Dev Tracker - Discussion

I know that you're referring to player-scaling, but in terms of content-level scaling, I liked how incursion scaled from ~128 to 140 or so. I would LOVE to see this continued in Dynamis Divergence, to scale it from from 150 to 160. I know, I know, wishful thinking.

Bro pls

Anyways
You bring 8-11 ppl, youre locked to two entries
You bring 12+, youre locked to 1

There were posts literally less than a week ago asking how to 2KI kill Ongo, so clearly people in 2025 cant just power creep a win in one KI.

You do your 1-2 fight with 8+ then youre stuck in lobby because you cant enter another fight as the job is being repeated. You afk in lobby or moglophone out.

Inb4: “But amp charge”
Bro pls, thats *** and you know it.
People arent amp charging with 3 wins. People beat V25 and never beat it again because theres no incentive too.

Thats your S-tier content: one-and-done V25
Oathsworn blade: a handful of groups cleared after 18 months
Wings of war: zero clears and its been out for 15 months

Hardly anyone considers Escha to be "high content" anymore.

Problem is as always an unwillingness to fill non-dd roles in an RPG. Compounded by dd jobs being relatively easy to gear, but having a massive gap between decent and almost BiS gears.

To the point where on the somewhat dangerous fights you don't want more than 2-3 capable dds since the added dmg from not-quite-there dds is too little and the additional risk from added TP moves too large.

Yea, I was wrong. Oops.

We've had this conversation enough times that I don't think either of us are going to change minds. I'm still thoroughly convinced that the only reason you want limits raised is so you can sit your mules in content for free points/clears.

SE gave you what you claimed to want with Limbus. Bring as many people as you want, points get split out but you all get credit. +4 gear is decent enough to provide a bridge for all those returners to be able to contribute to Sortie as is. Doesn't seem to have changed your attitude at all, though.

By all means, feel free to cite any posts where my issues with limbus (in its current form) are about anything other than the absolute dogshit drop rates on matter and their big brain decision to make the drop rate locked for a month. Sure its great if your server cleared everything pre-maint, my server didnt so limbus is comatose other than the idiots botting units to upgrade +4 pieces they will literally never use.

I did pre-farm a temp item set though so I can waltz in and pop a box when the drop rates adjust next week. I should check if they carry over though.


Thats cool and you can convince yourself to believe whatever you want to believe, but I carry, I dont get carried.

Also youve brought up Sortie like 5 times. Sortie is boring as ***. 60 minute event, 30+ minutes of it is just idle time running around. Being able to “sit my mules and get points” isnt a motivating factor. Cutting the event down and introducing better teleports would be a motivator.

Literally this. I've been harping on it forever. Making alliance content that's so laughably easy a party can do it will continue the degrading effects we already see and the horrible culture that is being impressed upon new players.

These days when a new player hits 99 they're basically told this is their path:
-Buy gear
-Buy Master, then buy EP
-Get carried or buy unlocks to Ody stuff
-Get carried through Ambu
-Get carried through Aeonics
-Get carried through Dynamis, Omen, etc.

Then once you're geared enough, you can start playing the game with vets.

How about:

There are scores and scores of people who claim they can't find anyone to do content with, and complain about elitists not helping them/letting them into their endgame events, and there are no incentives for veterans to help new players get up to speed. ***, what?

I refuse to believe that the problem with FFXI is that new players have too much content to do...it's a *** MMORPG. That's a benefit, not a problem. There are DECADES' worth of content for them to do. They should...do that content.

Show us your Celestial Spear and Ohakari

...? I haven't done a master trial, so SE should design more alliance content? I have no idea how you connected these two.

Are you saying the master trials should be opened up to alliances or something...? Is that the solution to "the new player problem?"

You're the one who just said "Making alliance content that's so laughably easy a party can do it", yet you have done the S-tier party content.


>>complains about lack of S-tier content
>>Hasnt done existing S-tier content

We all know those are ***-tier party content, not S-tier.

Please show me the complaint about a lack of S-tier content? There's plenty of party-level S-tier content.

All the alliance ***is easy as ***.

See the difference?

Unless I'm mistaken, the last alliance content that was released was 8 years ago. No I'm not including Limbus because it is very clearly nowhere near its finished state so there's no telling if it will be "easy as ***".

People dont get to talk about difficulty on content if they havent done the difficult content, regardless how stupid the reward is.

FFXI was developed horizontally. Most of the upgrades are really only worthwhile at the appropriate level. New players have to spend a silly amount of time and resources 'upgrading' JSE, weapons and building ultimate weapons before they even get to a point where they are useful. In any other MMO, you would start at a baseline of useful and upgrade from there.

This is likely a reason why new players prefer new MMOs. You're not facing a period of months before you're viable unless you're forced to play a job you hate or swipe your card.

I've never criticized sortie, odyssey, or master trials for being too easy so I think you're mistaken about my position.

On the topic of alliance content my point has always been: they either need to balance it for 6 or 18; they suck at scaling in a balanced way.

If they balance it for 6, it will be piss easy (read: boring as ***) for 18 players.

If they balance it for 18, hardly anyone will be able to do it at all, because hardly anyone has 18 people they regularly do content with.

So making content for alliances is a difficult proposition with a bunch of bad answers that make dogshit content (see: limbus)

BS. They can go out right now and do ***. They just can't hang with the fully decked out players. There's nothing stopping a new player from grouping up with 1-5 other players and doing delve, UNM, sheol A, vagary, etc.

Except people setting the expectation that new players should skip all that stuff and go straight to the big leagues. Which is what I've been railing against.

You can go out and do a bunch of ***people used to do when it was relevant, but since it's no longer relevant... it's ***. It's not connected to any other argument or point really, just a genuine reason why new players are overwhelmed. It's mostly ***.

Except... it's relevant for the players at that gear rung?

I don't know FFXIV much, but I did play some of the free trial when it was up to level 50. The content finder or w/e the name was giving me mostly content that nobody was doing (sometimes was difficult to find party members and I ended up with fake players), basically "hiding" from me the fact that there was a whole another tier of content that was not accessible to me, and giving me the illusion that I was playing "current" content, i.e. appropriate to my level.

FFXI has none of that and instead relied on there being troves of players in the same situation as you, which nowadays there is MUCH less... on Cerberus this is very evident, as any other lowpop server I'd guess, as during return campaigns there's always small pockets of players that came back from quitting in comparable periods, and it's easy for them to group up and do stuff they need for their own progression, while actually having fun. When a loner returns on its own in a more calm moment, they immancably end up with huge fomo and "i wish i could play with y'all but I need to finish rov :-(".

SE is trying to address this in multiple ways, but it's taking them a while.

"Old" doesn't mean "***", that's an extremely consumeristic (and reductive) way to see the thing. If anyone truly believes it, they should go play something else, this game is old.

Idk if you're saying the content is ***or the gear is ***but...either way I disagree.

If you're a COR, brand new to the game or returning, here's a (non exhaustive) list of events and the relevant gear you need (want). Most of this can be done in 1-3 man groups, nearly all of it with minimal gear requirements:

UNM: sailfi, kustawi, cacoethic, etc.
SR: ciphers, leyline gloves, samnuha body/legs, etc.
Vagary: defiant collar, gil, unlocks for empyrean armor
Delve: mats for JSE upgrades, gil, chaac belt
Omen: cards, scales, gil, eventually nusku shield, kishar ring, dingir, ilabrat, and iskur.
GF: carmine gear, adhemar gear, darraingers (sp) pants, herculean gear, etc.
Ambu: capes, REMA mats, ambu weapons, gil...

There are dozens of things a new player can do without needing an ounce of carrying from a veteran player. If you have 2 or 3 new players? They can do nearly everything without any help (in game). 6 players? Absolutely everything, full stop.

So...idk...start doing all that ***. Are we out here saying "there's stuff to do in this game, that's a problem for new players"? Why? They don't need to be handheld or skip over all this stuff, they can do it. They bought the game to play it, not to watch vets crush bosses they've never attacked before so they can be handed gear.

The game doesn't (have to) start at r20 nyame. I would argue that there are already too many catchup systems in place. They make new players feel like they have to skip the content and go straight to nyame and sakpata

It's a daunting investment of time and effort just getting to the level 99 rung. Many upgrades aren't even useful until until ilvl 109 and many that you would use full-time have to be 119+ before you'd consider them.

Useful for what? V15+ Odyssey bosses? 8+boss Sortie runs? Sure. But I don't know of many new players who start the game thinking, "I really want to tank a V20 soon." Most new players I know struggle with the original Shadow Lord fight because they haven't done limit breaks yet, and get excited when I help them out with my crappy Ambu gear.

This is very server-dependent sure, but some of my fondest memories was putting together a group of fellow-new players and getting our Vagary BF clears for Empy unlocks. We had to grind gear for that, strategize, and it took us several tries per fight but was a ton of fun throughout the process.

You may be right about this, but only to an extent. New players prefer newer games. That's likely the biggest reason. Secondly, with FFXI's advertising budget, practically no one knows FFXI is still active. And much less, knows what modern FFXI's selling points are.

I think also a lot that say just go do Omen or Ambu or w/e forget just how difficult even content as old as that is when you're actually a fresh 119.

So yes, the starting point is Odyssey R0 armor, which lets you solo farm empy +2 and later +3 if you want and all the UNM accessories and be useful in random ambus and what not.

The fact that Odyssey armor is multi-job should be a hint that it replaces the previous multi-job armor, ambu +1/+2. And it's easier to get than ambu +1/+2 for someone fresh off the boat.

Yes, they will need help even at v1. That's the MMO part coming in.

It's fine to help others with Ody clears. No, you're not cheating them out of content they "should" be doing. If you don't help them all you're doing is gate keeping and saying "In my day we had to farm Omen for.."

Stop it.

A practical example - someone fresh at 119 on a decent dd job will have to farm Ambu vol2 for a minimum of two months for a full set of +2. Said set of +2 is immediately made redundant by R0 Odyssey armor that can be used by that job.

Why not do vol1? Well they don't have even ambu +2 yet they're not doing anything in a vol1 by the self-imposed rules of "content ladder".

Why farm Ambu for that armor. What is the point. Why spend all that time on a placeholder set of armor.

Why is that hypothetical player doing that.

They just recently make that ambu grind a lot faster

For that exact reason. It's "the" starter gear. and it took too long to get.

Because this hypothetical player's character isn't 45 days old yet so they can't even enter Odyssey.

That's true, they do need to wait 45 days. Which ironically might get them to a ambu +2 set and maybe finish missions.

Imo the mountain of missions and cutscenes to wade through are a bigger detriment to new players than gear progression. They're not hard gear wise, can do them in sparks gear. But is it fun? Hmm.

There's something weird about the established players with a half dozen characters who have done the mission lines a half dozen times saying they aren't fun. They have low replay value because they aren't challenging, but a new player is being prompted to explore the massive world, interact with numerous systems, and experience some decent storylines.

Listening to the new player channels on Bahamut and Asura, new players seem to enjoy the mission lines. I haven't actually heard a new player complain about missions on their first playthrough.

These discussions always feel way too much like people are using new players as a placeholder to project their own views onto.

The equipment progression issue is cultural. If there's no player-driven desire to group for lower content, new players pick up on that culture. New players don't skip to Nyame because it's the only way to play, they skip to Nyame because everyone has ran through multiple mules and is telling them to do it. It's pretty hard to change that, but I don't really think having base Nyame ruins progression anyway (it's just durability, the DPS is trash). I definitely don't think it should be extended to other gear, though.

As a new(ish) player myself, since engaging with certain sections of the community, I've learned that I'm not nearly as mad about the state of the game as I should be. I've had entirely too much fun...

Going through WoTG for the first time was soul crushing. Doing it back in the day and discovering new continents new time lines and such was different than doing it now and just having to run through the same empty zones for the 15th time.

I don't think it's because of alts. Either you like the missions or you don't. Personally I haven't enjoyed any mission story line after Zilart.

I think some quest lines are better than any of the later missions, like the Four Kings quest line in Aht Urghan.

Bit of a tangent, but while we're talking carry culture..

Don't go DPS and one shot the entire zone if you're helping someone through older content. It might boost your ego and be time efficient, but it exacerbates the disengagement.

Go BRD, give them haste and acc cap and crowd control. If they can't kill the content, pull out the Naegling and make up the difference. Gives the person a chance to experience the scale of the content and be actively involved, even if you have to finish out the end.

RDM is a decent option, too. Either way, you can control the situation for them and ensure a win without doing it all: it's also more engaging (at least in my opinion) for the veteran than curbstomping old content.

Within the last year, I made a fresh character from level 1 and took it through to farming Lilith HTBF, doing basic Ody seg farms in A, doing Ambuscade, farming dynamis, etc. so while many people may be forgetting how difficult old content is...it's not me.

I also remember quite clearly how badly I got my *** handed to me by some of the UNMs, and various other content when I first returned and was using my garbage gear.

You know what I did? I made friends, joined linkshells, and then we, a bunch of garbage *** scrubs with Mandaus and Kikokus, did a *** of VD Vol 2 ambu until I could make some capes. I farmed Arthro, did Salvage, Dynamis [OG] for gil, ran Omen (and sometimes timed out on the first floor), died to the midbosses. Failed a million times at the first few Aeonics.

The game has an extremely good difficulty curve and you can very easily work your way through it without being carried. That's not to say sometimes getting a leg-up isn't helpful. I've given a massive amount of legs-up in my time, and taken a few as well.

That doesn't mean "the new player experience is awful" or "totally broken" or whatever nonsense is spouted around here. The new player experience is great. They have shitloads of content they can solo, content that's good for 2, 3, 5, 6, and 12 players. They can have a vet carry them through basically everything, or they can do it themselves. There are tiers of content and lots of stuff that scales as you gain power.

I really don't see the issues people are claiming exist here. Mobs can kill you? It takes a while to get from sparks gear to R30 Ody gear with multiple Prime weapons? Um...congratulations, you've got a vast world with dozens of events to do...is that not what you wanted?