions or the boss. Upon killing the boss, everyone is granted with currency and EXP shards, as well as chances for other rare drops. Granted, this system isn't perfect since you'll get some who just idle in a zone until the boss shows, but there's none of the drama of kissing a shell leader's ass, amassing DKP or whatever, or having to play nice with people you loathe. You just wind up with dozens, if not more, people trying to get shit done. On a PvP server? Well, welcome mobile PvP hotbeds at various event objectives. The closest FFXI has ever come to this was Campaign, but it's a rather juvenile system in comparison, lacking complexity and, nowadays, good rewards.

Rather bluntly, it's possible for large-group content to be made, even challenging. However, it needs to be easily accessed and equally rewarding in the long-term so it's not just an eventual WoE ghost town. A lot of the people who have embraced Abyssea's low-man atmosphere do not want to return the days where the earlier issues I noted were commonplace. It's not that they don't want to play with other people. Rather, it can be an issue of playing with other people when they want to/are able and not outright be subjected to the shortcomings of bad apples, like griefers, loot thieves, or the know-it-all jerkwads who truly know nothing at all.

Really, it behooves us to get SE off their current course with XI. The game could be better than it is right now. People have other options for entertainment with those options growing daily. The good ol' days of FFXI, the game, really weren't that good. Virtually everyone I see pining for those, when not trying to be a condescending troll, tend to mention the friends they made and the good times shared with them. That's not so much FFXI being a good game as it was FFXI mimicking a matchmaking service. Throw a bunch of people together with similar interests and shit happens, for better or worse. And as long as events are unrewarding for masses of players, I can't blame a group for steering toward having as few mouths to feed as possible. You get done more it quickly. It cuts down on the chances of someone feeling left out. The better job SE does in keeping player politics out of the actual gaming equation, the better. They just need to realize that actually involves listening to players and fixing shit based on their feedback. Abyssea itself needn't be FFXI's future, and I think most understand that. It's the taking steps backward in design philosophies that's problematic, and these aren't just the observations of "spoiled" players, but people who know better, who know there are greener pastures but still have the benefit of the game in mind instead of just canceling their sub and running off silent.

I should also not rant after having not slept for 34 hours.