Version Update Details (9/19/11)

[Byrthnoth]

I hate MNK for Monk and BRD for Bard, but I do it too so I can't hate it that much.

[Septimus]

Another moment of Dev Team win that will go unrecognized.

They probably shouldn't have buried it under the mountain of disappointment that was the update then.

[boo]

I hate people say FF11 instead of Final Fantasy 11

[Foldypaws]

I hate when people say "I hate people say" instead of "I hate when people say."

[Kaisha]

They probably shouldn't have buried it under the mountain of disappointment that was the update then.

It makes me wonder how long their laundry list is on FFXI given the last major update introduced the amazing functionality of purchasing more than one imperial currency at a time............after Whitegate became a ghost town.

Hell, it's those little tweaks I wish they would do more of, starting with unnecessary NPC interaction and cutscene zones/doors.

[Lordender]

They probably shouldn't have buried it under the mountain of disappointment that was the update then.

Glad i'm not the only one who thought this update was a waste of space and disappointing. XIV's update is looking like it will blow XI's one away and last I checked XIV is still free.

[Septimus]

Glad i'm not the only one who thought this update was a waste of space and disappointing. XIV's update is looking like it will blow XI's one away and last I checked XIV is still free.

Oh, don't get me wrong, the bit to which I was refereed (not having to talk to the NPCs) is good. The idea of less annoying steps between getting to where I want to go is always welcome.

The disappointment of which I speak is mostly aimed at how miserable the Trial of the Magians upgrades are and how wretched it is going to be to get them. Forty geodes for one extra stat and 5 extra damage, 150-200 silver mirrors, 1,500 Heavy Metal Plates. Sad, sadder, saddest. (Or should that last one actually be "sadist"?)

It isn't going to be hard to blow an update this lackluster away, and it is free because it is still an unplayable train-wreck and an albatross around the company's neck. This is what happens when you release too early, don't learn from your mistakes, and absolutely refuse to listen to people who are telling you things that you don't want to hear. I don't know if they are trying to tank FFXI intentionally to get people to go over to FFXIV, or is this is just sheer incompetence, but I can say without a doubt that this update is incredibly disappointing and does not give me hope for the future of this game. Abyssea was a bold departure from this game's status quo, Voidwatch is a terrifying step back to the shittacular drop rates that made CoP such a crowd pleaser that a huge chunk of the player base simply quit. The Dev team needs to stop being timid about this game, it is on its last leg, and that leg isn't going to support it much longer if they keep slapping out mediocrity.

[Shenrien]

The drop rates are really not that bad, with blitz its easy to bring up both red and blue if magic gets screwed or if ja/ws get screwed, in each T4 VW I went to, out of 3 fights, at least one person walked out with a body, several others including myself walked out with other misc drops that we wanted.

Yeah sure it's fucktarded that you can't pool something if your mule gets it but tough luck stop giving your mule a stone then, try again and keep going for it, personally I feel like the drop rates on things are far more exaggerated then what we claim they are around, the fights are fun and it involves more people to do shit then your static 3 person group that used to be the shit in Abyssea, I wouldn't say it's a step back, considering in times of olde you had SC+Magic Burst = Win or Stun 1 bad TP move = Win, or throw more kraken DRKs at it.

The scene of end game is also more opened to the public then it ever was in the past, a PUG VW group can be just as efficient at the shit as your servers top dog bad ass pimp legion of doom linkshell, everything to me about Voidwatch is great fun, and I'm glad to turn my back to Abyssea as the main stage attraction to the world primarily because it was getting to the point where I'd fall asleep in the zone so bored over fighting the same shit that has zero threatening TP moves, and hits a counter stance monk like my dead grandma.

[Septimus]

The drop rates are really not that bad, with blitz its easy to bring up both red and blue if magic gets screwed or if ja/ws get screwed, in each T4 VW I went to, out of 3 fights, at least one person walked out with a body, several others including myself walked out with other misc drops that we wanted.

Yeah sure it's fucktarded that you can't pool something if your mule gets it but tough luck stop giving your mule a stone then, try again and keep going for it, personally I feel like the drop rates on things are far more exaggerated then what we claim they are around, the fights are fun and it involves more people to do shit then your static 3 person group that used to be the shit in Abyssea, I wouldn't say it's a step back, considering in times of olde you had SC+Magic Burst = Win or Stun 1 bad TP move = Win, or throw more kraken DRKs at it.

The scene of end game is also more opened to the public then it ever was in the past, a PUG VW group can be just as efficient at the shit as your servers top dog bad ass pimp legion of doom linkshell, everything to me about Voidwatch is great fun, and I'm glad to turn my back to Abyssea as the main stage attraction to the world primarily because it was getting to the point where I'd fall asleep in the zone so bored over fighting the same shit that has zero threatening TP moves, and hits a counter stance monk like my dead grandma.

The drop rates are that bad. If you manage to get a Heavy Metal Plate every day and it will take over 4 years to upgrade an Empyrean Weapon. Forcing people to have to buy plates. Suddenly the Devs turned something accessible into yet another screw over where the reward cannot possibly match the effort it takes to obtain it. I don't even want an Empyrean Weapon and I am this irate over this.

For being made by the company that published Full Metal Alchemist, the FFXI Dev team know surprisingly little about Equivalent Exchange.

[Shenrien]

Well.. T3 Zilart was confirmed to drop pouches no? from the way the person posting made it sound, the pouch gave 8 and they had gotten 4 plates from the box itself :/ idk seemed bit unclear when they said shit, if you're doing it with your own LS I'm sure people would be willing to work together on one at a time, rather trying to work on 18 at a given time.

Not saying it would happen all the time with T3 but in some freak occurrence that the planets aligned, and happened to take place during a lunar eclipse standing on one foot facing south on darksday while examining the ebon panels and assuming you have 18 people with you for a T3 zilart run and everyone gets 12 heavy metal that's over 200 in total from 1 fight.

But knowing how FFXI works, the chances of that happening is likely as a semi-truck full of beer crashing into your neighbors house killing everyone inside and the driver, and you end up with more alcohol then you know what to do with before the cops/ambulance/fire dept can get there.

[Lordender]

Trial of the Magians is the most disappointing thing to me since I don't own an emp weapon. I personally thought this was a half-assed, lazy update where the dev-team just mailed it in putting in very little effort. I did WoE a few times, sure it can be fun when its not full of retards but the once a gameday entry thing pisses on your parade.

At the end of the day, this update was nothing more than bad filler that, the plate thing is terrible, it just seems so unbalanced to require 1500 plates, coins that you may or may not need from WoE.

They should of just made a point system in WoE where you could buy HMP's, coins of your choice, new spells while keeping the pouches of multiple plates on VW mobs. I just don't get it, a points system worked great for assault, einherjar and even abyssea and its not even considered here. Players could at least bang out some plates here and there while VW would still offer them in greater quantity etc.

Everyone wins in a point system because everyone puts in the work for what they want, so much fail at SE its unbelievable.

[Vandalhart]

It makes me wonder how long their laundry list is on FFXI given the last major update introduced the amazing functionality of purchasing more than one imperial currency at a time............after Whitegate became a ghost town.

Hell, it's those little tweaks I wish they would do more of, starting with unnecessary NPC interaction and cutscene zones/doors.

I agree. There's a whole shitload of areas where the NPC Interaction and confirm pop ups is just retarded. Dom Ops being one, hopefully they'll follow suit with what they did for GoV pages there.

I would like to see the atma selection process be updated also.


What it should be:
Select list to choose from, Atma1, Atma2, Atma3, Confirm.

What it is now:
Select list to chooser from, Atma1, Select another atma, Atma2, Select another atma, Atma3, Proceed, Confirm.

If they didn't want to make Dom Ops auto repeat, they could just let it default to the last one taken in the list.

[Forte]

SE still uses the Japanese philosophy of design, which is why they are going the way of the dinosaur.

[Hyan]

ITT: Being incompetent or not comes down to how much money you're willing to spend as a company on a product.

Which, from a customer's point of view, makes sense. He doesn't have to care whether there is any benefit for the company in doing so!

[Tagus]

Hell, it's those little tweaks I wish they would do more of

I find myself thinking about this all the time. It seems like we're playing a game that should have existed in 2008. Maybe in 2014 they'll find a way to make salvage relevant again, so that we can play the game we should be playing now.

[Apelila]

When did Imperial Standing get translated to 'ass-candy'?

5+(6?) years after I heard it the first time, this still makes me laugh everytime I see it. Same with the assjam, dynamoose/mouse- its fun to say in a totally sophomoric way.

What truly bugs the fuck out of me is when people wasy RDM or WHM in vent. When I see RDM my brain auto corrects to "Red Mage". Hearing someone say "ARR DEE EMM" lights a dark fire in my soul, one that cannot be expressed in this mortal language of men.

Also is voidwatch really as bad as I've read? I haven't done any because my playtimes put me apart from that of most people, but I have yet to see anyone say anything good about it outside of 'well, it could be worse'. I came in here to say, if someone is saying that 14 is more enjoyable that's all I really need to know to stay the hell away from it.

Also the conquest point thing is yet another thing from the "List of annoying crap" that they've slowly ninja'ed over the years.

Next update please change Union not to have 2 confirmation windows please? K thnx - Me

[Vandalhart]

5+(6?) years after I heard it the first time, this still makes me laugh everytime I see it. Same with the assjam, dynamoose/mouse- its fun to say in a totally sophomoric way.

What truly bugs the fuck out of me is when people wasy RDM or WHM in vent. When I see RDM my brain auto corrects to "Red Mage". Hearing someone say "ARR DEE EMM" lights a dark fire in my soul, one that cannot be expressed in this mortal language of men.

Also is voidwatch really as bad as I've read? I haven't done any because my playtimes put me apart from that of most people, but I have yet to see anyone say anything good about it outside of 'well, it could be worse'. I came in here to say, if someone is saying that 14 is more enjoyable that's all I really need to know to stay the hell away from it.

Also the conquest point thing is yet another thing from the http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/48900-List-of-annoying-crap-in-FFXI-(Wall-of-text-warning)"]"List of annoying crap"[/URL] that they've slowly ninja'ed over the years.

Next update please change Union not to have 2 confirmation windows please? K thnx - Me

I read some of your list of annoying crap. I don't see why they couldn't do away with the NPCs at the Airship entrances all together.
Make it like the ferries.. if you get on one and don't have a license to ride, you get kicked off.

[Kaisha]

Also is voidwatch really as bad as I've read? I haven't done any because my playtimes put me apart from that of most people, but I have yet to see anyone say anything good about it outside of 'well, it could be worse'.

The event design overall is fine. The majority of bitching you'll see is over its pants-on-head retarded personalized loot system, ensuring no one gets what they want as far as ra/ex drops go even if you play their game and max out light alignment every single kill along with using cells to increase the alignment further.

[Slycer]

I like Voidwatch a lot, but it is, for the most part, despite the loot system, not because of it. The primary positive thing about the loot system (from the point of view of someone leading events) is that distribution of items becomes a non-issue as it is handled for you, so you don't have to deal with a point system or priority lists or anything like that. From the point of view of crafters, it allows for a huge influx of craft items which previously were difficult to find and expensive since there can be upwards of 100 junk (read: craft item) drops created per full alliance battle vs. previous maximum limit of 10 items into the loot pool.

The drop rates on gear really aren't that bad, though. If you cap lights, you should be getting like 2-5 pieces of gear per fight across an alliance. Combine this with the fact that the same item can appear in multiple people's crates, and you are actually dealing with extremely high overall drop rates if you add it all together and average it out (talking like >100% average drop rate with a full alliance on many of the drops). They seemed to have taken a clue from many of the complaints about rare/ex items as the vast majority of VW-exclusive items introduced in this update (everything from T1 and T2) were rare, and not rare/ex.

The rare/ex bodies are ridiculously rare, yes, but if they weren't, the existence of crafted versions would be entirely pointless. They certainly aren't intended to be things which everyone can have, which is old-school, flawed SE game design, but that's that. There shouldn't really be any complaints about the drop rates of the other drops, though, rare/ex or otherwise.

Heavy metal plates are an entirely different level of stupidity that I can't really understand at this point. The only thing I can possibly say is that perhaps they have plans for the future to either make them much easier to acquire or to make the upgrade worth the cost. I'm thinking about how ridiculously difficult it seemed to get a level 80 Empyrean weapon when Visions first came out, and how incredibly useless they seemed for that seemingly large amount of work (all they had was high DMG), and then that "a ha" moment when Scars and Heroes released, the level cap increased further, and the weapon skills and aftermaths were added. Perhaps plates and pouches will be standard drops off low tier Voidwatch in the next update, and various kinds of procs will make them even easier to obtain, and perhaps the stats on the level 99 weapon will make the upgrade worthwhile. For now, yes, it seems dumb.

[Gergall]

What truly bugs the fuck out of me is when people wasy RDM or WHM in vent. When I see RDM my brain auto corrects to "Red Mage". Hearing someone say "ARR DEE EMM" lights a dark fire in my soul, one that cannot be expressed in this mortal language of men.

Try pointing out that the abbreviation is actually more syllables, especially for WHM.

There was a "hint" in the original Earthworm Jim instruction booklet advising you not to abbreviate his name to EWJ because it just takes even longer to say.