May 8th, 2022 Livestream Thread

we won’t get to physically enter Divergence Dreamlands, rather we have to use extradimensional chocobos to dig at portals connected to them scattered throughout the original areas, which gives us the mats for +2/+3 empyrean, and take them to a goblin in Ra’Kaznar

IMO, perpetuating 6-man content seems to be generally bad for the game because it heavily encourages following the meta since there's little room for flexibility or innovation unless the mechanics demand different setups.

Can X job equip Naegling? If yes, go to new content. If no, start over.

My *** is still chafed that the na/EU community got completely left out in the dark here like seriously wtf man

It's the Japanese way. If it weren't for community translators, XIV would be in the same boat.

Naegling content was because Naegling is overly powerful (along with a few other Gaol-specific features like no subjob and all of the NMs either taking negligible damage from SCs or outright punishing them), not because of 6-man vs 18-man.

How encouraged people are to follow the meta is based on the difficulty and time constraints of the content, not the number of people you can bring in; see Legion, which was even more setup-constrained than Odyssey is despite being able to be done with up to 36 people, or pre-ilvl Delve, which was incredibly restricted.

It is, basically kills linkshells.

Overall, I'd say this slightly underwhelmed me. I was hoping for SE to charge us for content (aka mini expansions like Abyssea), which would have indicated more interest on their part in developing FFXI vs. just doing the least and collecting monthly fees.

Still, we got the announcement of the long-awaited Empyrean +3 gear and new battle content. This was more like a really big "Freshly Picked" than a 20th anniversary celebration, but I didn't actually expect major investment into FFXI so I wasn't too disappointed.

The point is that if content only allows 6 characters, it's a pretty easy guess to figure out which jobs are going.

Naegling just happens to be an easy button exacerbated/encouraged by limited participation. Ambuscade itself is a good example: you can take a tailored setup to combat the mechanics or you can just Naegling all the things, generally with greater ease and just ignore anything that doesn't completely invalidate zerging.

As for the early days of Delve, I remember that being as chaotic as Lv75-cap Dynamis in terms of jobs, skill levels, and gear progression present. Most of the runs I went on ended up being highly random in structure, with a nontrivial part of the strategy being throw bodies at the mega boss until it died.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but where did it say 6man? I just want the reference to crush my dreams, thanks.

Funk's post says that +2 will be soloable and +3 will require "more work," so I presume a party but maybe an alliance.

Jet just wants more alliance content.

TY

On another note, guess people better start doing TVR.

Omen, Dynamis D were alliance group content were released when the game was supposedly done and population had declined. They added Ambuscade concurrently with those events and it was a good mix of 6 and alliance content at thet time. Ambuscade also changes up the monthly NM so no one job was always required. Omen was also highly scaleable both as a solo / low-man farming event all the way up to a full on NM event with a larger grup.

The problem with Odyssey is it's very strict and people will always min-max farming with that restriction. And yes it absolutely hurts linkshells with greater than 6 regular members.

If they want healthy pop they should have a good mix. Ody being difficult and restrictive is what it is, not expecting a change there, but if they keep introducing content like that it will drive players away

The only thing 6 characters being the limit for an event is that you're probably going to want a healer (but even then, sometimes your healer is a RDM that also DPSs, or even a BLU). Bard is very useful, but can often be replaced by a GEO + RDM, or not included at all if doing a magic setup and you don't need endurance. Higher V Odyssey is different because it's hard, not because it's 6-man.

Ambuscade is an exact counterpoint to your claim; it's only 6-man, but because it's much less demanding in terms of winning, wide varieties of setups are used. Moogle Ambu can be done melee style, ranger style, SMN burn style, RDM lowman style, and more. Naegling is used particularly often in Odyssey because it's difficult, Naegling is overtuned, and Savage Blade's properties mesh will with Gaol being SC-unfriendly, not because it's 6-man. Naegling gets used in all kinds of contexts these days regardless of how many people are able to come; it's a symptom of flawed game balance, not event size.

You're thinking of ilvl delve (particularly after boss weapons and armor started becoming common), not pre-ilvl delve. Pre-ilvl delve was an incredible time crunch, and required very precise setups to get through the NMs you didn't bead and then the gimmicks and HP of the final boss within the time limit. Tojil and Dakuwaqa were Formless Strikes monks + specific structured support, Muyingwa was one tank, rangers and corsairs, and support. Similarly, Legion was 3-6 parties of WAR/DRK/rarely MNK or SAM x2-3 + BRD + COR + WHM (with a couple SMNs or SCHs sprinkled through out the alliance depending on whether you were doing PD zerg or stunlock) with very little variation until power creep made it easier. Ragnarok was just as much of a bandwagon back then as Naegling is now, and then you had Oatixur bandwagon in Delve.

Dynamis being restricted to 18 sucked when my linkshell got bigger, when friends of friends wanted to join and eventually participate then we had a problem of not having enough spots.

We eventually got big enough to run two seperate groups of 12+ and divided up the over geared with the under geared to do proper 1-2-3 wave farming and maximize our gear distirbution.

Memeing aside, is the chocobo digging campaign a big deal? That's not rare if memory serves me correctly.

While what you underlined is likely one of the main points, I think there are more, often more subtle points that contribute to the sense of frustration that some people have shared about Odyssey, to the point that many don't even feel like tryin the event at all.
Using Ambuscade as per your example.

1) In Ambuscade you don't lose anything if you fail, you can try again.
2) In Ambuscade you don't need to farm anything in particular (aside the KI, but that's super fast) to enter, you can quickly join wether you're doing it for yourself or to help a friend
3) Through the years we've seen some hard ambuscade that the majority of players were ignoring, but the thing is: it's just a month, ignoring this content for a month and going back the one after isn't really a big deal, is it?
4) In Ambuscade there's no mandatory "daily" login necessary to fulfill the requirements (segments) to actually access the content (gaol). A lot of people login only during weekends or a couple of times per week, and the daily KI nature is kinda a kick in the balls for them, furtherly throwing fuel on their fire of frustration.


All of these aspects might seem secondary compared to the "difficulty" topic you were discussing, but I think in reality they all contribute to the same goal: making Odyssey feel like it's a frustrating and unattractive event to some people.


How big this group of people is, I can't say. It seems to me that, if anything, the group of people doing Odyssey now is certainly larger than that doing Odyssey 1+ years ago, at least on my server.
But it feels like it's still a very small minority (especially the "successful" groups lol)

I am legit digging to cap each day, but I am pretty sure it was pure meme.

I am thankful for the presentation, however, like many have said, what was not live could have had english subtitles for us to enjoy. It really is about respect.

That's the disconnect, you still think they have any respect. You're just a wallet to them, not even a sentient wallet.

My point wasn't about whether Odyssey was frustrating or fun or not (because that's entirely subjective), just whether it being 6-man was the reason behind it being so restrictive in terms of setups and jobs. There are other real reasons to want 18-person content, but the format being inherently more restrictive in terms of setups isn't one of them.

Did they say when this was coming?

Why? they don't owe you anything like you don't owe them a sub lmao.

Wouldnt that mean that datamined Rank 30 augments were wrong or just place holders?

Lol.. I wrote Logical like 3 times in comments to his videos, that showing and making sets with R30 augments is pointless when they might not be out for a long time or ever.

While I agree with having subtitles, they really don’t owe us anything. Another thing is, we’ve been playing this game for 10+ years, if we’re talking about “respect”, we should have learned japanese.

dumbest *** taken I've read in my entire life.

English speaking customers keep this dumpster fire of a company alive, no if's and's or buts about it.

but no, you the consumer should LEARN ANOTHER LANGUAGE. the multi billion $ company shouldn't pay someone a couple hundred to translate.

what an absolute simp take. be embarassed

You should be embarrassed for having that mindset. But go off, I am glad my comment triggered you. :)

It could either mean we are going to get changed stats for v25, or they are going past r30 to add even more stats past what was mined. Or both. Or neither and they could change their mind all together.

I'm disappointed :(

The biggest difference is also that there's not 10 secs latency and mobs that never die, targeting that gets stuck on your healer, sets not switching, spells not going off, JAs mysteriously vanishing into the ether in ambuscade, even at peak times, even on asura. It's still a mystery how odyssey in EU is so unplayable while ambuscade never gets any issues like the above.

Also for ls like mine where there's like 10 players consistently playing it just happens some don't get into odyssey unless they go with shouts, and that's not fun for people not going in...

From this Livestream I kinda get why SE as a global publisher needs to sell their western IPs. They have no ability to communicate with their western playerbase, so they can't understand their needs. Any western IP in their hands will flop because they are so detached with their western playerbase.

Someone posted "Camate's frustration" about an year ago documenting how SE never listen to western community rep despite Camate tried their hardest. So it's not even the problem of NA community team, but flawed company structure as a whole.