Odin Might Be A Dead Server For PUGs

It has gotten to the point where any interaction you have in any context is for profit. No one "informing" you of anything is doing it for any reason other than money. (they're being sponsored, or own stock, or are pumping and dumping or straight selling you something MLM) Literally every human has become an influencer lol.

Every argument, every disagreement, every thing you see and do, everywhere, everytime, always. Is for money. So many people will say or do anything for a dollar. They don't believe the ***they say, it's just business. And business is everything.

Everyone is simply pandering to the audience that pays them.

I have max lvl Priwen, with augment.

Good ?

Yeah but my point still stands, all the content you listed off is comparable to what we have now. Back then, people finished stuff too just like you did and also got bored. Back then we had way more time gated content compared to now also. The content doesn't have less replay value compared to the past... it really is comparable and not as different as your first post made it seem.


After almost a decade of Sky/Sea/limbus, most were finished with that content and I remember a lot of LS having problems recruiting before Abyssea to keep people doing that content. Really, Limbus gear only had a few homam pieces and nashira, once you completed the important pieces like legs, people quit or stopped showing up. That was a common theme amongst a lot of content going forward, especially Abyssea. I can't even tell you how many people quit once they got their empy wpns, it was a joke in my shell that their "work schedule changed" magically after they finished a weapon.

I think thats pretty comparable to now except we have more options, less time gates or less wait time on them. You also need less people in general compared to back then, there was more mouths to feed.

Which is also funny when you examine it and realize some of these people are complaining and longing for a time that SE deliberately made things super drawn out to keep people subbed... They had huge wait times on quests, missions, battlefields. People had to wait a long time to reattempt certain battlefields like Bahamut and Divine Might. Everything had a huge timer locking you out or forcing you to do something. People just like to be handheld I guess, when they get so much freedom they burn thru content too fast. Everyone used to want all these restrictions erased on literally everything, I remember a lot of the threads. Now that they mostly have it they complain about "missing out" "FOMO" and say the game is not comparable to what they had in the past.

I personally think they should bring that back again and double down, we need long grinds and harder mobs. People need a carrot to chase and they dont know what they want, the company has to show them what they need. Isn't there some saying like that?

I get what you sayin, but lets not act like they aint doing that with post-abyseea content:
SoA missions were drawn out over 20ish months.
RoV was drawn out over 7 months (based on page creation date of first and last mission on wiki).
TVR started Aug 2020, and its still on going 2 1/2 years later. WotG still holds the record though (3 years 1 month).

I meant as far as purposely putting lock outs and JP midnight etc on progression

This thread got really derailed, but I think that there is a lot of potential in the Odin discord server. 280 members I think, and hopefully we can get even more.

I suppose when it comes to shouts, it might be good to post a hey, I'm going to be starting shouting at 5:30 PST for X event or something to that effect. Would allow players to plan ahead a bit more. Can be difficult when you see a shout for something you want to do, but you already made plans.

I agree with you, the server does have a lot of potential. Back when ody was new, we’d have yells in there all the time. Sadly I seem to have been the main one using it lately.

I really like the idea of having a way to form for content offline. Shame more people don’t use it.

My sub is ending soon due to IRL things, so it might become a ghost town soon idk.

It's been the same since i started the game like 7 years ago, why i started multiboxing which arguably ruins the game even more since no need to make a party. On the plus side multibox lets you inflate 1 or all accounts so can actually get in a PUG, there is also the option to make own static but not many people want to do that so good luck waiting on shouts.

The game didn't even have a pug scene at all until VW? or so, like at all. partly because /sh sucked.

You had a LS for everything and a time to show up, I literally had a timetable like when I was in college.

The only pug content was merits.

Having said that, I do like pug content. You meet new people and it makes stuff feel fresh, so I hope the new stuff they are adding at the end of VR is pug friendly.

There were very often shouts/PUGs for Zilart/CoP missions early in the game, but you are correct. Now, a large reason is that the game was a lot less instanced for the first decade than we have now. I can relate to the statement of "I literally had a timetable like when I was in college"...however one could easily argue that its even easier to have that schedule these days, and make it your own vs Fafnir's.

There were shouts all of the time during CoP and ToAU. Shouts for Assaults were the main thing for a good long little while after ToAU came out. It was admittedly for the more easily spammable ones, rather than the weird objective ones.

I actually got my first three rank ups from spamming the rock breaking assault in Lebros Caverns 6 times a week with PUGs.

Did about three chapters(Chapter 1, 3, and 5) of CoP in PUGs.

All of RoZ with my first Sky LS.

Most of ToAU in PUGs. Last 10 or so missions with LS mates.

Also beat ACP with PUGs because of the Salvage bans destroying my friends list.

But after ToAU, the game transitioned into WoTG which was mostly Campaign. Campaign was somewhat glorious in that it was overworld fights joinable by anyone. There were shouts here or there for missions when they were new by the LS-less, but I had an LS static by then. And the WoTG missions released so slowly that they didn't even finish it until the 3rd Abyssea add-on or thereabouts.

Then PUGs didn't become a thing again until Voidwatch, but that was only because VW took more people for the harder fights(at first), and Abyssea had killed most big LSes due to Atmas/Cruor buffs letting people lowman with little effort/tons of people quitting the game.

Which around that time at the 95 cap I got my first Absolute Virtue kill in a PUG playing as Corsair with +1 Empy with the relatively recent Perfect Defense zergs.

After that I don't know what happened to PUG scene during Adoulin's heyday. Just before Adoulin there was some shouts for PUGing Neo-Nyzul, but those were somewhat rare. But as Adoulin came out, I was in nuke school in the Navy, and before I was finished, I'd quit XI due to my ex, and thought I was never going back.

So I've got no idea what happened to PUGs in the Adoulin era. I missed out on Skirmish, Delve, and Wildskeepers for the most part.

I'm 50/50 on PUG. Yes, on the one hand you're meeting new people, but the flip to that is getting someone who is hoping to be carried because they don't have the gear, skill, or both. Likewise, those new people are here now, gone in an hour, and you're just as likely to forget them entirely vs. make any meaningful contact.

I, however, LOVED the reliance on your Linkshell and friend groups back in CoP/TaAU/WotG age because you truly had to depend and trust those around you. You weren't just playing a game with those people, you were experience FF life with those people. They were as close, if not closer, than some of your real life friends (and often that diagram overlapped). I deeply cherish this game in its early life for being difficult enough that you basically *couldn't* solo anything because it meant this Massive Multiplayer Online game put me in the situation of garnering human interaction, so so much more so than today of people only shouting to sell slots in a party for gil and trust system clears.

are you telling me i should play horizon

Or shout for support jobs that wants to do content so leader can play jobs that they want.

I meant it's as fair as it can be. If you want to play DD then you do the extra work to shout. If you want save shouting time you play support for other DD leaders.

The idea of the leader has to do the shout work AND play support job that they don't want to play suck ***, lol. It's like double the work but not getting any benefit lol.

It's more of a problem on a bigger server and less so on a smaller server.

On a small server you will likely see the same guy in the community again, and again, and again in a few LS that everyone has. So the investment generally has greater return.

Only if they stick around long enough. A lot of players drop in and out, RL and everything and not always around for regular things.

Also why existing groups on smaller servers are suspicious of sudden server transfers of characters geared up to the hilt.

Generally they're around for a week or two then server transfer all over again. Also begs the question why they left their server in the first place when they are so supremely geared and seemingly able to do top end content.

The main reason players server transfer from a big server to a small server is to offload highly priced equipment that they bought on AH, or crafted themselves, to sell on. Because smaller servers don't have anywhere near as many crafters, getting certain HQ equipment is far more difficult, or sometimes even impossible from the AH.

Therefore, many players have no choice but to pay through the nose compared to what they would on a big server where stock actually exists. The best geared players have the extortionate amount of gil required to be able to do that (because they have nothing else to buy), on top of not caring that it costs them real money to jump.

This is also the primary reason why SE won't merge smaller servers, because they make extra money from those who jump around playing the economy game. The vast difference in economies, combined with the transfers, only discourages SE from any mergers, despite how positive it would be for the average player on smaller servers.

I play on a small server and don't want merges.

And I am not talking about transferring mules to sell stuff on AH on small servers or vice versa. People on small servers often transfer to Asura to buy stuff on a mule then come back. Often they tell their friends and buy stuff in bulk so they don't all have to do it.

I am talking about geared main characters with high end (rare/ex) gear that suddenly show up on a small server expecting to be invited to stuff. They are often gone within a week.

XI has no instanced content, merging servers would ruin the game at this point. On Asura we accept the downsides, people on smaller servers like being able to do what they want when they want to do it. One of the main reasons I swap server is to do stuff like making an emp these days, cause it's so much easier.

Also the carpetbaggers were addressed in a recent patch when they nerfed dyna D stuff rarity. Prople can still do it, but you have a far bigger chance of losing a lot of money doing it now because there are people preying on carpetbaggers, and it's hard to sell big ticket items on more casual servers anyway.

It's barely even worth doing now, unless you do a lot of research.

So, as a person who's returning, highly interested in casual stuff with an eye toward getting back to endgame once I re-establish my gear and player skill level, would you recommend staying on Asura or transferring over to a smaller server?

I feel like moving to a smaller server runs the risk that everyone's already in their various cliques and getting into them will be a challenge, but Asura as a bigger server comes with the problem of not being in the know with a lot of the content, gear, and requirements that current FFXI has.

I'd look around in the servers sub forums to see if anyone is actively recruiting. It will take some digging unless someone sees this post and reaches out to you. Giving people your preferred days and times that you play, along with your jobs (and those you may be working on) is a good start.

Stay on Asura and see if you recognize anyone you used to play with while you get back into the hang of things. Its not like you're gonna log in and expect to be doing R25 Ody. If its dry, put out some feelers to the quiet servers here or on discord.

Yeah no instance content, Dyna D, Sortie, Odyssey, Omen and HTBF just dont exist.

I believe he meant it has nothing but instanced content, but that shouldn't matter unless you want to do Ambuscade on the first day after update, or you're doing Sortie before SE updates its backend. There are no waits for anything on smaller servers, so merging those together would not suddenly make wait times as bad or worse than Asura. I doubt it would come close.

The only players on smaller servers who don't want a merge are those who don't want extra crafters, or other organised linkshells enticing any of their players away. Or they don't care, because they already have their group of dedicated friends and having extra players may mean they have to wait 20 seconds longer to get into Ambuscade.

No he's technically correct. FFXI has "instanced" content in spirit but not in actual application. Most content has a set number of available areas that can allow a set number of groups to be in. Which is a far cry from newer MMOs that the server will actually spin up a new instance made just for you or your group meaning that queue times don't exist because there is no need for them.

So merging server would just destroy queue times for things like Ambu, Sortie, Omen, and Ody. While also making the zones which inexplicably don't have a queue frustrating to get into (this is why they made the cost changes to Shinryu HTMB).

Though this is just being pedantic and really depends on what your definition of "Instance" is but FFXIs system is garbage.

I’d advise staying on Asura. People from Odin who have went over there have been telling me how much better it is.

Ngl I’m debating going myself. Odin’s static’s are effectively full already too.

They aren't instanced in the way they are on other games, on other games the server can make as many instances of a zone as it wants. XI has set numbers of each zone duplicated, it can't make them up. they have to add more. They are adding more sortie zone duplicated next patch for instance.

I think the only thing that is instanced is mog houses.

I mean if I moved to Asura I'd be lying through my teeth to convince myself it was actually a good idea too.

Its funny, a large portion of one of my LS moved to Asura a while back and then all moved back to Odin shortly after commenting on how much it sucked.

I suppose the game will be different for different people, but I think Odin is a nice middle ground for NA population where you can still do most events when you want, but there is still a nice JP propped up economy. I think that the lack of shouts among other things is more a reflection of the current state of the game than it is the server.