Dev Tracker - Discussion

I did
Did you? Because it sure seems you didnt.

I disagree. If you weren't doing Kings/sea/sky you had Dynamis and generally just sadistically levelling jobs and trying to make some gil, etc. There felt endless stuff to do back then, that was greatly advantageous.

WoTG didn't bring that much gear, but Abyssea came and changed things a lot and the break wasn't that bad between ToAU and that.

The game feels worse now in that you are aiming for gear for no real reason. Some people R25/30 all the ***from t1+t2 omen just for something to do, even though that entails mindlessly 6% HPing mobs and afking for dozens of hours. This is beyond dumb content. Sortie is mindnumbing as hell. Both Sortie and t3+Bumba should have been real strategic fights, but the game isn't really able to do that since there is stun botting, react, etc.

You're right, there is no evidence, none of us know why those ~7800 people quit, neither does SE since theres no "why are you quitting" questionnaire.

However, I dont think sticking to the status quo when losing ~1900 players per month over the last four months is going to do anything to proloing the longevity of the game. Maybe SE's game plan is to bleed subs so they can further merge servers until the playerbase is so small they can shut down the last server.

I get where your arguments coming from, I just think it's a day late and a dollar short.

If FFXI is bleeding subs because of maintenance mode anyway, just open the flood gates of RMTing (or actually alliancing) Sortie, who cares - which I think is Nynja's point. If the current meta for a new player (don't think they exist), is to RMT until they can enter Sortie, then play the most stale content ever. Why not just let them go all the way and run around in OP mode and get the added benefit of people who want to actually play in alliance getting to do their thing. I think the games past preserving the 'true experience' for the majority of folks - which is why RMT is so rampant in every level of content. Being able to leech Sortie rewards might even entice more people than grinding boring content - they automate all the other boring stuff anyway.

As much as we/you want to pretend ffxi is "bleeding subs" it hasn't dropped below the 68k ish mark

hasn't even managed to hit a new low in the 4 years I've been watching it

Which is really god damn weird, cause it should be. But it isn't. 67k last fall, 68.5 now

It just won't go below that 68kish

What is the threshold of activity to be considered an active player? I know Rooks defined it on the forums a couple times, but I cant remember and its not on the actual database page.

I hate to break it to you, but we're going to hemorrhage subs down to the point that all the people who believe we'll get new stuff soon(in the next year) because they're paying a sub will have finally stop paying that sub. Then they'll be back later when there is nothing interesting on the market and they need the distraction. Addicts man.

If you're not happy with how it is right now and who you're playing with, it's not going to change. They aren't making alliance content tag switches on their current content because that would be ANY work. They're absolutely finding out exactly how little they can invest and how much they can get out on a micro scale.

In a couple years, there might be something new. Or there won't and I'll have stopped subbing.

Edit: Page 420 jokes welcome you addicts

Blaze it.

When in April....

Yes everyone will have easier access to your trophy, it won't be special anymore. I know it's hard but you'll have to find a new trophy to claim.


If they make sortie more accessible then more people will have his trophy and that's a bad thing because the trophy is special and only the most dedicated people should have it.

Truly the worst fate an FFXI player can experience.

Yes he trained long and hard to have the elite skills necessary to get that trophy. Hundreds, no thousands, of hours were put into tireless practicing running, skillchaining and bursting. Mastering the elusive and secretive art of rolling 11 Bolters on demand. Studying the ancient mysteries of the elements, water, earth, fire and air, all to master magic bursting his eternal foes.



The power this trophy posses should not be carelessly handed out to the untrained. If anything too many lowly peasants are in possession of this Trophy. Neigh I say that instead of making it more accessible, we need to correct SE's mistake and restrict it even further. Only 30 minutes is allocated and have you no subjob. Only then will the trophy be possessed by the truly worthy amongst us.

wear protection?

The new player meta is to join, have the Quickstart Guide on BG-Wiki open for the next 100 hours, do all the pre-TVR stories and limit breaks and stuff (generally on THF or DNC or something as the guides recommend), get carried by a social LS they found for the RoV Siren and Cloud of Darkness fights, then level the jobs they're actually interested in. After that, maybe do some V2N Ambuscade or round up some social LSers for V1E or V1N if the month is easy. Get carried through Vagary or the Vagary Unlock fights too for Empy +1. This goes on for a month or three before they get all the Ambuscade gear and low-hanging Geas Fete gear and then realize that any further meaningful progress comes from either multiboxing, RMT/mercing, or taking the game seriously and playing a useful/support job to let existing players play the geared jobs they actually like on a very real schedule when all prior progress was at the individual player's own timeframe and discretion. Or forgoing that and being fine spending the next 1-2 years casually working on a REMA solo. From my anecdotal experience with friends who have also tried XI in the past few years, the conversion rate there is probably low single digits and most kind of just drift off around this point without doing or at least finishing TVR. Usually stuff for other games has also come out in this timeframe which also draws their attention away.

That's not an indictment on the game, mind. The leveling/story experience and "real" endgame in retail XI are very, very different experiences these days, and most players that are actually new to the game now are probably in the Final Fantasy completionist camp where they want to experience all the games and stories on some level. That class of player's experience isn't really enhanced by spending the next 6 months running down the same route of a purple corridor daily for an hour and they got their satisfying experience when the credits rolled on RoV. It sort of is what it is and nothing short of new and accessible (The end of TVR kind of isn't and that class of player would have to get super-carried beyond Cloud of Darkness) story content on a regular basis would keep those people around. Which isn't the game XI really is. The endgame is otherwise there mostly to keep the people that've always been there around and anyone new that sticks around is more of an incidental bonus.

You've said this ***so many times, but it is still a strawman. What trophy are you even talking about? I don't farm Sortie regularly. I don't even have a s3 prime. The only emp I have upgraded is what I absolutely needed for Ody. Why are you and Nynja unwilling to confront the argument on it's merits?

Saevel is projecting, thinking pixels have meaning. Nynja has a 5th grade reading level.

Ain't no point trying. As entertaining as the futility is.

That is precisely your arguement.


Everyone of those points boils down to restricting access and keeping the number of people who can successfully do content to a minimum based on your own desire for exclusivity.

This might very well work on a newish game but the current FFXI player population is no longer a bunch of young people with massive amounts of free time to throw at the game. FFXI now competes with other things that fill our lives and all indications show that it is being dropped in favor of other more accessible, less exclusive ways to obtain enjoyment.

Games exist to provide enjoyment, the product SE is selling is a flavor of enjoyment. Exclusivity as a form of enjoyment only works for a very specific competitive player type who largely consume PvP orientated games. FFXI doesn't have a formally ranked PvP system so those players instead must enjoy exclusivity using gear and content accomplishment as the exclusive trophy.

In short, you want trophies to be special and to restrict the number of people who have trophies under the misguided believe that the grind for trophies are what generate enjoyment. That belief is a death sentence for older niche games that need to keep an aging population in later life phases paying money.

Maybe Saevel thinks that trophies and impressing others is important, but that's not everyone's point.

I think Thorny has a very good point: if you allow an alliance in and don't scale the difficulty, it will end up like Dyna [D], Omen, and Vagary: an event where 3-6 people do the event and 12-15 people do absolutely nothing except adjust their /follow after using a teleporter.

I don't mind this from a trophy standpoint, but how *** boring is that? Are you suggesting that returning players will have a grand time when their gameplay experience involves AFKing in Omen, AFKing in Vagary, AFKing in Dynamis, AFKing in Odyssey, and then AFKing in Sortie? I mean I guess technically they might not literally be away from their keyboard, but they sure as *** won't be meleeing anything or put in any position of importance.

If they don't scale it and you have an alliance of actually useful people, then you'll take fights that currently last 20 seconds and make them last less than 10 seconds. What fun content, thankfully they finally "fixed" it!

If they do scale it with # of members, I'm picturing the Aeonic situation I normally deal with which is trying to figure out how many useless members you can squeeze in before it becomes too difficult for your useful members to do the content and plenty of awkward conversations explaining why you can't bring your 10th leech and who is 9th vs 10th and 11th.

And of course it also boils down to: people will never learn a goddamn thing about the game because they never actually played the game, they just had their big brothers beat up all the baddies for them. I think there's enough content in this game where you can be carried and a new player can get PLENTY well set-up as is, we don't need to make the entire game a leechfest where nobody actually fights anything; it's boring and helps nobody.

I beg to differ, not all groups were like that, especially when those events were new.
Now a large amount of those groups where is what you're saying? We have no numbers in our hands, but I'd dare to say you're likely right on that.

Still, so what?
I mean, even if the large majority of people would start fitting in the scenario you and Thorny described, what's the big deal?
Why should we care? If you care so much for the challenge you could still do it with 6.
I'd have a different point of view with a fresh event, but a certain amount of time after its release (maybe not now, but say by the end of the year or shortly after) I see no big deal with it.
Let more people enjoy it the way they want, even if it's about mercs or mules or leeches or whatever else, so be it, why should we care.


I do agree with one point Thorny made, something that completely skipped my mind when I posted my original post and I gotta admit he's absolutely right on that.

When he says that not all people do Sortie for Primes but likely only a minority. The majority cares just for Empys upgrades and being done in a week with those would probably feel good initially, but ultimately prove to be dethrimental to the game's health and the player's enjoyment. (something that wouldn't have happened if only there was a different currency for upgrades and for primes but too late for that now, rite?)


As much as I acknowledge this very realistic perspective, I still have mixed feelings about it and still sorta stand by what I said, that allowing alliances in Sortie -even without difficulty scaling- some time in the future, wouldn't be a big deal for anyone but more positive.

Mixed feelings, very mixed, but still more leaning towards that side of the fence.

Not boring: party of 6 defeating enemies, with up to 12 people sitting around in town doing nothing (if they're even subscribed)
Boring: party of 6 defeating enemies with up to 12 other people doing nothing but adjusting their /follow

Did I get this right?

12 hypothetical people sitting in town doing nothing, or have something precluding them from making two 6 people parties that are also doing Sortie at the same time, presumably.

What Dodik said. Making all the content in the game laughably easy and allowing geared players to do it for the ungeared players results in a situation where the newer players never actually play the game, they just get carried through everything and then wonder when the game gets fun.

We had this discussion about Odyssey too, people saying that it should be easier and/or alliances should be allowed in there.

Sure, it doesn't harm the players, except they just skipped all the content and now have nothing to do. It's like the "beat a game" button from AVGN. Wow, how fun, now you can see the end credits. Completely misses the forest for the trees. The fun of the game is doing the content, not getting the gear.

People want to skip straight to V25s, 16 prime weapons, and 110/110 empyrean+3 armor not realizing that doing the content to get those things IS THE GAME.

For all this talk of "there's nothing to use this gear on" we sure are in a rush to skip content...

It's weird to see maletaru with a basic grasp of objective reality for once. Even for the fleeting moment it will be.

You didnt answer the question though. Why is 6 people "not boring" but 6 people with 12 glorified cheerleaders "boring"? So what if I want 12 mithras running around in pompoms going "GIMME A N, GIMME AN A, GIMME A E" and so on then shouting "NAEGLINGGGGG" as they wave their pompoms in the air.

And "up to 12" doesnt mean "12", it means "any number less than or equal to 12", which could be any number not equal to 6, and it could be any number less than 6.

Furthermore, once you wade through all the RMT and merc fear mongering, the goal is:

Incredibly frustrating: Making a party of 6 in town. Player can't access H and didn't say anything before entering. Player only has Naegling. Player doesn't use GS. Player has gear but parses 50% of the other DPS. Player AFKs. Player DCs and doesn't return. Player aggros bosses before buffs. Group wipes due to the above and not a single mage has RR.

PUG life is not this magical place or experience.

[

Sorry, I thought this was incredibly obvious based on the words I wrote.

It's no more or less interesting for the 6. It's boring for the 12, because they're not doing anything.

In case it wasn't incredibly obvious by this point...my alternative would be that those 12 people make 2 parties and actually DO Sortie, instead of walking around watching people do it.

I'm sure PUGs aren't great, I wouldn't advocate for grabbing 5 random *** from /yell, I've never said that. My suggestion is, and has always been, to network, make friends, join discords, linkshells, add people to flist, and find people who you know aren't mouth breathers and do events with them.

If the content is turned into alliance that will even further cement the idea that you shouldn't bother doing any of that, because instead of making a new group of 6, you can just become the 9th person in your friends' group and walk around Purulent Oozing stuff while they do the content for you, that could be fun.

There probably isn't a perfect answer. We make a list of good players and bad. Our core rotates around 3-5 people but rarely 6. We are all old with kids so there are constantly reasons for the player rotation. The personal benefit being able to take more than 6 in would be if any of the above situations (previous post) come up, I would have a mule in zone to fix the issue.

Its sad when my mules are more reliable then most shout players but its the fact of the current situation.

Your mules are always more reliable than some rando.

You think it's weird yourself is more reliable than someone you don't know. That. Is whats weird.

That's been my complaint (forever) I know I can trust myself to heal myself 100% of the time. Literally any other healer, not so much. I know my mules will be in proper defensive sets 100% of the time, randos not so much. I know my mules will always have idris/rostam/gjaller on when they cast, randos not so much.

BUT. Playing with randos is how it's supposed to work. Even though suboptimal.