Dev Tracker: Discussion

[Seha]

Why did you like legion?
What is it you liked in legion?

Don't know why the same question twice. Anyway, I enjoyed it for it was. I liked the coordination required within the alli, brainstorming our next strategy due to people not showing up or having limited job selections, struggling on that last minute to get another kill in. There was a nice tension throughout a run. I think everyone who wasn't a scholar had fun in it. Previous events weren't like that. I hated meebs; ADL was endless farming for 20 seconds fights and hope on Wild Card; VW was fun for parses, but that's all it was; abyssea was a lonely journey; and next endgame going back in the timeline was like 2006.

Why do you think it "worked" and was a successful part of ffxi?

Cause during years of steamroll content it gave people something different to do, it required work from a ls. It was a very good alli experience.

Why do you think legion would be beneficial for ffxi at the present time and state of the game?

Don't know if it would be, given the state of linkshells; but don't care anyway as I am alone all the time now.

Delve cathered to a large audience who could experience the content in several ways

This isn't even true. Before the megabuffs only a very small minority managed to get clears, everyone else was struggling even with single nm outside fractures. Did you forget plasm farming parties existed? That was why.

Single boring room // Ok, Cirdas_U can get boring, but at least there was some small exploring/moving to do that kept things less boring than a single, identical room.

Really? Yeah so much exploration. At least come up with decent arguments.

To the point you can still see that now that we're level 119 with incredibly powerful damage tools, imagine how they were for abyssea-geared level 99 players.

Cause mobs in delve don't have aoe like that? Hybrid sets were used in Legion as they were in Delve. I don't see how one was "cheap" but not the other. And the strategic tricks for delve you mentioned never helped those who struggled to overpower them by force anyway. You still needed good gear, or people to carry you.

[Sechs]

Don't know if it would be

I see.

This isn't even true. Before the megabuffs only a very small minority managed to get clears

"Clears" you mean 5nm+boss? Absolutely.
But Delve was more than just that, and a consistent part of the player base was enjoying it one way or another. Could we say the same about Legion during its prime? Of course no, we can't.

My point wasn't even about how Legion sucked. Wether it did or not it's beside the point.
Thing is that someone said Legion would be nice for FFXI today and he was hoping for some Legion-like event, probably under the assumption that FFXI atm needs some serious end-game content (about which I couldn't agree more).
My point is that Legion wouldn't be a good model to imitate for what FFXI needs today. The "spirit" and game design behind pre-nerf Delve1 would be a much better model to look at to get inspiration for new content, imho.

Did you forget plasm farming parties existed?

Absolutely, I mentioned them already and it's exactely what I meant with "several ways of enjoying the content". Alliance plasm farming was one of them.

Yeah so much exploration. At least come up with decent arguments.

You had to move through rooms and halls, wait for walls to go down, and you had to actually find the mobs which were never in the same exact position.
Legion was just a... room. Not like Cirdas_U is the paradigm of level design, but for my tastes it surely was less boring than a single room rehashed from Horutoto Ruins.
What's exactely not "decent" about this argument? Please allow me to understand.

And the strategic tricks for delve you mentioned never helped those who struggled to overpower them by force anyway.

Says who?
And if you're talking about "overpowring" you're clearly thinking about much later in the lifecourse of Delve1.
Check what's still dangerous to these days in Legion and what's dangerous in Delve1 today.
And we're talking about 99 content vs 119 content.
Check the room for error allowed in Delve vs that allowed in Legion.
Wanna talk about Deaths everywhere, Worms sucking stuff, powerful AoE spells everywhere, Amnesiang, stuff removing gear etc?
You hardly saw anything like this in Delve, and the few things that compare are exclusive of the megabosses.

[Seha]

Waste of time. Say what you want.

[Damane]

I see.


"Clears" you mean 5nm+boss? Absolutely.
But Delve was more than just that, and a consistent part of the player base was enjoying it one way or another. Could we say the same about Legion during its prime? Of course no, we can't.

My point wasn't even about how Legion sucked. Wether it did or not it's beside the point.
Thing is that someone said Legion would be nice for FFXI today and he was hoping for some Legion-like event, probably under the assumption that FFXI atm needs some serious end-game content (about which I couldn't agree more).
My point is that Legion wouldn't be a good model to imitate for what FFXI needs today. The "spirit" and game design behind pre-nerf Delve1 would be a much better model to look at to get inspiration for new content, imho.



Absolutely, I mentioned them already and it's exactely what I meant with "several ways of enjoying the content". Alliance plasm farming was one of them.



You had to move through rooms and halls, wait for walls to go down, and you had to actually find the mobs which were never in the same exact position.
Legion was just a... room. Not like Cirdas_U is the paradigm of level design, but for my tastes it surely was less boring than a single room rehashed from Horutoto Ruins.
What's exactely not "decent" about this argument? Please allow me to understand.



Says who?
And if you're talking about "overpowring" you're clearly thinking about much later in the lifecourse of Delve1.
Check what's still dangerous to these days in Legion and what's dangerous in Delve1 today.
And we're talking about 99 content vs 119 content.
Check the room for error allowed in Delve vs that allowed in Legion.
Wanna talk about Deaths everywhere, Worms sucking stuff, powerful AoE spells everywhere, Amnesiang, stuff removing gear etc?
You hardly saw anything like this in Delve, and the few things that compare are exclusive of the megabosses.

tbh it would be fair to compare delve with pre buffed gear, with legion. because the amount of skill+ on weapons made ALOT of SoA content very very easy to manage, the same applies to various WS buffs. Delve 1 on release with no +skill on weapons was challening, more so then Legion. However once your mnks got OAT from delve the challenge settled aroudn Legion challenge. and with the skill+ adjustment got significantly alot easier.

Both required the same setup a mage pt with stunners and 2 melee pts rotating cors and brds in and out.
And pls dont bring delve gimmicks up, because the delve gimmicks were just as neglectable as the Legion gimmicks once figured out.

[Malithar]

But Delve was more than just that, and a consistent part of the player base was enjoying it one way or another. Could we say the same about Legion during its prime? Of course no, we can't.

My point wasn't even about how Legion sucked. Wether it did or not it's beside the point.
Thing is that someone said Legion would be nice for FFXI today and he was hoping for some Legion-like event, probably under the assumption that FFXI atm needs some serious end-game content (about which I couldn't agree more).
My point is that Legion wouldn't be a good model to imitate for what FFXI needs today. The "spirit" and game design behind pre-nerf Delve1 would be a much better model to look at to get inspiration for new content, imho.

Add the loot mechanics of Delve (augmenting base items, stronger boss items) to Legion, and it'd be quite similar. Adjust point amounts/prices to reflect these and a less than prepared group could farm what they can per run, getting drops, saving points for gear/augment materials, and making progress, while more prepared groups could tackle the main bosses, getting better drops, and racking up massive points. Legion and Delve aren't as different as you're claiming them to be if those simple loot changes were made.

And pls dont bring delve gimmicks up, because the delve gimmicks were just as neglectable as the Legion gimmicks once figured out.

That's fairly silly. Most of the gimmicks separated a wipe/time out run from a win. Granted, some were very negligible (mechanics on triple bats in Marjami for example), but a majority of them mattered greatly. Enfeebles on urganite, taking advantage of damage types on craklaw and matamata, separating damage types on crab, blinding pieste, using the correct enfeebles on gnat, no magic damage on raptor, damage types on ram and worthog, etc. Do they matter now? Some, but not nearly as much since they don't scale correctly with a 6 person party. But they sure as hell did when they were added.

[Bukadan]

i think damane means you can basically ignore the ones that arent prohibitive as opposed to being without that gimmick at all. its true too, thinking like the raptor and not magic damaging it i cant even figure out why, lol. i mean i magic burst fire4 and aero4 each light sc when i do my sam and rdm with a brd i know to trio tojils and slow'd para'd dia3'd raptor absolutely does not call for no magic damage. i joined a shout group a few months ago and i got put on blast for doing it. the only thing i really consider is nuking kurma opposite his last breath attack (thunder-waterbreath/aero-earthbreath). i dont even know if that helps, but it makes me feel good!

[Fwahm]

Raptor used to cause a lot of deaths when enraged with magic, especially during the zone message. It's not nearly as bad now, with everyone running around 5/5 119, but back when delve was newish, only the best melees and healers could ignore the magic gimmick and have zero chance of death. Back when people were wearing mixes of 99-110 armor, an enraged raptor during the zone message could turn to you and do 2000 damage in a single round if you were unlucky, no problem.

A number of the gimmicks are like that, neutered by far superior gear and DPS.

[Trumpy]

Yea, the last 2-3 times i did a morimar We all said not to do SCs or whatevson the raptor. Eventually someone used the wrong ws and sure enough a SC was made. And then everyone just started using their best WS makin SCs left and right and I was kind of surprised there was no issues at all.

Ive done more delves as geo though where Im out by the mages and Im not the kind of player that gets critical of others (as long as it isnt too obviously fucktarded what they are doing) and barely pay attention to what others are doing. So having a much smaller experience as an actual melee in the shit to see what the bad part of the gimmicks is kinda nice.

Like when I tried to help some friends do the outside NMs for morimar on my mnk + whm (our only healer) We did them in order and it was all cake til we got to the raptor. It was zombie-ing the shit out of us and I had never heard to use sacrifice before cause I never actually do any WHMing outside of dualboxing. Dont think I ever read about that on any wikis or any strategy chat so we kinda gave up on that NM after a couple tries. So glad I never tried to get my whm mule thru delve wins before I knew that or Id felt pretty stupid.

[Sechs]

Waste of time. Say what you want.

Gee, what a nice attitude! xD

tbh it would be fair to compare delve with pre buffed gear, with legion. because the amount of skill+ on weapons made ALOT of SoA content very very easy to manage, the same applies to various WS buffs. Delve 1 on release with no +skill on weapons was challening, more so then Legion.

Not sure if pre-nerf Delve1 was more or less challenging than Legion, idc to be honest, both were.
Legion was challenging with stupidly retardedly overpowered and annoying TP moves everywhere (old-style, Tanaka-style, call it whatever you want), Delve was challenging in a much smarter, less frustrating way. This is why I call they both reached the same goal, but one did it with cheap tricks (Legion), the other did it with a really fine game design behind.
This is the core point imho, the most important.

Then there's the other stuff (drops quality, zone, etc) but they're all minor things.

As for you defining gimmics useless I'm not sure. With the gear (and WS buff, and SC buffs) we have now we can ignore a lot of them, but back then? Absolutely not.
Keep in mind I'm talking about Delve1. For Delve2 maybe I could agree gimmicks had a much smaller importance.
Imho this is good design. There was some space for error, for different setups, for different approaches.
Could you say the same about Legion? Much less, much much less. Some (most?) of those TP moves and monsters are still dangerous NOW, with ilevel119 gear, new WS power, new SC lol
It just doesn't compare to Delve.

And, again, I'm not saying Delve was necessarily easier, it just managed to achieve "challenge" in a smarter way without using cheap tricks (retarded/annoying/broken mobs and TP moves).

[dasva]

Some gimmicks still make a bit of a difference especially if you aren't doing them right. Like last night did foret with a shout group with only like 2/8 people having done it before and known anything about the mobs. Cracklaw took around 10 minutes by itself because people couldn't understand it's dmg mechanics . 3 people died the first time urganite put out it's doom aura one person saying he was cursed help and another spamming holy waters lol I was the only one debuffing it. 4 people died the first time shark did it's death move.

[Kincard]

They wrote up the summary for the Freshly Picked but I honestly don't see anything interesting.

Multielement Belt/Gorgets both have 1% No MP/TP Cost like people figured and can stack for 2%.
Arciela has two modes, one of which is centered on supporting the player. They're saying it's just a representation of her affection system, so I'll take that to mean that it isn't actually affected by it.

[S N K]

what the fuck did SE break in Provenance? lol
Who the fuck does anything in Provenance that they found what SE broke in Provenance?

Yeah I saw that message also. I'm curious also since the zone probably hasn't had anyone visit it much in forever..

[Byrthnoth]

It's probably not that they broke something and more that someone figured out how to get the provenance dialogue box to give them any item they wanted.

[Foldypaws]

It's probably not that they broke something and more that someone figured out how to get the provenance dialogue box to give them any item they wanted.

Right..... "someone"

[ccl]

Gee, what a nice attitude! xD


Not sure if pre-nerf Delve1 was more or less challenging than Legion, idc to be honest, both were.
Legion was challenging with stupidly retardedly overpowered and annoying TP moves everywhere (old-style, Tanaka-style, call it whatever you want), Delve was challenging in a much smarter, less frustrating way. This is why I call they both reached the same goal, but one did it with cheap tricks (Legion), the other did it with a really fine game design behind.
This is the core point imho, the most important.

Then there's the other stuff (drops quality, zone, etc) but they're all minor things.

As for you defining gimmics useless I'm not sure. With the gear (and WS buff, and SC buffs) we have now we can ignore a lot of them, but back then? Absolutely not.
Keep in mind I'm talking about Delve1. For Delve2 maybe I could agree gimmicks had a much smaller importance.
Imho this is good design. There was some space for error, for different setups, for different approaches.
Could you say the same about Legion? Much less, much much less. Some (most?) of those TP moves and monsters are still dangerous NOW, with ilevel119 gear, new WS power, new SC lol
It just doesn't compare to Delve.

And, again, I'm not saying Delve was necessarily easier, it just managed to achieve "challenge" in a smarter way without using cheap tricks (retarded/annoying/broken mobs and TP moves).

TP move in delve 1 are as retarded as legion TP move were that's why everyone that won used sch to stun everything or rngs+pld back then.

[arus2001]

Let's just cut the shit and admit the primary way SE has made anything difficult was giving mobs retardedly strong TP moves. The only real exceptions to this manifest in Neo-Nyzul RNG and MAYBE the floor tiles dropping with Diabolos. Mechanics and utilizing the environment outside of Z axis shenanigans simply isn't XI's strong suit.

Will otherwise staunchly remain in the camp that new content should be the goal other than regurgitating old stuff with some ilvl tweaks/rewards.

[dasva]

So they posted the freshly picked from that vid with translations... and yeah it was all about the last update with stuff we mostly knew... though there is this interesting tidbit "Arciela is a support-type alter ego and she was made based on how she moves during Adoulin missions. In terms of special characteristics, she will switch between two different modes and also has intelligence that prioritizes the support of the player who summoned her. This intelligence will be expressed through a system where your reputation with her will change through Adoulin missions."

[fantasticdan]

Sounds like PR jargon to me, describing drawbacks as features.

"In terms of special characteristics, she will switch between two different modes" in practice means she has to switch stances to cast buffs vs debuffs, sitting in JA delay all the time, despite the fact that her spell list is smaller than her competition.

"Has intelligence that prioritizes the support of the player who summoned her." translates to her being completely incapable of buffing anyone besides herself or the player.

[Fwahm]

I think I'm looking forward to the Paralyze adjustment the most. Saboteur Paralyze II is going to be crippling against magic heavy mobs.

[Gokulo]

Just wanted to say wagary means truancy in polish, made me chuckle.