Heated Endgame Discussion

[Kyreth]

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.

Do it enough times, and the old indeed does become obselete. One layer doesn't do it. Two starts to. Three or four and you're seeing last year's useful gear becoming sale-to-vendor trash instead.

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.

(1)You think that SE shouldn't listen to the endgame crew and (2)only add stuff for them. (3)And that making the old, less important is bad.

(4)However, you also believe that SE should break the barriers of endgame, (5)or in otherwords render the old content not as useful or less important?

No, yes, yes,yes, and no. I believe S-E should kill the choke points that are one of the big problems now- the Ullis, the Fafnirs, the HNM's with long windows and unholy numbers of players (and RMT'ers) who want to actually do them.

It's not a few dozen players now with 70+ characters camping in order to actually fight these monsters, it's now from a pool of multiple 100's of players. S-E had a rate of fights vs. # of people able to fight X monster in mind when they initially put these monsters into the game, and restoring that rate relative to the larger high-level population is in order. And that further content be broad enough to allow for these large numbers of high-level characters to enjoy, but not draw so far away from the base of the game as to become unimaginable for new players.

Do I have all those answers? Fuck no, God or all-knowing Sage (lolSundi) I ain't. But that's why there's a community like this- to provide informed ideas and flaming fuckwit opinions to be tore apart alike, until useful things are derived from the chaos and the game made better and more playable as a result.

[layoneil]

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

depends on what you add and where you add it.

Ushikirimaru, Indra Katars and Astra Signa for example are completely obsolete, not less useful, just pretty much useless.

Crimson Mask has almost been completely obsoleted. Duelist's Chapeau is better and more accessible to more people.

if they continually go down the same path, it's very possible to make a lot of Lv 70-75 gear, completely obsolete.

whether that's good or bad, i don't know, that also depends on how they do it.

[divisortheory]

I'd much rather have very hard nm's that only 1-2 ls's per server can kill

that's exactly what they added in the last update.

[Kyreth]

I'd much rather have very hard nm's that only 1-2 ls's per server can kill

that's exactly what they added in the last update.

Sssh! Keep this up and somebody might stop camping Fafhogg and actually try Salvage.

[NynJa]

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.

You have no fuckin idea -.-

Linkshell event.....OOPS CANCELING IT BECAUSE OF DAY FOR ADAMANTOISE (yes this has seriously happened, on numerous occasions might I add). Its fucking retarded. I need to pull teeth just to get people to go to Salvage, like last week, day after maint. LS was scheduled to do Salvage, O SHIT CANT GO BECAUSE ITS DAY FOUR BEHEMOTH.

[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.

Do it enough times, and the old indeed does become obselete. One layer doesn't do it. Two starts to. Three or four and you're seeing last year's useful gear becoming sale-to-vendor trash instead.

That's kind of the point though, they haven't even done it once in years. And just because they do it once, doesn't mean that something else with follow immediately after, especially with this game.

The reason why SE doesn't add any new groundbreaking content is because they think that making the old less useful is bad. Which has left a lot of people frustrated.

[aurik]

Do it enough times, and the old indeed does become obselete. One layer doesn't do it. Two starts to. Three or four and you're seeing last year's useful gear becoming sale-to-vendor trash instead.

What exactly is wrong with tier 1 content becoming sell-to-vendor trash when there exists t2, t3, t4?

The prerequisite here is that there already exists a tier2 that you can hop to if you're sufficiently talented and have a good group.

Not only that, t1 content becomes stuff that people do purely for enjoyment. For example, I love meritting in Uleguerand and KRT, even though they fit the description of obsolete "teir 1" when it comes to merit camps. It's harder to do 15k+ in Uleguerand than it is to do 20k+ in Colibri Thickets, and it's harder to break 15k in KRT than it is to break 25k in Coli Thickets. But it's fun and easygoing and always available, so we do it anyway.

If they made all of sky obsolete, not even the gil farmers could scrape up enough money to justify their existence there (a majority of their money now comes from selling behemoth hides, damascus ingots, osodes and autumnstones). Then I could go and fight Byakko/Kirin/Faust for fun, even if the gear they drop are only useful for storing the entire sky-god set at the storage npc.

[aurik]

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.

You have no fuckin idea -.-

Linkshell event.....OOPS CANCELING IT BECAUSE OF DAY FOR ADAMANTOISE (yes this has seriously happened, on numerous occasions might I add). Its fucking retarded. I need to pull teeth just to get people to go to Salvage, like last week, day after maint. LS was scheduled to do Salvage, O SHIT CANT GO BECAUSE ITS DAY FOUR BEHEMOTH.

I have every fuckin idea, hence why I am not in one of those shells and in fact help run a shell which is focussed on the non-lame components of endgame.

[Khamsin]

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.

You have no fuckin idea -.-

Linkshell event.....OOPS CANCELING IT BECAUSE OF DAY FOR ADAMANTOISE (yes this has seriously happened, on numerous occasions might I add). Its fucking retarded. I need to pull teeth just to get people to go to Salvage, like last week, day after maint. LS was scheduled to do Salvage, O SHIT CANT GO BECAUSE ITS DAY FOUR BEHEMOTH.

I have every fuckin idea, hence why I am not in one of those shells and in fact help run a shell which is focussed on the non-lame components of endgame.

Khimaira, Cerberus, and Tiamat are notorious for popping right as we're gathering for Salvage.

[Ryko]

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.

I know you and waffles like pushing the whole "Hey I do plenty of end-game without hitting those bottlenecks" but hey, sorry, for a lot of jobs those are the only mobs that matter. You take away every sky/king drop from a WAR and you have a WAR that's a joke. This is completely excluding the possibility that you're capable of doing both sides of end-game which we all know isn't true to begin with. Maybe you guys are content with your relic 5's but if you havent figured out that you're pretty much a glaring minority in the end-game scene then you're never going to realize it. You can label the people who finally get sick of going 8-9 months without their dyna drop even showing let alone lotting to them, you can shun the people who look at salvage and realize that they have just as high a chance to luck out and score a piece from aery/khim/cerb/sky as they do of finishing anything of worth there as it is. By all means, feel free, but going "those parts of end-game are stupid" (and they are designed poorly) isn't going to stop people from considering it the greatest reward for the time you put into it.

[Senoska]

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.

I know you and waffles like pushing the whole "Hey I do plenty of end-game without hitting those bottlenecks" but hey, sorry, for a lot of jobs those are the only mobs that matter. You take away every sky/king drop from a WAR and you have a WAR that's a joke. This is completely excluding the possibility that you're capable of doing both sides of end-game which we all know isn't true to begin with. Maybe you guys are content with your relic 5's but if you havent figured out that you're pretty much a glaring minority in the end-game scene then you're never going to realize it.

you can rock some WAR AF2 yo.

[Ryko]

Maybe I'm just a tad miffed that we have a grand total of 2 homam hands and what, 1 nashira gages from all our time in limbus.

Maybe I'm just fed up with hearing people bitch that the last time thf hands/pld body/ranger body/socks (jerkin's not even useful wtf) dropped was before I quit.

Maybe.

I still think limbus is probably the most well designed aspect of end-game that exists currently, and all things considered that's not saying much.

Unfortunately this game fails harder than waking up from a wet dream at making the gear and items you obtain indicative of the time and effort you put into doing so.

[aurik]

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.

I know you and waffles like pushing the whole "Hey I do plenty of end-game without hitting those bottlenecks" but hey, sorry, for a lot of jobs those are the only mobs that matter. You take away every sky/king drop from a WAR and you have a WAR that's a joke. This is completely excluding the possibility that you're capable of doing both sides of end-game which we all know isn't true to begin with. Maybe you guys are content with your relic 5's but if you havent figured out that you're pretty much a glaring minority in the end-game scene then you're never going to realize it. You can label the people who finally get sick of going 8-9 months without their dyna drop even showing let alone lotting to them, you can shun the people who look at salvage and realize that they have just as high a chance to luck out and score a piece from aery/khim/cerb/sky as they do of finishing anything of worth there as it is. By all means, feel free, but going "those parts of end-game are stupid" (and they are designed poorly) isn't going to stop people from considering it the greatest reward for the time you put into it.

WAR is perhaps the only job that is significantly harmed by not pushing the omgkings agenda. And that's only because of ridill. A man/joy or jug/man warrior rocking normal haub and some random-ass pants is going to be just as effective as a well-geared thf, a well-geared sam, a well-geared ninja.

No, my LS doesn't have any "ridill-broken" WARs; what makes my LS "broken" as a whole is the fact we're good at this game and lacking a few pieces of gear isn't going to stop us from being capable as a whole of doing pretty much anything that a "real hnmls" can do.

We just choose not to waste our time doing nothing for a chance at a claim for a chance at a drop. I'd rather waste my time doing something for a chance of a drop; even if we end up skunked, it's better than having stood around staring at darters for the exact same result.

[NynJa]

The funny thing are the hypocritical statements that stem up...

People dont want to do Salvage because its "boring"...they "stand around and do nothing for the first 45 minutes"...yet what are kings ?? AFKing for 1 to 7 periods of 28 minutes out of 30 minutes (I think I worded that wrong, but you should get the point). Its these hypocritical statements that seriously irk me.

[Amadeo]

I'd much rather run around punching mobs naked and with gimp stats than stare at Darters for 28+ minutes repeatedly.

Mind numbing.

[governor]

I love the 28mins of AFK inbetween windows. Its just a matter of finding something else to do in that time and then kings aren't so bad.

[Ryko]

This is ignoring the concept that salvage requires pre-requisites and upkeep amongst other things and all it takes to get to dragon's aery is some silent oils.

My problem with salvage is simple, it's rather obvious SE threw it in without fully thinking it through.

[Xavier]

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?

A little validation to the groups that actually put in the massive amounts of time doesn't hurt once in a while. But I don't think I've made the argument that tier2 should be impossible for new players, just a lot more difficult.

Besides, FFXI isn't attracting new players specifically because of how limited it is to them. Beginning the game now, with all of the timesinks, is far too daunting for the majority of gamers.

I also want someone to say flat out that the loot pool on Fafnir/Nidhogg (easy) makes sense in comparison to Tiamat/Jorm/Vrtra/Hydra/Khim/Cerb (harder). Seriously. You're acting as if better rewards for harder fights is a crime.

[aurik]

This is ignoring the concept that salvage requires pre-requisites and upkeep amongst other things and all it takes to get to dragon's aery is some silent oils.

My problem with salvage is simple, it's rather obvious SE threw it in without fully thinking it through.

I spend less than 15k per salvage run on meds/food; I come well-stocked and I'm talking zones like Arrapago which are heavy on that sort of thing. The most onerous part of salvage for me is making 10 slots inventory to empty a hi-potion tank into, and I don't make it easy on myself with half-stacks of rainbow thread and sheep leather always taking up space.

The other major salvage pre-req (2000AP) can be knocked out in <20 minutes as long as you don't bring downs kids along with you. Add that to the time you're actually spending in the salvage zone and you're still looking at less time than a single "last window" hnm.

Is it perfect? No, it could be made better with some tweaking. Is it playable? Sure.

[Xavier]

Neither. I argue that your vision of "progression" leads to a dearth of new players, because it DOES become an immense timesink.

You act as if all of FFXI isn't already a timesink. And what new players? Do you see a ton of new characters being made every day? I don't.

Maybe the game would've been better if you got your AF1 at lvl 50-60 and never got another upgrade again. People play the game for gear. They can bullshit all they want about friends and wanting to be a team player, deep down, they all want to lot something. The ways to keep their interest are either continuing to add gear they want to lot, or make the gear they want somewhat unrealistic to obtain. FFXI is currently option two, and I really don't see why option one would break the game any further than it already is.

I'd rather be in a happy hell than straight hell.

There needs to be things from the past that can anchor the future, or there is no future for a game.

Nobody is talking about making past content obsolete. Adding 1 or 2 atk/acc, str/dex and the like to something that drops off a harder mob does not radically change the game. It at least makes sense. The problem with worldspawns is that they've gotten progressively less drops while getting harder and harder. Justify it, lol.

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.

The problem with this is that unless you give people a reason to care about expansion, ie, progression, they have no reason to expand beyond what they were already doing. It doesn't matter how many alternatives they give people, if the only reward is the thrill of the kill, almost nobody will bother to do it more than a handful of times.

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

No but I don't think I ever said anything about Dynamis being a faulty system, and have made it pretty clear I'm talking about how they handle worldspawn HNMs. Stick to the point and wipe that smile off your face because you didn't make a clever comment.