Dev Tracker - Discussion

New players doing endgame? I don't know how I *gave you that impression, but I am deeply sorry. Gotta respect that kind of ambition though.

I think the new player experience can be improved by allowing cutscenes to be skipped entirely. Not postponed, skipped.

Other than that I think it's fine. Make some friends, help each other out.

Cutscene (AND!) game day wait elimination would be huge.

No one ever watched them. No one ever read that ***. We all smashed enter or started using fastcs and enternity as soon as we learned about them.

Some of that ***is entirely way too god damn long. Summarize. For christs sake.

I mean, I'm a huge fan of the story, read every bit of it twice. And as best I can tell, most new people who stick around for a bit do so for the story. But I do agree, there should be an option to skip it.

To say NO ONE ever read a cutscene once is a bit hyperbolic... Generally only mash thru them if I've already done them before

You hit the nail on the head here. I mean, surely, there has to be at least one group of friends out there in the FFXI void that all started together fresh in 2025 with no prior knowledge of the game actually attempting to clear content in order...right? Deep down I feel like the answer is no, but I really want the answer to be yes.

The answer is absolutely yes. I'm in a (more general RPG-focused) Discord with some of them playing on Bahamut, have been all year. They've done missions together, failed Divine Might together, figured out BCNMs so they can afford their expensive stuff like Phalanx scrolls that seem very out of reach (lol they told me Bahamut prices recently shot up to 600k, and sure enough they did), had fun doing avatar fights, exp parties almost exclusively outside of Escha leveling.

They give zero shits about any of my complaints about Sortie, Limbus and AF/Relic+4, how long it takes to get ML (when you don't bot), all that stuff.

I've also seen several returning players in my own linkshells. Couple people who haven't regularly played in years came back, getting geared up, regularly come to events or do social stuff with others in the ls. We need to go do a few Kei runs soon to get our returning RDM an Ammurapi Shield), we've been going into Dyna [D] with some people's jobs that never got the wave 1 clear.

I've heard of a couple examples, most notably the one Capuchin mentioned, but also...it doesn't need to be 6, it doesn't need to be in order, it doesn't need to be 100% together.

Just grab 1 friend and do ***together. Or send a message in your linkshell(s) and ask if anyone wants to work on Kamavacas. Or whatever. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. I see lots of comments on here and reddit of people saying they can't do endgame because they can't commit to a static of 6 players going for 3 hours 7 days a week and I think that completely misses the point.

Other people think they need to get up to like 5 REMAs, ranked ody gear, and 5/5 of all their JSE+3 before they can start grouping up. *** that, group up from day 1. There are plenty of players in your situation who would love to group up with you, and you can also loop in a veteran player (or 2 or 3) too, if they're available and want to go with you. It really doesn't need to be such a SRS BSNS thing.

I loved RoV / the latest expansion’s stories. The other? Meh. I probably would have skipped if given a choice. Tbh it’s the stable of modern MMORPGs to let people skip stories.

Most first-time players dont skip cutscenes. This whole "we should be able to skip cutscenes" drivel comes from people making another alt or a new char to replace their banned one.

The option to skip cutscenes should be available though. Non-quest/mission BCNM's shouldnt have cutscenes. Like these lazy *** copy pasted the entirety of the BCNM code and just changed the level. They couldnt be assed to comment out the cutscene. Though I have a hunch the server side player reposition is based on the cutscene, but they have a prompt to skip the cutscene, suggesting they already have a very shortened cutscene that does the reposition.

I agree with everything you said Nynja, altough I'm not sure BCs are the best example here, it's one of the very few content where they actually give you the "skip cutscene" option lol

Oh my word SE are adding pay to win items!
Some good and some bad coming. Starting with the good:

• New AMAN Trove Items, and better distinction between trash Loud Thuds and the great new Impossible to Gauge Thud

• Shared Dyna Divergence area that you can enter every day. Wonder if it'll be swamped on the busy servers, or dead on the others.

• Exemplar points reward for the final RoV mission I guess?

• Ability to check whether the Limbus NMs have been killed or not

And the bad/weird:

• Login points becoming more of a daily requirement? Getting the 1500 bonus on day 15 instead of day 1.

• Vana'bout.. Stuff I guess?

Sure.

Patch notes: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/63494

News:

New shared areas in Dynamis – Divergence
Click image for larger version Name: 20251104_011.jpg Views: 3 Size: 35.3 KB ID: 14320

Sorry for the wait on this! We've finished our preparations on making Dynamis – Divergence available for solo play!

We have created a separate area and entrance from the current Divergence, so in order to distinguish between the two areas, the existing Divergence will continue to be referred to as the "occupied areas" and the new areas will be the "shared areas."

Note that there will be no changes made to the occupied areas. You can take them on using the same conditions as before.

The following is an overview of the newly established shared areas.

- The areas in each nation open and close at predetermined times
- The time limit cannot be extended
- You can take on the shared areas once per day (resets at 12:00 a.m. JST Earth time)
- After entering the area, other players can join you to take on the content
- The area ends when you defeat all of the Wave 2 enemies or reach the time limit

Please see the version update information for more details.

These new shared areas are designed to help players who found it difficult to take on the content before, and provide them an opportunity to upgrade their relic armor, or at least give them a better chance of doing so. It is our hope that as many adventurers as possible take advantage of this new feature.

----

This is good! As a returner trying to get multiple relic pieces on multiple jobs, this will just make tiering up so much easier. Especially as I am EU and all my linkshells run Dyna clears at 1am ... I can't be the only person suffering from a willingess to party up, but a lack of opportunities.

I like this. It gives people like me opportunity to progress, whilst not lowering difficulty and challenge to the higher tiers (i.e. I can't just solo a boss clear!)

Win win

The new Divergence area sounds better than I could've imagined.
I guess they're not gonna give RP and not drop Shards/Voids?
W/e, I don't need it but it feels good for the game in general.

What are they even talking about? I'm confused.

Ok solo entry dienamis sounds more reasonable when its open entry, not solo entry

Still, you'll be hard pressed to do *** all on 13 of the 16 servers. But, hell, you can enter and kill 1 mob every day for 100 days if that's what it takes.


it's vanabout *** time. God damn.

Wouldn't put it past mercs or trolls to enter the shared area and sweep it up to Wave 2 just to end the instance early and prevent players from utilizing it. Even if this isn't the case, it's still possible that the shared area will already be cleared by the time many players can sit down and play.

If they are smart they will make everything pre-popped and non link aggro, otherwise it will be a shitshow for the kinds of players who it's aimed at. They will get swarmed instantly and wipe. Jeuno especially.

Also unless they add some kind of punishment for normal entry if you enter this or some kind of cost to it, geared players will go in there to *** around and swing their *** around to kill everything just cause they can.

Is there an original version of the post in Japanese? I'm wondering if it's clearer there.

I'm guessing that DynaII is gonna work like DI, where everyone present is eligible. Some people stand over in the corner AFK and some people smash through the content like it's 10 years old and everyone gets their daily done anyway. Guess we'll find out soon.

It's obvious they are offering the chance to upgrade some gear with Unity Accolades instead of what would be the currency you normally upgrade that gear with.

I think it's pretty clear they meant this.
I'm just wondering specifically which category of gear they're talking about though.
Clearly not Unity Gear, because that category already uses Unity Accolades AND Lustreless stuff. So unless they meant "accolades in place of Lustreless", but I seriously doubt that.

Given how this update feels like a catch up for Divergence, maybe Unity Accolades in place of RP? But that too sounds unlikely to me. You already have an alternative to RP in Divergence zone and that's Heroism stuff. Costly as it may be, it undoubtely is an alternative for whom doesn't want/can't do RP in divergence zones.

So what else uses a "currency" to upgrade?
Limbus, but clearly they would be crazy to offer alternatives to the newest content.
Empy? Uhm... but that's still pretty "actual" content despite being almost 3 years old.

So I dunno, what else requires a "currency" to be upgraded and now you will be able to use Unity Accolades in its place?

Here is the link to the JP patch notes

I'm still unsure what they meant but I made two hypothesys:

1) You'll be able to buy JSE upgrade items using Unity Accolades, as part of the login campaign (wat?)

2) A new category for Login Campaign will be up, in this category you'll be able to buy items used to upgrade Unity Gear (do they mean Lustreless stuff? Or maybe the base mat with the proper NM name, that you can already buy, 100k max per week, from the Unity NPC, provided you beat that NM at least once?)


I think 1) makes no sense.
2) could be an alternative route to buy those mats, in addition to the current one where you buy them with Accolades and you need to have killed that NM at least once as Pre-req.
With this new change to Login points, you'll be able to buy all (some?) of those mats with Login Points as well.


Yeah I think this is probably it.

It'll be allowing the purchase of initial reforge Job and Slot ingredient items (Wootz Ore, Phoenix Feather, etc.) with Accolades. Please look forward to it!

English patch notes up here.

Impossible to Gauge Thud?
Thuds that actually make sounds!
Count me in!

Remember that your good drops are not their good drops.

You expect crep cloak, they'll be like "still voidpup lol"

Impossible to gauge could mean it's trash or it could mean it's slightly less trash.

It's.. impossible to gauge.

This seems the most likely explanation to me tbh

reforging equipment term really only applies to JSE with Monisette, traditionally, so sounds right.


first EP ring?

My question here is... does this mean that the rainbow chests will now guarantee "impossible to gauge" noise?

Are you actually expecting someone here to answer that today?