Dev Tracker - Discussion

Missed the point.

I didn't say "4000 people are all real players".

I only said "there's significant population growth since 2015".

Unless you want to argue that extra 2800 player on Asura and extra 800 people on Bahamut are all bots, otherwise many of these people are new players. I HIGHLY doubt the bots:real player ratio is 2:1 lol.

I find it silly that people just refuse to believe FFXI has many new players anyways. There are many "I just came back after X years..." Posts on Reddit every.single.day.

Well, I wonder if a very sizable portion of those players are just alts.

I feel like everywhere I go, myself including, you see "groups" of players consisting of a train of characters following one, clearly multiboxing 6 chars at once.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if a very large portion of the "new" players are really just existing players upping their multibox game.

People have been multi boxing WAY before player population increase. For example My "endgame LS" in 2016 which cleared the hardest content before everyone else had 8 real players and another half were alts.

You make it sound like multiple box is a trend that started recently and population increase is the result of it, which is false. People don't suddenly "get into multibox" recently. They've been doing it since forever.

Personally, I run into new/returning players way more often than alts/bots.

I go out of my way to help new players when I see shouts and yes there are a lot of people coming to the game, lots of new players from XIV who have nothing to do and long time returnees.

As for content for hardcore "veterans" with powerful shells, you burn though content faster than they can make it anyway. They could add something new every month and you would still complain.

People need to stop fixing on "lots of bots" or alts, every character is a paying account. Which means they make the game profitable for you to play, regardless of what they are anyway. It does not matter if there are 2k people or 4k people, you can't play with 4k, 2k, 1k or 100 anyway. Most complaining only do content with their shell anyway.

I started tri boxing, 6-7 years ago, I added 3 more this year. I would say it's a pretty decent possibility that those population spikes are more alts. Not that all of them are, but it is a pretty big portion. On that same note, I have seen much more new/returnees in that same amount of time join my shell. I would put the number at 2:1 new players compared to alts. In my shell, maybe 4-5 alts total have been created since spring. Seen a good 10+ new real bodies in that same stretch.

Keep in mind my statement was just "I wouldn't be surprised", Im not asserting it as an absolute truth, simply just my own personal subjective experience on Asura.

Which is why I simply said "I wonder", I think your points are pretty valid too.

I dunno, it really does feel like multiboxing is much more prevalent now than it was a couple years ago.

Before sure, I would see the occasional train of characters run by here and there.

But now, standing around in some zones, its pretty much constant in highly populated zones that there are multiple different trains of characters running around, doing actions at the same time, wearing identical gear, etc etc.

I really will say, and this is subjective though, Id estimate theres about 4 or 5 times the density of multiboxer trains roaming around than I remember a couple years ago.

But thats just me.

I mean there's arguments to be made that bot accounts got crippled by the sparks changes, I have zero idea what bots are doing now that they cant make money sparks farming. Like there's some random basement team in china or korea now that has like 80 FFXI accounts (Dragoons I think they were?) unable to print money like they used to.

The hell they gonna do with all those accounts now?


It certainly is a trend that there is a constant slew of "Im coming back after 10 years, FFXIV is boring, what do I do?" style posts on the FFXI subreddit.

People have been multi-boxing since HNM days. Literally pre-Abyssea.

Most of them were bots, but still....

Sure but we can certainly agree the ability to multibox has become much more accessible.

The Windower/Ashita APIs and tools you can access are much better than they were 10 years ago.

Now we have youtube vids detailing step by step how to multibox, with a full list of lua tools you can basically drag and drop in and boom, you're all set.

Back in the day you had to rove through seedy websites, or be "in the loop" with folks who had copies of custom built programs and they were effectively zip files shared around on forums or etc.

If you werent "in the loop" it was extremely difficult to get your hands on those kinds of tools.

Now everything is just on github or etc, open source and easy to tweak with basic lua knowledge.

And with much higher accessibility lower the bar for entry, its easy to reason a lot more players that wouldnt have multiboxed before, now are.

I dual-boxed once, for a good 6 months-1 year. It was a WHM mule, well before Trusts came out, but during the Abyssea era to 99.

It wasn't exactly fun, and it lead to one of the times I took a break from the game. It was all manual (I setup a laptop next to my computer and ran a separate game on it).

Now, I know of at least 4 people in my shell alone who multi-boxes.

To each his own.

Around 2011 I once 4boxed for 36 hours (took 2 chars from my friend who went on vacation). All manually and I did nothing but abyssea farm. I was so tired I slept for 18h and when I woke up I was super confused, because I went sleep at like 3am and woke up when it was dark, so for a moment I was like "Why day havent started yet??" lol.

I started multiboxing the moment they introduced Skirmish so that i was earning rewards x number of chars just standing there.

The game has a lot of expensive junk that i wanted but i wouldnt play a game to feel poor, for god sake... neither i would resort to RMT.

Multiboxing = being rich. I would never play a game to have financial problems lol.

I've had multiple accounts since 07-08 most for HNM timers and claiming. My first dedicated buff/healer mule I made during Korroloka Tunnel SMNburn days.

Been multiboxing since right after aht urhgan release. Had a whm+bard mule and I'd delevel the BRD to 55 to pull for me every time I wanted to level a new job(soloed to ~55 with lv75 bard songs). Obviously, level sync didn't exist yet, so no smn burns yet either.

Got up to 6 in abyssea days to handle all content. 9 in early adoulin to handle delve. Maxed at 12(wanted an even 2 parties to increase productivity at 6man content by doing it twice at a time). This is only counting my 'mains', not RMT related junk.

According to this post: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/56533?p=630642&viewfull=1#post6306423

Unity wanted equipment that gives an augment of Pet Accuracy + Pet Magic Accuracy also gives Pet Ranged Accuracy, but they said its hard to display it as an augment.

"It may be difficult to unify the notation method due to the limitation of the number of characters, but we will start by investigating whether it can be written in an easy-to-understand manner."

New update announcement highlighting a formor in abdhaljs.

Maybe a new version 2 of formor ambuscade?

Isnt octomber hallowen month?

They already told us V1 was troll boss, and didnt say what V2 was. It is possible.

That's the second time they've said this so it's nice to have a newer confirmation. The first was back with the Oboro weapon augments. iirc it was that any "Pet: Accuracy+" augment was pulling double duty with ranged accuracy. (I'd have to go hunting for that post.)

IIRC, last October was the Pumpkin-Head Fomor NM in Volume 2 and it was actually difficult to defeat.

It's too bad no BST pets actually deal ranged damage....One day. :(

sorry to contradict you but some ready moves are ranged.

needle Shot from Amigo Sabotender is ranged damage. I don't remember the others off the top of my head. but I tested it on that undead nm in Zi'tah.

the really ironic part is you can't use them arranged anymore because you have to be close enough to the mob or to your pet maybe we can it'd be tricky I'm going to have to try that out sick and use a range from far away but still well close

Two consecutive months without a job update... meh.

Um... Last October was the first time the fight was introduced and a number of people did actually try it just see what it was like since it was a Halloween theme.

Also, running a quick Volume 2 for seal to move on with one's day is a thing.

The fight itself had odd mechanics which made it a nuissance to do more than once.

Actually this spoiler dont show anything at all...
Unless they are hiding stuffs, at least some more of voracious surgence should be announced.

Maybe a bit too early for Sheol D, i guess more two or three months till we know if Sheol gonna stop at UNM gear or move to a next lv

please dear lord don't give them ideas. I don't plan on spending the next year of my FFXI life picking locks.

I don't get why they continue to show images of Ambuscade V2 and even used to demo it in videos when the rewards are disgracefully bad.

Nobody expects similar reward for v2 and v1 but they could improve it, for casual / solo players more than they currently do. Even if just boosting the one daily for v2 with extra hallmarks.

V2 VD = 300 points
V1 VD = 3600 points

V1 E = 600 points.

Also I didn't know Ambuscade was a proper word till today:

"To attack suddenly and without warning from a concealed place; ambush"