Asura Inflation - What's Going On?

I notice you didn't comment on my actual argument at all.

Do you feel that people who are currently uninterested in farming R20 or R25 augments would be more interested in farming R30 augments to the point that it makes the game last longer? Easier versions of the content are right there, with progressive rewards to match, and nobody is doing them.

Sounds to me like people who believe themselves unable to clear V25 are personally offended at the thought of farming anything less, even though [nearly] everyone who cleared V25 early on also farmed their R20s on V15 and R25s on V20.

If the entry fee scaled the V, more would

Of course they want v25 if the same price to enter v15 but more reward. As long as the cost is the same it's never going to make sense to climb v5 v10 v15 v20 when v25 exists at the same price even when they're incapable of winning

Because there is no argument, or rather it boils down a statement that because the first group of people had to crawl through broken glass, that everyone should also have to crawl through broken glass. It's gatekeeping, which is nonsensical in fictional environments.


No, in fact when I joked within a LS that next update would be V30, 9/10 people were vehemently against the it, while a single person was "yes". Odyssea Gaol was pain at higher vengeance levels, and the avoidance of pain is the strongest motivating factor for human behavior.


And this is a veiled personal attack. It boils down to "your argument is invalid because you just want to selfishly get my trophy".

Me and my team have long since got our V25 clears, we're solidly in the second group. We have the skills but our careers / families / etc.. mean we have limited time per week that we must carefully manage. We're now in the Sortie Aminon grind fest.

Except, everyone else doesn't have to do the same. They can use Sortie gear and MLs to get their V15/V20 clears without farming much augmented gear or refining the strategies to the level the first groups had to. They can augment their gear up to R25 with half the segments everyone else did. They can read guides of exactly how to do it.

There are numerous factors making the content easier without direct nerf, not least of which is the direct design around amplifier cheeese.

It's almost like your not even bothering to read and just gatekeeping as hard as possible.

so 'bout that inflation.... ;)

I read everything you said, it didn't convey anything besides that you think the natural weakening of the content isn't sufficient. The game doesn't have an insane skill ceiling, all you need to be capable of clearing V25 is a 90+ IQ and the prerequisite gear/job. They've made the prerequisite gear massively easier by design(reduced required segments by over half).

I don't see why everyone needs to be able to clear V25 without putting the work in, because as people so frequently state, there isn't a ton of endgame content. If people aren't ready for V25, but want more endgame than sortie, they can work through lower tiers to improve their skill and abilities.

Once you clear all of V25, there's nothing left. That's when you quit, unless you absolutely love grinding Sortie. Leaving that goal lofty, while still having the easier versions accessible, seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Asura inflation is out of control because people who think they're good enough for V25s can't kill them, so they buy 1B gil and use it to merc the clears and RP, buy weapons/armor off AH, and buy MLs, thinking it will make up for their lack of skill

More currency circling around combined with a bump in player growth.

Ahh found a picture that explains Thorny's entire line of reasoning.

I really don't get your argument here, usually you're more coherent than this. It's perfectly reasonable to disagree, but this is immature.

More like 2-3 if you dont mind being 1 of the important jobs. Tank+brd and/or whm is the roles you dont want to pug if you can help it, dds/cors now are dime a dozen and you can get them with 5 minutes of shouting and will largely suffice for all but highest level stuff.

You ignored the entire thing and went to "you noob", you don't want to understand or engage. Just pure gatekeeping that because you crawled through broken glass, everyone should have to crawl through broken glass.

It's a very common misconception amongst not only gamers but humans in general. "I worked X to get Y, nobody should get to that same X without also working Y". We view others who acquire the same reward with less "work" as cheapening or devaluing our own achievements. Its fundamentally an invalid line of thinking because it presupposes that all experiences must be the same.

In another post I broken down the four fundamental categories of players for the context of content achievement. Your gatekeeping stance only applies to the top two while purposefully excluding the bottom two. The bottom two will never be able to climb that mountain, the developers excluded them on purpose because otherwise the first two would of beat it near instantly. Those bottom two combined represent over half the gaming population, excluding half your paying customers is a death sentence for any business.

Your thought is to force the bottom two groups to "level up" and become members of the top two groups. After all since you did it, they must obviously be forced to do it too. This is flawed thinking, they will never become part of the top two groups, ever. Instead they would just lose interest and stop paying. This is why MMO developers have found that reducing contents difficulty sometime after it's release is a winning strategy. Upon initial release it's at it's more exclusive level. The first group beats it, later the second group clears it, then right as your introducing a "new thing" you also reducing the "old thing" sufficient that the bottom groups can start to clear it. This cycle is maintained indefinitely until the servers are shut down.

I read your argument, repeating it a dozen times doesn't change it. You objectively do not need to put in the same amount of time or play at the same standard to get R25 augments now as you did when V20 launched, by a huge margin.

My argument is that because the content is self-scaling, everyone has the option of clearing V15 or V20 and enjoying that content. Unless the person is dead set on being best despite not having the intelligence/time to be the best, the content is perfectly accessible.

Making it possible to clear V25 without previously farming R25 augments would reduce the hours of potential content by a substantial amount, and this is not a game that is constantly releasing new content. If there was new content of greater difficulty, I would fully support nerfing V25 as soon as that new content came out. Sortie is not of greater difficulty than V25.

Sortie and farming Prime Weapons is the "new thing" now. Odyseea Gaol has been out a few years now, it's no longer "new" and it should of been reduced sometime late last year as all the groups that can clear it have cleared it. Now it's just an artificial barrier to participation (what, you don't have V25 gear, no you can't join us noob).


I said nothing about RP farming, I said clears. RP farming means nothing if you don't have the clear, and you know that. The bottom ~50% of the player base still doesn't have their V25 clears yet, that is who you are telling to go kick rocks.

The problem with this theory is that it requires active development of new content and re-balancing of the old. FFXI has never followed this model and aside from gear creep basically nothing has been made easier. I guess they allowed alliances in Omen, I can't think of another relevant example in the history of the game.

Farming R25 gear was the greatest prereq to clearing V25 NMs, for those of us who did it when it was new. FFXI has always been about the gradual progress to increase your strength so you are ready for a fight. Making it easier to get geared for a fight, and increasing the maximum level of gear attainable prior to a fight, makes that fight easier.

While we're talking about nerfs, how much do you think a prime weapon is going to reduce the barrier to entry for V25..? Clearly we just disagree on how much they should cheapen the final challenging content this game will ever have.

If anything, I think Sortie gives more reason to leave it as is. It's a lot more motivating to farm a Prime weapon with the eventual goal of using it to overcome an Odyssey boss that you were previously unable to, than it is to farm it just to sit in town showing how great you are.

Absolutely none.

What makes V25 clears so bad is the mechanical systems involved. No SJ, 15min time limit (really 12), insane boss HP regen, and adds that can't be killed screwing with players.

The first three T3's are about survivability not damage, as long as nobody dies they can be beaten with several minutes to spare. The second three T3's are DPS races with really stupid limits put in place to screw with players.

Then Bumba is just a giant roll of dice, you can do everything perfectly right and still lose most of the time cause RNGJesus hates you.

15 minute time limit.. if only there were something that could reduce the impact that had. Maybe, a weapon that does considerably more damage and has better skillchain opportunites. Hm. Wonder what we could do to make DPS races easier..

SC's mean nothing when they have -100% resistance to magic. Damage is not the problem on V25, it's the "screw you" mechanics.

For tree it's the TP drain, WAR can't use Prime Axe and COR / BRD are using Naegling for slashing so neither Prime Dagger / Gun make any difference. Tiger is a fight against hate, Sarv just has the RNG pull hate faster and wipe everyone. Bird is the most "fair" and takes -100% against physical, your just making SC's with SCH,GEO,BRD,COR so the BLM can burst.

Bumba is just a game of TP denial combined with getting perfect luck.

You aren't going to convince me that doing more damage with no tradeoff doesn't make things easier. If you do more damage, you can drop an offensive buff for a defensive buff, and that gives free survivability.

We obviously aren't going to agree here, there's no point in repeating yourself until the end of time. I believe that the gradual strength creep and easier RP farming is much weakening as V25 needs, because there is nothing else in the game and there's no need to make V25 accessible to every player.

You disagree, and that's fine. But, you're not using objective criteria to back it up. You're using vague speculation that should be applied to games that have ongoing content development.

3 things that didn't exist at the time of v20 release that have drastically changed the difficulties of at least that level of clear without changing the content one bit:

1. ML30+ is now extremely common even among those who are ML'ing honestly. That's +30 to all stats and skill levels, certainly not something we can ignore.

2. Those seeking those v20 wins for the first time are more often than not paired up with those who already have them and some v25 wins mixed in- along with higher augmented gear that comes with it. It can equally be said that Empy+3 gear is now almost just assumed among those legitimately attempting those higher vengeances. These are exceedingly big improvements in survivability in regular sets that keep DPS high.

3. People attempting those wins have a plethora of information and strategies available to them pre-made rather than all the attempts made by earlier groups "wasting" segments just to figure ***out. They get to skip that stage completely and just work on perfecting the execution of proven strats.

All these happen naturally without any actual adjustment to the content itself, yet greatly lower the bar. I do completely agree that over time, adjustments should be made to content to keep newer players engaged and progressing instead of bailing on the game, but not all those adjustments have to be directly changing the content. Sometimes WE just get better/stronger and that changes things more than anything SE could do to the mobs themselves.

Its not always gatekeeping or "back in my day" talk- sometimes its just preserving a level of difficulty that keeps that replay value present without having to add extra rewards. Which brings me back to the concept of sometimes the reward is just knowing you helped a friend get a clear they struggled with and if that isn't enough for some....perhaps the issue isn't the content.

There is no "more damage" to be done, that is my point. Kalunga / Ngai / Bee can already be killed in ~7min with defensive buffs, and the prime weapons are not dealing more damage then what is already being used. As I highlighted above the second three are mechanical fights where the mechanics themselves act as damage limiters.


I'm the only one using objective measures. Your entire argument boils down to exclusive gatekeeping.

"Elite players walked 10 miles barefoot through snow uphill in both directions to get that win, everyone should have to do this too"

It's an argument of exclusivity, you want the achievement to be hard and exclusive. If everyone walked around with a V25 bumba clear, you would feel bad. This mentality is toxic and kills games, which is why I'm strongest against it.

Yes V20 is definitely easier to do, V20 Bumba is still a dice roll as you have to kill him in 60~90s before he just blows the entire party up. The V25's are generally twice as hard as the V20's and were released with ML's / etc.. in mind. Nothing SE has since has lowered their difficulty in any meaningful way.

Thorny's entire line of reasoning is definitely exclusivity / "back in my day" talk. Having seen this in multiple MMO's, it's quite easy to spot by answering a simple question. Are they advocating for ways in which more people acquire the objective? If the answer is "no" then it's exclusivity / gatekeeping.

You know instead of just putting "" around something, you can quote people's actual words, right? I'd be interested to see you quoting ANYONE saying this, instead of just applying that bias to their actual words.

Yes, I see having a few hard fights remaining in the game as a positive thing. It's nothing about my personal 'achievements', it's because having something to strive for gives players a reason to gear new jobs or slog through a 6 month prime farm. When there's nothing left to strive for, you lose interest in the game just as surely as when things are out of your reach.

75 era had AV then PW. 99 era had arch dynamis bosses and legion. Early ilevel had delve. All of these things were eventually made easy, but new content replaced them to keep people busy. FFXI having content that only a small percentage of the playerbase can beat is hardly a new concept, and some of these things remained for years.

Throw in that the entirety of Odyssey isn't out of reach, people who can't beat V25 can still grind through V20. Most of the poor barefoot plebeians you're defending don't even care to get V20 wins as is, are you suggesting they should be able to beat V25 easier than current V20..? I don't get your angle, or how it benefits the game. If people are quitting because they can't beat everything in the game, that sounds like an ego/mindset issue on their part.

You even openly admit your idea is to restrict access to Odysea Gaol V25. That is absolutely exclusivity / gatekeeping.

And that is toxic to the long term life of any multiplayer game. It's good for new stuff to be that way, need something for the first two groups of players to get through. Once those groups have climbed the mountain, then it no longer serves a positive effect.

What you keep thinking is that somehow magically the bottom half of the player population is going to "level up" and climb that mountain. That is where your thought process is failing. That group will never do that, at best they might eventually get carried through by someone in the higher tier, most likely they'll just quit when they start being excluded from stuff. This is bad. You never want to exclude paying customers from content long term.

Or in other words, their monthly subscription is worth just as much as your monthly subscription.

You're stating opinions as fact and dropping memes as if that somehow backs up your point.

Yes, it is feasible that people will get bored and quit because they can't access V25.

It's also feasible that people will get bored and quit after clearing V25.

R30 Nyame is nowhere near commonplace enough that shouts are excluding people for not having it. Even on Asura, very few have it. On other servers, it's typically 0-2 groups with a clear. Nobody is being held out of content besides V25 because of this.

There is a balance to be struck between content being too easy and content being too difficult, and we have different opinions on where that balance is to be struck. You have not provided any objective information to back up your opinion.