Next update...

[JoOeetheplatypuS]

They need to bring more challenging fights to the table and a LOT more accessible. The most exciting fights in the game are a fucking pain in the ass to get to. Bahamut v.2 needs a lot of fucking luck on rare ass drop from old content. lolAV took us over 6 months to pop because of lottery.

Bahamut v.2 is easy as hell to get to. Its not as easy to FOCUS on but if your ls does a healthy amount of the many evoker droppers you should have a decent amount of baha 2s.

were about 4:500+. Dont give me easy.

...thats rediculous. I've never EVER heard about drop rates that bad.

[Tyche]

we've gotten 3 evokers since it was released. 2 came from allaince ENM we used to do weekly. Since then, we've started to split up. We bought one as well. Bet you never heard of 2:150+ on ridill and 1:10 on aces helm, and 0:10 on reviler helm, i could keep going on our LSs luck. Its infamous on carbuncle.

[JoOeetheplatypuS]

Like The Wind+Uninvited Guests=Profit

[divisortheory]

I just thought of something that would be cool.

Make KS99 drop abjurations (nothing new), kings more accessible so more people can fight them (nothing new). The previous two things combined make getting abjurations easier. Now, for the new part - Make kings in ToAU areas that drop new abjurations which can be used to transform existing Abjuration armor into something with similar stats, but more powerful. Like maybe remove all negative stats from the uncursed versions plus give them an additional bonus. Example:

Hecatomb Harness
Def: 50 HP+16 STR+12 Accuracy+10 Slow+13%

Hecatomb Harness+1
Def: 51 HP+18 STR+13 Accuracy+11 Slow+15%


New Armor (Required: Hecatomb Harness, Abjuration v2)
Def: 55 HP+20 STR+15 Accuracy+15 Haste+5%

New Armor+1 (Required: Hecatomb Harness+1, Abjuration v2)
Def: 57 HP+25 STR+16 Accuracy+17 Haste+7%

[NynJa]

you know what'd be cooler ??

they made that gear, but made the HQ cursed pieces non-upgradable, just like HQ synthesis items are useless (hello Merman's Hairpin).

[JoOeetheplatypuS]

Kalia. That is an awful idea on so many levels.

[divisortheory]

Well, it's awful in the sense that it doesn't change the traditional item acquisition model of "compete against tons of people for claim, then pray the rare shit drops". But this is SE we're talking about, I'm trying to think inside the box of what they're willing to do. We've already seen that they simply aren't going to listen if an idea is too novel or different from existing paradigms. That would a) keep people in Aery trying to get abjurations, since you can't upgrade shit without the original uncursed thing, b) make new fights that drop very good shit, c) keep people playing for at least another 2 years, since the items would be a pretty significant upgrade over the previous set of items, d) be hard to acquire, but definitely within the reach of most endgame shells, and e) be exactly the same model they currently use for items, so they would have an easy time understanding it, which seems to be part of what's holding them back from fixing problems.

[Quicklet]

CoP added wyrms. Even though the loot tables were less than stellar, they were challenging, have money drops, and a few nice toys.

Ill quit soon if the next update doesnt add more endgame content. It would be so simple, that im optimistic. Top tier assaults (General or whatever, when they get there) = Alliance Boss Fights. Once per day content, 5 to chose from. Bahamut 2-esque challenges. Money drops, new useful gear. Done.

Saying that CoP wyrms were quality endgame content is like saying Cerberus and Hydra are quality endgame content. Why are you so upset when SE has provided you with these challenging (debatably) HNMs already within the first few patches of ToAU. They provide money drops and nice toys too.

Endgame HNMs should not be about "money drops and a few nice toys." Endgame should be about progression: fight HNMs, upgrade gear so you can handle the next tier of HNMs. SE doesn't usually do a good job of making challenging encounters that aren't totally imbalanced. Everything either takes forever/glitching to kill (AV) or is killed within days of its patch (Cerberus). The last patches of CoP were much better than the rest of the patches though.

If it follows that the later patches of ToAU will be better than the first few patches of ToAU, which arguably have added more to the game than practically all of CoP, why worry?

FFXI will never have the endgame structure that, say, EQ or WoW have. SE just doesn't plan their game that way, they like to focus on broader features. I would imagine that ToAU endgame will be better than CoP's, though it's hard to imagine they would make it as good as RoZ. Guess you gotta wait and see lawl.

[cravygravy]

Who didn't see this coming... Just look at Chains of Promathia. Heres a +5STR +5DEX/+5INT +5MND/Shitty ring for 1year of trials. Now go fuck yourself in sea.

[Kiro]

I just beat CoP/got my ring about 2 days ago. I avoided CoP like the fucking plague.

[cravygravy]

I just beat CoP/got my ring about 2 days ago. I avoided CoP like the fucking plague.

I finished it like... 4months ago. It still felt like a waste time once I got to sea.

[Celeras]

CoP added wyrms. Even though the loot tables were less than stellar, they were challenging, have money drops, and a few nice toys.

Ill quit soon if the next update doesnt add more endgame content. It would be so simple, that im optimistic. Top tier assaults (General or whatever, when they get there) = Alliance Boss Fights. Once per day content, 5 to chose from. Bahamut 2-esque challenges. Money drops, new useful gear. Done.

Saying that CoP wyrms were quality endgame content is like saying Cerberus and Hydra are quality endgame content. Why are you so upset when SE has provided you with these challenging (debatably) HNMs already within the first few patches of ToAU. They provide money drops and nice toys too.

Endgame HNMs should not be about "money drops and a few nice toys." Endgame should be about progression: fight HNMs, upgrade gear so you can handle the next tier of HNMs. SE doesn't usually do a good job of making challenging encounters that aren't totally imbalanced. Everything either takes forever/glitching to kill (AV) or is killed within days of its patch (Cerberus). The last patches of CoP were much better than the rest of the patches though.

If it follows that the later patches of ToAU will be better than the first few patches of ToAU, which arguably have added more to the game than practically all of CoP, why worry?

FFXI will never have the endgame structure that, say, EQ or WoW have. SE just doesn't plan their game that way, they like to focus on broader features. I would imagine that ToAU endgame will be better than CoP's, though it's hard to imagine they would make it as good as RoZ. Guess you gotta wait and see lawl.

Because the wyrms were challenges when first released, and took time to figure out. Whereas Cerb/Hydra were beaten within hours of release, and have for the most part (cerb mantle) absolutely no reason to kill repeatedly?

You cant 'tier' gear in ffxi. Anybody can beat virtually anything in the game, in full AF1. Exceptions being only some sea content, and Bahamut 2. Things get easier with better gear, they dont magically become possible like in WoW. Its very poorly designed in that respect.

[Ashira]

One thing that would fix sea:

Make all deeds/virtues 100%, like the seals in sky...

Never... ever... EVER understood this.


/sigh

ZAM me, I'm waiting for it.

[Quicklet]

My real complaint with sea (besides the lol drop rates), was that it really had a bad difficulty curve.

Offensively the NMs were stronger, using repeatable 2hrs, new spells, and being slightly dangerous if you weren't careful. Defensively though, they're not even as strong as sky gods are.

It would have been nice to see a difficulty level as such:

Tier1(Jailers/Ix'Aern) -> Kirin level (Lv90)
Tier2 Jailers -> Wyrm Level (Lv92)
JoL/AV -> somewhere between Lv93-95

As well as corresponding gear that would compensate for the increased difficulty (even if, say, sea gear received extra bonuses just against Luminians or in Lumoria while being relatively equal to existing gear outside of the region).

AV's loot table is good, it's just a shame that it's taken so long just for groups to start killing it on a regular basis, and that the loot table depth of everything else required to get the pop items for AV is still pretty dismal. Torques are great, capes are great: they satisfy the min-maxers... but it's hard(er) to keep interest in mobs when there aren't little synth drops or other loot items that would motivate people to put in all the time.

Oh yeah, and while I'm on the topic... it really would've been an amazing idea to do more with tissues/organs and gorgets/obis. At the VERY least, allow the 8 gorgets + 8 obis to be combined into a single gorget and single obi that covers all elements. An abjuration system involving drops from jailers + quest NMs, and so on.

Obviously, none of this is going to happen, and it's a pointless exercise to list these simple things that would at least improve a poorly designed part of the game, but it's always been mind-boggling as to why more effort wasn't put into little enhancements like this.

------
To Celeras:

CoP wyrms have for the most part absolutely no (progression) reason to kill repeatedly either. Ouryu does but that's only because of Bahamut, which is one of the things that SE did right near the end of CoP. If it weren't for the mass rapage of SMNs, it probably would've been a LOT longer before you saw more wyrm kills. A lot of progression has entered the game since they were implemented, but at the time they were released it was ridiculously hard (though not impossible) to beat them, but killing them didn't give you any progression in future fights either, so it was more beneficial just to kill the easier encounters or get meripo / level more jobs / focus on HQing existing gear.

Gear matters. Meripo matters. It's just hard to see the effects because the cumulative difference is much more gradual than in EQ or WoW. The difference between people in full AF1 and no meripo, and those with AF2, cursed, torques, meripo, Limbus gear, etc. is HUGE. But yes, people who can kill the hardest RoZ HNMs are usually able to kill most other HNMs because the difficulty level in CoP was not increased very much, and most of the progression came from meripo or from minor NMs that were not hard at all.

[JoOeetheplatypuS]

Honestly, its been too long since we had a good doomsday FFXI thread.

[Vic]

IMO we need more end-game places to meripo, more HNMs that are more easily accesable to EVERYONE, not just assfags with bots. And candy.

[Dein]

One thing I would like to see from Assault in the near future would be new gear sets. I liked the set bonus idea and would like to see JSE sets for jobs be added into the assault reward list that took advantage of that. Of course this pipe dream would mean that the set bonuses on these new armors would make the set worth using often.

I'm probably going to play PSU and watch what SE does with the next update or two and decide what I'll do then.

[Eaglestrike]

If they had made Jailers level 90-95, it'd just be another BLM ZERG fest because level effects blm's a lot less than melee's. The pDIF loss just because of level correlation is a BIG problem with melee's vs HNM's. So making mobs that are higher level is only going to make it so BLM is the only DD around...

[Bananas]

-More exp areas
-Fix the sea bullshit so I don't have to keep faking "AFK" when my linkshell does that crap
-More gear
-Add some more force popped HNMs that actually drops some useful equipment.

[Plow]

The reason there's no progression is simply because they don't want most people to have the "rare" stuff.

When you make a game and intentionally exclude people from parts of it, you can't just keep making new parts that require the "exclusive" parts from before.

FFXI will never be fixed because they flat out don't believe you're worthy of having the items if you're not willing to cheat for them.