Dev Tracker - Discussion

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people do, and people remember the first year of Omen being 6man as well. They just also remember that during those times there was still an alliance-sized relevant content that was younger than 5 years old still occurring along with pickup content that was important for other reasons.

I truly believe the issue people have with Odyssey being 6man is because there is so little relevant alliance-sized content to do beyond things we've been doing for 5-7 years already (dyna-D and aeonics). Compare the number of complaints about Odyssey being 6man vs Odyssey being all there is to do- I think when truly examined, even many of the first group really are talking about the second.

Surely you guys don't wanna make a 1:1 comparison between a 2006 (?) event for a game that was then at its peak, vs a 2022 event for a game with an extremely small player base?


@Cele
It was a few months more than 1 year, if I recall.
They unlocked alliance in Omen pretty early.

Not trying to equate, but I am trying to compare. We've had limiting 6man content before that had extremely valued gear- the best comparison I can come up with is original Nyzul Uncharted in my book. Yes- the shrunken population is definitely a huge factor that magnifies/reveals the gaping chasm between the "haves" and the "have-nots"....but again, I'm not trying to equate, merely compare.

And I do strongly believe the issue isn't that its 6man, but rather its 6man and for many there just isn't anything else. I still enjoy alliance-sized dyna-D, but I know i'm in a huge minority here.

salvage's major problems was the utter trash 35 drop rate on most things, coupled with a few of them being more obnoxious to get than others(ramparts) along with cells making inventory management a hassle when inventory was at its most strict, content itself was fairly flexible in how you tackled it both in party comp and in routes you could take, better groups could take more optimal paths to attempt to grab more stuff while one's struggling could focus down to just 1 or 2 things.

Arguably 6man events fit more to smaller playerbase. Also Odyssey is perfectly scaleable. Farming 5k+ segments is super easy even for new/returning players even with some party slots taken by Trusts. Clearing Goal R5 is super easy too and farming RP even at R15 is super easy to when you only need to make 5% HP. Salvage was brutal without any mercy, not to mention progress in Odyssey is for everyone and beside Nyame all sets are super strong even at R0, while Salvage had mostly progress for one or max few people at once and anything useful came only from collecting all 3 parts. Seriously in comparison Odyssey is Incredible Easy Prey.

most of us are still trying to FORGET Salvage. goddamned Bhaflau....

i dualboxed nearly all of my key salvage 35 pieces by paying people 10-50k to d/c with a permit, it was never difficult in the same way odyssey is difficult now.. people were just afraid to try it

you needed more than 2 for chariots, but the pieces were lower demand, and they still weren't that difficult

I don't think you remember it very we or you was doing it after some powercreep. There was no bad groups being able to do Salvage bosses or spawning some NMs like turtle or frogs etc. Mediocre groups was able to farm some low floor NMs or with easy spawn conditions, but then with extremely low drop rate people could get nothing for months or even years. Odyssey is instant gratification with several extremely powerful sets after just basic clear that you can mostly cheese even solo on some jobs. Farming segments also comes with farming gils, which for returning/new players is very helpful too.

5f frog needs 3 people fully unlocked, but very easy with thf brd rdm and probably wouldn't be hard to duo if you could pop it duo

turtle also 3manned early on:
https://www.bluegartr.com/threads/61934-Three-man-Citadel-Chelonian

you're confusing the difficulty of full clearing a run while hitting every NM with farming a single NM with a smaller group

salvage wasn't hard, people just liked to talk themselves up because *nothing* was really hard in the old days

Only content I'd put on a similar level to odyssey in terms of restrictiveness and required group coordination is pre nerf, pre iLvl weapons Delve and that wasn't 6 man content anyway.

Definitely a massive distinction between challenging content and artificial challenging via limiting what could be accomplished in single runs (due to lockout paths, not just time) and absurdly rare drop conditions. I do completely agree that salvage wasn't really difficult, but it sure was the king of frustration caused by content, not caused by lack of claim.

I'm not confusing anything. You are talking about experienced bis geared players and I'm talking about new/returning players. Also in term of rewards it's not even close. Before they dramatically increased drop rate of 35 pieces I got maybe two armor pieces in year of running Salvage for several days per week. From Odyssey you can get unaugmented Sakpata, Gleti, Mpaca etc. In a week or two starting from nothing. The only hard part of Odyssey is V20 now, but most stuff is amazing even unaugmented and V15 clears are very easy now and Nyame at R20 is not significantly worse than at R25. You said it was more about people being scary to try Salvage? How is that different for Odyssey? It's exactly the same.

Virgin 6 man 15min boss fight near the end of ffxi's life vs Chad 18man 100min event with boss fight at the end when FFXI was in its prime

I entirely agree with this, aside from the high tier Gaol NM clears Ody is still open to casual people with either PUG group or trust solo segment farming, and the V0 NM's are fairly doable with trusts or a less experienced PUG group. I want to however point out that I mentioned in the other thread exactly this about how powerful the Ody armor is at Rank 0 yet people were saying that was somehow wrong.

So why does that suddenly go from wrong to correct when Simon says it? Not ***posting you Simon I agree with you on this, just asking a legitmate question here. It is utterly disingenuous *** to claim the rank 0 Ody gear is bad and you all know they are very good gear overall. Several people on the other thread mentioned that is not the case and that they are very powerful compared to most other gear in the game.

The only armors in this game that are objectively better than the Ody armor at rank 0 is the Malig set and most of the +3 Artifact/Relic armors. But most of those sets aside from Malig don't have the DT to survive powerful attacks that the Ody armors have. Maybe compared to Rank 25 Nyame the other Ody armors may not be as good at rank 0 yes, but I was more referring to the rest of the gear in this game outside of Ody, not the rank 25 Ody augments. Obviously no one is going to say that rank 25 Ody armor is bad and that wasn't the point I was making.

That would be like trying to claim Artifact/Relic/Empy +1 is better than the +2/+3 versions of those armors, which is obviously incorrect. I'm simply saying the rank 0 Ody armors are very powerful and let you bypass a lot of the older 119 era armors for most jobs. And I would argue outside of Nyame, the other T3 Ody armor sets augments are not as game changing compared to Nyame's. Yes they are still good, but not like holy ***gigantic difference that Nyame's augments have.

I **think** this is what they had in mind when they created Odyssey.
A content that's difficult for tough players who want to be the best but still somewhat accessible to semicasual players to unlock armors on V0.
And they made it so like 85% of the strenghth comes from the armor itself, rest from the augments.
Now this clearly isn't always how things are but I think this was their plan.

It's okay in theory, it doesn't work in reality because it leaves a sour sense of incompleteness in the mouths of most casual players, and all those players (which I would argue are probably the majority of the population) which are stuck somewhere between "casual" and "superpro".

In addition to that, there's a lot of small things that simply do not promote cooperative play in the right way, the way they probably meant.
The fact you can get only one KI per day, the fact you need Segments for everything, so bad, so so bad that you're not gonna be likely to accept a super casual pug that gives you 4k segments because "something goes bad"
Likewise you're likely not gonna be willing to help a friend because... it costs you segments to do so. See above for the Segments need.
Last but not least, you're not likely to help people who need RP on armor different than yours because... what do you get out of it? Nothing, and you have to spend precious segments on that, segments that you could be spending elsewhere on stuff you actually need RP on.


For all of these reasons I don't think Odyssey quite worked out as it could, or as they wanted to.



There's so many unhappy people out there with the content, so many that, surprisingly so, even the JP playerbase are being quite vocal about it this once.
I think it's an important signal that tells us "something" didn't work out in this content.
I think they're gonna do something about it before the end of the year, sayin it first!

I have often wondered if SE had released a "no moglophone II" option for NMs if we'd see more cooperation to get people unlocks/RP help- ie you could participate in a Gaol fight without spending the segments, just no rewards for you (similar to the function now in UNM fights). Or whether we'd still keep ourselves insulated from helping other groups simply due to time in those moments.

I know I see it in myself, I'm sure others do as well- if we don't have some skin in the game, often helping merely for the sake of kindness isn't what we jump to.

Without the II then it would just be nonstop pay for merc "help"

Which it is anyway, but it forces the mercs to farm points.

All roads lead to the same destination.

harsh- yet so very true- reality.

I Like 150% agree with you on this, honestly great post on the Ody issues. SE could fix the majority of the problems with Ody by making 3 changes. Increase the max capacity for the moglophone key item. Increase the amount of segments per mob kill, and decrease the segment cost for moglophone II and amplifier.

With those changes people would be more willing to help others with the Ody content since they could not only accumulate segments a lot easier/faster, but also do more runs per day without worry of the run going bad and such. The suggestion made about giving the option to do either the 6 man OR alliance version of the Gaol NM's is honestly a good idea too.

People who want a challenge could just do it 6 man still, and those who don't have the gear/ML requirements for the V20/25 Gaol NM fights could go alliance and get it done in a more casual friendly way. Ody would be way better with literally just those changes. But SE is lame so prolly not gonna happen lol.

Do they? I thought someone who was translating 20th Anniversary live wrote something like that, but then more people watched it after few days and couldn't find anything supporting this claim.

I see the "just make gaol alliance sized" argument a lot.


How?


The content's primary feature that makes it unique from anything prior is the limitations placed on job usage. If you opened up Gaol to 18 man groups without removing this restriction, you then have a result where likely over half the jobs coming can't do anything anyways. And if you did remove it, then you destroy what makes this different than any other dungeon.

I don't see a way to allow more people in the zone beyond 6 without essentially ruining the content's intentions. My guess is many want just that- but again, even if you did, its not like a SAM suddenly becomes useful on Ngai, or a MNK on Xevioso, or anything that can't Savage on Bumba. Its just a way to bring alts for RP or leeches at the end of the day.

They should've made it like Ambuscade. Where you only get credit at the end, but lose nothing for trying (KI is consumed when u win).
They can't do that now because you get PARTIAL credit (RP, or even just monster HP that doesn't increase) for your attempt, so they would have to remove it.
And keep in mind the most widespread method to farm RP these days is to go for the 5% damage then wipe. Which CLEARLY is not the way SE intended that system to work, but you know us players, right?

They should add multiple KIs storage like Omen and a weekly objective that gives additional segments. Wouldn't be much of a big deal for people who do Segments everyday regardless, but would be quite the boon for everybody else.
They don't wanna do this change because they're afraid of overloading the server that handles the zone. Which happens to be the same for all Sheols and for Gaol too (very wise planning on their end, right?)

If you ask me they should also do something about Sheol A and B.
Like make so the multiplier at the end gives, I dunno, 100% or 50% of the segments you get. This would motivate more people to do A/B instead of C and this in turn would:
1) be nice for noobs/casuals
2) make so the price of Wings go slightly up
3) make so the price on hides and scales goes slightly down

Sounds good too me! Sometimes I'd love to do A or B just for the sake of variation, but with how pressed you are these days to get every single segment you can, the difference between an A/B and a C run is so huge, it's not really worth it alas.

There is always this fundamental lack of understanding.

Everything is designed on purpose to keep you just unhappy enough. Everything is the way it is for specific reasons.

There is more benefit than RP leeching to giving the alliance option while keeping the 6 man option still. People who don't have time to invest in a hardcore endgame LS due to real life obligations could still get the clears for V20/25 and then be able to augment the Ody armors fully. The current way Ody is prevents a huge amount of the player base from those clears, as many people in the player base, including myself fall into that category.

This would provide a way to do that and not make Ody so exclusive to only the top tier players, since with an alliance you wouldn't require the best gear in the game or Master Levels just to defeat the NMs at V20/25. I would still advocate for the 6 man option because a lot of people still want the challenge. I enjoy soloing a lot of tougher content with trusts for the same reason.

But you can still keep Gaol's job limitations with an alliance and make it work as intended. It would be similar to Divine Might with zerging the first few ark angels at the beginning of the fight. You can still just have multiple people bring the proper jobs needed to damage that particular Gaol NM, along with multiple people bringing tank/support/healer jobs as well which aren't affected by the NM's damage restrictions.

That would still work without breaking the original design of Ody Gaol. The main idea is to lift the limitation of only top tier players being able to get the high level clears, along with making it easier to RP farm. Of course people will still bring alts/mules to leech, but that happens with most content in this game already so who cares. Ambuscade definitely has that and it still gets done by a lot of players on VD either way.

And as a site note, no I'm not complaining about not having the V20/25 clears. I'm a pretty casual XI player at this point so I'm honestly not worried if I only ever had Rank 0 Ody armor. I can do pretty much all the other content in the game without Rank 25 Ody gear besides the top Gaol NM tiers. I'm just saying SE would be able to make Ody and Gaol especially more casual friendly/accessible with the alliance option and those other changes I mentioned in last post.

Another great Ody post, totally agree on all of this! The ambu key item point is extremely true it should be like that. Especially since it takes like less than 5 min to get an ambu key item and you keep it till you win, and there's no content lockout with ambu. Ody mog II KI takes a lot longer to farm and you lose all those segments if you fail the Gaol NM fight, on top of the Sheol A/B/C lockout time gate. Pretty big difference in risk and restrictions, which ultimately makes less people want to help with Ody/Gaol content.

Yeah they need to make some incentive to do Sheol A/B besides just the scale/hide farming. Cause at this point there isn't much except like moogle mastery for trusts. They do need to address the congestion issue as well with Ody like they did with ambu. It would prolly end up same way the Lillith/Odin/Alex/Cait Sith HTMB queue line was a few years ago otherwise.

I don't think Ody should be so self-restrictive and exclusionary by the playerbase- but I have zero issues with the original intent SE had behind odyssey- that everyone could have relatively quick and easy access to gear that was 75-85% as good as the fully augmented version, that less people would have access to R15 augmented results, and even fewer to each tier released.

But we as players don't think that way, and I do blame SE for not understanding that there were only three types of players regarding Odyssey gear: those who didn't give a ***, those who got the gear void of augments and quit, and the rest of us who will grind til our accounts are gone to 'git dem blue numbahs'.

Players should adequately evaluate the limited growth of the gear between R15 and R25. When we compare the jump between no ody gear and non-augmented ody gear, the leap is huge. Between non-augmented and R15, its pretty damn big for many pieces/sets. But the pieces that get the greatest growth between R15 and R25 are in reality the Atonement 1 and 2 tier drops....the easier mobs.

But no one's happy with something they know from the dats or other players as "not complete" once they start down that path. SE's intent might have been very hopeful and good, but that's not how we as the players take what we're given- we only want all or none.

For Gaol, I think that restricting SJ was too much. Limiting a job to one usage is perfectly fine, it forces people to come up with creative ways to approach stuff. Removing SJ on the other hand is terrible as sub jobs are one of the foundations of FFXI's combat system.

Kept saying this from day one where, other than for the tri-runs, it didn't really matter THAT much back then.

But for me it's beyond being or not being relevant in terms of difficulty.
It's just very bad game design to go against one of FFXI's core elements.
Just my view on the topic of course.

At this point, who cares?