Dev Tracker - Discussion

Yeah don’t focus on apart of the game that has been a large driving force behind people still playing, that would be stupid!

Are you playing the same game as the rest of us Simon? lmao

Nick...that rolf meme gets me every time.... lmfao im done!

Yeah because SE designs content around people paying Mercs to progress...

Jokes on me who wanted to actually play the game...

Not like Odyssey is even "fun". Even Master Trials with no reward are more fun than Odyssey with reward.

I missed the time when raids were difficult and requires a party or alliance of very up to date characters and strong coordination to beat. Thats what MMOs are for.

In past 1.5 years I think my account was active for 2 months total, Id rather play single player games than playing MMO with heavy solo content. Thanks SE.

The game has had a few of these really bad content droughts. Hopefully it pulls through and we get something meaningful.

Ofc I do, I just have different taste. I still play Baldur's gate 1 and 2 for example and I'm doing it with pleasure even when there is nothing new (not counting mods) for years. Just trying different classes and different strategies/mechanics is enjoyable for me.


SE designed Odyssey to be played on multiply ways. Solo, group, farming mimics, farming NMs, farming nostos. Playerbase prioritizing reward over gameplay turned this to key chest farming almost exclusively, even when they hated to do it. Ultimately some people decided that farming elsewhere and buying drops from Odyssey is better, because they hate keying. You felt obligated to keying because you couldn't stand that doing Odyssey the fun way, brings you less gils. You couldnt stand that someone else on solo THF was getting more gils. None of those people actually thought "Oh, but I can still get good amount of drops and gils if I play it normally and its fast paced 30 min event, so it should be fun". None did that because AGAIN gils/hour is priority and doing Odyssey differently than keying was worse gil/hour than doing something else (even some totally boring farming), so better to skip it entirely.
So yes, I go back to statement that most people here are totally focused on reward or gil/hour and lost the pleasure of actually playing the game. If SE would make Odyssey like few people here suggest and would make it like su5 augmenting (but without heroism crystals options) and actually forced most of you to go there, 50% would scream that its stupidly boring and why cant you simply buy drops, 45% will still use gils farmed elsewhere to pay someone to merc them Odyssey and same 5% that enjoy it now, would still enjoy it. This forum is full of people (not saying that everyone here who complain are like this, but many) who are just tired of this game and being in toxic/addictive relationship with it. You no longer enjoy simply playing it, but for whatever reason you cant stop. That frustrates you. You are probably hoping that SE will finally pull the plug and save you.

I suggest you to take a break. Then after some time, come back or just quit.

Just my thought, but the game is made for party stuff. Tbh i hope they do the same here as with WOW and make multiple acounts a no go. Its a game to play together and not a bot fest. But hey this is my vision. I find it more fun to play with actual peeps then run 4 or more accounts to do stuff on myself. Tho i do understand why peeps do it. I always hoped they would add a battlefinder program like ffxiv. Like that peeps would do more stuff together instead of having multiple accounts.

Maybe totaly of topic but meh :)

The problem with this in ffxi is amount of real players is low. Also people in PUG in ffxi usually have many jobs and can decide who play what after they form the party. afaik in ffxiv you "lfg" on specific job/role.

Also they probably havent get rid of boxing, purely because of business perspective. One person paying for multiply accounts is good income for them.

This is by far the most accurate representation of the past 5-10 pages of whining.

I agree that was their plan.
But quite evidently something went wrong along that plan and things didn't come out exactely as they intended them to be.
They failed to balance all those possible "paths" evenly and, so far, refused to adjust things on the way.

As an example check Omen.
They planned to do the same thing too there, but things worked much better.
There's people farming cards, people farming detritus, people farming drops.
They're doing it solo, with large groups, small groups.
Things are not perfect, but quite evidently things worked much better.

I don't wanna go as far as to say what exactely went wrong in Odyssey, but quite obviously something did, period.

I would say that the cause is having all the paths fully divorced from each other.
If there was an overlap from drop use in the same way that MM stacks, then it would be more cohesive. But as it stands as it is, it's essentially 3 (4 in January *fingerscrossed*) separate battle contents.

I think the points thing is their attempt at bridging that inherent divorce... but as it is, it's so paltry and nothing that it's a bandaid on a severed limb.

Referencing the above post and quotation:

1. What's wrong with the playerbase seeking the best reward:time ratio in an event that is gated VIA TIME? If SE wanted multiple ways of doing the content to be popular, there are literally endless ways they could have done this- the easiest being simply better rewards for combat via keying.

2. In terms of "if they changed the system to make it like su5 augmenting", it doesn't suddenly make it good content, and that's ok that people think that. In fact, it actually supports the belief that rewards don't make the content- content makes the content.

3. You're dead right that many of us (and myself included some days) have a toxic relationship with this game. We complain, yet don't actually do anything about it. For me, its because I realize that the FFXI I love is incredibly unique in the online gaming world, and I don't see this style of game being popular ever again. People just don't want the grind. So, I've chosen to keep playing as long as its around, knowing I won't get another chance at this style of game again.

One final comment on the gils/hour comments: we as a playerbase have always focused on best return for our time. For years, it was because the game was simply too big and too slow to play it any other way. Now, after over a decade of the population playing that way, you can't just turn it off as the content faucet reduces to a trickle.

I dunno, for me it's other things, but I'm thinking about my personal view and needs, so it's not very objective and highly biased, I suppose.
Imho the separate paths would be fine.
What's missing is

1) A way to stack KIs so you can store them and do multiple runs all in a row

2) A better reward-ratio for stuff done with a group. Stuff that only a group can do efficiently (maybe we will get this in the next and last wing of Odyssey?)

3) Less emphasis on trust empowering (the concept is cool and fine, they brought it way too far though) more emphasis on boons that will benefit people according to the number inside. Like some sort of bonus that scales with number of real player participants.

4) More personal rewards, less treasure pool rewards (I'm fine with both, ratio should've been different though)

5) Something that's not sellable and that's used for long term goals (and we might be getting this in the next patch, in the form of Segments used for... Odyssey weapons? The ones we saw in the Mog Bonanza?)


Not all points are equally important. For me for instance the 1st is king.

Omen is a typical event when farming solo for gils is way better than in group. You wont get more Detritus with group, but you need to split it. Now that typical solo path of doing Omen was added later in that event to balance things out. Now for Odyssey its kinda reverse. They started with it giving more profit for solo players, but now they added segments and plan to add boss area, which will benefit group playing more. The final version might be really similar to current Omen.

There is also few myths about Odyssey that people still use as arguments.
1. First myth - Naked THF can solo all chests reliably. NO it cannot. You need good meva/eva and DT to survive mimic, long enough to engage and put trusts on it. If chest is in middle of the mobs or worse invisible beastmen, then getting mimic on that chest can be end of the run even for geared THF. Only people who reliably solo all chests on undergeared THFs are people using pos hack to teleport dead body and raise away from mimic. Tons of my runs on alt ends up on first chest.
2. Second myth - good group cannot outpace solo THF keying in gil/run. That was the case on start. When scales/hides/wings were overpriced. Its not longer true.

Yes, similar to Odyssey.
Yet in spite of this similarity Omen managed to be a succesful event which has been happily sought after by players of different kinds and composition for many years.
Will the same happen to Odyssey? Time will tell, but judging by how much people are whining now that the event is fresh, I hardly believe that's gonna happen, unless SE finally decide to pull the finger out of their *** and do something to tweak Odyssey.

The final path might change things, as I mentioned before.
I'm all hoping for that, but if we're talking about the current state of Odyssey then nope, it's not a "good" event, despite their heartfelt plans for it.

Omen now is fundamentally different than when it was introduced, though. it was more difficult due to both the gear curve as well as how you could enter. its primary draw until the introduction of Detritus was needing to go on Job X to get your cards, as well as the R/E host of gear that was a step up in almost every slot when it was introduced. Odyssey is something that is efficient enough solo that there is far less incentive to group up, and you can just buy the only drop of note in it freely on AH.

if they made it so you could sell Scales/Equipment on AH, Omen would see a temporary boom before dwindling to something at/below the current level of interest by nature of the gear treadmill being directly affected.

Well you're right, but they did a single patch/change to Omen.
1) Allowed entry to parties larger than 6
2) Added a path that made farming/solo more interesting
3) Added a new boss

Well technically we could say they also added Astral Detritus in a latter patch, which gave a new purpose to the event and prolonged its life.
While this is true, I feel it's not particularly relevant because by then Omen was already a successful event.


It's been a while since Odyssey has been out instead, next month we're gonna see the "last" patch, supposedly, and the event STILL isn't nowhere as successful as Omen, quite the other way around. That, in short, was sorta my point.

If you want to compare odyssey to something it's new-dienamis

Started out as trash, took 12 major fixes, still trash but has air fresheners hanging over it.

That's the MO since adoulin, make the bare minimum effort thing and stretch it out months so people go look they're working hard. (they've always done it somewhat, they're just better at it now)

that's why I said what I did in the middle of my post - the nature of the rewards are completely different. Scales/Hides/Wings not being R/E is why Odyssey is floundering in comparison. for example, I have not done any runs outside of my initial clears - it is too much hassle and I can just pump gil into bypassing its entry restrictions entirely.

I agree the only rewards from Odyssey being sellable and 99% of Omen stuff being R/E is a big difference.
I'm not sure I get your point though.

To me that's part of the reason why people liked and felt compelled to do Omen whereas most of them are simply skipping it and buying mats.
It's not the only reason, maybe not the main one, but it's one of the reasons for sure.

Maybe I missed entirely what you were tryin to say though?



@eiryl
from that perspective, complete failure at start, sorta desired after a few patches, I agree we can compare Divergence with Odyssey. Well, hopefully! Because so far Ody is still not there.
But I think it ends there. They have two completely different scales and Divergence was clearly made for groups and groups only, imho. The only thing meant for soloers is "entrance to unlock +2 reforge" which isn't really much honestly.
I feel in their purpose to be "events who can cater to both groups, small groups or soloers" there are more similarities between Odyssey and Omen.

Well you cant really even argue it wasn't, since you need 3 people minimum to enter XD

As long as they keep making stuff that can only be done once a day (twice if you skip the previous day), I'm going to be completely happy with the ability to bypass its content. Nevermind the fact that Odyssey at its most "fun" is just popping the old UNMs we fought already but without the gimmicks that they made them actual unique and fun fights.

I dont understand why people are comparing odyssey with Omen. When omen was just out it was a 6 man challenging content with no gil involved, just good ex/rare drops. Beating boss at that time with 6 people actually required coordination because boss had different mechanics way back in early 2017. And you actually needed a group to beat it in 2017.

Omen 2017 was more like NNI, you needed a static and close friends to win. Its exactly what make FFXI as MMO engaging: you go out and make friends so you beat content for gears or else you cant. Its nothing like Odyssey.

Odyssey is more like skirmish, or campaign. Its content that can be done by anyone whenever they want, not really a "MMO raid" with forced grouping and connection building.



Thats A LOT of assumptions on why people dislike Odyssey. WoW has raids, so does FF14. We havent get that in 11 for years despite ffxi advertise it as "MMO". Its ridiculous. Give me something thats only beatable by 6+ members coordinating. Thats what "fun" really means in a MMO.

The fact that Odyssey is all about gil but not connection building is exactly why it isnt fun.

I prefer LS contents like legion 2012/delve 2013/helm 2016, or even NNI/omen kind of 6 man static content is more fun than everything(except ambuscade) that we have now.

For the sake of clarity.

Omen was added in December 2016.
Ou/alternative path came in February 2017.
There have been small patches in january and... april? With small adjustments.
Nothing big, but clearly it showed they cared for Omen and "adjusted" it very early so that it worked better for players.


Odyssey was added in March 2020.
Sheol B was added in July 2020.
Sheol C was added in September 2020
The new will be added in January but let's ignore that for now, hard to talk about unreleased stuff, we all hope Sheol D is gonna "fix" things, but so far Odyssey has been the same identical event since release, without not a single small tweak/adjustment at all.

It's a shame because:
1) The event has a lot of potential
2) FFXI seriously lack new content, so of course when they finally release one, everybody hopes for it to be good.

Omen is light-years better than Odyssey and it's not even close. I remember forming my own pug parties years ago to get my ring from Fu shortly after omen was released. It was fun, challenging, stressful, and most times we walked away with nothing but double scales (I have a few dozen stacks as proof) or just a loss. Back then, there were no astrals so you basically only got cards most times. But we learned a lot and it was interesting using new groups on the different bosses. You couldn't just Zerg most bosses because they punished you for doing so, so there was some teamwork involved. I always liked that aspect of the content. Especially Ou.

Odyssey can be basically steamrolled with a very standard party of non communicating players, and the only thing it ever encouraged for months was making money or MM, which very little cared about. So why are people acting like all the players care about is Gil/HR when the event is 30 minutes and only nets Gil items? What?? There was no "fun" factor in Odyssey, because it didn't make sense as a content at the time. You couldn't full shout groups because why would people waste their KI farming for a full split when they can do that solo? With the introduction is segments, I have enjoyed grouping up with people to farm but that doesn't change the fact that the content is dry. Buff pull sleep tank kill. There's literally nothing to it.

Small correction: mats from megabosses and minibosses where guaranteed, at least 1, with chance of 2 from Ou.
Those greatly devaluated with time but, especially at start, were very expensive, so much that if you ran with a static it was worth to split/sell actually.

I still have fun playing the game but completely avoid crapssey because it isn't fun and was stupidly easy to get the rewards. Hell yeah I am going to trash on it that it has no flavor like Karen's thanksgiving turkey because that's more fun then this event

You literally told me I gotta take a break because the new content is a steaming pile of trash that can be capped out in a day and shouldn't complain. Don't get me even started on the rest of that paragraph of crap you spewed ShillmonSes. If anyone has issues it's you for not being able to see this for what it is. A turd of an event.

Oh and I enjoy ffxi - In just this month I got Ashera harness, Did a ton of Ambu, VW, helping friends, Getting Volte gear from dyna D, and working on Carn at my own pace while I play Apex legends and Genshin Impact.

@Afania @Buukki

I wasnt playing when Omen was released but afaik it was when FFXI situation was still much better and they had more people working on it? Wasnt it in general the part of RoV (by part I mean not story, but whole last big "expension" idea), or was it added later?. They probably had more time and resources to push it completed instead of for example first only release first few floors solely for people to farm cards and midbosses, then add 5 main bosses later. Now SE business situation seems to be worse and covid is a problem too. So they decided to push Odyssey in parts. Its very possible that in boss area you will find what you are looking for Afania (tho I kinda doubt those bosses will really be hard enough for your taste, unless players will be able to scale their difficulty level for better rewards, like Ambu/HTMB). Segments is also a step to improve reward for grouping.

They have increased the difficulty with each floor they have added for Odyssey so it could be that these new bosses could be 140-150.