Announcing the December Version Update!Follow

Only if RDMs are last allowed to lot on Neo-Joyeuse.

Some people do understand that, yeah. But there are still people, like a bunch of the people shouting to do content, who when I /tell about coming on my THF, laugh and go "I don't even let <personal friend> come on THF and he's the best I've ever seen."

Well, you haven't seen me, then...

Logic says if he never invites THF's the only one he has ever played with would be the "Best".

<.<

Evil casuals killing MMOs. How dare they want to play my video game.

Contrary to what a lot of people seem to claim, the reality seems to show you have the opinion that best represents the population. Most people I know quit during the end of ToAU/WotG era, and quite a few people returned to the game, or picked up the game and stuck with it starting during the Abyssea era. I think people are just bitter that all their work at 75 got outdated by abyssea, even if it helped breath new life into the game overall.

This is definitely a part of it, but even then, I'd consider those disenfranchised by the shift a minority.

When I logged in during the Abyssea era, I basically had the following things I could do:
- EXP and Merit.
- Quest for Empyrean armor slips.
- Kill NMs for Empyrean armor slips or +2 items.
- Kill NMs to work on Empyrean weapons.
- Kill NMs for specific useful standalone items.
- Work on Magian Trials for useful weapons outside the Empyrean line.
- Collect Atma and abyssites.
- Work on Abyssea-related quests and missions.
- Make gil via cruor or chest farming.
- Farm specific items from chests like dark rings, TH sashes, or Empy boots.
- Merc services for any of the above to willing buyers.
- Help friends or shellmates with any of the above.

Now, I think there's a gross simplification on what was and wasn't soloed during the time, and maybe a casual forgetfulness of the ease of dual-boxing a pocket WHM, but I will fight to the grave to make it known these activities were far more pick-up-and-play friendly and overlapped more than Adoulin content. And barring some Magian objectives, this was all solely Abyssea content, not including Salvage/Nyzul/Dynamis/Limbus or whatever else may have been kinda sorta useful.

As for Adoulin content, if you're geared "like crap" (Sparks gear or worse), the only real endgame content available to you would be Skirmish, but that relies on finding warm bodies. Again, the common theme for issues in Adoulin progression is finding the bodies. It's so freakin' easy to say to join shouts or start your own group, but that's being ignorant of server conditions, the time of day one logs in, and as some have tried to stress, actual available jobs. Plus what Fyn noted in confidence as both a leader and follower. Now, Delve may be low-mannable these days, but again, people are going to want others decently geared. Maybe even the ol' MMO Catch 22 of "You have to have beaten the content in able to participate in it!" is in play for PUGs. NA in NA primetime? Sure, your luck goes up. NA in JP primetime? Baka gaijin!

Point for point, the available casual activities for Adoulin don't quite stack up to those of Abyssea. Yes, I could backtrack and still EXP in Abyssea, but we're not getting CP/JP there. Field/Popped NMs with useful gear? Arguably a bit too hard for the gimp soloists, nevermind some of the new Union things. Trials are no longer a thing, for better (yay targeted progression) or worse (***** day/weather). As I've said before, Dynamis and Limbus also have a priority now due to reforging, which is easily 3 hours daily where you ONLY get base pieces, -1s, and currency. The EXP is a joke and CP/JP obviously don't exist. Take out an WKR on your own? Teehee.

So, forgive me for scoffing at the notion that Abyssea was XI's death knell. The year or two before it sucked, yes. The year or so after wasn't too hot, either. The time in between? Well, it was pretty great to not have to suck up to some jerkface just because he'd be 1 of 18 to field an alliance. Then again, there were usually multiple jerks. Dozens of friends in an MMO? I don't need that. Just give me a handful and I'm good. Less drama. Less logistics. Less waiting around. Play the game, don't let it play you.

First off, I won't argue that XIV's production (and flop) hurt XI. I'd also put some weight on Tanaka just being an all around stubborn motherfugger, but we know your lurv for him clouds judgment at times.

And now that you've got a totally pointless food analogy out of your system, the only thing you've really proven with the rest of your post is that you can't wrap your head around the concept that fair and meaningful progression can come without the God Mode you opted to highlight and scorn. Old content gets old. Get over it. Caps were abolished and it didn't really teach anything meaningful for the old school leveling process even when they were a thing. Abyssea killed leveling? So did EXP Rings, bonus campaigns, FoV/GoV, and Trusts if we want to run with this doomsday logic. Or maybe the hassle of leveling is where it was decided the game's challenge wouldn't lie. Well, at least until a totally new leveling system arrived via CP/JP. And its only challenge is pure, unadulterated time sink.

When your game gets top-heavy, new blood or returnees need to be able to get to the top ASAP. Forcing them to wallow in the mid-levels, especially with no form of matchmaking or cross-server system for the antiquated content you seem to be insisting they play, just yields frustration. Abyssea didn't "kill" FFXI. Treating the game in 2012 like it was 2007 is what did damage. Players got smarter. The "steak" you're pimping was more the realization we'd been getting a poo sandwich prior with bad RNG, lockouts, and 21+ hour respawns. Competition from other games also became more numerous and intuitive. The lives of some players did change.

I'll give credit to the current team for attempting to modernize things as they're able with what little they have available in manpower and resources, but that's about where my praise will end. Nostalgia can't carry the game forever.

Sorry but abyssea didnt kill FFXI, it just transitioned it into an mmo that was more fit for the modern era.

Large portions of FFXI made no sense.
Time sink =/= Content
Stuff wasn't balanced at 75, not even close, if you werent a certain job, you had nothing

How is abyssea not good for new people? Give me a person with 1 stone, and i will build their time up to 200+ minutes, they can zone out, level break, return etc. And never need more than that 1 initial stone...>EVER<. You only NEEDed stones at the very end to challenge Shinryu...thats it...end of argument. You are 100% wrong. Even new people at 30 both 3 years ago and now can find leech spots in parties, you act like you had to buy gil to get a fell cleave, to level a first toon in abyssea. The party setup of 18 people getting exp at once, capping at 600+ exp a kill, and not requiring time sensitive exp chains to maintain is what made exp in abyssea good.


Seriha is right though, the only people who were butt hurt about abyssea 'killing' ffxi were people who were in top teir LS/relic builders who abused whole link shells into thinking devoting 18+ peoples time to farm 1 persons relic was a good idea.

Huh? The Shinryu fight was in an area that didn't need stones (hence the temptation to afk skill magic in there). 10000 gil per fight, period.

I felt Abyssea wasn't very good. Mostly reused assets, making it very eco friendly. I believe the 3 add ons introduced a grand total of 4 songs and a handful of new models, the biggest addition was new Job AFs and weapon models but little new elsewhere. It was heavily battle related and everything else seemed to be prioritized very little. Some really weird fps drops near those teleportation points too.

Job balance went straight out of the window with powerful atmas and stupid proc system. There was a huge gap between a good player and a bad one. I saw no reason why I would let a paladin tank the boss without atmas when a thief could faceroll it using 3 really good ones (hell, that thief could probably just solo it). If you didn't have atmas you might as well just not do anything until you've obtained them. The most difficult part of farming the stuff was to get the right proc, the bosses themselves became really easy over time.

The game really needed raid content and voidwatch didn't seem like a good answer. Eventually everything about voidwatch became faceroll. Ludicrous low drop rate on items that were relevant. The crafted items were nowhere near as good as the ones that dropped.

See, someone else is essentially getting what I said with this earlier:

The overall timeline puts Tanaka back at the helm, no longer distracted by running XIV into the ground. Abyssea was christened a mistake, much to the delight of its detractors, but learning from that or even prior mistakes didn't seem to be much of a priority. It became business as usual, which led to...

With a side of a terribad Legion. Now, I'm someone who believes raiding should never be the primary focus of an MMO, but pretty much everywhere you look, you'll see a profoundly large chunk of developmental resources spent on placating what one could effectively call a sub-20% of a given game's population, with that further sliding to under 10% for people who might actually beat said content. Why does that remaining 10% fail? There's no singularly specific reason, but things like time, skill, leadership, and the availability of competent peers are certainly up there. The remaining 80% of the population are those who would more than likely love to see the content, and aren't unskilled, but either understand their limitations or simply can't play enough to even hope to be fairly considered while said content is current or unadjusted. Perhaps Abyssea's greatest strength, once all three parts were in play, was it flipped this norm on its head. Reasonable effort yielded reward. There wasn't really any going 0/200 on drop like a VW item. There was no needing 17 others just to make sure you could proc enough if you were after more than just a clear. Was Abyssea perfect? Nope. Times of congestion really sucked. Fighting over popped mobs like Gukumatz was also a throwback to olden day blah. Yet, I'd rather endure Abyssea's faults than wait around for Sandworm or Ixion to pop just to lose it to botters and position hackers, be scheduled for Einherjar and Dynamis twice a week, and depending on how much further back you went, struggling for Kings and wiggling other things in like Nyzul or Salvage. There is such a thing as "too much" endgame, which is a dangerous line XI toed in part because it was so afraid to let old things go because of precedent, nostalgia, or whatever coat of paint you want to slap on it.

"But Seri, I like hard fights! I like working with lots of other people for a common goal!" Well, let's not confuse my perception of focus with wanting to outright eliminate that option. It's not uncommon for people who partake of such to want something unique to show for it, to effectively show off. Again, ego is not something I believe that spurs good content design. On the reward side, tackling the harder things and with more people should only yield the things others could via alternative methods, but more quickly relative to the difficulty. Or to put it in Abyssea terms, if one easy mob dropped 2 seals, the "hard mode" would drop 8. "But no one would do the hard modes because..." I'd say that better puts into perspective those who really want to raid, along with all the related politics and drama, and those who don't. Let's stop pretending those who don't are terrible people and deserve content table scraps. This is really one of the ugliest aspect of appealing to the traditions of MMOs. Let titles and vanity be the prizes, not functionality.

I'd put this squarely on XIV being a vampire to the game, but at the same time, has Adoulin improved much? Recycled seal fights. Recycled Divine Might and single AA counterparts. Recycled Avatar battles. Recycled "merit" system. Recycled Artifact, Relic, and soon Empyrean gear. Nevermind pulling up the old models for Sparks stuff. One of the boldest steps the game could've taken, casting aside RMEs, was nixed because people couldn't let go and the appeals to tradition were honored. Now, there's a fair chance that if you want to be decent at any job these days, you've gotta spend 3+ months slaving away in menial content. Yes, things like this fall under the umbrella of new players and returnees needing to be able to get current at a reasonable pace.

The first is true even without Atmas in play. The second also applies, with a further winknudgenod to third-party tool use. Of course, the road never traveled was those who yearned for difficult play never actually had to use Atmas. Subtle precognition into people being fed up with XI's alliance game, perhaps? Or just further affirmation that hardcore challenge isn't the priority of the masses? These aren't difficult questions to answer, but it seems to me the answers are ones some don't want to acknowledge. You know, stupid casuals ruining gaming and such.

I know I've been back and forth between a couple posts trying to weave a related narrative while ultimately attempting to further on the conversation, but this really just comes back to treating the game like it's not 2007 anymore. FFXI absolutely NEEDS features that simply aren't present, like good matchmaking systems and cross-server functionality. Any time I see the devs say something like this is impossible, I see, "We don't have enough time and resources to make it work." That's a dangerous slope to be on. "Quit being such an armchair dev, Seri! You don't know what it's like!" I know what it's like to be a player. I know what is fun to me. I know what isn't. I know what I've seen work elsewhere. I know what I've seen that hasn't. If all of that collective mind jumble can't congeal into meaningful critique, feedback, and suggestion, then I'd love to know what the missing piece(s) is/are.

So, more apt to this quote, I'm going to agree. Some people have come to hate me in the past because I spent so much time wanting to "fix" Red Mage to better align it to lore, franchise mythos, and enjoyability within the hands of the player. Rebuttals happened, many more often mere personal attacks than fair back-and-forth. Heck, all of this has probably contributed to the occasionally adversarial tone I take up here and now. And no, this isn't me saying that fixing RDM will fix FFXI. Rather, the devs need to channel into similar desire and boldness to enact change. Not just for RDM, but all the jobs. Don't fall into the trappings of MMOs where the only places good things come from are full party+ content. Don't subscribe to the notion that something can only be worth it if it is rare or hard to get. Give players reason to come together at the spur of the moment, not after memorizing a wiki and watching youtube videos simply as a qualifier. Call me cynical, fine, but that's the direct result of seeing the worst of what these games bring out of us as people and players. Perhaps the benefit of seeing and enduring this darkness is the optimism in the belief that we could do better, way better. If MMOs have cultivated us into being a bunch of collective cornhole coiffures, maybe, just maybe, there are things wrong with MMOs. Or we can just be lazy, do nothing, and declare people suck. That's worked so well up until now, hasn't it?

http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/polnews/news23858.shtml

Edited, Dec 4th 2014 10:14am by Szabo