Heated Endgame Discussion

[Aerin]

less arguing more excuses from SE please.

^^^^^^^^

What he said.

2nd

[Priran]

someone should start a ninjiz deadpool

Whats that? something about a game where you pick who will die?

no, it's when you bet on how soon someone will die.

or in this case, takes a banzerfaust.

[Xavier]

At least the first derail was still kinda on topic about Square and its handling of the game. I don't even know how we got to rdm/nin tanking now.

[rezn0r]

Yea we all know some of the best items in the game come from monsters that are 3 years old. HOWEVER, one thing SE doesnt want to do is make the game a joke. Lets get real, Merits, new merit abilities have made a lot of the game lolworthy. Hell Ive see rdms tank tiamat, and a jp ls Manaburned faffy the other day with burst 2. The more gear they give us the easier the game becomes. If they release uber gear to top previous gear every update people will be soloing wyrms in a few months. Do we need new gear yes, does it have to top king abj gear every update no.

right there

[Xavier]

Yea we all know some of the best items in the game come from monsters that are 3 years old. HOWEVER, one thing SE doesnt want to do is make the game a joke. Lets get real, Merits, new merit abilities have made a lot of the game lolworthy. Hell Ive see rdms tank tiamat, and a jp ls Manaburned faffy the other day with burst 2. The more gear they give us the easier the game becomes. If they release uber gear to top previous gear every update people will be soloing wyrms in a few months. Do we need new gear yes, does it have to top king abj gear every update no.

right there

so long as the purpose of new gear is to continue to kill the old monsters, you're right

[Aerin]

who was asking for every update to top king gear?

we're complaining that since those gears were introduced nothing has been added that tops them. While that is nice for a while, 3 years+ is a bit excessive.

The fact is that SE will not increase the level cap, fine. So give us monsters (not just HNM regular mobs too) in new areas that have an increased resistance/evasion etc. And give us gear that helps to compensate for that.

That's how they should have been going at it all along. I admit though we may have passed the point of no return on that. Because now adding that gear so late will make 80% of the rest of the game too easy.

Or maybe just make the gear region or area specific, level 75 required, questable only after you beat RoZ, CoP to make sure only veteran (or "core") players get them, something along those lines

[Lordender]

Should be about 2 more days until we see the answers or lolthursday at the latest

[Khajit]

People acting like progression is bad and will be horrible because people will trio kings ect need to realize that if SE gives us some decent gear progression people might actually be able to kill AV.

[Lordender]

personally I wouldn't mind SE putting in weapons from new HNM's that when equipped you get some kinda curse or negative effects that has new spells/ja/job traits on them like trial weapons that you have to unlock to learn those things permanently ;x

[Khamsin]

Maybe they should create an HNM that is only feasibly killed by an alliance of ebody ridill WARs, shura BB MNKs, gjallarhorn BRDs, kraken DRKs, shadow ring/mantle d.ring aegis hauteclaire PLDs, etc. all sporting ninurta's sashes, mars rings, and novio/novia earrings. Would that satisfy people's need for progression in the HNM scene?

[psnsonixx]

Maybe they should create an HNM that is only feasibly killed by an alliance of ebody ridill WARs, shura BB MNKs, gjallarhorn BRDs, kraken DRKs, shadow ring/mantle d.ring aegis hauteclaire PLDs, etc. all sporting ninurta's sashes, mars rings, and novio/novia earrings. Would that satisfy people's need for progression in the HNM scene?

You should work for SE. You are hired.

[Kyreth]

And I think the core of bottlenecking is the HNM/NM system as it stands today. Fix that, and you fix the biggest collective pain in the ass we have in the game.

Ok, so lets say they fix the bottlenecking. This will in turn make it a bit quicker for people to get their gear, right? After everyone has their said desired gear, then what?

Use it to merit? But wait... Whats the point of meritting...? You were able to kill the biggest HNMs before the merits, so why are they necessary?

I may be hearing people wrong, but it seems like you want to keep those king abj's as the top of the line equip.

What percentage of the game now have a set of abjuration gear? How about CoP rings? Salvage armor? Full set of AF2? Homam? A Riddill? D-Ring? Etc, etc. Even -with- decent access, people will be busy trying (and eventually winning) the stuff they wanted to do. Progression in big steps is a mirage- it only indicates the beginning of a rift between new players and old players, which eventually only resolves in no more new players and a fatal loss of server population. Why does FFXI get new players and keep em? Hope. That level 1 can see someone with abjuration gear and actually work his way up through the existing content to a point where he can be contribute meaningfully to an HNMLS, Dynamis LS, or the like. There are no gaps of gear between what he can get and the stuff he can do getting it.

Even with the bottlenecks fixed, there's plenty of stuff to do. Will it be constant? No. That's the one thing universal to all MMORPG's- there will be a community of players who consume content faster than it appears. A lot of those people can be found here, in places like BG. But it'll mean the majority of the playerbase has much more to sink their teeth into- and that's a more satisfying gaming experience. A better game means more players. More players means more dev dollars. More money for the devs means more new content. More new content means happier end-game players.

As long as new tidbits get fed into the gaping maw that is "uber" playerdom, there will be people stuck happily on their FFXI accounts. I think a little more elbow room is one of the keys to that.

[Kyreth]

"Progression" eventually would lead to the death of new endgame groups on servers, simply due to the increasing timesinks involved in not kissing the top dog's ass to get a hand up.

Are you arguing against a timesink with a timesink as the alternative?

Don't have progression to continually get better gear, just have the same gear near unobtainable for the majority of players?

Your argument is kind of not following anything because if you assume, like divsory, that there is no way to increase the playerbase at this point, then theres no reason to cater to new players. If you have no new players to cater to, the old content should be worthless anyway.

Neither. I argue that your vision of "progression" leads to a dearth of new players, because it DOES become an immense timesink. I also believe that increasing the ability to do endgame content is part of the solution, not maintaining the current infinite cockblock that is Ulli and company, or Fafnir, or KB, or any number of HNM"s.

A game that only caters to and sacrifices it's original base to attempt to sate the insatiable endgame crew only destroys it's own source of new income, and loses population to normal attrition/burnout of old players. Rendering old content obselete is like slash-and-burn farming. It's bad for the game despite any short-term shoring up of the endgame. Keeping the -beginning and middle- appealing matters too. Otherwise, you have level 1 players looking at the top like it was three Mt. Everests, saying "Fuck this" and going off to play Maple Story instead. ^^

I also believe that breaking the impasse on endgame content will do good things for the game- heck, it'll attract new players, recall old players and hold them. The malaise on FFXI is a sense that progress stagnates around 75- that you can't do a good portion of the endgame because it mostly takes staring at an empty space and praying you claim what pops in it before 12 other groups do.

That needs to stop. It needed to stop a year ago. If FFXI is to get it's act together, it'd be doing fine to start by the March update (of course, it likely won't).

[Kyreth]

Exactly my point. Content is not being progressed past- it is being rendered obselete.

Its a good thing the real world doesn't work the way you want the game to, because otherwise we'd still be riding around in our horse and buggies because we wouldn't want cars to make them obsolete.

Progress has always come at the expense of the past, and generally is accepted because its a step-forward. People quit this game because there is nothing to do after you've obtained the only set of gear in the game that matters.

You camp Nidhogg to get his drops, just to keep camping Nidhogg to kill him with his drops, because hes the only NM whos drops really matter. There needs to be something more.

It'd be a better thing if the game world worked like the real world- but last I check, Windurst is pretty much the same as when I logged in as a L1 RDM. Game worlds still have that quaint spot where you ganked your first newbie monster, and without a feeling of continuity, you lose the people who come from there before they ever rise to your level. There needs to be things from the past that can anchor the future, or there is no future for a game. Push that "progression" too far, and you end up losing the people who wanted to progress through to begin with. Then your game is DOA, because those are the people who put enough dollars in S-E's pocket to make your new content. The people who get all their shinies and quit? A pittance compared to the number who crash up against the bottlenecks and vanish in frustration.

Game worlds need to expand more than progress. If you have new things to do that demand alternatives to your "best gear"- then you have other things to do than camp Nidhogg. That's what I look for in the future of FFXI.

So tell me- that Aegis you got. Nidhogg dropped it, amirite?

[aurik]

The malaise on FFXI is a sense that progress stagnates around 75- that you can't do a good portion of the endgame because it mostly takes staring at an empty space and praying you claim what pops in it before 12 other groups do.

That's funny, I do lots of endgame stuff which doesn't involve warring over claims on otherwise pushover monsters. Salvage, Limbus, Dynamis, KSNM/BCNM/ENM and various other battlefields, sea, pop-NMs, endgame-level meritting...the ONLY place where the "claim the NM" mechanic bottlenecks is Kings and Sky and to some degree tiamat/cerb/khimaira.

The real problem is that "endgame" shells treat these bottlenecked activities as the holy grail of FFXI, dropping anything and everything to camp for a chance at claim for a chance at a drop. But, as the amount of truly overpowered items coming from these bottlenecked activities steadily diminishes, maybe the incentive to camp will drop as well.

[Lordwafik]

But, as the amount of truly overpowered items coming from these bottlenecked activities steadily diminishes, maybe the incentive to camp will drop as well.

Unfortunately I don't see the "popularity" of these things diminishing, as many LS's are still stuck in JP mode.

'back in the day, only JP's were 75, and at 75 all they did was camp kings

NA's get 75, and follow what the other 75's were doing

New 75's replace old 75's, and see they're still camping kings.

Alot of LS's think this is the only way to play FFXI, and just waste time on kings or whatever the JPs used to do. I don't mind personally, less people in my activities the better Just don't complain when your LS forces you to do <boring event> for the nth time.

[Aerin]

How many new players does SE even get per month or even per year? The game isn't exactly on the top seller shelves.

And what the fuck is maple story?

By adding better gear, you don't make the old obselete, it just becomes less useful.

A game that only caters to and sacrifices it's original base to attempt to sate the insatiable endgame crew only destroys it's own source of new income, and loses population to normal attrition/burnout of old players.
Rendering old content obselete is like slash-and-burn farming.

I also believe that breaking the impasse on endgame content will do good things for the game- heck, it'll attract new players, recall old players and hold them

So let me get this straight.

You think that SE shouldn't listen to the endgame crew and only add stuff for them. And that making the old, less important is bad.

However, you also believe that SE should break the barriers of endgame, or in otherwords render the old content not as useful or less important?

[Khamsin]

Maybe they should create an HNM that is only feasibly killed by an alliance of ebody ridill WARs, shura BB MNKs, gjallarhorn BRDs, kraken DRKs, shadow ring/mantle d.ring aegis hauteclaire PLDs, etc. all sporting ninurta's sashes, mars rings, and novio/novia earrings. Would that satisfy people's need for progression in the HNM scene?

You should work for SE. You are hired.

That's what people are asking for. It must be what they want. They want new HNMs that are only killable with gear from the previous tier. They want progression. So naturally, if the 3 year old content is "Tier 1" then "Tier 2" must require an alliance of people maxed on "Tier 1" gear to be able to have a chance at killing it.

[Kyreth]

The malaise on FFXI is a sense that progress stagnates around 75- that you can't do a good portion of the endgame because it mostly takes staring at an empty space and praying you claim what pops in it before 12 other groups do.

The real problem is that "endgame" shells treat these bottlenecked activities as the holy grail of FFXI, dropping anything and everything to camp for a chance at claim for a chance at a drop. But, as the amount of truly overpowered items coming from these bottlenecked activities steadily diminishes, maybe the incentive to camp will drop as well.

Bingo- that sense that the bottlenecked content is the be-all and end-all of endgame.

It's artificially so important becuase it's been made artifically so goddamned hard to actually do at any reasonable pace, since so many LS'es are fighting over that claim- because there's no other way to get those shiny trophies of war or gear up "properly".

Break the bottlenecks, and we may very well see a lot less frustration at the top.

[psnsonixx]

well personally it's what I want.. I want challenging nm's.. look at Khim.. it's just a joke.. I want rewards on our current hnms.. how come fafnir drops better items then Vrtra? Why don't the 3 wyrms drop Monarch orb.. or abj.. or anything useful.. Tiamat has gaiters, yes.. we love them.. to death.. but vrtra/jorm .. zzzzzzzzz.. Khim sword i won't get into but let's say most people are happy with it, that's fine.. it's too bad he's weak sauce. How about a nice thunder based dragon that you can't stun.. and make it instanced too so people can't bring 40 people like they do to vrtra... I'd much rather have very hard nm's that only 1-2 ls's per server can kill instead of nm's like fafnir where you got 200 people in the zone lagging/botting/whatever to get items.. how many ls's can REALLY lose to fafnir these days? it's killable easily with 6 or less, and most ls's bring 12-18.. I just want to be challenged.