Pandemonium, Morgan Webb Causes Vomiting. Media Blitz Ensues

[Lordwafik]

The more bad press the better. Maybe then SE will stop acting like the worst programmers on earth...

Spoilers!

Spoiler: show

They're not acting

[LinktheDeme]

Pretty sure the programmer from Bob's Nintendo DS's game could code FFXI better single handedly

[tymora]

Coding the game is somewhat different from designing the fight. Blame the designers!

[Ace-o-fire]

How long to Kirin take back in the day? shit i remember it taking something like 3+ hours with something like 36 people there. Lord knows it was a shit ls and most of the players didn't know what endgame was like myself.

out of the 5 ive done... the last one i did took around maybe an hour and a half.

Give PW some time. if it is dead by November then we have some problems...


btw how many times has it poped now 3?

[Guitarman]

How long to Kirin take back in the day? shit i remember it taking something like 3+ hours with something like 36 people there. Lord knows it was a shit ls and most of the players didn't know what endgame was like myself.

out of the 5 ive done... the last one i did took around maybe an hour and a half.

Give PW some time. if it is dead by November then we have some problems...


btw how many times has it poped now 3?

5. the first ls, SA twice, Btl once, Apathy once.

Main difference between kirin and PW; we didnt know how to handle the summons for kirin, and how to set up the fight. SA, Btl and Apathy knew how to fight it. They knew how to kill the adds. It's the 20+ friggen forms with who knows how much hp per form, plus 12 new adds every single transformation. That's the difference. It's the slogging through all these fucking forms, rekilling it all these times thats stupid. It'd be like redoing the whole kirin fight, adds, 2hr and all 20 times. Would'nt be fun.

[Ace-o-fire]

5. the first ls, SA twice, Btl once, Apathy once.

Main difference between kirin and PW; we didnt know how to handle the summons for kirin, and how to set up the fight. SA, Btl and Apathy knew how to fight it. They knew how to kill the adds. It's the 20+ friggen forms with who knows how much hp per form, plus 12 new adds every single transformation. That's the difference. It's the slogging through all these fucking forms, rekilling it all these times thats stupid. It'd be like redoing the whole kirin fight, adds, 2hr and all 20 times. Would'nt be fun.

wow i didnt know all that shit... yep it's fucked. No more double named Boss HNM AV now PW.

[Sylphet]

Sorry I'm so late to this thread. I've been in a bit of an anti-FFXI mode this week!

Just to clarify some things.

I haven't been misquoted at all. Fusionx said he was writing an article and asked for some basic information and if there was anything else I wanted to get convey. I wasn't exactly sure how in-depth the article was going to be so it was pretty basic. Here's an exact copy of the PM I sent to fusionx in response to his query about the fight and the aftermath.

===================

LS name: Beyond the Limitation
Server: Seraph
LS Leader: Lhexh
LS website: community.beyondthelimitation.com (lame site, we know)

If you want a detailed writeup about everything that happened Ruke (Rkenshin on this forum) will be putting something together later this week - it will most likely be written up on his LJ: rukenshin.livejournal.com. We did collect a lot of very specific information regarding the fight but right now we're all still too beat from it to go through it in gory detail. We have no problem sharing all of our information with the FFXI community though.

If there's anything that our linkshell would like to get across right now to SE, it's that while the FFXI playerbase is always up for a challenge, we would like them to carefully consider their own warning that they put on the login of FFXI regarding not forgetting your work/friends/family. They have admitted that AV is intended to be an 18 hour fight. This is an absurd amount of time for anyone to remain focused on a video game. There is no pause or save in FFXI.. We are dedicated, hardcore players and we just reached the physical limits of being able to play. There are many reasons for people to stop killing an NM however when you continually make progress at it and are forced to stop because people are ill (multiple members of the ls actually ended up vomiting by the end of the night) from focusing intensely with no breaks for 18 hours.. then it needs to end.

We were as well-prepared as a ls could be to fight PW at this point. While a comparison to Absolute Virtue is inevitable, there's a big difference between making constant progress at a NM (like we did at PW) and futilely trying to bring it down to 95%. We are one of very few LS who have killed AV (not using the wall trick) so we know quite well what is futile and what is not. None of us doubt that PW can be killed. We just call into question exactly what the development team thinks is a reasonable from human beings.

Feel free to ask any more questions!

Best,

Syl

===================

I have not been contacted by any of the other media who have quoted me or referred to things I have said on this forum and in that PM.

It has become a bit sensationalized in my opinion but the point remains. Many of us don't have a desire to play FFXI right now. I won't speak for others in my shell but on a personal level it's because I know that it did go too far. I'm personally ashamed to have put that much effort into something that made me feel that horrible (not just demoralized). Not only did I affect myself but I also motivated people to do the same thing I was doing despite knowing how I felt and that they likely felt the same. (Read: THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT PEOPLE WANTED TO LOG AND I/WE FORCED THEM TO STAY ONLINE - NO, NOTHING LIKE THAT HAPPENED). We all fed off of each other's motivation and really hung in there until way past when it should have ended. I think about whether or not I'd feel the same way if we won and frankly.. even if we did win there's no way in hell I'd ever do that fight again. No reward, to me justifies that kind of output. This is game after all, and while games aren't by nature devoid of physical or mental effort, in cases where that kind of effort is present, there's some sort of responsibility to minimize any detrimental effects. Professional athletes push themselves to their physical limits but do we enjoy it or call them pussies when they get injured? People take precautions to make sure that does not happen again if at all possible. Likewise, can a video game company stop someone from staying up for 24 hours or neglecting their real life for in-game accomplishments? No, of course they can't. There will always be people who do that. However, I do believe that it's completely different to enable that behavior by specifically creating things that require unreasonable effort.

You can always say it was our choice to play for a long as we did and you'd be correct. Every one of us enjoyed the challenge initially and were proud of getting further than anyone else. Fact of the matter is that it's partly us to blame for what happened in that we let it happen and partly SE for designing it that way. It would be nice for SE to do their part in addressing the issues raised by this.

[anathema]

yeah. kirin was probably meant to be a relatively long and grueling fight, but at least players were able to develop a strategy based on experience with the NM on how to kill it. oh, we should probably kite kirin so we don't get clapped and stonega'd to death. oh, it summons all of the other gods, so let's have a separate alliance or party take care of them.

there is nothing in the AV fight to suggest that it's beatable and it doesn't give any clues on how the hell to stop its ridiculousness...

PW is just retardedly long for no reason.

[Malumultimus]

I truly feel like BtL deserved the win and can't even imagine what it must feel like to be so morally broken, mentally crushed, and physically sick of the game right now...

But I gotta' say, I'm not opposed to there being 18-hour Mega Boss fights, and the reason is because there are people willing to do them, and if there's people willing to be so crazy about a video game, SE retains the right to satiate their...uh...very unique addictions. And I like the fact that there's big bosses in FFXI who are never killed, since Vrtra and Kirin are a joke these days.

And people will say, "They shouldn't put crap in the game virtually no one can attain!" ...but this was SE's reasoning for Relic Weapons, was it not? They said the average player wouldn't be able to get them, and that's that, and the average player...to my knowledge...accepts it.

Or another example. You could say Absolute Virtue and Pandemonium Warden are just an extreme example of some other End-game (or even normal) aspects of the game, where players outright refuse to do things because of how long and tedious they are -- and it's perfectly fine. Plenty of people refuse to go to HNMs everyday and sit there for hours competing for a monster they don't care about that will more often times than not either kill them or drop squat. Or how about sky? Unless Linkshells specifically focus on sky, I never see them up there anymore. Instead, they just buy God pops off others or tell individual members to get the pops themselves.

In my honest opinion, I think the true form of Pandemonium Warden should've been it. How demoralizing is it to finally fight the bastard who's been chuckling at your endless endeavors for the past 18 hours...only for him to full heal and insta-wipe you? At 75%, nothing should've happened. That should've been the final deal. The other thing SE could change is the HP of the Lamps. From what I read, the Lamps are 25k a piece and the Warden is 100k? I'm of the opinion that the 8 Lamps atleast shouldn't have more HP combined than the Warden himself.

In short, I hope the members of BtL feel better - they were definitely screwed - but I disagree with everyone cheering on the bad press.

As a sidenote...at the end of the fight...how much easier would it have been if the "@75% everything goes to hell" thing had been known?

[Mojo]

You're fucking stupid for thinking for even one second that an 18+ hour fight in a video game is acceptable.

[Malumultimus]

You're fucking stupid for thinking for even one second that an 18+ hour fight in a video game is acceptable.

I'm sorry you feel I'm "fucking stupid" but you pay to play the game, you don't pay to have a Hachiryu Haramaki.

And I know people who liked games so much they played them for a lot longer than 18 hours straight, so it isn't impossible - it's just ludicrous.

But...as a player who can't make more than 100k a week...you don't see me complaining about Relic Weapons. And people who only play for a couple hours each day don't complain about HNM windows, either.

[AnonRamuh]

But I gotta' say, I'm not opposed to there being 18-hour Mega Boss fights, and the reason is because there are people willing to do them, and if there's people willing to be so crazy about a video game, SE retains the right to satiate their...uh...very unique addictions. And I like the fact that there's big bosses in FFXI who are never killed, since Vrtra and Kirin are a joke these days.

At face value I kind of agree with you. But then I think of it from the other angle.

Lots of people have "very unique addictions" that no sane person would ever "satiate". Knowingly satiating an addiction would make an individual or company liable for most anything bad that happens while that addiction is being satiated. This is, in no uncertain terms, paramount to a grave lawsuit.

Nor would I ever condone satiating any "very unique addictions" that so obviously can be unhealthy. This isn't just about what the FFXI fan base wants. It's about what is morally acceptable for a company to do.

[Malumultimus]

The company just made two bosses that are realistically impossible to kill. It's not like anyone forces you to fight them. Are you really going to say there needs to be a limit on how hard video game fights should be? Absolute Virtue and Pandemonium Warden are the "extra bosses" of FFXI.

I'm not saying I'd engage in an 18 hour long fight, but it's not impossible for me to and I know there are some others that are the same. My first moments on the game, I played for just under 40 hours straight. My friend once played a fighting game of his for 3 days straight. When I was a little kid, I watched my uncle play an SNES game for 24 straight hours. These were all our decisions.

Plus, a Linkshell determined on killing these things could do it without anyone fighting it for that long with the proper timing. You just need to want it that bad. Most of us won't.

[ertyu]

People who say you aren't forced to do the fights so it doesn't matter how long they are are fucking retarded.

That is all.

[Malumultimus]

Apparently the new strategy for AV/PW is to concoct indirect, simple-minded butthurt complaints...

SE wouldn't know balance if it kicked down their door and sodomized them with a light fixture, so I wouldn't be surprised if they nerf AV and PW, anyways. But I don't think they're worried about losing fans just because two random, unnecessary mobs are stupid-hard. If they did, Sage Sundi wouldn't have said, with a straight face, that AV could take up to 18 hours; and the other guy, who plays, said their LS gave up on AV. If a developer gives up on AV, I think that's a message...

[Xno Kappa]

Can a mod just start fucking banning the people with the, "lulz 18hrs isn't sh1t, i iz betta tehn j00," self-esteem issues? Seriously, in the words of one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived;
You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else.

[Septimus]

Apparently the new strategy for AV/PW is to concoct indirect, simple-minded butthurt complaints...

SE wouldn't know balance if it kicked down their door and sodomized them with a light fixture, so I wouldn't be surprised if they nerf AV and PW, anyways. But I don't think they're worried about losing fans just because two random, unnecessary mobs are stupid-hard. If they did, Sage Sundi wouldn't have said, with a straight face, that AV could take up to 18 hours; and the other guy, who plays, said their LS gave up on AV. If a developer gives up on AV, I think that's a message...

No, the real solution is to say that you think that 18 hour fights are great, even when you didn't participate in it.

And lets change this:

http://www.septimusprime.com/images/...urPlayersA.jpg

to this:

http://www.septimusprime.com/images/...urPlayersB.jpg

That's my little buddy in action!

[Malumultimus]

Can a mod just start fucking banning the people with the, "lulz 18hrs isn't sh1t, i iz betta tehn j00," self-esteem issues? Seriously, in the words of one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived;
You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else.

That is definitely not what I was saying. I could fight for 18 hours because I have no life. x_x; I didn't say 18 hours isn't shit, I said I think it's alright that two optional Mega Bosses in the game take that long to kill. I don't think their drops are worth it, but if others do, they can work out a plan to make 18 hours easier to live with...as long as they also don't really have lives. =/

No, the real solution is to say that you think that 18 hour fights aren't horrendous, because you have no plans of ever participating in them and don't think 95% of the players should either.

[Septimus]

That is definitely not what I was saying. I could fight for 18 hours because I have no life. x_x; I didn't say 18 hours isn't shit, I said I think it's alright that two optional Mega Bosses in the game take that long to kill. I don't think their drops are worth it, but if others do, they can work out a plan to make 18 hours easier to live with...as long as they also don't really have lives. =/

So basically what you are saying is: "I don't want to do it, but fuck everyone who wants that gear- they should either put up with a fight that only a deranged person would think is fair, or not get it."

AV and PW drop some nice gear, but in no way is any of it "18 hour fight" nice. Why do I even bother though...

[Malumultimus]

So basically what you are saying is: "I don't want to do it, but fuck everyone who wants that gear- they should either put up with a fight that only a deranged person would think is fair, or not get it."

And as I stated before...for me, it's no different than say Relic Weapons or the Kraken Club. There's no way in hell I'll ever get them and even if I had the means I don't think I would (all that gil could fund quite a lot). It doesn't mean I don't want them, it just means I'm not one of the few people who'll ever attain them.

Why is that such a problem? Or do you simply not notice all the players who long for even 500k, or shit, a semi-decent Linkshell?