Why are you looking forward to FF14?

[Kawfee]

I don't mind achievements if they are like WOW and don't impact gameplay in anyway. You can do them if you want, if you don't, very easy to ignore. In WOTLK expansion pack for WOW, they used them in a bit of a helpful way, for example "Complete 50 quests in this zone" would give you an idea if you've done enough quests in a certain place and it was time to move on to the next one.

FFXI already has a sort of achievements in its Title system.

[Tulun]

Gear progression is definitely a large issue. There are some pieces that simply have not been replaced in years and will likely never be replaced... this is a problem. Even minor upgrades (cause let's face it, the game is full of them...even haub+1 to adaberk is overall a minor upgrade) would have been proper; it wouldn't outdate your old drops but it would further promote new systems and some continued interest in playing. As pointed out, people could literally cap themselves on the best gear from the expansion 6 years ago... You need to strike a decent balance; I think FFXI went too far in Zilart and they just never looked back.

Shadows are pretty amazing. I mean, they didn't even know what they were giving the players (They never intended NIN to be a tank...). But because we don't have a bunch of JA on low timers, what else would tanks do? Best we'd have is spell spam. I hope they give a lot more low timed JA (1-3 mins at most) for tanks to play around with, and all classes in general, to play around with.

[Alderaan]

Achievements shouldn't affect whether or not you can participate in any activities. It should be something on the lines of titles with a stat bonus of some kind or monetary/item rewards that aren't complete garbage.

This goes with my philosophy that making money should not be a main focus of any kind. The gameplay and community should be. Hoping for a hagun to drop or having to monopolize NM's should not be the only ways of making decent gil.

[Lucavi]

Ranger.

There was a lot of job change around that time, but donMt forget most people didn't had parser back then, and the general knowledge of the game was pretty bad. Melee dps dmg "sucked" until people got parser.

About ulli, it was mostly a kiting fight. If you know how to kite 10min, you know how to kite 15min.

Oh I know all about broken ass rangers, and go figure - rangers could use all of those godly pieces of Sky gear that we're all citing almost a decade later. I used to bard in sky for our LS's ranger corps, and macroed in firing squad shouts for them to WS off of. It was actually a lot of fun -- too bad it was only rangers that got to -have- fun.

You can't look at one problem and solve it by throwing another problem in the line of fire. Everyone knows rangers were absurdly broken, and I laughed - a lot - when they were nerfed to the ground. I also laughed with nin was borked (slightly), blm was hammered, and when 2-handers got buffed to beat out juggy/maneater wars.

The point still stands, regardless of just throwing another broken job in the way. You could say the same thing today about sams if everyone else didn't (finally) have comparable gear to at least run even with them.

[Vacht]

Thief nerf sucked. But it was corrected with gear.. so whateves.

[Lucavi]

Man if you played hardcore ballista, you'd have never imagined thf ever received a nerf. All that evasion, stealing, and fleeing with my goddamned petra! If I didn't have an acc build for 60 and my homam build at 75.... *grumbles*

[Eaglestrike]

If only steal didn't have such a shitty cooldown.

[Vacht]

I never did a real ballista match in my 5 years playing :/ I did it one time a long time ago and hated it. I love pvp, and have too much respect for the shizz that SE put out... SORRY BUT ITS TRUE! Dark age of camelot and asheron's call had some nice pvp.

Yeah whats the deal with the steal cooldown? Was the cooldown a metaphorical conscience?

[Kaylia]

Achievements will ruin things.

Your titles, weapons, armors, items, etc. should act as your only form of achievements. Although I would really like a FF12-style bestiary (codex). :3

I'm not sure if you played WoW or not, but achievement UI is really well done. It's a great way to keep track of the content you experienced, and to bundle certain insignificant thing together and reward you for them. Imagine that every time you open the menu in FFXI, would see a grayed "garisson" or "fey weapon fight - Xarcabard", it would most likely server as extra motivation to at least try the content once.

Killing a single ZNM isn't worth a reward or title, but maybe killing all 30 would be worth a title, or a furniture, or something. Sure, you could do it without the achievement concept, but I believe it's a pretty good method for this. It doesnt have to be game breaking reward, but it can be mount, pets, tabard and title like WoW..these kind of gift are always welcome.


Also, it's a good way to give more challenge to the players who are looking for it. Certain fight in WoW are very easy, but when you're going for the achievement, they turn into something that require perfect coordination...it's interesting from a gameplay perspective.
Some of the most challenging achievement reward you with the fastest mount in game too.

You can't look at one problem and solve it by throwing another problem in the line of fire. Everyone knows rangers were absurdly broken, and I laughed - a lot - when they were nerfed to the ground. I also laughed with nin was borked (slightly), blm was hammered, and when 2-handers got buffed to beat out juggy/maneater wars.

That's part of what I don't understand. Why were Zilart fight so damn hard when we had access to overpowered Zilart gear, and now, they are easy? It's not the gears that changed, it's everything else. Are people going to argue that kirin was easy 7 years ago, or that CoP wyrm were getting destroyed when they were added to the game? If we were undergeared at some point compared to monster, it was back then.



The new dood (sushi, that were added during cop era might I add), the merits, damage formula, better strategies (ex: brd rotation)....that's what make the biggest difference between back then and now. To this, you can add the gears upgrade you have in 75% of the slot that eventually count for something.

[Vacht]

I'm not sure if you played WoW or not, but achievement UI is really well done. It's a great way to keep track of the content you experienced, and to bundle certain insignificant thing together and reward you for them. Imagine that every time you open the menu in FFXI, would see a grayed "garisson" or "fey weapon fight - Xarcabard", it would most likely server as extra motivation to at least try the content once.

Killing a single ZNM isn't worth a reward or title, but maybe killing all 30 would be worth a title, or a furniture, or something. Sure, you could do it without the achievement concept, but I believe it's a pretty good method for this. It doesnt have to be game breaking reward, but WoW reward you with mount, pets, tabard and title..these kind of gift are always welcomed.


Also, it's a good way to give more challenge to the players who are looking for it. Certain fight in WoW are very easy, but when you're going for the achievement, they turn into something that require perfect coordination...it's interesting from a gameplay perspective.
Some of the most challenging achievement reward you with the fastest mount in game.


That's part of what I don't understand. Why were Zilart fight so damn hard when we had access to overpowered Zilart gear, and now, they are easy? It's not the gears that changed, it's everything else. Are people going to argue that kirin was easy 7 years ago, or that CoP wyrm were getting destroyed when they were added to the game? If we were undergeared at some point compared to monster, it was back then.



The new dood (sushi, that were added during cop era might I add), the merits, damage formula, better strategies (ex: brd rotation)....that's what make the biggest difference between back then and now. To this, you can add the gears upgrade you have in 75% of the slot that eventually count for something.

Sounds really awesome, the achievements.

You know I think FFXI will forever be the hardest MMO to be good at. That bard rotation was just insane. I had so much respect for my leaders.

[Kaylia]

I ignored your last post, but I don't understand the point you're trying to make with your sarcasm.

[Crosius]

Maybe we should pin our hopes for Squeenix on what they learned and what they didn't learn in XI.

They learned that Shields shouldn't just be decoration. But, then they designed content so that even if you block a hit, you still take huge damage.

They learned that Black Mages could gather and turn anything into soup, but then they created content that made it very difficult for the Black Mage to participate in experience parties with other classes.

They did learn that events like Ballista, Pankration, Choco Racing see a very quick death without rewards, so they created Moblin Maze Mongers which does have a reward. They didn't go back and add some sort of reward to the latter to generate new found interest. It's a shame really, such an easy fix for alot of hard work wasted.

They learned that people love huge events with 18-64 players. The best content the game has to offer uses coordinated effort from larger groups. They didn't learn to add the extra server rack, so that more than one group on any server can do the same thing at once via Instancing. The answer they came up with was very frugal, adding time restrictions, artificial "tag" restrictions, so as to keep the load low on real time secluded invite only zones.

They learned how to obtain a larger playerbase by being multi-platform. SE didn't learn that in the long run, supporting these platforms restricts what they can do with the engine and upgrade it as technology improves. If XI was PConry, they could have done vast make-overs. Even now, if they were to kill PS2 support they could keep the current player base, do a retool, and "XI-2 it". If marketed correctly, FFXI could live on for 10 more years. PS3 support for XIV could have been a big mistake, in the same way that continued PS2 support is for XI.

I hope they have some win and lose production tree in the office to show what they did right and how they failed. I'd hate to see them create a new world and repeat the same miss-steps.

[Plow]

That's part of what I don't understand. Why were Zilart fight so damn hard when we had access to overpowered Zilart gear, and now, they are easy? It's not the gears that changed, it's everything else. Are people going to argue that kirin was easy 7 years ago, or that CoP wyrm were getting destroyed when they were added to the game? If we were undergeared at some point compared to monster, it was back then.

This first, other post after:

First off, we were fucking broke. Having a haubergeon while you were leveling (which is when we did zilart, the best places to get 75 were in sky) was an accomplishment. Having haub + sniper's? Pimp shit.

Having Ebody + sniper's+1 + ohat + speed belt + ridill + jugg + peacock + suppa + haidate + dusk + n set for ws... maybe if you were one of the like 1 ls per server that got kings before anybody had even the slightest clue how good that shit was.

Being high enough to use all that shit was an accomplishment in itself.


And yes, Kirin was easy all along. We had retardedly broken rangers and blms with like +50 magic acc between their staff and hands alone. What's sad is it was still really hard for them to land shit. What's hilarious is they'd ES Tornado and pull hate with that 1 spell and get owned in the face lol.


If you want to question CoP, that's another story... and the answer is level capped gear.

The solution, of course, was mages.

Zilart really wasn't that hard if you weren't doing it with parties of 4-5 lv 60-65's for the missions and masses of 65-70 for the bosses.

[Plow]

I'm not going to address the list of gears, because I'm not even sure what we are arguing about here.
Also, you listed many pieces as "zilart" that have better upgrade (sea torque/ancient torque, augmented crap, mini expansion reward, AV items... ). Thing like shadow breasplate outdo e.body in place like nyzul, salvage or campaign imo, so situational gears can rank up there as well.

HQ dusk gloves/feet are nice and all, but you're looking at +3 haste in exchange of 5atk/10acc, and more importantly, you run fucking slow (it does hurt if you have to do move quickly)

The situational gears are cool, and well done (even if barely better than stuff like dusk legs, byrnie, etc) for the most part.

As you'll go on to post in a bit, acc is rarely a concern now, you max haste where you can and fill in acc needs elsewhere, as much as reasonably possible.

The problem is that none of these things are upgrades... or even as good as, for the most challenging fights (outside slaveage).

Just... the best way I can put it is this:

Odin drops fucking E.Body. Not a body with improved stats 7 years later. He just fucking drops E.Body. How pathetic is that, seriously?

I should have used "easily obtainable gears" over "AH gears", because thing like aurum feet are much easier to obtain than dusk feet +1 for example. Essentially, everything with good drop rate or low price tag that isn't considered a luxury items. If you gears yourself this way, you will be able to be nearly as efficient as most perfectly geared player, at only a fraction of the effort.

That still leaves you with dusk hands, some random ghetto ass pants, a level 40 belt from cop, level 40 rings you'd wear anyway, level 60 neck that's not as good as the level 30 one that's been in game since day 1, and good ole haub.

Which, honestly, is ok. The problem is, if you're an AH war running, say, nyzul... you should really be getting upgrades, not town gear and rarely used situational crap.

Same with dynamis, if you want to rule dynamis stuff out of zilart considerations.

He could simply job change to SMN if he had so little gears.

not an acceptable solution

I'm not sure why you went for a literal interpretation of my post. I'm talking about a good players who didn't have the opportunity to farm the "overpowered" zilart endgame gears. A good players should still have decents equipment, merits, and everything that is easy to get.

I took it literally to make a point: we'd be seriously weaksauce without zilart gear, 7 years later.

What would you even wear for a body when you need acc? Jaridah? I guess that sh+1+1 thing.

I know you play WoW, so let me put it this way: how would you like to run molten core every week because all your melee need t1 helms and t2 legs?

I assure you that we didn't have hasso and 2h updates back in Zilart.

I don't understand how that matters. A top end Zilart geared warrior being utterly dominant during Zilart is quite fine. A top end Zilart geared warrior being utterly dominant in 2010, not so much.

Also, I doubt +3 dmg +15acc (35) -10atk and metatron torment alone would double your dmg. You're looking at +20%(?) dmg from the accuracy in the optimal situation, +10% from the dmg proc, and way less than +70% from metatron torment. If accuracy is capped, and it should, it's probably closer to +30% more dmg than 100%.

Except the part where a full ares/cop belt war loses 19% haste to maintain similar att and lower acc numbers, while not having a decent ring, earring, or belt to use that's not at least 6 years old. Also double damage procs.

Of course, heaven forbid I suggest they actually use the full set for its bonus...

And again, I don't include relic in "zilart" or any expansion, since they were announced to be the best gears. I'm not saying it was a good idea , but why is it surprising that the so called "best weapon" in game is indeed the best weapon. I think there is a bigger issue when a 1m weapon outdo a relic.

That's fine, but Zilart wasn't the place to do that, not to mention that money wasn't the way to do that.

Well, this is the normal progression you would expect to see, but why not giving AV +15str items, and PW +20str? You're looking at a 1-3% dmg increase. If it's truly a balance issue, you can increase the monster vit by 1% in the next expansion.

The "vision" they so dearly embraced as an excuse for lack of foresight was of the epic mobs being epic forever, so I'm just suggesting in a way that reaches similar heights, without the peaks being so centered on the very start.

None of this is -overpowered-. Hell, they could add 50vit and 25str to a ring, and I would still play the game exactly the same on warrior. The only difference is that it would allow me to shave a few seconds of some fight, and possibly prevent a fluke death occasionally.

The accuracy/dmg on an ele staff is not "a few seconds," nor is it responsible for "preventing a fluke death occasionally."

It's the difference between winning before you run out of steam and constant regular deaths due to missed enfeebles becoming "occasional fluke deaths."

Again the problem in most of our eyes is not with the raw power of the items... it's the decision to balance the game forever around them being the best things with the way and time they were implemented.

I personally think it's just an impression you got from your environment. I've seen ls where everyone was rng, I've seen ls were everything was zerged with smn, I've seen ls manaburn everything, I've seen ls melee zerg everything they could.....

Manaburn has the advantage of being very simple to build and execute, but again, it's far from being the only efficient (or most efficient) in many situation. In respect to this, I think FFXI is relatively well balanced at this point. Pet job are the only who still have issue finding a role (except the occasional smn zerg against heavy aoe mob)

For the most part, the only thing where, in terms of loot availability per person, black mage doesn't utterly dominate with its low man capability are things which have specific defenses intended to stop it.

Also, when you can use blm, you can also use corsair and sch to produce similar number now.

To some extent, sure. But it's not the same, at all, as what black mages and red mages bring to the table.

There was a lot of job change around that time, but donMt forget most people didn't had parser back then, and the general knowledge of the game was pretty bad. Melee dps dmg "sucked" until people got parser.

People also didn't have sushi back then.

Melee dps dmg "sucked" until everyone and their dog's 5 hand-me-down/ebayed alts had zilart gear everywhere, rangers got nerfed, black mages got nerfed, people figured out how good haste is, and mobs with low enough evasion to melee fast appeared in large numbers.

[arus2001]

They learned that people love huge events with 18-64 players. The best content the game has to offer uses coordinated effort from larger groups. They didn't learn to add the extra server rack, so that more than one group on any server can do the same thing at once via Instancing. The answer they came up with was very frugal, adding time restrictions, artificial "tag" restrictions, so as to keep the load low on real time secluded invite only zones.

I can't say I agree with this, or at least the part about people loving huge-number content. A lot of leaders I see talking about the organization end claimed it a nightmare, marking attendance, who got what, who could lot what, when people left, and so on. Then there's always player ego and the drama it incites. Additionally, as XI aged and people got better equipped with both gear and knowledge, habits shifted more toward doing things with as few people as possible to help maximize rewards or just get done with unfun things ASAP.

I will agree that no instancing in XIV will be a bad thing, though.

[Crosius]

Having helped run a dynamis shell, I know the headaches involved, and I agree it isn't easy. Some of that mess is directly caused by the restrictions in place to limit availability. If dynamis were instanced and daily, scheduling and coordination with other shells is a non-issue. Drops increase because of saturation. Instanced Sky, indoor Sea, Dynamis, and even instanced god pops would lessen the load on people officiating events, especially if several groups could do them concurrently. Points and attendance become a bigger deal when there is a built in system for severe supply limitations.

[arus2001]

Can't really say I've ever dug player run point systems, either. They're never perfect and either favor no-lifers or somehow find a way to penalize dedicated players despite routine contribution. In that vein, it's better if the game itself handles such rewards through things like Ampoules, Assault Points, or even Ancient Beastcoins and the like that could be split amongst members at the end of a run. But that's only for larger scale encounters. Low-man content shouldn't need such things, but I won't argue against their presence if the rewards are good, the content's fun, and easy to attempt so you can build your pool at your leisure.

[Kawfee]

Can't really say I've ever dug player run point systems, either. They're never perfect and either favor no-lifers or somehow find a way to penalize dedicated players despite routine contribution. In that vein, it's better if the game itself handles such rewards through things like Ampoules, Assault Points, or even Ancient Beastcoins and the like that could be split amongst members at the end of a run. But that's only for larger scale encounters. Low-man content shouldn't need such things, but I won't argue against their presence if the rewards are good, the content's fun, and easy to attempt so you can build your pool at your leisure.

Agree with this 100%. Sky for example, is my own personal hell. As has been rehashed endlessly, we can all thank SE for making sky gear some of the best gear for the last 6 years. After about 300-350 trips to sky (typical 4hour+ trip each), I still don't have Haidate due to points systems, shells breaking, etc. Fuck that.

[Hyan]

They learned that people love huge events with 18-64 players. The best content the game has to offer uses coordinated effort from larger groups. They didn't learn to add the extra server rack, so that more than one group on any server can do the same thing at once via Instancing. The answer they came up with was very frugal, adding time restrictions, artificial "tag" restrictions, so as to keep the load low on real time secluded invite only zones.

Who?

I mean I'm biased for leading an LS, but dear god, I'd never go back to leading an LS with 60+ players again after doing Salvage for few years with <15 people. It's just too much of a headache.

Plus I liked having smaller team to do the events with- it's just more personal and not just some random mercenaries doing shit. But that might be just me.

EDIT: What Arus said, too.

They learned how to obtain a larger playerbase by being multi-platform. SE didn't learn that in the long run, supporting these platforms restricts what they can do with the engine and upgrade it as technology improves. If XI was PConry, they could have done vast make-overs. Even now, if they were to kill PS2 support they could keep the current player base, do a retool, and "XI-2 it". If marketed correctly, FFXI could live on for 10 more years. PS3 support for XIV could have been a big mistake, in the same way that continued PS2 support is for XI.

Shit is just too broken today (and was before, from the core). I don't think that would work at all. A reset is much better option than XI-2 imo.

[Lucavi]

I can't say I agree with this, or at least the part about people loving huge-number content. A lot of leaders I see talking about the organization end claimed it a nightmare, marking attendance, who got what, who could lot what, when people left, and so on. Then there's always player ego and the drama it incites. Additionally, as XI aged and people got better equipped with both gear and knowledge, habits shifted more toward doing things with as few people as possible to help maximize rewards or just get done with unfun things ASAP.

I will agree that no instancing in XIV will be a bad thing, though.

Stop thinking about the rain that falls from that beautiful cloud. The -fight- itself, with all those people, is fun. The managing and maintaining and drama that leads -up- to that fight, is not so much.

I loved fighting Kirin. I never considered it a bore, regardless of the job I came on. I loved fighting Naxx bosses too, especially Thaddius, and didn't get tired there. What I did get tired of was, as a sackholder/officer, trying to maintain a sense of normalcy and keeping everyone happy. The fights were hella fun.

I think I actually enjoyed Warhammer's public quest system, because you could engage in those grandoise-esque fights, yet you didn't have to worry about managing a lot of drama and whatnot. Everyone got loot depending on how much they contributed. Campaign introduced something similiar, but not quite as enthralling.

I'd like to see more public quests, perhaps even public raids with much tougher bosses and better loot. Maybe even throw in a system where people that participated in the raid can trade items that they received as war spoils, but only with those others that participated in that fight. This would solve the problem of some beefy tank getting mage gear and having nothing to do with it (although FF's job change system typically ensures that everyone can use everything at -some- point).