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

[Botosi]

Not being able to speed/POS hack all over the place is the dealbreaker for me.

While I think this project is really cool, as someone mentioned, walking all over the place is extremely time consuming and boring (especially at the 40 your server is set to).

I think increasing movement speed would be crucial to keeping your population from dropping.

I doubt I’m alone. I’ll be 32 soon and have no interest in walking across Konschtact Highlands 50 times at retail speed.

If you considered bumping up the movement speed, I’d definitely consider playing.

[Druin]

They don't even need to globally increase movement speed. All they have to do is add in the Book teleport shit current era has. Or fuck me just make a +500% movespeed item that makes you deal 0% damage just to get around since you can alter dats or whatever the fuck

[Spicyryan]

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[arus2001]

A) As a career RDM I can literally never think of a time in this game's entire life (up until recently in retail thanks to Master Levels) where RDM was a better healer than WHM in any situation that wasn't an EXP/Merit party. They don't get access to the more important -na spells, they have no HoTs for enmity management, and they have functionally no AoE curing. MP management and debuffs are the job identity. It can't really melee, it's not a nuking job in that era, and it's a very bootleg healer.

B) I don't know which support buffs you're talking about other than potentially Phalanx II (but I can't remember when that was added as a GRoup 2 merit). WHM and SMN can both cast Haste, BRD can give Refresh through ballads. It doesn't have Protectra or Shellra, it doesn't have aoe Bar spells or Stoneskin.

C) Dia and Bio are good but not game breaking, Slow is accessible to WHM and BRD's Elegies are just as good if not better. Paralyze is good. It can't AoE sleep like BRD or BLM. Obviously RDM is a good debuffer (its class identity), but trying to pretend the potency difference is massive at 75 cap is asinine. The strength is in role consolidation because it has access to both Light and Dark-based enfeebles.

D) Tanking and soloing hard content at 75 cap required so much specialized gear, time, and skill that it's insulting to use as an argument. How many RDMs did you know tanking Jailer of Love and Ouryu? How many did you know soloing Sky pops/gods? And if you really want to stop it from happening, just make the simple tweak to mob AI to stop people from pinning.

You're right that you need to look at the entire picture when you're trying to balance something. I just don't know why you'd say that and then do something like give the best support job in the game the ability to swap weapons without losing TP so it can melee better. SAM was carried by strong single-hit weaponskills with Attack bonuses and Hagun so I doubt anything you're trying to do there is going to matter at all. Whatever you're doing to RDM's MP economy (based on the blurb and other comments here, I assume increasing spell costs and/or removing the Conserve MP traits) isn't going to make other unpopular jobs more desirable, it's just going to make BRD even more important than it already is, which is silly.

I have no interest in playing a 75 cap server in the first place so I'll probably just dip out of here to stop shitting up the thread, but it just feels really gross to be trying to cash in on the nostalgia people feel for that era while making something that's going to be nothing like it.

I'd say this roughly correlates with my own experiences, observations, and perceptions. Something I was getting at in my earlier post was that it wasn't so much RDM that was broken, but other aspects of the game. Instead of SE nipping that, they just targeted the job or outright ignored it through expansions. Otherwise, game problems also included other jobs underperforming and I was certainly all about giving them love back in the day even if I might've disagreed with some of the ideas others had. RDM's eventual status was a net result of coping with what SE had given them and not so much enthusiastic acceptance. People deluding themselves into believing they'd be the next Avesta or keeping it under wraps they actually Clippered with their solos didn't do any good. They certainly weren't blood tanking /WAR post 40 nor /NIN tanking in any EXP party. I don't think it's a secret that their melee was lampooned even if I do believe this was actually the proper route of giving them identity with Enspells and other possible quirks. You weren't being invited for nuking, as history eventually taught us that BLMs, as the superior nuker, had to resort to mana burns or BST pet solos just to get EXP.

In summary, you basically had to settle for being a Refresh battery once that unlocked or suck it up and be a healer because most players don't like healing. We could maybe make an honorable mention for Dispel as crabs and crawlers being the preferred targets for various leveling camps, but this was hardly exclusive with BRD Finales or eventually COR's shots. Pink Mage, Med Rage, whatever we wanna call it in sarcastic tone, the implication that the class succeed as a "Jack" was never really true. And if you take it a step further to assert its identity lived around Convert (which you also needed a specific gear set for to survive main heal blah), then it really, truly, honestly was a sad job. Nobody was gonna miss a few % differences in Slow or Para procs, assuming the mob was even vulnerable, couldn't shed the debuff(s), or gradually became immune. Needing ES from /BLM to land them in the extreme instances also called into question their enfeebling superiority, since any unique debuffs they had could be /RDM. Hell, BLU marched in eventually and got a far deeper debuff arsenal even if player priority there was typically damage. Perhaps one of my more embittering experiences, however, was once people knew I was a RDM and didn't suck at it, I was never allowed to be anything else if I wanted to do anything endgame. It wasn't flattery. It was everyone else vocalizing their disdain for the job (and what it had become through SE's (in)action). It was 100% the job few wanted to play, but everyone loved to tell you how the moment you deviated. Shouldn't be too hard to figure out why I call it a former main and walked away with less "friends" from there. Or even why I venerate Abyssea so much for shattering a lot of the politics at the time. Logwatch can go fuck itself, though.

[Lucavi]

Not being able to speed/POS hack all over the place is the dealbreaker for me.

While I think this project is really cool, as someone mentioned, walking all over the place is extremely time consuming and boring (especially at the 40 your server is set to).

I think increasing movement speed would be crucial to keeping your population from dropping.

I doubt I’m alone. I’ll be 32 soon and have no interest in walking across Konschtact Highlands 50 times at retail speed.

If you considered bumping up the movement speed, I’d definitely consider playing.

But NOSTALGIA, MAN!! The authenticity! You need to play this game exactly as Sage Sundi and Tanaka-SAMA intended!

[SilverBreeze]

But NOSTALGIA, MAN!! The authenticity! You need to play this game exactly as Sage Sundi and Tanaka-SAMA intended!

I will never forgive Sage Sundi.

That being said, I do see Horizon as an interesting in-between of the XI we all know (and love and hate) from 75 cap and the often unrecognizable pile of numbers that XI retail has become. It'll be interesting to see what becomes of it.

It won't be the first or the last private server to try something different, but hopefully they won't make the same mistakes as many others have in the past.

[Ethycs]

I think this is a cool fan project. Preserving the old style of needing to party, form alliances and supply the economy, while providing new changes sounds almost like a classic MMO randomizer doesn't it?

I love how far emulation has come that any of this is even possible. The divide is real, but I still think it shows just how great emulation can be towards preserving, enhancing or modding old abandoned gems.

[Salodin]

All this bullshit aside, how do I emulate this on mobile?

Sent from my SM-G996U using Tapatalk

[Kipling]

All this bullshit aside, how do I emulate this on mobile?

Sent from my SM-G996U using Tapatalk

What kind of device? People have already gotten our beta running on steam deck. I can't speak for anything else.

[Salodin]

Android, mobile device. I'd rather not have to steam link, and I don't have a steam deck but eyyyy maybe one day I will lol

Sent from my SM-G996U using Tapatalk

[The Stig]

This thread has been very interesting. I wish to partake:

1. Is mobs despawning outside a certain radius present? I wish to MPK as BST
2. Has BST's pool of charmable mobs been expanded? It was always annoying that in most endgame areas a BST is reduced to be using either using CC (easy but crap) or Saber Siravarde/Chopsuey Chucky/Lifedrinker Lars (expensive to cook). It would be nice if more things were charmable, even Demons/Arcana/Elementals etc and the CoP area mobs like in Sea
3. The PLD card does it mean they'll actually feel PLD? I remembered that PLD didn't truely feel like a PLD until the release of Ochain. Back then it was pretty much mandatory to sub NIN to tank with -PDT gear on hand but even with that you'd go down in 5 or 6 swings (I just remembered reading or investigating back then that DEF was pretty much useless on a character because of the incredibly high attack rating on mobs meaning that you won't feel like a brick wall, ever, unless you're fighting something substanially weaker, so a PLD/WAR or WAR with Defender up rocking a full Koenig set you still didn't feel that much tankier)
4. I like the idea of WAR rocking up a sword and board to sub in as tank
5. (not serious but more wishful) C'mon lets make the dreams the author talked about in the Brady Games guide a reality:

https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Bradygames_Guide

Sub RDM on Monk for uber En-spells!
I want to level WAR sub BLM to 30 so I can be a Dark Knight.
I want to level WAR sub WHM to 30 so I can be a Paladin.

The potential/fantasy was there but was let down by inefficiency due to skill levels being halfed and the spells scaling on scale level and other things! XD

[Pirian]

On point 4 and 5, you don't remember the short-lived war/whm blood tanking tiamat tank (Gjallarhorn required)? lol

[Prothescar]

casts cure...


GETS HATE!

[Kipling]

1. We have said we won't reveal that cause we want players to find out day 1.
2. I can't answer job mechanics unfortunately since we want people to find the changes, other than what we've posted in the BST preview on our website.
3. We are doing our best to really emphasize shield tanking and making blood tanking more viable in some instances.

[The Stig]

Oh wow I totally missed that! (The WAR/WHM thing)!

1. We have said we won't reveal that cause we want players to find out day 1.
2. I can't answer job mechanics unfortunately since we want people to find the changes, other than what we've posted in the BST preview on our website.
3. We are doing our best to really emphasize shield tanking and making blood tanking more viable in some instances.

Fair enough. Lets see then

[Spicyryan]

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[Obsidian]

Based on the PLD blurb you can probably assume they've pulled in Palisade and maybe even Majesty, and they've also probably adjusted how much enmity decay PLD suffers from being hit (maybe only while blocking).

[arus2001]

Realistically, if Blood Tanking is to ever be a thing in XI, you have to address the formula, gear, mob stats, healing output, and not just shuffling abilities around or assuming it's okay because Ochain exists. Because if done right, you could actually have things like MNK countertanks, SAM tanks, or even RDM blood tanks as a pseudo-PLD with /WAR. XI's frequent attempts to balance top-down instead of bottom-up played a big part in fucking jobs over.

[Spicyryan]

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[Kipling]

We have a large testing and balance team who works through and tests all of our changes in a live environment. But yes, you will need to play and find out like everyone else as exploration and discovery are key themes of Horizon in regards to all of our era+ changes (or don't - that's your choice).