Your opinion on Content difficultyFollow

So today Camate gave us this message:



http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/28187-Adjustments-to-Embrava-and-Perfect-Defense?p=378811#post378811

The italicized part has me lost for words..

Edited, Nov 15th 2012 3:53pm by Szabo

Well, that explains Absolute Virtue.

In theory, this is fine. You want some content that's more difficult to beat than others to justify the better items.

In practice... well, I'm not entirely sure I trust the devs to understand reasonable difficulty levels. FFXI gear doesn't tier-up all that well; some gear is certainly better than others, but I can think of very few pieces that are worlds above game changers outside of the relic / empy weapons.

Difficulty doesn't bug me. Fake difficulty does. And fake difficulty is what SE thrives on between insta-kill TP moves and obsession with the RNG. Add a dash of time limits, both within the content and accessing it, and you get the perfect storm of people pissed off with what they're given.

Not all jobs will grow equally depending on what gear is offered. Early in FFXI, there was very little to make Cures stronger. Grab a light staff and everyone was pretty much equal with equal tier spells. Eventually we saw more gear, WHM getting to 50% easier than other jobs, but eventually most the people you'd care to have cast Cure could do it. Then SE further tweaks the Cure formula to better include Healing skill and MND. That's fine. That actually helps to translate to a degree of growth for a character. Meanwhile, you've still got skills like Enhancing Magic that do jack for certain spells within its family. It's something that could change, but also with the caveat of respect toward breaking RDM's +2 set and not wanting to see that happen without specific regard for it.

SE's otherwise backed themselves into a corner with the sidegrade game. If you want a challenge treadmill, you need a gear treadmill, and that means equipment steadily replacing older gear as you progress further along. This also gets harder to do as you insist on keeping numbers small, for reasons suggested above where an improvement might not seem worth all the hassle you'd have to go through just to acquire it. This is also why people will give stuff like higher tier prestige weapons the bird or not bother to touch NNI. Challenge skill and reflexes, not jump straight to patience. Ditch all the timers (for completion and rage), improve mob AI, make the environment mean something. Don't be afraid to make uber gear, either. If this means dropping the PS2 fossil so the entirety of stats can actually be displayed, go for it. Such can be at the end of that difficulty tunnel, but you also shouldn't have to look at a cliff from what you had before to then, like was the case for prestige weapons for some classes before merit WS.

And uncap merit categories. Then you can start balancing the tough **** under the assumption a given job would have all their skills maxed.

Yeah, I always wanted a way to define your 'main' job. Merit WS almost did this, but weren't so constrained enough to a single job to really fit such purpose (plus few jobs need their merit WS to be competitive).

Something to put a real gap between a 'career' player of a job and someone who burned it up last week, besides magic skill and whatnot.

This is tricky because I personally hate telling people you can't have multiple "careers" within the game, which is basically what merits currently do with their restrictions. Gear is a temporary distinction of its own, while others would also defend spell rarity for mages, which I wouldn't because they're rare for all the wrong reasons.

But as an example, I mentioned more uber gear in my last post. Let's say you get your AF+1, Relic+2, and Emp+2 for a particular slot. Enter a quest to merge them all into one piece. No, not collect 500 shinryu anuses. Not full Legion clears. Just something difficult enough to require a party, and at best, locked out to maybe upgrading one piece of gear a week. So, in 5 weeks, the truly dedicated DRKs would have their "Legendary" tier, while the casuals may have 1 or 2 pieces, maybe split across multiple jobs.

But that's just a start. You can put spells, JAs, WS, or even Job Traits behind similar questing. Hell, BLUs could get ways to unlock more spell points. While you'll inevitably get your asses who demand Perfect X or GTFO, particularly those types who'd never help someone get to such a point, it'd be a bit more complex than just throwing more EXP at it or chilling in Abyssea with a pocket WHM.

because the playerbase (super casuals mostly on the official forums) complained about it. SE does sometimes give us good things (Embrava, PD, etc.) Then some high and might player of yore that hasn't played in 6 years comes back, complains the game isn't what is used to be (!!!) and our good things get taken away.

Your hyopthetical is not really an accurate potrayal of cause and effect.

Want good things, start making your voice heard on the official forums and for every idiot, you'll need to post 1,000 times to convince SE that the other position is idiocy.

They never were big on letting players have simple character progression. The only time they ever did that was a mistake. Creating the game in their own vision is all that ever mattered. Tedious time sinks and silly hurdles were always a big part of game design. Difficult fights are one thing, but s-e seems to equate difficulty with low drop rates or artificial barriers and gimmicks like instant death or not being in range when the AoE one shots happen. Challenge requiring player skill is not the same as spamming an event a hundred times until the random generator pops out the one in a thousand drop. It's kind of like trying to get the golden gumball in the penny arcade, you can spend hundreds of dollars or get it in a few tries. Luck is not the same as challenge at all.

Edited, Nov 16th 2012 12:04am by Melphina

What is so unusual about that? It's called twinking, and it's been done in countless games before this one.

I played Diablo 2 before I played this, and it was sure rampant in that game.

I don't think it's really any more unusual than people being able to reach max level from scratch in a day or two.

I'll post in the Official Forum since those are the only opinions SE is going to listen to, but I think it's perfectly fine to have a filter to weed out all but the best possible players for certain, current, content. I do not want my main jobs to be grouped in the same company as mere Empy+2 players or worse (e.g., Aurore/Perle/Teal). Those players should have to put in a certain amount of work to catch up or the company risks disenfranchising it's most loyal players for the sake of recent subscribes/re-subscribes. Good call in my opinion. (Please notice the keywords "certain" and "current", which are crucial in my first sentence before you go on an ultra-casual tirade.)

What I will suggest is that overall content needs to become more skill based vs. luck or time based. I'd rather learn strategies that I can conduct with 3 to 5, 6-11, or 12 to 17 other players than simply do an event 100 times and hope to get gear one of those times. For example, even a team geared with 6 optimal jobs, all of the best gear from other areas of FFXI isn't going to be able to get around pants on head, Ralph Wiggum lamp order in NNI. However, that team will do a lot better than the other 99.9% at kill speed and eventually be able to develop strategems for getting through more difficult floors quicker (e.g., kill 5 flans but avoid gears, particularly the 3 in the first room that you need to ranged pull so that some/all of your DD can get to the actual 5 flans, all in less than 1.5 minutes average per floor). I'm okay with the latter. I'd be better with actual strategies.

It seems the only two strategies SE has ever actually developed are kindegarten level aspects to game strategy in the form of skillchains, magic bursts and procs. We have a wealth of actual RPG knowledge to be drawn on. Originally this was turn based, then Ito-san developed the ATB system for FFIV (whch corresponding Japanese and US patents granted on this system, illustrating creative innovation capacity). While I don't think the CTB system introduced in FFX would work in an MMO, the concept of Overdrives for special tactical moves, requiring special button input to increase effectiveness is a basic skill element that should be re-examined. Another element to look at would be strung together skill chains whereby a final, more powerful attack, defense, cure, aura, etc. could be achieved (a la Concurrences in FFXII) - we have nothing like this in FFXI right now. As with GF in FVIII, these are mere timed occurences that must happen at the right time, so they are simple elements of skill but they are still better than "oh crap we didn't guess correctly, run over" elements. In other words, I'd rather be penalized for things I failed at doing versus being penalized because of luck. SE needs to do a better job introducing more barriers to us doing our jobs well, and stop introducing luck barriers except in rare cases.

Say "X is my main job." Then go out and treat it as such. There doesn't need to be a system in place for this. If you're good at your job that will speak for itself.



You're ignoring the possibilities that this person who "burned it up last week" doesn't intend to make that job their "main" job, and that they may actually be better at it than someone who's spent all their time on it.

There's really no effective mid-tier content. I guess that's what VW is supposed to be? Maybe? It's generally not that hard until you reach some of the final tiers, but the drop rates are some of the worst ever recorded in the history of FFXI (and that's saying quite a lot). Even then, while some items are clear upgrades, many are not much better than what we get from Abyssea.

I dunno. I've gone through Abyssea, the AH, and VW and put together some effective sets. I have a level 90 emp for one of my jobs, and am working on a second. I've worked on shoring up my macros and making myself as efficient as possible. I always use the best food I can for the situation. I feel like I've done as much as I'm able, and it still seems like I'm not prepared to beat what lies beyond VW. Now, I'm sure many would say, "Well maybe you're just bad." It's possible. I certainly have no delusions of grandeur that I'm God's gift to gaming. Still, it feels like the tools (gear, stats, abilities) I need to take myself to the next level either don't exist or are effectively out of reach. I know I can improve with 1500 HMPs, but that's beyond me right now. Should that really be necessary to move beyond the VW "stage?" If so, then I suppose I'm stuck forever. I guess I'm supposed to be satisfied with that and just keep on playing. It doesn't feel very satisfying though.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if Voidwatch wasn't so soul destroying and meeble burrows wasn't structured in such a PUG unfriendly way. Like I am sure I am good enough to do well in meeble - but with all my friends on break and the event not being set up to really work with PUGs (I've NEVER seen a shout for it)... I am bored bored bored.Can only solo dynamis so many times (especially when the zones are seemingly ALWAYS packed these days)

Edited, Nov 16th 2012 11:27am by Olorinus