July 2026 Version Update

I welcome adding new gear to serve as stopgaps for new/returnees, but at least make them easier to get. The latest batch of bodies have been poorly implemented, but allowing them to be too easy would mean RMTs could pick them up and do things like Ambuscade faster.

In saying that, the devs literally gave away the JSE +1 pieces. You didn't even have to fight anything. You could just show up and pick the chest after everyone beat the NM. What constitutes handing something out and being a stupidly low drop rate is baffling.

It's like Omen bodies... I did Omen every week for 2 years straight and got everything except the Ashera Harness. Finally got it last night from AMAN Trove, all these years later.

I was excited to see the drop, but I also felt really bad it took this long. All the other Omen bodies dropped several times over for me in AMAN, but maybe once or twice ever from Omen itself... which is wrong.

It's pretty wild they are introducing stopgap gear, but won't go and tweak drops on content people have to do anyway. And as for Shinryu, they lowered the merit cost, but did they make the bodies any easier to get? Hell no. They want to keep the gambling machine enticing.

If they really cared about catch up gear, RSE+1 wouldn't be limited time

Honestly it should just be on the curio moogle.

RMTs worth a damn aren't worried about stopgap gear. They can roll mules ahead of time and go straight to R0 Odyssey gear. The time investment is negligible. So, I don't think the balancing is really about RMT getting gear as much as the degree of engagement for returners.

If a piece is both powerful and easy to get, it removes variety from player experiences by rushing everyone to that piece. The goal seems to be to provide an ecosystem where players can assemble working sets a variety of different ways, and they're making some progress toward that.

If the bodies are really 1-3% range on the difficulty a returner can expect to challenge, that's probably too low. Keep in mind that Malignance exists at ~2% already and it's extremely strong gear for all slots. Something like 5-10% for each body seems reasonable: you need a dedicated effort to farm it, but you don't need the level of gear other comparable equipment takes to do so.

RSE+1 should always be active. Hard disagree on it being on curio. Getting players to engage with a couple systems is better than just giving them handouts and the current system is very forgiving to those who are too far behind to contribute.

They even actually mentioned RSE+1 specifically as a catch-up and then... didn't say anything about making the event fulltime. Wild.

Has there ever been an RMT born that got all their characters banned at once? Like, they're not going to not have a single 99 to carry a fresh batch of new Ambuscaders to some Mummu to get Malignance to get... well, you know what I mean.

e: plus what Thorny said, if the accounts are old enough they go directly to R0 Odyssey and I'm sure the accounts are old enough because they buy keys for shouting accounts in bulk when they're on sale obviously

You don't even have to engage in the content. There's no difference between click the curio moogle and clicking a box after a mob you dont have to fight is dead.

It just makes it harder to do, cause who is doing ZM missions to get access to fake-kirin for RSE+1

ZM missions 5+ are like priority 20

It's the same with the Archduke gear. You get an NQ item from an HTBF, then have to go to random NPCs to buy random furnishing in order to get the real gear.

It's just time wasting is what it is. Engage in the content, aka run the hamster wheel to get the cheese. It is what it is, if you want the gear you have to do it.

unironically, Suppanomimi gets new people to do RoTZ because they hate having empty jewelry slots and it costs no gil

I absolutely agree with this. However, were it to be permanently active, I feel the NMs should be adjusted. As the campaign went on, fewer and fewer people were showing up to fight the NMs. A new player with starter 99 or 119 gear who is on a dead server is going to spend a lot of time whittling away solo at a mob that is meant to be fought by a dozen or more players. Even a very well geared character doesn't deal a significant amount of damage to these. So it needs to scale dynamically, perhaps similarly to Domain Invasion or Geas Fete.

I refuse to believe anyone actually thinks RMT is anywhere close to the most pressing issue facing this game in 2026

Even if you were to start over fresh as an RMT, you aren't going to grind stepping stone gear.

If you are playing the game for money, everything is a time/$ value proposition. Paying 3m for full nyame is going to beat out grinding gear for a month.

Any gear that is a stepping stone is good for FFXI at this point because the path that most people suggest if you go looking anywhere, is just to buy a v0 bumba clear. That is not a good look for new players.

What do you think is the most pressing issue facing this game in 2026.

6-botting. Fight me.

6-botting is a result. An answer to a problem.

...It feeds into a positive feedback loop but it's not the root.
(more people box, less pick ups, more quit, more box, less social, more quit, more box)

the fact that nobody wants to play it and the developers do not seem especially bothered by this

Case in point, I'm not having much fun so.. hard to justify keeping subs going.

Nobody wants to play. Evidence: I don't want to play.

In other breaking news: nobody likes seafood, everyone hates horror movies, and everyone loves to swim. Ask me about my case in point.

Point your attitude towards something else, not interested.

the real evidence is the amount of people who would rather bot everything they can than actually engage with the game

that's not wanting to play, that's wanting to have progress to fulfill an addiction

Hard disagree here. They're still engaging with the majority of the game's systems, like gear swapping, boss mechanics, quests and missions, all the gil and other currencies, etc. They're refusing to engage with the social aspects, sure, but that's a cultural issue not an indictment of the game itself.

To say the developers don't care is also incredibly off-base. You could say they suck at creating good content, sure. You could say they're out of touch with the community (i don't think so, but some people do) but saying they don't care is completely stupid.

People prefer to play tennis against tennis bots instead of with other players! Obviously nobody likes tennis!

I haven't seen so many recruiting for 5-7 times a week event, must have XYZ posts since the HNM days.

Is that healthy for the game?

You're all missing the point.

Problem is not that the game is languishing - of course you lot don't see a problem; there are still people playing Civ 2, there will always be diehards - it's that the developers don't care

This month's marquee addition is a retread of a fight from 18 YEARS AGO with terrible drop rates because they're afraid of people finishing it too quickly. Is that good

OK, so what should they be doing? Creating enough content to satisfy players every month? Advertise? Retool the entire game from the ground up?

Basically everything people suggest as ways SE should show they care about ffxi involve tens of millions of dollars of investment in their 25 year old profitable mmo project, with the hope that it might be a bit more profitable afterwards. I wonder how your guys' businesses are going, with this genius level strategy you should be the world's second trillionaire soon.

Someone's giving instructions to make any new content last at least a certain, long, amount of time - I don't think it's the dev's decision.

I truly believe there are a couple of devs that are very passionate about the game. As evidence, the last major addition to remas, the primes, were all very well thought out, and incredibly well balanced given they are ultimate weapons.

All I was saying is that RMT does not count as a real problem in light of the actual status quo of this game

Talk about rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic; worrying about the RMT impact of any potential change is just deranged. Anybody actually paying attention to what time it is should be encouraging RMT insofar as it reflects actual engagement

You are correct. Devs don't decide what happens. Producers decide.

That's going to go in circles because it's a very layered issue with dependencies. People will have different reasons for engaging is questionable gameplay. 6boxing is an issue. I say that as a 6boxer My reasons for doing so is that I like enjoying the game at my own pace. I used to loathe waiting 10-25 minutes to gather for Sortie past the designated gather time every day... etc. I choose this pace for my current place in life. It's cozy. I understand why isolated cozy gaming in a social game is dangerous.

• Legion/Delve forced SCHs to be stun bots. I know many used react like tools. My first time quitting this game was sheer boredom having to stun Delve bosses eyes glued to the chat log as a SCH when my joys are SAM and SMN. If I knew about react at that time maybe it would have been less tedious?
• This system that makes BRD so "necessary" via time/payout. Not enough people enjoy the job so we automate. I'm not defending it but rather acknowledging there is a logical thought leading to these outcomes.
• In the LS I lead when we did Einherjar I had to pull and play BRD because no one else wanted to. I know I didn't want to, but I wanted to keep up with the pressure of keeping my linkshell active.
• WHM, same as bard, but I ask you to consider more than just "WHM is boring to me or I love WHM".. The job was altered significantly post 75. It didn't need to take a knee all the time via empy legs. How many WHMs missed the rush of true MP management and decided maybe they want to play something. -- A minority to be sure but these are real factors for people.

There's simply more to it than one base reason such as social isolation. When the game coerces people into roles or changes the context of their roles such that they are playing something they aren't genuinely enjoying you're going to see people seeking outlets and shortcuts in terms of tools and counter-meta.

"If you aren't enjoying it then play something else" -- People want what they want and is why there are people chasing their dreams on private servers. Some would argue private servers are the biggest problem (For the record I am not one of them nor do I play on private servers)

Game hasn't been social in 20 years.

Group ups are for activities, for a purpose, they're not social gatherings. Statics form around content, not the other way around.

Social gatherings are in cities, fireworks, that kind of thing.

When was the last time you have ever seen a social event happen in a city zone.

Yeah I agree. It's certainly that way on Shiva. I define MMOs as social games even if they fall short of it. Maybe I'm wrong thinking that way but that was always been my conception.

That does make me wonder if Discord was bad for the game as ironic as that sounds. Not that there wasn't Vent/TS, and other forms but there's more chatter there than on the game chats.

Must be in very anti social groups if people aren't chatting much. My group often talks and does more so in the LS than in Discord. I know other LS on my server who are similar. This game has never not been sociable. If you multi box and isolate yourself all the time, there's no wonder why some think that.