December 2023 Version Update

I think hitting one stretch goal but not the second means the goal was set adequately(or the numbers were adjusted adequately). A goal that gets hit every time isn't a goal at all. I don't think there's much to be inferred about it, just wait and see how they do next round and hope it's a more interesting set of objectives.

Hitting the stretch goal means only 5000/80000 bodies did your thing.

6k isn't some amazing improvement, but through that lens it's not something to be proud of either

"Oh if it weren't for that darn congestion, we'd have had 24000 people do it, but 5k is good too, right fellas"

See now, if we hit the second goal, they couldve been like awe geeze, you guys are the champions of the world, we under estimated you go team such amazing players and all that *** kissery. PR 101. Underpromise, over deliver and all that jazz.

I was wondering about the math on this, are there currently 80,000 subs, or 80,000 characters? because myself, and I'm sure many players have mules, and those certainly shouldn't be considered for this kind of event. Of the people I know that have mules, in my LS, we have about 30 active players, 4 that I know of don't have any mules, 2 only have 2, and the rest have 8+ with 3 having 15, so it's fair to estimate the average player having 8 total characters, so at best given that statistic, 12.5% of the population would contribute, at best.

factor in that the devs chose to implement this event during the most holiday packed time of the year, and you have already low attendance meeting a much spaller player base than they assumed, so 5-6% participation seems about right.

Another detail that certainly hurt this was the fact that we just came off a very ambuscade heavy month, so I'm sure a lot of people were already burnt out after last month.

We don't actually know how many subs they are, it's just numbers sourced from XIAH's AH data. Assuming 'do it' means spend 2 hours hitting every single goal, every day, during the holidays is also unrealistic. You can contribute without maxing it out, and plenty of active chars are probably just on autobill and never touched.

All we know is that their original goal was ridiculously out of touch with what actually happened.

It's the beginning of what the new management cycle looks like and sets the expectations for what maintenance mode might produce for us. Considering it was 1/4 of a original targets, it's definitely a failure, but that doesn't mean it's a significant one. They asked for feedback within the same month they launched which is telling. That month being a month after they originally said it was coming...

I agree entirely. I have watched this as the train wreck that it is. It has my attention because I'm truly curious if they can salvage this. I'd honestly love it if they would.

It's not like their website for the event is terrible. The idea in theory is perfectly good. Their gold tier rewards are demotivating and abysmal, but there is still something worthwhile that might come out of this. Is this the beginning of them actually giving a ***or just more of the same?

So did you guys win something?

That's pretty easy to do when they control the reporting system. Their reaction to the initial embarrassment makes me think they picked the end result they wanted and made up the numbers to fit. I'm sure they would have preferred a legit win, but they clearly had a vested interest in seeing Vanabout succeed regardless of player participation or enthusiasm for the event.

(NSFW language)
It doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, but if they wanted people to trust their numbers they shouldn't have moved the goalposts. Let us fail, apologize after the fact, do better next time.

My dumbass grinded to Gold for the funsies, then cashed in EXP instead of Exemplars....

I wasn't paying attention then saw "You obtain 13900 limit points" and groaned....

It seems the overall reward is broken? or not available yet? it's still listed as 10,000 exp or exemplars and even though you have the option to claim nothing happens.

Yup, this is just like SE's "Ask us questions and we'll select some to answer/respond to" ....and the questions they answer are totally bogus.

I noticed that too, I 'm going to guess that yes, it is broken for the time being

The login items are really starting to be lame, they are really lazy and giving away the look of items that take effort to get. Which is a cardinal sin in the mmorpg universe.

The new 500 login points item are just Denouements, and even though they are nothing to serious players a lot of people put a lot of effort to get them.

While I am not going to pat SE on the back for their efforts for Login Campaigns - this is the model for Dragon Fangs, not Denouements.

Which, realistically, is even worse for those who have the real deal (although you have been able to get cosmetic versions of other Rank 1 weapons for years now so this one is technically overdue).

"Starting"?

They were good once?

The Abyssea item one isn't awful, but they've only run it once in the last few years.

There was the occasional good cosmetic that doubled as an easy to get red proc weapon, as some weapons have some limited options, plus the odd mount that someone out there wanted here and there. Now you just wait for an emp item campaign to drop, preferably with a ton of mules if you dont mind the additional cost for a month

FFXI is laughable with their login points and the current campaigns. I feel bad for returning players with good memories realizing they haven't updated this crap for years. Pathetic. Developers should be skinned for their terrible update ethic and should be terminated.

it's like they don't even play enjoy understand wish to make it better want to retain players get new players Make the game fun care about this game.

All they need to do is forget it was ever a PS2 game and make the launcher and getting into the game smooth and update the graphics (which we all know we can do already) and the game would be infinitely better. There's tons of content they could easily add hard modes to with gear/augments too.

When PlayOnline is still a thing 20 years later, probably the most hated and most useless launcher in the history of software, you know nothing will change.

The Impish Box was nice but apparently it was to nice, as it is not a permanent fixture @ the 1500 level.

Seemed more like an attempt to boost participation. I'm not sure that many people cared to be honest.

NOOOO IT WAS A HEAD OF ITS TIME!!! BUT IT WAS FULL OF ***REMAMBER WHEN THEY SAID THEY WILL MAKE MANY ONLINE GAMES IN PLAYONLINE!!! BUT THEY DELETED TETRAMSTER!!!!!! I USED TO PLAY IT!!

I'd give my right arm for a Tetramaster remake. It was a fun game and I liked the artwork and card stats.

I still dunno why people hate playonline launcher so much, it does its job fine. What's the big deal?

It updates the game with little problem, it has a built in integrity checking system, built is message system and flist, login is within 30 seconds and it has good security.

It sucked back in the day cause it took forever to install, but that's not such a big deal these days.

30 seconds with a half dozen keypresses, and it goes half speed if not in focus, this is why everyone hates it and we all know it

the file integrity system uses an awful system designed for dialup that takes 10x longer than it should, but updating is rare enough this wouldn't bother anyone too much if the actual login time wasn't so long

It’s a bad login by modern standards, but you can still do the whole thing in under a minute. When you end up staying logged in for a few hours most days it’s really not a big deal.


I didn’t expect it to last. It was clearly added to the pool to get players who otherwise wouldn’t have done the fight to give it a try. Get em hooked on the rewards so they keep coming back for it. What better way to promote participation in the only new content they came out with in months.

20 extra seconds logging in, where you have to pay attention to it, daily for a year is over 2 hours waiting for those prompts to press enter. obviously it's gonna vary if you stay logged in overnight or multibox or just plain don't play daily, but it's still wasted time with zero benefit whatsoever because nobody uses any of the social features of playonline any more

it's not game ruining, but it's definitely annoying, and i would imagine most new players to find both the registration and the login process obnoxious. there's something to be said for how quickly you can install and get into horizon, a modern launcher that handles registration key/POL accounts/wardrobes/etc and gets ingame quickly would make the game much more accessible to new players and be a welcome addition for veterans

it's probably not the most important thing SE could fix, but it's still bad

Lets not forget it might be the first launchet that could launch multipile games with news/message, but god remember the *** paymeny method through playonline it was like a battlefield loading into loding into game id activation with that yellow crystal background lol

I can’t disagree it’s inefficient, but if the extent of the time lost is a couple hours in a year that’s pretty insignificant. I lose minutes at a time on my daily commute just because a pair of traffic lights are out of sync on the way. You end up waiting at the first when it’s red, only for it to turn green and the next one to turn red at that moment. And if the first is green you always get the second one red. It’s highly inefficient but it’s been that way since forever. If 20 seconds on pol login is a couple hours a year I’d hate to know what that adds up to. I’d rather see them fix some of the lag issues in Dynamis and Sheol c. The lag you get when a bunch of mobs are pulled is way too high. True story, we’ve had multiple instances of having the alliance just vanish in dyna jeuno and bastok because we ended up with massive piles of mobs loaded on the screen by the fountain in jeuno or above the alchemy guild in bastok. The lag was so bad the player characters just loaded out until the mobs died.