It takes 26,000 hours to fully upgrade a Mythic weaponFollow

If you tell me that you've done every possible thing in every video game you've ever bought, then I'm afraid I won't believe you. Do you really expect to reach 100% completion of every aspect of a game when you buy it? I certainly don't, at any rate, and the clear majority of players are like me if console trophy and achievement stats are any indication.

I'm pretty damned casual. It's just that when I see people who put more time and effort into something than I do, I don't have a problem with them getting greater rewards for their greater effort. If there are players who WANT to be hardcore, why on earth not give them something hardcore to do? How can more options possibly hurt anyone?

I have no idea how much you play, but I guarantee that there are players out there who have less time online than you, and who can't do all the things you do as a result. Should the things you enjoy be taken away or made easier just because other players don't have time for it? Of course not. The ideal game has content for players at all levels of investment. If everything was accessible to everyone at every possible amount of playtime, then the game would be both very easy and very short. Different content at different levels of investment and challenge are necessary, and are a feature of every MMO out there.

I think the point is whichever achievement you want is achievable - not that you will "finish" the game by quickly achieving everything. The problem is you're advocating for the game to be designed to exclude most people from a certain particular slice of content.

That's bad game design. The way you make it so that the game doesn't end because casual players can achieve whichever particular thing they want is not to gate off some content - leaving it for people with unhealthy addictions only - but to offer SO MUCH content that no one gets bored. You don't actually have to gate off some special obsessed person only content - you just keep adding content so that the 95% who are normal players with lives don't run out of stuff to do - not because the grind is idiotic - but because the devs add new quests and new achievements all the time.

Why anyone would advocate for content to be added to an online game that can only be completed by people with unhealthy addictions - boggles my mind. And worse - excuse developer cheapness/laziness in not continually adding NEW content in order to ensure players have things to do.


Edited, Dec 27th 2011 12:39am by Olorinus

It took me 2 days or less of partying to go from 75 to 90. Also, I brought two jobs from 30 to 50 in the same night. What he said was not an exaguration, and the way you incorrectly call him out makes me question if you know how to play the game.

Everytime I partied in abyssea there were one or two people who were okay to talk with max. And those people would be there on other days as well. But everyone else was just a face in the crowd. You can't compare it to the way everyone would talk in 6-person parties. To the way people would talk while waiting for parties. To the way people would talk to the parties around them.



3k/hr was good/acceptable when zilart was just released. 4k-6k parties were the amazing ones. You can say people were excluded, and they were, but that was for making a party not once you got in it. But those people who were excluded didn't want to do anything. You could just make a party yourself and not have to deal with "exclusion". Perfect gear and subjobs required? lol. The way you talk about it shows you really haven't done it so you're just talking trash.

Don't make me boot up my computer and find some glorious land of rainbows and friendship screenshots. My first fond ones were talking with a small group of people for a few hours because we were waiting for the days to change so we could get our chocobo liscence.

Also, what ItsaMyri said in that last post. :p

Edited, Dec 27th 2011 5:02am by Deadgye

This concept pretty much sums up what Trial of the Magians has been since it was first released IMO, and it's one of the reasons I quit FFXI at the time (I came back to play with a few old friends after all three abyssea expansions were out to complete the expansions, but have stopped playing again for the time being).

Every path seemed to involve nothing but busy work. Killing old mobs hundreds of times with day/weather restrictions to hold you back, hunting old NMs over and over again, in order to collect a prize at the end. And now I'm reading about killing PW 500 times, a pretty ridiculous task but just a (way, way, WAY more extreme) version of what TotM has been about since the beginning.

I was willing to put up with, hell, usually I even enjoyed, nearly all of FFXI's old events because I found them all interesting and unique. I know some of the events I enjoyed weren't liked by all (or even most in some cases), but I loved learning about the different aspects of each particular event. Each coming with its own unique set of mobs with different strengths and weaknesses, and different strategies. Our set ups in Limbus alone, for example, varied highly depending on the floor we chose. Nyzul Isle had many set ups that could work, and even had some floors where the focus is more on communication and teamwork than it was on fighting. Man, what an awesome event that was.

When I saw the direction this game was heading with the TotM update, that was it for me. It became apparent that SE's focus had moved heavily toward providing menial tasks as "busy work" to keep players playing whilst not adding anything substantial to the game itself. Suddenly, a new system was introduced with weapons that outclassed tons of weapons from years worth of events, NMs, crafting, etc. and yet the method of obtaining them couldn't be more mundane. The message was pretty clear. The devs want you spending time doing TotM, which is why they dangle the carrot (the new best weapons) in front of you. At the same time, they don't want to bother making the content itself compelling. I'm fully aware by now that in a game like this you need to dangle that carrot, but once it becomes 100% about the reward and no effort is put into the journey to getting it, there's little reason to stick around.

Yes, I am one of those "FFXI's best days are behind it" advocators. I'm not going to say it was the perfect game, but it did have a pretty decent community feel, people of all levels doing all sorts of content (level 20 Eco War shout on Sundays!), and enjoying that content! People joining exp groups and enjoying the aspects of playing a new job in those groups. And at end game, new and refreshing content added over time and just about all of it staying relevant throughout the years (until about 2010?).

I understand why SE is doing what they're doing, FFXI is an old game and they'd like to keep players playing but they don't actually want to spend resources creating content, and a lot of what we see today is the result of that. Although I do want to hand it to them for Abyssea. As an old player who thought he was done with FFXI well over a year ago, I came back to check it out and actually found it extremely enjoyable. If I were still a full time player I'd probably have mixed things to say about it but it did give me something refreshing and fun to do in a game that I thought had stagnated so I can't fault it in that sense.

Here's the rub with making the DDs interchangable. I'll be talking oldschool FFXI in this post, so lets not get into 'soandso can do this in abyssea'.

Tanks: PLD, NIN
Healers: WHM, RDM, SCH
Support/Buffs: BRD, COR
DPS: MNK THF WAR DRK RNG BST SAM NIN DRG BLU PUP DNC BLM

With that many jobs, you'll either end up with identical jobs, or some jobs which are blatantly superior for some reason. If one DPS job does more damage than another (and they can't all be identical) then that job will get more invites. Sometimes, it's psychology. PUP and BST were great damage dealers, but I'm a moron and BST was considered to be solo only.

I main healed a lot as a DNC, but only in parties I made, because people only invited DNC as another melee: and a bottom rung one, too. It was considered just a melee and got invited/treated as such, even when it could support and heal.

I don't think it's inexcusible, I think it's inevitable. Fighting games don't have tiers due to intentional imbalance. You just can't make 15 classes which are different and yet equal, unless they all perform different roles and don't compete. BRD doesn't compete with MNK, but MNK and WAR compete, and if WAR does more damage, how can MNK compensate when it's job is 'deal damage'?

except all jobs don't use WS. It could be done with a stance type system available to more jobs. Jobs like PLD and DRK which do have roles but 2 of them are denied by obvious job restrictions. PLD struggles in Offensive capability, likely restricted due to its defensive and healing options. DRK on the other hand has a heavily restricted casting side presumably because it has a very strong attack side.

We know that stance have been done before in a couple of ways, obviously there is SCH which at base value is meh at a bunch of things with limited tools. Using its stances it becomes a pretty good healer (id say higher then RDM but less than WHM which is an accurate placement.) and a pretty good nuker, at time more damaging than even BLM (but BLM retains the AoE, and sheer number of damaging spells, and SCH is clearly above RDM). But there is also MNK who has their various stance options, even WAR who has defender and agressor with bonuses to defense. They also have a semi unique trait in Fencer which combined with appropriate gear and a good main hand can allow them to tank fairly well.

SE seems to have neglected jobs that at face value have more than 1 ability, they fixed DNC (granted it was still newish and seemed to have a niche roll in group play at the 75 cap), but so many jobs in this game need work, there are parts of many jobs that have been neglected for some time, and it doesn't just apply to melee jobs.

Someone posted a list earlier which is accurate to a point, but I think people underestimate /RDM. While it limits total support (-na's) it allows a lot of jobs to move into that secondary healing position. Pretty much any job with MP. This really clusters up the healing section because outside of WHM the jobs are replaceable, especially when you can combine them with say BRD or COR, or BLU or SMN, all which provide more for the same. Its not just DD jobs who are feeling the crunch, hell abyssea anyone could tank with HP atma and a WHM. But SE is leaving that behind and what they have left is a cluster ****.

They need to find what the jobs are supposed to do and provide "stance" options for those tasks. Which manipulate stats based on the stance. Some might recognize the idea of a talent tree, but I don't think a tree is appropriate, there should be some type of stance that functions like ********************

That was a good filter catch, actually, but the point still stands that people considered puppetmaster terrible and thought beastmaster could only solo, despite dealing respectable damage.

I remember back to my {sea} days. We had a very well geared PUP who came on that job to JoL. He sicced the puppet on JoL, set it up to do its thing, and then half-afk'd to watch movies while glancing at the laptop to hit a macro every minute or so. His puppet kept casting pretty much hate free 1K nukes every thirty seconds the entire time.

We had a main PUP in our little weekend sea static. They brought the WHM puppet and main healed for us. Despite all the people who joke about retarded automaton AI, it got the job done exceptionally well. I love PUP. I was speaking entirely about player perception in my job analysis, not what they're actually capable of.

For instance, I had players freak out when they saw no mages in the party. I liked to main heal on dancer, and built parties around it. Aspir Samba II is more potent than refresh for a paladin that can actually hit the mob, and my cures were more than enough. Yet, people were afraid. They didn't think it could work. (It worked fine.) So, despite dancer being a plenty capable healer for exp parties (post-reverse flourish), it couldn't really be called a healer practically.



I never understood why Distortion was such a big deal. It's not like other elements weren't good to MB off of. The only time distortion was really amazing was when it was closed by SATAVB, because SATAVB was probably the strongest spike WS in the game at those levels; I guess monkey see, monkey do.

Kinda like how, when ToAU came out, BLM became a 'bad DD' (because colibri) and stopped getting invites from level 10-54 just the same as 55+, despite BLM being amazing at low levels. People just copy each other. When colibri started snatching food, people stopped using food on everything, to mimic the high-level style.

Also: I once did a 5THF party too. It was in Crawler's Nest in the 40's. Nothing but SATA spam bouncing the mob around. Was fun. Also, a hybrid manaburn/ranger burn with low level BLM (pre ancient magic). Pre-nerf, of course. Weird parties were good fun. I always preferred two war/nin tanks over a NIN or PLD. Dunno why people thought it was only a subjob.

True to a certain extent, as is the rest of this post, DPS-WS-SpikeNuke-Enspell decay etc....all lead to different strengths.

Its the playerbase that figured out the "Most efficient" use of various jobs/abilities & the synergy between the two,and made it the norm thus: Boost-Idle Chi Blast Monk builds, DRK/THF, DRK OAt-4-8 SEBW zerg, PinkBirdDRGZerg, KRT Bones Monk fest etc....leading up to "Sam onry" days with 2 handed buff-nerf (that left Sam at the YGK Hagun Pinnacle)

Giving all Damaging jobs similar tiers of Enfeebling/Elemental/Multi-hit Crit ws would have balanced that aspect (as long as they were also all capable of Skillchaining with each other effectively) This balancing act would also have necessitated pretty much getting rid of Damage Type Resistances. Or having an even distribution of Mobs for exp.....having large level ranges where the main accessible & plentiful EXP mobs are highly resistant to certain types of damage has fail written all over it.

Abyssea actually addressed a lot of these issues by having concurrent/simultaneous "chains" of reward being built by groups, giving multiple jobs a place in alliance. (Lights/Cruor/Exp) kinda funny how they messed it up by having chains be broken by mob types, requiring CFH be used.

So we've gone from the days of "SAM onry" & people leveling DRG to merit their other jobs to "MONK & WHM can do anything" The EXP grind is pretty much gone & must be replaced by other time sinks ^^.

Kinda on a humorous note: If FFXI were Real Life, charges could be leveled for some of the things done to the playerbase by the Devs for discrimination, breach of contract, false advertising etc..... thats what these types of trials are like imho.

Thank God I have no intention of being sucked in by any of these Shiny,unobtainable pixels. Its a disease that kills off its best customers, most of the heavy hitter- multi Relic/ Empy owners I have known have either been LM-17'd or have been forced to quit due to what they resorted to to get their "Shinys".

I seem to recall hearing that one of the reasons pet jobs were not wanted (except DRG/SAM, which could do some good damage) is that BRD buffs don't work on the pet, and the pet is a good chunk of the job's total damage.

And I am just old enough (mid-2008) to know that WHM's problem was lack of MP stamina, which is why RDM with its Refresh was the other God Job, along with BRD (and sometimes COR) and its non-conflicting Refresh. It was all about those buffs to get an extra 5% or so out of the party. And naturally once people figured atma out, those jobs were suddenly out on the street with the rest of us.

When you have 2 slots taken up with a RDM and BRD, that only leaves 4, and someone's got to do the DPS.

And pup is still lol, it's just the opposite sort of lol now. (as in lol look at what I just soloed)



/RDM wasn't that great until 80 cap when you got Convert, and 85 cap when you got Refresh. Before that, the healing spells are learned at a higher level, and the Bar-spells are single-target only, so I don't see any improvement over /WHM other than you can Phalanx yourself. And at 85 cap /WHM could give anybody Cure IV. (/DNC's equivalent takes until 90!) Oh yeah, and lol self-cast-only enspells.

I think it's actually /WHM that's underestimated. Maybe it's because of everybody (rightfully) making fun of WAR/WHM in the old Brady guide. I've never found a good reason to /RDM other than Convert, Refresh, Dispel (which you can also get /SCH), and BLM/RDM. But for lower level BYOH grinding, /WHM with even one point FoV refresh is better than /DNC if you can avoid interrupts, and it doesn't steal TP from your WS damage.



So true. Maybe they needed more +CHR on their AF.

I agree that whm was an equally large shift in the closeness of how a backline operates, especially in abyssea. To me i find in appalling that my BLM/WHM heals just as well as my RDM/SCH or /WHM in abyssea, and yes I abuse the **** out of it. But RDM brings with it all the same tools and sacrifices -na's for more MP. This is especially critical when you look at jobs like BRD and COR who have limited MP, yet through /RDM and their own personal sources of refresh, combined with Refresh and Convert can be very effective mana batteries that also provide buffs that are "unique" to them.

RDM and SCH for example are decent healers and can have access to -na's. But what if you don't need those spells on every back line job, you then look elsewhere and BRD and COR for example offer much more to a group then SCH or RDM, while retaining the healing force and MP sustainability of those jobs. Essentially unless you need mass -na's BRD/RDM or COR/RDM will always be a better option then RDM/SCH or SCH/RDM.

This also applies to other jobs as well maybe even with larger ramifications, those jobs being SMN and BLU (to an extent PLD but I won't touch on this one as it is highly unique and not overly practical but healadins can find a place with /RDM).

While WHM did cause a shift in abyssea, I feel that /RDM has extended that outside of abyssea which is devastating to some jobs, primarily SCH and RDM who have had large issues finding relevance in abyssea.

This doesn't just apply to mage jobs, it also shows on the front line. MNK and WAR have over the years been given access to more hate management type tools, PLD has received nothing to increase its damage optimization. What you have is 2 jobs that can tank one mob then turn around and face rape the next, meanwhile you have PLD which isn't going to be doing much face raping and in a lot of cases is almost overkill in tanking (outside of voidwatch really it is replaceable).

The jobs feel to me directionless. Some jobs are sitting ok, primarily ones with limited utility, ones that can only perform 1 function seem to be sitting ok. SAM, MNK, WAR are all sitting pretty good, it seems that SE has a severe issue with tweaking offensive/defensive capabilities of jobs who could perform 1 task, in some cases outright making it a joke (DRK nukes are a joke). They have always dragged their feet over this issue, its not a new thing that variable jobs have always been weaker, but in some cases it is flat out a waste of time to do so. Looking at DRK again there is absolutely no reason to use elemental magic because it serves no purpose to do so, you lose to much damage for no gain. It has limited use to Perfect Dodge and Invincible and that is about it.

I strongly feel that stance style systems for jobs is needed, be they merits or direct abilities. I hate to compare WoW to FFXI because the games are vastly different, but the job variety (while you could only pick one) was very well thought out. At anytime (out of combat) I could switch from being a nuker, to a healer, or from a tank to a dd (on druid) with the click of a button and a macro swap. Depending on the specialization I chose my stats would vary, this is something I feel SE needs to explore, maybe not implement it exactly, but there should be someway to directly enhance parts of jobs that are "inferior" (i don't want to use that word but can't think of another atm yay AM") and if SE feels that it would be imbalanced without reducing other parts of the job then that is fine.

If I want to be a healer on PLD I should have that option, If I want to nuke on DRK i should have that option. If I want to DD on RDM I should have that option. I shouldn't have to face restricitions when jobs like WAR MNK DNC BLU SCH all have tools or similar ways to enhance certain aspects of their jobs. These tools should be in some shape or form with other jobs.

(to be fair they did seem to try in some cases with lolccult accumen, and Composure, but both are relatively weak in their applicitions.)

sorry for the wall of text I just got up and didnt realize I rambled so much

WS design is only part of the problem. A large part of the disparity also game from TP gain and things like weapon speed. Haste, multi-hit weapons and how they worked with Dual Wield also had a part in it (not to mention the TP floor before it was nerfed and how two-handers were balanced before the buff). Combat as a whole could be considered to be borked and in need of revision.

Edited, Dec 28th 2011 6:52pm by Ruisu