Dead Server Syndrome?

[Klaatu]

This is exactly the kind of player I'm talking about. Thank you for being the classic example of the kind of player this thread's about.

Except it's not.

[Narol]

People can whine and bitch all they like about certain player types, but "dead server syndrome" comes from, gasp, fewer players on the server. Only way to get more players is to attract and keep new ones (or bring old ones out of retirement, but that's not even close to what you get when your aim is to bring in new ones). Taking CoP as an example, SE realized that hardmode CoP wasn't going to keep players around, so they fixed the difficulty level. Say what you will about this subject, but the basic CoP storyline being mind-numbingly hard for average players doesn't inspire them to stay—and is still pretty high up the difficulty curve for basic storyline content.

Think about it this way: If you were a new player and the prevailing mentality you're met with is, "No one helped me, so no one's going to help you," would you really want to stay, or would you leave for something less antagonistic?

[LinktheDeme]

CoP: Harder than almost every other offline FF pre-nerf.

You know pre-nerf wasn't really what made it easier. People doing it a lot and explaining all of the mob moves lead to optimal strategy making it easier. Looking back on the BCs I had trouble with was most likely due to less prepness.

Promys are piss easy if everyone has anima

mammets are easy with 3 ninja and 3 whm (probably only need 1 to keep a haste cycle and throw random healers/mages instead)

Diabolos was only hard because people suck at stun or not enough DRKs to go around originally. (though they gave him a significant HP cut)

Ouryu is still just as hard as i remembered. Though its really easy with 2-3 BLM and it was even easier pre nerf because no BLM nerf at that point.

Promyvion Vahzl easy again if people have their animas


mithra bc easy with 2 smn (even 1 smn makes it easy) and pre nerf they seemed to sleep longer than they currently do

Snoll Tzar was always easy with rngs and everyone /sam with TP wing and blms

Ultima and Omega and Mammets - here is one of the things I noticed that the mammets post nerf have less hp and do less damage. Ultima and Omega I didn't really notice anything huge change wise as this BC was easy without melee and BLM and RNGs only (especially pre nerf )

Tenzen BC was always piss easy

3 pots bc - This was easy always if you did 6x blm but even without 1 BLM - 2 BLM with one /BLM mage with zombie strat made it pretty easy as well

Promathia - I don't see how this was even suppose to be a challenge if you outrun meteor.

The one thing I did notice is that the update gave most bosses HP cuts some cases more significant than others. Diabolos is ridiculously noticeable as one attack takes off 3% of his HP. But overall the BCs weren't anything hard the only thing that was hard was getting to the BCs now those areas are less filled though and the monsters are weaker enroute.

Anyway like I was saying though as long as you were prepared back then I think it would still be pretty easy if you used the cheating jobs on each BC. Especially back then with ranger's being as ridiculous as they were. The only hard part was farming the items and figuring out what they do to prepare back then with their insanely low drop rates and non tradeability

[Mayareira]

Pre-nerf, it didn't take me long to complete CoP (was done with promies before I hit what..40?). Jeuno was full of shouts about it and every type of social linkshell had bunch of people needing it. if you were willing to get it done you could get it done in a day or two. Needed promies? No problem, just grab one of the 10 pick up groups that's being formed everyday.

But now things are different, it may take a new player up to 4~ hours or more to form a shout group...and if you can't form a good static earlier on it can get really, really frustrating.

BC difficulty was the only problem players had before, which only required a strategy and average players to overcome...it was fun as well. Now the problem lies with finding people to do them. Its a 5 year expansion (my EU copy was bundled with it back in 2005) and understandably the current player base of the game is done with it already.

Calling these new, rare low-mid levels out there "anti-social piece of shits" and masturbating on them doesn't help with the case. Low-mid level range population is much less than compared to 1-5 years ago and it undeniably has disadvantages.

Fuck you and die. Guess what, no one helped us, no one's helping you

Actually I genuinely enjoyed CoP, me and a lot others have helped bunch of people thru CoP and Zilart even when we weren't done with them ourselves. Now, I don't even think an European social linkshell exists in my server and most of the EU players are dependent on people living at the other side of the ocean (and timezone).

CoP isn't something I'd call "difficult". It is just getting old, and suffers from the expected problems of that. Still a breeze for "hardcore" players but not so for the casual newbie.

[Shenrien]

After I got banned I redid cop in like 4 days, granted it was the week after finals and I had those days off before I started working but JESUS it was easy. I did CoP when that shit was hard in 2005, so when people cry about CoP these days since it got nerfed I really can't have sympathy. I did it twice and once was actually hard, so stop crying. Lots of others have done it as well.

I honestly wished I played during them times just so I knew how difficult it was, I thought CoP was rather easy on my way through it, took me about a week total to do it all.

[Mayareira]

Promies were more crowded and you had to farm your anima's (think they are buyable now?). Other than that and the impact of 2-hand buffs, its pretty much the same.

[Arkanna]

At the time of CoP's release, the Promy's needed a full alliance of level 30's to even think about reaching the top, due to the original strength of the MR's and the Stray's protecting them. On top of that, the BC was only a 6-man fight, so each Promy alliance needed 3 individual party wins for clearance, so each alliance had to be built properly to take on the BC. Then, when one party inevitably lost the BC fight, the climb had to be repeated until everyone had clearance. Finally, take all of the above and repeat it twice more for the other Promy's, and you can see why CoP, at release, was a skullfuck.

[Burnsy]

This is exactly the kind of player I'm talking about. Thank you for being the classic example of someone that has made me butthurt.

You are the classic example of the people that made all my friends quit the game. Whiny bitches that can't stand on their own two feet and expect everyone around them to just drop their shit and help them with *gasp* old fucking content.

We were met with an antagonistic attitude at the NA release, jps hated us and scorned us as much as they could, NAs in turn hated the EUs. Welcome to FFXI, you want nice? I hear Hello Kitty Island Adventure or Webkins has some nice new content.

[Midnightjade]

Promies were more crowded and you had to farm your anima's (think they are buyable now?). Other than that and the impact of 2-hand buffs, its pretty much the same.

Yeah, they were a lot more crowded. When I went back to do the climbs again for AN a while ago, the reduction in mob numbers was really striking.

I remember rolling Promyvion-Dem back in early 2005 with 9 BST and a few friends. All those jugpets made it lag city but omg it was fun. Only two of the players from that run are still around.

[Destinye]

You are the classic example of the people that made all my friends quit the game. Whiny bitches that can't stand on their own two feet and expect everyone around them to just drop their shit and help them with *gasp* old fucking content.

Haha, so your friends quit because they were asked to help? Yeah that's unheard of in an MMORPG.

[ronin sparthos]

Promies were more crowded and you had to farm your anima's (think they are buyable now?). Other than that and the impact of 2-hand buffs, its pretty much the same.

You forgot the part where WHM couldn't actually Reraise inside Promyvion a huge fucking change that came way too late.

Oh how many runs were completely wrecked when the WHM would run off and get him/herself killed agrroing a bunch of shit then everyone would have to start over because unless you had another WHM you'd have to home point.

Im also pretty sure the actual monsters inside Promyvion were weakened as well, making agro less of a "oh hi, we're fucked" moment. The bosses were nerfed into oblivion and it's easy to see when one melee strike was taking off 2% of the mobs HP bar or more.

There are many things I hated about CoP pre-nerf but I have to say that it was the most formidable challenge SE ever presented in a numbered Final Fantasy. The human element made it difficult, losses were rewarded with time loss and overall it was the slogfest from hell. It needed to be made easier but I really am glad I got to take it on at its peak, really was an accomplishment to end CoP. ToAU was interesting but jeez, it was all snores till Gessho and Alexander.

Helping people on missions today? Sure, my problem is when people just decide to forklift all the work on one person and expect to coast to victory. I guess SE should award personal treasure chests to people repeating missions for others as more incentive to win battles again, along with the EXP.

[Klaatu]

We were met with an antagonistic attitude at the NA release, jps hated us and scorned us as much as they could, NAs in turn hated the EUs.

Actually, JPs were nice to NAs up to the point of PS2 release. Then came the retards and it went downhill from there.

People complaining about game being hard because they can't complete content obviously haven't done it enough to see a clear picture. CoP is not that big of a challenge. I have done it on "hard mode" and twice on "easy mode" and I can tell you, you don't call it "easy mode" for nothing.

Obviously when we did it on "hard mode" it took us longer because patches were released with updates, but the difficulty was harder as well. I went through 2 statics, not because people dropped due to CoP's difficulty, but due to personal problems with timing of the static, etc.

When I did it on "easy mode" I did it all through shouts and it took me only 2 months to go from Promy to Promathia. Yes, it was pain in the ass to get help from LS or Friend List and it took hours to get a PT through shouts, but if you don't want to get it done you shouldn't shout. I've met plenty of people to know who's the lazy bum who wants shit done for him and those that would go extra distance to do it right.

The only difference between then and now, especially on closed server, the margin for getting people through shouts is getting smaller and smaller. And this applies not only to expansion missions, but Assaults, Nyzul and everything in between.

Obviously it'll get to a point where anyone who didn't catch up with content will have extreme difficulty getting PT together for a mission or other, but that's what server transfer is for (which I hope they either remove fee for or lower it at least). But a more permanent solution would be to open servers and/or merge a few of them.

P.S. Another solution to problem of server being overcrowded would be to create a lottery for migration of players to specific server. Only those who win the lottery will be able to transfer to that server. This shouldn't apply just to closed servers, but to all of them.

[Tagus]

You forgot the part where WHM couldn't actually Reraise inside Promyvion a huge fucking change that came way too late.

Oh how many runs were completely wrecked when the WHM would run off and get him/herself killed agrroing a bunch of shit then everyone would have to start over because unless you had another WHM you'd have to home point.

Im also pretty sure the actual monsters inside Promyvion were weakened as well, making agro less of a "oh hi, we're fucked" moment. The bosses were nerfed into oblivion and it's easy to see when one melee strike was taking off 2% of the mobs HP bar or more.

There are many things I hated about CoP pre-nerf but I have to say that it was the most formidable challenge SE ever presented in a numbered Final Fantasy. The human element made it difficult, losses were rewarded with time loss and overall it was the slogfest from hell. It needed to be made easier but I really am glad I got to take it on at its peak, really was an accomplishment to end CoP. ToAU was interesting but jeez, it was all snores till Gessho and Alexander.

Helping people on missions today? Sure, my problem is when people just decide to forklift all the work on one person and expect to coast to victory. I guess SE should award personal treasure chests to people repeating missions for others as more incentive to win battles again, along with the EXP.

I want to preface this wonderful story by saying that if I wasn't at work I could search wiki for mission description specifics that I have since forgotten, including a verification of the proper spelling of "Beaudecine Glacier". I think it's right, but hold your petty "you spelled it wrong omg" punches, please. Anywho...

I used to help people. I remember about a year ago I solo'd a party of younger players through that x3 tiger fight in Beaudecine on my Samurai. It was a piece of cake, maybe a couple of hours tops, had some great weapon skill numbers, most of you probably can picture it. One of those guys I helped eventually tried to con me and my friends out of 30k by claiming that the warp dude you gamble with in Movapolos to get into that CoP BCNM wouldn't let him through and he was out of money, when we were only there to help him with the fight to begin with. It was awesome. By now every single one of those players that I helped that day has since quit the game.

I've got a ton of stories about people I helped that quit, or switched LS's, or jumped servers, or turned douchebag... that's just the one that comes to my mind. At this point every time somebody asks me for help I think about the fact that it's probably just a waste of time... and I've only been playing for two years and I've only got two jobs @ 75. I'm sure the older players have stories that could trump the shit out of mine.

[TacoTaru]

This thread makes me reminisce about when CoP was actually really fun to do.

I remember climbing promies and ending up teaming up with 3 to 4 other groups just so we could ensure everyone made it one go. I even remember the wait outside some groups to raise one another just in case they failed early before any animas went off.

[Kipling]

I don't think people are complaining that it's difficult. It's more like finding the members for it is difficult when typically, the people who do this have the social status of a hermit.

That's not valid at all, I /shouted for all but like 2 of my missions. And found people right away. Also, a hermit lol? Did it take you a few years to finish cop because you're terrible or something?

[Tagus]

That's not valid at all, I /shouted for all but like 2 of my missions. And found people right away. Also, a hermit lol? Did it take you a few years to finish cop because you're terrible or something?

Everybody's experiences are different. I saw a person get Byakko's Haidate a week or two after hitting 75 on a job that could equip it, it took me 8 months in sky, and I just spoke to a guy who got them last week after 5 years of playing the game.

My first thought on finishing CoP in four days is that you're full of shit, to be honest. But then again, I could easily be wrong and I don't really have the energy today for a pointless argument.

[dannyl]

I'm on Bahamut and all I can say is............. REALLLLLLYYYYYYYY??? never noticed the deadzone

[Viq]

Everybody's experiences are different. I saw a person get Byakko's Haidate a week or two after hitting 75 on a job that could equip it, it took me 8 months in sky, and I just spoke to a guy who got them last week after 5 years of playing the game.

I got my Haidate when BRD73 was my highest job back in 2004. Take THAT random melee dudes.

[Anomander]

At the time of CoP's release, the Promy's needed a full alliance of level 30's to even think about reaching the top, due to the original strength of the MR's and the Stray's protecting them. On top of that, the BC was only a 6-man fight, so each Promy alliance needed 3 individual party wins for clearance, so each alliance had to be built properly to take on the BC. Then, when one party inevitably lost the BC fight, the climb had to be repeated until everyone had clearance. Finally, take all of the above and repeat it twice more for the other Promy's, and you can see why CoP, at release, was a skullfuck.

Not true. I beat all promies pre nerf with one party the entire way up for each.

[Gergall]

Not true. I beat all promies pre nerf with one party the entire way up for each.

The promies were nerfed several times. One of the nerfs was almost immediately after the CoP release.

Maybe you did it before even the first nerf, but I find that a lot of people who think they did it "pre-nerf" don't know what they are talking about.