HorizonXI – Era+ 75 Cap FFXI Server Launching December 17th, 2022

[Warudo Ecksu]

Both systems are fair. This one is more accessible.

Accessibility is bad. This is precisely why I said I would never invest in a private server. The game SHOULD limit out people such that the ones willing to sacrifice and bleed are rewarded.

what in the hell

other people having access to the same gear/items as you does not diminish the usefulness of said gear/spells/whatever in any kind of way. If something is good, it's good regardless if 5 people or 500 people have it. If you're not invested in the private server why post in the private server section with your weird ass mentality? Nothing should ever be gatekeeped from the community. Smart devs will think way down the road about how every decision will affect the server's health as a whole, not limit things to ten people who play 20 hours a day. Players put in a lot of hours to work on their characters, even if they are casual. Most of us have jobs and families now. No one needs to make sacrifices and BLEEEEED to play a game.

[Lokus]

You're going to trigger his manifesto.

[Gredival]

Nothing should ever be gatekeeped from the community. Smart devs will think way down the road about how every decision will affect the server's health as a whole, not limit things to ten people who play 20 hours a day. Players put in a lot of hours to work on their characters, even if they are casual. Most of us have jobs and families now. No one needs to make sacrifices and BLEEEEED to play a game.

No, the reason why MMOs went astray is precisely because we stopped gatekeeping. We should be graded on a strict bell curve. You don't earn things by fulfilling the bare minimum requirement (beating the boss); you earn them according to how much better you are than everyone else at doing that minimum requirement (out-camping everyone for the boss). If that means you never get rewarded that means you were inadequate.

The idea that someone "deserves" anything in game is precisely what leads to justifications for shortcuts. It's how you open a Pandora's Box. The drive to make content accessible creates a reduction of a high daily hour requirement to "causal-friendly" content of short dailies plus weeklies on the weekend. After that, you start to allow a "little" P2W in here and there - it's fine as long as its just skipping "repetitive" and "easy" content.

The line has to be drawn somewhere. Logically and practically speaking, the best way is to tier access to content/rewards according to the ability/willingness to do that with the hardest and most exclusive content giving the best rewards.

In the past, the only way for a game to turn a profit was to have the most players and to keep them all subscribed. The charitable interpretation is that a game had to deliver the best experience to retain customers over competition. The realistic take is that games were designed to be skinner boxes -- intensely repetitive grinds, but packaged in an addictive package that would keep you hooked month to month. And in FFXI, part of what kept the progression slow was everyone higher up on the ladder than you kicking you off as you tried to scramble up.

other people having access to the same gear/items as you does not diminish the usefulness of said gear/spells/whatever in any kind of way. If something is good, it's good regardless if 5 people or 500 people have it.

Value is determined by both utility AND rarity. No one gives a shit about rare items that are useless (Spleunker's Hat). On the reverse side a drop that everyone has is also not worth much, even if it's good. It gets taken for granted and becomes virtually valueless (e.g. Walahra Turban on ToAU release). This isn't based on video games, it's simple economics. Water is more essential to life than nearly anything else, but it's cheap because the supply is near infinite (we pay for the delivery infrastructure or the processing -- not the product). Comparatively diamonds and gold are expensive because they are rare and because we consider them valuable (in this case for beauty rather than stats) even if they don't have any inherent benefit.

No one plays for content. They play to collect pixels because we are/were in a skinner box. We are seeking that chemically stimulated euphoria we get from mastering certain tasks and being given treats for that mastery. Which means there is incentive as a matter of fact to make the treats harder to get. Once you can admit that, it's very readily apparent that Kings were the absolute best end game system.

First, the zero-sum competition for gear increased the enjoyment in two ways. Drops cater to our natural and biological drive to derive satisfaction from more difficult and arduous tasks. Virtually all cultures in all time periods laud figures who "accomplish" something in the face of adversity. MMOs hijack this brain chemistry by using artificial difficulty to feed our sense of accomplishment, which is why we can say "worth it" if we "win" by beating simple loot table RNG. That gets amped up ten-fold in competitive PvE because of the dopamine from winning at the exclusion of someone else as they compete for a limited resource. Thus, high value gear that takes a lot of effort and skill to acquire is best accomplished through the zero-sum nature of Kings claims wherein there is direct competition between the player base (further inhibited by drop rates). It drives the player base to work harder to top each other, it increases the value of accomplishments and thus the "fun." World spawns make it so that the skinner box becomes a competition between you and the other rats vs. a skinner box where we all run our own individual treadmills and race to see who gets lucky with the lever mechanism first.

Second, Kings (and other World Spawns) were the best balance for how XI content was structured. In WoW, they were used to new level caps, obsoleted gear, etc. and it mattered less because new expansions and dramatic upheavals were expected and regular and because these updates and expansions came very fast. XI was different. New content came out slower, and because it took so long to get things they had near infinite shelf life. New gear in FF was always a balance of side grades and situational gear. They obsoleted gear, but rarely anything that was "terminal" content for an expansion. For example they obsoleted the BiS Optical Hat, but they left Byakko's Haidate and Adaberk without equal for years. They released Homam but only for jobs that didn't get Haidate. A specific balance that didn't obsolete accomplishments and effort.

Third, exclusion is good on principle. It is key to distinguishing players from one another. Deviating from this mindset is exactly what ruined MMOs. People start with the assumption that every piece of gear should be accessible to them. We should start from the presumption that your gear should be limited by how far the pyramid you climb up and that most players should and will probably be unable to reach the top. Everyone should get to play how they want; people shouldn't have to do HNMs if they don't want to. But that doesn't mean they are entitled to rewards from content they cannot or will not do, nor should the game be changed to remove such content because the majority cannot/will not do it. You can't have everyone be the best at a game and have all the best gear. Just like there's no shame in not going to Harvard, there is no shame in not being the top of an MMO… unless you yourself value being at the top. And the fact that so many people obviously DID have a problem not being at the top, that shows how important progression actually is to MMO. It was explicitly stated when Relics were introduced that the intention was for these to be exceedingly rare and for most players to not have one. Instead of accepting this, players complained that the concept was flawed. It wasn't "I guess this content isn't for me" it's that "This content shouldn't exist because this means some people will get something that I never will." People should not get rewards without accomplishing whatever prerequisite tasks are attached to them. I feel if you make these choices not to participate, you should live without getting those rewards. You shouldn't get a D-Ring because you feel entitled to one and you think it's stupid that you have to compete against 50-100 people everyday for years to get one. Instead now the mantra of design is to give everyone everything, and make everything accessible, because that way you make the majority of players (who are by definition average) happy. After you remove the effort and skill gates, it's only a matter of time before money becomes an alternate. That is precisely how MMOs, and the genre as a whole, died.

If you're not invested in the private server why post in the private server section with your weird ass mentality?

To point out what's going wrong and why it's wrong. Things are not owed positivity and support just because.

The whole point of a private server is the fact that Abyssea ruined the game and to go back to a better time. The temptation is great to add QOL changes while doing this, but the community needs to understand how and why Abyssea ruined the game to understand what QOL changes are acceptable and what are just a slippery slope that leads to the plague of casualization that happened with Abyssea. We need to know what's good for us, even if it's not what we want.

[Koyangi]

You're going to trigger his manifesto.

Lol, you posted this seconds before he does exactly that.

[Spicyryan]

.

[arus2001]

Hot Take: FFXI didn't have an endgame until Magian Trials.

[Prothescar]

We need to know what's good for us, even if it's not what we want.

[Melena]

Lol, you posted this seconds before he does exactly that.

You know he keeps that shit open in a document to quickly copy/paste lol.

[Gredival]

You know he keeps that shit open in a document to quickly copy/paste lol.

I continually innovate and revise. This is my informal dissertation defense.

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk

[Madeline]

Still one of if not the most fitting avatar on BG.

I admire the passion. I agree with a good portion of Gred's takes. I however do not long for that era. The only reason I got out was they pulled the needle out. That shit was addictive in a way I'd never understand until much later in life.

I don't wholly blame Abyssea for the death of the game as a whole, but for the death of the game as the earlier players knew it.

As a whole it was a mix of ban waves, Abyssea causing infighting in larger shells and fragmenting the already fragmented community further. They then decided that adding 36 man and 18 man content would be a great idea in consecutive patches. Add a dash of Nyzul Isle being way too fucking difficult and RNG driven for what people were left to sink their teeth into, ToAU having several mediocre HNM like Hydra and Khimaira (the latter of which was good until it wasn't), it was just one shit show after another.


It was easy to feel like it died from Abyssea though. They were weak already and continued to weaken the foundation, eventually destroying it entirely. They had Tanaka working on the failure that was 1.0 XIV, they essentially publicly disgraced the man for it's failure, which I still don't necessarily blame him for, and our replacement just did not have anything resembling Tanaka's vision for what XI was going to be. I think ultimately losing that man, as much as we memed him for being the way that he was, killed XI. XIV being successful in the aftermath essentially nailed the coffin shut.

Least that's my take as someone that was on Carbuncle at the time. I understand one individual only experiences a microcosm of the larger picture.

Jesus a lot happened during that time. Not one bit of that was an ideal situation for anyone involved.

[Spicyryan]

.

[Tyrath]

That shit was addictive in a way I'd never understand until much later in life.

It's why I didn't last very long on Horizon. I could see the signs of how I was spending my free time on it lol

[arus2001]

Feel like there's a bit too much credit being doled out for what amounts to SE effectively bumbling blind through the early days of a gaming genre with the only real competition being WoW. For a lot of it, we couldn't know better because we hadn't seen alternatives, or in niche cases, things technologically impossible then that aren't now. Some of us stuck around because it was FF. Some of us stuck around because it wasn't "ugly" like WoW. Some of us stuck around because you didn't need an alt army to enjoy the game. Some of us stuck around because the stories were just told and presented better. Some stuck around for friends. Some of us played because PvP had no real place. None of this relied on the cartoon fight cloud that was Kings or the histrionics of "endgame" LS management that a lot of folks felt was dumb or a loose interpretation of the Skinner Box to be later refined through mobile games before their predatory penetration into the mainstream. For some, it was literally as simple as "Log on and do shit." and not "Log on and hope that you might be able to do shit through combined layers of social and mechanical RNG..." Of course, by the time SE finally learned this lesson, we were 2-3 MMO gens later and XI's reputation wasn't going to be shaken off. The idea that Abyssea killed the game will remain forever a fallacy, because the game was "dying" long before that and the new shinies were giving people what they wanted that XI refused to. Which obviously made the jerk back to alliance content late/post-Abyssea all the more damning because what good faith they had reclaimed was summarily cast aside. Swathes of dated systems and a clunky UI weren't going to keep people around once the content couldn't be done at whim.

[Gredival]

Sometimes choice and options are bad because people don't know what's good for them. The decline in political understanding and civic engagement is, at it's roots, exploitation of human laziness and apathy enabled by choice.

Whatever reason or lack thereof, Kings and other open world competitive server limited content was the best. Instances should be reserved for casual mid content.

Top tier content should require getting up every hour at night to check if the mob spawns and waking ten people up to do it at 4 AM, then not getting a drop for months.

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk

[arus2001]

It's 2023 and I'm making a XI meme. What is this I don't even...

[Koyangi]

That was pretty good.

[Spicyryan]

.

[Warudo Ecksu]

Top tier content should require getting up every hour at night to check if the mob spawns and waking ten people up to do it at 4 AM, then not getting a drop for months.

Didn't read the earlier wall of text, and after seeing this statement, it was a wise decision to keep scrolling. We are either being trolled or this guy has issues.

[Shenrien]

No, the reason why MMOs went astray is precisely because we stopped gatekeeping. We should be graded on a strict bell curve. You don't earn things by fulfilling the bare minimum requirement (beating the boss); you earn them according to how much better you are than everyone else at doing that minimum requirement (out-camping everyone for the boss). If that means you never get rewarded that means you were inadequate.

The idea that someone "deserves" anything in game is precisely what leads to justifications for shortcuts. It's how you open a Pandora's Box. The drive to make content accessible creates a reduction of a high daily hour requirement to "causal-friendly" content of short dailies plus weeklies on the weekend. After that, you start to allow a "little" P2W in here and there - it's fine as long as its just skipping "repetitive" and "easy" content.

The line has to be drawn somewhere. Logically and practically speaking, the best way is to tier access to content/rewards according to the ability/willingness to do that with the hardest and most exclusive content giving the best rewards.

In the past, the only way for a game to turn a profit was to have the most players and to keep them all subscribed. The charitable interpretation is that a game had to deliver the best experience to retain customers over competition. The realistic take is that games were designed to be skinner boxes -- intensely repetitive grinds, but packaged in an addictive package that would keep you hooked month to month. And in FFXI, part of what kept the progression slow was everyone higher up on the ladder than you kicking you off as you tried to scramble up.



Value is determined by both utility AND rarity. No one gives a shit about rare items that are useless (Spleunker's Hat). On the reverse side a drop that everyone has is also not worth much, even if it's good. It gets taken for granted and becomes virtually valueless (e.g. Walahra Turban on ToAU release). This isn't based on video games, it's simple economics. Water is more essential to life than nearly anything else, but it's cheap because the supply is near infinite (we pay for the delivery infrastructure or the processing -- not the product). Comparatively diamonds and gold are expensive because they are rare and because we consider them valuable (in this case for beauty rather than stats) even if they don't have any inherent benefit.

No one plays for content. They play to collect pixels because we are/were in a skinner box. We are seeking that chemically stimulated euphoria we get from mastering certain tasks and being given treats for that mastery. Which means there is incentive as a matter of fact to make the treats harder to get. Once you can admit that, it's very readily apparent that Kings were the absolute best end game system.

First, the zero-sum competition for gear increased the enjoyment in two ways. Drops cater to our natural and biological drive to derive satisfaction from more difficult and arduous tasks. Virtually all cultures in all time periods laud figures who "accomplish" something in the face of adversity. MMOs hijack this brain chemistry by using artificial difficulty to feed our sense of accomplishment, which is why we can say "worth it" if we "win" by beating simple loot table RNG. That gets amped up ten-fold in competitive PvE because of the dopamine from winning at the exclusion of someone else as they compete for a limited resource. Thus, high value gear that takes a lot of effort and skill to acquire is best accomplished through the zero-sum nature of Kings claims wherein there is direct competition between the player base (further inhibited by drop rates). It drives the player base to work harder to top each other, it increases the value of accomplishments and thus the "fun." World spawns make it so that the skinner box becomes a competition between you and the other rats vs. a skinner box where we all run our own individual treadmills and race to see who gets lucky with the lever mechanism first.

Second, Kings (and other World Spawns) were the best balance for how XI content was structured. In WoW, they were used to new level caps, obsoleted gear, etc. and it mattered less because new expansions and dramatic upheavals were expected and regular and because these updates and expansions came very fast. XI was different. New content came out slower, and because it took so long to get things they had near infinite shelf life. New gear in FF was always a balance of side grades and situational gear. They obsoleted gear, but rarely anything that was "terminal" content for an expansion. For example they obsoleted the BiS Optical Hat, but they left Byakko's Haidate and Adaberk without equal for years. They released Homam but only for jobs that didn't get Haidate. A specific balance that didn't obsolete accomplishments and effort.

Third, exclusion is good on principle. It is key to distinguishing players from one another. Deviating from this mindset is exactly what ruined MMOs. People start with the assumption that every piece of gear should be accessible to them. We should start from the presumption that your gear should be limited by how far the pyramid you climb up and that most players should and will probably be unable to reach the top. Everyone should get to play how they want; people shouldn't have to do HNMs if they don't want to. But that doesn't mean they are entitled to rewards from content they cannot or will not do, nor should the game be changed to remove such content because the majority cannot/will not do it. You can't have everyone be the best at a game and have all the best gear. Just like there's no shame in not going to Harvard, there is no shame in not being the top of an MMO… unless you yourself value being at the top. And the fact that so many people obviously DID have a problem not being at the top, that shows how important progression actually is to MMO. It was explicitly stated when Relics were introduced that the intention was for these to be exceedingly rare and for most players to not have one. Instead of accepting this, players complained that the concept was flawed. It wasn't "I guess this content isn't for me" it's that "This content shouldn't exist because this means some people will get something that I never will." People should not get rewards without accomplishing whatever prerequisite tasks are attached to them. I feel if you make these choices not to participate, you should live without getting those rewards. You shouldn't get a D-Ring because you feel entitled to one and you think it's stupid that you have to compete against 50-100 people everyday for years to get one. Instead now the mantra of design is to give everyone everything, and make everything accessible, because that way you make the majority of players (who are by definition average) happy. After you remove the effort and skill gates, it's only a matter of time before money becomes an alternate. That is precisely how MMOs, and the genre as a whole, died.



To point out what's going wrong and why it's wrong. Things are not owed positivity and support just because.

The whole point of a private server is the fact that Abyssea ruined the game and to go back to a better time. The temptation is great to add QOL changes while doing this, but the community needs to understand how and why Abyssea ruined the game to understand what QOL changes are acceptable and what are just a slippery slope that leads to the plague of casualization that happened with Abyssea. We need to know what's good for us, even if it's not what we want.

I ain't reading all that, I'm happy for u tho, or sorry that happened.

[carlweathers]

Amazing post, Gredival. Someone else beat me to it, but yeah, that was 100% the guy in your avatar.

I feel the problem with that approach you're dealing with is we aren't litigating how a current MMO is being patched/developed. This is a Private Server, people have families now and I think those kind of concessions/QoL are needed to keep people happy or they get frustrated and your server dies.