Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

If they kill more OGs I wont like it!

Trying some PS1 era stuff

idk what a bott is, but they could ban bots if they cared

however merging servers would be moronic

Yeah, merging the servers would be a lose for everyone. Square-Enix gets less money from people transferring and players no longer have a choice as to how populated of a server they wish to join. Servers such as Asura, Odin, and Bahamut already have several thousand at peak hours and having all of them in one place would be extremely bloated.

The way server population is distributed right now lets you choose what kind of environment and experience that you want to play in. Leave it alone.

Have you heard of our lord and savior Asura server?

If my options were Horizon or Asura, I'm going to Horizon.

Asura's only role is to be the black market of FFXI.

"They should improve game health by merging servers"

Maybe a fusion of butt and bot.

That would mean those bots moved on from musache and bald Galkas to bulky mithras.

Whats undeniable an evolution.

After spending a lot of my vacation downtime trying to solve an issue with my TTRPG engine and going absolutely nowhere with it, I suddenly had a eureka moment today. The solution is simple (it doesn't make being a caster any extra complicated), it adds yet even more flexibility to the system, it let me add a cool new mechanic (casters can now combine their efforts into one big spell, a la FFXI's Meteor), and it fixed a few balance issues I had.

I was hoping to have a playable build by this point - y'know, after a combined nearly 70 hours in airports and airplanes - but I'm just happy at this point to have made progress. Even if it did take until a day after coming home...

Why would it be monoric ? Its monoric that 90 percent yells are botts and players just afk. Also bott. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/bott

This problem is not caused by small population nor it can be solved by merging servers.

Because the way FFXI content is designed now many endgame player only play with their static and organize pt on discord or LS chat, only log on when their static members are on.

Because of how endgame content doesn't favor PUG many people avoid PUG completely. Then you'd see 90% of shouts are bot because many people don't want to play with random.

If the source of the problem isn't server population, then there is no reason to merge, as it creates even more problems like super long queues.

No when delve was new you could yell fail Yell Again clear, IT WAS not TIME GATED its how they design new stuff its *** Stupid its not that its about organizing people through a static. than the game Feels empty when you create a new mid tier content that you cant yell for because if you had bad players you would get punished badly not just time Wasted that is a stupid design Sortie is not End game. Odyessy is Sortie should not be Time gated, Omen should not be Time gated, odyssey is fine as it is.

Remember when you had Leigon
you had VW *partially time gated*
Abyssea Seals/ Stones
Weapons to make
All these content were not Time gated like now they were smartly Time gated and u can extend time to Abyssea. i dont know if i did not explain it well am trying my english is as shitty as the new decision choices in FFXI

Just wait to the new content. If they are smart they will do it like echa and we'll be doing it for 5 years

Hey teacher leave the botts alone.

Its an extra subscription, ok?

Someone need to pay for the game to stay alive.

What we need is that all bots have a maechanism that, when they are told to leave, they simply cast warp and leave.

That would be fair.

I never said anything about the bots

The word is bot.

edit: it may be moronic that people stay logged in, probably blame the never improved login method.

What you're complaining about is modern game design because you lament the designs of games long past. The days when you could pay $60 for a full game experience without the need for DLC or playing everyday over the course of a year.

Why do you think Gacha Games are so popular or addictive?

It's about getting you to come back everyday to log in. You're supposed to choose how you spend your time or points. They don't want you to be able to just have everything arbitrarily or after grinding for 100hours sequentially. Time gates extend the life of the game and encourage repeat play due to the fear of missing out (players don't want to lose their points or miss a day).

The only problem with this philosophy of design is it cumulatively widens the gap between long term players and beginners (hence we're at a point where supports are almost always more popular for entry players).

I wouldn't agree with that. I would say PUG's can certainly accomplish current endgame, but the problem is who leads the PUG. They have to know the entirety of the fight as if they could do it themself. They have to vet players that they think have the proper equipment to accomplish the objective (which is more difficult in an era of gearswap when you don't necessarily know if someone has everything just from looking at their idle set). They then have to sternly communicate with their teammates what their roles are at different intervals of a fight. Calmly. There's not many people that have the proper type of character to run PUG's. Those that could just end up 5 boxing and mercing clears as it's much easier than arguing over who gets what drop.

What dissuaded people from PUG's was the idea that their extended effort could go unrewarded. Meaning, they could kill 1000 Ou's and never get the Regal Ring as they lose the roll to someone that just showed up for their first run. That has more to do with the xenophobia of the community. Long term players have either played together for a long time, are known names in the community, or start playing by themselves by means of multi-boxing. Of those long term players there is certainly xenophobia from server natives and those that are transfers or even just beginners. This is best exemplified on Asura where the markets are flush and bots run rampant. If you show up on the server with a stacked character people aren't going to automatically invite you to their group. They're going to project their insecurities onto you as they try to exclude you from their group. Worse, they might think you're trying to steal their spot on the team so to speak.

What I'm trying to say is: it's not the way the game is designed, but the sociology of the player base that has caused it to devolve into it's current state.

Someone has to run that bot. Maybe it's someone in your linkshell that is running some on the down low to funnel into their main account, but they aren't going to advertise that type of behavior.

Even the endgame. It's not hard when someone can 5-box it to merc for someone. That means the problem is the playerbase rather than the game design.

SEASON 2 "late 2023"


And new south park next month!

Ah hell yeah! Invincible news!

... so probably early 2024 then...

Yeahhhhhhhhh that's the unfortunate reality. Just push this back and push that back and cancel this and rewrite that and new more covid and it just goes on and on.

Bro what? A whole bunch of pre-Abyssea content was time gated:
Dyanmis (72hr)
Einherjar (72 hr)
Assault / Salvage (21 hrs)
Kings (21-24)
Sky (bit of a reach, but pop item NM's having 5+ hr repop is a decent time gate, considering its popularity as the endgame event at the time)
Limbus (72 hr I think?)
Voidwatch was absolutely time gated
ANNM (jp mid)
ENM (72 hrs I think?)


Voidwatch's time gating isnt noticeable to a 10+ year old char, who has accumulated 4000 stones. But back in 2008, I dont think voiddust existed yet, you could only use 6 KI at a time, and no one was sitting on 100+ stones.

Omen's time gating is fine. You missed a day? No biggie, use the KI tomorrow. I dont like the time gating on Ody and Sortie. The concept of "haha you didnt do this event today, you've fallen behind permanently sucks to be you" is pathetic.

Yup, they've been doing it since day1. Just another person ignoring facts to proclaim doom and gloom. Oh but we have to worry about fear of missing out now, on a 2 decade old game.

Perhaps I should elaborate more from the last post I've run PUG for years, so I know the difficulty about PUG, which IMO is totally related to how the game is made.

One of the common example is that in FFXI if I shout for a DD for a difficult content, there is a very good chance that I'll get someone who lacks DPS. Even if I add "r15 rema only" there is still a very good chance that I'll get someone with r15 rema but unable to do good DPS due to low quality sets.

This doesn't happen to MMO with a gear score system. You either meet the gear score for the content and able to enter, or you don't so you can't enter. But FFXI's character performance is less straight forward, you can't judge a DD's capability with one or two gears or sets.

What's the solution? Personally, I collect parse data as often as possible and only do harder content with someone that I know. Which leads to DD spot rarely available in the PUG community.

(Or I can request gear check, which often leads to people being offended so I stopped bothering.)

Even you recognize the problem here:


This is entirely FFXI's problem. Although I personally enjoy the "use spreadsheet to collect the gears and build sets" gameplay, I can't say this is accessable to most of the video game players.

Finding DD is actually the more straight forward part. Other job that requires more varied gameplay choice is much harder.

Which leads to what you said here:



FFXI is designed to be complicated by nature, and there is rarely any "visual cues" like red boxes in other MMO telling people what to do next. that's why PUG leader has to communicate all these things because most game players aren't interested in reading many pages of info on forums and wiki before attending a fight. They are interested in playing.

That's why I believe the source of the problem is how the game is made. People who are interested in reading and researching will forever be in the minority. You can't change how players behave, you can only make games differently so it's more accessable to more players. But if SE simplify the gameplay existing player will complain too, as it become a different game. So in the end FFXI stays as it is, as people avoid PUG so they don't have to deal with it.

BRO I DID NOT SAY PRE ABYSSEA
FROM 2011/2012 NOTHING was gated outside of einherjar 2 nothing from mid tier content was Time gated and in seekers delve was the end game for a long time and it was not gated, Abyssea was a *** masterpiece key items would stack, and u can Extend, Voidwatch is the same thing thats what i mean, its not End game its mid tier content, Sortie is midtier omen is mid tier but but they *** it up with Time gating you get punished heavily for pugging Sortie THATS WHAT AM COMPLAINING ABOUT and there is no interaction with players in the zones abyssea was fun u would compete on 15 min repops nms and what not too am just saying the game was better socially and Design wise.

I used to take every account through rhapsodies end, it's truly self inflicted torture.