Dev Tracker

[Mahoro]

It does, but at the same time we are taught not to strip-mine writing of its color and persuasiveness entirely, nor to sacrifice necessary detail. Of course, whether a detail is necessary is where most of the gray area lies.

[scaevola]

Bullshit. There is not a legal writing professor on the planet who will tell you to say in fifteen words what you could say in five. A little wit goes a long way, of course, but nobody will tell you to sacrifice brevity for it, and more importantly the posting style you're defending is neither brief nor witty.

[Eurell]

Bullshit. There is not a legal writing professor on the planet who will tell you to say in fifteen words what you could say in five. A little wit goes a long way, of course, but nobody will tell you to sacrifice brevity for it, and more importantly the posting style you're defending is neither brief nor witty.

You've wasted the past page of this thread complaining about brevity. Holy fuck let it die.

[Mahoro]

EDIT: Irony taken, never mind. Back on topic, how about them devs?

[scaevola]

You've wasted the past page of this thread complaining about brevity. Holy fuck let it die.

It's much more interesting than page #230 of HEY GUYS HOW OUT OF TOUCH ARE THOSE FFXI DEVS HUH

[Restrat]

except it's a thread ABOUT devs

[Spira]

That argument while sound just doesn't mesh with the reality of what Empyreans were supposed to be - a casual alternative to a relic.

gonna need a source quote for this.
according to who? i don't the devs ever said Empys were meant to be casual

[NynJa]

Joe Scrub can farm one in 2 months if they wanted, how much more casual do you want? The only problem is they made them ridiculously overpowered for the effort involved, and relic/mythic owners rightfully bitched about it.


*pre neo-dyna, but even in neo dyna joe scrub would need 5-6 months for a relic.

[Slycer]

Look at an Empyrean 90 as the casual version of an Empyrean 99 and it makes more sense. As I said a few posts back, most of the better Empyreans are respectable at level 90. Just how "casual" the next steps are is debatable, but as previous posters have implied, there's nothing "hardcore" about the gil farming for HMPs/riftstuff if you stretch it out over a reasonably long time period.

[Genosync]

gonna need a source quote for this.
according to who? i don't the devs ever said Empys were meant to be casual

let's think of a good way to keep a massive playerbase that is turning more casual by the day (hi, people get older and grow up and start having things of higher priority, real life does eventually happen) able to constantly progress on something important and that sets them apart from the rest of the crowd that decides to play that certain class.


I can't think of a better way than empyreans that they've implemented so far. Sure, your more hardcore player can get every single one no problem, but you're going around my one and only point and trying to point out some random flaw in what I'm saying, while I'm not addressing that point at all.


Yes, 90s are still "not bad" at 99. They're not all exactly great, but most can marginally outperform their alternatives. On the other side of the coin, spamming Shoha with a TP bonus GKT at 99 is better than a 90 Masamune. Math it out if you don't believe me.


It's just a giant slap in the face and a poor design decision to keep the attention of an extremely large playerbase when they want to attempt to progress at a rate that makes them feel like they're actually getting something done. And takes out the randomness. Completely takes out the random. Which is something all of us love to complain about.

I am by no means saying "don't make it as hard as getting 1500 of an item". I'm saying take the fucking random out of being able to do it on your own.

random
balance
random
yadayada they have nothing to do with each other when trying to design a mechanic that works extremely well to keep people wanting to repeat a task

[Appie]

gonna need a source quote for this.
according to who? i don't the devs ever said Empys were meant to be casual

Considering the pop times of NM's, ways to get KI's and whatnot before they got adjusted in Abyssea, I think they weren't initially meant as "casual" weapons. They just became casual after all those patches.

You could say the original plan for the Empyreans path was "classic Tanaka" that actually got adjusted to casual, but with the 95 and 99 trial they went right back to classic Tanaka.

[KCem]

Considering the pop times of NM's, ways to get KI's and whatnot before they got adjusted in Abyssea, I think they weren't initially meant as "casual" weapons. They just became casual after all those patches.

You could say the original plan for the Empyreans path was "classic Tanaka" that actually got adjusted to casual, but with the 95 and 99 trial they went right back to classic Tanaka.

At level 80, gathering 50 Briareus helms seemed like a hefty task to many people, considering you needed substantially more people then the solo/duo nature of the way many people can do these NMs now. I'd say that elements of classic Tanaka were designed to be there, but the intended grind didn't pan out well, as things got much easier to do, with less people.

[Appie]

My post wasn't about the advantage of level increase and being able to do stuff with less people. My post was about actual patches to pop timers of KI NM's for the lv85 version, adding KI's to chests and whatever else they did to make the shit casual. Instead of having an ally at Gukumatz aery (which pre-patch had up to an hour for repop?) for a chance to get KI, people could get stuff done with less people, regardless of what the current level cap was. Casual folks wouldn't have even considered making an Emp if it wasn't for patches to avoid shit like Gukumatz aery, I know I wouldn't have at least.

[drwaffles]

Now, that you had only considered two possible explanations for a misunderstanding (either you offended me or I can't read) while leaving out a third (you did, and consistently do, a really shitty job of explaining your thoughts when talking to real human beings) helps explain why you find interacting with your peers difficult* in at least two different ways.

EDIT: But don't feel about about it! Lack of clarity is a pretty common problem among people who learned English from video games translated by non-native speakers!


*so difficult that you consider it "kind of boring and annoying", when any healthy neurotypical on the street will tell you getting to know people is fucking awesome

I'm not getting any further into this since it stopped being interesting about three pages ago. Your entire argument seems to be based on some really dumb assumptions, the main one being that you can get a clear idea of how I interact with real people from the style of my posts on an internet forum, which most 'healthy neurotypicals' will probably tell you is pretty stupid. Our ideologies are never going to mesh, so let's not bore other people with this pointless argument.

[KCem]

My post wasn't about the advantage of level increase and being able to do stuff with less people. My post was about actual patches to pop timers of KI NM's for the lv85 version, adding KI's to chests and whatever else they did to make the shit casual. Instead of having an ally at Gukumatz aery (which pre-patch had up to an hour for repop?) for a chance to get KI, people could get stuff done with less people, regardless of what the current level cap was. Casual folks wouldn't have even considered making an Emp if it wasn't for patches to avoid shit like Gukumatz aery, I know I wouldn't have at least.

Don't get me wrong, I'm aware that wasn't the point you raised, and I agree, having 1 NM KI per scars "boss" only drop from the NM was a major pain; Amun, Heqet and Gukumatz were notably subject to worse camping then anything I'd ever seen before.

The point I wanted to make, was that 50 xyz's from NMs that needed an alliance to comfortably take down (ie: not a top tier EGLS), it definately didn't feel like the weapons were easy to get hold of. The thought of having to farm 50 Glavoid shells after my LSs first Glavoid win was the first thing to pop into my mind when news first broke about 99 Relics requiring 50(?) Umbral Marrows, hence why I felt the initial stages of empyrean weapons were Tanaka-esque.

[Isiolia]

The thought of having to farm 50 Glavoid shells after my LSs first Glavoid win was the first thing to pop into my mind when news first broke about 99 Relics requiring 50(?) Umbral Marrows, hence why I felt the initial stages of empyrean weapons were Tanaka-esque.

One angle to consider, however, is that when Visions was released, 80 cap, all that...99 cap was already announced, and subsequent Abyssea content would have at least been in the planning stages. Either they were incredibly shortsighted, or they realized that those NMs would eventually be much easier to tackle. Additionally, the stated goal of Abyssea in general was to allow for players to engage in NM fights/etc with "the least of fuss", which the congestion issues (anticipated or not) would have been counter to.

My feeling is more that they put the weapons in early to give the early adopter/hardcore players something to strive for, with the realization that they'd eventually be within reach of average players. They just probably didn't count on the demand ramping up as quickly as it did.

[ronin sparthos]

gonna need a source quote for this.
according to who? i don't the devs ever said Empys were meant to be casual

Actions speak louder than words.

The weapons themselves were created to be top tier gear from the get-go once 85 hit and we got a taste of how powerful these attached weaponskills would be. Things like Ukkos, Smite, Chant, Jishnu and Hi completed destroyed the weaponskills that were king before them then at 90 SE made everything easier to obtain by:
-lopping off the need to camp NMs
-lowering the repop timers of NMs
-easier NMs thanks to level increases they knew were coming down the pipe

Why else would SE do any of this if they didn't intend these weapons to be in the hands of normal players? If the plan was to make the weapons difficult to obtain then it'd have made more sense to make the initial trials like Carabosse something like 500 drops in order to discourage people from doing Emps and to consider WoE weapons instead.

What SE eventually did was create weapons that were deceitfully easy to get to 90 and then kicked everyone in the crotch with an arbitrary 1500 item slog just because they regret making Abyssea too simple. I always just took it as Tanaka coming back and doing what Tanaka does best - fucking everything up.

I mean they didn't even adjust the WoE weapons to make them easy to hit 99 with. As it stands both Emps and WOE weapons are huge amounts of gil just to cap simply because SE felt they should be.

[kittycatrag]

I wish our characters dinged more often, instead of every 3 months, and we had items to actually get excited about, instead of the junk from new nyzul / voidwatch finale / legion.

Oh fuck it, i want a touchscreen ffxi where we launch chocobo chicks with slingshots and swipe to parry enemy attacks and get skillups.

[Spira]

theres no question that the weapons were meant to be powerful. for the record the devs did mention that Empys would be a third set of legendary weapons, and they do exhibit similar patterns in terms of progression.

my point tho is that it was never meant to be this easy. back when Visions had just come out at lv80, people looked at 50 briareus and were like no fucking way thats a crazy grind. but that gradually eased up, and the same went for Scars NMs and Heroes. If this were a part of any other event in the game, then I'd say it didn't scale too badly.

Lets look to some Relic and Mythic "equivalents".
Relic NMs for 75 acquisition. Attestation NMs and Animated Weapons can probably be soloed by a few jobs, but if you're not in those then you're likely to need some decent support setup of 2-4 people.
Mythic NMs for 75 acquisition. Solo is not really an option for the 8 NM titles, but you could duo-trio the salvage ones, and with the right job (read: bst) the beastkings as well. Odin requires a group. Zeni T4 trophies will require a small group.

These are all events designed at lv75, and almost all require more support at 99 than any of the Empyrean NMs in Abyssea designed at 80, 85, 90. Lets not kid ourselves by saying it was the Lv cap raise that made this easy. Without atma and cruor buffs, and then brews, I can assure you there won't be half as many people with Empyreans today.

tl;dr the ease of Empyrean weapon honestly boils down to atma. that was the single most significant thing that casual-ized Empy acquisition.

i also don't get why people keep saying tanaka came back after abyssea. he never left his role as producer

[Apelila]

i also don't get why people keep saying tanaka came back after abyssea. he never left his role as producer

Its easiest to blame Tanaka because the failure of 14, its developmental reorganization and the return of the RNG progression system after he was removed from 14 fit so well. He's been the producer yes, but with the launch of a major facing him it isn't a stretch to think that he delegated the task to someone else for a while.
It might not be 100% accurate, but it's all anyone really has. It's clear from that one interview recently where a developer says "Abyssea made the game too easy" that not everyone in charge liked the changes as much as the playerbase did.

Which is and always has been one of FFXI's biggest drawbacks: the people in charge don't listen to the playerbase(Except as outlined below), and when they do its with a selective hearing unparalleled in all creation.

Pre 2009: No feedback, no adjustments. Just grind grind grind, if you don't like a system then you don't understand it. And if you kill Absolute Virtue it will be patched.

Abyssea: They're listening to us. HOLY SHIT THEY'RE LISTENING TO US?!?!? A year long campaign by someone to right wrongs of the past and correct bottlenecks both quickly and smartly. Obviously such peace cannot last.

Post 14 launch/Tanaka being removed from the directorship of 14: Voidwatch, BALANCE! feedback goes from 'you're right this makes this event a chore' to 'well look into that' and other cryptic dismissals.