Dev Tracker

[Karbuncle]

The only reason i suspect Tanak is because during the time he was "in charge" of FFXIV, FFXI got some good updates and it felt like our voices were heard. Once he was canned from FFXIV for... guess what... Failing to listen to players... FFXI began to suffer the same symptoms it used to have.

I'm not a man to believe in coincidences, despite what they fed us, He may have been in charge of both games, but he was more certainly focused on FFXIV during Abyssea era, probably let someone else take temporary lead, But once he was canned for being a terrible director, he's back to take out his frustration on us.

Not sure why that company can't see that man runs every game they put him on into the ground because he can't listen for shit.

Plus, around the time the official forums came out, There was a good flow of information, and a lot of our feedback was actually considered and implemented. Reduced respawns for Abysea Key Item NMs, Adding those KI's to Brown boxes... Then FFXIV revamp, Tanaka no longer on team and... our best answers have become "Balance" and "We considered it, But decided if we give you this, You'll just keep asking for more, and where do we draw the line?".

P.S: No fucking shit on that last one, Go look it up, I don't recall which thread but its very recent.

[KCem]

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'm going to have to disagree with you here, and please don't consider this a personal thing as I've disagreed with you once or twice already, but based on personal experience, player level makes a big difference. At 90 there was no way I'd be able to solo something like Dragua on NIN/DNC, I just didn't have the evasion to evade often enough without having to resort to evasion gear and sacrificing the more appealing atma for something more defensive, resulting in slower TP gain for waltzes to the point I couldn't keep up. However since 99 cap I've been able to solo her using standard TP gear. I've even been able hold Rani solo while my MNK friend realises he'd forgotten his staff and went back to get it (this I did using brew atmas, nothing defensive).

Yes, atma gave us a huge amount of wriggle room and power, but you cannot disregard the advantages that come with revised level difference calculations and the associated skill boosts that come with new levels. The reasons why certain old content still requires a small group is because of the fact they throw multiple mobs at the player, and require x amount of damage to be done in y amount of time, or are in general just much better designed to be a challenge (Einherjar, Kirin, PW to name a few).

[Churchill]

Spira needs to get off the Tanacock

[Spira]

Spira needs to get off the Tanacock

yes. that gives you so much more credibility now

edit:
KCem > well, im not saying levels don't make a difference. they do, but next to atmas, its nothing.

Big man in a suit of atma, take that away - what are you?

If u think its worth a challenge, try going back to any abyssea NMs but this time don't use cruor buffs or atma, maybe not even temps. I think you'll get what i mean. you're obviously going to see a diff between lv80 and lv99.. but if you're lv80 with 3 good atma and 99 with none, then you may find yourself in a better position in the former.

[Guitarman]

I'm going to have to disagree with you here, and please don't consider this a personal thing as I've disagreed with you once or twice already, but based on personal experience, player level makes a big difference. At 90 there was no way I'd be able to solo something like Dragua on NIN/DNC, I just didn't have the evasion to evade often enough without having to resort to evasion gear and sacrificing the more appealing atma for something more defensive, resulting in slower TP gain for waltzes to the point I couldn't keep up. However since 99 cap I've been able to solo her using standard TP gear. I've even been able hold Rani solo while my MNK friend realises he'd forgotten his staff and went back to get it (this I did using brew atmas, nothing defensive).

Yes, atma gave us a huge amount of wriggle room and power, but you cannot disregard the advantages that come with revised level difference calculations and the associated skill boosts that come with new levels. The reasons why certain old content still requires a small group is because of the fact they throw multiple mobs at the player, and require x amount of damage to be done in y amount of time, or are in general just much better designed to be a challenge (Einherjar, Kirin, PW to name a few).

Reenforces your point but thought i'd throw that out there. Others are a matter of time/willingness.

[Spira]

that is a beautiful BST solo.. but still not something just anyone can replicate with this kind of speed or effectiveness.
last years census recorded 0 aymurs made (1 was done a few weeks after census was carried out) - are there even 10 aymurs around yet?

i agree with time/willingness. but you'll find that is mostly lacking.
also, is there even a point to killing kirin solo other than bragging rights? not like his drops are actually useful at this level

[KCem]

Big man in a suit of atma, take that away - what are you?

If u think its worth a challenge, try going back to any abyssea NMs but this time don't use cruor buffs or atma, maybe not even temps. I think you'll get what i mean. you're obviously going to see a diff between lv80 and lv99.. but if you're lv80 with 3 good atma and 99 with none, then you may find yourself in a better position in the former.

While not quite the same, I did kill my the last Briareus for my 80 Kannagi totally naked except for a single katana (me and a friend thought it'd be good for a laugh). That was at 90. I'll give it a go without atma or buffs at some point this month.

I've seen that Kirin solo before, and to be honest I completely forgot about it. Possibly unrelated, but pets have always been a bit weird against high level mobs. I had an old 2004ish Kirin parse showing Wyverns having something like 75% accuracy and very consistently hitting for a certain amount of damage, while melee jobs would occasionally hit 0's and very low numbers.

Back on topic: I'm pretty sure most old mobs can be killed with Muslum spam, I've seen Jorm and Vrtra solos at 95 done with Muslum pretty comfortably.

[Arkanna]

that is a beautiful BST solo.. but still not something just anyone can replicate with this kind of speed or effectiveness.
last years census recorded 0 aymurs made (1 was done a few weeks after census was carried out) - are there even 10 aymurs around yet?

i agree with time/willingness. but you'll find that is mostly lacking.
also, is there even a point to killing kirin solo other than bragging rights? not like his drops are actually useful at this level

Raise III is useful. W Legs will always be sought after. Kirin's Poles are valuable for augmenting to get +enhancing skill for SCH and Embrava.

[Foldypaws]

I've seen that Kirin solo before, and to be honest I completely forgot about it. Possibly unrelated, but pets have always been a bit weird against high level mobs. I had an old 2004ish Kirin parse showing Wyverns having something like 75% accuracy and very consistently hitting for a certain amount of damage, while melee jobs would occasionally hit 0's and very low numbers.

Pets ignore level correction, if I'm not mistaken.

So Kirin, who was level 92 according to wiki, had 68 more "evasion" for players than he did for pets, and players had pdif reduced by .85 past what pets would.

(I think pets also have a 1.0 pdif floor, but I might misremember that.)

[fantasticdan]

Run wild is what makes kirin soloable on bst and no, you don't need a relic/mythic/perfect gear to do it. I soloed it pretty easily the one time I tried it, and that's just with pdt axes, 5/5 ruinator, and fairly average gear.

[Guitarman]

Most of it's been said, but there's still alot of desireable things on kirin; w legs i use almost daily still, the pole for augments can fetch around 700k - 1.2m or thereabouts, hell, even Quake is 320k on shiva at the moment. Sure there's easier ways to make that money but it's a very solid consolation prize. The level increase took us a long way through being able to do all this. Honestly, all atmas did was dumb down the playerbase. Was fun though. I was excited to log into FFXI for the first time in years. Proved to me that there's still magic left in the game. It makes me hope they can hit the mark like that again.

[Weeks]

Most of it's been said, but there's still alot of desireable things on kirin; w legs i use almost daily still, the pole for augments can fetch around 700k - 1.2m or thereabouts, hell, even Quake is 320k on shiva at the moment. Sure there's easier ways to make that money but it's a very solid consolation prize.

Scrapping a Kirin set leaves you with about 2 million worth of scraps though, so that pretty much narrows Kirin down to people who need W. Legs or who can't find a Pole to augment.

[TheDangerousDave]

Ruinator was amazing in that vid, saw 22xx about 4 times and 28xx, is it normal to average like that on weak mobs? Makes it far better than Rampage right?

[Byrthnoth]

So, a few things have happened over the last few days:
1) They relaxed the requirements for test server access, so you probably don't need all the expansions anymore.
2) More vanafest non-info.
3) More non-info in general
4) UI update post. Highlights are:
* You can choose to use the old UI (hopefully this will keep windower working)
* The new UI targets keyboard and mouse users, so expect some of the features to be non-functional with controllers.
* Useless timer on your macros.
* They are NOT going to increase the number of lines per macro (thus necessitating the perpetuation of windower).
* No Copy and Paste

I'm eagerly anticipating not using the new UI.

[Prothescar]

Still don't understand why everyone seems to think that the UI changes will break Windower

[Byrthnoth]

Windower itself (the Direct X wrapper) is unlikely to ever break. Major UI changes (like adding a second chat box/log) could affect things like log access and text input though, which would kill every plugin that isn't simply overlaying text. The people that figured out how to get text input working in the first place have been gone for years.

[Apelila]

Lets put it this way. The last time yarnball broke, it was almost a year before it got fixed. Now imagine an update that breaks damn near everything, spellcast, yarnball, timestamp, autoexec all of it AND re-positions the interface so that the overlays don't line up properly. Or worse yet, do something silly like use less than 1 pixel per percent.

Or as I would call it: Hey, I wonder why half the playerbase stopped logging in?

[Karbuncle]

I'd probably be thoroughly amused at the FFXI Apocalypse being brought on because Windower stopped working. Most people wouldn't be able to adapt to not having their macro scripts, amongst other things.

The game dying when SE Tries to fix UI Issues, the irony would be delicious.

[Guitarman]

Eh, ill just play D3 until shit's fixed. But yeah, if you want to get stuff done, that's the time. I know I can't play very long without it lol.

[Celebrindor]

I would wonder if the peace offering option to still use the old UI is for windower users.

In regards to Spira and others' arguments about Tanaka et al, I think there are a few good points that Spira brings up that cannot be written off simply as "you live in the olden days, move on".

Yes, some of Tanaka's penchant for keeping the playerbase at bay can be annoying, but I must admit, giving us everything we want does make some content obsolete in a few months (read: 2-3 for some players) rather than making it viable longer. He knows he doesn't have the budget or manpower to release full blown expansions any more. He's gotta stretch shit out. Sucks for us, smart for him. That's at least how I see it. (For a wonderful example of this, see the crafting 100-110 move. Some crafts lack materials available and thus in cost associated. Then actual benefits to the playerbase rarely justify the crafter the incredible investment in leveling the craft to that point.)

There are legitimate adjustments that have been made and should have been made (multiple pop locations for empy NMs is but one great example), and there are pussification of the game adjustments that never would have been made in the past (some guaranteed drops for example- now some may argue this point but I however do not, to each their own I guess. But I'm sure many can think of other examples of updates where you just think "game on easy mode, great").

Pre-abyssea we saw very little of either. In abyssea we saw a lot of the first. Then we saw a lot of "easy mode" adjustments- I think the developers wanted to keep people around by giving people anything and everything they wanted, sometimes without thinking of balance. I don't know how good that has been. And I speak from the perspective of someone who walks around in a lot of old gear. But I get the concept nonetheless.