May 8th, 2022 Livestream Thread

There is this also:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/55210-Freshly-Picked-Vana-diel-44-Digest?p=614384#post614384


Sure surprised us all, with lack of anything substantial.. There are more instances of these teases too, so really you are just trying to twist the knife in the wounds because its really not hard to see why people were expecting something. Again, 12k+ viewers, all NA players commenting with hopes for something in the chat, a lot of ppl expected something from this.

This is probably the only quote I've seen that can be construed as teasing something on the anniversary. Everything else either refers the time after it or is just talking about events/celebrations.

It works this way if you are a conscious consumer, but it isn't the current reality. The consumer is not on the top of the food chain ladder, he is just another form of a product. Using advertisements, social pressure, politics, manipulations, and other forms of communication they can to some degree control what you want. Everyone wants to belong somewhere, they want to be popular, be right, etc., so... let's make them our selling products to others. So you are at the same time consumer and the product. If you will put a good enough campaign showing that everyone needs to buy some random girl bathwater, and you will put enough social pressure, the nonconscious consumers will go and buy it.


And it isn't investor/shareholder/consumer fault, this is just a (sad?) reality.

I think it might be difference in what we as NA/EU playerbase values and what developers and maybe even Japanese playerbase value.

We are Vana'diel site is probably valued really high by devs. It's pretty huge, there is tons of info about development, interviews and many more nostalgia there now and that probably took lots of work.

Stream like yesterday is also something they count as substantial. Presentation, set, interviews etc. It's probably big deal for small team they have.

There is probably something more that will be qualified as celebration too at 16th.

Now NA/EU playerbase mostly doesn't care about stuff like this. SE *** this up further by ignoring language barrier and not providing translation to streams. NA/EU playerbase mostly care about in-game content and not cosmetic events, but endgame events. That's the problem I see here I think.

That being said I still feel like people are ignoring the fact that TVR is now probably bigger than any of the 3 mini expansions we got in the past and it's only half way done. Full TVR including possibly new endgame battlefield and new area at the end is imo something between mini and full expansion. Again NA/EU playerbase doesn't care because there is no substantial rewards from it for now, just CSs and fights mostly. I remember how people hated on Odyssey when they added it and it almost turned 180 when they added armor sets. Simply putting carrot at the end of the stick changed opinions about event from terrible to great, with few cons like moglophone not stacking and locked sj.

Even by the standards people are placing on it - it was a disappointing stream. And they have mentioned big job updates, and alluded to big updates for the 20th. I don't think people read too much into those. At the very least they were written to be ambiguous.

Some hints towards things that will be happening eventually without even showing some gear, or hinting at how the new weapons will look. Not showing off a zone or battlefield content.

More vague allusions to the facts things will be coming eventually, after 2 years of telling us the 20th anniversary will have new things to do.

I hope that some of that merch becomes available outside of Japan, but I'm not even hopeful for that at this point.

If I recall correctly they said they were planning to make a bunch of individual job adjustments and then follow-up with something that would adjust all jobs at the same time. Fairly certain that's pretty much what we got after they added RNG's Hover Shot as final individual adjustment (unless I'm misremembering) and then started with master levels.

In other words, more stats and a bigger SJ impact seems to mean the same as job balancing to them, for whatever reason. Or maybe they are holding off on adjustments until after they can see what the landscape is like with ML99 and Empy+3, but that's gonna be a while.

I don't think they are planning for ML above 50.
I'm not saying it will never happen, just that they stated quite clearly that for the time being they have no intention to look past that, stating that for now the cap for ML will be 50.

yeah, that could be true. Though I swear I remember something being said that jobs being adjusted to make less playable jobs become more relevant in content, maybe that's coming later. who knows

Ah, my bad. Did they state this in the livestream or sometime before then? I haven't been keeping up with the news and was under the impression everyone still was expecting it to go all the way to ML99 since I remember some discussion about SJ levels at 68 or 69.

yes

I wouldn't read too much into it Aerix.
They stated their current opinion on the topic (and I have no reasons to believe they were lying), but things could always change in the future, who knows?

savage

normally i'm in the "SE didn't promise anything" boat, but the posts that were posted here have changed my mind a little, but only a little.

this was neither "chock full of content" nor was it a "surprise".

the best thing this company could do for its western playerbase is sell the rights just like they have for some of their other games, they clearly aren't capable of developing a game their players enjoy anymore.

You speaking for who exactly? I enjoy it.
Also what would be the changes you think player base would enjoy and new owner could provide? I'm like 100% sure any development would be at cost of p2w microtransactions, because nothing else would provide enough income to even invest money in buying FFXI. vertical progression every 3 months would be another thing to keep players involved. You would maybe enjoy that, I wouldn't. Also they can't sell it anyway, because it's part of the main FF series.

P2W micro transactions like wardrobes?

aren't you the kid who's constantly trying to argue anyone that will about mechanics?

also do you do anything current content wise? all i see you ever talking about is hanging out with your trusts.

i'm not sure i care what your opinion of the game is

any new owner that'd pay the salary for 1 dedicated full-time developer could provide fixes to those instance problems you're always suffering from, while repairing a ton of other technical debt

if they're actually taking in 10m/year in revenue like was postulated earlier in this thread, there's tons of room for it to remain extremely profitable for a small studio while also receiving quite a bit more than SE offers

(i don't think anyone would buy it even if SE offered, just saying)

To be real for a moment though, when the tone turned serious towards the end there and spent 2 minutes grimly announcing that Matsui was not retiring (wtf?), I thought they were definitely announcing an FFXI sunset date.

That "hey, Matsui is (not) retiring)" line from Funk took a load off.

20th anniversary surprise vibes

I think for me, I was expecting more content to actually roll out in May (mainly Empyrean). But it just looks like it got moved back a month or two. Which isnt a big deal when you have played the game for as long as we have.

Hopefully the implementation of empyrean will be more on the fun side. While I do like odyssey for the most part, its rewarding content but not really fun. Still hoping that we would get some new zone/mobs but I am sure it will just be a re-skin which kind of sucks (if true).

The fact that we actually got some dates for stuff, and a quasi road map was more than I was expecting personally.

Stopping at ML 50 actually makes sense because it stops us before sj60. You get Foil out of /RUN but you don't get Rampart and Reprisal out of /PLD. You don't get retaliate out of /WAR or new tiers of DW out of /DNC so that you don't need DW gear with Haste Samba up. SCH/WHM never gets Cure V, as god intended or whatever spite demons say. All of the things at 60-62 level look absolutely broken for some jobs to get from subjobs.

There isn't a lot of great stuff post ML 30 but you get a bunch of buffer stats. If you drop level from dying during a fight, you're not going to be stuck in a situation where you lost a vital ability.

I'm at least partially relieved because I'm tired of the perpetual grind. The extra HP and stats are great and I will keep going until I'm done on the jobs I love, but without them giving us boosts, I'll burn out.

The aforementioned broad job rebalances before the Empy +2/3 might just be Mastery Levels. Since July is around the corner, it fits the time line. For Pseudo-tanks, more HP and better enmity tools from new SJ levels is a broad rebalance. For casters, more MP is a broad rebalance to lessen the need for supports. For jobs that are less DPS friendly, 50 more weapon skill levels and 50 more DEX is a great way to not have to address accuracy issues so long as they don't make the accuracy requirements for future content outrageous.

I'd always love more job adjustments or +50 Mastery Levels, but I'm really happy with Mastery levels as they are and if the Empy +2/3 turns out positive on the expectations met side of things, then I'd be really happy with the state of the game for awhile. They can always go back later and add more if they want to keep the power creep going as their next push to add more to the game.

I am somewhat expecting them to soft balance jobs via Empyrean+2-3 gear, honestly. That has kind of been their approach to address (what they perceived as) overperforming jobs since around Omen, such as RUN or BLU.


I'm not really disappointed because I didn't expect much to begin with, but pretty much everything they've announced in the anniversary stream was basically just stuff we already knew about and were supposed to get over time anyway. It doesn't really seem like they did anything special specifically for the anniversary, aside from the Granblue collaboration and Cornelia/Matsui-P returning.

I guess the dark relics turning out to be Prime weapons and a new type of REMA is new information, but we were expecting something to come from that already ever since the TVR art showed them off.

I wouldn't be surprised if foil remains main job only.

Foil should become subbable, as the only exceptions are specifically for stance changes SE doesn't want other jobs to get.

Foil wouldn't be any more unreasonable than the stuff we're already getting, like Super Jump, Auspice, or Curaga III.

It would be interesting if this were the case, I just don't see them straying away from the same deal as AF/Relic. Few niche pieces, JA related pieces and a main WS/TP piece.

I'd start with making the set bonus the main focus and not some tiny 1-5% chance that only a few jobs get to take advantage of.

Agreed, Foil most likely will become accessible. Ultimately it's just more or less twice the potency of a BLU enmity spell that is self-targeted, but you also lose out on solid self-buffs like Cocoon. It'll be incredibly useful, but hardly overpowered.

Even if Foil won't be exclusive to RUN anymore the job will be fine since it still has high DPS and comparatively a ton of enmity JAs. In terms of enmity Epeolatry Liement alone is very hard to match.

At least we might finally see a proper renaissance of NIN tanking thanks to /RUN, even for those without Yagyu. The two jobs actually mesh incredibly well since NIN was always supposed to be parrying-focused by design and runes/MDB help mitigate Utsusemi's weakness against AoE magic damage. Having access to Aquaveil is icing on the cake.

Meh I don't see any reason foil would be restricted, it's only going to see use on nin/run and it's not special really.
Really wouldn't matter if NIN could use Invincible on 30 second cooldown. Noonecares.

Where it would be kinda broken is sch/run if it can be accessioned. That could get it altered.

far as i know you can't ascension stuff sch doesnt naturally get to begin with so that shouldn't be a concern

Super Jump has been by far the most important master level ability for me so far. It makes /DRG my go-to sub for melee DD jobs anywhere I am not supposed to tank.

Refresh is actually a valid spell for Accession despite being RDM and RUN only, if I recall correctly. Same for Phalanx.


I think that wouldn't even be too broken and would make Caper Emissarius considerably more useful than before to deal with hate resets. As far as the evasion bonus against special attacks, I don't see it making a huge difference for most jobs in terms of mitigation.