Interview With Mizuki Ito on FINAL FANTASY XI's New Expansion Pack

[Damane]

Nitpicking but while Promathia was the first enemy to use Amnesia, Tauri were the first to doom and not Gargouille. That being said Amnesia has never been that terrible as you're still able to auto-attack but the combos of Charm/DOT, AOE doom and straight insta-deaths are just unbelievably stupid. I'm sure here's the part where SE points to the new gear that improves cursna and subsequently shits over your dwindling inventory.

Hey SE. Learn to use floor hazards.

my bad I meant tauri with mortal ray. I wonder what that monster bee in Seekers of Adoulin as a HNM will do... AoE Final sting!

I am still baffled they didnt exploit the effect of mute from promathia and attached to other mobs in a AoE manner.

[Michelob]

I am still baffled they didnt exploit the effect of mute from promathia and attached to other mobs in a AoE manner.

Unless I'm misunderstanding you, isn't that the basis of Cyclonic Torrent from Pixie NMs?

[Damane]

Unless I'm misunderstanding you, isn't that the basis of Cyclonic Torrent from Pixie NMs?

i didnt fight much pixie NMs, ecxept the one swith encumbrance move

[Michelob]

A couple of the ones with the encumberance move also use Cyclonic Torrent (20' Radial Mute). Off the top of my head, I think Urd, Verthandi, Carabosse, and Belphoebe use Torrent... maybe Bhishani too?

[TummieGaruda]

Watch SE introduce a large Venus Flytrap that you have to get across in the field and if you don't watch your step, you trigger its mouth to close quickly causing insta-death

Also a large Plant HNM that secrets some floral pollen aura that causes players to lose control of their characters for 1 minute as they run around like mad aggroing everything in sight.

[Kaisha]

I am still baffled they didnt exploit the effect of mute from promathia and attached to other mobs in a AoE manner.

Didn't that walrus nm in Abyssea have aura silence?

[ronin sparthos]

Didn't that walrus nm in Abyssea have aura silence?

Gasha in Voidwatch also utilizes a silence aura.

[Damane]

gogogo doom aura for a kited fight!!!

[Priran]

Yags in dynamis were the first mobs to doom, and cardians could "mute" pre-rotz although this was curable and simply had an absurd duration

I've had about enough of the debuff arms race, hopefully SE will move onto mobs buffing themselves in interesting ways.

[Spira]

Hey SE. Learn to use floor hazards.

You have ventured too far from the field of battle.
Voidwatcher status revoked.

Floor hazards..

lol but srsly, i don't think they've done real floor hazards since CoP's gasponias and Diabolos BC. maybe gyves count considering their auras can be dangerous but its not like they're ever placed anywhere intentionally.

[Kyte]

The worst experience I've had with ring-outs was with that one peiste ANNM; if you had hate and didn't get yourself backed to a wall, you were fucked.

I am still baffled they didnt exploit the effect of mute from promathia and attached to other mobs in a AoE manner.

Not exactly an AoE, but Nightmare Cockatrice use a conal Mute.

[Ophannus]

Ever since the 75 cap was removed, HNMs and NMs needed bullshit gimmicks like charmga/doomga/unavoidable death moves for the following reasons:

1) You get crazy cruor buffs that give you like HP/MP+50% Stats+65
2) Atmas/Atmacites
3) Temps items like Lucid Elixers and Fanatic Powders which functionally are pretty potent.
4) Staggering

To counteract all the amazing tools players have had, SE implemented gimmicks for these mobs to give them a sporting chance against 18 demigods players. Furthermore, because players were buffed so highly and could impair the mob with staggers, SE was able to ramp up the difficulty very high on some of these mobs by giving them annoying AoEs and death moves.

Now that Abyssea/VW are done and a new expansion comes out, we'll get to see how 99 NMs will be. I would wager that a good difficulty setting for 99 HNMs would be somewhere between Pil and Kalasutrax(rememeber it won't be in Abyssea or VW so you can't stagger or use temps). I'd say Pil/Kalasutrax without temps or staggering would give any good endgame LS a run for its money and would bring back the nostalgic feel of fighting a 'difficult' NM. Although instead of taking the fight slowly with a PLD and a few DDs, it'll probably just be another PD/Embrava zerg with shocksquall rotations and Wildcard spams.
But yeah just to reiterate the only reason mobs have had these 'fuck you moves' is because the players have 'fuck you buffs'. We're 18 lv99 players fighting a lv120 NM but spamming invincibles, megalixers, dusty wings, terroring the mob for 2-3minutes, it's no wonder SE gave them bullshit moves. New NMs will probably be weaker than most VW mobs and seemingly be weaker in terms of AoE and statuses but without the temp item blanket or the stagger safety net, the fights will be relatively as difficult and force players to be a bit smarter than just spamming their Dusty Wing and Ukko Fury macros. Also with the loss of the proc system, it'll allow players to organize alliances more intelligently instead of trying to get proc jobs. Legion gave us a small taste of what's to come with 99 HNMs although the difficulty of legion mobs(individually) is probably lower compared to what's in store only because in legion you fight multiple mobs rather than 1 big mob which is what a world spawn HNM would be. With that said, the difficulty of an NM of that caliber would probably be like Odin v2 in terms of defense/aoe damage/evasion and attack power. But even Odin v2's strength is probably set a bit lower than a world spawn HNM would be due to it being a timed 30min fight, having 2 instant death AoEs at the end and having 9 adds that are not to be fucked with.

[NynJa]

Are you high?

Whos doing legion without PD spam? No one, why? Because SE took those mobs where we fought as "demigods" and copy pasted them into legion. also VW atma's arent exactly gamebreaking like Aby's were.


once upon a time, HNM's had their own fuck you moves as punishment for doing things wrong or atleast gave you a chance to avoid them. Since SE realized players are good at avoiding them, because were not fucking retards, they've moved onto having mobs have completely unavoidable "fuck you" moves that can be done at any given time. These are bullshit moves that force the playerbase to simply rely on PD and other methods of basically being invincible, since its the ONLY way to survive. A mob who has one TP move that reduces your HP/MP by 50% and another TP move that deals over 1300 damage forces you to sit on PD, for example. Is there really any other way to do it? It has nothing to do with tactics.

[Ophannus]

Whos doing legion without PD spam?

You don't need that shit for every chamber, can do Hall of An without PD spam lol. I'm convinced there are tricks or exploits the playerbase isn't aware of for weakening some of these NMs because it's SE's axiom that any event can be cleared without relying heavily on one job's 2hr. I'm fairly sure they didn't create legion with the intent of having LS bring an armada of SMNs and COR to have everyone PD'd and Embrava'd up just like they probably didn't intend for people to be fighting AV with like 6 Kraken DRKs. Since the player base was never aware of how to lock AV, or /fume in VW or /kneel+/heal in Einherjar, wouldn't you at least keep your mind open to the fact that there may be strategies and tactics people are unaware of? Techincally nobody has beaten P.warden at 75 with 18 people without PD when SE said it was possible. Probably means there's a battle tactic that isn't being used, probably because it's some stupid emote gimmick or relies on some kind of JA or soultrapper or something.

I think SE makes these new mobs with fuckyou moves because they want you to strive to figure out their stupid gimmick tactic, not immediately jump on the PD/Embrava bandwagon(which people end up doing anyway because it's the easiest and most parsimonious route). When the de facto strategy becomes "you need 6 SMNs, 2 SCHs, 5 CORs to win or gtfo" you know there's something wrong with that. Either the playerbase is unwilling to try and adapt to harder content with novel strategies(until SE nerfs the piss out PD spammage) or SE needs to stop shoving bullshit gimmick methods down our throat. Legion definitely has gimmick exploits, so far we're really only aware of one or two(like dispelling the behemoth prevents it from casting meteor), I'm sure there are others, probably one for the Bot Rex too, cuz that PW Astral Flow shit is retarded.

[Mrbeansman]

I'm sorry but we as a player base should not have to be subjected to shitty gimmicks in the name of keeping gear rare.

[NynJa]

I'm convinced there are tricks or exploits the playerbase isn't aware of for weakening some of these NMs because it's SE's axiom that any event can be cleared without relying heavily on one job's 2hr.

You mean running fraps and zooming in on the time?

People figured out the behemoth and Dispel because eventually it stood out "hey, its only casting when it has blaze spikes on". Gimmicks like that make sense, because its somewhat hidden, but its not a needle in a haystack. If the trick to Rex is to fight it from NNW with an enspell on everyone matching the day's element while keeping an active elemental debuff of the opposite element while spamming emotes in alphabetical order based on the chronological order of creation of the players in the alliance while the gil on your character is a prime number...FUCKING STUPID.

[Chamaan]

Adding in random things like /kneel and /fume shouldn't be an excuse for bullshit unless the information is hidden somewhere in game text, or on some stone tablet in a hidden room in the back of a totally different zone Legend of Zelda style. Major new content shouldn't only be beatable with some Konami Code that they stuck in there in the hopes that someone randomly brings a Christmas bell and tries to sing It's a Long Way to Tipperary to the new super HNM with Death Aura and autoattacks that register as ranged WS with en-terror and en-amnesia.

[NynJa]

Kneel we also kinda figured out on our own, i remember a taru rsm posting a ss of them surviving odins 2hr, and we worked from that.

[Odin'sLaw]

Adding in random things like /kneel and /fume shouldn't be an excuse for bullshit unless the information is hidden somewhere in game text, or on some stone tablet in a hidden room in the back of a totally different zone Legend of Narutostyle.

have any of FF games be straight forward? they all took a bit of "if i try this and do that oh this happens!" not saying its good or bad but it does get on your tits after 8 years of playing :/

[arus2001]

Gimmicks are fine if there are clues, but seriously, how were players supposed to know about shit like JoL's pets affecting AV?