Dev Tracker

[Raen Ryong]

Voidwatch is shitty and luckbased though :/ SE is really going back to rewarding the favourites of the RNG, with the HQ king pop item droprate/voidwatch/etc.

[Eanae]

Yeah, the drop method needs fixing, but other than that it's a really nice system.

[Koyangi]

75 cap FFXI was: I'm a special snowflake, if someone else has what I have they're special too, as long as it's only 3% of the total playerbase.
Cap raised FFXI is: Everyone is a special snowflake now, which means noone is. Waah, I want to be a special snowflake again.

And you're surprised?

Nothing is worthwhile when everyone can be the same. Doesn't work in RL and surely not in a video game. It doesn't mean that you have to have the environment where only an elite tier can survive like the XI of old but at this moment there is no sense of accomplishment because SE keeps setting the bar lower.

SE went from the extreme of only elite being able to play this game to the equally worse extreme of handing out gear when you can't even beat the mobs that drop the items. We're one step from a new moogle being introduced that gives you one random piece of elite gear per day just for playing the game.

In fact, I bet that's what the daily quests SE are working on involves.

If you can't win because of natural faults, you can always just brew it. Instead of the player being challenged to be the best they can along with their group you basically bypass the challenge and get rewarded for little to no effort.

I see no difference between this style of XI and the harsh style that forced alot of quits way back when. With how easy things become, people are going to cap out and quit the game because SE can't churn out new content fast enough to keep up with how fast you can overrun the old even at a casual pace.

I'm not surprised. I was stating how the game is now compared to then, and added a part where the people who were special snowflakes at 75 cap cant be special snowflakes now.

[Kaisha]

Do you guys ever figured the final lvl99 content may just be the complete opposite of Abyssea though? Abyssea is just a money-maker for SE, and will probably serve as a 'good enough' means for most people's gear/weapons while the 99-shit is a beast to trudge through.

Spoiler: show

Oh who am I kidding, they're just going to come up and charge us a $30 premium for a new single add-on that shits AF4.

[Draylo]

This 1000 times over. At least voidwatch is a step in the right direction. No way people who are terrible at the game will be clearing the content.

I think Einherjar was a great event and the perfect way to allow those who didn't want to bot or cheat to obtain the gear from Odin at just as fast of a rate with 3 feather mules. What happened to those types of systems? I'd like to say Einherjar was enough of a challenge to prevent idiots from getting the gear while allowing anyone with a decent amount of skill to get it. Instead now it's like SE is fucking Oprah. AND YOU GET AN EMPYREAN. AND YOUUUU GET AN EMPYREAN. EVERYBODY GETS AN EMPYREAN!

Yep, basically. I know it's cool to hate on someone who liked the way things were but... try to see it from all perspectives maybe.

[Dooom]

I think everyone can agree that 200k brews and infinite RR are horrid ideas that shouldn't have been implemented. And yeah, Ein was pretty much the closest thing SE has come up with to a "perfect" endgame system.

[Fievel]

I think everyone can agree that 200k brews and infinite RR are horrid ideas that shouldn't have been implemented. And yeah, Ein was pretty much the closest thing SE has come up with to a "perfect" endgame system.

Ein really was a great idea, but 30min every 72 hours was pretty lame.

[Kaisha]

Like most shit, it took a couple iterations for Ein to be worth it. Originally you needed *everyone* to have all the feathers for the Odin fight no? I recalled my LS back in the day having major problems with that due to attendance problems preventing us moving past tier2, assuming we didn't get dick mob selections.

I can see VW becoming the next Einherjar. It just needs a couple of revisions, particularly in the lack-of-adding-to-loot option with your chest, and the lack of convenient warp-back-to-VW-NPC after a battle to keep the flow going.

[Hyan]

Anything involving randomization imo. It really spices things up.

Plus making us set the bar higher manually. Set different objectives, a time limit, and see how far a group can get when numbers don't mean everything. 15 floors in Nyzul? 3-man salvage? Your skills as a group determine the pace. Reward success, don't punish failure.

[Dooom]

Anything involving randomization imo. It really spices things up.

To some extent. If you mean like Nyzul Isle I agree. If you mean like the random box rewards VW currently operates under, then I disagree.

And yeah, Ein took some tweaking to become worthwhile, I hope the same happens with VW.

[ronin sparthos]

Honestly for all the flak it gets, ZNM was a damn good and rewarding system.

Id like to see more of it without the picture taking hullabaloo.

[Spira]

I think as far as randomization goes, Nyzul Isle hit the nail on the head. It was just so much fun to do and the randomness of floors, objectives and penalties really tested the durability of parties taking it on at lv75. Of course it didn't start off perfectly either - I think it was pretty good from the moment they added the lobby chest, and I suppose it became the most accessible when they allowed simultaneous climbing.

As for end-game events, I wouldn't say Einherjar was the best event around. It had a degree of randomness but also difficulty variability that wasn't proportional to it. Tier 3s were somewhat of a gamble on whether you'd see 2 waves, whether you'd get certain mobs, or certain bosses and was pretty punishing in that way because practically only 1-2 types of sets would make the fights ridiculously much harder than they would otherwise be.

I think Limbus was one of the best events around for its time - structured and requiring strategy / decision-making based on time.. it also provided a good ratio of effort:rewards and didnt cockblock players on droprates. Progression was good, as far as Apollyon was concerned. Temenos coulda been better if the number of paths or the structure of progression was made equal to Apollyon.

And as for an event that proved that too much randomization and lack of progressive goals fails, theres MMM. Parts of it attempted to mimc the success of Nyzul but its varied usage ended up seeing it being abused for EXP raking and then there was overcrowding and stuff..
The Revitalization team was the only one with any form of real content progression but honestly I don't think many people have even done it because it was so badly advertised and the whole thing from its system to NMs to rewards was entirely overshadowed by Abyssea...

[Yeyoking]

And you're surprised?

Nothing is worthwhile when everyone can be the same. Doesn't work in RL and surely not in a video game. It doesn't mean that you have to have the environment where only an elite tier can survive like the XI of old but at this moment there is no sense of accomplishment because SE keeps setting the bar lower.

SE went from the extreme of only elite being able to play this game to the equally worse extreme of handing out gear when you can't even beat the mobs that drop the items. We're one step from a new moogle being introduced that gives you one random piece of elite gear per day just for playing the game.

In fact, I bet that's what the daily quests SE are working on involves.

If you can't win because of natural faults, you can always just brew it. Instead of the player being challenged to be the best they can along with their group you basically bypass the challenge and get rewarded for little to no effort.

I see no difference between this style of XI and the harsh style that forced alot of quits way back when. With how easy things become, people are going to cap out and quit the game because SE can't churn out new content fast enough to keep up with how fast you can overrun the old even at a casual pace.

I like how they are testing the water with the new armor sets (Fazheluo, Cuauhtli, etc) where NQ and HQ can be crafted/bought but HQ2 is a drop from VW. The casual players can look like the "elite" players but they will always be -1. I hope they keep going down that road so everyone can look like each other at the end but the stats is what separates the casual from the "elite." That should calm some of the whiners down, not likely though.

[Eanae]

Isn't hq2 the only one that glows?

[Raen Ryong]

I like how they are testing the water with the new armor sets (Fazheluo, Cuauhtli, etc) where NQ and HQ can be crafted/bought but HQ2 is a drop from VW. The casual players can look like the "elite" players but they will always be -1. I hope they keep going down that road so everyone can look like each other at the end but the stats is what separates the casual from the "elite." That should calm some of the whiners down, not likely though.

Some people aren't happy with that when you consider AF3+1 and AF3+2 so

[Eanae]

AF3+1 and +2 were perfect before people figured out atmas.

[Miroku_Asura]

I think Limbus was one of the best events around for its time - structured and requiring strategy / decision-making based on time.. it also provided a good ratio of effort:rewards and didnt cockblock players on droprates. Progression was good, as far as Apollyon was concerned. Temenos coulda been better if the number of paths or the structure of progression was made equal to Apollyon.
.

The problem I had with Limbus was simply that the rewards for mages were nowhere near as epic as they were for melee jobs (in addition that the nashira gear took twice as much effort to get as the homam)

[Spira]

Yeah.. thats why I pointed out progression was good only as far as Apollyon was concerned..

The sad part is that with 1 melee and 1 mage set, you're basically going to need to have really good stats on them if you want to cater to all the jobs grouped in that category.. to draw interest to it

Like, even with Abjuration having 6 (+2) sets, it could barely cater to all jobs at all, let alone equally. Similarly there were 5 Salvage sets which managed to garner interest from most of the playerbase. And the 3 Nyzul sets, and the 3 (+1) Zeni sets, and so on... so 3 is like the bare minimal number to work with

The Voidwatch system isn't that bad but the rewards are a little lacking in that it doesn't generate enough interest for the perceived effort put in, and that Empyrean Armor is still generally better for the most part.

I'd say for any new armor sets to really succeed, they either have to be overpoweringly better than many Empyrean +2 gear in specific slots or just provide very unique bonuses which are universally popular. Personally I'm also waiting for an actual good BST/DRG/SMN/PUP pet stat set.

[Shenrien]

SE needs to place in an option on the box that if someone gets something that they can't use like the HQ2 bodys that they can distribute it into pool so those that can use it can lot on it, knowing that I put in more effort as a tank or as a WHM then said other person, and I get some crappy crafting items while they get the r.ex piece of gear that everyone wants but the person who got it in box can't even use it.. Great system SE! /rage

[Dooom]

SE needs to place in an option on the box that if someone gets something that they can't use like the HQ2 bodys that they can distribute it into pool so those that can use it can lot on it

I hope they implement this, but they still haven't done so for coins in WoE, so I'm not expecting it anytime soon. Maybe in the next major update, but not before then (no bonus "extra ???" style patch).