If YOU Could Be A Developer For The Next Year...

People also missed this little tidbit:

So, basically making Blitzer's Roll useless. I mean, who doesn't already have 25% equipment haste already?

Given their presumed budget, FFXI's current devs are doing a pretty close approximation of what I'd do. They've created a content delivery system (Ambuscade) that requires pretty minimal effort to update. Swap models, design one new fight, swap rewards, release. I lack their metrics but if I was them then I would probably create a year worth of Ambuscade content before doing anything else. Monthly Ambuscade feels like the minimum content required to keep players engaged. FFXI is obviously a low priority project for SE right now. Its team probably don't know when their budget/resources are getting pulled and they need shelved content to whip out if SE decides to reallocate their only programmer, or we could start going months between shitty Ambuscade updates and that would certainly lose the remaining playerbase.

After ensuring FFXI's playerbase would have a year of ambuscade content, I'd switch to low-effort content creation, mostly by building on otherwise-abandoned content. FFXI players are motivated by tangible character advancement, which typically takes the form of gear improvements, but also typically view such efforts as a long-term investment, which means they aren't open to being motivated by outdating their gear very often. We need to come up with another way to motivate people to grind relatively sparse content. Below I will list what I'd do with three events and two more general changes to keep people playing FFXI, as well as my estimation of the Reward/Effort (R/E) ratio for the team. I would recommend prioritizing the high R/E items and then working my way down to Medium, probably never doing Low but wishing that I could.

Monstrosity's abandonment still tops my charts of worst decisions SE has made in the last few years:
* Highest R/E - There are, IIRC, 3 families of half-implemented monsters/instincts. Finish implementing these.
* High R/E - Make the Monstrosity quest less obscure (wtf, the bottom of Pashhow?) and make it harder to accidentally lock yourself in PvM mode as a player.
* Medium R/E - Create a cheer-like system for Monstrosity, where you have one cheer slots and gain access to a cheer for taking a monster to 99 (some nerfed version of its instincts) and another cheer for taking all monsters in an entire family to 99 (whatever SE wants).
* Low R/E - Scale Monstrosity to iLevel, add an uncapped PvM zone, rebalance PvM, change the reward assignment system, and add real rewards. I'd balance it so the barrier to entry is higher for Monipulators than Player, and the reward for Monipulators is something only hardcores would be interested in while the Player rewards would be immediately useful for players of any skill/commitment level (perhaps Voidwatch materials with the drop quantities/rates being proportional to the monipulator's kill streak and the ability to buy unique, lower-strength cheers). I'd want to make it beneficial for Monipulators to become notorious on their server. Perhaps you would get extra monipulator-cheer slots for every 500 players in your current kill streak.

MMM had/has potential and scales to 99 pretty well but doesn't really scale to iLevel.
* High R/E - Make MMM scale off the entering player's iLevel. Add 119 weapons+accessories to Voucher 07 and 09 NMs if the entering player's iLevel is over 99, and scale drop rates and difficulty based on iLevel.
* Medium R/E - Add new runes to the lockbox of Voucher 01-03 that change the final boss of Voucher 09 (and thus his rewards), giving a second Ambuscade-like content delivery pipeline.
* Low R/E - Provide information about synthesis recipes in Voucher 04 and make sure the synthesis skill runes give a unique +1 skill bonus inside MMM. Rebalance Voucher 05 for 119 and enhance belt augments to match. Figure out some way to make Voucher 06 fun. Eliminate the lobby area.

Job Master BCs are currently very difficult and only offer bragging rights/lockstyle gear, so I've never even seen someone joke about doing them. Currently, this is probably pulling equal amounts of dev time to Ambuscade and very few people are even attempting the content. In order to make it more appealing:
* N/A R/E - Let entry items also be bought for 50 JPs. Turn entry item in to a Key Item. This won't really help anyone or improve the content, but it's dumb that you need to get Job Master (can't spend any more Job Points) so that you can buy entry items to the Job Master BC with Merit Points.
* Medium R/E - Create 9 items that permanently boost stats when consumed (HP+10, MP+10, INT/MND/CHR/VIT/DEX/STR/AGI+1) with a max of 10 boosts to each stat per character and assign one to each Job Master BC. These BCs would be the only way to obtain these items.
* Medium R/E - Keep adding new Job Master BCs until there are 9.
* Medium R/E - If this content is popular, add a tenth Job Master BC that can only be entered with a set of 9 KIs obtained from each previous BC. Make beating it remove the caps on job specific merit points.

RMEEs are currently in demand and still drive people to do a lot of old content, but they do so inefficiently because half of them suck.
* Medium R/E - Rebalance RMEEs and Relic WSs so every 119v3 RMEE has a use to at least one of the jobs that can wear it. This will ultimately increase demand for RMEEs and thus increase motivation to do old content.

Job Adjustments to shift the balance of power a little every 6-8 months.
* High R/E - Doing something like making Monk good again would inspire people to gear their monks, which would lead them to make RMEEs, do content, etc.




So yeah, adjustments like that. I could further go into the FFXI design things I wish they'd change or the myriad of specific things I'd adjust, but this post is far too long already and honestly those changes won't retain nearly as many players as the above, content-providing adjustments would (with the possible exception of fixing the instancing systems, static BC systems, and merging servers).

bring back pankimon

Pankration had a huge amount of half-implemented depth, but it was so unpopular the first time around that I don't think players would go for a reboot.

It would be if you could summon your pet outside, in full parties and alliances.

I feel like the game doesn't lack for content.

I'd revamp the chat windows so that they maintained connection and presence regardless of zoning.

Everything would be same-account sendable. If I want to transfer all my RME to a mule and start over, what harm is there?

An 80 slot account-bank would be nice, accessible from all mules.

I'd add a LS bank for items, not so much gil. Went on a crafting spree and have a bunch of NQ to give away? Offload it to the guild bank so people can have it at their leisure.

Implement at least some addon functionality so that addons could at least know things like window state. So when the items window is open, Timers is automatically hidden. This could also be achieved by letting addons write to a layer that open windows would be on top of.

Addressing the throttling on bandwidth speeds for sure.

All content meant for the 119+ era would give decent CP and JP. The funniest thing about this game right now is that the more a particular section of content requires you to understand the workings of your job, the less CP/JP you gain. As matter of fact, following a good blu or bst is second only in cp rate to mind-numbing party-grinding. (And not always second, some parties suck).

Add an overriding lockstyle command so that it locks people to the gear you see them in so that the damn geos stop blinking every time they cast a spell (they're limiting themselves if they're not). Blinkmenot did this 10 years ago, surely SE can figure out how.

Maybe make all boxes accessible anywhere like sacks/satchels. It used to be the these were special, now the others just suck.

A toggle-able command with a 180s (or more) cooldown that let players shut off the skillchain properties of their weaponskills so that if you happened to be melee-heavy, you didn't have people sitting on TP. Even if skillchains aren't relevant to the strategy and you have a dnc and one other dps, you might see higher DPS by having the other dps shut off their skillchain interaction so the dnc (or sam, poor guys lol) could play their job to max potential while the other ws'd freely. With deliberate self-sc being easy for several jobs and incidental SC being easy for many, the player TP system has decayed kind of poorly.

All that's from week 2 forward. Week 1 would be making Ambuscade suck less. The KI ping-pong, the 50 trades per cape. The capes themselves.. The JSE-enhancements of the capes should be made key items and the capes themselves should be made all-jobs.

That would defeat the whole purpose of Pankration, and the purpose of beastmasters.

Better yet, give BSTs access to multiple pets.

Who needs alliances when a BST can summon 5 trusts and 6 pets?

Sic all the things!

Add silver and gold level vouchers to the RoE system, offering higher volume rewards to what the bronze vouchers convert to. e.g gold gives pluton/beit/boulder boxes.

Add these vouchers to lots of old content, in order to make them appealing to higher level players.

Massively expand RoE generally, fill in the obvious gaps in content covered: For instance add tasks to cover NM's in more areas than just the old middle-lands, cover a wider range of events. Add higher tier versions of existing general combat challenges.

Add a system that makes use of excess JP's. Why track the excess when you have no means to spend or lose it? The current situation makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Either lower the cost of Brews in Escha, or make kills made under it count towards aeonic quest completion. Or, simply remove it altogether because as it stands its an exorbitantly expensive joke item.

Oh and one last thing, reinstate full strength revitalizers. Price them higher if neccessary, because why not? Its not like noone knows about MMM revit team mazes!

Alot of good ideas.

New battles. Spirit walkers solo and hard 119 fight

Scnm castles, revamp to 99 or 119.

Add missing mob blu spells. Even if suck it add fun and completeness to the job.

Give sch access to flash nova, 196 ws and sime ws like xacatlism.

For sch and whm, finish off banish spells.

Add blu mage trust, and the sch who is traped in time for trust.

Smn, add that bohlmar new avatar to smn.

Hard mode fights of those 75 mobs who wotg that had weapons like blurred sword.

Relic for all jobs.

For the 18 man event where three waves of nms came, aa, spirit warrios, then av and kirlin.

Update crafting

So they can run through it like a wrecking ball (obligatory)? Through HTBF and UNM, SE has made old content worthwhile to participate in.


While I do want some meaningful way to spend excess JP...

This design exists because JPs to be spent had to be held somewhere. Though I wasn't playing then, I'm sure people appreciated being able to hold them while waiting for the system to be expanded (up to 2100). It takes a small amount more programming to say "Okay, the player is at 2100 JP, stop rewarding them CP".

i remember when you was on siren we rocked those wotg NM for blurred sword , how the hell you been ?

One job should not be able to self-cap it's own Magic Haste, have second best accuracy to a Ranger while being a melee job, have outstanding defensive buffs it can cast and forget, be able to heal itself to full with one spell, be on most of the best melee equipment in the game, have the most overpowered weapon skill in the game again with all the best equipment in the game to power it up further and have even more utility beyond this.

When BLU is literally all groups shout for or when people leave groups because BLU x2-3 are not the melee then it needs a nerf. How it hasn't yet is beyond me.

That was a typo, what I get for writing before I go to bed. Equipment Haste is worthless you're right, I meant to say 'Job Ability Haste'.

No idea what you're talking about. The only job anyone shouts for is geo.

Add player gear to Ballista and Brenner. This would allow players to actually have incentive PvP. Also, allow gear changes in Ballista, but just /lockstyle everyone so nobody can blink you to death.

I think most people would consider PVP if it weren't a hassle to set up. You have to do a freakin' quest with cutscenes just to do Ballista, let alone find people to fight. If they wanted it to catch on, they should've just:

- Made a small accessible zone featuring the PVP arenas and other useful things like MH, AH, Porter Moogle, etc.
- Multiple arenas for battle (to prevent congestion), with spectator viewing
- No pre-requisites, costs, or pointless cutscenes/fluff
- Simplify registration (any number of ways they could handle this)
- On/off for items, gearswaps, 1hrs, even subjobs I guess
- Teams (including uneven numbers), free-for-alls, single duels, allows for Monstrosity (which itself needed expanding), level caps
- No pointless Capture the Flag on the side

Traveled the world. Just started getting back into ffxi after years 3x away maybe four. Hope all is good for you. And hope your server is healthy.

The thing is that blm isn't competing pt slot with any job. They are the only offensive caster job in this game and the only viable job in mage setup, the only alternative that may replace blm in mage setup is probably sch rdm geo etc, and those jobs aren't made to be real caster DPS. Nerfing BLM aren't giving other job more advantage for pt slot.

On the otherhand there are multiple melee jobs that are competing with blu for pt slot in melee setup. All these melee jobs are competing with a job that can self cap haste, has multiple shadows, high defense, access to strong crit ws which also lv3 sc with itself, and multiple high tier dd job traits.

The fact that BLU takes dps slot away from other jobs is the reason why ppl cry blu nerf, while blm nerf does no good to anyone, only makes woc T4 unbeatable. You can argue that "your war drg mnk nin sam drk must suck if you don't get invite", competition is still competition and blu just gains huge advantage.

I would introduce the Foolkiller +1 with a great latent effect description. Then I'd sit back for the rest of the year as people tried to find the non-existent way to activate it.

Not that I disagree with what you're saying; but in the scheme of things what is BLU taking DPS slots away from content wise? Generally anything you melee(may have changed a little with the agi changes) and is shouted for is lower level content. Being completely honest, GEO is the most broken job in the game and it isn't even close. But, most people that complain are too lazy to make their own party and go whatever job they want lol.

On Asura, I have seen shouts for BLU for the most mundane content, like Escha Ru'ann T1/T2s, Ambuscade or even for APEX parties.

Anything you melee consists of low-mid tier content that makes up about 95% of the games total current content, so...

There's like 15 things in the game you manaburn over meleeburn.

Yeah, but you can cut that down by a lot of things you actually need a party for. Most of the lower level content you can solo with trusts.

There are 4 things about jobs Id address:

1) Blu: in general I dont really have anything against Blu, as I know that if you play the other jobs right you can compare pretty well (even if many ppl dont realize that). However, I do agree with the statement above that Haste should be removed from Mighty Guard. Being able to haste yourself is ok as many jobs have ways to either directly haste or reduce delay (hello to fast cast, haste samba, dual wield, martial arts, ...). However, the idea of the whole haste thingy is that you haste yourself as far as you can and then a support job adds the little rest you need to cap. Yes other jobs can reach delay cap (Nin just one example) but NOT haste cap on their own. Thus, for a Nin additional magical haste will always increase DPS more than for a blu as more DW can be compensated than for Blu.
So Blu is not only strong cause it can haste itself but because in party content the support jobs can go for a different buff instead. To balance this I think haste should be removed from Mighty Guard or not stack with other forms of Blu haste.

2) Geo: Buffs are ok! Cor and Brd and even Smn have nice buffs. Not all as powerful, admitted, but minor buffs to these jobs could handle all that and keep in mind that Smn and Cor e.g. are pretty strong DDs as well. Would be pretty OP if you had such a strong DD with buffs as powerful as Geo....
Back to Geo. What makes Geo OP imho is that debuffs cannot be resisted by mobs. Not sure how to deal with that without rendering the job useless, but debuffing jobs like Rdm are highly devalued by that fact. The only thing that debuffwise is needed that Geo cannot provide is Sleep.

3) Sch or better SCs: the fact that Sch can stand back and SC comfortably without having to TP or even care about any form of evade or resist is maybe the biggest issue. There is no incentive for the good old: melees SC and mages MB tactic. Skillchains are supposed to work from 'weapon'skills not magic skills. The idea of a sch solo sc is ok but that a L1 SC MB is as powerful as a L3 SC makes it unbalanced. Reduce SC bonus for all SCs, create a boost by SC level and increase the boost for a higher number of weaponskills performed. That way ppl would have an incentive to use melees to create powerfull 5 Step double Dark or whatever to get the most out of a MB. then you can even drop the reduction for multiple MBs during one SC. Sch would still be good as it can contribte to SCs and/or solo to improve its Macc on big nukes by MBing but it wouldnt render melees an obstacle for MB setups anymore.

4) Items: a lot of discussions about Bst and Dawn Mulsum. As it is currently I dont see any need for a change for Bst. Not even Dawn Mulsum. However, Id change the other items instead. Most HP/MP restore medicine is (lets face it) pretty useless in actual fighting situations. Too long activation times, too long cool down, too long ability lock after usage, too little effect.
Instead of nerfing Mulsums, just buff potions and stuff. Make them % heal as well. Quicker activation. Let them be used on other players(!) so a whm can use items if he is silenced or out of MP. And remove medicated status from most medicine. Then not only bst can just "buy" a win solo by stacking up on Mulsums but Items in general would get a more tactical role for all jobs.

Well I rarely see people shout for blu. On Bismarck, when a DD is needed, the shouts are usually for "DD," unless they really need something special like blank gaze. It's not fair for everyone else that SE should nerf blu just to deal with the bad habits of people on 1 server. People on Asura need to change their attitudes.

And when people say that 1 job should not be allowed to do all those things, by what authority do they say that? Those people don't make the rules. If blu can self cap haste (btw, it's never for 100% of the time) and use CDC and have good tp and ws gear, well SE made it like that, therefore blu has the right to be like that.

Also, back when delve was the big thing and mnks were all the rage, people were crying that mnks needed to be nerfed, and look at mnk now. Seriously, what's the endgame here? Will all the emos only be happy when all melee jobs are ruined and useless?

Ask SE to buff your jobs, STOP asking for nerfs.

I'm not really here to call for BLU nerfs. I do think it is worth mentioning that buffs and nerfs force the community to re-evaluate current job standings. They are by no means a bad thing if they are done on a cycle as well.

Keep in mind that FFXI is a game built around being able to play multiple jobs so nerfing BLU in favor of buffing another job isn't a bad thing. If the BLU nerf is to bad then they can buff them again ect.

MOBAs do this sort of thing all the time and it creates a pretty healthy environment.

The players will only react to changes not just to the whims and musings of everyone else.

I have a blue as well as several well geared jobs. If they nerf blue it might be the end of me as well as many others. Besides? Why nerf blue when u can buff other melees? I'm ok if they buff monk/other dds to surpass blue.

You can't just continually buff things, if you keep building things up eventually they will get to high. Nerfing and Buffing is required to keep the game challenging will also shift class focus.

Don't know what I'd do for sure, but I'd try all of this:

• The 2.5 second delay between weaponskills before a skillchain can be made would be removed. The end of the window for creating or continuing a skillchain would remain unaffected.

• If a skillchain is made and another WS is used with the same property as that skillchain during the same SC window, that extra WS will create the same skillchain with a reduced bonus similar to repeated Magic Bursts. Continuing the skillchain as normal will still be possible and the initiating WS in each "step" will always inflict full damage as it does currently. An individual player may only contribute to each step once without continuing or restarting a skillchain.
  Examples:

  • Stardiver > Resolution (Frag) + Savage Blade (Frag) > Blade: Shun (Light)
  • Drakesbane > Expiacion (Dist[Scis]) + Resolution (Dist[Scis]) + Tachi: Fudo (new chain)
  • Apex Arrow > Expiacion (Dist) + Resolution (new chain)

• The penalty to EXP/CP rates in a party or alliance of any size would be abolished.

• Special attack rounds from monsters such as Ironclads and Narakas may be countered, retaliated, and can trigger spikes effects.

• President Karst trust is added, dude has Regain aura and doesn't like you.

this bores me now