Dev Tracker - Discussion

SE openly admitted Odyssey wasn't popular, recognizing the problem.

Multiple players openly said they dislike Odyssey, not just me.

Me, as a customer, who provided opinion on how to fix the problem, so SE may know what to do to future content better.

Baniak: but you shouldn't complain, you should just play other games instead.

Okay......

I mean, if people just quit and SE lose money, why do you care?-.-



If Sheol G isn't for casuals, what should casuals do after they are done with V10 then?

Like I said, I was done with ML40 2 weeks after release. I was done with sortie 2 weeks after release. I have multiple jobs that is ready for v20 progression wise. And I don't need v10 clears nor RP.


What's stopping me from doing v20 progression wasn't the lack of v20 ready jobs like Baniak claimed, but the fact that 50% of my playtime are spent looking for 5 other people who has the right job AND needing the same NM, and I'd like that 50% time invested on building a party reduce to something like 10%-20% so I can actually play the game instead of looking for people.

Or if SE can't do that, give me something else to do progression wise that is faster and easier to form a party for. Like the old ambuscade. They can be hard idc. It only needs strong incentive so more people are available for invite.

As a player this is as reasonable to ask as it can be. I never say people should be able to beat every content even if they are way behind.



Ambuscade was the perfect content in back 2017-2018 imo, everyone can join and the reward is reasonable. On the same time VD was not too easy back in 2017-2018.

But it is 5 year old content and nothing new added since 2-3 years ago.

HTBC are also pretty old, and the only one with any kind of longevity is shinryu with shitty drop rate. So most casuals will skip that.

None of these are strong incentive in 2022 FFXI today unless you are brand new player or took a long break and still missing ambu or higher drop rate htbc items.

What FFXI need for casuals is content similar to Omen in 2017 or ambuscade at that time. Something that everyone can participate with a reasonable reward progression and last for at least a few months.

Sortie is pretty close IF they last a little bit longer.

Strangely enough I agree with what Afania has been saying so far, my my, what's gonna happen next, end of the world?!
Despite me agreeing with like 99% of what she said though, I wonder if she would have said the same things if she had a static of other like-minded "casual players" like her.

Because part of me think she would've said the same things SimonSes is saying, or simply not partecipating in the discussion at all ;-P


As far as I'm concerned I'm torn on the issue. I love several things of Odyssey, I truly do, and I enjoyed doing a lot of those fights until I quit my static (well, we all did to be fair).
In this case though, I was complaining even when I was perfectly bursting through those RP ranks with my static, so it's not a matter of "the fox and the grapes" for me.
I simply think that while I absolutely love several things of Odyssey and what's around it, several others are incredibly wrong.

What makes it even more ironic for me is that they wouldn't need to re-design the event from scratch to fix it. Just some incredibly simple changes here and there would make the event so much more enjoyable while it keeps throwing a bone to hardcore players, but also welcomes a far larger audience who, in my opinion, has simply voluntarily ignored that the content even exist.
Truly, it's ironic because it would be so easy to make things better for everyone, and I mean everyone.


But nooo, it's like we're still in 2005, people have to whiteknight whatever SE does because it's gotta be the only one, any other way is wrong, I dunno, I guess some things will never change, eh?

Yeah, Ody is not for casual players. Its super restrictive and plainly not fun because of that.

Why limit peoples desire to engage in relevant current content instead of encouraging it?

Does SE just want the 100 super core players to be the only ones left on their servers after everyone normal finally gets fed up and bored from being on the sidelines.

In my opinion there's a whoooooole lot of shades of grey between the extremes of making an event boring because any average joe can faceroll it, and make it so extremely restrictive that the majority of the payer base doesn't even want to bother with it.
It's not always black or white, they could've strived for a much better compromise.

Or, like it always happens in every bloody *** MMO (FFXI included!) they could simply start with an event that's super hard, targeted at a very small part of the player base, but then progressively make it easier, so that other players can eventually get in and play catch up. And by the time they really catch up those hardcore players would've long stopped doing the event anyway.


SE themselves have been doin that for the majority of their events over the last few years, not sure why they're refusing to do it on Odyssey.

Are they afraid that if they were to do that then people would get past the content too fast and complain they have "nothing to do"?
Maybe, but it depends on how they balance things out.
Also, what's wrong in demanding new content? We pay what, >18$ per month?
"We don't have enough people working on this game"
Then *** hire a couple more?
Or do they really want to tell me they can't afford 3k/month to pay for a couple new developers with the current FFXI incomes?
Because I won't buy that.

SE implemented a system where people can get RP and progress towards better gear, and then slide the difficulty scale up, progressively clearing harder content. They even allowed you to take several cracks at the NM to chip it down, allowing you to learn the boss and maybe eventually clear it. Then you can go up a tier and challenge yourself. "More rewards for higher difficulty" they literally spelled it out at the outset.

One of the main problems with this is that people just skipped this whole process and only want to clear the highest level, then they get massively frustrated with how difficult it is. SE designed Gaol to be progressive and job role-oriented/inclusive, but people largely rejected the idea of having to play multiple jobs to participate. Even still, it doesn't change what the intention was from SE's perspective, so people can say it's a bad system (it may very well be) and bang their head against a wall while asking for a change, but SE spelled out how they wanted the content to be played. If more people followed the process, it would be less painful. Also, if SE made it more inclusive, it would likewise be less painful. I think there's just a rift between what the players want as content and what SE envisions how they want the content to be played, not necessarily a "bad system" per se.

It's almost the same situation as the BST Master+Pet focused system: SE envisions something one way, players reject that idea, SE implements improvements for their original vision, players say the additions are minor or dumb because it doesn't fit what they would like to do with the job. Endless rift between SE and the playerbase.

Haha, that's awesome Sechs, totally agree.

Ehr... I seriously doubt that was their main intent when they allowed it.
If you're talking about having 3 attempts on the same NM. The difficult is so high and the requirements so strict that if you fail once (and won't be able to use the same jobs again) do we really wanna tell ourselves that a group is gonna kill that mob in 2 successive attempts with different jobs?
C'mon let's be serious xD
I'm talking about "real" attempts, not that accidental wipe at 2%.

Also the "farm RP" thing to scale the difficulty slider doesn't make much sense to me either.
What the *** do you do with RP when you need to kill the higher difficulty at least once to be able to spend that RP?

Also the RP requirements are insane in terms of amount of grind, even worse when you consider that you're cockblocked by Segments, which you need to farm (spending 30 mins a day because god forbid people who can log only 2-3 times per week).

Before they added the Amplifier (which makes RP much more reasonable, especially if you can do 3x Runs to charge it up every now and then) RP requirements were simply beyond reasonable c'mon Buukki, you can't be defending that "ratio" of effort:reward, it's masochistical and makes me wonder if someone is under a stockholm syndrome.


I'm not even questioning their reason.
Did they wanted to slow down potential progress, putting some gate so that crazy people aren't done with RP within 3 days of 24/7 gameplay?
I agree with that, go for it, put up a gating system of some sort, I don't mind. (or rather accept the fact that it's pretty much unavoidable/necessary in a MMO).
I'm questioning the specific way they decided to achieve that, not the idea itself.
It's convoluted and terribly one-sided, as it doesn't allow much freedom of choice at all to us, the players.

And I could say the same for several other things. I empathize with the goal they had in mind and think it was a neat idea, but the way they tried to achieve it, uhm... debatable to say the least.


Also there's the "do 5% damage and get insane amount of RP if you use an amplifier" thing that has been used by a lot of people to solo/lowmen farm RP after unlocking a tier boss.
Clearly we're not so naive to believe that it was meant to be, right?
It was obviously a bug but SE refused to fix it because there was so much discontent by the majority of the player base around this event, that if they removed even that thing, they clearly would've been forced to compensate with something else. And that would've meant additional work, and by now we know they don't want / can't afford to.



Speaking for myself only now, but personally I never skipped any level. With my static we got all of our unlocks by ourselves.
Sometimes I liked the challenge these artificial limitations posed to us, it was cool.
Most of the time what I felt was "annoyance" though.
Especially with the V20 tier and the adds.
That was such a... poor, weak, boring way to add a difficulty layer to the NMs. Doing it for a few would've been fine, but doing the same exact thing to all of them was so tedious really.

Odyssey design is fine, it's just not meant for a playerbase where the whole endgame population wants to be able to 6box every piece of content while still having the image that the content is hard to make them feel more special for doing so. There are so few groups actually trying new strategies or refining the fights that frankly, most of our strategies are still sub-ideal. Everything gets shoehorned into one of the same handful of group setups and zerged accordingly.

Bumba has a 15 minute time limit, yet every strategy relies on killing it in 2 so that you don't have to deal with any of the mechanics. I have no doubt there is some ability that can be used to mitigate a potential denounce and give you time to remove the aura, but nobody has any interest in trying things like that.

Strategies using SMN to chip down Ongo's HP without touching main setup exist, and are in use. That's perhaps the most exclusive NM, where only a couple of jobs can do any meaningful damage. If they can be used to effect there, they can certainly be used to effect on other NMs. But, again, nobody wants to try. Everyone wants to be able to turn on their react, autoWS, gearswap, and afk to victory using the same copy/paste gear the first people to post a win used.

I'm dead serious, because I was in groups that successfully V15 bosses with a secondary crew. One of my first groups did a V15 Bumba and 2 other V15 bosses, or at least came very close to beating Kalunga, if not for a third aura or something lame. There are videos of people literally clearing 3 NM T3 runs, and testimonials of people who say they have done it. You even have people who took SMN into a boss and took it down to like 80% completely solo. If someone actually wanted to coordinate a double run attempt, you could definitely go in with B jobs and chip it down to 75% and then wipe, and take it down with main jobs on a second attempt. I have actually done this. Don't say it's not reasonable when it actually works. You (and others) just never consider doing it that way, but the system is in place to use it that way if you want.


You can augment up to R15 just from a V1 kill. If you can't kill a V15 boss after R15ing all of your gear, then you don't need to worry about any excess RP after that point.


What the hell are you talking about? I never said the grind WAS reasonable, I was talking about the system in Gaol. Btw, I did R20 my Coiste Bodhar almost completely solo on MNK, before Amplifiers were released, so I know exactly how brutal the segments:rp grind was initially. RP farming has gotten significantly easier now just by losing. Before amps, losing any fight gave you like under 100 RP no matter how much damage you dealt. Now, you can deal 6% damage and get triple what the original V15 kill RP gave. They threw people a major bone, most people never had to suffer through that same grind you mention, so it's a moot point tbqh.


Its intended. They have been aware of the RP reward for dealing low damage for a while, they would have fixed it if it were truly an exploit. Also, it's dumb, but again, they threw everyone a bone. You can make progress on gear while losing, learning the strat, and not feel like you wasted all that time grinding.


How exactly is adding another layer of difficulty to an already strong boss "boring"...?

Well, you said what I wrote in response faster while mine was still in the drafts.

Anyways, I did originally have groups of NA players who definitely played into Bumba's mechanics. We brought a spread of jobs and went out of our way to cover the aura using a multistep, crits (like impetus smite/true strike etc) GEO magic bursting, all in one go. There's a video of JP using Rayke and abusing multistep to deal massive damage to Bumba when he changes to the correct "mode". There's the chip method both of us mentioned. Hell, BST can even abuse a free 10% on a couple of monsters. I even remember doing the first Mboze strats with Rampart instead of TP denial method. So there's alternative ways to clear bosses or use the repeat-same-boss-system. By the time V20 rolled out, everyone abandoned any type of intelligent thought and only wanted to steamroll the content using whatever was the fastest and nothing else. That has nothing to do with how it's designed, people just chose to ignore that part of the content.

Nah, I don't think the player needs artificial limitation to force them on certain job. People will play multiple jobs as long as 1) those jobs has legit pros to be used, and DPS is balanced 2) fun to play with. People play multiple jobs for fun or niche use pre-Odyssey all the time.

Personally, I think it's more fun to choose to play a job because you feel this job would work well against certain mechanics, not because the game flat out tells you "only this job works".

Even before Odyssey "war x3 for everything" was certainly not a thing from my experience. It was preferred in zergs, that's about it. If you want to use other jobs the game wouldn't stop you. And you can still be successful if that other DD is geared super well

The funny thing is, post Odyssey war is now even more "meta" than before lol. Why level 2 DD to do 3 damage types when you can level one for all?

So I am not really convinced that meta will become a worse problem than pre-Odyssey if artificial limitation is dropped. Even if war x3 really become a problem they should be nerfing MS -> WC -> MS super DPS burst combo in short fights before using artificial limitations to stop people abusing WAR x3 IMO. I feel Zerg SP being OP in short single NM fights, AND the fact that it can be resetted, was the key reason why war x3 may be meta without job limitations

What SE should do and what they did do are two completely different things. They shouldn't artificially force people off the same jobs. But they did it because they wanted to expand on their whole "Job roles" thing. If we are being honest, if not for the job limitation, most players would pick the easiest setup and roll with that for clears/rp, and then after getting that out of the way, they would bring their favorite job to Gaol to show what they can do. Not in reverse.


Again:

They SHOULD nerf naegling. They SHOULD nerf abusive strats that circumvent the entirety of the boss. In fact, they've done that in the past by making mobs immune to Geomancy, rages with rolls/songs/favor, nerf Twilight Scythe/Souleater etc. They just chose to do it another way for this content.

Just gotta get a JP to complain about Naegling though, or else they'll never even know there's a sword by that name

My LS did. They used SMN PD to survive denounce, and med to remove dot, remove aura with dia mb or 1 DD SCing.

Tbh, I feel like that applies to the entire game. If I couldn't play with my LS or find another group with a similar level of cohesion - I'd probably stop playing altogether. It's not a content issue, but rather the fact that the game is 10000% more enjoyable with friends/group of real players.

I think the example with Mboze kinda counters that assertion. TP denial is neither the fastest nor the easiest strategy - it's just the most consistent one.

Its not really the bosses that are the main issue with Ody. They need to incentivize non static parties instead of get the win and done while saving segments for just the static. Make it easier and worthwhile to actually enter the boss fights.

Sortie was cool because you can enter mess around solo for fun/gains, then party up for bosses. If the +3 is a "long" grind using only statics, that'll suck.

From my perspective, you are not casual if you are in V10. The difference between R0 and R15 gear isn't significant to someone who spends most of their time doing things that are already trivial.


In just a few weeks, Lady Lilith ad I will be celebrating our 3 year anniversary.

Yeah, it's been that long and yeah, the gear is till that good.

Flamma will still be in fashion in 2023.

Prime weapons cannot wake you from Nightmare.*


More specifically, the nightmare that Naegling will still be better than all of these despite it taking 100 times longer to obtain.

Maybe not "fastest" in a literal way, but it's effectively the same thing, given that we are talking about clears here.

If it takes me 5 tries to beat Mboze using TP denial strat due to it's consistency vs 10 runs trying to do the supposed faster Zerg/Rampart strat, then the former method is indeed "faster" to clear.

I think, in a way, handing out RP via amplifiers worked against the content's liveliness. If they had drastically increased the rewards for actually winning, while not rewarding cheesy tactics, many more people would be willing to farm RP on V10 or V15 and eventually progress to the higher difficulties. By making subsequent wins unnecessary for progress, they made it much less likely that a culture of players who understand the fights and have done them frequently enough to interchange players would emerge.

I see your argument, but I have a completely opposite feeling towards it than you do. For me, the job restrictions, especially in a 3x run, allowed me to play and use jobs that I had not previously, in ways that I also had not used them before. BST, DNC, SCH, NIN, all gained value for me and I was able to bring them to events which fleshed out their versatility. I do understand the difficulty in finding people with the right jobs, especially "niche" ones like BLM. I don't, however, think that every job should be viable in every Atonement fight. As others have pointed out, there are multiple strategies (granted these have become more strict with V20) for every encounter that utilize more than just the "best" jobs for that particular fight.

Someone yells "Ody v15 fight Can I have it". What is your first thought?

1) Hell yeah lets go!

2) Hell no! I already have it and not going to waste segments and there's no reason for me to join since I'm already either maxed out or using those segments somewhere else.

3) Hell no! I don't know you.

Need to fix #2 and #3.

My first thought is this person is probably trying to buy a clear. If I'm wrong, my second thought is wondering why he doesn't just form his own group. Shouting to JOIN a group (aka asking someone else to start a group and invite you) is one of the silliest things I have seen people do. It almost never works.

Yeah. There's two sides to this as well. For every person who leveled a job for Gaol and saw value outside of it, there's probably (definitely) someone else who specifically leveled a job for a specific fight or job versatility, then got their clear, and that was the last meaningful thing they did on that job. So the only use they got from being forced onto something else was just to get their clear, and then it went back into the closet.

It depends on the mechanics IMO. Some mechanic has room to explore different strategy, like bumba's denounce. You can Zerg to bypass it, PD to survive it and proc, or possibly kite/range it(not confirmed this works, just throwing out ideas) As you proc.

Some super straight forward T3 mechanics like "every dmg except piercing has 95% dmg reduction, non-elemental doesn't work too" is far more restrictive than fetter/denounce. Besides tomahawk(?) What else can we do to bypass it other than change your DDs? Or did I miss other effective solution better than tomahawk?

Of course strong dmg type reduction isn't the most terrible mechanic in the world that single handedly made one event terrible. Most of the time we just change our DDs and deal with it. But restrictions add up and the supposed "challenge" become an annoyance.

Correct me if I'm wrong, If I remember correctly FFXIV doesn't have dmg types because of job flexibility reason.

I can see why people want a more forced opportunity to play different jobs in different situations and I really don't mind different jobs are being used. But I feel the actual execution could use more flexibility.

Err, you're being too specific there and missing the point.

"Can I have it" could be "Team Up" or "Join My Party"

Anyways, you still didn't choose #1.

Because the whole thing doesn't make any sense?

If someone doesn't need V15 clear, they just won't go. That doesn't mean anything. If a person does need it, they will likely send a tell asking them if they are interested in making a group. You asked what our first thought was and mine could be completely different than someone else's depending on their need. That varier per person; it's not a blanket statement where people are actively going out of their way to avoid teaming up with other people.

Of course it makes sense and its the underlying problem. Its kindof funny you are trying so hard to miss the point which proves my point that better access systems are needed to be incentivized.

Not going to argue, just was showing that most people aren't going to join an Ody shout group which is a dumb system in a mmo.

I've literally never seen a shout for a V15 clear. I have, however, attempted to organize V15 clears to which 1 person showed up. The reason for the low turnout? Segments.

Yep.

Depends on who is yelling, what job I feel like playing, and if I care enough to get some RP. Most of the time it's #3, or I know the person but not in a good way. Very few players are maxed out, and especially fewer are maxed out + sitting on a bank to spend on R30 augments.

Most of the group I am in have 500k-1mil segments, and we haven't done a Sheol C in 6 months, only A - which rewards maybe 5k/run. We do not run every day. So while I understand we are not the average players, I don't understand it when people say they are out of/low on segments. Even if you run two to three times a week, say averaging 9k (is this normal for a C PUG these days? idk), that's about 9 NM attempts per week.