Dev Tracker: Discussion

[jacobs67]

Eh... 75 wasn't that bad for job choice. Most people only had 1 or 2 75s so you couldn't really afford to be picky when you needed people, and there was a ton of alliance content. And if you had a reputation for being a good player, you could play whatever loljob you want and still get invited because people knew you would kick ass. Exping or meriting was never much of a problem if you started your own parties, or again had a reputation for being good regardless of job.
It's harder now IMO. I think abyssea is when the era of "lol that job is completely, absolutely 100% useless, just level 10 other jobs to cap in a leech party and switch plz!" started. Things became even more exclusive with the advent of "RME onry"
No one expected anyone to have a relic at 75

[Byrthnoth]

I certainly didn't bring BSTs and PUPs to Salvage, or even content as easy as Dynamis and Limbus at 75. Maybe pre-ToAU you could make the argument that inclusivity was necessary because people only had one 75, but ToAU xp rates were high enough that having two 75s became expected.

[dasva]

Shit my early salvage stuff the only DDs allowed pretty much were mnks and the token thf lol.

[Isiolia]

Back in the old days, it was more a matter of perception of what a job could do, rather than what it could actually do. As the community gained a better understanding of game mechanics, attitudes shifted.

There were definitely shifts in strategies as people learned more about game mechanics, but things were far from balanced. There were also a lot of major adjustments along the way, so in some cases, the preferences made sense at the time (like RNG before the ranged adjustments).

On a general level, I'd say modern XI is a lot more balanced. It's not so much an issue of what the popular DDs are, but long-standing stuff like having functional DEF and tanking, solid MP recovery/maintenance for all, SC/MB damage being worth coordinating, and so on. A lot really does come down to favoring smaller groups, which in turn favors jobs/setups that can get away with less support.

[Fwahm]

I certainly didn't bring BSTs and PUPs to Salvage, or even content as easy as Dynamis and Limbus at 75. Maybe pre-ToAU you could make the argument that inclusivity was necessary because people only had one 75, but ToAU xp rates were high enough that having two 75s became expected.

My groups definitely brought any job to events like limbus, dynamis, and einherjar (other than maybe the final bosses, I can't remember).

[Rooney]

Mine was the same. We made sure to cover the basics, then pretty much filled in with w/e. A few things had restrictions on subjobs for DD's, but otherwise pretty much open season if you were competent and had decent gear for the job.

[dasva]

My dynamis/ein shell definitely had some give but my limbus was low man (3-4 peeps per zone 6-8 for omega/ultima) So were pretty specific on jobs and a lot of switching depending on zone

[Byrthnoth]

Yeah, I'm not thinking "end of 75 era" as much as "early WotG/late ToAU era in an aggressive shell." Everyone-needs-9-feathers Einherjar. Killing Omega every other Apollyon run because you lowman Limbus. Salvage before the box. Dynamis - Tav farming back when most groups didn't bother clearing Dreamlands. Lowmanning inside sea and only gathering to clear outside popsets people had farmed that they couldn't lowman. Meleeburning Kirin and otherwise not doing sky because it was lowmannable. Trioing Assaults for salvage points. Your-camp-your-gaiters Tiamat.

Efficiency was the name of the game and nobody had time for shitty jobs.

[steellord]

Shit my early salvage stuff the only DDs allowed pretty much were mnks and the token thf lol.

that's cause of cells, but even so, that was one event and that's more DD than allowed now for most any content

other events at the time, my static of 6-10 ran tons of events with a galka who came multiple melee jobs. Even greater variety of mage jobs were used back then

i really can only thing of the brief period were 3 boxing nin war whm was in vogue for abyssea as being so unbalanced as now...and with lack of development coming, it may never improve

[steellord]

In Abyssea it was fine because any job could solo.

The real shitty time to be an unpopular job was 75. It was difficult to even get a merit party invite on a pet job then, let alone do endgame.

any job could solo but could you farm an empy anywhere near as fast without a stable red/yellow proc? No way, it was just like scaling is now, an artificial limitation that destroys PUGs, larger LS, and many jobs' viability and in exchange allows a few decent rdm/nin to solo escha.

"Weekend warrior" used to be a thing during 75. We'd invite the drg who didn't even farm pops into the ally cause no scaling and no red proc. He could still hit things, SC cause no immanence, and not get fucked without -50% dt and sacrificing support

So what we have? Just do search. Last i checked there was twice as many BLM on my server than all other DD combined and twice as many SCH as the "sc master" job. Pretty much the casuals have all quit

[dasva]

Other events too. For appolyon between all 5 zones the only jobs that we used were blm, rdm, brd, sam or blu and nin. Nins only used on omega and they didn't melee. Sams/blus only used on the one zone with changing dmg type immunities. rdm and brd only used in the 2 zones the "melees" were used in.

Merit pts were basically 1 healer 1 brd 4x sam or drg.

All the sky stuff we actually did outside of kirin was pld + blm with either just rdm support or brd + whm support.

Old NI vast majority of the runs I was were rdm + brd and then a mix of blus and sams.

Now some of these in more casual groups used other stuff as long as time wasn't a factor... but we were often going for efficiency and low manning and well nowadays time is always a factor because you simply aren't allowed to slowly kill things

[Sechs]

I think I agree a bit, for different reasons, with all of you. From my pov you're just confirming what I said.
Yes, for a lot of events many jobs could come along (granted that happened a bit later in game from the period I had in mind) but that was possible exactely because there was no scaling, so whoever was in charge of leading events could afford to bring a certain number of loljobs along.
That's hardly the case today unless you have a very strong core of jobs, you are doing something easy and that core is so strong than the rest you're bringing are just leeches (and then again you can hardly afford more than a certain number of them)

And still, there was more difference between jobs efficiency and what they could do in and outside of "events".


In addition to the scaling another strictly connected factor to it is the time limit. A lot of stuff (the majority?) didn't have time limits. Yes there were rage timers but they were usually very generous, too generous you could say.
Time limits work together with the scaling to make bringing more people really unrealistic unless they can provide a reasonable help to the group and have a good synergy with the other players.
I can remember for instance when I was at 75 and MNK is my only job and I was chiblasting stuff. Getting invited in and out from the alliance, having more than 23 people (when an alliance can hold 18 people only) and doing my small damage contribution once every 3 minutes (when the person in charge of inviting wasn't taking too long, wasting my Chiblast charges lol).
That's because there was no invite limit, there was no max players limit, there was no external help limit, there was no time limit, there was no scaling.
How many scenarios were like that? Many, the majority, anything that was not gated behind a specific entrance.
My MNK was hardly ever meleeing stuff. I think when Salvage arrived that was the first time when I finally felt MNK was useful and wanted for something, but until then? "Omg it hits too much generates to much TP!", I had accuracy issues, damage was lol as 90% of stuff didn't take good damage from blunt and frankly H2H WSs weren't anything special back then.
I remember having to wait WEEKS to get XP PT invites when I was around level 40-60, and me trying to create PTs wasn't going too well either.
I could at least find a spot in Limbus typically, except for Ultima and Omega where, again, I had to go back Chiblasting lol

[Spira]

I remembered Nyzul Isle being more job variant friendly than other events, and that was probably one good reason why I loved it. While I did have a static most of the time (NIN, 2 of DRG/SAM/BLU, RDM, BRD, WHM), I did also take part in shout parties which had very mixed combinations.

This was probably due to the combination of a few factors.
1) objectives were randomised and varied, so no single setup was guaranteed success and you could be screwed over by specific restrictions.
2) related to 1, objectives were not always battle oriented or dealing with big NMs (unless u did boss floor farming, for which you might plan the setup more rigidly)
3) "multiple" rewards objectives. Generally the main objective was progressing floor records and generally people aim for 5 floor increments as reliable progression. For most decent groups this is a comfortable target and they can either exit early (more tokens) or scout for NMs to kill (for ??? gear or vigil weapons)

With all those factors taken into account, there would rarely be a "max efficiency" setup for the event and its seldom necessary either due to the way progression is recorded. Some jobs were definitely more preferable but it was definitely a fairer system than a lot of events out there

[Trumpy]

well a major difference between betas of gearswap and linkshell community is the LS one was going like 10 years.

When abyssea came out at first not everybody could solo. but of course after a while with level cap raises and gear (you know cause they finally figured out lil fuckin +1 str on a gear item is shit) that actually gave stats that made a difference, most to all jobs could. I remember back in the day, I think it took me like 4 years to hit my first 75. but mostly cause i just took my time and enjoyed the game. i never was in a terrible hurry to hit 75. Sometimes i miss those days, and then alot of times i really dont lol.

[fantasticdan]

Old nyzul was job friendly just because it was super easy. If you compare how many floors you could climb on average with x dd jobs, nin/thf/pup/etc wouldn't have came close to blu, OAT weapon sam, etc.

[Maurauc]

Well, the new Ambuscade looks a little terrifying if we're gonna be fighting Odin and Alexander at the same time. Should be a lot of fun though!

[Toth]

Well, the new Ambuscade looks a little terrifying if we're gonna be fighting Odin and Alexander at the same time. Should be a lot of fun though!

Yup. But the congestion with normal savage does concern me...

[Sechs]

Well, the new Ambuscade looks a little terrifying if we're gonna be fighting Odin and Alexander at the same time. Should be a lot of fun though!

They way it's written it makes me think they're talking about new content aimed for high-end players in ADDITION to ambuscade, and I think that's what the image is about, an alliance-oriented fight where you confront Odin, his Valkyries and Alexander.
Dunno, not sure if I want to believe this and then be disappointed, it seems unlikely they're actually doing this, but still... it's what I can think of after reading that small post from them.

[Gokulo]

Yep, sounds like a new thing

[Isiolia]

They way it's written it makes me think they're talking about new content aimed for high-end players in ADDITION to ambuscade, and I think that's what the image is about, an alliance-oriented fight where you confront Odin, his Valkyries and Alexander.
Dunno, not sure if I want to believe this and then be disappointed, it seems unlikely they're actually doing this, but still... it's what I can think of after reading that small post from them.

They had previously indicated that they were looking at alternate methods to get the monthly armors and such. So, it's possible that they're making another event for it instead of a simpler solution. An alliance fight doesn't seem like it'd really fit the bill for that though.

Maybe a WKR/Domain Invasion style thing?