[dev1007]Voidwatch Emerges

[Khiinroye]

Lights from the ascent items are separate, but the lights from the weakness triggers are shared.

[Lyall]

Lights from the ascent items are separate, but the lights from the weakness triggers are shared.

Touche, reading comprehension failure on my part.

[Spira]

srsly, is it THAT HARD to play with other people in an MMORPG?

if you want to pay extra money to play with yourself, then by all means, but don't make that seem like something that is a given across the community because it isn't. The game isn't made to cater to soloists, as hard as it is to believe.

If its hard, yay you actually need 6 slots.

If its easy, which first tier is probably gonna be, then just group with some random person you meet to get it done. Its as simple as that.

And if you can't find random people to do it with, make friends ffs.

[drwaffles]

Except lights and chests are independent, so the only thing they gain by leeching a spot is a shitty loot pool and some cruor. I don't think it's so bad.

What's to stop them building up good lights prior to the fight and then sitting on their ass whilst you proc weaknesses and kill? From what it says in the notes it looks like triggering weakness affects the contents of all participants' chests.

[Julian]

I'm an elitist in a casual's body shit sucks

[NynJa]

If this moves some of the people working on 2nd and 3rd Empyreans (who constantly bitch about Abyssea) out of Abyssea, I couldn't be happier. Please just fucking go away already, nobody likes you.

Hey now, that Masamune/Ukon/Twashtar/Kannagi/Vere/Ochain/Almace all serve different purposes and all will get used equally and proficiently, its their 15$ etc etc etc

[Gwynplaine]

srsly, is it THAT HARD to play with other people in an MMORPG?

if you want to pay extra money to play with yourself, then by all means, but don't make that seem like something that is a given across the community because it isn't. The game isn't made to cater to soloists, as hard as it is to believe.

In a sense it's not and in another sense it is. Unlike some people who are pickup group-phobic I don't really mind trying them. And if this is one of those things you could smoosh into a pickup for like ISNM or KSNM used to be I'd do it. But the issue is that while FFXI nudges you into making groups and teaming up, it doesn't help you at all to do so. It's a tedious nightmare shouting for pickups like some beggar with a tin cup. Or on the other end, loitering around hoping someone is making a group to do something interesting. If you're in an LS you can get in good usually, but sometimes even then you have to practically beg people to do anything outside their moghouse.

[Charismatic]

Sounds like it could be fun enough to me even though it's similar to Abyssea... which, well... I still find to be fun.
Too bad for the people who are tired of it, I guess.

[Eldelphia]

I'm hoping its more fun than it sounds. I am firmly in the camp of wanting something NEW. Abyssea is fine and serves a purpose but I want to move on to something which requires challenge. Until we know more its hard to say whether this is it. But yeah my heart sank when I read the description.

[drwaffles]

If its easy, which first tier is probably gonna be, then just group with some random person you meet to get it done. Its as simple as that.

And if you can't find random people to do it with, make friends ffs.

An MMO should cater to the needs of people who want to play in full alliances for everything and to people who would rather do stuff with a couple of friends or by themselves. The way you do this is by not placing pointless limitations on how few people you can participate in content with. I shouldn't have to play with people I don't want to in order to achieve my goals if I'm perfectly capable of doing the relevant content on my own, especially not if they're getting what they want via my hard work without contributing anything other than a means to bypass an illogical prerequisite.

And this isn't about how many friends you have, either. I don't want to have to beg people to come out just so that I can pop something that I want a drop from. I had enough of that crap with Salvage.

[Nightfyre]

Regarding issues with grabbing an additional random to fill your party:

Imagine if you had bring a random in order to pop and kill Pantokrator, Glavoid, etc. There's a pretty good chance their presence is going to hinder your progress in the fight rather than help. Dislike of arbitrary requirements aside there's good reason to be leery of bringing more members than you have to, especially if it's not someone you can rely on. They're not especially hard with a competent group, but a random can be one hell of a spanner in the works.

Setting an arbitrary minimum requirement is not only stupid for reasons Waffles has already outlined, it can be detrimental depending on who is available to you.

[Lyramion]

Imagine if you had bring a random in order to pop and kill Pantokrator, Glavoid, etc. There's a pretty good chance their presence is going to hinder your progress in the fight rather than help.

WHMS ONRY ! NO TOUCHY MOB !

[Malacite]

Here's a major problem I'm seeing with this.

What if those buyable ascent items are not universal across all currency (IS, CP etc.)? So say you have to spend 1-5k IS to get the "more quality treasure" or red ascent item. I don't know about other people but I have 1k IS on my main and however much on my mule. There is absolutely no efficient way to farm IS. Your options are getting like 1-4 IS per mob killing shit (in a party) in ToAU or doing Besieged for 2kish. Is anybody else frightened by the fact that we may have to fucking kill Greater Colibri for hours on end again just for IS to get drops from this new system? It would be even worse with CP (although almost everybody has an excess of THAT, it would still run out eventually).

Extremely Dickish move by SE if the above assumptions are correct.

EDIT: What I mean in the second sentence is what if each specific ascent item is tied to a specific currency? (IS = red, CP = yellow, etc.)

This is the best part of the whole thing, and why I'm laughing @ all my buddies right now. I'm a bit miffed on the allied notes front as I'm down to 50k (where I previously had close to 1 mil lol, damn campaign gear) but I've still got close to 300k CP & ISP each and have been wondering as to wtf I should do with it all. Well, here's SE's incentive to get more people out of Abyssea and into older zones.

It's genius! I also love that we'll get to keep having fun with our super powered Abyssea-style of play, while keeping it strictly limited to these new fights. It also likely means that these NMs are going to get very, very difficult as you progress further without said buffs.


Maybe we'll actually get to run around fully buffed though in that new floating crystal island area that we saw the concept art for in the update outline post a while back. Also betting that this is absolutely going to be the way to get 99 Relic/Mythic/Empyreans.

[Rocl]

WHMS ONRY ! NO TOUCHY MOB !

yo lyra you my random sixth, ya hurd?

[Chun Liroy]

Rocl why don't you wave when I wave at you.

[Charismatic]

Rocl why don't you wave when I wave at you.

Silentleroy

I dunno.

[Spira]

i get the whole argument about stupid arbitrary requirements for this, but it does have legitimate reason apart from 'getting people to group'

here's the most relevant point.

soloing - if people can solo or low man shit, there's always a high chance of them doing it.

With Abyssea, there were 3 zones added per update and about 25 NMs on average per zone. Not all of them could be soloed/lowmanned but a majority could, but your crowd is spread out amongst that many more NMs to do. To distract from/limit them, pop item farming is also necessary

with Voidwatch, battles are not instanced, and each Op can only accommodate 3 pops at a go. Although its likely that there'll be limitations to the area your battle can reach ala Confrontation, there still a likelihood it can be slowly lowmanned/soloed, even if this is capped at 30min a battle. If so, then you might find yourself queuing and waiting for some asshole who is taking his time to kill the NM when you could probably clear it in 1/3rd the time as a group - at no significant loss to each player.

As more players clear a battle with each pop, more people can move up tier and reduce traffic. Its also possible this tier system doesn't allow you to spam a tier since they might always upgrade, meaning you'd have to wait on others for the following tier.
Anyway, 18x3 is still less than 25x3, and you can expect there to be significant bottlenecking at the events launch.

However, with other spam countermeasures like Voidstones in place, this may not be necessary.
Also when Voidwatch parts 2-4 get released, the playerbase will be spread out even further - by then we'd definitely not need the player limits, but for now it serves as a crowd control measure, and also helps to get people to group

[Herzins]

I take offense to "you people." Recognize us Elvaan for what we are: Mutant X Dhalmels. We are no some street Opo-opo or house cat. We've passed the *You must be this high to enjoy the ride* test multiple times and we don't have Native American carvings.

lmao! /cheer

[Chun Liroy]

I dunno.

Actually.. you're on bismark? I'm moving there soon. Will you wave at me when I wave at you?

[mactabilis]

Minimum requirement again...you'd think they'd have learned from salvage and how old content gets easier as level cap goes up. End result for skilled ppl is they'll just bring mules or not bother with it altogether. If they actually need 6 to win then average players won't be able to advance at all, resulting in whining that it's too hard, difficulty gets nerfed and...you still need 6 to enter. Forcing ppl to play together for something like exp in the past is far more tolerable than joining shout group for new events, though we'll see about the separate loot. Many including myself have ditched larger LS as level cap has gone up and player quality has gone down and prefer doing things solo or with a few others max. I don't see that changing for this.

I think drwaffles put it well also. Screw having to nag others to come help you enter or get GM'd for being in there solo or some crap.