RMT Bots Have Won...

Their thought was "That's not what we intended". They didn't want a "fast and quick" way to farm EP. They wanted it to take a long time as a means of false longevity.

While this game is fun in a lot of aspects and memorable, a lot of development decisions on it are highly questionable. One of my biggest peeves were the amount of effort required to obtain remas when they were first released.

I mean, it was at the point (on Asura) where some groups were pulling the entire circle and if you took any of 'their' mobs it was the end of the world.

There was no 'you guys take that half and we take that half', or any other sort of communication, just the good ol' 'Murican attitude of 'i got mine, sucks for you'. Couldn't play nice together and share, so SE took it away from everyone. And around and around we go on the carousel of 'how could SE do this to us?'.

Unreal as to how some people are still deluded into thinking SE saw how fast it was. They don't care. They cared about how one group could effectively take the entire map for themselves. And people did just that.

Don't believe me? Here's the video, from 5:07:

I don't agree with this.
We all have the right to exp in whatever way we enjoy.
"Normal" parties or solo don't make it difficult for others to exp.
AoE parties not only used to pull most of the mobs in the area, making it difficult for normal parties to maintain a good chain, but it would cause an insane lag every single time that train of mobs would pass next to you.

While i don't agree with nerfs in general, this was the only way they could fix this "problem"

Or they could have put a lower "cap" on the number of mobs that would link, making it easier for other people there to exp.

Small but significant note: they don't link, they were aggroing. I say this because putting a cap on the number of mobs that can aggro you and making you immune to aggro after hitting that cap would have...unintended consequences...

And trying to make the aggro rules work differently for a specific set/type/area of mobs is a nightmare hellscape from a design/coding perspective, and maybe not even possible, so I think this solution is probably out.

I... think it's both things really. But yeah this aspect I mentioned was not secondary imho, not at all.

And if you think about it, as much as it hurts me to say it, it was a legit concern.
Think about you and 5 more friends willing to do AoE and going to crawler only to find 2 other groups are already there and bitching at each other for taking "their" mobs.
I mean clearly we couldn't expect stuff like that to keep happening.

Then there's the too-fast-EP-rate aspect and I don't think that was particularly secondary either.


So yeah, really, I think both were taken into great consideration by SE and why they decided to take action about it.


@Minaras
It's exactly what I said? D:
Everybody "deserved" to be able to exp in the zone. Not 1 or 2 groups of people who managed to get there before everybody else and started monopolizing te zone.
It sucks, I've been inan AoE pt once and it was so nice, but I can totally see why they removed it and the high EP rate was only part of the problem.

People don't want to admit they were actively impeding other peoples play.

Those poor Asurans unable to find another spot.

People raised in XI during the days of claiming NMs over other people got trained on that dopamine fix of "I got this, you didn't". While the world around us may have changed in the past 20 years, and even Vana'diel has changed in that time, that initial connection between beating someone else and excitement dies hard.

Not XI specifically, they're just *** rude. The lack of manners in players is appalling. (Main character syndrome, entitlement, shitty parenting etc)

Oh you ran one whole minute out to a camp that was taken and instead of leaving you camp on top on them.

If you show up to a taken camp, congrats, you win an all expense paid trip to somewhere the *** else. Not a hissyfit.

This topped with the fact that this is a heavy "snooze you lose" game. It's not like it's successor where there is plenty everywhere for everyone.


100%

Never really understood the whole "be shitty to others online".
Been that way as long as I can remember. Back in the days of AoL chatrooms, people making those inappropriate ascii to represent someone's mom. I've seen it in this forum, in-game, other forums, and other games. It's worse when those people are cheered on by others.

Never understood why so many cannot simply agree to disagree. It's like the concept is completely alien to them. Some just prefer to be internet tough guys. Most of them, I guarantee wouldn't have the balls to say a fraction of what they do in person.

Maybe I'm just lucky, but I haven't had a problem with a real player taking over camps in many years, most people are pretty understanding and will move somewhere else. The only time I've had someone move to camp directly on top of me was when RMT setup their bots on top of us when we were farming EP, which happened a few times.

RMT aside, it seems a lot less contentious than it used to be. Even farming Empyrean weapon NMs, I've never had a problem with a player bogarting a camp or refusing to work together. People seem pretty generous about teaching and helping others too.

The community is a lot softer and more friendly now than any other period I remember, but maybe I've just been lucky.

Bingo- if someone's afk botting MLs I don't feel like I'm "stealing" a camp- I'm rescuing it. Other than the botting of MLs, the overall community is more tamed- maybe not more connected than we were in our youth, but certainly a lot more sane.

World of Warcraft culture has mostly been "all that matters is that I get mine". FFXI's culture for the most part has been incredibly positive / supportable. Maplestory (Pre Big-bang) was all about helping the community too and people would 100% "change channel" if they saw someone at a camp they wanted. I would be curious how ffxiv and other 'mordern' mmorpg's cultures have developed.

Alas maybe this is a question for future anthropologists.

So, I 'm reading a lot of comments where people are just barely scratching the surface of the point/underlying issue.

EXPing, specifically ffxi style exping is boring. No one is pretending they exp for the excitement of it, so how do we resolve that? Adjusting content to offer more exemplar points would be one way to help offset the massive cost to level, an average sortie run nets you about 10k, an oddy run, depending on the zone is something like 3-7k? dynamis is a pitiful 1k, omen might give you 3k? I fully recognize exp isn't the focus of those events, but omen, oddy and sortie all give considerable CP, so maybe they could add an option to increase the mob level so they would then give more meaningful EP would be one option. They have such a function in sortie already with the prime weapons, so in theory it wouldn't be too difficult to implement.

The amount of EP needed to level vs the reward of leveling: so this is something I do agree with as being a problem. Firstly, the hp/mp amounts per level shouldn't be static across all jobs. I've long said that mages should get a higher number of MP and lower HP. Gaining all stats, acc, atk and so on is fine, but with that, some jobs should also get magic acc, MAB, cure potency and or fast cast/spell interrupt. At this point in the game, you should be able to spend job points to increase the amount of merits you can put into job specific merits. There's no reason we should have to switch job merits based on the content you're doing, at this point, we should just gain access to all of the categories being able to be maxed out. Or, with each master level, you can unlock an additional merit, so a ML 50 job would get an extra 50 merits to spend on the job specific merits, just a suggestion.

On smaller servers, Botters are still a problem, but not to the degree they are on larger servers, people just don't have the patience to grind EP for hours like they used to. Most of the player base was in their mid 20's when they started the game in 2003, that puts them squarely in their 40's now, most married with kids or other obligations where time is a more valuable resource now. Offering a ring that boosts EP for a duration like all the other exp rings is certainly long overdue. Offering items that would improve EP rates in content like oddy, sortie for that whole run would also encourage people to continue doing that content for more than the basic rewards.

Unfortunately there's no simple fix, and my belief is that the devs made master levels so daunting as a way to put somewhat of time cap on how high people could get. If they had continued increasing the cap at the rate it was initially going, people would be ML 99 already on multiple jobs, and all of their "difficult" content would already be obsolete.

I mean, MLs (specifically 40+) is the t(-_-) the players had coming to them. Having to beat everything in the first 5 minutes of DLing an update, or capping stuff out if the limits got raised. Same can be said for Sortie weapons. Oh, you went to an event one time and can just throw money at it? Not for these shinies, suckers! Congrats, you got your gold box with Tedious +3

what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

I guess what you're saying is that SE should've allowed people to complete the new content on day 1, by stockpiling muffins before the primes were released, and they should've allowed people to enter the content once, then never play it again and instead just throw shitloads of gil at it?

This is how you design for longevity? That and lower the EP per level. You should get into game design, I feel like your version of FFXI has some real staying power.

They dont have to adjust mob level, as doing so may put this content out of each for the lesser geared players, just give fixed amounts of XP/CP/EP. The base code already exists to do such a thing (see Skirmish).

He meant making the content level adjustable. As in, you're noob so you go in at 135, you're l337 you go in at 155. Sorta like, huh, Incursion?

Somehow Maletaru read what Richy was trying to say, and interpreted it in the exact opposite of what he was conveying (or he missed the sarcasm).

He's not saying that people should be able to reach goals within a day, he's saying the portion of the playerbase that reached these goals within a day is who SE was targeting when they gave the massive exponential TNL's going forward:
The June 2022 patch raised the ML cap from 30 to 40. It took about 36 hours for some people to hit that 40 cap.
The Nov 2022 patch raised the cap to ML50. It took about 4 days for some people to hit ML 50.

The actions of a few (the people who rush to the new ML cap, the people who grief others in the donut room, the people who finish Delve on day one and deactivate for 4 months, etc etc) ruin everything for the others.

It’s the people that complain the most that do the least.

AoE party weren’t a problem we needed more of them, bots don’t prevent you from playing either, SMN burn aren’t a problem, RMT aren’t a problem, people that got banned never impeded my game play but that definitely made the game dead-er, nothing is a problem. The only problem here is “players” that keep complaining because they don’t want to do something or anything. I play 1h30 max a day and still went thru what I need, but jeez people complain about stuff because they just bad at the game, understand zero mechanics and refuse to learn, or have nothing else to do.

How a player that botted his pseudo ML affected your ambu run? How did they prevented you to lvl BLM for Ongo? Why can’t you do your aeonics? Is that because of someone else or you? Make sure you leave your name in the “I can’t” category

There will always be people that do better or faster than you.
Are you saying people need to stop doing their best because it hurts you in some way?
The guy that bought a Ferrari should stop doing that because I can't afford it?

"Nobody is allowed to do better than me"
What kind of self Glorified failist attitude is that?

My guy, its not about me. I dont know why you think this is about me and others potentially being faster or better than me.

I literally said "the people who finish Delve on day one and deactivate for 4 months". This has nothing to do with others being better or faster than me. You fixated on "people who finish Delve on day one" and ignored they key point of "deactivate for 4 months". Despite what some morons here think, SE arent completely inept. If people are deactivating their accounts for 3-4 months because they finished the newly made content within days, thats a pretty shitty client retention model, dont you think?

Literally every event in this game prior to SoA had some participation restriction.
Sky: long NM repop timers
BC/KS NM's: Seal requirements
Dynamis: ~3 days
ENM: 5 days
Limbus: 3 days (later reduced to 20 hours)
Einherjar: ~3 days
Campaign Medals: 5 days between rankups I believe
Salvage: 1 per day
Assault: 1 tag per day (max of up to 4 or 5 with captain rank)
ISNM: 1 per day
ANNM: 1 per day
Voidwatch: So many variables here, however you were limited to 3 to 6 fights at a time depending on Frontier KI with stones replenishing one per 20/16/12 hours depending on Exploration KI. Theres no limit to the amount of stones you may carry though. You could get voiddust, however you couldnt use voiddust to increase your stock.
WoE: no lockout, but it was completely optional (everything could be bought)
Abyssea: Traverser stones and a 120 minute limit within Abyssea, but TE chests made that inconsequential. Free-roam NM's had a 45 min repop though, Gukumatz became the new Fafhogg.
Legion: no lockout.
Meebles: one sack per 20 hours, limit of 5. I believe this was the last event added before SoA

Did I miss any?

Now what was added after SoA but before RoV?
Delve: no lockout timer
Skirmishes: no lockout timer
Sinister Reign: no lockout timer
Vagary: no lockout timer
Coalition Ops: Yeah this one has a lockout timer, but for the longest time it didnt really matter until you hit a mission that needed you to keep on top of these. However, the bar wasnt that high (unless you're a new char trying to rush through it in 2 days). Prospective Idris/Epeo owners dont like that timer though.

And then we go post SoA:
Ambuscade: fre-entry, however there are reward limits
Omen: 20 hours. Used to not even store extra canteens, later changed to 3.
Odyssey: 20 hours, no extra KI's (other than held)
Dyna-D: 60 hours
HTMB: bound only by your ability to gain XP. However, SE has clearly modified the drop rates (pre-Selbina has 100% drop rate on D/VD with a second drop slot, Selbina isnt 100% or has a gimmick, Shinryu is 0.01%) to make the content last longer, in an extremely detrimental fashion re: Shinryu.
Sortie: 20 hours with a really convoluted extra KI system.


SoA gave no timed lockout and SE saw subs constantly go up and down as people deactivated and reactivated because they were speeding through the content with no limit.

I don't understand why SE decided not to adjust exemplar points gain for certain activities.
The amount of exemplar points gained in Sortie or Ody is ridiculous.
They could also add them to other instanced areas, revamping things nobody does anymore.
And also... does anyone know why SE didn't rise the difficulty of Besieged?

Very simple. So you have something to do when all the events are burned for the day to keep you on longer.

The only goal is more logins and longer up time. Delay/stretch/extend Everyone has 3-5 years of content on Mlevel. No one can say "I have nothing to do" only "there's nothing I WANT to do".

Takes time and development resources.

Isn't that counter intuitive, in that it causes more players to become disincentivized to continue logging in for 'chores' rather than rewarding activities.

In trying to drag out players playtime by moving the goal post to earn more revenue over a short period of time, they're ultimately losing out on revenue over the long period by not having a healthy community that continues to re-sub.

There's definitely a threshold of how much players are willing to do things they don't want for their reward before they just outright refuse to do it. We see it with sortie Prime grind, master levels, and the upper echelon of Odyssey. Certainly it's anecdotal, but I've seen more people quit lately in my entire playtime since my return in 2019.

It would, if you had any modicum of self respect and did just stop doing it. It's just a chore simulator. More dailys and complaining about dailys than engaging content.

If we were all rational people, we'd see *** for *** and stop putting up with it.

But that's not how an mmo player acts. A couple might discover dignity, but very few.

Not enough