Dev Tracker - Discussion

Yup, they've said before that Escha/Resisenjima is Abyssea 2.0. Not an exact match, but you can definitely see the spin on it with a focus on popped NMs, lifeless copies of existing zones to run around, etc. Now they've moved on to revamps of Adoulin-era content:

Odyssey is Neo-Delve. Naakauls and armor/weapons based on them, lesser NMs with some significant drops, weapon damage type plays a big role, the idea of farming currency (Segments/Plasm) and obtaining/upgrading armor to get strong enough to fight the NMs (Delve with leveling up newly introduced ilevel stuff as a gear check, Odyssey with strong augments to gear making it easier to defeat the NMs at increasingly higher levels).

Sortie is Neo-Vagary. Unstated objectives to discover, Vagary type NMs, running through Ra'kaznar zones fighting stuff until you get to the boss. Also a little sprinkling of Incursion in that it's one big zone with lots of mobs to fight and NMs at specific locations within the zone.


Uh... I think it's a bit premature to say this with only phase 1 of Sortie released. Just like reforged AF/Relic+2, Empy +2 armor was always designed to be a lot more accessible for all. Takes some time, but was never intended to be a massive time sink. Empy +3 will take longer. And then the REAL long term grind is going to be Prime weapons.

Earrings are just a bit of side content, IMO. They do want it to be random and never-ending, sure, but I don't think the earrings were ever designed to be the "this is the content that people go out of their way to grind for years" style thing that some people here seem to believe. For a tiny handful of people who can't accept anything but MAXIMUM AUGMENTS and PERFECT OPTIMAL GEAR ONLY, they may beat their head against the RNG forever. But like Shinryu, it's not realistic to think that the majority is going to really dig into that as the reason to do Sortie.

They might even add auxiliary gear/armor to Sortie bosses. All of the associated JSE content had additional drops (Omen, Dynamis, Vagary). It might not just be only earrings indefinitely, so the content will have some life in it after Empyrean is finished. However, they did just say the process would be "long", which could be interpreted in a few ways.

It will change depending how it's being received. They'll modify it based on how good or bad engagement is.

See; 10 tries to make dyna-D work

Definitely the earrings are a side thing. Obviously they will have to up the drop rate, let us upgrade from multiples etc or it will fail. I think the question is if they put in +3 earrings, which I doubt for the moment because its so hard to get a +2.

I totally see the correlations that Capuchin was talking about in terms of previous systems used in new systems (aby/escha/sortie/vagary). I'm not sure Ody ~ Delve though.

Speaking of Ody, if +3 empys are competitive or possibly better in many slots (Kasuga vs Mpaca for example) then I hope they refine the Ody pop system and make it easier to achieve that tier of equipment. Specifically, lower the obstacles in attempting bosses. Add in big segment bonuses for bosses where you get a 5k return for the win. Increase EP gain a lot for a win. Maybe a 10/20/30/40/50k EP bonus for a win. Suddenly, everyone is fighting the Ody bosses, which keeps the content competitive and accessible as a 3-4? year old content.

I'd like to add on that the development decisions they made are empy+3 versus Ody versus obsoleting previous tier gears like escha/relic.

Their decision process will be whether to make the empy+3 easier to get than ody gears and if better than them. It can't be both right, or that will obsolete ody gears and obliterate the others.

Specific to Nyame, that's never going to be totally replaced by Empy+3 if only for the reasons that:
(a) Nyame is all jobs gear, so you can make a killer WS piece (or much less commonly, a TP or MAB piece) for multiple jobs at once instead of 1 Empy at a time - and even if Empy is best in slot for one job, there are other jobs where Nyame will be the clear winner in that slot, and
(b) If going with the orthodox choice of B path Nyame (and using a WS that makes use of WSD gear), no job has more than 1 WSD piece per set from reforged AF/Relic/Empy. So even if an Empy+3 WSD+15 piece (I agree with Simon, I think that's coming) beats Nyame in a specific slot, any DD job is still going to have a couple slots where augmented Nyame B is the BiS WS piece, and
(c) It's hard to beat Nyame for DT/Meva purposes, especially for non-Malignance jobs where 2nd best option may not even be very close. Again, you might have a slot or two here and there for each job where something else wins, but everyone has SOME use for some Nyame gear for DT/Meva sets.

And the other multi-job Odyssey sets have some fairly unique uses that won't be easily replaced any time soon, if ever: Mpaca TP bonus head, Agwu's Drain/Aspir feet, Mpaca/Gleti/Bunzi pet lv+1 pieces, etc. That's aside from more general utility like Sakpata's set being generally great for DT/hybrid purposes and not going away for a long time (even if you replace a piece or two of the 5 with something like WAR empy body, there's going to be a spot for some pieces of the set), or Gleti's set having great idle regain.

Plus, again, they're multiple job sets. Even if I no longer care much about Mpaca body for my SAM due to Kasuga body, it's still good for my MNK with Impetus down, or PUP for a multiattack option.

V20 isn't even a year old yet, Gaol is turning 2 in January. This isn't that old of content. And with v25 coming soon, they're still upgrading the content.

Changes I'd like to see for odyssey is assisting other players with clears having an option for 0 reward, but 0 cost. This would make doing progression much less harsh for alot of teams, in addition you can bring in friends to help you learn without costing anyone, anything. With that system, make clears count for KI progression until V15, at which time you have to win to unlock the augments, same with v20. This would let people spend 0 segments to unlock V15 access and then worry about the segment grind for kills and RP, beyond this, it would let people do the fights to practice without huge losses if they want to try a new method that better suits their group's abilities/jobs.

I don't think they need to make it "more accessible" just less punishing. Letting us stock up mogphone1's wouldn't be a bad change either...

Edit: also, I highly doubt, even with huge upgrades people have been predicting, that any ody set will be completely outdone by empy. Sure, Sam scored big in multiple slots. However, 4th line augments can completely erase that gap depending on what they add to each piece, or to each set. Once we see final empy sets, we can all fawn over them until v25 at which point ody might still Reign Supreme(or not, who knows)

Another idea is to let the players convert RP between NMs by the ratio of 1:3 if they are in the same or lower tier. If people can get at least 700 RP that they can use however they want when they help friend's r20 clears it would be easier to find people and farm RP.

To be fair, I don't think subjob lock is the main reason why it's difficult to build parties. It does change the party dynamic and playstyle slightly, like DNC being more relevant and non-yag whm harder to play, but I don't think it stops anyone joining parties because of it.

It's the endless other restrictions makes it harder to build a party.

Imagine you are building a party for Xevioso but your friend doesn't have piercing DD, so they can't join. Because for some reason, instead of just giving 25% dmg bonus to the bee so every DD is viable with piercing DD only being favorable but not a requirement, SE decided to make all non piercing dmg useless.

Then you shout and get another guy who has a piercing DD, but that DD is the same as yours, so they can't join too, since only 1 of the same job is allowed. Not because use 2 same jobs in pt is mathematically inefficient, but the game flat out tell you you can't use 2 same jobs.

Then you shout again and finally get a piercing DD on another job, but that guy is under geared for v20 DPS check. So it's not a good idea to invite them too.

Then finally some elite piercing DD from your LS popped, you asked them if they wanna do Xevioso they said they don't need RP from it nor they need clears.

That's when a available pool of players that you can pick from gets cut and cut and cut. Not because the fight is actually more difficult than every other content, but because the needless rules and reward system makes it harder to form a pt outside of a static.

At least 1-2 of the restrictions mentioned above needs to be cut for more enjoyable Odyssey playing experience IMO. I don't think SJ restriction change much since it never stops me from inviting anyone.

Imagine there is nothing of that and you get what? 3x Sakpata WAR with Naegling :)

Access to at least decent:
Piercing - WAR,SAM,DNC,THF,DRG,BST,NIN,RDM(?)
Slashing - WAR,SAM,THF,DRG,BST,NIN,DRK,RDM,RNG,BLU,COR
Blunt - WAR,MNK,PUP,BLU,RDM

I don't see any problem with damage type and unique job restriction. Especially that something like V10, you probably doesn't even need right weapon type and Tomahawk also exists and with COR doing RD>WC>RD you can probably zerg any V10 in few minutes with Tomahawk and using any type of damage (or kill slower without tomhawk, but still kill). Why I'm talking about V10? Because that would be around what SE should imo balance to be accessed by casuals. V20 is not for casuals and if you want to beat them all at V20, level and gear more jobs. No idea why people think V20 should be easily accessed by everyone.

Ongo and Arebati are more problematic, but I don't have better idea to force people to use nukes and shooting otherwise. On the other hand Arebati could have no damage type restriction and it would still force you to shooting, because of all the aoe TP moves it uses.

I agree that v20 should not be the benchmark for access, also, V15 is only marginally harder than v10 so it's not like all of the content is that hard.

About forming parties: so I don't know why the job selection thing is even a point of contention or anger. Except for the fact that most players bandwagon onto the same jobs. Since odyssey began I've played and geared more jobs than I ever thought I would, and found I enjoy some jobs I never thought I would touch. To do 3x fights in a row you have a choice of 18/22 jobs, and that means this is probably the most inclusive content to date for all of the jobs in XI.

Without the job restriction how many fights become brd geo cor + healer dd dd? Or + dd tank?

Without the singleton job restriction how many fights turn into double cor for ranged fights, double Sam for piercing or slashing fights, double warrior for mixed fights (or in bumba's case outright zergs). How many jobs suddenly become useless when bandwagon jobs become available to stack.

RNG gets replaced by cor, because who cares that rng is higher damage when we can get even more buffs which offset the damage loss?

DRG or DNC get replaced in bumba fights because why bring them when war is better for the fast zerg.

Magic fights why not bring 2 sch's who can alternate skillchains or chain together and not really ever have to worry about strats.

I get it, some people only have x jobs leveled. And most of the player base all seem to enjoy the flavor of the week in terms of powerlevel. But sometimes, maybe everyone could step out of their comfort zone and try/play something new.

Beyond all of this, I really feel like odyssey in general was a push toward bringing back statics. Yes, doing pugs of this stuff will probably never happen, but if you found 5 friends you play with, and work together to gear up different jobs, and share the workload of what jobs everyone brings to the table, building teams for this is not an insurmountable task. AND allows some lesser used jobs a chance to really shine in their own right.

Forcing people to unbandwagon and not use 3 wars, 3 rangers, 3 sams etc is the better way to do it.

And the players know that, but it goes against the previous 18 years of exploiting it, so of course they're going to *** about it incessantly.

Always pray that they never find a way to force you out of the cor+brd+geo you've become reliant upon buff stacking to the absolute maximum in literally every single fight.

We weren't talking about V10. We were talking about v20.

I already addressed it. You would have a point if 1) v20 doesn't have harsh dps check OR 2) the dmg type restriction is only a 25% bonus but not high reduction for every other dmg type.

In the case of 1) you can use a slightly lesser geared job or a job thag doesn't excel at certain damage type, like equipping a tauret and spam evis and get it done with.

As soon as you add harsh DPS check intended for more optimized pt, the difficulty will be balanced for jobs that excels at that specific damage type geared at high end level. That's when mandau rdm isn't a viable DD even if they can do piercing dmg. Because the HP is scaled and balanced for war DRG as the main DD and SP twice.

But for MMO, they obviously need hard content with a DPS check, so the most obvious good solution is making every dmg type at least viable.

Making every dmg type viable wouldn't make every pt war only. Back then when we did Teles melee zerg strat, I've seen THF DNC WAR DRG being used, not just war. But those weren't a requirement to win the fight. I've parsed fairly well with Savage blade on that NM. It doesn't stop me from using other DDs.

Ultimately, I fail to see why SE wouldn't let us use setup however we want as long as it's mathematically effective. It's a game and ultimately the whole point is to have fun. If you have fun on a job and you can make a setup to make that job effective, why can't we use it?



I didn't say v20 should be able to beaten by everyone. If I make a pt, enter v20 and failed because my strategy is ineffective or our gear and skill sucked, it's on me. Nothing to complain about.

If I can't even make a 6/6 pt to try it because my player pool gets cut and cut and cut due to the reasons mentioned above, I feel it's more like the game purposely stop me from even doing the content, not because I failed at the content after I tried. In that case I'd just cancel sub and play other games.

We don't need shitty artificial limitation to create difficulty and challenge in high end content. Go ahead, make the game hard, make me fail. All I'm asking is don't tell me I can't use X job only because another guy has it. It's not fun.

What are you talking about? Even with Odyssey job restrictions it's still BRD geo cor or healer DD DD or DD+tank. This restriction doesn't make non-interchangeable roles more interchangeable.

On the other hand it makes interchangeable jobs (aka DD) less interchangeable.

If they want to make BRD cor geo tank role more interchangeable, the entire battle system needs a huge overhaul, including how pdif and haste works. Odyssey's system doesn't accomplish that at all.


The better way to make everyone use different job is to make different setup equally effective, not artificial limitation that stops player from entering the content if one job is used twice

2 out of 3 restrictions is not game cutting your options, but you.

Neither taking off meta piercing damage job and only focusing on bis ones or player not geared enough to do v20 is YOUR decision, not game mechanic. The only restriction cutting your options is unique job, but that's a very good restriction.


You misunderstood. My comment with the list of jobs was about V20, then I added, that at V10 it wouldn't even matter, because you can beat V10 without proper damage type anyway.

If you do one fight, then yeah. If you do 3 (which is the most optimal), then you have much more jobs stepping up as support/healer/dd/tank.

EDIT: ofc they *** this up by giving too much RP from amplifier bonus, instead of making it more dependent on how much damage you can do or if you kill the mob, instead of just doing 5%, but that's whole other story. Still doing 3 fights and killing V20 A1-2 or damaging or maybe killing another A3 in 2nd and 3rd fight is the most optimal AND FUN.

Players will always make decisions based on game design.

If X is meta, of course player will use X. But who made the decision that X is meta? Game designer, of course. Not player.

Like wise, if an NM needs 1000 dmg in 15 min to win, players won't build a party that deal 800 dmg in 15 min. They'll build a party that deals 1000 dmg. I fail to see why it's player's decision in this case when it's 100% game designer who set it this way.

If game dev doesn't want people use 3 war, don't make war overwhelmingly the better choice. Then people will use other jobs, without artificial limitation. As long as other job is only slightly behind war.

Even if one meta is 10% better than the 2nd best choice, plenty of people will still use the 2nd best one happily because gearing one job takes a lot of time, and not everyone likes war. For many people, Being 10% worse than the best choice doesn't matter if you get to play your favorite job.

If you can't even use the 2nd best choice then it's another story.

I think what makes the game fun is letting you use every setup, and in the process the player finds what works the best. Not the other way around.

It's all true, but we are talking about game with 15 years of endgame, years of limitation etc. Balance that you want would require massive overhaul and imo also taking away depth of many jobs. I personally like fFXI the way it is, where you are sometimes limited, but sometimes you can join game mechanics to be OP in a way developers never thought about.

Also you either taking responsibility of building pug or not. How exactly "not geared enough for V20" is caused by weapon type restriction? You mean it's only geared with Great Axe on WAR and its game fault he can do V20 Xevioso? Good, he still can do V10.

What's exactly different between piercing having boost and HP being scaled that you can only kill a mob with bis piercing weapons and piercing being normal and other weapons being nerfed? The result would be the same, you will only do like 50%HP using slashing on Xevioso. That being said, gearing for another damage type on job you have is not like building whole new job from nothing. It's pretty low effort to get piercing on WAR, SAM, BST, NIN and RDM and be viable as piercing DD, especially when COR and BRD helps DD too.

I've always felt the beauty of FFXI was zero limitation on us in terms of gearing up and playing different jobs. So often we look for content to be favorable for any job- how about expecting more of us and as long as every job has a place in some aspect of relevant content, limiting what works best in some moments isn't hampering our gaming experience, its encouraging us to experience more of the game and gear/play more jobs.

Its when some jobs simply have no place in relevant content that problems exist in my book.

Oh, I get that it's hard. Except I think SE resorted to a worse solution(IMO) when they could just use the same formula as other content from 2015-2020: let players use setup that they want, even if one content ended up having "meta". The horizontal progression kinda solved this issue as different content has different meta, hence most jobs are valuable.

But nooooo.... They made Odyssey vertical progression too lol.

I can understand why Odyssey has fans. Some jobs, like DNC BST Blu BLM etc all become more useful in Odyssey, so they see Odyssey as the "right solution" to this problem.




Why do you keep telling people to do v10 lol. If you already cleared v10 and capped RP at r20 then doing v10 is totally useless. People want to do v20 and continue their progression after they are done with previous ones. What's the point to do progression that you are already done?

I'm pretty excited for another round of Sortie. It kept me entertained for a month. FFXI's development pace can't really afford to have content be disposable at this point, but I still felt it was enjoyable content.

If they want to clear V20, then make job/get weapons to be viable there, instead of expecting to be able to clear it on xxx with savage blade. That's my point. If you are casual, then stick to casual difficulty and clear however you like.

Also boosting piercing by 25% wouldnt work, because even with this boost most piercing option would be barely better or even worse than some bis slashing or blunt options anyway and you also cant go with something like +50%, because we have 99999 cap, which would limit you on for example DRG Impulse or stacked Rudra. Reducing damage on other weapon types is much better approach.

You seems to forget that players don't have obligation to pay and play a video game lol.

No, they always have the option to simply play other games or spend their time/money on different entertainment if their progression is stuck.

SE already admitted Odyssey is less popular as a content if I remember correctly, and they probably have backend data to support the statement. So it doesn't matter what YOU think about Odyssey, what matter is if it's a profitable content or not.

If people simply choose not to do v20 and play a different game(since FFXI doesn't really have other long lasting progression that isn't Odyssey atm), then no amount of "but players should do V10..." posts would solve this problem.

I'm simply analyzing "why" to SE's problem after they admitted that it was indeed a problem.

Your idea that "casual players should do V10 and forget about v20" would work if FFXI has more long lasting horizontal progression. So they have other goals to do after they are done with V10 and capped RP.

Unfortunately that isn't the case. Personally I finished ML 40 in like 2 weeks in AoE pt and sortie in 2 weeks too. It's easy to run into a situation that v20 is the only progression left but the amount of time it takes to build a v20 pt(not even playing and failing the content, but building a pt and not playing)takes significant amount of playtime due to small available pool of players that can be used.

To the point that other entertainment become a more appealing choice.

Maybe this problem will be fixed after sortie +3 released, not now unfortunately.


Then the better choice is nerf the strongest slashing options so they are fairly equal, not artificial limitation.

Same, I enjoy sortie a lot more than Odyssey atm too. Even though some objectives favor certain jobs too, it doesn't feel super forced unlike Odyssey.

I hope they don't *** up after +3 release.....

I havent said such person should stick with the game. This game is mostly for dedicated players anyway. It doesn't need to fight for new casual players, because it will fail anyway. Adapt or play other games.


Ofc it's less popular when it's harder to access. Doesn't mean that people who can access it, dislike it.


It's really not much people who play this game casually and want to do V20 you know? This game usually have casuals that are way behind or dedicated players who can overcome restrictions. You want to have a cookie and eat a cookie here. I prefer even that takes me from comfort zone and challenge me in unique way, instead of just letting me use optimal strategy to make something little faster. Approach like that always fail in FFXI. If there is way of doing thing easy mode and slightly slower, most people will do it. You would see nothing but Naegling WARs and other bandwagon jobs doing Odyssey, if they take all restrictions. It's boring as ***. Maybe not for you who shows up in game every now and then, but for people playing regularly that meta is stupid.


I didnt say they should forget about V20. I said they should expend their job or damage type porfolio, so they can overcome restrictions, instead of crying they are there.
You finished it, because you are playing like 2-3 jobs? That's exactly your problem. Games offers you to play 22 jobs. Plenty of goals to reach and gameplay to experience, that you choose to ignore, then cry you have nothing to do. I personally have not enough time to do 20% of what I would like in this game and Im far from being finished with ML, Sortie or Odyssey and Im doing it daily.


How is reduction in slashing damage not a nerf to slashing options? If you mean they should nerf specific builds to balance them, you know it wont happen. We didn't have proper balance for 15 years, so you are trolling at this point if you suggest that as real alternative.

Sheol G is not for casual players.


The progression style practically begs 'static' which is not appealing. Ambuscade and HTMBs which are casual friendly events, grant rewards that are easily enough for any casual player to contribute meaningfully to anything they would be doing day to day.


I think there are a lot less people progressing Odyssey RP than many seem to think. This doesn't include the people who paid for it with gil, I mean people who are actually compelled to participate in the content because they find it enjoyable. The content in the game that casual players enjoy is really unaffected by marginal stat increases. Until 'casual speedrunning' becomes a thing...

Gaol Bosses are designed for more gear-interested players with a sliding difficulty scale, while Sortie should be designed for broader appeal. I think both can exist for different audiences of player. I suspect that after Empy+3 gear makes its rounds, SE will throw out V25 bosses for that specific crowd of players. The people who couldn't complete V20 won't be too bothered because Empy+3 served to be beefy enough and not terribly challenging, where Odyssea V25 + gear is marginally better overall, but only appeals to a small subset of players who want that bigger challenge to tackle.

I kind of look at Gaol like a newer, incentivized Master Trials in a sense. Most players completely ignored MTs because it was too difficult and the gear wasn't worth it. The other crowd of players loved attempting it and showing off their shinies. Different crowds.