By Fenrir.Melphina 2017-12-28 19:12:17
Honestly gearing for lvl 60 cap equipment isn't that hard, it's just the matter of getting physical bodies that's impossible. Most of the rare/ex items are easily farmable now that old lvl capped content is soloable, and the crafting cap increase has broken any tiers on crafted gear, Chatoyant staff, HQ lvl 54 rings, mission gear, artifact equipment, all reasonable to attain. However... you still need to have people attending. A 3 versus 3 match is just not fun at all because its simply too lopsided. One team gets a war, sam, and ranger and the other gets a blm, whm, and a pup? Well GG, the job balance already dictates who won that matchup. Similarly if a 3 v 3 has similar jobs but the players on one side have far superior skills the matchup is an auto concede for the lesser skilled players.
The reason old 60 cap was viable and fun was because it was regularly a matchup of 6 versus 6, 8 versus 8, or even 12 versus 12 (often more). Hell I still remember one very specific and memorable 22 v 22 Pashow match from back on Fenrir on a Saturday in JP prime hours (crazy game that one, over 400 petras scored both sides). The point is having a large enough number of players on each side balances the teams pretty well, and that was the reason the event was viable. You simply cannot replicate that ever again. Even if you could get interest it would be short lived, and when the attention span dropped the event would die off instantly all over again. The scheduling issues only further compound difficulty in getting people to show (One week NA prime is Tuesday, next its Sunday, then Saturday, then Thursday etc etc). It just isn't sustainable with the current state of FFXI's dwindled interest and populace on a whole.