[dev1007]Voidwatch Emerges

[Trix]

Has there been any info on how voidwatch will fit into the rest of the game?(aka any sort of story)

[Odin'sLaw]

Has there been any info on how voidwatch will fit into the rest of the game?(aka any sort of story)

you'll find out tomorrow (kind of hoping it tags on from the last abyssea mission) and Mal just teach them "newbies" then

[Malacite]

There's been no mention of Voidwatch's plot significance, but ever since WotG SE has been pushing the multi-dimensional plot pretty hard.

I got a feeling that Voidwatch will lead to the heart of all this. Maybe that's what that concept art of that crystal island chain was? Could be the literal center of the universe (though I thought that was supposed to be the WoE? Or is that just more of a highway/hub station? )

[Foldypaws]

There's been no mention of Voidwatch's plot significance, but ever since WotG SE has been pushing the multi-dimensional plot pretty hard.

I got a feeling that Voidwatch will lead to the heart of all this. Maybe that's what that concept art of that crystal island chain was? Could be the literal center of the universe (though I thought that was supposed to be the WoE? Or is that just more of a highway/hub station? )

Unless I grossly misread the cutscenes (entirely possible) Walk of Echoes is the "trash heap" of time. It's just where everything that Atomos eats ends up.

That said, as Atomos eats stuff from everywhere/when, it *does* connect to everywhere/when, but it's sort of like jumping out of everyone's sewer pipes, rather than taking the subway >_>

[Spira]

u're pretty much correct on that. Walk of Echoes exists beyond time and space because its where Atomos operates and he eats other times and spaces. In that sense, WoE is the only known zone that is a convergence of realities that the game ever shows you.

All past game events and systems have always had some kind of lore to support it, even for seasonal stuff, so you can expect Voidwatch to have one too. Only question is whether it'll be uber-vague like Limbus was, or have nice quest story progression like Abyssea (which was touted as a battle and not scenario add-on) did. Either way, you can bet on it having a big daddy boss at the end of all 4 parts of Voidwatch, which will likely give you a clear picture of what the whole Voidwatch thing is about, if this new set of void monsters dont come from Abyssea

[Ophannus]

big daddy boss at the end of all 4 parts of Voidwatch, which will likely give you a clear picture of what the whole Voidwatch thing is about,

Incoming Neo Shinryu. It's just normal Shinryu but fought without Atma or Cruor buffs!

[Foldypaws]

Incoming Neo Shinryu. It's just normal Shinryu but fought without Atma or Cruor buffs! Brew

Fixed that for you.

[Yubar]

I'm sure we'll run into Haudrale and Aquila again since

Spoiler: show

after winning the fight with those two Haudrale mentions the void.

[Fiarlia]

That said, as Atomos eats stuff from everywhere/when, it *does* connect to everywhere/when, but it's sort of like jumping out of everyone's sewer pipes, rather than taking the subway >_>

Mario will be the big boss of Voidwatch?

[Spira]

Mario will be the big boss of Voidwatch?

Bowser?

a quadav then.

[Chun Liroy]

Was the good news posted in this thread?!

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...9433#post89433

[Karbuncle]

Quick Question.

I suck with Time zones. Maint in 1 hour right?

[Spira]

no, now

[Karbuncle]

no, now

Fuck-a-doodle-do. I'm sitting at the "Play" Screen, and the button was hitteable when i posted, I tab over and now its in Maint.

[Spira]

im guessing since its the first major version update after they implemented the forum thingy they're a bit slow with figuring out where to post it or something

[Gredival]

I'm mad because you have bipolar opinions. Get on your fucking meds and stop acting like a menopausal woman.

I was posting about how horrible Abyssea was since week 1 when everyone was swallowing the Dev Team's collective cock harder than Pac-man swallows balls.

You try to reframe the discussion as your distaste for people bitching about every change, but your posts specifically reveal that you are just lashing out against people who dislike Abyssea.

I'm not going to say you aren't entitled to your opinion, however wrong it is. But there is a more basic and essential flaw of your position: Why did you never take your own advice? In the days before Abyssea why didn't you quit if pre-Abyssea content was so horrible?

People who dislike Abyssea have the same rights to continue to bitch about it as all those people who disliked old content but stayed around to bitch about it. One hopes that through a strong enough collective showing of disdain SE will respond to complaints. It already happened once, right?

Let me clue you in. People don't like Abyssea because it added content. They like Abyssea because they went from Have-nots to Have-everythings. There was always a large amount of content to do in XI, even before Abyssea. On top of storylines and quests there was Einherjar, Salvage, Sky, Sea, Assault, Nyzul Isle, ANNM, SCNM, KSNM, ZNM, VNM, Kings, Limbus, Wyrms, ToaU Kings, Dynamis. The catch? A substantial amount of the *best* drops were centered in content that you didn't like. No one wanted to do content, no matter how fresh, if the rewards were shitty.

Abyssea didn't save the game because of anything inherent in content; Abyssea didn't even save anything. Abyssea simply made it so that disgruntled people, most often shitty but not always, who used to have nothing to do or could only do lower end content with shitty rewards, could get gameshark buffs and start doing top end content for top end rewards. Abyssea engaged the insignificant section of the playerbase that was mostly idle or kept to itself.

(Yes I know this was very late, but this was pretty rage inducing to me so I have to respond.)

[Lovex]

I was posting about how horrible Abyssea was since week 1 when everyone was swallowing the Dev Team's collective cock harder than Pac-man swallows balls.

You try to reframe the discussion as your distaste for people bitching about every change, but your posts specifically reveal that you are just lashing out against people who dislike Abyssea.

I'm not going to say you aren't entitled to your opinion, however wrong it is. But there is a more basic and essential flaw of your position: Why did you never take your own advice? In the days before Abyssea why didn't you quit if pre-Abyssea content was so horrible?

People who dislike Abyssea have the same rights to continue to bitch about it as all those people who disliked old content but stayed around to bitch about it. One hopes that through a strong enough collective showing of disdain SE will respond to complaints. It already happened once, right?

Let me clue you in. People don't like Abyssea because it added content. They like Abyssea because they went from Have-nots to Have-everythings. There was always a large amount of content to do in XI, even before Abyssea. On top of storylines and quests there was Einherjar, Salvage, Sky, Sea, Assault, Nyzul Isle, ANNM, SCNM, KSNM, ZNM, VNM, Kings, Limbus, Wyrms, ToaU Kings, Dynamis. The catch? A substantial amount of the *best* drops were centered in content that you didn't like. No one wanted to do content, no matter how fresh, if the rewards were shitty.

Abyssea didn't save the game because of anything inherent in content; Abyssea didn't even save anything. Abyssea simply made it so that disgruntled people, most often shitty but not always, who used to have nothing to do or could only do lower end content with shitty rewards, could get gameshark buffs and start doing top end content for top end rewards. Abyssea engaged the insignificant section of the playerbase that was mostly idle or kept to itself.

(Yes I know this was very late, but this was pretty rage inducing to me so I have to respond.)

BRITNEY APPROVES OF GREDIVAL!

Co-sign, sup.

[Raen Ryong]

Abyssea gives you rewards without having to sacrifice too much real life time, be committed to x hours of event per week, and without having to suck people off or wait with long queues.

In old FFXI, you didn't get drops based on your skill. You got them based on luck/opportunity/positioning. It's silly to act as if only good players got good items because that was far, far from the case. Items are not allocated to people on a "high ability basis".

[Malacite]

Abyssea gives you rewards without having to sacrifice too much real life time, be committed to x hours of event per week, and without having to suck people off or wait with long queues.

Eh, shit's been rather crowded since the update. The last 2 days I was able to snag 9 Cara gems each but only about 4 or 5 today because for w/e reason there was over 5 parties spamming her tonight, was fucking absurd. Had to wait over an hour just to do the one pop (we had 3 but ppl were tired by this point) due to so many people, and I swear at least 1 group was using a bot or some shit as I saw her pop a couple of times to them without ever seeing the ??? and I was spamming F8 right on the spot every time. 3 hours of farming just to net 2 gems sucked ass >_<; fucking people can't take turns...

[Gredival]

Abyssea gives you rewards without having to sacrifice too much real life time, be committed to x hours of event per week, and without having to suck people off or wait with long queues.

Except that virtually all of the content I listed, with the exception of the world spawns, were hardly time consuming. Dynamis would be the longest, capping at around 3.5 hrs, something plenty of people are easily able to commit to for Abyssea. SE tried to offer a variety of content in which rewards were scaled according to both difficulty and accessibility of the content. However lots of content ended up neglected because people ultimately hone in on drop quality. Top end players wouldn't waste their time on new content when it didn't offer any drops useful for them, lower end players would sulk about how whatever they got from X still didn't beat Adaberk.

Imagine if SE introduced a fight that was easily accessible (in terms of being able to try the challenge) and had top of the line rewards... but was stupidly ridiculously difficult to complete. I guarantee you that the bitching would shift from complaints about "accessibility" to how it was "too difficult." It's all about gear, more specifically, the best gear. Abyssea isn't popular for any reason besides the fact that there's a shitton of people that like having top of the line gear even if they aren't top of the line players. Bitching about "accessibility of content" has never been about the redundancy, time commitment, or annoyance of the pre-fight rituals -- it's about the "accessibility of gear" whether or not I can get it.

Kings remained a contentious issue for as long as they did, despite a dearth of alternative content, because a large number of people who didn't have an Adaberk/Ridill/Dramatica just couldn't deal with not being able to get one and nothing ever replacing them.

But grievances about where one lies on the curve is a different matter from whether or not the curve should exist at all. So give me an affirmative reason why top end gear should be accessible rather than exclusive.

Any justification for accessibility ultimately lies on gear not mattering. "They're just pixels, why should people have to do X Y and Z to get them?" But if gear doesn't matter, one can make just as good of a case for exclusivity. "If gear doesn't matter, why does one need it to play the game or have fun?"

So long as gear matters, and I think empirically it's been shown that it does, then there is a very good reason for exclusivity. It becomes clear once you understand video games and gear in the abstract.

Games, video games included, are fun because our brains are hard-wired to find enjoyment in the mastery of tasks/acquisition of skill. Cognitive science tells us that our brains are likely wired this way for the evolutionary purpose of encouraging the acquisition and refinement of beneficial survival skills. For the most part, it doesn't matter what the actual task is or what value the skill has. That's why video games are fun despite the fact that they have no real world application at all. The is one caveat to this: challenge/mastery. When mastery is not a factor, or when tasks have no challenge, tasks are not fun. This is why we don't care for mundane tasks like taking out the trash.

Gear is supposed to be a reward in recognition for mastery. Completion of a certain task signifies a level of mastery that entitles you to a certain reward. Is it coming together now?

Now here's where exclusivity comes into place: mastery is relative. We value the acquisition of skills and the mastery of skills, but we judge the quality of our skills and the degree of our mastery through comparison. Exclusivity of gear helps establish relativity of mastery.

So long as gear is correlated with completion of certain tasks and the difficulty of those tasks are known, it's a shortcut to knowing what that player is capable of. Ever made fun of a WAR meeling in full AF2? You're establishing the relativity of his skill based on his lack of substantial rewards.

It happens post Abyssea too, like people in full Teal or full Perle. The problem is that there are so few people unable to complete the top level task that mastery level is non-existent. You either have people geared to the teeth or absolute retard. The middle has been eliminated. Even people who like Abyssea acknowledge it is far far far easier.

In old FFXI, you didn't get drops based on your skill. You got them based on luck/opportunity/positioning. It's silly to act as if only good players got good items because that was far, far from the case. Items are not allocated to people on a "high ability basis".

I'm not going to argue that old XI tracked drops perfectly. There was definitely over-inclusiveness by nature of the fact it's an MMO. You only have to be good enough such that a group that can do the task doesn't kick you out, not good enough such that a group comprised of exactly your mean skill level could do the task.

And one could argue there was over-exclusiveness to a point. There are definitely many skilled people who could have succeeded at the HNMLS stage but did not for whatever reason.

But are you seriously going to argue that Abyssea is any better? There were shitty relic holders to be sure, but do you really think the mean skill level between relic holders and Empyrean holders is comparable?

I could list thousands of reasons why not, but the most glaring obvious reason why Abyssea has made the connection between gear and mastery less relevant is the existence of Brew. Brew was probably envisioned as a compromise on skill for effort for who put in an EXTREME amount so that they could eventually do something solo (i.e. think of the person who wants to be able to get Kings gear but can only play 2 hours a day but would dedicate all that time to farming if it meant being able to get it). Then they shortsightedly made it cheaper. You don't even have to be good enough to get access to Shinryu, you can pay/leech your way up to him then pay/leech your way through him, then start the gameshark hijinks yourself. Anything that stands in your way, lack of skill included, can be fixed all for 200k cruor. HOW ACCESSIBLE!

I'm willing to tolerate old XI's margin of error not only because it was far less than Abyssea's but also because at the end of the day effort and skill together should count for more than just one without the other. Michael Jordan wasn't the greatest simply because he was talented, it's because he squeezed every ounce of result possible out of his innate talents and toiled year after year until he sat alone atop.

Moreover as a game that exists in the real world, you have to deal with spillover from the real world. And sometimes the real world isn't perfectly fair and we have to do the best with what we have. It sucks if you can't put in the time to play the game to succeed at the highest levels, but in the end those who put in the hours actually did put in the hours, shouldn't they get something for that? I'd rather have a game in which some people have to accept not being on top, rather than some terrible program running on my other screen where everyone with an IQ above a rock is identical while I watch YouTube