Dev Tracker - Discussion

There are dozens of posts on this site claiming that aura RNG is the difference between winning and losing.

The idea behind 25 Vengeance levels is so that players of all different gear and skill levels can clear up to a certain point. Unfortunately in reality players will only clear up to: V25 for the hardcore, V20 for the weekend warriors, V15 for the non-aspirational, or V1/V0 for the merc buyers or full carried. It's a generous system in theory but as usual the community is the one who bungles it.

“Segments are a limiting factor, no one wants to waste 154k segments unlocking V15 fights, just let us go right there, its not like people are getting stronger”.


By my math, with access to V15 fights only:
Amp each fight: 4500 segs gets 1021 RP with amp, assuming inability to kill (if they could kill, they wouldnt be doing V15) but getting to ~39% each time, costing 27k segments to get one piece of gear to R15
I was gonna calculate charging an amp, but that got too complex with variables: use amp 3 times on same nm then push for a kill with it charged or do 3 diff nms to charge amp then blow it on target. Either way, the charged amp is only worth 2352, im certain its less cost effective in segments/RP no matter how you cut it.

They can always try to push dealan up to V25 and charge on that. You can vertically progress up Atone1. But that also wastes 50 minutes just on the charge lol. Push to 94, afk. Push to 89, afk. Push to 79, afk. Then another 5-10 min fighting the target NM at whatever tier. More importantly: if you cant kill Dealan V20 to unlock V25, you have no business trying a V15 Atone3/Bumba.


Doing the climb organically may draw out weaknesses in the group or their gear. If theyre clearing V5 with less than 90 on the clock, they arent beating V10.

Of course 2hrs and auras are a meaningful difference, what are we even talking about.

The discussion started with "people don't want to bother climbing up V0/1-V5-V10 to do V15 or V20 so let's abolish V5-V10 to make it easy".

If people don't want to climb, just don't do V15 or V20. I don't see the problem.

You get R15 by clearing anything V1-V14. So do any of those up to the level you can, and be happy with it.

Clear a T1 at the highest V you can for RP charge purposes, cap your R15s, and there's no content you can't do with that.

These people moved the goalposts so much, i dont even remember where the goal lines were.


Aura only affects V25 difficulty, didnt you know that?!?

I think the theory is that players would get the base gear from v0 then gear themselves with the Odyssey gear, clearing v5, v10, v15, etc along the way and RPing their gear up along the way, then using it to assist with the clears. I'm not sure you learn much between those first 3 ranks. It doesn't really work that way in practice but I expect that was SE's intent. Not sure if that worked at release either, but it is probably further diluted with gearing changes since then.

The ability to jump past this with one person that has access is unusually generous by their standards. That's the sort of thing that I'd expect them to add years down the line, not be in place for as long as it has been. Have they ever directly addressed this in an interview or publicly? Part of me wonders if it was a bug they just left.

Either way, I don't see them adjusting it, even if I think it's silly. The v5/v10 climb seems kinda dated, but in their mind, they probably see the current situation as balanced and/or think people are still following the original design. I've always thought it might be interesting to introduce some QOL changes via items you could buy with either RP or segments to tweak the fights, like adding subjobs or resetting JAs in the lobby, but I'd be shocked if they make any material changes to Odyssey ever.

honestly I have no idea why they even put 25 in, rather than 0-5 and just let you do five augment ranks per Vengeance etc

With a charged amp, it makes more sense to do, say, a V19 or a V24 than a V20 or V25 for the charged run.

The charge bonus outweighs the bonus you get by jumping to V20 or V25, when you can do a V19 or V24 at a much lower difficulty and still get 99% of the RP.

Similarly for the lower tiers. V14 allows you to not have to deal with 1hrs and push to a lower percentage. V19 allows you to not have to deal with adds and push past 75%.

It kinda makes sense, in an overly complicated SE way.

If I was to level and gear another job to get into end game content (Odyssey/Sortie) would be the most wanted/in demand? Right now I have SMN/GEO/WHM geared, and am somewhat interested in...

RUN
BST
BLM
SCH
BRD (I want to play, but I really don't want to make 5 REMAs...)
BLU

If there's a different one that is more obvious/relevant that would be interesting to know too.

I mean, wouldn't you say that the aura's impact is significantly lower impact at lower difficulties? You can argue it if you like, but my contention is just that the difference between any difficulty isn't significant enough to outweigh the fact that there's no reward until v15, when you get r20 unlocked. If you want to count the unlock at v1, then sure. But that's not really justifying the existence of the v5/v10 hurdles.

That's why I think v15 should be available right off the bat, with no hurdles.

among those, RUN, SCH, would see some somewhat regular use, gearing SCH can also cover a fair bit of bases on gearing BLM so you could possibly take that up along the way with SCH

BRDs an obvious one, but you will need to do the rema marathon, at least emp/aeonic/relic, after doing so it's basically slotted into every setup there is though. The rest have some places they can be used but its not near as frequent imo.

PLDs worth taking up if you're gonna gear RUN so you can have the 2nd tank slot available for 2 KI runs/just needing to tank where RUN isnt as useful, DD wise WARs always going to have a slot and is somewhat easy to get going

COR - Used in almost everything
WAR - Can be used in Kalunga, Mboze, Arabati, Bumba, Sortie
PLD - Used in many of the higher vengeance level Odyssey clears and can be used in Sortie

Brd.

You need to take into account how many other people also have the job you are considering.

Savage Wars are a dime a dozen.

Everyone and their mother has a cor.

Good brds are like finding a leprechaun's lucky coin.

Because the requirement for entry for a savage WAR is exponentially easier and faster than a PREMA BRD. COR is a bit more laborious than WAR but still nowhere near BRD. I don't disagree BRD is infinitely more useful than WAR, but the levels of effort for each are miles apart.

The answer is always bard, because no one wants to be the bard, so bard is never the answer

SO i'm reading the pre-patch notes, and the thing that sticks out to me is how they mention, "We're also planning to make these notorious monsters the next group of foes for adventurers who have managed to gather the armor from Ambuscade." Are we thinking/predicting upgrades to ambu gear? Maybe a +3 version?. Odds are this means "Difficulty is set at those who have gotten Ambu gear"? Just my thoughts

You're assuming everyone that is still holding out at R0 is running around with Emp+3, AF/Relic+4 and a stage 4/5 Prime weapon.

Guarantee the majority of these people are running around in Ambu+2 / RSE+1 armor using a Kaja weapon.

I guess it might be time to toot my own horn... the only one I'm really not looking forward to is Daurdabla. It does not sound fun to camp a ton of Abyssea NMs, nor do I have the means to easily proc them, but I know it's not optional.

If anyone knows an easy resource to guide me on how to do it as painlessly as possible I would appreciate... otherwise... I will probably begin the process. Probably should've grabbed Miracle Cheer...

It's just a dogshit translation. it literally says this is the next step in gear progress after ambuscade plus two in japanese.

It is not ambu+3 nor new ambuscade nor anything else, it is just what you should do after you have ambu +2 instead of trying to grind into odyssey.

DI/Sparks/PK > Ambu+2 > New nms/RSE+1 > Odyssey R0/Malig/AF+4/Relic+4 > Emp+3 > Odyssey R30/LimbusR30

But v0-v14 can still exist. I just think that if you CAN handle v15, then you shouldn't have to do v5/v10 clears first. That's why I was arguing that v5/v10 fights aren't different enough from v15 to justify their existence, given that they're just checking a box and not giving any rewards.

If people aren't making groups to do the v5/v10/v15 ladder now, would v15 being immediately available somehow make the situation worse? I would think that being able to attempt v15 from the start would encourage more people to group up. But hey I could be wrong. I just think the content is old enough that we can make it more appealing for people.

There is no assurance a group can clear V15 just because its 2026. They're going to throw segs at the wall because they read on FFXIAH how "everyone should start with V15 access because its so easy"

Thats what I was thinking as well

Can always level war to be the proc job, souls are probably the worst part of it just cause of the constant zoning if you dont have any competition, or you can just take it slow and camp 1 zone. Can box farm apademak's popset as well as the ironclads popset iirc while you do souls as well, its just a boring slog if there's not people blocking you from popping stuff

If you're flying truly solo, might as well do thf for procs? Dont have to waste time leaving the area changing to thf to kill Apad.


You are killing Apad on thf, right????

Level Nin to 99. Nin/war gets all the procs.

If you have War already, just need ML5 to get all proc WS.

Daurd farming is kind a pain, but not too hard. Not really much to it, lookup what NM items you need and farm them. Once you have NM items + currency, just need to hand it in. No trials involved.

Thf is a must for TH8, yes.

Gjallarhorn was more annoying for me.

THF/WAR gets you all but GK/Katana procs plus all your TH, would much prefer this than TH4-ish on NIN, but whatever you have access to.

Getting low level weapons from login points and ambu replicas are a good way to get proc weapons.

Also remember procs can be reset by using the in-zone porter and coming back. The NM will go unclaimed, so don't do this if there are others around.

Yup, very possible. If we're talking about that level of player, then no, unlocking v15 from the start won't help them. But the current situation is also ***.

Those same people already aren't doing Odyssey because doing all the v5/v10 clears takes a lot of time and segments. The people with ambuscade gear are the ones that can't efficiently farm segments, and every additional moglophone II they have to spend to get to the next atonement is significant. Not only that, clearing a v5 doesn't make your gear better at all. Neither does clearing a v10.

I'd rather see v15 be available immediately to help the players who are ignoring Odyssey because of the huge gap between unlocking the gear and getting meaningful augments for the gear (without being carried). I also think they should give out free (or nearly free) Moglophone II as well.

Wrong

You get access to R15



The majority of the players who are still <V15 fall under this category, guaranteed.

It really is. I read the quoted line from Jordymus at least 3 times and knew from past history there was no way in hell it would be ambu+3, so it had to just be their way of saying "do these next". Always such a weird way of saying the simplest thing.

Then they add this:


So they are clearly advertising to players what they should be doing and in what order, but now I am curious, because none of the unity armor that I can think of has any good defensive properties worth a damn (eh, the cure potency hands are alright). If they're smart, this gear should be tankier than Unity gear, otherwise it's a failure from the start. If it has even a little -DT per piece of armor (not sure if they're doing individual pieces, sets, or just random stuff), it should be stronger/better than Unity gear for a new player.

Assume they meant in terms of overall stats, which yeah, unity gear is around the same level as ambu+2, probably stronger when augmented, piece depending though defensively lacking but so is much of the "middle" gear i.e. stuff released prior to malig. Would think whatever this new gear is will follow the trend of RSE+1/the ACP bodies

Would honestly prefer them just mass upgrading the older gear to be up to par with current stuff, but that wouldn't be new enough i guess.