Dev Tracker - Discussion

How much of this change (which I definitely agree is happening all throughout entertainment, not just FFXI) is the decision of the "bean counters" and not just the changing desires of median gamers in the past 20 years? And- is it even possible to truly separate the two? Either the powers that be are adapting to the demands of their perceived customer base (I do think even if this were the case, they're not reading their targeted audience of FFXI gamers well), or the gamers on average are just ok accepting the changing world to keep playing what they love, even in a diminished sense.

Again- I do feel that the FFXI gamer is not the typical median gamer, and SE should have realized that years ago. Perhaps they have, and those who make the money decisions just aren't listening. Or perhaps those of us wanting what we say we do isn't as large as we think.

Of course not. Subscriber numbers would be even lower if there really were that many people who cared. Won't stop me from bitching about ***like more daily key items and those *** wardrobes tho.

Coming from someone who does play and enjoy a variety of gacha games, I expect a gacha game to be shitty and predatory and thus don't want much out of it. I do expect more care and respect for time out of a game where I'm paying a premium to play every month. Maybe that's where I'm going wrong, having any expectations for SE regarding player convenience is probably expecting way too much.

SE: Another 20 hour lock out daily event - FUN FUN FUN FUN



Player base:

I hated wardrobes and Trove but I can tolerate some daily if it's not too bad.

Omen/dyna D was okay to me. Card can be soloed and dyna D only needs a LS for w3 wins. So attendance requirement is quite low. If I need specific drop from an omen boss I can PUG them and lock the drop. If I remember correctly, I was "done" with Omen and dyna D relatively quick after release.

Odyssey is far worse because if you want to farm this content efficiently, you pretty much need a static that's when playing a video game becomes a commitment argh...

Also it bears mentioning I guess that we might be overreacting and the npc can hold multiple key items for this since the preview didn't say one way or another, but I'll suspend my disbelief and continue to be cynical for the time being

It's not only a matter of players age.
The fallacy of those sort of comparisons is that what was considered an "acceptable" standard in 2006 is not in 2022.
Is it good? Is it bad? We can discuss that, but it's undoubtly how things are.

Try to propose a MMOmodel that gained 15 millions players in 2006 and see the "success" that exact identical model gains in 2022.
Things are different, the market is different and the MMO market in particular is not the fresh, vibrant "new" market that it was back then.
It's stale and a very different thing.


So, really, comparing something today and saying "it's better than how things were in 2005!" even supposing that's true, it's still devoid of any useful information. What does that tell us? Nothing, absolutely nothing.


Cathering to 6men is ok, and as a matter of fact they've been doing that ever since the release of Dynamis Divergence because everything we got was 6 players based. Odyssey which is the new "main" content, and even small updates to Ambuscade, everything has been 6men.
Was it too much to expect something scaleable in some form that could offer "something" for soloers, for small groups, for larger groups, and still make so that content would last years?
They've managed to do this so many times even in recent times, why does it seem so "out of the question" that they have the capability to do that now in 2022? Especially after teasing us with this goddamn "new content" for what, 3 years now?

Let's at least hope this is gonna be fun...
Well, the rewards look promising so there's that, to say the least. It's more than nothing already, I suppose.

Oh boy, lets stop with the extremes. You don't HAVE to do this content, you are not forced to do it every day in order to progress. Hell, look at Odyssey. You could have literally skipped every single day of it and come back now and do a few segment farms and someone can carry you through each v15 or v20 and you can cap easily. You didn't have to keep doing it every single day and you completed the content.

I was around for every single era in this games life, and this game was exactly like this for a LONG time. Back in the day it was WORSE, because you had to make those events first for linkshell points and second some systems required you actually participate to gain points (assaults, imprimaturs, meebles, ENM.) It doesn't matter if the lock out was daily or weekly, you had tons of them and most linkshells used points too.

This game right now is so lax and laid back... theres 0 reason to spam or complete things right when they come out unless you like to save your sub fee. We are going to be doing this content FOR YEARS, literally 3+ years. The drip of content is not gonna be enough if you're spamming this daily.

Oh and lets not pretend most of the adults here dont have a lot of free time. Most of them are either in established careers with dedicated time slots to entertainment or they are just basement dwellers. Most of the casual crowd is long gone lol

I don't mind the 20h lockout so much, just want to be able to run with friends who happen to be around when our main team does stuff.

Lets not forget the 3 day wait on Einherjar and then iirc you need all 9 feathers to enter Odin's chamber so you could only fight odin every 27 days. You also needed a full party of 6 or you would be removed from the chamber after 10mins.

Dyna - 3 days and if a group happened to go in just before you your group had to wait.

Einherjar - 3 days like dyna only one group per chamber.

Limbus - 20 hours pretty sure that again only one group per tower.

Salvage - 24 hours finally actual instance content so more than one group at a time.

Sky and Sea you could do whenever but required lottery pop NMs so you could waste so much time there if you didnt know the ToD.
HNMs - 24-72 hours could end up popping at 4am.

Assaults - tags refreshed 1 every 24 hours luckily more instanced content so more than one group at a time.

Can you imagine if Omen, Odyssey, HTBF, Dyna D or Ambuscade were one group at a time?

The new "Sortie" battle content planned for August that has the upgrade items and points needed for the Empyrean armor +2 upgrades will also have a 20-hour KI.

Edit: whoops, missed the page where this was already discussed, sorry.

Only the first time doing Odin you needed all 9 feathers, after which you only needed 3 to enter the chamber (t1,2,3) but the person opening Odin needed all 9, thus entered 3 feather mules that would shove 3 real players out to cycle the content.

I hope we get to hold more than 1 ki on ody and sortie.

I understand how weekend congestion would work on Asura, but no one is on Asura on accident at this point.

Asura congestion should never dictate game design. Last I checked, there's still a ***load of other servers that have active enough communities. If you don't like dealing with incessant lag and long lines, there's a fix for that.

You needed all 9 feathers for every Odin fight when Einherjar came out; it wasn't until years later that they reduced it to 1 from each tier.

It's funny because a lot of the complaints about the long Ambuscade wait times in the OF came from larger servers like Asura people complaining. They eventually fixed it because of all of the complaints. True, bigger servers caused the problem, but it definitely changed things. And they also did make an adjustment recently to DI specifically from an Asura problem. So they kinda do make adjustments based on what's going on with some of the bigger servers.

Asura: Can't do content because there are too many people trying to run the content and queues are long

Other servers: Can't do content because the server is empty and no one is trying to run the content unless you are in a cool kids club

The same handful of people still complain about "Uniquely Asura" problems every time the subject of queues/waits/bad design choices comes up. I'd rather have a wide range of people to do things with than walk around and feel like I can't do anything without six-boxing or lurk around the game until I can get into the one PUG doing something and hope eventually I get brought into a group that runs content at the same time I can. While Asura shouldn't solely dictate design decisions, it can't be ignored, and smaller servers shouldn't be ignored either. That's part of balancing the game.

The game either needs to be made more accommodating to small groups or to larger groups (like Omen), but they apparently chose neither and their takeaway from Odyssey is somehow that everyone loves 6 man content. Maybe they considered this and structured it as less demanding than segment farming. (X) Doubt.

Leaving Asura for a smaller server isn't exactly a quick fix either, you just end up trying to claw your way into a static to do stuff with, so it doesn't magically solve the problem.

As for DI, that wasn't an Asura problem, that was a 4 people problem that happened to occur on Asura. Somehow we did fine for years until one group decided to leverage the mechanic to screw with everyone else. The end result should have been bans, not mechanic changes that no one really wanted or cared about.

Lmao they said it would be easy for people to +2 and somehow ffxiah thought this would be alliance content

You guys are intentionally setting yourselves up to be punched in the nuts.

Ya, *** shame on us for hoping SE wasn't forcing segregated content again.

Honest question is 6 man not accommodating to small groups?

I think they mean 3 real people controlling 18.

The funny part is, when I was advocating for alliance content in the past, these same people were all about the "low man" stuff. Now it seems to have reversed? Weird.

You're confusing a social problem with a gameplay problem. The goal of systems and gameplay design is to generate the most fun and addictive gameplay systems without negatively impacting the player experience, not to balance server populations.

It boils down to the same thing as applying to the workforce. Have desirable traits, then fill a niche. You can get slotted into any group in the game fairly easily with that methodology providing you have not personally offended anyone within that group.

Sometimes you have to put in the work first because it validates your presence in a group of long-term players. If you have every support with the relevant REMAs, but you need the spoils of group content (RP, Cards, Dyna Clears), you're still going to get picked up without a doubt. Has literally anyone heard of a 5-song, carn bard getting passed on because they don't have JSE+3, JSE neck, or even a DPS set? Be friendly, be useful, and be aware of social context and everything will be fine.

You will not, however, get slotted into anything easily if you:

• Play all selfish DD jobs

• Play jobs that don't easily fit into meta content well such as THF, DNC, PUP, NIN, etc. (Seriously, save these jobs for after you have a great group, they're stretch goals)

• Refuse to complete solo grinds like REMAs, Missions, low-tier Escha, skirmish, etc

• Refuse to level jobs that help you easily solo money-making/resource-generating content

• Refuse to do the research about your job so that your character is as optimal as it can be prior to searching for a group

To join another group, you have to be the flexible one. The game is not populated enough so that you can do whatever you want and expect to find a group of people that need your newly geared PUP.

The meme is "Need R15 REMA DD for Ambu". You can do it with less, but the closer to that you are, the easier everything gets and the lower the probability of failure.

The synopsis here is that being on Asura doesn't fix your problems, you still have to do what's described above or opt for what most people on Asura do - RMT and merc your content.

Were you not around for the first round of Empyrean upgrades? We farmed our +2 upgrades in 6 man groups. The +3 upgrades were alliance content until people had atma progress. It's a little early to complain...

So just as a sidenote: since they are slapping very large amounts of DT on pretty much all kinds of gear now, I think it's safe to assume that SE will absolutely expect all jobs to be wearing at least 30-50% DT for content going forward (even moreso than now).

In other words, content difficulty will be balanced around that fact and they will likely continue the trend of mobs hitting too hard for non-tanks. Solo DDs tanking NMs might end up becoming a thing of the past.

One thing is the "pro" player base expecting you to always be in capped DT in each and every one of your sets.

Another thing is SE planning battle balance of content around the fact that they expect everyone to always be at capped DT.


I hope that's not the case because at that point it's no longer a wise choice, but a mandatory thing that sort of annuls the benefits of having DT in your sets to begin with.

I think that last part is exactly what SE is going for, actually. They might be attempting to devalue DT by making it the default in order to strengthen the dichotomy between tanks and non-tanks again. The massive Attack of Odyssey mobs might have been an indicator of future things to come to counteract some of the power creep.

However, I don't think people expecting you to be wearing DT is necessarily a "pro" player thing. For me it's mainly just a matter of being considerate to make relatively minor DPS concessions in order to make the life of your healer easier.

I hope they will add those pieces fast to porter moogle and addon will be able to cover that too, because otherwise my inventory space will die :D

Would PDT2/MDT2 on jobs other than pld or run really break the game? If +2 are 13% then +3 will be at least 15% but it's not hard to get 50% already

It would for sure break the game, because they would need to balance content around people having access to that. Currently they can balance around people having access to MDT/PDT at 50% and people can get there with many combinations. With PDT/MDT/DT II on just empy+3 it would be mandatory to use empy and nothing else in endgame. Unless they will simply make more attacks ignoring pdt/mdt/dt, but then it would be even worse. Also remember DT above 50% is getting relatively stronger with each %. From 0% to 50% that 50% less damage. From 50% you only need additional 25% to cut damage by 50% again. Also things like stoneskin and phalanx would be able to cut damage to 0 in a lot of cases.