Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

[Aksannyi]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

Lol. I was actually considering making the "Aks and Yyg talk nonsense" thread but that would probably get merged with the "Official Bored at Work/Just Shooting the Shit/No Rails to Derail thread."

Aksannyi's Derailment Skill increases by 0.3 points.
Aksannyi's Derailment skill reaches 200!
Aksannyi learns "Nonsensical Chatter!"

(is that on-topic enough?)

[Yygdrasil]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

"Aks and Yyg talk nonsense" thread

Brilliant. I'm making it.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

Pfft. I bet most of the people who say they'd play FF11 if it's an offline, single-player game would lose interest fast if that becomes the case. For all human beings' flaws, machines and programs cannot offer the same richness of experience as interacting with fellow players. At least, not quite yet.

Right, because it would have to be the exact same game it was.

FFXI is a totally different game from the game it was this time last year. Its lost most of its edge and it panders to those that have cared to stay to a point its actually deeply insulting to anyone that left. Oh, now Dynamis drop rates are awesome - all of how many years later? They took the best storyline and dumbed down its content, now they've finished the job with rank missions.

Yet they haven't changed how sky gods are popped, the spawn rate of Yovra or a lot of other shit.

Does Eastern Shadow really need a 18-27 hour respawn now? If you're going to streamline the game so much, why aren't they streamlining all of it? It got my Vali's in two hours of camping, but the mob's spawn time is still bullshit.

Like Aks said, FFXI is the missing Final Fantasy.

And its pretty much got everything Final Fantasy fans have been otherwise wanting from the franchise. A world and characters visualized by Sakaguchi and the people that wrote FFIX, the basis of the sound track is Uematsu. The setting is similar to that of FFIV, FFVI and FFIX.

This is stuff people want. People are getting tired of the sci-fi angle with J-Rock stars.

FFXI has the material to weave one of the biggest and best Final Fantasy titles ever. They just have to change some things, change gameplay, perhaps exploration. It doesn't need to be 1:1 with the online version, but it could certainly tell a version and have content similar to the FFXI trilogy - FFXI, RoZ and CoP. That's the real story of FFXI right there, ToA and WotG and Abyssea are kinda superfluous, but you could throw in the original add-ons or work them into the story.

Aldo, Prishe, Shantotto and so many characters could be playable allies. They've already put Prishe and Shantotto out there in Dissidia - its got to make people curious, but I doubt its going to push people to subscribe to an MMO.

[Aksannyi]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

Basically, if an offline version of FFXI were to be made, I wouldn't really want it to be anything at all like the MMO. Two totally different genres. It would have to be the game that FFXI would have been if MMOs did not exist and this were just the eleventh game in the series of Final Fantasy RPGs. However, that doesn't mean that it can't exist within Vana'diel.

I wouldn't want to go camp Fafnir on an offline game and wait for his spawn to get a Ridill. I wouldn't want to gather zeni pictures to turn in for pop items for certain NMs. Those are purely MMO-type systems, and they probably wouldn't work in an offline game.

I would love to see something like an arena where mobs such as Fafnir or Tiamat could be challenged by your party, for experience, gil, and maybe an achievement or something. (Kill all of the mobs in the arena mode and get an ultimate weapon for your protagonist. Make it even the same name as a relic, like a lolClaustrum or something)

Of course it would be somewhat grindy because that's the nature of RPG games - have to grind to 50 before having a chance of reasonably killing N Boss - but it wouldn't be grind to 75, gear up, enter Dynamis, play Dynamis every three days (lolwut of course that would not work in an offline RPG), get some drops that no one in your party can use (hi2u pup) and repeat this for three years until the thing you do want drops? Only difference then is you eliminate the competition aspect with other players, but come on. That kind of model does not work in an offline RPG. And that's just one example - I didn't say I wanted FFXI to just be ported to a PS3 and turned into a game where I do the same shit I did in the game between '04 and '09, I would want it to be an offline RPG game like FFX, FFVII, Tales games, Dragon Warrior, etc., but set in the world of Vana'diel, where the cities and the NPCs that we all know hang out but help the single player instead of collecting millions of bat wings to raise your fame.

You get what I'm saying? Vana'diel is an awesome world. It would be cool to experience it through the eyes of a SE-created character progressing through the world as he saves it from the one singular "big bad." Of course that one main mob doesn't exist in FFXI now, because it's an MMO. They could create a single storyline, find a reasonable boss to continue the "end" boss. Maybe one that we haven't seen in XI (this would probably make more sense) and give the game a finite end. This would appeal to the people who couldn't play FFXI because (and I quote), "It doesn't have an end. It isn't a Final Fantasy game if it doesn't end." Those people could experience Vana'diel. It wouldn't be the same thing, but that's not the point - at least they get to see it in some way. And I think it would be very cool, an offline game set in Vana'diel. Continuity might be a challenge, but I'm sure SE could think of something. They are master storytellers, after all.

I hope that clarified my point. I wouldn't want the same MMO-grindy shit to be in an offline game. No one would. Clean it up, give us a (fairly) linear storyline - and hell, you could even have three story arcs, one from each starting point of Sandy, Windy, and Bastok, replay value amirite - give it some awesome SE-style cutscenes and music in places where there currently is none, give it an ending, and bam. You bet your ass I would play it.

[Kailea]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

well of course if someone made an offline mode for FFXI, many things would be changed, I would not mind the game staying the same. But all the timers for everything would be greatly adjusted.

[Yygdrasil]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

I can see it now. More and more .dat file changes and Yutube videos of people fighting Shinryu AS Shinryu... with comments under it that read something like:

"OMGAWSOMELOOKWHATIDIDLOLIMTEHMAN!!!"

Do...

Not...

Want...

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

@Aksannyi: That sounds like a spin off, and a somewhat lazily designed one since it's mostly about converting MMORPG content into single player format. lol. Well, if there are enough people who'd buy it, SE surely would be interested in making it. It's a bit sad, but even the likes of Pixar and SE are into recycling story/characters and worlds these days.

I can't say I'm interested in it myself; having played through much of the (non-hobby/crafting) contents already, the chance to do it again in a solo format isn't all that appealing. FF11 really wouldn't be fun for me without the friends and LS mates.

@ BBQ: Chill, dude. Foaming at the mouth and finding an MMORPG you don't even play "deeply insulting" is bit much. Take a pill or something. (I'd reply with "But the people who play are having fun," but I'm afraid you'd work yourself into a raging frenzy, so let's not go there.)

* * *

Getting back to the topic, I have some reservations, but the vast majority of the current players would enjoy the change to the skill up and exp rate, IMO. That may be the best yardstick for SE's progress: doing what it takes to make the largest number of paying customers happy.

Some may call it pandering, but it is good business sense. *shrug*

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

@ BBQ: Chill, dude. Foaming at the mouth and finding an MMORPG you don't even play "deeply insulting" is bit much. Take a pill or something. (I'd reply with "But the people who play are having fun," but I'm afraid you'd work yourself into a raging frenzy, so let's not go there.)

You're confusing blunt honesty with rage. Look at what SE has and hasn't done this last year and you can see the inconsistencies in the adjustments and what they've left as is. They saw fit to change the missions and EXP to "speed people along" but the don't change sky, sea, NMs and lots of other things.

It doesn't make much sense to me. What's going to be the litmus test for the new endgame when it happens. What are we measuring player skill by now that there's pretty nothing to measure it with?

[Aksannyi]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

@Aksannyi: That sounds like a spin off, and a somewhat lazily designed one since it's mostly about converting MMORPG content into single player format. lol. Well, if there are enough people who'd buy it, SE surely would be interested in making it. It's a bit sad, but even the likes of Pixar and SE are into recycling story/characters and worlds these days.

Not exactly what I mean, though. Maybe a spin-off would be kind of what it is, maybe sometime 50 years in the future or something. (Vana'diel was restored to blahblahblah but oh look, a new threat looms!) I don't think that turning the current game known as FFXI into an offline game works. There's so much of that model that is specifically designed in an MMO style. You don't do "raids" (so to speak) in offline games. You do dungeons, solve puzzles usually, and beat a dungeon boss. Which is essentially what you would do in say, Dynamis, but after you defeat a boss in a dungeon in an offline MMO, he usually stays dead and the dungeon is cleared. You're not usually farming dungeons for gear. XP maybe.

I would like to see something different, but set in Vana'diel. I think that people who are FF fans but not MMO fans would appreciate something like that. Do I think SE would ever do it? No, I definitely don't. Do I think it would be cool if they did do something like that? Yes, I definitely do. Do I think that the opportunity to revisit Vana'diel as Joe Protagonist and follow a sequence in which I Save the World (again) would be sweet? Yes. I think there is enough space somewhere in the story (or like I said, set sometime after the period of Vana'diel which players of this game currently inhabit) to create some kind of linear RPG game in this existing world.

People would of course bitch. "OMG they are so lazy they didn't even create a new world for this game, what the fuck SE." But if people realized that FFXI-Offline were basically the "alternative" to playing FFXI and still getting to experience the world of Vana'diel in the same way that X players experience Spira, I think it could have a moderately successful - if not very successful - following.

Certainly better than HDing all of Vana'diel and rereleasing the entire game and pretending it's FFXIV like some people apparently seem to want.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

Oh, you're calmer now.

Well, first of all, raising level cap to 90 basically already changed Sky, Sea, (H)NM. I mean, my social LS took down a Tiamat the other week, and few of us have even seen it before. (No, it wasn't easy, but we managed somehow. lol. Was fun, by the way.) It's not the kind of change you have in mind, but it is change, and it's real--no one botting Tiamat--now that's a change if anything is a change.

Second way of looking at it: how many people are using those contents? Devs do not have infinite amount of time and resources, so they have to pick and choose what to work on. You want the biggest bang for your gaming dollar, no? Well, dev managers are the same with their budgets--how to make improvements for more people for less dev time.

So, drop rate is easier to adjust than instancing is to implement. Guess what gets altered about Dynamis? (And, yes, there are more people doing Dynamis than Sky/Sea/HNM.) The metaphor computer people like to use is along the line of "Low hanging fruits get picked." (It has to do with their obsession with trees, I'd imagine.)

As for "player skill", I'm not too obsessed with how other people play unless they are in my alliance. I will say this: people can and still do make wrong choices during battles, and inattentive players still suck. Nothing SE's done changed that, except that with higher HP people have now, we have a bit more time to recover from minor errors.

[NightShayde]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

I, for one, have been having a blast on FFXI lately.

[Yygdrasil]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

I second that

[Aksannyi]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

Nothing against that. I just really wonder what kind of scenarios SE could cook up if they wanted to create a sequel-ish single player game in Vana'diel. The thought intrigues me.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

Oh, you're calmer now.

Well, first of all, raising level cap to 90 basically already changed Sky, Sea, (H)NM. I mean, my social LS took down a Tiamat the other week, and few of us have even seen it before. (No, it wasn't easy, but we managed somehow. lol. Was fun, by the way.) It's not the kind of change you have in mind, but it is change, and it's real--no one botting Tiamat--now that's a change if anything is a change.

All that changed was that you can overpower this content now, no one even needs to be playing to come to this conclusions. That's not what I'm getting at here.

The problem is not so much that it was easier, but that much of this content has not also been sped up to par. I mean, if your logic is going to be getting everyone on the same page more quickly, then you need to change the rate at which NMs spawn and drops/triggers are obtained. This was what drove the changes to Dynamis and EXP, but apparently not much else.

Its sloppy, if you ask me.

Second way of looking at it: how many people are using those contents? Devs do not have infinite amount of time and resources, so they have to pick and choose what to work on. You want the biggest bang for your gaming dollar, no? Well, dev managers are the same with their budgets--how to make improvements for more people for less dev time.

For years, FFXI made use of all endgame content, which set itself apart from the likes of WoW and so many other MMORPGs. Isn't it nice to work for your gear and have it still be important. No matter what, there was always going to be a new shiny around the corner, but the old ones remained relevant.

And some of it remains relevant, but interests now may lie elsewhere for others and the timesink elements have not changed. They let you spawn gods faster, but you don't obtain triggers any faster than before.

As for missions, why not go this way about it - Some games do let you take the easy way out and let you see the main story and get zone access for your big endgame shinies, however, they are deprived of the rewards of completing the story content for not playing up to par.

In a game like Donkey Kong Country Returns the use of Super Kong on any level in DKCR and you get to complete the level and see the next level, but you are deprived of any and all rewards that level might have offered and this prevents you from accessing a secret area and also the secret world.

And before that confuses your precious little mind, its something that can be applied to any game. Think of it as an un-achievement.

FFXI actually did have one instance that was similar. Ark Angels. You and your friends could just go take down each AA separately then go on to take down Eld'narche, but how many people did it that way?

You didn't get a Suppanomimi for doing it that way. The dev team didn't think that was good enough, so you had to face down all the AAs at once with an alliance.

And that was exactly what people did. Most people didn't even complete RoZ without doing the full AA fight for the Suppa and other earrings.

So lets say that perhaps the team gave you a way to skip doing Three Paths and the Airship fight in CoP, or just made them easier. Yeah, sure, pot fight is hard, too, but those are the ones that really bother everyone. So we make those easier, but no CoP ring for you if you go that route and no access to Apocalypse Nigh for its reward.

I'm sure lots of people would take the easy way out just to get endgame content access. And hey, that's standard issue stuff, so that's fine. But it would solve that nagging problem of no one helping with missions if they were deprived of their lucrative rewards for going the easy way, wouldn't it?

And nothing about the rewarding path would have to be dumbed down, so players could still show they were organized and good listeners for competing CoP. Skill is one thing, attention span and drive are another. People prefer all three, but skill is optional.

If greed is the great motivator of MMOs - and it is - then use greed to motivate players.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

Well, I was going to earnest reply in detail, but this popped out at me.

And before that confuses your precious little mind

I guess civility is just difficult with some people. (Or maybe you're still sore because I pointed out where COR fell short compared to BRD* these days, despite new Phantom Rolls, plus several other misconceptions you had with FF11?)

In any case, if you refuse to see how the level cap increase let people who couldn't previously experience Sky and many other endgame contents do so now (albeit at a less than "full strength" dose), I don't know what to say. It really is obvious, when your social LS stops saying "I wish we can do Kirin," and instead asking "Who has pop items? Which ones do we need?"

Oh, it's simple and obvious to say level cap increase lets player "overpower" the old contents, but the reality is a bit more subtle, and contains more scenario than overpowering strength.

And, by the way, I don't think SE wants everyone to have every gear they want--it's more along the line of letting more players have more opportunities to experience more of the contents.


* No, I didn't say BRD is better than COR unconditionally; it was strictly about the ability to enable delay reduction for melee DDs (and reduce recast time for spells). No foaming at the mouth, please.


* * *

I don't think the two specific adjustment alters the difficulty of the contents directly at all, though, except for skilling up and low level exping. Which, I think most can agree are not much as 'content' goes. Well, the first trip up the levels was really something, but the shine wears off more with each subsequent trip for most people, I think.

Though, I used to really admire SMNs with blue skill numbers for their determinations--and thought MNK with blue Guard skilsl were all lifeless zombie FF11 addicts. They were kind of like Maat's Cap before the Level Sync, Astral Flow party craze.

* * *

Totally random trip down the memory lane.

Totally random, but speaking of the first trip to Lv.75 (yeah yeah, ancient times), I remember taking an hour looking for a spot to take a screenshot of my newly completed RDM Artifact set. I waited extra, too, for the sunrise in-game, to take the picture because I wanted a certain lighting.



(Don't let the sword full you; I was a 95% back line RDM--and happy to be there.)

Back then, every level--no, every 0.1 skill--was something worth celebrating over. hehehe.