Death Of Sortie? Gone To Soon (A Brief Rant)

I know it's a merc server, but the grind to get that Pink glow was real. The grind for +2 earrings was real. Then it just all stopped. The statics, the PUGs...all of it. A bunch of necro-bump posts of statics looking for members.

SE needs to do something about content grind fatigue (CGF). They say they want to combat RMTs, but all I see are merc shouts (I do appreciate y'all, by the way). And now, if I want to do content alone, I can't even create new accounts on the server.

TIBS

i am grep.

I said this a few days ago


And quite a few accounts are being banned more frequently. Combination of bad content + boring grinds + mains getting clipped = less interest in game as a whole.

The SE unfettered ban hammer is out of hand. BUT, I believe they are intentionally trying to kill the game without actually saying, "Sorry all, shutting the servers down."

The disparity between veteran players and new or old players who have not maxed out gear in old content is vast, while playtime is limited for most players.

I wish SE would come up with a reward system for combining the needs of these 2 groups. That alone would encourage content participation & boost other players in to current high end content.

Also, Limbus is awful content. 100% pure grind.

People have literally been saying this since CoP, and there were even a few people saying it prior to CoP. It was always false, and will always be a bad read of the circumstance. The budget for this game is quite small, and they're still developing new content. SE would have no motivation to axe FFXI unless they planned to move people from this project internally and reassign them elsewhere, AND they were unable to hire replacements for a reasonable cost. Additionally, they would not kill the game by telling low-salary employees to hand out bans more liberally. There are 0 companies of any significant size that make project or department-level decisions this way.

Today's grind with the largest payout (Prime weapons) is arguably equivalent to the grind involved in leveling a job to 75 in the early days, and arguably less frustrating. It's laughably less grindy than building a Relic in the early days (like not even in the same universe). The grinding in this game is less intense than ever.

Two things I agree with you about: 1) The gulf between established players and new players is huge, with little-to-no incentive for established players to assist new players with anything at all. 2) The grind:reward ratio for Limbus is utterly abysmal. Like... absurdly amaturish levels of unbalanced (I think I may be the only person on my server consistently killing NMs multiple times a week, so my perspective may be skewed).

They banned like 2% of all the cheaters, probably at least half of which got warnings (3 day suspensions) instead of bans, meanwhile thousands of other cheaters are still running rampant.

Yup, sure is "unfettered" and "out of hand".

The SE ban hammer is using kiddie gloves and pulling punches. Which is good, because if it really was unfettered and out of hand, probably 90% of the population, including most of the veteran players, would be gone.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not pleased that people are banned and I don't think it should be 100% strictly enforced (at this point). Nearly every time the ban waves come through at least a couple of my friends get hit, but let's call it like it is, not use BS hyperbole.

Of course, we do differ on solutions. Most people think the solution is to stop banning people and let people play however they want. I respectfully disagree.

Sortie weapons are not worth it for "me" until they lower it to reasonable time. The game has more to offer, than chasing pink aura weapons for months.

Sortie sucks
But I'm not gonna shed a tear for morons who get their ***banned because they set their fleehack to 800 and POS all across the maps.

The gap between party and solo point rewards is very large and the same points are used for Empy +3 and Primes. The good +2 earring drop rates are so low that even party players view it as nice when it happens but not as a motivation to do more sortie, the same could already be said about +1 from a solo players perspective.

SE has a habit to introducing new content extremely grindy (not uncommon in MMOs). Unfortunately they then miss the opportunity to tweak the content for solo play for like 5++ years once the main wave of "elites" and party players finished the main grind.
The first wave of players mostly lose interest in the content long before the main reward of the content comes in reach of solo play so the content effectively becomes low interest for the entire population even though there would still be plenty of incentive to grind it for at least half of the player base.

You could still buy existing asura accounts but I suppose the markup breaks the buisness model?

I have negative feelings on how they handled the 100k>100m unlock, but other than that I still think Sortie is a content way better than I personally gave SE credit for during the window of time it was released.

I think the only objectively problematic thing that wasn't addressed, from a game design point of view, is Prime sharing the same currency as AF3 upgrades and the fact there is no Earring exchange program.
Allowing an alternative path to upgrade AF3 (multiple numbers of Sapphires and Starstones for instance, giving them a purpose since the game keeps on spouting them at you) and allowing a certain number of earrings to be exchanged would be more than enough.

I mean, these things probably weren't necessary at launch, but we're past 2 years since Sortie release, the fact they're not even remotely thinking about it, it's a shame.


Other than that, some secondary (but still important) things about which they failed to value their importance over a long period of time, is how the event is structured.
1hr event with a daily lockout, unable to store multiple KIs and like more than 60% of that time is spent walking around.
Now everything becomes tedious and repetitive if you do it everyday for a long period of time, everything, no exceptions.
But this is even worse if so much of your time is spent walking around the same exact path.
The fact they made Bitzer and NMs random in the basement was to give a little amount of variability in the runs, which is absolutely good in theory, but given how the possible spawn areas are so huge in a couple of basements, I feel that adds more tediousness rather than fighting against repetitiveness.

These are just minor factors, but they contributed in making this event feel tiresome in a stronger and faster way than it otherwise could've been.

If I may add something else, I still believe the overall amount of Galli required for Stage 5 primes is a bit too much. It's like what, 8,6m galli? Given how you have 6 months gating from psyches (and, strangely enough, I'm fine with that) I think they could've let the Galli requirements be a bit lower honestly.



Anyway, when all is said and done, I see a plethora of different approaches they could take into revamping Sortie, at least for a little while longer, but will they every do any of it? (spoiler: no). At least the major part (alternative routes for AF3 upgrades and Earrings exchange) is long due and wouldn't be a big deal from a Dev-time-effort.

I agree with nearly everything Sechs said.

I will say i think the 100k -> 100m threshold change was/is WAY overblown by the community. The fact that they didn't let us pre-load a prime weapon before they were released should hardly be surprising or controversial. They could've just introduced a whole new currency for weapons, but that would add more complexity which I don't think is warranted. A new currency would also, similarly, put you at 0% prime weapon progress on day 1.

I also don't think the JSE sharing currency with primes is as big of a deal as it's made out to be. If you're making 8k muffins a run, you're not making a prime in the first place, flat out. If you're making 55k (8 boss) or 80k (9 boss) a run, the cost of a few pieces of JSE is totally negligible. I just...don't see who's affected by this. Whenever it's brought up, people always bring up fringe cases like "if you wanted to make all 16 primes and do 110/110 empy+3" but like...I'm sorry, if you're insane enough to do that, that's on you, not on SE. That SHOULD be a grind. You're trying to get a platinum trophy on THE grindy MMO.

And if that is your goal, the JSE will make up ~6% of the muffins spent, barely more than a single prime weapon. The JSE is incredibly insignificant in the grand scheme (and way more impactful)

Purple hallways are boring, the stone ratios are all way off (other than meso), but the content is good. Some of the best they've made in a long time.

A big side effect of servers getting locked is that people who get banned are not able to re-create an account right away. This severely increases the effect of a ban on the server's population and economy.

(Re-buying can get expensive fast, not to mention supplies will not last forever)

It's not necessarily a bad thing, provided they handle it well in the long run. We'll see.

EDIT: also seconding the entirety of Sechs' and Maletaru's last posts.

Odyssey is a much grindier system than Sortie, and the amount of people that just don't bother with V25s probably outweighs the amount of people that don't do Sortie.

I am frankly surprised no one has mentioned how do-able it is to fully automate Sortie, by that I mean completely afk Sortie farming. You literally do the same thing every time, which a bot can do just as well.

The statics that keep doing it will do it for a while then most people get a prime or two and get tired of walking through the same damn pink hallways every day. Hence all the statics looking for 1-2 members.

But give those same people the option to afk farm points without them having to manually run through pink hallways..

Anyone who's getting banned is blatantly botting, using speed tools, or warping around Sortie. All you have to do is stop using the most egregious things and it becomes a non-issue. If something puts you at risk of a ban, it isn't worth it. You can't outfarm a periodic full reset, even without server lockdowns.

..I know, you need ML50 and won't even consider it. C'est la vie.

Strongly disagree. 3.2 days of segments and ~2.5 hours inside to cap a piece from 0. 60 pieces total. So, 192 days of segments(96 hours) and 150 hours of mostly being afk in boss chambers to be fully and completely done with no value besides gil remaining in the event. You also get ~295m in the process.

246 hours of Sortie gets you 2 primes and your +3s for your favorite jobs. You could argue that 2 primes is enough, but you could also make a pretty good argument that you only need about 20/60 pieces in Odyssey too.

Timewise, they're not that different. I consider Odyssey less grindy, personally.

Edit: Changed numbers to be more accurate

You're ignoring how long it takes the average group to do a climb from V15-V20-V25 just to be able to RP those things.

And your numbers assume already having cleared V25 to be able to RP at that rate, which a group doing a climb can't do.

The average group gives up at a V20 full clear, or before clearing V25 T3s.

Losing a few times and giving up is trivial amounts of hours compared to the RP, though. Each fight is only 15 minutes and even a shitty segment run is at least 3 fights worth and a bonus million gil, making it worthwhile win or lose.

The average group isn't doing 9 boss Sortie, either.

8 boss is very viable for average or slightly above average groups. 5+Aminon also.

Matsui was utterly fanatical about XI, it was personal and a passion for him. I don't get that from Fujito at all, even from his first message upon taking over is was downbeat and talking more about his devs careers rather than what he wanted to do with the game and his community. I feel he agreed to carry things on because he felt responsibility to do so, rather than actually wanting to do something he was passionate about.

As such I think he is doing the bare minimum, and his plans for the future are unimpressive and designed to be souless and simplistic grind paths of 1-3 sets of gear.

When I saw that they seemingly have no intention to keep the variety of content and gear relevant that came before under Matsui, and just funnel everyone into rehashes of content chasing ever increasing +1's of AF, Relic and Emp I lost the will to log in and do anything at all.

The change to Malignance was the last straw, it offered no avenue to improve the gear to extend the numerous progression paths and effectively just ended Lillith as content. I unsubbed when I saw that, I still need some pieces of Malig on other characters but it just showed me where the game is going and I lost interest.

They should have added a way to upgrade that gear to +1 or something else to keep content relevant, that would show they want to retain more variety in advancement and things to do but they didn't. Even Ambuscade and Ody is effectively dead ended with no further upgrades unless you're just farming gil. If you're not going to add new things, keep the variety of old relevant as long as possible with ongoing upgrades to the gear to chase.

2 years from now is everyone who can stomach the long grinds only going to be wearing +6, +7, +8 af/relic/emp? and that alone, cause they refuse to upgrade or add anything else? That will decimate the casual audiences most of all with that crap.

I'm not logging in to +1, +2, +3, +4 af/relic/emp over 10 jobs with minimal upgrades each time by grinding obnoxious and long winded content, I'm out if that's all they can offer for my hundreds of bucks a month.

The big elephant in the room for Odyssey is Segments.
That thing was never a thoroughfully well planned thing from a long run game design pov if you ask me.
It surely doesn't concern people like us. I mean I have over 600k Segments waiting for the right moments to be spent. Friend of mine has over 1,5m segments.

Granted that over the last few months Seg runs on Asura have become way less common than it used to be (but maybe it's just a temporary coincidence) that's the big problem.
A returning player, a new player, or a player who decides to step up their games with all good intentions and maybe even good means to achieve their goals, will be seriously stuck.

It's not an insourmountable obstacle, but starting from 0 segs with a rate of 10k per run (on average with a PUG, and I'm being generous) per day... that's a very very big obstacle. Again not insurmountable but it's clearly a problem and it's a hard one for SE to solve, imho, thanks to how badly Odyssey and its reliance on Segments was planned from the beginning.

And I'm not criticizing Odyssey. I have my own problems with the content which I carefully listed multiple times, but overall the pros of the content largely outweights its problems, imho.
This part specifically though, the reliance on segments, is a very big problem for anybody who hasn't tackled the content so far and wants to start to.

I am holding out hope that Sortie gets a slight increase/bump in terms of crafting materials or new recipes, but I won't hold my breath. I would even settle for anything that reduces the time we need to spend in Sortie, theoretically.

If we could do something to eliminate walking, like warp directly to boss rooms with Bitzers, Sortie could be a 30-minute event, instead of an hour. Of course, put some time-gate behind it, like "must own all +3 empy gear for a given job" or even "own a stage 4/5 weapon", perhaps?

Why? ...I have no idea. Because SE, that's why. :/

Also, if you've been playing this game more than a few years, and don't know how to pace yourself in order to prevent burn out, then that's a YOU problem.

Of course, if you do 9-boss 7 days/week and burn yourself out trying to find people, what do you expect to happen?

Go touch grass ...in your Mog Garden.

Time gates make sortie, and segs difficult because everyone wants to max. It also creates statics, which start out great, and end with most members low grade wishing death on atleast two other members. (*** I mean you.)

the redistribution of population had many implications that will continue to be problems for months/years to come. entire server stock of many items was entirely bought out and moved to bahamut, for example. bahamut got turned into asura 2.0 and while life goes on, they inadvertently changed an entire community culture overnight. not very well thought out, at all.

That's what I thought of for the longest time.
Even just considering upstairs, the walk from D boss to C, to B to A and then back to start is like what, ~15 mins?
Putting 4 new teleports, one in each upstairs boss room, connected among them and with the 5 basic warps, would allow you to save ~15 mins of time.

That would mean, what? Groups who already do 9 bosses (80k galli) could get even more galli and skip more runs per week to do other stuff, or simply exit 15 mins earlier.
Other groups on the other hand would have a lot of pros.
If we consider the groups of people who tackle Sortie on a regular base, I esteem no more than 5% of them are able to do 9 bosses. Around 40% of them are able to do 8bosses, the remaining 55% does less.
For that 50% those 15 mins of saved time would give lots of space to do 9 bosses themselves, and for the others it would allow them to step up to 6, 7 or even 8 bosses even with the intrinsic limitations of their respective groups.

Would be a nice change, wouldn't mean a lot given the 6 months gating coming from psyches, but it would be healthy for the content, at least for 1 year or something.

Seriously doubt they'd even remotely do anything like that though.

Most solo players start out clearing main level NMs but once they upgraded to empy +2 they'll eventually switch to soloing basement dhartok. It's no where near party point level but there is room for improvement even when soloing.


Now let's pretend for a moment SE made 2 different currencies, one for empy upgrades and one for primes, both rewarded at the same rate.
By the time I'd have 5/5ed my first set of empy +3 I'd have saved 400k points into my first prime, almost at halfway point to stage 3.

Since odyssey it's not uncommon to have 3 jobs reasonably geared so chances are you'd want to +3 at least some pieces of the jobs you care about, too. Suddenly a stage 3 prime seems to be within reach of a solo player!

In that scenario I'm pretty sure I would have continued solo at least till stage 3 prime. With the current system I've 5/5ed my main and maybe 1/5 or 2/5 the crucial pieces of the other 2 jobs I care about and call it a day.


The worst part is the opportunity of this double incentive, empy +3 and prime progress at the same time, is gone now.

Shared currency still is annoying. A second Emp+2/3 path would make sense.

The earring system is terrible. My last +2 was Aug. 29th and we 9 boss at least 5 times a week.

But I think the server lockdown is what caused the biggest decline on Asura. The AH has screeched to a halt and group shouts have become much more rare.

This bit is tricky though, because the only reason Asura had such a lively AH was all the people buying and transferring to their own servers. That made the AHs on those servers that much slower, so it wasn't very good for the game on the whole.

It is actually insane how *** the games economy as a whole is due to this stupidity

Not surprising at all. Literally said it would happen. It's still wild to see happen. That they would just fist everyone with no regard for the obvious consequences of cutting a server off.

Worse yet, small servers had/have RMT or real players that transfer to the server just to buy out the AH from REMA currency at a lower price then transfer back to Asura to sell it at a higher price.

This is a negative for the small server players who now don't have any REMA currency to buy, and also pushes up their price when it comes back in stock.

It is also a negative for Asura players farming currency to sell as the AH now has a sudden influx of stock that was not farmed on Asura, pushing down prices and making real players less gil.

The simple answer is stopping server transfers for real money and only allowing a transfer once per 6-12 months per character, or even just once per character. If you move you've moved, can't move anymore. But SE won't do that cause $$.

Locking Asura won't fix this, will just move to Bahamut then Odin then the next.