With SoA, What Direction Should FFXI Take?

[NynJa]

Something along the lines of 2-3 hour repop, or at the very least, make them KI pops with multiple spots, ala Abyssea, but to get the KI you have to do a certain repeatable quest that is offered in a town.

I'm perfectly ok with 1-3 hour repop HNM's. Short enough that it cant be monopolized, and even if a LS wants to go all hardcore and camp it non stop, they will fill up on its drops and move on. Should someone suggest they'd just monopolize and sell the drops, GM's would catch onto the griefing after a while. Knowing SE though, they would offset the short repop timer by having Nov 2009 NM drop rates.

[Gwynplaine]

I doubt this would be popularly accepted, but I'd like to see a continent in which the basis of existing game mechanics don't apply. Make Adoulin affected by some sort of magical power (along the lines of emptiness... but they can get creative here) in which our current job levels don't apply.

You first step foot into Adoulin-- boom, all your jobs there are lv1. Instead of grinding or leeching in Abyssea... You level up only via participation in the continent's conflict. Quests, Crafting, Campaign, ect all generate exp in which you build up your character back to it's 'full-power' on Adoulin.

No. Don't ever institute artificial challenges by nerfing players. That is the grave lesson of level cap CoP, CoP Dynamis, and Salvage. The big focus of FFXI is improving your character and sharpening your gear. It's what veterans have spent years and years working on. To restrict that is to fail at creating good content.

[arus2001]

Yeah, fuck that cap shit. "Starting fresh" is something is that rapidly deteriorates the longer content is out, and suddenly slowing level progression to like... fuck, 1/20th current EXP rates isn't going to be encouraging people to help out those a couple levels or more lower. They'll just be as obsessed in getting back to the top of again and exploiting whatever resources SE plops there for profit or epeen. In the interest of character growth, I'd rather them look into employing more quests to acquire WS, JAs, and Spells (that you can't AH) to go alongside the usual gear grind. 76-99 was not equal for all jobs by any stretch of the imagination in terms of growth. And stagnating sucks balls hoping SE might look at a certain job at some point in the future maybe possibly.

Basically, I feel like we gotta keep pressure on them to actually have them develop new shit and not regurgitate or do as little as possible to lend to the illusion of work. I know this is hard as hell given how insignificant board input is, official or otherwise, but I hate suffering in silence or those who feel doing such would be better for the game.

[Churchill]

I'm not sure what your solution is, they don't read the NA boards or care to develop anything that gets said there. Claiming people also want to suffer in silence is sort of silly, everyone wants to see the game succeed, SE is the only one holding it back.

There are too many fundamental things that have to get fixed, I just don't think they care enough to put that effort in. Why should they? You'll keep paying them, and when the time comes where people are stagnant and dropping subs they'll announce a new expansion. I don't know if SoA will be good, but I definitely have my doubts - at least to the extent that even if SoA has some fun content, it won't be updated or expanded upon. I don't see the enmity system being fixed, ever. You have a game with 20 classes where at best 5 are useful and another 5 are okay but not as good or have 1 useful aspect. The other jobs have their niches, and are great at them, but I would never say that those jobs were specifically designed for solo play/what we use them for. (eg, RDM at 75 cap was super skilled/awesome for soloing Krabkatoa, Suzaku, etc. This is player instilled challenge though, not design. Also, nerfed.) 2 new jobs won't change this without, again, fundamental changes to enmity, and pdif/damage formulas. (Monsters specifically)

I don't think anything since ToAU release really contradicts what I've said; Abyssea was fun, but I don't think anyone will disagree certain aspects were poorly instituted. From a player perspective, the ease of leveling/obtaining easy to progress gear and VW warps were the only good things to come out of 4+ years of FFXI.

[Spira]

curiously, based on that statement, I'd like to know what you consider to be good things that came out from FFXI before these 4 years.
your benchmark for "good things in game/improving the game" seems pretty unrealistic

[Churchill]

I've always thought Salvage (sans droprates/Bhaf pop conditions) and Nyzul Isle Exploration were 2 really good keystone end game activities.

At the time, you had Sea (HNM, big LS content), Limbus (Low man possible, but also LS content. Success could be directly equated to efficiency), Nyzul Isle (Low man, less skill required content - decent rewards, some BIS), Einherjar (Challenging, big LS content, rewards available via ampoules) and Salvage (Low man, challenging content, took us awhile to figure it out completely, success could be directly equated to efficiency/skill*although you could go 0/500 and a scrub could go 5/5) - later on we got the ZNM system which was horrendous in terms of farming the plates and which then brought about the 18h PW.

These events were also pretty fun, and if there was some sort of ampoule system for all of them they would have been perfect, even if the progression was really, really slow. From that point until Abyssea you had WoTG storyline (update speed was super fast...lol), Campaign (not really fun if you weren't interested in leveling dancer for one event, but one of the rewards was good. Also brought about instanced fights you had to unlock, which we see now is dead content), Sandworm and Dark Ixion, interesting concept for the warp battlefields, not interesting in terms of playing pokemon across every Shadowreign zone, and VNM's. I don't think I need to mention that VNMs were also just such a great system that it turned into something RDM's, BLU's, and COR's solo farmed.

My benchmark? lol

Change player pDIF and level correction; change monster pDIF
Uncap enmity
Make every 2h DD the same
-1h DD's are pretty equal for what they bring, surviveability, self sustaining, etc. I wouldn't care if they were able to put out the same damage as a 2h DD though.

Why is that important to me? I don't really care that DRG's QQ that they suck, or live in a fantasy world where they think they are useful. My problem is that they aren't. They bring nothing to the table - here is a job that gets fucked on gear selection, has an attack penalty on their best pre merit WS, and has 2/3 emp/relic/mythic that just flat out suck. Delete the wyvern, make them do damage. You shouldn't have to make every player level WAR/DRK and make a Ukon/Rag to be a useful member of an alliance. I should be able to take the guy who likes DRG or THF to Legion and have them do damage. I shouldn't need to bring 7 SMN's /18 players to an event to beat it. That's not a strategy, that's bringing 3-4 DD's who have to have Rag/Ukon and rechargeable 1:30s fanatics drinks.


I so desperately wanted this game to get better, but the expansion announcement is what actually made me unsub. Ugh, there's just so much that makes this game not enjoyable at times, I feel listing it off would just be repeating things everyone has said in this thread or others and already knows, so there's no point. This game has always been played for shinies, nostalgia and friends, I don't think I'm alone in saying that's why a lot of us have played it for so long.

[Yugl]

This game has always been played for shinies, nostalgia and friends, I don't think I'm alone in saying that's why a lot of us have played it for so long.

I play to win.

[Tarage]

I play because Garuda has amazing hips.

[arus2001]

I'm not sure what your solution is, they don't read the NA boards or care to develop anything that gets said there. Claiming people also want to suffer in silence is sort of silly, everyone wants to see the game succeed, SE is the only one holding it back.

It's not an easy answer since it outright depends on SE actually listening. However, if people aren't telling them something's wrong, or worse, smartasses jumping in and saying something isn't wrong (Enter casual vs. hardcore type debates), then they'll not really know aside from vague server statistics like nobody having 110 crafting skill in things aside from Cooking and Fishing. And bluntly, coded game conditions influence player social structure for better or worse. If players were happier, they wouldn't be trolling forums so much and instead playing the game.

On the later point of paying them anyway, I'm not. Conveniently, I can't bitch at SE's doorstep to tell them why I dropped my sub in a constructive manner. There wasn't any kind of exit survey to do the same, either. The prevailing sentiment that they just don't care or are out of touch with their customers is a dangerous place to be in, especially as the MMO market continues to grow. And as I've said before in conversations along this nature, at what number of subs will SE decide that supporting FFXI is no longer worth it? The game going poof because enough people had enough isn't something I'd call good for the game. Add a dash of XIV conspiracy if you feel like wearing a tinfoil hat.

[Siatdiat]

And as I've said before in conversations along this nature, at what number of subs will SE decide that supporting FFXI is no longer worth it? The game going poof because enough people had enough isn't something I'd call good for the game. Add a dash of XIV conspiracy if you feel like wearing a tinfoil hat.

I still don't get why people think that SE will cancel their top money making game.

Also, this:

www.uoherald.com

www.everquest.com

etc.

[arus2001]

The question revolved more around the Money Going In vs. Money Coming Out concept. Yeah, maybe they'd be willing to eat small losses in the future for posterity with smaller numbers, and if XIV gets its act together to basically "repay" all it munched from XI in manpower and resources for like half a decade now. But if they're still sitting at 200k subs, yeah, no point pulling the plug. Though they should definitely be doing more for the game.

[Tarage]

They are releasing a boxed expansion. That alone is doing quite a bit for the game.

[Septimus]

They are releasing a boxed expansion. That alone is doing quite a bit for the game.

They are releasing a boxed expansion. But the problem is that it is a boxed expansion by a bunch of people who love to shit out situational gear, but think that 6 macro lines is more than enough. People who think that a convoluted process of letting enfeebling magic land again is all that RDM needs to be a viable job. People that think that events governed by dumb luck are the best way to run a game.

Honestly, my hopes for this expansion fall a little bit each time the Community Team relays a message from the Dev Team.

[Alistaire]

On the later point of paying them anyway, I'm not. Conveniently, I can't bitch at SE's doorstep to tell them why I dropped my sub in a constructive manner. There wasn't any kind of exit survey to do the same, either. The prevailing sentiment that they just don't care or are out of touch with their customers is a dangerous place to be in, especially as the MMO market continues to grow. And as I've said before in conversations along this nature, at what number of subs will SE decide that supporting FFXI is no longer worth it? The game going poof because enough people had enough isn't something I'd call good for the game. Add a dash of XIV conspiracy if you feel like wearing a tinfoil hat.

Tinfoil hats are situational at best.

[Spira]

lol didn't know which topic to place this and didnt wanna start one for no good reason.

i've been looking at this image


and i'm hoping somehow that the arciela.. refers to some legendary map making NPC or something.. as sort of the devs recognition of me as a player and a member of the community. (ps: i author all my charts/maps as Arciel Spira). hurhur egoist.

which might be a direction that i'd like to see more of in SoA.. a celebration of the community, be it in the form of recognition for players through silent nods or light references, FFXI memes (subligars, blurple, domaru and the like) or something that encourages the community to bond more.. even forum contests help
it might be a bit much to expect for XI, tho I do expect to see a paradigm shift in the way its run now that Tanaka is out, but community belonging is something that I felt was both a strong and weak point for the game in various ways.

for the record, it isn't like SE hasn't referenced an actual player before. I don't think Avesta Bangles being usable by RDM, and actually being the most useful for that job, would happen to be pure coincidence. It isn't enough to outright say it, but also a little much to simply dismiss it. And that's really nice, imo.

[arus2001]

I'd rather them avoid player/community references, personally. JP bias, for starters, and everyone will have their own baseline of community worth.

[Miroku_Asura]

I'd rather them avoid player/community references, personally. JP bias, for starters, and everyone will have their own baseline of community worth.

I wouldn't mind a little more community references really- each community JP/NA/EU has their own community icons so its not like there'd be a massive amount of JP ones where as the NA ones would be left to the likes of Spira and the players who manned the 18 hour PW fight. The game is starting to wind down and you have to admit- it'd be pretty legit to have your identity immortalized in an MMO. Hell, didn't Blizzard put in titles like "Many Whelps" and the Jenken's surname?

[arus2001]

I dunno, I just figure there are a lot of good people out there that go unnoticed because they don't post, cause drama, or whatever. And akin to the whole cheese sandwich debacle, I'm sure someone would be pissed if someone from Alla or the OF landed a spot over some BG regular. Don't get me wrong, I'm more for getting the community involved, but there are better ways of going about it than cherrypicking memes.

[Yukari]

Also, knowing them, Starcade would definitely be picked as a reference.

[Spira]

personally, i think it'd be neat if they did it regardless of whoever they pick. its not so much a reward to the player as a form of acknowledgement. ultimately it doesn't mean much, considering we aren't any better off as a player in the game. its not like they gave us a free relic/mythic/empyrean or anything. and I'm sure we all know how that turned out.

other community involvement things could take a page from FFXIV. i mean.. XIV is clearly more participative than XI on the forums. we're still getting 'this is how we want the game to run' but at least there are more 'please give suggestions' and 'please be specific' than before.

i do like stuff like 'design a piece of gear' that they're doing in XIV right now. Because even if only 1 person is picked for the gear, it gives the community the impression they have the power to shape the game they play, through fun and constructive feedback, as opposed to breaking the game, exploiting a bug or vomiting and quitting after 18 hours of play.