Dev Tracker - Discussion

Pickup is literally dead as *** because alliance content doesnt exist and the current 6man content requires familiarity and precision coordination.

Honestly the whole merc scene seems to be more of an Asura thing. I rarely if ever see mercs on Bahamut unless I'm just naive or its not done in the open.

That said, would be interesting to learn how many people of each server filled out the survey since there seem to be differences between.

Exactly they jammed us into specific set ups that require specific mechanics and coordination.

I've said this before bring VW back, mindless alliance content that uses many different jobs and is fast. A 30 minute alliance event would go a long way with this game. Make the difficulty mid-core with our typical FFXI drop rates so people spam.

You think people solo/multibox/static because that's the only content they have available.

Reality; the only content available is because people only solo/multibox/static

If they make new alli content, it won't add pick ups it will only add boxes.

We are the vocal minority here, too. Our habits are not necessarily representative of the whole playerbase. I still see many people in sparks equivalent gear doing story or other non-endgame content quite a bit.

Beseiged could be a nice common denominator if they do it right, increase battle frequency and rewards, decrease time waiting for them to advance, encourage teaming up, etc.

List of people who can solo-multibox V20/V25 Gaol fights:
1-Thorny
2-That guy selling his bot for $12/month

List of PUG groups doing 8+Aminon Sortie:
1- ???

that guy can qualify when his shitty bot has a chance at arebati or bumba, until then it's just a slightly more streamlined autows doing the melee ones

(though i'm sure there is probably *someone* besides me that's done it)

Everyone plays with trusts because everyone else is multipboxing. If you're not doing either of these, then you're buying clears from people who can clear it themselves (usually as a multibox). Mercing totally ruined any PUG scene for sure, but people's unwillingness to pick up new jobs, form organic groups and build friendships with similarly-progressed players and be afraid to lose a little while learning/trying, has also contributed to the problem. Absolutely nobody wants to form groups anymore. Absolutely nobody wants to play WHM (literally, this is the biggest problem in FFXI on Asura as least, there are NO WHITE MAGES AT ALL). Hell, I even struggle to find BELOW AVERAGE PLAYERS to fill a VD1 AMBUSCADE that I can solo on my own. Pathetic.

In either case, players are 100% responsible for the lack of a grassroots PUG scene to get things done without being in top-tier elite endgame groups; Odyssey/Sortie just put the final nail in the coffin. And yall want Alliance content? That will literally only continue to benefit the same people, lol

Suppose I should say something on topic too.

Accurate assessment, but there's not much of a solution. The entire premise of the game seems to be grinding prereqs(jobs/gear/macros/recruitment) to do fights that are relatively simple to execute.

You can't easily focus on execution, because the game's packet system is trash and doesn't even properly allow for tight timings. If all content is easy, you lose out on players who feel like they just cruised through to the top and quit. So, you still need content that gatekeeps through preparation to maintain a 'final challenge'.

Unless I'm misinterpreting Nynja's take, it seems to be that there should be alliance content in the middle that rewards slightly worse gear than odyssey and Sortie. I definitely believe that would help the game, but I'm not so sure it'd bring about some pickup renaissance. I think too many people are unwilling to entertain anything less than BiS.

If I am correct, that means the new content will be ignored by folks who have already cleared odyssey and sortie. It's likely that without those players to organize/carry, the alliance content would have to be reduced substantially in difficulty(perhaps to dyna-D levels) to allow pickup success.

Content like this doesn't develop the skills necessary to tackle Odyssey. The pathway to developing those skills is already there: Do Odyssey below V20/25. The rewards are still great. But, precious few people are willing to do that and develop those skills.

What would be the end goal of this new content? Create a new forever grind like Sortie that'll just be botted, sold, and carried? Give people a reason to log in and afk in a shout party for an hour daily? I don't really see what it accomplishes to address the shortcomings of the game. People who have fixed groups of more than 6 are already tied into the game and do things with those groups. The folks who really need pickup culture are just going to be shuffled through parties where RMT sell slots until they get bored and quit.

I too miss 20 second fights followed by 3~ minutes of people yelling at noone to clear the damn box.

Honestly id like a redo of delve or incursion but i think player creeps just too high to really do those as an alliance again, would just get trimmed down to 8~ man within a month

Your upcoming alliance content is probably going to be Level 15 Besieged.

To be fair, they do have the ability to give players individual drops from a fixed loot pool (the Reisenjima Geas Fete Campaign proves this) - they could do "fixed" VW.

Depends how far into fixed we're talking. It's not real VW if theres not 8~ slots of scrolls/meds/craft mats among the rare/extremely rare item you're actually after and idk if an auto loot pool can take all that, or rather do both in the (common) case you were full

Voidwatch (and Abyssea) is literally what killed FFXI.

People who never played this game before that era will never know what this game was originally like, how it was played, and how incredible the community was.

Aby was a short lived injection shot, game was already fading out cause SE basically abandoned the game for XIV around late AU/early WotG

Aby brought some life back into the game, but at the cost of basically everything before it being invalidated, which I always found a terrible move for the game going forward, but XI wasnt supposed to live past XIV anyway so what did SE care. Abys own shelf life being pretty limited due to how contained it was and how quick to completion it was outside of garbage empy weapon grinding sure didnt help that either.

VW in general was just a really lazy content addition that eventually became decent but still never good if only cause the garbage drop rates on everything

FFXI prior to aby required teamwork and group-building for success. Abyssea and Voidwatch invalidated that by making everything so easy and flexible that braindead PUGs could do it. Many of the less tight groups fell apart, because individual members decided they didn't need the group any more if everything could be duoed or PUGed on their own schedule. Maybe goes without saying, but it did the same thing to exp groups by making it possible for 10 or more players to leech off of a soloer or duo.

Delve tried to save it, but it was too late at that point. That became obvious when SE had to add HP scaling and nerf the ***out of it at a point when only 1-2 groups per server had even killed Muyingwa/Dakuwaqa.

Won't comment on VW since I'm overly biased, but Abyssea is what made a game which was set on its path toward eternal death, last longer.

We could argue it unreversably changed the game so much it was unrecognizable and completely different from before (and from this point of view you could say "dead") but the game would've never survived without that.

Very well said. The players deserve just as much blame as the devs when it comes to making this MMO massive and not just 1-6 people. Our community mindset is notably different now than what everyone is describing no matter which era you liked or hated. Adapt to survive and all that, but for new alliance content to succeed, we would need to really change to make it work.

Oh, the other missing ingredient, on Asura at least, is the willingness to experience failure then get up and try again. Yes, we're older and have less time to get more done, but if there is even a hint that a shout might not win 100%, no one will join.

In my experience of 75 days XI people in my shell were just leaving due to boredom of the largely same content pool with only einherjar being the highlight, and even that was running its course. There was a small spark when the [S] stronghold raids came out but that didnt last very long and everything else released around that time barely got off the ground like fae weapons, ANNM(?) box fights, the add on exapansion fights, though you could say this was in part due to it all just being random augment rewards.

I think had SE really tried during the WotG days and not just basically been throwing darts at a board for content additions every few months that maybe got 1 update then forgotten(along with story additions also every few months that seemed to take longer each time) aby might not have ever been needed but that was then.


Not sure how much players can be blamed if the devs didnt bother to curtail it much at any point, as stated the community got fractured once aby introduced the idea of being able to 1-3 man most of its content, even before that we had various levels of bots, just kept on the downlow for the sake of appearing legit, but once aby came in i saw plenty of DD(usually mnk or nin) + WHM bot at min.

Once that box is opened its hard to shut it again, and with the pop as low as it was post aby/VW multi-boxing was simply a given if you didnt already lose most of your friends/ls mates over that period, to the point SE added trusts later on down the line as people trying to level to get into the ilvl content was a massive chore for most.

Finally the game from then on was largely lowman favored, HP scaling, less micromanaging, less competition on rewards, etc.

Then came in mercing which again SE never really stopped so it's just gonna balloon and it was very easy to do so with the way content is designed nowadays, people wont stop doing what benefits them if they're simply told "that's bad" there has to be some kind of recourse otherwise it just spreads until we reach where we are now.

FFXI feels fractured from its old self. Gone are the days of tight-knit groups forging through the fires of DKP Systems and linkshell dramas. For the most part, the most socialization is when players join a pug dyna D or a very open LS on a server filled to the gills with mercs and bots.

6 man this, 6 man that. only have 5? My friend has that. only have 4? Luckily another friend can do that. down to 3? It's okay because you dual box too...right?

Its hard to formulate tight-knit groups when all the content requires S-tier 6 people. What older content was this restrictive?

CoP missions were restricted to 6, but also needed to be cleared once to pass the barrier. Its not like you had to clear Promys weekly to retain access to Tavnazia.

Sky was mixed content, but ally was possible.
Dyna was 64 man, but people quickly figured out you didnt need 64
Ein was 36, but not needed
Limbus was 18, but not needed
Salvage was 18, but not needed
VW was 18, and it was needed on a technicality
Legion was 18 or 36, but not necessarily needed
Delve and Vagary were 18, but not needed

I know battlefields (Circles, enm, SR, ISNM, etc) were pt only, but they were also mostly “go at your own pace” and they werent content to build around. They also werent all that difficult to be honest.

When you make content that limits participation, you encourage the community to fracture.

Closest would probably just be old salvage due to cells being what they were plus time limit but even that you could bring about 8 and not be that bad off, maybe neo-nyzul, everything else was fairly flexible in its setup/amount of bodies allowed

“But but mercs”

Give the parttimers the ability to partake in content without being a hinderance to the fulltimers by requiring them to slow down or get left behind, and the reliance on mercs may go down. Assuming the worst of the entire playerbase is rather nihilstic.

This was a partial byproduct of the content, especially OG Savage without the box. MNK was required for the content, and then needing 20 hi-potions just to survive until magic unlocks.

Regardless, those extra bodies were still able to join in on the event. They may have been a bench warmer, but its better to be a bench warmer instead of sitting in the press box being healthy scratched.

NNI was 6 person, but NNI was a crapshoot event whos reliance on luck was a bigger factor than skill and gear. Nothing you can do if you jump 20 floors and still time out on 82.

Dont know if that was in response to me, but not really assuming the worst, just the path of least resistance, player A wants money, player B wants gear, a trade is made and both get what they want, you spread that around and it eventually becomes a viable alternative to both getting money and getting gear, then it becomes the norm as the money gained from it is typically better than other routes for the person selling, and its an easy path through content for the person buying.

For the singular player its pretty harmless, it just has a long knock-on effect to the community if its not addressed at any point, we've had mercing since 75 days it was just again(in my experience) pretty hush for reasons, that eventually went away and here we are.

Content built with a high ceiling for a game running at low speed - This content isn't feasible for this era which should surprise you guys because I am saying it

I think most groups broke up already after that terrible 20th anniversary and most seem to only focus on sortie now which gets draining - I see a new post every other month from really good groups seeking out 1 player to recoup their ranks.

I think SE should try to have 1-2 alliance based content events. we have dyna D - give us 1 more please

General response because “but mercs” has been a repeated excuse for why opening content is bad. Wasnt directed at you personally.


Player b wants gear, but he has to resort to mercs because his friends in Group A cant accommodate him due to content restrictions.

Theres no guarantee it would alleviate the amount of merc business goin on. Maybe it wont. But if 10% of the playerbase find they can play the game with their friends again and the other 90% still rely on mercs, is that not a win?

“But mercing gets easier”
Ok and? Supply increases, demand drops because some of the buyers are now playing the content with friends. Merc services get cheaper, some quit the business because its not worth it.
See dyna corrency. Used to be 90k per hundo, now its 300-500k because it wasnt worth farming. Basic economics.

It's a zero-sum game. If 10% of the playerbase gets to leech off their friends(be real, it's leeching, even if you could bring 18 you wouldn't want those undergeared DPS engaging your Sortie mobs), the remaining 90% has that many fewer people who need that content to group with.

If this also allows merc groups to take a 6man group and bring 12 leeches, those 12 are removed from the content pool as well. I believe that a healthy game requires content to encourage grouping. It may seem paradoxical to you, but allowing larger groups without any increase in difficulty, does the opposite. It reduces the requirement to group with your peers by creating even easier options.

I don't think many people are having Sortie merced regularly right now, because the options are poor. It's expensive to have 4 well-equipped people carry only 2 leeches, and the runs are still suboptimal (40k?). If you could pay 10m to get a 9boss run (meaning the group gets 120m for carrying 12 folks), how many folks would start doing that and leave their groups short..?

I feel like my memory of 75-cap is a bit different.

The only PUG content I recall was exp groups. I don't remember seeing shouts for Dynamis, Salvage, Assaults, Limbus, etc. I remember event linkshells forming to do these things that had mandatory participation and if you missed too much, you got booted. They had rigid schedules and tons of drama. I think the gearing requirements were less, but I don't recall much of a PUG culture until Abyssea came around. I'm old so willing to admit it may be lost to memory, but I only really remember PUGs extensively doing exp parties.

At risk of getting torched, I feel like post-Abyssea FFXI was more welcoming and chilled out than before it. Prior to that, it was toxic and restrictive as hell unless you got into a good LS.

This is 100% true.

When I was trying to PUG some Odyssey v20s, there were a number of players who bailed the first failed attempt. These weren't catastrophic failures either, like took it down to 30-40% on the first try with 3-4 static players and the rest were pickup. Fail the first time, they bail. I understand leaving if the group was clearly not going to win or was a catastrophic failure but, despite my being there, that wasn't the case. The idea of failing to fix and succeed later is lost on many.

There is also some allergy to experimentation. "I want to try this off the wall crazy thing" - "That's not what the guide says". If the guide doesn't say it, it gets shot down.

I always thought this was the most interesting part of the game, the ability to experiment with the interesting jobs and shift strategies around. I've seen groups of players do it and they tend to win, but a lot of players would rather do the same thing over and over again and fail than try something new.

Yes, and when you make 18men content it's hard to make it challenging without making it broken/frustrating.

Having more challenging content for 6men was in general a good idea imho.
Having ONLY 6men content for all these years... not so much.

I would even be fine with a new content being hard and challenging for a certain amount of time, then being moderately made more accessible in successive steps (one of which could be making it 18 men content).
But having exclusively challenging, hard content, focusing on 6 men and with very little space for error and more often than not full of limitations (to create a more controlled environment on the dev-side and, as a consequence, more "balance" in the difficuclty level)

I don't think everything exactly worked out as they planned, but if we want to generalize, yes.