Dev Tracker - Discussion

I thought Pheonix had an explosion of players and growth?

And Sure, I'll concede starting from scratch isnt easy... but it's not supposed to be easy. And the people that are established and have connections did so over long periods of time. I'm simply saying put your best foot forward and work with people if you want to build something

Yeah, it got locked down, and the population is dropping fast. Most of the players are very new players who are taking the game very, very slowly. People who get a 99 job then go to level another job and do not end up with a geared job. They are going through the stories very slowly over weeks/months and are unlikely to ever even reach the point of doing end game content in a consistent group. I'm in multiple linkshells to help people when I can because I'm a geared person who is knowledgeable about the game, but these people are not ready to jump into Sortie, Odyssey, etc. People end up quitting before they get anywhere in end game because they had their fill, and move on. I helped a newbie white mage as their teacher for gear, how to play, etc, and he quit the game before he got into actual end game content healing. So many people just ask to be carried through content, and get upset if you tell them they need to purchase their spells, cap their skills, and fix up their gear.

When you do find people that are 99 and have been playing for a bit, you find people who do not swap gear and are very against doing it, people who play their own way and ignore any other suggestions, people who are very very slow and afk constantly so they are not suited to doing end game content, and so on, and so on.

There are end game people and groups, and I have been doing some Sortie runs (4 boss, 6 boss, even 8 boss), but only as a sub. I still have not touched Odyssey bosses outside of a single v0 clear on Bumba/Mboze because there are no groups or people to do it with. I am actively searching and attempting to get into consistent groups, but it is quite difficult with no tools in-game to assist in finding people and all communication happens privately between people. Like I said, I've joined TEN different private discord communities around the game, but am still pushing to break through into some kind of consistent setup to running Odyssey/Sortie. Limbus is a crapshoot, nobody wants to do that.

What you have expressed is what my impression of Phoenix was. I still don’t understand why they locked the servers. The claim was ‘congestion’, but even on Bahamut I haven’t really seen it. The bigger issue was RMT spam, which is down a lot now. Like when ambuscade launched we used to have 45 min waits — I literally have never seen this on Bahamut despite SE’s claims of high congestion. Maybe it’s sortie they’re referring to? Not sure.

It's not queues and lines it's server pings

You got 8000 people injecting packets nonstop. DDoSing the server from within.

Even a couple vanabouts ago when half the objectives were ambu, the wait was like what 5-10 minutes? It was a while but sure no 45 minutes.

Now the economy is super funky being locked down.

It did... but a lot has dropped off I feel. At the height of the surge, that was right around when XIV's final tier of the XI-crossover alliance raid had come out. Quite a lot of folk started pouring in since Asura/Bahamut/Odin were locked. Assist chat was swarming with a lot of newbies and returning players, returnee/social LSs were all the rage again. But a lot of that surge has tapered off.

Yeah we are overall still higher than we were in the past, but quite a lot of those fresh newcomers and returnees didnt seem to stick around. I think a combination of the hype of the XIV-XI alliance raid started wearing off, and of course naturally I think a fair amount hit 99 and realized there was quite a lot more than they could chew off, or hit that point where they felt they didnt know how to progress further.

I moreso noticed a lot of people that transferred to Phoenix shortly before it closed to get in on the activity/surge that have stuck around though. A lot more multiboxxers/6boxxers running around. More people with merc/carry outlooks and less pleasant attitudes. I've also noticed it has rubbed off onto some of the genuine newcomers/returnees in some social circles I've been around, which bums me out but it is what it is I suppose.

@Crevox
I agree it's hard to form core groups and statics in current day; a lot of people playing are old fogeys like me who play with their main circle they met years ago, and schedules+availabilities are hard to align of course. But I encourage folks to keep trying to initiate and form groups for stuff despite how low the odds are or how many times it fizzles out. I do notice there are a lot of people who seem willing to or want to do stuff but dont want to lead and organize (or are scared to). It's understandable; sucks to be the ringleader and trying to juggle times, managing everyones roles, helping people learn stuff if needed... or just because you dont feel you can lead because you might not be an "expert" at something.

Just gotta keep trying to til you can find folks who are in similar boats, are willing to learn, willing to fail (this one is really important! Lot of grown adults out there that I see still throwing tantrums and hissyfits over bad runs which can happen to anyone...). I agree it would be nicer if they implemented some sort of content seeking/grouping functionality to make it easier for people in game to connect and find people with similar situations & schedules instead of the current "keep LS hopping and joining tons of discords".

And if you /yell occasionally to try and advertise building a static for x times/days etc. and anyone gives you crap, just blacklist them. Those people aren't worth your time and 99% chance unbearable to play with anyway.

I'm one of the people that transferred to Phoenix... I logged in for the anniversary just to check things out and ended up playing a bit more. I wanted a fresh start and was a bit exhausted of the things on Asura, and saw the Phoenix server was closing... heard about all the new players and wanted to help out and do things together so I made the jump.

The assist channel is completely silent now... there's still some newer players in my linkshells but much less. I'm still helping players daily with the knowledge and power I have but many stopped logging in. I realize it's a bit counterintuitive to leave Asura to jump to a server with new players and complain about having a hard time getting into end-game content groups, but I still want to do those things. Asura is the peak of the things I don't like about this game (bots, extreme multiboxers, blatant cheating, extreme elitism, etc) so I wanted to move away from it. That still exists here on Phoenix, but it has been lessened to a degree (unfortunately, not as much as I was hoping).


For some reason this has always been the case with FF11 compared to other games... even when my friends played they acted similarly. People don't want to try things because they are very afraid to fail, and they take it poorly when they do. The penalty for death in this game isn't what it used to be and is less than other games, so I'm not entirely sure where it still stems from.