Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

[Aksannyi]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

Yeah, while people have it easier getting to sky and seeing that content, or getting to sea and being able to participate in Jailers or what not, the systems are still stupidly slow. Go up and farm diorites for a few hours, pretty sure that shit hasn't changed. Popping Despot? Gonna be just as slow as before, because repop timers on mobs haven't changed and the spawn rate of Despot is still just as slow.

I don't think they necessarily need to adjust how often you can enter Dynamis, Limbus, or Einherjar, but adjusting drop rates in Dynamis was a good start to streamlining things a bit, if that's how they're trying to go. But how's the drop rate on Kitty pants these days? Still fairly low? I'm not saying it should be 100% drop - but maybe it should. Farming diorites is a huge pain in the ass. Getting Despot to spawn is a pain in the ass. You'd think that by the time you went through all of that, SE might throw you a bone. If the goal is just to get to Kirin, the sky god are indeed easier, no doubt, four gods = 8 pop items to pop them, and some of them are horribly annoying to get. Would there be something bad about adjusting either the drop/spawn rates of necessary sky pop NMs, or the drop rate of the sky gods? Or hell, even both?

Not sure how many people are still up doing sky. But sky is the worst, if you ask me. I always hated how time consuming doing anything in sky was.

I guess SE really wants to keep some stuff rare, but if they're so hellbent on making the game easier. Why so inconsistent? It's easy as hell to get from 30 to 90 now (so I hear), why can't everything else be made just as simple? Yeah, it's easier to kill NMs ... if you can get to pop them. If you don't mind waiting three days for them to pop (hi Tiamat). Gaiters should be rare, okay. But if they want to give more people the chance to experience things like kings, why not lower the time between spawns on all NMs but slightly lower the drop rate, as well? That keeps the drops rare (lol at that, but this is an SE mentality) but allows people access to the content. Right?

I kind of see what BBQ is saying. Maybe my explanation will clarify some things.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

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

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?)

You think in very linear terms, so I feel the need to keep you on track when the subject begins to involve creative or critical thinking.

And actually, I must have missed what you said about BRD and COR. I've said those were deeply flawed jobs upon much reflection. It would have been wiser to distribute their skills among the other 18 jobs because jobs like SMN or PUP or DRG wouldn't have fallen so far behind had they and other jobs been given what BRD and COR had.

But it wasn't until late 2009 that SMN got AoE refresh for the party. A lot of updates helped DRG, but what could have really helped DRG shed a lot of misconceptions sooner is if they could have provided something like Haste to a party.

Whatever your perception of BRD and COR is, the fundamental difference for me is BRD gets to high level no matter what - COR has to earn it. Well, unless they want to be a second-rate BRD and not use a gun. See, for me,

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?"

Again with the linear thinking.

The updates did nothing to change how sky WORKS, its just made fights EASIER.

It didn't change how you obtain triggers.
It didn't change how you pop gods.
It didn't change how you fight gods.
It didn't change anything about the routine.

Hence, it made nothing more accessible. You still need a group, perhaps with fewer people if you wish.

You seem to keep missing the point that this is not just about overpowering the content. Much like the mechanics of sky have not changed, neither have the missions they've lifted the caps from.

I don't think the fights were even so much of the problem with CoPs as it was all the bullshit in between,

Mostly the item farming, really. The animas , the tailfeathers for the Ouryu right, the salts for the bomb fight, the PCC Polymer Pumps, the Sacrarium keys. They let you buy some of this stuff later on, sure, but then there's all the RUNNING AROUND, NM popping, the chocobo rentals, burning through warp cudgels - there was a lot of things that could be done to speed things up and reduce frustration

I mean, they were thoughtful enough to give you the option to be transported out of the whole of Riverne or spires upon completion of the mission there, but you can't just drop me in Metalworks after the Moblin BC cutscene is done? I really have to burn a warp cudgel charge or run back there?

I understand part of the mission experience needs a sense of journey, but let's reduce some of the traveling back to end a storyline with a particular NPC.

And as I've said, you could leave the option of capping missions in and just withhold the mission rewards and hidden mission to those that take things down the easy way for endgame access. No CoP or TaA ring, just like no RoZ earring for doing AA the easier way.

Or, even better, you could add an Assault or ToM-ish system for people that have completed missions the classic way and go back and help others with the classic approach. Moogles would be happy to create an Adventurer Assistance Program, I'd imagine. Earn points toward EXP, gil or lucrative gear rewards within that system.

There were a lot of ways SE could have approached it rather than how they've done it.

[Malacite]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

Yeah, while people have it easier getting to sky and seeing that content, or getting to sea and being able to participate in Jailers or what not, the systems are still stupidly slow. Go up and farm diorites for a few hours, pretty sure that shit hasn't changed. Popping Despot? Gonna be just as slow as before, because repop timers on mobs haven't changed and the spawn rate of Despot is still just as slow.

This is why they need to fix old content. In abyssea, you can get some of the most OP gear in the game with the exception D Ring, though even that's debatable vs Dark Rings with up to +6% PDT & MDT on the same thing. And all these NMs are fairly easily killed, quickly spawned, and drop their stuff often enough with TH & !! Triggers.

So either SE nerfs Abyssea (unlikely) or fixes older content so that it's not such a cockblock anymore. 24 hour respawns should be done away with entirely. I *love* Abyssea's 15 minute maximum and never feel like I'm at a loss for things to do inside there.

[Takelli]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

So either SE nerfs Abyssea (unlikely) or fixes older content so that it's not such a cockblock anymore. 24 hour respawns should be done away with entirely. I *love* Abyssea's 15 minute maximum and never feel like I'm at a loss for things to do inside there.

What elitsts will say: HELL NO!!!!!111!!!11 ONEONEONE!1 wE WORKED FOR THE GEAR, WE DON'T WANT OTHER TO JUST STROLL IN AND GET IT!

Well, I say all NMs should be on a 20-30 min spawn timer, and increase their drops rates as well. Make ALL the gear R/Ex from NMs, and increase the drop rate by a good chunk. Make it so that others don't have to wait WEEKS (Like I did to try and get O-kotes for my sam after 70+ kills, I fucking gave up.), and increase the drop rate of magic, and such. Make the game easier so that we don't have to spend hours upon hours farming just to get one thing.

[Aksannyi]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

That kind of elitism should be long dead anyway. Should have been dead when Einherjar was created and you could get A Body and E Body from Odin. (That's where I got both my A and my E, btw. Not that we weren't camping kings - we were, but it was much easier to get a drop off a mob we spawned ourselves than have to worry about competing with 5 linkshells for a spawn - and not necessarily even the HQ spawn.) Still, Odin is not terribly easy to get to and/or kill. A lot of linkshells struggled with Einherjar. But the fact remains that SE gave people an alternative to get certain pieces of gear while still managing to keep them rare. Einherjar was pure win. We stopped camping Aspid entirely unless we had a buyer for the egg.

And not only should that form of elitism be dead just from that sort of thing, the fact that the game isn't even remotely the same should have killed a lot of that kind of attitude. Yeah, I leveled RDM when it was still hard - before ToAU. (I think I finished about a month after that, but I can't honestly remember.) I leveled my WHM the real way. I leveled my BLM the hard way (solo bitches). And I leveled SMN the Astral burn way, and you know what? My RDM, WHM, and BLM did not feel cheated by that.

After all the changes in the game, if people are still gonna bitch over things being made easier - things that a lot of people don't even fucking do anymore, then seriously, they need to get over themselves. I would have been happy as hell if they'd upped the drop rates on sky NM pop items and sky god drops after ToAU was released, even, because by that time, only "newb" endgame shells (I use the term newb to mean that they were new to endgame activities) were regularly doing sky. And you know what? No one is going to be saddened that people can gear up faster and thus be useful in other aspects of the game. Yeah, sure it makes me /cry a little to hear of WHMs who bought Erase for 10k when my scroll was 800k but well, that's how it is. That's the nature of MMOs. Things change. Nerfs happen. Don't like it? Don't play.

I don't even play and I can see why changing things like sky gods/sky pops/sky drops should be adjusted.

[Rodin]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

So the fewer subscribers FFXI has:

- The more TH improves
- The easier skill-ups become
- The more EXP you get per kill
- And missions become even more of a joke.

Seriously, can you just make an offline version now? The only problem I'm seeing now is people have to pay to play this.

As for playing in offline mode, there used to be something called ProjectXI, which would let you emulate a server (similar to a private server for WoW.) Square-Enix sent the original programmer of the project a cease and desist letter some time ago.

Basically, you could rework the entire code of the game to make it your style. You could max out all levels of everything on your toon. You could make Bubbly Bernie shit relic weapons like he just ate mexican food. You could be a level 75BLM/75RDM. And you could invite your friends to play on it.

That is probably the closest this game will get to being offline.

But, like I said, it doesn't "exist" anymore.

Rumor has it that a few copies of the program are circulating on torrent sites, but they are extremely hard to find. And imaginging since it's been sometime, will need some programming to bring up to speed. Don't ask me for any links to any websites, I don't know of any.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

As for playing in offline mode, there used to be something called ProjectXI, which would let you emulate a server (similar to a private server for WoW.) Square-Enix sent the original programmer of the project a cease and desist letter some time ago.

Basically, you could rework the entire code of the game to make it your style. You could max out all levels of everything on your toon. You could make Bubbly Bernie shit relic weapons like he just ate mexican food. You could be a level 75BLM/75RDM. And you could invite your friends to play on it.

That is probably the closest this game will get to being offline.

Right. Remakes, reversions and sequels for Final Fantasy games never happen.

[Rodin]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

Right. Remakes, reversions and sequels for Final Fantasy games never happen.

I like your enthusiasm for XI, but to be honest the massive revision they would have to do to countless hours of gameplay, it wouldn't seem effective to make a revision or remake to FFXI. Seeing as how they haven't even acknowledged the existence (actually, denied it I believe) the PS3 remake of FFVII, which nearly every FF fanboy has been screaming about a remake for I dunno how many years now.

A lot of the older remakes for the FF games (the SNES era games) are made purely because the lack of need for extensive programming and decoding (the technology is archaic) are feasible because the amount of work and resources needed for the remake are minimal compared to the projected profits. (FF6 for GBA? OH MAH GAWD.)

FFXI is too large of a game.

Although, looking at the changes to XIV they're planning, you might start seeing it as a sequel to XI.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

I like your enthusiasm for XI, but to be honest the massive revision they would have to do to countless hours of gameplay, it wouldn't seem effective to make a revision or remake to FFXI. Seeing as how they haven't even acknowledged the existence (actually, denied it I believe) the PS3 remake of FFVII, which nearly every FF fanboy has been screaming about a remake for I dunno how many years now.

I think its important to separate FFVII fans from the core FF fans. There's the fans and then there's the crazy people. FFXI is kinda out there with the FFVII people, but I don't think the appreciation for the world and its story is as overrated as FFVII's

When Sephiroth and Cloud with the GameFaqs poll every year since FFVII, and Link from Zelda:OOT is right behind them, I think its safe to say the people who insist on living in 1997 and 1998 are the unstable ones we need not listen to. We've had so many great gaming experiences since then. Those were good games, but the way people hang onto them is crazy.

Nintendo didn't remake Zelda:OOT because their moron fans demanded it, they did it because they felt the 3DS was the right time for it. When Zelda came out, they had you jumping down holes and angled the camera for that sense of "Gee, that's pretty far down" because doing games in 3D was a new thing. So I can't really be surprised that its coming with the 3DS now because that's the sort of effect they're trying to sell people on now with real 3D effects.

But I'm sure the FFVII fanboy is going to look at that and say "See? Nintendo listens to their fans!" Probably doesn't help that MS is remaking Halo: Combat Evolved, either. Zelda: OOT and Halo are some pretty big stuff, but those are games that also live in the lap of luxury that is first party development.

FFVII doesn't live there, it lives in a world of third party budgets, deadlines and shipdates. A Zelda or Halo game can be developed and it comes out "when its done," not usually a street date.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

Yeah, while people have it easier getting to sky and seeing that content, or getting to sea and being able to participate in Jailers or what not, the systems are still stupidly slow. Go up and farm diorites for a few hours, pretty sure that shit hasn't changed. Popping Despot? Gonna be just as slow as before, because repop timers on mobs haven't changed and the spawn rate of Despot is still just as slow.

Yes, the system largely remain as it were (except the ??? re-spawn delay was reduced quite a bit a while back).

That doesn't mean the Sky experience as it was, though; high level players now means a group can spread out to cover more trigger items at the same time than before. And, with Abyssea luring most people away, competition for NMs is practically nil; you're no long bouncing from one location to another because the NMs are taken--you actually get the NMs now.

The same number of people can gather triggers faster than ever. (And a smaller, non "endgame LS" group can handle Kirin these days--but I mentioned that already.)

I think that's why the people who don't play anymore have a hard time understand from merely reading about the updates to the game. You folks get the mechanism change (and the mechanism which didn't change), but the implication for actually playing the game isn't always obvious at the first glance.

Despite the lack of change to the trigger system, Sky is a lot faster/eaiser compared to before. Can it be streamlined more? Sure; Diorite is still a pain (though less than a full party can kill statues faster than repop in Nexus now, so fewer people need to suffer at the same time.) Do I think that's where SE should be spending its dev time? Nah.

* * *

By the way, Aksannyi, you may not have guessed this, but Despot was easily the most popular NM with my Sky LS members back when I still did Sky regularly.

With FoV in Sky, people who arrived early often would kill the Groundkeepers placeholders while waiting for the rest of the LS to show up. That way, they get a bit of experience points and tabs, and possibly a Gem of the West.

So, yeah, Diorite (and thus Autumnstone) was a chore, but we almost always had spares of Gem of the West.

[Aksannyi]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

By the time I quit, (still after those elusive Kitty pants) hardly any linkshells were doing sky at all on Hades, so I don't really see much of a difference between then and now, at least from my perspective. The only thing is the speed at which you can kill stuff, which really was never the issue in the first place. Once you clear all the statues out, you still have to wait 15 minutes for repops.

No doubt it's easier for some, and on populated servers where sky was still crowded this is undoubtedly a godsend, but (and maybe this is my WoW-ified self talking here) people going back to do old, outdated content generally don't want to screw around farming drops all day. They'd probably like to run up there (gathering still takes forever because I'd be willing to bet that most people haven't gotten the sky warp, especially those who have never been in a sky linkshell) and kill a few NMs. While sometimes farming/skill-up parties can be fun, usually it's a chore and you start to curse the gods at Square Enix for making it take so damn long for stupid Steam Cleaner to pop, or damn Ro'Maeve water to drop.

I mean, old content is old. And I'd wager those areas are deserted - even more so than before, on some servers. I don't see it being bad that they'd lower some spawn times or increase the drop rates. And honestly, make diorite sellable. Do it. If some random idiot happens to kill a statue on the way to god-knows what (coffer spawn, perhaps? I don't know) let him sell the diorite neither he nor his ls is ever going to use. They could tweak it. They've tweaked so much over the years, god only knows why they won't fix sky of all things.

Sea could also stand to be reworked - getting animosity sucks. Getting DRG to pop sucks. And if you're not there for capes but actual pop items and you just wasted four hours farming a pop item to get a cape that no one wants, that sucks. Make the virtues 100% now, and the vices a lottery second drop. Since chances are, people don't really care for the capes anymore but might wanna pop JoL or even AV. I don't think it would kill SE.

ZNM was a timesink but they did this one somewhat right. You have a lot more control over what you pop and how you get your pop items. There's no waiting on lotteries there. You can easily farm zeni solo and when people have their pop items, you all go kill the NM. I gotta say, while zeni was a pain if you had inventory woes (cue Aks trading with her mule account for 20 minutes in WG), the system worked really well. And it never really felt like I was wasting time. I'd go to cook dinner so I'd have my Pankration pet queued up, check on him in 10 minutes and requeue, etc.

While that is indeed newer content, they got it right. Do I think they should change sky and sea to be that way? No. I think they should tweak the spawn rate of NMs and their placeholders, and they should up the drop rate of pop items.

And I note that no one has addressed kings back with me, but I'm going to say again that at this point, 21-24 hours is retarded, 3-5 is even moreso. Not that it wasn't to begin with, but at this point with so few people needing gear and rather just wanting it (yes, Ridill was hopelessly outdated by the time I quit and I still wanted one), why not up the spawn rates of these NMs? You said it yourself, give more people a chance to fight. You will still have monopolizing linkshells for a while, but they'll get what they want and they'll stop camping. (We did that, by the way. We rarely camped Aspid anymore, and there were times we'd go a few weeks without bothering with Fafhogg.) This may already be the case, I don't know. Maybe Fafnir is sitting up in the pit right now going, "Uh, guys? Hey. No one's botted me in a while, can someone come kill me? I'd do it myself but, you know, I'm not a DRK."

They've made so much of the game faster and easier, it just seems so inconsistent to keep some stuff as ridiculously slow as it is while putting the other stuff at practically warp speed in comparison. But maybe they're stealing Blizzard's model, where old content is old and they don't update it anymore because it's no longer relevant.

[Raydeus]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

I think its safe to say the people who insist on living in 1997 and 1998 are the unstable ones we need not listen to.

As a side note I insist on living in 1999 and playing VIII and IV over and over again. Thus I loved XI's story, characters and world waaaaaaay more than it's gameplay (which was always a chore to me for the most part.)

[Firewind]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

This may actually make me want to come back. O.O

What Takalli said.

[wrongfeifong]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

i am happy but the next FFXI cycle for me is in June-july and august.

I won't be playing until then... FFXIV for now.

[Aeni]

Re: Battle Adjustments (02/01/2011)

Has anyone found soloing any easier because of this change? I might just reroll on Yyg's server >.> Oh wait ... SE doesn't want my CC. Nvm. Seriously thought about playing FFXI, got nostalgic for it listening to the soundtrack ... argh.