Dev Tracker: Discussion

[ccl]

RoE is content in mind for people that don't have a lot of play time. I really doubt the whole game will be diluted to this. You kinda keep going back and forth with what you really want. "Delve I was perfect > people you know quit anyway. Everything in this game is a joke > some VD are harder than others. I can sell Delve II clears > it should be nerfed. I wish SAM got the HP boost > nerf fudo." This is paraphrasing of course.

Maybe you could define what it is you really want and how the devs are failing you in this regard instead of whining there's no hard content and casual this casual that.

Content similar as delve II(on release, not now, maybe a lil harder than what it was on release) every other months with slighty better reward/no plasm would be awesome for me.

[Hitou]

What changed to make Delve II any different? And expecting content like that every 2 months at any point in this games life is ambitious at best.

[arus2001]

When most are talking about casuals, it's likely someone who plays in the neighborhood of 10-15 hours a week. That could be spread out over multiple nights or maybe they're more the weekend warrior. Either way, issues of scheduling and steeper time commitments can and are issues that aren't easily worked around, if at all. And I know the whole, "Don't forget your friends, family, and work..." is sort of mocked here, it's still a valid reminder that people older than college aged can and do have other obligations. Lobbing around sentiments like, "This game isn't for you, then!" is toeing a dangerous line. Especially if that defining factor is time and not actual skill... which some here have tried to establish that XI doesn't have much a high ceiling in due to its age and engine limitations.

[ccl]

When most are talking about casuals, it's likely someone who plays in the neighborhood of 10-15 hours a week. That could be spread out over multiple nights or maybe they're more the weekend warrior. Either way, issues of scheduling and steeper time commitments can and are issues that aren't easily worked around, if at all. And I know the whole, "Don't forget your friends, family, and work..." is sort of mocked here, it's still a valid reminder that people older than college aged can and do have other obligations. Lobbing around sentiments like, "This game isn't for you, then!" is toeing a dangerous line. Especially if that defining factor is time and not actual skill... which some here have tried to establish that XI doesn't have much a high ceiling in due to its age and engine limitations.

I play less than 15h a week i'm a casual

Delve II was fun for a month, only Marja was really easy other zone were more challenging could have done a lil harder and slighty better drop no plasm to make the event last longer; having mil of plasm saved and being able to buy all drop after 1 clear is what really killed delve II.

[Hitou]

That and most of the drops aren't that great compared to Delve I as far as boss loot goes. I think everyone agrees Delve II should have had a new currency and even SE said they were planning on it but for whatever reason they decided to just roughly double the plasm price and airlixer cost of delve II stuff and call it a day. Also I think the terms casual and hardcore are thrown around too much and basically have no discernible definition anymore.

[JSHidaka]

wonder if AFK in Jeuno can be considered as "playing"... I just play ~1h a day, I just do Salvage ~40 mins then afk till a friend gets online to do Einherjar ~10 mins then logoff..

[TummieGaruda]

Playing 1~2hr a night doesn't make you casual though, real casual player play far less than that.

To me a casual player is a person who plays a few hours here and there with a more relaxed attitude and smaller focus in the game. This could be a person who logs in for RoE's or randomly helps LS members with small quests or BC fights.

As far as people quitting I know that most people left because they got tired of being rejected for Delve II runs because they didn't have 119 weapons or the PUG's they joined repeatedly failed.

[Draylo]

That just baffles me tbh, Delve is so easy idk how people can't find anyone to do stuff with. I see like 10 different active LS recruiting on ffxiah.com every week at various play times.

[Hitou]

Your server is just awesome for NA I guess? Donno what to tell you, Delve isn't so easy that moron's can clear it and that's usually the only thing that will reply to shouts, and good luck waiting around for one in town. Took me a while to eventually get the 3 Delve I boss clears, after months of joining or building my own groups and watching them fail to follow simple commands or just be generally awful at the game. I'm glad you still have friends that play this game, genuinely glad, because pick ups are just awful. Actually two of my Delve I wins were with JP groups and not a lot of people can get into those or even know what's being shouted for.

[TummieGaruda]

That just baffles me tbh, Delve is so easy idk how people can't find anyone to do stuff with. I see like 10 different active LS recruiting on ffxiah.com every week at various play times.

Easy =\= auto-win though especially in a pug situation where one person can jeopardize the whole run by a bad action. I too have seen this occur countless times during Delve I last year with Tojil runs ending with wipes at <30% or timeouts. Dont get me wrong, pugs can be amazing when everyone is performing in sync and they can be successful, but there is always going to be a risk of failure that is higher than a well organized static/linkshell.

[Xantavia]

That just baffles me tbh, Delve is so easy idk how people can't find anyone to do stuff with. I see like 10 different active LS recruiting on ffxiah.com every week at various play times.

Keep in mind the type of gear the person still looking for a Delve win has. They most likely have sparks armor, eminent weapons, maybe some reforged artifact/relic they got by slowly turning in sparks for REM tales. A PUG of average to below average players don't see the event as being real easy. As for the LS recruiting, what are they looking for? Will they take anybody, or are there a bunch of gear/weapon requirements that lock out the people looking to join the group? Like early on, when the only reliable way to get in on a Tojil run was to already have the stuff he dropped.

[arus2001]

I play less than 15h a week i'm a casual

Don't underestimate the boon of your friends/LS. Them being good and available results in far more efficient time use. The real casual types with likely equally casual friends (and their flaky schedules) are more likely to be facing lots of LFG time.

One of my big issues before I hung up my sub was the fact my play time varied due to shift work. Friends I played with at 9am simply wouldn't be there at 9pm, and virtually any other combination of time differences. In the LS I was in, this even led to some people refusing to help me because they felt I didn't deserve it as I wasn't usually on when they were. Am I inclined to just call those people dicks? Yeah, but I'm too cynical to believe that most aren't functioning on some element of "You scratch my back, I scratch yours..." kind of play in MMOs. Still, I had a few dozen friends on my FL. But even before that began to fizzle with VW and Legion being the game's focus, getting them all together just wasn't going to happen. Maybe 3 or 4 tops. This worked well enough for Abyssea, sure, but seeing the writing on the wall wasn't very inspiring.

[Ophannus]

Like early on, when the only reliable way to get in on a Tojil run was to already have the stuff he dropped.

That only pertained to MNKs. You could easily get into a Tojil run early on by having WHM PLD BRD COR GEO SCH, hell even DRG for piercing and angon and RDM's Dia3 and Grav 2 was acceptable for Tojil for def down/acc down. If you only had MNK and wanted to get into Tojil in a PUG with your Rigor Bangnahks, you were kind of a jerk because coming on ANY of those other jobs would have been more useful. MNKs carried Morimar delve runs more than any other DD and if you have even one Oatixur MNK you were virtually guaranteed to win as long as SCH were on point and that Oatixur MNK didn't die. However,most people got their initial delve wins by sucking up and bringing a different job or leveling a support job and then bringing it.

I was always annoyed by people who were MNK onry and had no other jobs leveled, demanding they be allowed to join Tojil PUGs espousing the same mantra of "How are we supposed to get Oatixurs if we need Oatixurs to be invited?" I don't know dipshit, how about bringing a different job? Not saying that people didn't invite NQ MNKs and still win, but to insinuate that PUG leaders were being paradoxical, just made those crybaby, "Johnny McMonkOnlyJobs" appear even more douchy.

[Supaswag]

The only useful idea I've seen someone suggest for shurikens is to make Sange have a skillchain affinity. It'd put that skillchain bonus to some use, I guess.

Yea, that was me in an older thread pertaining to a ninja ability suggestion as-well as the ninja job manifesto.

Imo, the same ol' throwing concept will not work; unless it grants a sizable amount of tp in return and hits like a truck. Otherwise, the delay and damage may be undesirable.

Nin has skill-chain/magic burst bonus; I just thought it would be neat to give ninja a damaging throwing ability with skill-chain properties, hence magic and shurikens could get some use. Irrc, ninjustsu will also be adjusted. Imo, that would be more useful than chucking of shurikens (Normally); unless they do insane damage or something.

[Damane]

You guys jump to some crazy ass conclusions based on a post that says the exact same thing as Matsui said over a year ago. When RMEs were first revamped to 119, it was said that going forward, any increase in the ilvl cap would be accompanied by an available upgrade to RME ilvl. This really isn't anything new, and this tier of Skirmish surely will not be greater than 119, since they've already stated it's 119. Empy reforged I can believe though.

The whole ilvl system is going to become silly again if they increase though. Are we going to have to reforged +2 all of our AF and Relic as well? And further more, what are their plans as far as having a wide array of content to go into at 129 or whatever it is? Or are we going to have a situation all to similar to early SoA where some jobs had 119 weapons, some had 119 gear in certain slots, and some went without any relevant ilvl gear until Yorcia Skirmish?

i think adoulin content will be done in 1 year mission wise and content wise. they are pushing it faster then wotg. after that or soon before the end we will see prolly some/one of those options:
- abyssea toau edition (with synththique atma from hardmode titles and different mechanics) introduceing a new type of artifact maybe (but doubtfull)
- voidwatch saga continuation with adouli
- or some other alternate dimension
- new yorcia skirmish followed by new rakaznar skirmish
basicly anything that doesnt need the creation of new zone from the grounds up

i think its realistic to expect an ilvl increase in the next 6-8 months

[Toth]

Way to put a BIG spoiler in the update teaser SE...lol

[Fwahm]

I think enfeebling shuriken would be interesting, ala acid bolts but with 100% stick rate. Make shurikens with defense, attack, mab, mdb, etc enfeebles, and make them stack with everything, and I think they'd be useful. Either make the enfeebles sange only, or make it so only one can be up at a time, perhaps.

[Draylo]

Yeah I saw that. ..

[Oyama]

That only pertained to MNKs. You could easily get into a Tojil run early on by having WHM PLD BRD COR GEO SCH, hell even DRG for piercing and angon and RDM's Dia3 and Grav 2 was acceptable for Tojil for def down/acc down. If you only had MNK and wanted to get into Tojil in a PUG with your Rigor Bangnahks, you were kind of a jerk because coming on ANY of those other jobs would have been more useful. MNKs carried Morimar delve runs more than any other DD and if you have even one Oatixur MNK you were virtually guaranteed to win as long as SCH were on point and that Oatixur MNK didn't die. However,most people got their initial delve wins by sucking up and bringing a different job or leveling a support job and then bringing it.

I actually leveled COR for that exact reason, and was rejected because it wasn't BRD. I hate BRD and have no interest in playing or gearing it, and I know I'd be a bad one because of it. But I am interested in being able to fill multiple party roles, and I thought COR was a really cool job. After I leveled and geared it pretty decently, it sucked to be told BRD only. I thought about WHM and SCH, but my connection can be choppy sometimes and my first few attempts at Tojil got screwed up by bad support or bad healing, and I didn't want to do that to groups. I've never seen the other jobs requested for Tojil or Daku, so I dunno what you're on about there, but it's just been my experience.

I ended up buying Tojil for 2M, and got great drops which helped a lot (Oats, Bura, Helm and Ring) and I just got my Dakuwaqa win with LS mates after like 15 attempts. I think the main thing I want to say is that Delve is really not that easy when you are a casual player with mostly casual friends. It can certainly be done, I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's not piss easy like a lot of people here are saying when you don't have really well-geared dd's AND really awesome support, and a lot of the gear that makes Delve easier comes from Delve. I know Daku is a pain compared to other Delve bosses, but even small mistakes by the right person can totally screw a run up. I have a hard time believing people who say they can beat any delve in sparks gear. I assume that means you're also not going to swap much gear, if any, if sparks gear is all that is needed, and I assume all your healing and support will also be in nothing but sparks gear. I dunno about that.

I think most of the playerbase probably falls somewhere in the middle of the road, what I would call "casual but sincere," who want to do game content and try to get good gear for multiple jobs, but are not interested in grinding thousands of the same items and tens of millions of gil for months for a single shiny. As long as it took me and the others to beat Daku, we were all so happy to have beaten him fair and square after so much trial and error, and that overcoming of a strategy-based challenge was more rewarding than 100 hours of dynamis or w/e. So for players like that, Delve is still interesting and challenging content. If you and your group are geared such that you can faceroll through it and you're pissed because it bores you, realize that you don't represent the majority of players and that level of pinnacle gameplay will make everything in the game easy. They can't spend too much dev resources designing content for the small percentage of players that are the best, it would be bad business. For most players, Delve and VD stuff is a challenge and requires strategy and effort (most of the time).

That said, I wouldn't mind them adding a really hard battle, as long as the rewards aren't so far ahead of everything else that they end up being a requirement for everyone to get. As someone said, a lot of people in the upper echelons of the playerbase lose sight of what "good enough" means. Personally, I like the HM battles' system of setting difficulty at the start of the BC, that way no group is locked out of enjoying the content itself, and better groups can do something more on their level. I just wish they would do it with new content instead of just for rehashes of old content, and perhaps scale the quality of the drops with the difficulty chosen. That way you could work your way up if you really wanted the high quality drops, kinda like how WKR and Skirmish prepare you for Delve.

EDIT: Although I guess they do it to a certain extent with other stuff, like how choosing certain sim pieces can make a skirmish run a little differently or take less time.

[Malithar]

Blue Mage tears must taste pretty awful, looks like they're changing the +learn rate JP in September lol. Poor pet jobs, they be cryin for years and SE just lappin those tears up.