Lets get together and argue with each other aka Draylo is always wrong?

[jimbobsonofgod]

Pchans claimed to have done DM on easy with 6

Our first DM clear was on normal with 6(no outside buffs), we bring 7 now for TH.
mnk/ninx2 cor brd whm pld
Kill Elvaan-Mithra-Hume-Galka-Taru.

[Xenhas]

fixed

Not really. I have lead tons of shout runs. You find out who the retards are pretty fast and can easily shut them down every time after. You find out who the good people are, and can just /tell them before you shout. Not trying is essentially the same as being a useless gimp, because you still aren't getting your shit, even after iLvl updates and a few extra months have passed.

[mdkuser]

Pchans claimed to have done DM on easy with 6. Given that its the same versions as the AAs in individual easy bcs I'd believe it. DM on hard is doable with 12-13. The lowest I've heard of on vd was 17, but im sure by now that might even be lower.

** 6-box **. I 6-box VE in 15 mn, E in 20mn. 6 real players shouldnt have pb 6-man Normal difficulty.

[Gredival]

Draylo, Please do not PM me again trying to start arguements in private.

No need to take things to PM.

If you want to argue about how much SE has fucked over/saved this game by transitioning away from 18-man content, this is an appropriate place to discuss it.

[Gredival]

I think the DM fight is an example of an alliance event done right.

The difficulty is about right. It's difficult, but not so difficult on N/D that pickup groups can't clear it. VD obviously takes a special breed (and perhaps a dedicated 18-man LS), but it's not impossible either. You can get all the drops on all the difficulty levels, so the reward for VD is basically capping out a little sooner and getting a title.

Quit XI a long time ago, but I think the quality of the drops should definitely be tied to difficulty level. No one should be entitled to the best drops; they should be a reward for those capable of clearing the hardest content.

I see no reason to allow players to faceplant fail their way through shitty shout alliances to earn drops. It's like letting failing students turn in enough partial credit to pass a class. Gear should be competency based, not hour based.

I mean of course it's an indirect standard since it's a multiplayer game; an alliance can win despite one or two weak links. You have to rely on the alliance to self-screen and not take on the additional burden of trash players to gear when the extra body doesn't justify it. That's part of linkshell efficiency. You closed recruitment when you had enough dedicated players on a certain job.

LS's died in Abyssea, and SoA showed no one cares to revive them. People are enjoying their small, social shells and don't want to deal with the hassle of a big LS. So SE is going with it. Best way to keep the game alive is you develop for the most players, cockblocking a 6-man crew from only one section of the game isn't how you make people enjoy the game. I could complete the AA VD's, but I still need to get a drop from shark, which I can't do since I only have 6 people, how lame...

It's a tad more complex than that.

Dedicating raiding Linkshells died out because Abyssea made it easier for small groups to succeed (lolGameshark Potion; lolReRaise Atma) AND because Abyssea's scale meant that small manning was almost always a more efficient way to do things.

Before large linkshells could sustain a roster by doing a rotation of different content because every member either needed something from it or because the other members needed the help of a linkshell to do content they did need gear from. But with Abyssea, all you had to do was farm the mobs that you and your friends needed. Why sit in line at 12th position to have your Empyrean done when you can just get with a group of 5 people and grind everyone a single weapon? Even with less people it was more efficient because adding people didn't always proportionally scale in time saved.

But to say that people enjoyed this switch isn't accurate. It's moreso that a bunch of people who could never participate in End Game shells before (either because of time commitment or because of ineptitude) could finally access content that gave high end gear. It was never the case XI suffered for things to do, it's that there were barriers to entry for content that gave top tier equipment. Previously even when SE put top tier equipment in small man content (Salvage), there weren't small-man equivalents for every piece of gear for traditional HNMLS content (Adaberk, Defending Ring, Hecatomb Gear, Herald's Gaiters, Valhalla)

SE discovered, like many other game publishers, that a *financially* successful game is about often about neutering gameplay to the lowest common denominator. It's not just about having content available to low man groups, it's about having the best stuff available to everyone. Yoshi P basically gave FFXI the League of Legends treatment.

[dasva]

Not really. I have lead tons of shout runs. You find out who the retards are pretty fast and can easily shut them down every time after. You find out who the good people are, and can just /tell them before you shout. Not trying is essentially the same as being a useless gimp, because you still aren't getting your shit, even after iLvl updates and a few extra months have passed.

That kinda depends on what servers you are on and what times you can play. I swear at least 95% of the english speakers I've met over here thru shouts have never even once read anything about the game online. I'd had an entire allaince argueing with me about how sch was the best job for shell/protect and haste because it had more enhancing skill than any other job <.<.

[Sho]

Anyway, If/when ARR dies out

Lol.

[TummieGaruda]

Why not just go in with 16/18 lol, unless you're missing key jobs like BRD stunner, but that really has nothing to do with numbers.

On Lakshmi, stunners were always the hardest slot to fill because they either didn't have an adequate stun set or they simply do not want the pressure and massive responsibility of handling stuns.

[NynJa]

On Lakshmi, stunners were always the hardest slot to fill because they either didn't have an adequate stun set or they simply do not want the pressure and massive responsibility of handling stuns.

I'm surprised you get people to join shouts when ppl are asking for stunners. Any group on carby that shouts needing a SCH generally gets ignored lol.

Joined a PUG with 2 pick up stunners, they were literally free stunning Tojil, there was no other excuse for how bad their stuns were. Which is why SE needs to introduce a 6 personal alternative because the talent pool can not handle needing that many people.

[orinthia]

This entire thread:

[Sechs]

What I don't get and what surprises me is the difference between my perception of reality and... reality itself, which gets punched into my face when I read some posts around.

Honestly I always thought that SoA was SE's attempt to give player base more alliance-based content (Delve) and it seemed to me it succeded. Despite people whining around "omg I'm gimp I want Atma of Apocalypse!11! and a LS." the overall impression of people around everywhere was pretty positive.
Gimmicks to defeat bosses, many different jobs needed, several approaches available (go all out, farm beads/stuff outside).
It also offered a points system and many other things.
At the same time it kept offering solo/lowmen content

Really, if I could find something wrong it wouldn't be directly in Delve. What was wrong is NOT the fact that Delve was a 18men content.
The wrong parts imho were:
1) Beads drop rates
2) NMs difficulty outside (for some of them at least, the 30m time was steep for many groups in the beginning)
3) Unbalancement of the Delve runs. 10k plasm for 5nms, 50k just for the megaboss? It's way too much...
4) There was no cap on Plasm. People farmed too much, too fast (in other games you have either an overall cap or a weekly/daily/monthly cap)
5) Skirmish (the first 2) came out wrong with how hard/expensive it was to access it. They got it right over time and tweaks, but way too late
6) WKRs were too expensive and rewards unworth it
7) Delve was the only high-end alliance content for way too long. In a game with a linear, tiered progression like what they're trying to make FFXI become, you can't expect a content to last that long and people be happy about it.


These are the errors I perceived in their actions. I was completely unaware people were THIS angry about there being alliance content. But why? I thought the majority of people were happy about LSs being useful again, I saw many LSs flourish again after the death cause by abyssea... and at the same time things were pretty manageable and way more user friendly and accessible for everybody compared to pre-abyssea.
Despite the flaws it seemed to me like a perfectly balanced situation/compromise between old FFXI and Abyssea FFXI.
While instead I have to discover that most people like to solo/multibox stuff?
Ungh... it looks pretty antisocial and sad to me, but if that's what the majority wants it's only right that SE tries to move in that direction, I guess.

[Prothescar]

No one is making an argument to abolish alliance content. Instead, I personally want options to do it with a party or so instead, obviously expecting it to take longer to get what we want as a result but provide a similar level of challenge. I don't want to have to invite people who will just put in the minimum amount of effort and then hope to win something, nor sit there for 45mins trying to get enough people to do something (relevant for future events, mostly).

Sliding difficulties with various party sizes and drop rates/point rewards would be the way to go. Doing things with the group of friends that I still have playing the game is entirely preferable to forcing myself into inviting x amount of probably bads who I likely have no desire to play with just so I have more bodies to throw at shit.

This is the direction that they seem to be taking. It's completely beneficial and hurts absolutely no one. I don't see why anyone could see it as a bad thing or as hurting them aside from their egos and epeens being bruised because they can't be snowflakes outside of titles.

[Sechs]

No one is making an argument to abolish alliance content. Instead, I personally want options to do it with a party or so instead

With less items to drop and less plasm it would be pretty balanced I say.
But with the current FFXI infrastructure can you imagine the level of lag you'd get inside delve zones with alliances farming Plasm, alliances farming bosses and parties doing the same in the 6-men version?
I'm all fine for offering alternatives to the current 18men content, but it doesn't necessarily has to be a 6men version of the same content.
If AAs or new BCs or similar stuff were available during Delve's prime time (and if Skirmish worked the way it should've...) I'm sure 6-men people would have had A LOT of content to keep themselves busy, and it would have been more fair for everybody, honestly.

I also think making "previous top tier content" more accessible once you release a "new" top tier is only right.
For instance, this 6men for original delve areas would've been fantastic if at the same time they released 3 new 18-men Delve zones.
It's a pretty common model for modern MMOs and I'm fine with that, but it's not what's about to happen with today's patch, is it?



But in the end I didn't want to complain or argue. I have my tastes, other people have theirs, I try to respect those. I'm clearly in the minority here so I find it only "right" and fair that SE tries to follows what the majority wants.
I was just surprised to find out that so many people were unhappy about Delve because I always got the impression that the majority of people considered the event a success.
And, indeed, I was wondering why a new Delve hadn't been released yet considering its success.
The truth? There was no success at all and a lot of people complained and were unhappy with that, this thread shows it.

Once people have been spoiled by years of solo/lowmen content you can't expect to go back to different models. And it's not just a matter of being spoiled, it's just that people changed, the game changed, times have changed, too much stuff has changed, I guess.

[Prothescar]

That's the thing though, this caters to everyone's tastes. That's why it's great that they're stepping towards sliding difficulty /reward systems.

There are a lot of broken things about delve. Reliance on stuns, for example; it leads to bland, colorless battles that always happen the same way. The only reason that it's been so successful, imo, is because it provided moderately easy access to God tier gear, and was(still is in some cases) the only way to do so. The event itself is fun to some degree, and it has the best loot system ffxi has ever seen(though it can do with adjustments, plasm is too easy to get), but by no means is it any sort of masterful display of game design or something.

[Sechs]

Reliance on stuns, for example

This is mainly for the megabosses though, and yeah I kinda agree. Altough it required more than just that, I too think it's boring having fights (or rather ALL fights, since it's 3 on 3 here) rely on stuns that much.
For the other 15 nms? Not so much. I mean sure, there is stuff you want to stun (scorpion, other nms too) but it's not as "vital" as it is for megabosses, can do without.
The other fights were pretty fun and overall Delve became boring/plain once everything was sorted out and you knew how to kill everything.
In the beginning, for the first months, there was a huge challenge and several ways to "enjoy" the delve content. People aiming for 5nms kills, people using Beads (not so many because of the retarded beads drop rates...) and people farming plasm by killing normal mobs. It was fun and it offered different levels of involvement/pressure.
Those fights were "different" from the zergfests we had been used to for the previous 2 years.
They required tactics, strategy, teamplay. It was simple but it felt so fresh after so much time without fights like those.

If there is something I hate even more than stun-lock, that's gotta be zergs. I mean zergs are fun when you do them as a display of power on old content, or zerging some specific mob particularly prominent to zerg tactics. It's cool, for the sake of variety.
But Zerging EVERYTHING is not fun, it's boring! In my book at least.


But fights meant to be done a certain way, will always be done that way. The differences will come by some random variables here and there, but mostly by the different composition of jobs and their special stuff.
That's how successful games like WoW do it for Raids. And trust me those boss fights can be a lot of fun. Yet most of the times there is a single way to kill a certain boss.
How is it still fun? Simple:
1) it's not always that easy to apply it
2) Different classes bring different buffs/stuff
I don't see other ways to achieve it other than this. The only other way is putting a fuckton of random stuff that you cannot foresee, at that point each fight will always be different... but will it also be fun? Becuase at that point it becomes frustrating, imho, even if different every time.
FFXI would need to reduce how much it relies on overbuffing (or buffswapping) though, before being able to successfully follow that model.
Something like a smaller number of "buff slots" and you can't get more than that and need to strategically pick up which ones you want beforehands, or maybe make so buffs are lost if the job who cast them leaves the party/alliance, which is the way other MMOs do it but I'm afraid it could be difficult to realize with the current FFXI server technology.
I see the first method more doable and to a certain extent it already is active (COR rolls and BRD songs already share a 12 slots cap, if I recall)

[Damane]

@sechs: actually my shell enjoyed delve alot. it was a very nice challenge and people enjoyed it. granted we werent allways 18 peeps we filled the 3-4 remaing spots with none key role jobs (cors debuff rdm brd for sch stun pt) while providing key jobs by us. unfortunately we were done with delve around october when skirmish 2 hit, no challenge just s snooze fest, sadly this state converted half of our LS peeps to 14. some will rejoin when delve 2 hits and is challenging enough as ally content

we also colaborate with other top end shells that have the same issue as us: loosing peeps to 14. we were allways on friendly terms and provided each other key jobs from our or their members for ally events. just last saturday we teamed up with 2 other shells and fill in the gaps to do divine might VD. i just think people need to be more open minded and friendly and see other top end shells not as rivals but as partners with respect. at least thats how it works here on phoenix between us

[Darkmagi]

Delve was great, but the reliance on stuns was really annoying. No one wants to play stunner, usually just ended up being a stunbot or someone forced into the role due to necessity. Looking forward to the 2 stun immune bosses.

[doctorugh]

Delve was great, but the reliance on stuns was really annoying. No one wants to play stunner, usually just ended up being a stunbot or someone forced into the role due to necessity. Looking forward to the 2 stun immune bosses.

Eald from Celestial Nexus is the right way to make a boss. The AOE Terrors, slowga, bindga, and warping prevent an actual zerg but nothing is going to outright flatten your party. At difficult level, you actually need to play smart and have teamwork rather than the zerg style with stuns required in delve. I think SE is on the right track revamping content that is old enough that people haven't seen (or remember) in a while, but the challenge/fun is still there without pigeonholding it so only a certain set of jobs can win. Hopefully they can do this with ToAU content as well. ZNM and assaults come to mind as fun content.

[xerodok]

Delve was great, but the reliance on stuns was really annoying. No one wants to play stunner, usually just ended up being a stunbot or someone forced into the role due to necessity. Looking forward to the 2 stun immune bosses.

Yeah I'm looking forward to the 2 stun immune bosses. It should add an extra element of difficulty to a dead game.

[Draylo]

But in the end I didn't want to complain or argue. I have my tastes, other people have theirs, I try to respect those. I'm clearly in the minority here so I find it only "right" and fair that SE tries to follows what the majority wants.
I was just surprised to find out that so many people were unhappy about Delve because I always got the impression that the majority of people considered the event a success.
And, indeed, I was wondering why a new Delve hadn't been released yet considering its success.
The truth? There was no success at all and a lot of people complained and were unhappy with that, this thread shows it.

People would have enjoyed it if they weren't so antisocial and bad. I loved delve. Also you shouldn't be afraid to express your opinion because you are in the minority. Aside from not giving two fucks what these idiots say on this thread, its a damn forum. Honestly don't get why they haven't been infracted or w/e. When people are afraid to post their opinions when asked due to personal attacks, that is pretty sad.

I also disagree with your assesment here. Delve was actually a big hit and a lot of people enjoyed it. The big problem with it is what you stated, they gave too much to people. They gave out 50k+ plasm per run and capped everyone. I can tell you a huge list of people who quit simply because they had everything and they were bored. If they were kept chasing that carrot like every other MMO, they would still be here as it would have given SE enough time to pump out the rest of the content they had like reforged AF. Many others enjoyed the difficulty of Delve but since they capped out so fast it they got bored. They could have had these people who can't get a win to save their life some more wins through sale or help. If you recall, the director wanted people to help the server out and take others into Delve with them to obtain wins.

Edit:

While instead I have to discover that most people like to solo/multibox stuff?
Ungh... it looks pretty antisocial and sad to me, but if that's what the majority wants it's only right that SE tries to move in that direction, I guess.

The majority doesn't know what they want. They want to be handed everything, leave the game to the developer where it belongs. This game has always been for a niche market, if they opened it to everyone for sales then it would be a WoW clone just like FFXIV.