How Could SE Realistically Improve Modern FFXI?

Or, and I know this opinion is going to get me booed as always but...

Do Sortie themselves.

If you allow 18-man Sortie runs, I can guarantee you that no new/returning player will ever step foot into Sortie without someone to carry them, until all the players carrying them quit (maybe).

I don't think that being carried through Ody clears, carried through an aeonic, carried through dynamis [d], carried through sinister reign, carried through vagary, carried through omen, and then carried through sortie and having all the gear in the game is a very engaging process for a new player, personally.

I think it's nice to have something aspirational that is challenging and you can't have your big brother beat up for you, personally. Something that actually requires you to play the game and execute a plan as opposed to just standing around waiting for your armor to show up in your inventory.

I'm sure this isn't what EVERYONE wants/why everyone wants 18-man, ala Godfry's group with 10, but it is a natural consequence of unlocking it.

That was the point I was trying to make. If you make it too easy to leech, that becomes the standard progression. There's no more strength gains really, you reactivate and are immediately shepherded to your empyrean+3 set. After that, you have jumped to the top power tier and nothing else you do for the rest of your time playing will give you anything near that much of a strength boost. It's not hard to see how that environment gets boring.

It's doubly bad when the main ongoing content is to continue to spam Sortie, an event that most of the existing playerbase doesn't accept to be fun or engaging. So, any benefit to groups with more than 6 has to be weighed against the harm of destroying the returning player experience. If you can farm a few pieces at a time and work through content, you have a much longer and more satisfying progression and experience a much wider portion of the game in the process.

Regarding alliance play and specifically OMEN: Here is my OP on the forums 12/21/16 They resolved by 3/2017

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/51846-Please-allow-the-formation-of-more-than-6-in-a-party-for-Omen?p=589394#post589394

Given that it was around Christmas and the New Year this was a pretty big turnaround on Square's part and it was most definitely still relevant. The point is people like to play with other people me included and it still is the second reason why I quit on the 20th Anniversary. We had a pretty big shell at least for Leviathan's standards and it was shitty that we had to sideline people.

I don't fully disagree with you.. nor should I think that they should make sortie alliance because I have 4 more friends I want to bring. But I do disagree with the engagement part. Dynamis LS are the friendliest to new players, people have fun, and you honestly don't feel like you are carrying. People might underperform but that doesn't feel like a carry.

I didn't play during the Aeonic phase, but could you really carry people on a full Aeonic clear before oddy gear came out? I thought that was actually a hard content if you had a full alliance, but only main PT fighting.

I wonder if tripling Sortie bosses HP for full alliance and making them hit harder would be something that would break the content. You go single party, you have regular sortie. You go 2 pts, everything now has twice the HP and hit harder.

They just need to revamp sortie. Shorten the time to 30 mins. Make the Gall per objective go up, limit to 1 top and 1 basement boss a run.

Would help make it more of a variety, feel less grindy, still feel like you are getting progress, and also dear God, remove Purchasing Old cases for 80k... that was just pointless ever.

Keep 6 people, we don't need to make it an Alliance event. Auto-refilling Tag, with 3 charges. So if you still wanted to run for an hour you could. And add the ROE objectives i mentioned before.

All of that makes this event way more reasonable across the board.

I don't think anyone would really complain about having it feel Less grindy.

Yeah, I should also be clear that I actually LIKE Sortie as an event primarily focused on Empy armor reforge. That works quite well, feels like it has a fair effort:reward ratio, players can make realistic progress solo or with less rigidly scheduled groups, etc.

While this ship has obviously already sailed, I would have really liked it if they had designed Sortie to provide the following rewards:
* Empy +2/+3 reforge items, like it is now.
* JSE earrings similar to current approach, though maybe adjusting +1/+2 drop rates (I think if it was a little more consistent, people might specifically go to farm earrings - as opposed to it being such a low chance of something good now that people can only view it as an incidental bonus from the event they're doing for other reasons)
* Add some additional drops/reason to farm, maybe Astral Detritus? (which also drops from the content associated with reforged AF and Relic upgrades, so feels consistent)
* Bump up the CP/EP reward so that doing an hour of Sortie provides EP on par with Apex mobs - meaning that some people will also use the event as a regular leveling spot (but limited to 1hr per day means it can't really be abused, and is more of an incentive to keep doing Sortie)
* Add some direct drops to the NMs/bosses, same idea as a lot of events (Omen, Vagary, Incursion, etc.).

For Primes, I also hate that they actively compete with Empy armor reforge since they use the same points.

What I would have loved to see for Primes: Don't tie the acquisition to a single endgame event, but instead introduce a new currency added to nearly all relevant endgame content, so that logging into FFXI and playing the game doing whatever you prefer still helps make a little progress. There might be an optimal/most efficient way to get these points, but you make slow and steady progress by simply playing the game regularly and doing any relevant content. Not limited to repeated farming of one specific 6-person event (which is inherently a little anti-social TBH, since you're locking yourself into a major time commitment where you realistically only play with 5 other people)

I'm talking about something like having "Prime Bucks" come from:
* Sortie - awarded from mobs in Sortie, just like CP/EP. Still limited by number of Sortie entries per week and performance in the event.
* Ambuscade - limited amount purchasable each month
* Sheol (A/B/C) - a modest amount awarded from hitting the end crystal
* Peculiar Foes RoEs - moderate reward for doing each of the monthly RoEs, encouraging more people to kill them all routinely
* Apex mobs - add a daily/weekly RoE that gives some Prime Bucks by killing x number of Apex mobs.
* Master Trials - some Prime Bucks awarded for any MT win
* Domain Invasion - small reward from killing DI dragons, more significant reward from killing Mireu.
* If you want to expand it even further to older content, maybe also add these points to other events like Omen, Dynamis[D], Vagary.

I'm not saying to make the amount required trivial. This would be an example of something that's totally fine to be a long term grind that would take a diligent player several months, but if people had a sense they were making consistent small progress by doing whatever events they enjoy doing, that further incentivizes doing all sorts of different endgame content regularly, and gives another carrot to keep people regularly logging in and just doing stuff in the game.

If people really want to finish their weapons as fast as possible, they'll be encouraged to engage with ALL of the endgame content, including dailies/weeklies, on a regular basis (since each source is limited by number of entries to the event, or a non-repeatable daily/weekly/monthly RoE). But for those who are fine taking it a little more slowly, they still feel some sense of accomplishment by doing any current content - that helps improve engagement (and subscription retention) for everyone from the fairly casual endgame player to the super-hardcore.

I was able to 12-box it with 4 leeches within 2 months of the first aeonics being produced. It was on the harder end of content at the time, but HP scaling just doesn't do much to dissuade leeching because the value of buff stacking is so high. Might be slightly better in Sortie because of the WS wall, but I doubt it would be much of a deterant.

Alliance content Can I have it? 60 American Dollars You can have this.

"12 box" implies manual play. Were you not automating a bunch of SMN?

I could be wrong, but I think adding Astral Detritus to Sortie is actually genius. All of these Sortie suggestions seem great as they don't cut down the grind time for a Prime (regardless of whether or not this is a good thing) while also giving people more reasons to participate in Sortie.


Assuming they won't change the currency for making Prime weapons, I think making the galli cap monthly rather than daily + allowing other forms of content to reward galli would be a great way to ease frustrations with Sortie.

Wasn't manual, tons of automation. Was before SMN-burn aeonic was common though, many of them were done with Death-MB strategy, Schah was RNG, etc. Not sure how that's relevant to the topic though, unless you just really needed to clarify that someone 'playing' 12 characters wasn't doing it by hand.

Feel like the thing id change about sort is you could port more directly to things. I feel like the running around is the most frequent complaint. So like let ppl port straight to a boss once u have the shard and metal maybe... then make the boss fights a bit longer if you must. Aita might last more than 1 minute on occasion if you get fettered to death. E boss maybe cuz primes and savage make distortion. Less travel time, more fighting time would solve some ppl's issues with it.

And yeah fair point re: expanding it to 18. Would immediately just be sold smh. Considering the low population that has been referenced by others and the amount of rmt... idk like whos even around to buy gil any more? They damn near took needing gil out of the game like years ago. There's a disconnect there I still don't fully grasp.

Or maybe do similar to how they did options for Sinister Reign and Vagary bosses.

Have regular mode, exactly as is, and a "short" mode, where Gall is increased, but you are limited to 1 region or your choice, so they would need to modify some objectives, and cut the time you are in the zone for.

This would allow for more job diversity since you don't need to be on a job that best fits the whole run, and mix some other stuff in. Some Ring, Waist/neck/back drops from the bosses, to have a reason to do more then 1. Balance it so earring rates still turn out the same, and Gall would be proportional, so ~12-15k for a short run vs ~45-60k for a full run, which is still way better then a solo casual run around and farm run.

I do like the idea of a pool point system from various content as well. And can tie that in to the different currencies as well. 1/100 CP, 1/100 ISP, 1/10000 Silt 1/10000 cruor (not traded in, but some conversion value added based on what you have)

Would make it feel more like an ultimate goal also that way.

SE will absolutely never, in a million years, let you buy the latest content clears by botting MLs in different zones. Dated currencies are not given new uses specifically because everyone has a surplus of them. Let it go~

The running is part of the design. It is on purpose. It is not changing, ever.

My fav part of ML

I stack my old cases to 99 so I can get my disappointment done all at once.



It's 9 boss, every chest, all naaks, and aoe cleaving as much extra as humanly possible(with cheats). It would be significantly more galli per day. People aren't currently limited by psych, the only people that ever were are the people that were first to hit stage 5.

My entire static is bottlenecked by Psyche. You can bottleneck yourself even faster if you make stage 4s instead. It's a cheap design.

This is incredibly impressive considering:


I have 35 psyche I'm not using, but that's because I have split my time between two characters. If I had been grinding only on the same character this whole time, I would have about 10 psyche more than what I need, maybe 15. Guess I'm not a real elitist.

And you have done all your psyche since the event started?

I don't do sortie 7 days a week currently. I do ody or sortie 7 days a week, occasionally both, so I make less galli than someone who is all in. I have plenty of psyche and haven't done them all since I unsubbed for 4 months after one of the 3 people I used to run Sortie with drama bombed RL.

If you had made one stage 5 and one stage 4 by now you'll have.. five psyche left.

Have we not gotten 65 psyches so far (including this month)? A stage 5 and a stage 4 are 30 and 15 psyches, respectively, for a total of 45. You'd have 20 to spare at this point.

No, the correct count is:


I have a stage 5 (on Male) and 30 Psyche + 5 more I haven't collected yet this month.

You need to get around 48k muffins every day nonstop for the last 13 months without a single day off in order to have run out of psyche at this point. This includes the times when the basement bosses were supertough and the time before there were public aminon+basement strats.

To be clear, I'm not necessarily advocating that Sortie become alliance content. I think that it should and I have before, but I also don't think that's the only way to solve it either. The suggestion earlier of cutting it to 30 minutes, adding teleports, and allowing more flexible entry KIs might do a lot to mitigate what I see the problems are, as well. Not only will it increase the pace, but it gives people more flexibility with their time and party. I'm sure there are other options, also. They will all have inevitable tradeoffs and they will all have people that don't like it, so the question should be what brings the most people back and keeps them engaged with the content.

I also agree there is no winning here, Maletaru said earlier he'd quit if most of these recommendations were put in place, so either way you do it people leave. I just know in my circle personally the largest exodus in the game took place in the months following the Prime weapon release and a lot of them were veteran players who were already burned out on Sortie and just said *** it. The bugged release of v25 didn't help and neither did the widespread banning that took place last summer. Had they been given toys to play with, it would've drawn out their inevitable exit, but they weren't willing to spend the months on end doing the same thing on repeat and committing to a static for one toy every few months. When you have new content that is the last of its kind, it's not easy to make it interesting but the rewards at least could've spiced it up more had they been accessible.

Vet players are going to quit eventually, SE recognizes this likely and they lack the resources to infinitely expand content to keep them occupied, but I don't think the answer to this is a long drawn out grind either. I think they could've dragged these departures out further by making Primes more accessible, but I also get that the evidence for this is entirely anecdotal and the opposite could also be just as true. It's just my observation that the game becoming more accessible to peoples time and life tends to lead to greater participation. This doesn't have to translate to easy, there is a difference between difficult and time sink. Me raising the sub issue is just the point that the way things are right now aren't working and something should change, but you might be right, it might just be inevitable and the natural order given the state of the game.

My suggestion is just make it more worthwhile for solo/lowman groups to farm a decent amount of gallimaufry. A regular 8-nm run nets close to 60k gallimaufry. To me, a good target would be maybe 1/3 that amount for a soloer and 1/2 that for a group of up to 3-4 or so. Can the content/rewards be adjusted to make it more reasonable for this segment of the community? I think that's more than enough to keep those players engaged and not feeling completely left out. Even if stage 5 primes are off the table.

Something like increasing the rewards for the A-D bosses while decreasing the rewards for the E-H bosses accordingly. Instead of 2k/10k, why not 4k/8k? If you can do 8-NM runs already, you won't even notice a difference.

"I'm gonna quit if they make sortie alliance" is the same crybaby ***as "I'm quitting because Abyssea made my E.Bd useless". Hell, its probably even bigger crybaby ***because Abyssea didnt take away any prestige of having an E.Bd, that was Einherjar.

I think my point was pretty clear, I wouldn't quit because I'd be upset and my feewings would be hurt, I would have quit because I'd have nothing to do. I was saying: If SE had made prime weapons 1.5m muffins each, I would have quit by now, because I would have already made every weapon I want by now.

You can beat this guy up if you want tho.

1-Meeble covered it

2-I replied to what I saw in Iamaman's post about you quitting, which I believed the topic was still about alliance, not reducing muffins.

Frak me enough complaining about the sortie grind. It's not going away.

Seriously sounding like butt hurt overgrown babies that can't/won't get shiny cause takes too long. Suck it up and do it or don't. Just enough with the crying.

Corrected on the psyche, guess was not doing them at start.

Do what I do - Pretend Sortie doesn't exist and never *** do it