Endgame Rewards and Situational Gear

[ringthree]

I actually pretty much agree with you. The only difference that I wanted to point out is that because of the way FFXI is designed you have to use old content over and over. I completely agree though that this is the exact opposite of WoW and that neither has a very good system in this regard.

[Ruuz]

Yeah, since the stats decide how good a set of armor is, unless the stats keep getting better and better, the old stuff will always be better.

[Arthars]

salvage + homam and ebody are the real rewards for now

i doubt anything will beat full usu and morrigan and ebody yet, interms of end game rewards

[ronin sparthos]

Yeah, since the stats decide how good a set of armor is, unless the stats keep getting better and better, the old stuff will always be better.

The gear cant get much better because we're already at the tipping point in player strength vs monster strength. With all the buffs players are getting, all it'd take is one new set of gear to throw things off balance.

Barring NMs like Pandemonium Warden that are a challenge more because they take forever to organize spawns, FFXI has capped out on difficult NMs that call gear into question. Most of our upgrades are to get better at what we already do, not to stand any chance against a challenge.

[Ruuz]

You are right that things are already too easy for well geared players, but that doesnt mean you cant make them more powerful. You just have to balance it with harder monsters. SE just has problems with either making monsters too easy or fucking impossible. This game would be great if they could figure out how find the in between.

[FailureMidgard]

The gear cant get much better because we're already at the tipping point in player strength vs monster strength. With all the buffs players are getting, all it'd take is one new set of gear to throw things off balance.

Barring NMs like Pandemonium Warden that are a challenge more because they take forever to organize spawns, FFXI has capped out on difficult NMs that call gear into question. Most of our upgrades are to get better at what we already do, not to stand any chance against a challenge.

Umm, what? There's all sorts of ways you are wrong. It may not be the "amazing" endgame people are so used to here, where the "difficulty" of killing Nidhogg is getting claim on it, but what if they used rage timers as part of the difficulty of the fight? What if salvage got dropped down to 60 minutes instead of 100?

You don't need to have some overpowered enemy that has 8 different 2hrs that wipe your alliance in order to add a challenge. Start an epeen thread, and figure out how fast people have killed Nidhogg. Take the fastest time someone has said, subtract 1 minute from that, and make that his new rage timer. I guarantee you in less than a week every LS that is worth it's salt will still kill him, and a bunch of others will be left in the dust. In any case, it might make the fight at least borderline challenging, or at least give you a reason to have the gear.

As for NMs, for the most part, FFXI doesn't require you to have decent gear to do anything. Most HNM shells I've had the pleasure to watch run around with gimped out idiot BLMs who have no earthly clue about the simplest game mechanics, and yet they can still kill nearly everything. How is FFXI "capped out" on this? What NMs do you believe are truly challenging besides PW and AV? Pretty sure you don't need any special gear to do any fight really. A small bit of intelligence and you're set.

And finally, no new gear would throw the game off-balance. There is no balance in FFXI. Don't get me wrong, I like the game a lot, but it isn't about balance. /nin is the most unbalanced thing I've ever seen in any mmo.

Any challenge that exists in this game exists in a micro-management level. I get annoyed with myself when I make an error - not because it will -ever- cause me to fail at what I am doing, but just because I know I could have done better. Gear helps, but I guess what I'm trying to say is, in the end, the groups that succeed will probably do so regardless of what gear they are even wearing. Give them all passive 80% haste, and all the HNMs they kill, the salvage runs they do, will go the exact same - that is, the events aren't even hard. And the terrible shells that fail to kill a single NM in salvage with 10+ people will still fail to kill a single NM in salvage with 10+ people. The game wouldn't be the least bit broken.

[ronin sparthos]

Umm, what? There's all sorts of ways you are wrong. It may not be the "amazing" endgame people are so used to here, where the "difficulty" of killing Nidhogg is getting claim on it, but what if they used rage timers as part of the difficulty of the fight? What if salvage got dropped down to 60 minutes instead of 100?

My point is that FFXI in its current state for the typical endgamer is not that terribly difficult if you have basic coordination going on, perhaps you misunderstood me. A good linkshell will never hit the rage timers on any HNM unless they have a serious problem going on regarding coordination. (It happens to every shell on bad days) Hell, according to SE, the rage timers are only there to stop people deliberately trying to hold an HNM to manipulate the TOD and not a measure of difficulty. Only AV and PW have timers that are meant to be part of the challenge and that's partly because SE did not want to be seen as being overly cruel on the challenge level of those 2 HNMs.

You don't need to have some overpowered enemy that has 8 different 2hrs that wipe your alliance in order to add a challenge. Start an epeen thread, and figure out how fast people have killed Nidhogg. Take the fastest time someone has said, subtract 1 minute from that, and make that his new rage timer. I guarantee you in less than a week every LS that is worth it's salt will still kill him, and a bunch of others will be left in the dust. In any case, it might make the fight at least borderline challenging, or at least give you a reason to have the gear.

The problem is that new HNMs that get released are smoked by resident players within 24hours of release. Ixion? Sandworm? Smoked within a 24hour span. Resorting to "who has the quicker kill" as a gauge of who is the better HNM shell means that the challenge is inherently too easy. For Lakshmi, the last world-spawn challenge was Vrtra before the zergfests were devised and it took a good long while for it to be taken down. It was an event when a linkshell tried and thats how a new world-spawn should be... for a short while. Few HNMs ever make this cut, most end up on farm status within the week.

My argument is not that SE should churn out more stupid HNMs like AV (sheer difficulty) and PW (sheer time to amass pop items) but the difficulty level of HNMs needs to be rising as fast as the players powers are. There is no reason that within a week an HNM should be devolving into "who can zerg the shit outta this the fastest". There is a happy medium between stupid-hard AV content and stupid-easy content and SE has yet to find it.

As for NMs, for the most part, FFXI doesn't require you to have decent gear to do anything. Most HNM shells I've had the pleasure to watch run around with gimped out idiot BLMs who have no earthly clue about the simplest game mechanics, and yet they can still kill nearly everything. How is FFXI "capped out" on this? What NMs do you believe are truly challenging besides PW and AV? Pretty sure you don't need any special gear to do any fight really. A small bit of intelligence and you're set.

Thats my point, there are no gear checks on any HNMs. A group of full AF 75s could struggle a Fafnir kill and a group of decked 75s could drop him in 7mins. Both groups kill Fafnir at the end of the day. The very idea that better gear only speeds up kills is problematic, it boils everything down to finesse. In the ideal situation, the full AF 75s should be vaporized by Fafnir and forced to come back with better gear while the decked 75s are given a reasonable challenge to justify the gear.

And finally, no new gear would throw the game off-balance. There is no balance in FFXI. Don't get me wrong, I like the game a lot, but it isn't about balance. /nin is the most unbalanced thing I've ever seen in any mmo.

SE seems to feel differently because they have danced around gear like Adaman Hauberk for the longest time. They realize that if they surpass this gear, the game is going to go easy-mode at a rapid pace. Weapons like Hagun, Martial Gun and Elemental Staves have boxed the game into a corner where all they can do is dance around these items creating sidegrades that most people dont really care for. I agree with you when you say that the game is not balanced but SE seems to feel differently based on gear that gets released in patches. How many years has E/V Bow sat at the pinnacle of Ranger weaponry?

Its almost laughable when a Martial Gun could likely beat the Death Penalty given the difficulty level of obtaining each but SE strives to maintain this "balance".

The game doesnt need to be WoW-like where gear gets obsoleted at a record pace but at the least FFXI could drop some gear that needs to be strived for to meet the new challenges presented to the playerbase.

[FailureMidgard]

Huh? Your original post stated that new gear would throw it off balance.

If the current NMs are all too easy regardless of gear (and they can be killed by people with relic), giving all your melee 5% more haste and 10 more weapon damage, and your mages a single staff that upped damage done by 20% would not "throw things off balance."

Due to the fact that these rage timers are a joke, anyone doing more damage really means nothing. Letting healers heal for more or have more regen would also not throw things off balance.

Where would the balance changes be? Only in timed events that people barely fail - perhaps some average Einherjar shells that fail a T3 by 1-2 minutes. But really, a lot of those shells fail because their members don't understand how to maximize their damage output/etc anyway, so I'm not too sure how much said changes would make.

As for making things more difficult, their next events just need to be stricter on the timer. Any NM they add that follows their current plan for endgame will be beaten in a week. I 100% agree. But what if they raged soon? What if beating the rage -was- part of the challenge? That is the only way they can really make gear matter. It doesn't even have to be a boring normal rage timer. Make the mob astral flow once every 3 minutes, and it does more and more damage each time. The longer you keep it alive, the more it hurts.

In any case, I'm not saying to gauge shells by "who can kill it quicker". I'm saying make Nidhogg rage @ X minutes, where X is a somewhat low, but not too unreasonable matter. Make people have to put out good damage to beat the timer.

It's hard for something to be a challenge when ideas like "holding parties" exist with 2-3 people that can survive indefinitely vs said mob. My main point is your statement that
"The gear cant get much better because we're already at the tipping point in player strength vs monster strength. With all the buffs players are getting, all it'd take is one new set of gear to throw things off balance."
is way off.

[Hyan]

Thats my point, there are no gear checks on any HNMs. A group of full AF 75s could struggle a Fafnir kill and a group of decked 75s could drop him in 7mins. Both groups kill Fafnir at the end of the day. The very idea that better gear only speeds up kills is problematic, it boils everything down to finesse. In the ideal situation, the full AF 75s should be vaporized by Fafnir and forced to come back with better gear while the decked 75s are given a reasonable challenge to justify the gear.

Can't say I agree with this. If a group loses a fight the reason shouldn't be "their gear sucks" but "their skills/cooperation/etc. sucks". Even if it justifies the gear, IMO you shouldn't be blocked from a fight because of your equips (alone).

[Ruuz]

I think what Failure meant when he said the game is not balanced is that the jobs are not balanced. For most aspects of the game, at least two jobs are completely ignored (BST and PUP). For high level exp, over half the jobs are ignored, and for endgame, things are much the same. Sure, a skilled player can fit themselves in, but when you already have events down to a science, efficiency and reliability are much more important.

The same can be said for sub jobs. /NIN is really the best example, since just by subbing NIN you gain the best damage mitigation ability in the game, without really loosing anything.

[arus2001]

Can't say I agree with this. If a group loses a fight the reason shouldn't be "their gear sucks" but "their skills/cooperation/etc. sucks". Even if it justifies the gear, IMO you shouldn't be blocked from a fight because of your equips (alone).

Problem with people who think only those who are decked out should be able to fight certain mobs is that a lot of the time it just boils down them being greedy little shits and wanting to AH or merc off whatever for the greatest profits possible once they're done gearing themselves up. Of course, there's also the glaring disconnect of progression where an individual new to the endgame scene just might not be able to get into an established shell because their apps are perpetually closed. Drama Toramas aside, that's probably one of the biggest contributors for creating the "gimp" shells who wind up needing the whole hour to kill a Fafnir they miraculously claimed.

Really, it sucks watching people take forever to kill something you know your group could do a lot faster. Prior to the April update, the JPs on our server had Ixion on a stranglehold because 4-9am windows really wasn't a good time for the NA side. If it spawned early, they'd just kite it around doing the minimum amount of damage healed by Memento just to avoid GMing. And even if it spawned late, they weren't much faster on tickling it. It's been a bit better since then, but it's pretty obvious they still try to keep things in their prime time.

The only truly elegant solution is guaranteeing fights. Sacrifice drop rates a little in exchange for people actually getting a shot? I think people would be okay with that. SSR level of retardation? Certainly not so. The funny thing is, though, fights of above average difficulty do exist or can happen if they don't throw more DRKs at it, but they're often avoided due to either poor drops or alternative paths like with ZNMs. You also get people looking to work around the difficulty through DoT/Zone nuking to bring things to a more low man setting. Actually, that's probably one of SE's biggest flaws: Large group content not rewarding enough of the people who participate. A mob that needs an alliance or more shouldn't drop one or two things if you're lucky. That's probably my only lingering beef with Einherjar, abysmal chest drops in non-Odin chambers aside.

[ninjafox]

A mob that needs an alliance or more shouldn't drop one or two things if you're lucky. That's probably my only lingering beef with Einherjar, abysmal chest drops in non-Odin chambers aside.

This right here is, IMO, what SE doesn't seem to understand.

[ronin sparthos]

Huh? Your original post stated that new gear would throw it off balance.

I stand by my post that if SE surpassed some current gear in the game that we'd go into broken territory for players that already show mastery with what we have in the game. People already have zerged some of the hardest content in the game - better gear without balancing the scales on the monster side would create imbalance.

Jobs aren't supposed to be balanced but the difficulty of a monster versus a group of people is roughly supposed to be when the content is launched. No one expects Adamantoise to be a challenge anymore but when you drop Dark Ixion, its supposed to be hard for at least a short while.

HQ staves are a popular flashpoint of angst within the playerbase but if SE decided to completely surpass them with a new HNM drop what would happen? Events that were already simplistic would become even easier to overcome and without new challenges the game would stagnate. The same goes for many other pieces of gear that make up the top tier of gear in this game.

Im not against new gear but SE has to balance player buffs (through gear) with monster buffs. If you buff players too much, things get too easy and if buff monsters too much you have AV-content. Currently the scales are tipping a bit too much towards powerful players.

As for making things more difficult, their next events just need to be stricter on the timer. Any NM they add that follows their current plan for endgame will be beaten in a week. I 100% agree. But what if they raged soon? What if beating the rage -was- part of the challenge? That is the only way they can really make gear matter. It doesn't even have to be a boring normal rage timer. Make the mob astral flow once every 3 minutes, and it does more and more damage each time. The longer you keep it alive, the more it hurts.

I agree, there are plenty of ways to make content harder without completely going overboard but the facts go back to SE unveiling these huge buffs to players without adding content that takes these new buffs and puts them to the test. Stricter time limits and less room for error would create challenge along with making new challenges world-spawns so people could give them a try without having to wait months to gather a spawn-set.

Theres many ways to go about making a monster harder without going into AV territory, instance timers and anti-zerg tactics are just two ways.

Wing III Einherjar is pretty much the poster-child for "hard" content in XI and thats largely because you never know what you are going to get.

[Hyan]

I think what Failure meant when he said the game is not balanced is that the jobs are not balanced. For most aspects of the game, at least two jobs are completely ignored (BST and PUP). For high level exp, over half the jobs are ignored, and for endgame, things are much the same. Sure, a skilled player can fit themselves in, but when you already have events down to a science, efficiency and reliability are much more important.

The same can be said for sub jobs. /NIN is really the best example, since just by subbing NIN you gain the best damage mitigation ability in the game, without really loosing anything.

Honestly, it's more a playerbase issue nowadays. It starts as early as level 20 (when all DD's sub /nin or /war while /drg /drk or /rng would be more beneficial. And people think of them as noobs because they don't sub 'what everyone subs'). It continues after that to 75 because leaders apply the general opinion of the job at 75 to every level before that. Good PUP's and BST's don't get invited over bandwagon SAM's even though they could beat the SAM 10 0 (BST's dig their own grave though, they don't even want to lfp most of the time so how would the players even know how good it actually is pre-75). It's not that the jobs suck, it's because people are sheeps. If SE wants to fix this, they have to change the job at 75 (which in turn might make it OP in 10-74 range).

It's the same thing at merits. Good PUP's outparse bad SAM's but that doesn't stop the players from ignoring the PUP and inviting the DOMARUUU SAM instead.

[Ruuz]

I boot gimps. I do not waste my time with badly geared DDs (Im easier on mages and bards cause they are harder to get). As for pup and bst, i'm sure in certain camps/circumstances a good pup or bst could do better than a crappy DD, but unless I know the dude as being an awesome guy/gal who knows how to play the job to its' best, it is just too much of a risk as a bad pup or bst is far worse than a bad sam. Of course, a good sam (or normal dd) is far better than the upper limits of pup, so why risk the time?

There are very few if any group activities in this game that pup and bst can fill a role that other jobs cant do better.

[FailureMidgard]

Honestly, it's more a playerbase issue nowadays. It starts as early as level 20 (when all DD's sub /nin or /war while /drg /drk or /rng would be more beneficial. And people think of them as noobs because they don't sub 'what everyone subs'). It continues after that to 75 because leaders apply the general opinion of the job at 75 to every level before that. Good PUP's and BST's don't get invited over bandwagon SAM's even though they could beat the SAM 10 0 (BST's dig their own grave though, they don't even want to lfp most of the time so how would the players even know how good it actually is pre-75). It's not that the jobs suck, it's because people are sheeps. If SE wants to fix this, they have to change the job at 75 (which in turn might make it OP in 10-74 range).

It's the same thing at merits. Good PUP's outparse bad SAM's but that doesn't stop the players from ignoring the PUP and inviting the DOMARUUU SAM instead.

100% agree with all of these. People have asked me to change subs when I was /rng in Yuhtunga in the past, made me sad to switch to /war for defense bonus.

And really, I'll invite a sam before a bst/pup too - unless I know the person. 'cause ya, Domaru sams suck. But the only thing worse is an equivalent BST. If you have no clue on what quality player you're gonna get, you'd still rather get better job. If I had a friend who was amazing and had bst and sam lvled...I'd make him come sam. Same shit for the pugs. But yea, if my options are a good bst or a shitty sam...definitely take the bst.

I stand by my post that if SE surpassed some current gear in the game that we'd go into broken territory for players that already show mastery with what we have in the game. People already have zerged some of the hardest content in the game - better gear without balancing the scales on the monster side would create imbalance.

Jobs aren't supposed to be balanced but the difficulty of a monster versus a group of people is roughly supposed to be when the content is launched. No one expects Adamantoise to be a challenge anymore but when you drop Dark Ixion, its supposed to be hard for at least a short while.

HQ staves are a popular flashpoint of angst within the playerbase but if SE decided to completely surpass them with a new HNM drop what would happen? Events that were already simplistic would become even easier to overcome and without new challenges the game would stagnate. The same goes for many other pieces of gear that make up the top tier of gear in this game.

Im not against new gear but SE has to balance player buffs (through gear) with monster buffs. If you buff players too much, things get too easy and if buff monsters too much you have AV-content. Currently the scales are tipping a bit too much towards powerful players.

No, I still fully disagree. The challenges you think would stagnate already have done so. Adding a +20% to all elements staff WOULD NOT CHANGE THE GAME AT ALL. Shells get Faf to 10% and hold him for 45 minutes. How does it matter your BLMs are doing 3% more dmg per nuke?
Sorry, events were old the ~30th time I did them. It's not gonna be more boring if I can suddenly do it 5-10% faster because we get more gear. They should give us the better gear, then make the new events that much harder.

[Midnightjade]

It's the same thing at merits. Good PUP's outparse bad SAM's but that doesn't stop the players from ignoring the PUP and inviting the DOMARUUU SAM instead.

This is so true. I have bad memories of seeing Domaru SAM at North Mamool staging point camp. Two of them in the same party. One with a polearm. Anything would have been better. My grandma would have had better Acc%.

[EternalSnow]

Honestly, it's more a playerbase issue nowadays. It starts as early as level 20 (when all DD's sub /nin or /war while /drg /drk or /rng would be more beneficial. And people think of them as noobs because they don't sub 'what everyone subs'). It continues after that to 75 because leaders apply the general opinion of the job at 75 to every level before that. Good PUP's and BST's don't get invited over bandwagon SAM's even though they could beat the SAM 10 0 (BST's dig their own grave though, they don't even want to lfp most of the time so how would the players even know how good it actually is pre-75). It's not that the jobs suck, it's because people are sheeps. If SE wants to fix this, they have to change the job at 75 (which in turn might make it OP in 10-74 range).

It's the same thing at merits. Good PUP's outparse bad SAM's but that doesn't stop the players from ignoring the PUP and inviting the DOMARUUU SAM instead.

Isn't your avatar the picture of that fairy from the anime berserk? XD

[Rilu]

Yea, I wouldn't invite a Average BST to my exp party either, and i'm a HUGE proponent for BST in merit and exp parties, but then again, maybe that is just because i've gone as BST and out damaged like 90% of DD's in the parties. PLUS, bst is a perfect SATA partner because of Snarl - that job ability is broken IMO.

I agree, I would like to see a bit more "End Game" for Bst, but then again, maybe there is already EG content for BST but we as a playerbase have just been too narrow-sighted to actually see it. Kind of like how Pld/nin was always there, but we all thought Pld/War with AA was the way to go.

[Max™]

I remember a Pld bud of mine getting mad a long time ago when I thought he was joking about Pld/War + AA rotation...

He's got an Aegis now... I was like "why not just Pld/Nin?"