Gaol is get one win then cheese for points by NOT doing the fight
The cheese method came later, it was never part of the initial Release. I used to farm V15 Gogmagog solo on MNK for 360~ RP/clear, to finish out my Coiste Bodhar. I did dozens of fights this way before any cheese existed. SE threw all of us a bone by allowing amplifiers in the first place (and I'm certain they flubbed the execution so much but never bothered to fix it). In any case, absolutely none of the RP cheese method has anything to do with "depth".
You don't think Odyssey Gaol has any depth? Okay. Probably trolling but I'll bite because it's a slow Monday at my desk.
- You need 6 real players (not mules or alts) to have a chance
- You need 6 unique jobs per fight. Multiplied by how many successive fights you were willing to do (2 fights = 12 jobs, 3 = 18 jobs. Nearly impossible for plebs)
- You can't rely on your support job to supplement weaknesses in the group (i.e. if your healer sucks, your GEO or SMN can't help out.
- Everyone must be top notch geared, at least on the higher veng levels.
- You need to have appropriate macros and sets, or you will get exposed for being the weak link in the group.
- You need to know how to use your abilities properly, and you need to watch out for key triggers. Timing JAs was so important, if you used Rayke/Gambit/Subtle Sorcery/Wild Card/Soul Voice/Threnodies/TP Drainkiss/Impact/Helix at the wrong time, you might as well warp out. The fights were
THAT strict
- You could change the difficulty for each boss slightly to challenge yourself. If you couldn't beat a certain tier, it was clear evidence you were not good enough.
- Each boss uses a very specific strategy, but before some of them were discovered, groups bashed their heads into a wall surviving things like Tiiimbeeer (looking at you Poseidon's Ring and Rampart RD rotations). It was incredibly frustrating figuring out all the mechanics early on.
- Positioning is incredibly important in certain fights (standing in front of Kalunga or Gigilorum = run over). Sometimes you need to employ a very different strategy (like kiting) to even have a chance. Even the Craklaw can one-shot a superbly geared RUN.
- You needed specific weapon types or magic damage to even hurt bosses past a certain veng level.
- You can't even be carried on some of the higher level bosses. There's some people know who still can't beat Kalunga V25 with 2 KIs (because they lack job depth and strength), even WITH primes and gear creep.
- *They give you three chances to clear one boss, with the caveat that you can't repeat jobs in subsequent attempts. Most players only have really good A and B jobs. PUGs struggle heavily with 2 KI fights because their secondary jobs are weaker comparatively. I've never seen a PUG 3-KI fight, because organizing that many people to have non-conflicting top notch jobs x18 is almost impossible. This forces people to level up all of their relevant jobs to even have a chance. If you refused, you simply could not clear (unless you "cheesed" out and bought the clear, your loss)
- *You could challenge yourself as a group by attempting to fight 3 bosses in one go. Not "cheese", but really trying to fight and clear. 99% of players
NEVER attempted this not a single time. Amplifier cheese ruined people's desire to even attempt the challenge, but I'm certain the devs wanted players to challenge themselves. I was proud of my then-static that successfully did 3 V15s in one visit using all of our ABC jobs. It was an incredible test. Go back and read the first few stabs at V15s in the Odyssey thread and look how engaging all of the community was with sharing information.
You can't convince me that Gaol didn't have depth. Just because most players skipped past the majority of the event years later doesn't diminish the quality of the content (it did come out with a ton of bugs initially, but that's not a depth issue).
Compare all of this with Limbus, where you literally put 5 alts on follow, pull trash, sleep them, spam the same ws 15 times in a row, click a porter, and repeat 20+ times. The comparison isn't even close.
but people clear V25 and then never go for the kill again because of how *** it is.
Hard disagree. Gaol clearing on V25 was F-R-U-S-T-R-A-T-I-N-G for sure, but not ***. The issue was the fights were so hard at first, it made people upset because they were basically locked out of clears until all the good players figured it out for them. Personally, I formed my own group and lost tons of sleep over Gaol fights (ESPECIALLY V25 AREBATI FK THIS GUY FOR LIFE, but most fun I have had in a long time). The frustration with losing so many times led me to never want to form a static for these fights ever again, it was so frustrating. But that frustration wasn't because the content sucks, I sucked. We just didn't win. Until we did. Then it felt glorious. The content MADE me want to get better, more MLs, improve my timing and learn how to better anticipate moves, or even think of new strategies to deal with the challenges we couldn't overcome. Every single ounce of frustration was validated the moment we won a single V25. It was just a matter of were you willing to keep going after dozens of failures.
And I happily go back and help people with these fights, even to this day on fights where I am capped RP and get nothing from it. But I guess I'm in the minority of people who thought those fights were (except Bumba V25, absolute incredible horseshit, but maybe we stopped trying to figure it out) very challenging and entertaining.
