Tanaka Rage!

[NynJa]

Do you know what could potentially alleviate long repop timer world spawns? 100% rare/ex drops with no money drops. While you're still have the occasional fuckheads who think it would be cool to claim shit hoping there would be a potential buyer...if shit were 100%, there would be no need to buy it, cause you could always try for claim tomorrow. People would get their shit, then have no need to camp it.

If Gaiters were 100% rare/ex drop, would it have escalated to the huge camp fest? maybe.....but potential looters would have eventually run out.


if 21-24 hour camps were so desired, how come 0.001% of the player base miss them? (that 0.001% being people backed by bot LSs and were actually able to fight the mobs, or were people who can schedule their lives around a game)

[Gredival]

That's the thing we're doing circles with: Anyone who obtained Empyrean armor was ABLE to kill the monsters who held the seals for them. Anyone with an Empyrean weapon was ABLE to kill the prerequisite monsters to obtain what they worked for. No one is saying anyone should be able to just log in and obtain those things

Atma of the Apocalypse. Brew.

The problem with Abyssea is that the bar is set ridiculously low. Content is made accessible to the lowest common denominator, both by removing competition and removing challenge.

I'll try to make a more accurate analogy, then. Imagine you are at work alongside a few dozen coworkers. There is an announcement that there is going to be a promotion that you qualify for, you have all of the right qualities and education and it will allow you to move up a pay grade and generally enjoy your job more.

Seventy other people are also up for promotion. Then you find out you have to submit an application for it, and there is only ONE application this quarter and half of the people there are standing around with vacuums. A small portion of them have leaf-blowers just to fuck up everyone else's chances. There is nothing even close to "fair" or "skill" involved here, it is a mad grab for something. It doesn't make the "winner" better at filling out an application, it doesn't make everyone else worse because they didn't manage to fight off a small crowd.

I already said that I'd be fine with improvements to the system. I said Kings were better than Abyssea, not ideal.

In your example, Abyssea is the comparative equivalent of giving everyone qualified the promotion, and then letting the unqualified work extra overtime to earn "points" and get promotions as well despite inferiority.

Now I'm not saying there aren't more exact ways to do this, but at least the initial scenario had some manner of screening in which an employee who wasn't qualified just didn't get it (I'd assume if they got the application and got rejected, another application would be released similarly to how mobs go white)

And I guess to me that's what's important. The person that can't, or doesn't try, doesn't win. In the end someone who deserves it will win. And that's because I believe honestly that anyone who wanted King gear and was willing to put in the time and effort could get it. It could take years (it took me two years between three servers). It probably means neglecting other FF goals, especially if you have a limited RL schedule. But you can get it.

Do you think I ever expected to get a Dring? No. It fell into my lap because I went to Kings, every single time I could, and eventually the stars had to align. I killed it enough for it to finally drop and all my effort was plainly quanitified by having the leading DKP.

To me it's like I buy into this version of the American dream in FFXI. It's not perfect, and you will get some scars along the way. But anything is possible. And that's what makes it worthwhile. To others, the dream is dead as soon as they have to compete against someone else.

You yourself said that you've seen people wipe to HNMs with a full alliance, with a full dozen. If that's the case, why not let more people fail at it? You said yourself you don't have a problem with people practicing in one way or another, or even if there was a dummy Faf they could use to work out a strategy for you'd be all for it. Ultimately it comes down to limiting the chances at equipment and the championing of poor design and fake difficulty in the form of mass competition.

I already explicitly stated that I think limited resources over which players have to compete is beneficial and desirable.

I also said I'm more then fine with augmenting difficulty (although to be fair, Fafnir was hard when we were toting Earth Staff Purple Paladins and no one had merits)In particular, I said I wouldn't mind a game in which PvE content was concurrent with open world PvP.

I'll address "poor design" below

It shouldn't matter to anyone in the game what a bunch of chuckle-fucks you don't work with obtain. If every person had a 21-24 hour lockout on their own personal HNM timer similar to WoW's dungeon system, I am positive you'd have a problem with it if people could get the gear you cherish from it. It doesn't make sense to me; Your values in elitism and having things people don't speak very loudly about you and I think to everyone here. I'm sure you don't give a fuck, though.

If you've seen so many people unable to kill HNMs at HNM camps you really shouldn't give a fuck if they get a chance to fight it or not; They'll just wipe and that'll be that. Conversely, they WON'T wipe and people you deem inferior will obtain equipment that you feel is reserved for awesome dedicated skilled players such as yourself, and your perceived value with go down because your armor is slightly less special now that there's another guy in Jeuno idling next to you in it.

1. Quite simply I don't mind part of the assigned challenge being "you have to beat other people to it" and I think those willing to go through that extra layer, that competition, deserve something more than anyone who just withdraws from content because they don't like dealing with cross-camping.

2. If gear doesn't matter, why do people want it? We either work from the premise that it matters or it doesn't. If it doesn't, then people shouldn't mind being excluded from it. This is evidently wrong. So long as we all work from the premise it matters, there are very good reasons for open world competitive models.

A. So gear matters, why does that mean it should be rare? Because if we concede that gear matters, it is now the measuring stick (amongst relevant parties) from which we measure completion of challenges in the game. Therefore items should scale in terms of challenge to quality. There is not only a skill question, but an effort question. A skilled player who doesn't do content doesn't deserve reward. A bad player who can't do content doesn't deserve reward. It should be a mix, with gear increasing in quality comparative to both the skill and effort necessary to obtain it. Placing premiere gear on World Spawns automatically creates a high effort test because many top tier players will go after it. Kings were originally difficult when released. I think this represented an appropriate mix of difficulty and effort befitting top level gear like Adaberk when RotZ content was actually released. Moreover, I feel that this model was successfully adapted moving forward as ToaU Kings, Dark Ixion, and Sandworm all evolved from the basic world spawn system. It did not need to be discarded.

B. Rarity is good. Gear matters, and it should have a value reflecting that metagame importance. What are the components of "value" though? I argue it's a combination of function and rarity. No one gives a shit about rare items that are useless (Spleunker's Hat), but on the reverse side what's the point of a drop that everyone has even if it's good? It gets taken for granted and becomes valueless, e.g. Walahra Turban. Stuff like Dring (and formerly Ridill) are so valuable not only because of their own merit but because of their rarity. Since I want gear in FFXI to have value I also believe that good gear should be rare. The most effective way to keep something rare is to place it on a world spawn. Even if something is 1% drop rate there is a huge difference if there is only one theoretical spawn a day vs. dozens.

C. World spawns are the best system for maintaining the type of skinner box I am arguing is ideal. High value gear that takes a lot of effort and skill to acquire. Again I'm not arguing Kings were perfect, merely comparatively superior. The old XI model gave you goals to work through, long-term, in an environment where content functioned cohesively together. You had your Kings, your Salvage, your Limbus, your Dynamis, your ToaU and WotG NMs all together. The new XI is about blitzing content then waiting for the next round.

Do you know what could potentially alleviate long repop timer world spawns? 100% rare/ex drops with no money drops. While you're still have the occasional fuckheads who think it would be cool to claim shit hoping there would be a potential buyer...if shit were 100%, there would be no need to buy it, cause you could always try for claim tomorrow. People would get their shit, then have no need to camp it.

If Gaiters were 100% rare/ex drop, would it have escalated to the huge camp fest? maybe.....but potential looters would have eventually run out.


if 21-24 hour camps were so desired, how come 0.001% of the player base miss them? (that 0.001% being people backed by bot LSs and were actually able to fight the mobs, or were people who can schedule their lives around a game)

I'm not even going to bother responding to you. Everything you have said is already answered in some form or other in a previous post of mine.

Lyall is actually making an effort and has amazingly managed to understand (probably after reading it over twenty times) that my argument explicitly states that Kings weren't popular but were nonetheless a superior system. Something you must have selective vision problems reading.

[NynJa]

I'm not even going to bother responding to you. Everything you have said is already answered in some form or other in a previous post of mine.

I read that as "wah wah wah I have nothing to say because you've shot down everything I said"
You've said you loved the kings system, and think abyssea ruined the game, bla bla bla bla bla...you catered your life to the bullshit 21-24 hour system, dont try to sugar coat it.

Atma of the Apocalypse. Brew.

Because your average scrub is sitting on 10 million cruor to brew shit over and over and over and over. Have you ever seen a scrub use a brew? Most of the time they manage to kill one mob only with it, sometimes two, and sometimes, though rarely, they need to pop a second brew.

As I've said, giving "auto reraise" does not automatically mean easy mode. Sometimes shit happens, like Sobek doing Tyrant Tusk right after Blizzaga and stun is down...shit happens and dying to something like that doesnt mean you're a fucking retard scrub whos too stupid to be playing the game.

The only easy mode shit about AoA is the fact auto-reraise works on double weakness. If that aspect were removed, and didnt work if you're double weak, it would go to great legnths.

[dasva]

Not to mention the people that will steal nms the second they go white to the point of harrass you and following you the second things go bad and you try to kite

[NynJa]

Some fuckhead did that when I was fighting sobek. Tusked me after blizzaga4 (one of the resident Nyn hater bangwagoners brought it up for some reason, kidnoftle I think) cause I was trying to cleave xp for mules...I died obv, had my naked taru thf80/whm hold it while I was dead with my mithra whm74/blm...once I got up, I back tanked for 5 min, and some dude is staring at it that entire time hoping I die.

[Cail]

You're an oblivious moron if you think bots didnt give you a drastic increase in claims

[Tagus]

You're an oblivious moron if you think bots didnt give you a drastic increase in claims

Which seems to be the forgotten element in this discussion. Everybody's making good points, but people are going to always going to cheat in video games. Unfortunately the world spawn system gives cheaters the opportunity to not only move faster than everybody else etc., but monopolize the best gear in the game. It's like that old simpsons kang quote, "the politics of failure have failed." There's no reason to go back to that.

[Lyall]

You're using two at-the-end-of-the-expansion concepts to write off an entire system and that is a flaw in the argument. No one is theoretically handed 200k brews or Apoc. I know none of the people I run with got them the easy way, and as I've established I do not give a damn about the people outside of my circle of players. I don't understand why other people can't see it that way either.

Disclaimer: I am all for Gimp/Confused/WTF though I also don't believe anyone takes it seriously enough to have it wrinkle their day (people like my signature notwithstanding).

To address your points:

1) This is a matter of taste and I don't think we're even trying to sway each other on these points. I don't think a bottleneck that's most often won with raw numbers or third party programs is a good design.

2) The gear does matter otherwise no one would be playing the game. Advancement of your character is the name of the game really. With that established:
A) A few things to discuss here. First, I agree with a test in the form of a difficult fight to obtain relatively more powerful equipment. As mentioned in my first point though I don't feel a bottleneck on a day-to-week-long lockout is a "test" so much as it is a lottery. You point out that Kings fights were originally difficult and that is the largest problem here I think: As time moved on and there WAS no upgrade beyond those drops, it created a dam. Where you'd normally have people taking down bosses and becoming more powerful in a relative manner, we instead had a gradual increase in the people looking for the same things. When there were only a few linkshells who COULD kill an HQHNM, the competition didn't matter so much when if someone wasn't capable they'd eventually lose it. Once you had two hundred people all equally geared and equally skilled, it was no longer a contest of being able to defeat the monster. As it had been brought up before in recent history the challenge was never the encounter, being able to engage it was. This again goes back to our first points.

B) A few things I also disagree with here. While there is no question that rarity has a value in and of itself, I can't imagine how Walahra Turban is valueless when at the 75 cap it was an essential piece of gear. Again, I feel you are devaluing something incredibly useful on account of everyone having it so it cannot be special. Beyond that, look at the number of Askar helmets running around at 75. If D. Ring was obtainable with 300,000 Conquest Points it would not suddenly stop being valuable.

C) I'd like to quote you here.

The most effective way to keep something rare is to place it on a world spawn. Even if something is 1% drop rate there is a huge difference if there is only one theoretical spawn a day vs. dozens.

Yet you hated Salvage, which is as Skinner-Box as it can get. Just like you tried Salvage out, hated it and moved on I tried Kings, hated it and moved on. To my understanding a successful skinner box has to allow the subject a chance of success; Being able to run Salvage unmolested where each Powderkeg might finally put out was a much more desirable situation (to me and mine, that is) since we at least got to overcome the monster we were looking for the item from. Going to Kings, being outclaimed and hoping for a wipe isn't dynamic or exciting (again, to me and mine). Given the theoretically-once-per-day entry on Salvage it gives you precisely what you asked for, too, which makes me wonder why you disliked it so much. It provided a variable challenge that was inversely proportional to how many people you ran with (due to cell distribution, you either made one or two people very powerful or spread it out so everyone was mediocre). There were multiple monsters to tackle in every zone, and Bhaf gates even made you pray for a rare spawn in a manner similar to HNMs. The only thing I can think of that would have been a legitimate reason (outside of taste) is that compared to full-abjurations and the like the gear wasn't particularly useful, depending on job of course.

Finally, I don't understand what you mean by old end-game existing cohesively. I can't think of a common link between Dynamis/Limbus/Kings/Ein that would be any different throwing one of the nine Abyssea zones in to compare, or the multiple tiers of Voidwatch that, barring a few select fights, require more strategy and coordination than anything I can think of previously.

[NynJa]

btw, if abyssea is too easy for you, why dont you do it without cruor buffs and atmas? Bam, theres your challenge.

[Cail]

or without gear! i remember doing wotg sw without gear to try to make it hard on pld, didnt work;;

[Byrthnoth]

Or just not do Abyssea? I've been to Abyssea about twice in the last four months.

[Cail]

dont think thats the issue. the problem is EVERYONE ELSE does abyssea and has a chance to get good gear AND THATS JUST NOT FUCKING ACCEPTABLE

[Septimus]

Do you know what could potentially alleviate long repop timer world spawns? 100% rare/ex drops with no money drops. While you're still have the occasional fuckheads who think it would be cool to claim shit hoping there would be a potential buyer...if shit were 100%, there would be no need to buy it, cause you could always try for claim tomorrow. People would get their shit, then have no need to camp it.

If Gaiters were 100% rare/ex drop, would it have escalated to the huge camp fest? maybe.....but potential looters would have eventually run out.


if 21-24 hour camps were so desired, how come 0.001% of the player base miss them? (that 0.001% being people backed by bot LSs and were actually able to fight the mobs, or were people who can schedule their lives around a game)

Fuck 21-24 hour free spanwing HNMs. Even with Rare/EX items, douches would bot their balls off to monopolize them to sell the drops to people in the area. Free spawn NMs bring out the absolute worst in people and requires a game to become their job.

If I were the President of FFXI that shit would never happen again under any condition.

[NynJa]

I did specify potential, but yeah 21-24 shit is dumb as an ox. You want to know whats dumber than 21-24 freespawn? 21+hr lotto.

[Septimus]

I did specify potential, but yeah 21-24 shit is dumb as an ox. You want to know whats dumber than 21-24 freespawn? 21+hr lotto.

Worse than that. 3-7 days. Oh, that CoP...

[NynJa]

Ah yeah...I remember that great mindset..."with such long repop timers, we hope the player base will not sit around and camp, but instead will be treated to a surprise as they run by and are ambushed by the monster lurking in their path", or whatever it was.

Dont forget the reverse lotto too, keep the PH alive for 21 hours.

[dasva]

Yeah which really meant parking your ass there for the full 21 hours in hopes of intimidating other players from killing them in order to force a new TOD over and over and over....

[Churchill]

If there was something that dropped an item everyone wanted 100% and it could be monopolized then I would monopolize it. People wouldn't "stop camping" once they got their shit. They'd stop camping once it stopped being profitable.

[Septimus]

Ah yeah...I remember that great mindset..."with such long repop timers, we hope the player base will not sit around and camp, but instead will be treated to a surprise as they run by and are ambushed by the monster lurking in their path", or whatever it was.

Dont forget the reverse lotto too, keep the PH alive for 21 hours.

It truly was a wonderland of Haijin-ism.

Damn you Abyssea for making people think that content should be enjoyable and rewarding!

[NynJa]

If KA dropped speed (velocious) belt 100% of the time instead if a 5% drop rate, would you be inclined to buy it at 30 mil...or would you save that 30 mil and go "well I know it'll drop tomorow, and I may claim it tomorrow?". Its not like "oh shit it dropped, and it might not drop again for another approx 25 days, whats to say the one time I do claim it it wont drop"? The bots are good, very good...but they're not infallible, and sometimes the legit player WILL claim.

If someone attempts to monopolize a NM that drops 100% of the time, and there are no potential buyers, whats the point of camping it? You'll just be wasting your time.