Dev Tracker: Discussion

[Sechs]

I expect that another expansion is in the works.. since the development cycle and system they've established in SoA works to a certain degree and keeps players entertained. But maybe not so soon? I think they'd keep developing stuff to fill Adoulin with content before they move on.

Yes but it's not like you announce an expansion and after 2 weeks it comes out.
It would be expected for them to announce it with several months (an year?) in advance, and then use that time to do exactely what you said (fill in adoulin content) and slowly release information for the new Exp.
This isn't happenin for now and I find it concerning.
That's why I said I'm dying to know what exactely they have in mind for FFXI's next 2 years. I don't wanna know the exact details/timeline. Just a rough idea.

Am I the only one who thinks Aby had both good and bad points to it? Looks like everyone thinks in black and white only.

^ this, totally.
Abyssea ruined a lot of stuff, did several huge mistakes that brought to unavoidable catastrophe, but also did some things right.
Game wouldn't have survived to 2014 without some big change.
Sure, there could have been a "better" big change, but something was needed at that point.
Pretending things could have gone on that way 'til today is just unrealistic.

To a certain extent I feel similar with SoA.
Despite my hate for ilevel thing, I think SoA did a great extent to take that game that FFXI turned into post-abyssea, and tried to find a better spot in-between.
What they did wrong is imho lack of foresight.
Their plans were too short-sighted and short-term, clear sign they had to rush Adoulin and had to "try" things on the run.
Which is sad, things could have been so much better with better planning (better introduction of the ilevel thing, better long time plan, better timed introduction of all the several stuff we've seen in the past 1,5 years etc)

[Elizara]

I don't think this deserves its own thread but Square has removed Playspan from the payment options. Well, dang. I hope they get in a new option for FFXI really soon for those that don't have any other way to pay.

[Prothescar]

Abyssea ended horizontal progression FFXI and started vertical progression FFXI. FFXI had a solid player base for years before that, and since then it's been dying. It's a treadmill one way or the other, but at least horizontal progression was relatively unique for a MMO operating in 2010. Abyssea homogenized FFXI to the state of the MMO genre in 2010, which simultaneously alienated tons of people whose idea of what an MMO should be was rooted in 2002-2004 and drew in absolutely nobody because the people who like that sort of game were too busy hopping between AAA WoW clones.

Maybe Abyssea didn't ruin your subjective enjoyment of the game, but for a lot of people it did, and it objectively killed off the game's identity pre-2010.

Old post but just backreading now. This is incredibly wrong, and I'm not entirely sure you know what "horizontal/vertical progression" means.

Everything up until Legion was still on a horizontal gear progression model. Abyssea/Voidwatch/Legion introduced some fantastic gear, yes, but it was waaaaay different from the vertical progression syndrome (VPD) that SoA introduced. Empyrean equipment wasn't made with the idea that it'd just be replaced 3 months later, it was made strong for longevity and to define the roles of several jobs. They made an effort to keep old gear up to date with augments or HQ versions. There was no ridiculous iLvl system that caused forced obsolescence within months. Though I guess you're right about one slot, Abyssea totally replaced Walahra Turban for almost every melee job.

There were still plenty of reason to do all of the endgame activities that existed prior to Abyssea's release during the Aby/VW/Legion era. For SoA? That isn't the case. Big difference between the two, and it is the difference between them that defines horizontal/vertical progression. You're also comparing level cap raises with gear progression, which are two completely separate things and was independent from Abyssea entirely. Again: even through the level cap raise, they kept old gear relevant by updating it, similar to how they're doing it now but on a much more horizontal scale rather than "inflate all of these stats by a magnitude of 10".

[Priran]

Old post but just backreading now. This is incredibly wrong, and I'm not entirely sure you know what "horizontal/vertical progression" means.

Everything up until Legion was still on a horizontal gear progression model. Abyssea/Voidwatch/Legion introduced some fantastic gear, yes, but it was waaaaay different from the vertical progression syndrome (VPD) that SoA introduced. Empyrean equipment wasn't made with the idea that it'd just be replaced 3 months later, it was made strong for longevity and to define the roles of several jobs. They made an effort to keep old gear up to date with augments or HQ versions. There was no ridiculous iLvl system that caused forced obsolescence within months. Though I guess you're right about one slot, Abyssea totally replaced Walahra Turban for almost every melee job.

There were still plenty of reason to do all of the endgame activities that existed prior to Abyssea's release during the Aby/VW/Legion era. For SoA? That isn't the case. Big difference between the two, and it is the difference between them that defines horizontal/vertical progression. You're also comparing level cap raises with gear progression, which are two completely separate things and was independent from Abyssea entirely. Again: even through the level cap raise, they kept old gear relevant by updating it, similar to how they're doing it now but on a much more horizontal scale rather than "inflate all of these stats by a magnitude of 10".

Oh okay, I thought vertical progression was when new gear (like Empyrean +2, Magian/Empyrean weapons, Pulse gear/weapons, accessories like Atheling Mantle/Rancor Collar, NNI, Odin v2) was added at a rapid pace such that many pieces were obsoleted every update, and there is constant power creep that makes old things easy. I see now that it's when new gear (like Skirmish, WKR, Delve, High-tier battles) is added at a rapid pace such that many pieces are obsoleted every update, old things become easy, but you don't need to level up first. Or something about how some of the new gear was made with old gear, even if it both obsoleted something old and was quickly obsoleted itself. Blah blah sky god augments blah blah hexed abjurations. A couple times during Abyssea->Legion I was like "Getting that gear sounds boring, I'm gonna come back in a couple months when it's obsolete so I don't have to bother." And it totally worked out every time.

There was actually less reason to do old endgame during Abyssea, because Empys were so easy that mythics and relics weren't worth the effort. But whatever.

[Prothescar]

Rapid pace? It was no more rapid than ToAU era, unless we want to forget assault and salvage gear, not to mention ZNM, all of which "replaced" a multitude of gear for every job. Time between Aby addons, VW inclusions, etc. was by an order of several months. In fact, there was like a year between lv 90 and 95 and all of the content that came with that. Speeeeeeeeeeeeeeeedy. This is still ignoring that Aby/VW/Legion didn't replace every single piece of gear that wasn't for something like movement speed.

[Shenrien]

I wouldn't say things back during Abyssea/VW/Legion/Odin2/Limbust2 era of content release was exactly released .. rapidly. It was a good 3 months+ for some garbage update that usually got set on the back burner, not the monthly updates the game is receiving currently, or when abyssea was launching, 4-5 months +

[Priran]

Rapid pace? It was no more rapid than ToAU era

Tell that to everyone who fought Odin for E.Bodies

[Prothescar]

e.body wasn't even replaced by abyssea, what are you on about

[Byrthnoth]

Dusk Gloves +1 (Brego Gloves) and Speed Belt (Goading Belt, Bullwhip Belt, etc.) were replaced around then. Byakko's Haidates were replaced for the most part as well (except for specific WSs with augments.)

[Prothescar]

But they were still horizontal upgrades. When you went from Dusk+1 to Brego, you weren't gaining any substantial amounts of DPS. Same can be said for speed belt -> other belts (most of these being the availability of speed belts too, Bullwhip was never ideal) and pants. You can't really compare these upgrades to what SoA is doing and say that they're the same thing; horizontal doesnt mean same stats with a different look, it means small bumps in effectiveness over a period of time. Vertical means large bumps in effectiveness over a much shorter period of time, i.e. going from an empyrean/relic/mythic to a skirmish weapon, or emp+2 gear to coalition/sparks gear and then a couple weeks later, skirmish weapon -> delve weapon and coalition/sparks -> delve gear. They're significantly different.

Here's a fun exercise: find me a piece of lv 75 gear that outdated another piece of 75 gear in such a way that it A) felt like the piece of gear was outdated quickly and B) felt like using the previous piece of gear would be a waste of time to acquire and use.

Next, find me a piece of lv 80~95 gear that does the same thing.

Do the same for a piece of pre-Adoulin lv99 equipment.

Now compare all three of those pieces of gear to an entry level piece of lv 99 Adoulin equipment. Then compare the time it took to go from 75 to 99 and the time it took from 99 to Adoulin to entry level Adoulin to present. Be sure to include the fact that the physical level cap was changed during the second and third comparison periods, and also include augments and armor upgrades during their various eras.

[Priran]

e.body wasn't even replaced by abyssea, what are you on about

I'm on about gear being good for 6+ years, then being replaced, then its replacement being replaced, and so on. But I guess because this took a couple months each time that was still horizontal progression. Lol

[Shenrien]

Fairly certain that Ebody was good even into SoA until their adjustments to how ilevel worked in August of last year.(Worst update imo.)

[Prothescar]

You're still missing what the difference between Horizontal and Vertical is. If you want to wear byakko's haidate and dusk gloves forever, that would be called stagnation and wouldn't be referred to as any type of progression, because there is no progress. Minor increases in stats that bump old pieces of equipment down over periods of time would be horizontal, because the line looks like this: ------^----^---^-------

Large increases in stats, "tiers" of gear at a time, if you will (i.e., ilvl gear) over shorter periods of time would refer to vertical, because the line looks like this:

             /                                        
            /                                          
___________/

or this:

                       |
                       |
                       |

Items like ebody were useful all the way into mid-SoA.

[Toth]

It's funny how this is also such a big problem in 14. I just got to i108 and I'm thrilled...but I know the next patch will just push the levels to 120 or something and I am now stuck working on yet another set. Even worse, in 14, you you have to keep the higher levels because the primary stats matter so much and they only increase with high level gear. There is also very little variety in weapons. HA weapon, relic, or tombstone +1 weapons....all other weapons are for vanity.

[Prothescar]

XIV is built from the ground up to be a vertical theme park MMO where the name of the game is replacing entire sets of gear with each content update. XI was pretty much going down that road for most of early-to-mid SoA, but it's slowed down lately.

[Priran]

You're still missing what the difference between Horizontal and Vertical is. If you want to wear byakko's haidate and dusk gloves forever, that would be called stagnation and wouldn't be referred to as any type of progression, because there is no progress. Minor increases in stats that bump old pieces of equipment down over periods of time would be horizontal, because the line looks like this: ------^----^---^-------

Large increases in stats, "tiers" of gear at a time, if you will (i.e., ilvl gear) over shorter periods of time would refer to vertical, because the line looks like this:

You know what game this is, right? Dusk Gloves were good for a long time but the hand slot wasn't stagnant because even for someone who had that item, you weren't fulltiming them. And for every slot where you didn't have the best item for a given purpose, you could progress without obsoleting the best gear by SE adding items that were better than easy alternatives but still not the best.

[Prothescar]

And that was no different all the way through Legion. If you want to bitch and moan about gear being outdated, look no further than Salvage, because that's when it started happening "en masse", if you want to be so sensitive as to call it that. If anything, Abyssea improved the situational gear variety and overall gear diversity without outright obsoleting every single piece of gear and every single endgame activity that came before it. If you wanted the best of the best, it still took time, commitment, and resources. You didn't get handed best in slot for walking into Abyssea, you got functional equipment that had multiple uses, just like anything from anywhere else. The only slot I could possibly say was overpowered during Aby was the weapon slot, but even then a lot of it came down to relative job strengths and available buffs than the Empyrean weapons themselves. Not all relics were even replaced by them.

[Priran]

And that was no different all the way through Legion. If you want to bitch and moan about gear being outdated, look no further than Salvage, because that's when it started happening "en masse", if you want to be so sensitive as to call it that. If anything, Abyssea improved the situational gear situation and overall gear diversity without outright obsoleting every single piece of gear and every single endgame activity that came before it.

Mmm. Yes. I definitely have fond memories of being on a 99 BST and soloing Dynamis monsters that people brought an alliance for at 75 and thinking "Wow, I sure haven't thrown out a lot of the gear I wore a year ago for inventory space. It would be harder, but I could definitely pull this off in that old gear, because gear progression has been very gradual over the past few add-ons."

You guys remember all three Abyssea add-ons came out over a period of four months, yeah? And Provenance about a year and a half later?

[Prothescar]

Whatever, it's evident that you're too inexperienced with MMO models to see this from more than a skewed angle. Continue believing that Abyssea is the spawn of the devil that made XI worse or whatever it is that you people think.

[Draylo]

Abyssea actually revived the game, it was very stagnant before then. We had an update that introduced /bell.... an update for bells and barely anything else lol.