New Vanafest incoming.

[NynJa]

SE might say Legion is that content...of course everyone will retort to the fact that there is no player countermeasure that can be done to mobs that are immune to stun and have TP moves that cause instant death in itself or 4 digit aoe damage (after substantial -DT mitigation), which is almost the same as instant death.

[Damane]

SE might say Legion is that content...of course everyone will retort to the fact that there is no player countermeasure that can be done to mobs that are immune to stun and have TP moves that cause instant death in itself or 4 digit aoe damage (after substantial -DT mitigation), which is almost the same as instant death.

while legion would be good, the time limit kills any attempt that doesnt involve zerging. Besides any fight that takes more then 30 min shouldnt even be considered. I dont know why its hard to actually implement fights that can be done in 30 min without zerging

[Spira]

it could just be a case of the battle directors being lost in certain ideas or styles..

classic content used to always be like that, although some might say it bordered on gimmicky for several fights.

but when you talk about 30min without zerging, Lambton Worm comes to mind lol.

[arus2001]

I guess that is where we differ, then. I don't find difficulty to be a silly ideal; I like a challenge. To each his own, I guess.

Well, I've already talked on why basically scaling everything to demand certain atma builds to be pointless since you're basically recreating a starting point that could otherwise be achieved by looking at everyone's stats at 99 with a modest expectation of gear. And I know it's been a few days since this conversation and I'm too lazy to read back, but I believe you also spoke on disliking blue procs and how "easy" it made getting gear. Essentially, yes, you're attacking practically everything that made Abyssea what it is, only really leaving the light system and having to farm TEs for prolonged visits. SE hasn't been shy about doing timed events poorly lately (VW, Legion, and Neo Nyzul). I don't really think players want more of that.

Now, I called your ideal of difficulty silly because, vague as it's been portrayed, I am incredibly cautious of the concepts of cheap difficulty and legitimate difficulty. Cheap difficult is in abundance right now with all the fuck you up TP moves and stupid mechanics hidden in things SE has no real intention of cluing us in on or coding the game in such a manner that we might actually pick up on them. Yeah, there's something wrong when SAMs are better tanks than PLDs or whatever other exploitable mechanic basically screws certain jobs out of an encounter by them either being useless or the community latching so hard onto a given method that attempting to deviate makes you a subject of scorn and accusation of not being a team player.

Personally, when I think of making encounters difficult, it's not through mobs fucking us up 50 ways from Firesday or making them immune to every debuff a RDM could even conceptually think of. I'd rather see better AI and scripting, possibly taking advantage of the terrain and interactive objects. Sure, I wholly trust SE to fuck something like this up, and with their habit of never giving clues, such fights could be rigged with the next evolution of the Ebon Panel, but when you get down to it, most FFXI fights were pretty much tank and spank. VW is more like letting the mob tank itself once you get procs flowing.

So, yeah, Abyssea's full of big numbers. I don't want stupid big number difficulty that just translates to cheap in SE language. From an outsider's perspective of the game seemingly shrinking, pimping content that demands alliances just doesn't seem like the right move, either. And if locking fights to 6 people is really a concern so you don't see people rotating in and out, it's not like there aren't systems in place to prevent that through BCs or Confrontation status.

[scaevola]

I would LOVE a hardmode abyssea. We already have an easymode one where the entire content can be cleared out under a year; how about one that is actually a challenge and is essentially impossible without acquiring key atmas and abyssites from the current abyssea zones? Sounds like fun to me as long as I can't 2box everything in it easily.

I know this isn't directly what you were saying, but I think it bears mention: by what insane metric would content as readily accessible and constantly rewarding as Abyssea STILL lasting a reasonably dedicated player a year (and most of us still keep going back to the well two years later!) have to be judged to not be considered a complete, unqualified success?

[arus2001]

Shifting gears a bit, I think a lot of MMO players need to get over the idea that anything added in an MMO needs to last forever, too. Part of that has led to the blah of all these rehashes and revamps instead of new content. Meanwhile, looking to Rift and its pending expansion and cap increase, you get people bitching about the current content getting obsoleted and wasting all their "hard work" with the new zones bringing with them new quests, gear, etc..

[Eurell]

Idk, I really liked that about ffxi at 75. New gear was always just sidegrades, or situational pieces. Great shit to get and aim for, but won't obsolete anything. PLD relic was a great example of that, everything was macro'd in just for one ability each.

[arus2001]

Well, FFXI is a bit of an MMO bastard with the allowance of gear swapping mid-combat, too. I'd rather see means to combine all those situational pieces into one useable item, but SE's up and claimed their item system won't really allow that on the back end.

[Taint]

Tiamat is a great example of a well thought out mob. (atleast at 75) He had numerous adds, eles, undead and the occational antlion. If you did 10% damage he flew/landed so you had to swap damage types. He could 2 shot a DD and had hidden counters. Hate reset TP move, AoE wings/landing (annoying and recoverable but required some prep) and roar fun.

None zerged Bahamat2 was an excellent BC.

[Draylo]

Yeah I hope they have another battle with Bahamut at some point, he was just too awesome. Something for LV99 cap with shinryuu, Prov watcher and crap instead of the old school wyrms lol.

[scaevola]

Shifting gears a bit, I think a lot of MMO players need to get over the idea that anything added in an MMO needs to last forever, too. Part of that has led to the blah of all these rehashes and revamps instead of new content. Meanwhile, looking to Rift and its pending expansion and cap increase, you get people bitching about the current content getting obsoleted and wasting all their "hard work" with the new zones bringing with them new quests, gear, etc..

I'm pretty sure that's only FFXI, though.

EDIT: Oh, Rift. Yeah, the first level cap increase usually does that, then people learn.

[Spira]

After the level cap was declared at 75 (pretty on in FFXIs life), FFXI really was all about marginal upgrades and sidegrades. Their vision was apparently to expand content laterally, which actually worked, because you had 15 to 20 different jobs and each of them had various stats to aim for.

Whilst certain gear slots were considered best pieces, they usually had slightly differentiated substitutes from other places, which allowed players to pick their poison and focus on some events instead of others, which still provided rewards that were meaningful. This led to an amazing breadth of content at 75 because the relative difficulty and promise of rewards never pushed any event into redundancy. There definitely were events that were unpopular, but they served a purpose for a handful of jobs or situations, to say the least.

Fast forward to 99, it has unfortunately made many events absolutely redundant, especially the ones that weren't even popular to begin with. And a bulk of them were from WotG, because by that point they were designing gear that was so situational that was such a hassle to obtain that it really wasn't worth the effort.
We have events like ANNM, Succor of the Sidth, FoV training regimes and Evolith NMs, which are mostly cakewalks now and have the rewards outclassed by stuff found on the AH. Its just sad because a lot of them had a lot of potential, but really sucked because of the low drop rates coupled with the random stats/random roll bullshit.

I'm quite glad the days of events with crappy augments are over.. but now the problem lies with not being enough breadth for content, or rewards for that matter.
Hopefully all these content revamps will do something about it - and i hope they don't just stop at the popular events because theres events in the 10 year history of the game that could totally be repurposed for the betterment of this game

[Slycer]

Tiamat is a great example of a well thought out mob. (atleast at 75) He had numerous adds, eles, undead and the occational antlion. If you did 10% damage he flew/landed so you had to swap damage types. He could 2 shot a DD and had hidden counters. Hate reset TP move, AoE wings/landing (annoying and recoverable but required some prep) and roar fun.

None zerged Bahamat2 was an excellent BC.

When it was first added, and even still now if you consider it a level 75 battle, Proto-Ultima was also one of the most, if not the most well-designed single battle in my opinion. The combination of HP-timed abilities, a successively higher difficulty level with added moves and abilities as he went down (I think he has no fewer than 15 different TP moves by the time he's below 20%), random target Holy II which meant no one was completely safe, and CB, a wacky/unique super powerful move which was not a randomly used instant KO like most of the shit they've added recently but announced 30 seconds in advance and easily avoidable (except for one person who hopefully had a light resist setup and prayed to survive) made it a fun fight every time.

It has my hopes high for the new Ultima this week, but I'll keep them in check based on this past year's general update quality (or lack thereof).

[Michelob]

I know this isn't directly what you were saying, but I think it bears mention: by what insane metric would content as readily accessible and constantly rewarding as Abyssea STILL lasting a reasonably dedicated player a year (and most of us still keep going back to the well two years later!) have to be judged to not be considered a complete, unqualified success?

Most people I know had all of the abyssea gear for 5 or so jobs plus a couple empyreans within 6 months of heroes being released and were bored waiting for new content.

The only part that I consider unsuccessful about abyssea is that most people don't care to go back anymore unless they are making their 5th empyrean. The content essentially lasted only a few months to a year past release where I think it could have lasted longer had it been more challenging (elminate brews at the very least) or if the drop rates were trimmed back a bit.

I honestly have nothing against the drop rates in abyssea aside from the fact that they simply don't release content fast enough to keep up with the acquisition rate. If they were going to release new zones and/or similar content every 6-8 months I'd be totally fine with drop rates like that but I don't see that happening.

So as my conclusion, yes I would be thrilled if they announced they were going to release a new more challenging abyssea, one that I wouldn't be done with in 6 months.


Edit: I agree with Spira on 100% of his/her post, and that angle is what I was trying to get at with a hard mode abyssea. I meant something that could begin to compare with what we had in breadth of content and would stick around for the long term.

[Genosync]

I honestly have nothing against the drop rates in abyssea aside from the fact that they simply don't release content fast enough to keep up with the acquisition rate. If they were going to release new zones and/or similar content every 6-8 months I'd be totally fine with drop rates like that but I don't see that happening.

So as my conclusion, yes I would be thrilled if they announced they were going to release a new more challenging abyssea, one that I wouldn't be done with in 6 months..

Gotta spend money to make money, and I don't think they're spending nearly as much money as they used to. Content is definitely not being developed at the same pace as it was before.

Even though Abyssea reused zones, the zone itself was always completely reworked. Mob placement, a few new types, reworked mob AI, balancing (yes, there was originally balancing), drops, weakness mechanics, etc all new. And there were 3 done at a time per release. All three releases rapidly.

Whereas, post-Abyssea maybe one or two new battlefields at random were created. Sometimes nothing at all. VW content was hardly worth mentioning. New point in an existing zone, mob type that already exists, make slight changes to its mechanics, don't bother balancing. It probably took the same work effort to make an Abyssea zone operational from scratch that it took to make 30+ VW fights.



Abyssea also always had a constant reward system. Kill this mob, get this KI, maybe some seals you need, etc. Kill another, same thing, another etc. Pop big mob, get some weapon drops, upgrade items, maybe another KI (first three zones), etc etc. Every single one of those mobs indicated progress. You always got something for the time you spent. It never felt like truly "wasted" time.

But then you have all this new content with the idea of zero reward, and a low low low % chance of a drop. Backwards much? Or just poor design due to not spending enough time/money looking at it?

[scaevola]

Most people I know had all of the abyssea gear for 5 or so jobs plus a couple empyreans within 6 months of heroes being released and were bored waiting for new content.

The only part that I consider unsuccessful about abyssea is that most people don't care to go back anymore unless they are making their 5th empyrean. The content essentially lasted only a few months to a year past release where I think it could have lasted longer had it been more challenging (elminate brews at the very least) or if the drop rates were trimmed back a bit.

You're talking about a very small subset of the FFXI population; if that's the circle you run in, great for you, but I would put money down on nearly every player outside of maybe a couple hundred per server still spending the lion's share of their time in Abyssea despite the existence of newer accessible, pug-able, and reasonably rewarding content like Dynamis and Voidwatch.*

Take a step back, and realizing you're claiming everybody had a couple empyreans within six months when a trip to PJ on basically any server will be crowded with +1 seal shouts even today.


*yes, voidwatch is rewarding, especially for players who aren't rich and thus 17k cruor + vendables a fight represents a good chunk of cash

[arus2001]

...Except that all the redundant augmented crap was a direct result of the 75 sidegrade game and SE basically backing themselves into corners by maybe offering best in slot items, but at the sheer lunacy of the random number generator's misery on top of either daily timers or resource restrictions like AN. And once people derived best in slot status on something, you can pretty much guarantee people would skip lesser variants if at all possible. FFXI being multi-class on one character also led to many situations of people using X job to gear Y job, whereas other MMOs typically forced you to level another character and run whatever content with them since most shit was bind on pickup. Basically, antiquation was still happening in the sidegrade sphere. Unfortunately, since people would refuse to "move on" from the good old days, it meant someone who ran Dynamis a billion times back in the day to get their Chapeau would still likely have to keep running it for other people in their shell unless they wanted to get labeled as selfish, not a team player, or whatever commonly employed guilt trip tactic basically led to enslavement in the old days. I don't miss getting called out for fucking not wanting to spend 5 hours spamming widescan for Ixion and Sandworm, and subsequently some taking it upon themselves to never want to help me because the mobs were fucking dumb.

Shit gets old. Not wanting to do it because it's old and been done to death is not a bad thing. Adding new and fresh things so we don't have to remain shackled to the old and crusty is a good thing. Weren't around for the first 8 years of FFXI? Well, too bad. Even without the cap increases, new players wouldn't be experiencing it like the veterans did. In fact, they'd probably have a hell of a time experiencing it at all. See: CoP. Frankly, I have no problem with Abyssea's progression rate or difficulty. Nobody was holding a gun to your head forcing you to make multiple Emps, either. I'll agree that SE dropped the ball on post-content, but just as some wrestle with that whole "never let go" mentality of content, others need to stop insisting that shit has to take a year or more to progress through. Not everyone plays the same way, or can even play the same way as they could 8 years ago. Designing casual content around hardcore players is dumb. Designing hardcore content at the expense of casual players, especially in today's FFXI state, is fucking suicide. Old FFXI was largely challenging for all the wrong reasons. As I said in earlier posts, I can understand wanting challenges, but they have to come the right way. That's not something I trust SE with, with VW, Legion, and Neo Nyzul as shining examples of how to fuck up.

Edit: And to follow up Sca's post that snuck in between mine, insisting everyone had multiple Emps post-Heroes is utter fucking folly. Not everyone is Arthars, Churchill, or whatever big name multi-boxer you wanna point out as evidence of how easy shit was. They're the exceptions, not the norm. And hey, maybe I'm bitter I didn't finish my first Emp until like a 8 months later, but I also wasn't someone who was fortunate enough to have people randomly drop everything for my sake alongside my random and unreliable RL schedule. I'll be damned if people weren't quick to insinuate I was a scrub prior, though.

[scaevola]

Confession time: I'm still working on my first Empyrean!

I'm almost done with Helms, half done with Skins, and still cannot decide whether I want Kannagi for my soon-to-be-better-than-most NIN or if I want Almace for my not-even-unlocked-but-still-potentially-more-useful BLU because my best geared job is DNC and let's face it, it's basically the same thing as NIN anyway, now.

[arus2001]

FLAY THE NOOB!

[scaevola]

Empyreans are the worst, because they are simple enough to be attainable for a primarily solo player like me*, but not so much so that the potential benefit of a given Empyrean outweighs the opportunity cost.

I mean, I can solo Briareus and Sobek really easily, but good fucking lord solo KIs + Briareus #35 is not as empowering a feeling as solo KIs + Briareus #3, mostly because around #15 you start asking yourself "what am I actually going to use this fucking thing for?", and subsequently don't do anything with it for like two weeks.


Ugh.





*"primarily" does not quite cover it; Stat Moogle this year said I had something like 120,000 battles fought and about 750 parties and 250 alliances joined total since I made Scaevola in the spring of 2005.