The Odyssey - || Strategy And Discussion ||

Since we've never had any r30 items in game, I wonder if they'll do like master levels and artificially increase the rp scaling/costs from 25-30. 1-25 is just over 25k total rp, would be hilarious to have to get another 30-40k to hit 30.

They should. You'd (all) still do it. Make it 100k, why not.

(They won't)

Personally was thinking they'd make 4th line augs be a single improvement instead of r25-30, just r25 turn in with requisite rp and receive 4th line... Say for... 50k/piece... Lol

v25 will reward a new currency called "Accomplishment Points" that only improve the new Augment, preventing spamming of lower tiers to RP it up.

Maybe I bet a lot of people are sitting on 100k Bumba RP and 2mil Segments waiting for the update.

I understand the sentiment but RP caps at 50k.

Thats probably why the latest chapter for TVR wasnt finished. SE allots only 3 hours per week to the FFXI dev's, and upon realization that R30 doesnt exist, they burnt all the allocated hours into implementing R30.

It doesn't matter how much RP it costs to cap, the players will do it. People complain about the ML grind (while begrudgingly doing it). Hell, if they could take a time machine and visit when they created Trial of the Magians, I bet this current state of SE would have loved to have you kill 100,000 soulflayers or 500 pandemonium wardens for 5 more STR. People used to fish for 10,000 Moat carps or whatever it was back then. All they had to do was add a percentage of a stat to literally any gear in the game and people would grind trials for it. They had the perfect formula for grind system and they just abandoned it. Imagine if they did ilvl ToM weapons with TP bonus/WSD/ Occ. 2-4. Grind Goldmine right there.

It took them long enough, but RP grind on Odyssey gear is basically just another form of ToM. Say what yall want about Odyssey; after being burned out from grinding RP and boss/segs for a good year straight, and then taking a 6-month break, I'm officially ready for le'grind part duece.

For sure, image is an example, there are a lot of factors making it difficult to always get favorable auto targets but the idea is there. Don't face the entire group of mobs and as much as possible keep your line of sights away from one another.

In the end it's not like segments are hard or runs in a solid group can't be cleared even without effort to optimize targeting strategies but for the love of Altana and the sake of efficiency, pls, get off my mob and lrn2strafe.

Honestly the boss fights would be pretty fun... if we had subjobs. As it stands they are just annoying as hell, especially for jobs that relied heavily on their subs to compliment their role.

Aside from the steep/annoying requirements for entry, I think the Odyssey boss are lotsa fun* regardless of lack of SJ, imho.
I mean I won't deny how the lack of subjob can be a real pain, for some jobs way more than others.
But in my book it annoys me more on an ideological level than a practical one.

Also I'm not a super fan of the adds added on V20 and V25.
It would've been cool if it was just for some NMs, but the fact that they did the same exact thing (adding 1-2 adds) copy/paste for every single boss was quite anticlimactic, for me.



*
except you, Mboze. You don't belong with the rest of the cool guys >_>'''

Allowing subjobs means the fights would have to have been completely overtuned and much more BS than they are now. The stats and acc/atk requirements for the fights (at least through V20) have been pretty lax compared to stuff like Reisenjima HELMs or W3 NMs.

They also probably didn't know how busted some of the new SJ abilities and traits would be when bumping up MLs but if we got SJ access with the fights as they currently are they'd be complete and total jokes.

I think thus far subjob restriction has made the fights more interesting and challenging in ways beyond just upping the bosses raw output/defense. Without subjobs you are locked into using your available buffs as a resource. Things like Dirge so DDs don't pull hate become a non issue if you have access to jumps from /DRG. MNK becomes an unkillable machine against Ngai from subbing RUN. COR and BRD almost just straight double the damage output on Xevi from being able to sub DNC while also offering incidental healing through waltz. God forbid SE doesn't want all 6 people subbing DRK for Absorb-TP strats. The way Gaol is setup is to lock you out of resources and make you figure out the best way to deal with it.

Only job that really suffers dramatically is GEO so I guess if you are relegated to be your groups bubble boy I can understand the frustration of only being able to do one thing.

It's fundamentally a different kind of challenge and one that works with the rest of the restrictions in line with what SE envisioned with Gaol (what's the point of MJ restrictions of one use if everyone can just sub a job anyways, if they try to restrict the SJ thing too it just becomes even more convoluted). Now I will say if they never use it again it wouldn't be soon enough since I think we've seen the upper extent of how it changes fights and jobs. Feels like an okay one and done mechanic. It at least certainly feels better than the WS wall in Sortie Basement or some of the other hamfisted mechanics they have a penchant to use these days.

I can understand the logic behind no subjob=less fun because the players really get less choices to deal with a problem.

For example, if DD has hate problem? With subjob players can choose to /DRG or use dirge. Now the option is locked to dirge only. Or if you need box step? You can use DNC main for more box step OR cor BRD sub DNC for a gimped one. Now it's locked to DNC main only.


It's more interesting for you because it forces you out of meta so it feels different, not because it offers more depth or meaningful choices to deal with a challenge.

FFXI never needed subjob lock to be challenging in the past. See Neo Nyzul, legion, delve when it was out, aeonic in 2015, MT in 2017.


It's not tough to implement some kind of mechanics that can't be facerolled with /run.



But people still use absorb TP strat in Odyssey though. They just use different jobs that can absorb TP on main and lock on to it instead of any job.



It's an okay one if it's one content out of many for a bit more variety, probably.

But it's like the main content that's meant to be grinded for a long time, and it doesn't feel good to come up with an idea to solve a mechanics or gained a new ability with ML, only to be told that we can't use it because the game set a special rule for this content, with nowhere else to play with different builds.

There is more than one way to deal with hate in the game, not sure why you're zeroing in on one ability via support job.

Carbuncle has pacifying ruby, which is a strategy our group used in Matamata in consecutive boss runs. Caper from SCH can also be used to control hate once per fight, something I've also seen used in groups. SCH also has Minuo, and LolNinja has Yain and Innin when striking from behind. BST has access to Snarl if it somehow manages to take hate. You mentioned DRG which can eliminate it's own hate, but DRG main can also eliminate a party member's hate via SP1 and positioning ( super jump removes hate from closest party member behind DRG during ability). Even THF can aid in controlling hate to some degree. RNG has camouflage and Decoy Shot. And then there's also the option for all jobs to use gear to fill the void of no high/super jump.

I didn't like the support job removal at first because it felt forced, but it did introduce players to more varied setups using individual jobs strengths. Tp denial was a thing with mew, but it came back fresh with BST, which is something that had not been used very much at all prior to Odyssey. Prior to that, you had to rely on having additional bodies in range and rampart to have a good chance at beating Mboze. It was shortly replaced in favor of the former tp denial strategy, but it was still viable as an additional option.

Gaol was probably their way of helping people to focus on job strengths, aligning with their plans for Master Levels, but they wanted each job to be used for the content in some way. If anything, Gaol just exposed how badly designed some jobs were without their support jobs (Ninja, Geomancer). Even then, you could still use GEO for every boss, and I guess Ninja could nuke on one or two and DPS on others (it is a high subtle *** after all). They should have used Gaol as a springboard to address jobs that struggled badly without their sub. For instance, PLD loses a lot without it's sub, whereas RUN is sufficient tool-Wise. That's where I think they missed the most with Odyssey Gaol, not adjusting jobs afterwards

Agreed 100% Buukki. Focusing on a jobs utility and strengths made for much more interesting content and outside the box thinking. In their own way each fight opened the door to a lot of jobs to be used in viable and creative ways.

As far as job adjustments go GEO and NIN definitely gutted of a lot of meaningful utility with loss of SJ. As for PLD never really had hate issues and I've used PLD for Kalunga and Arebati on both V15 and V20 clears with hate rarely ever being an actual issue but Majesty Cures being an important utility.

Odyssey has just felt like this entire puzzle where you gotta look at all the jobs and what pieces they bring to the table to help solve it. But at the same time it's not like every fight has this rigid setup that you can only use to win (Ongo being the biggest exception). Killed Kalunga with all various forms of slashing DDs, have done Xevioso with DNC SMN THF DRG SAM RDM as the 6th member. Have done Ngai with SMN WAR GEO RDM as the 6th job. Each of these jobs changed the fight drastically as somethings were made easier, others harder. Did Rampart strat on V15 Mboze, and BST TP denial on V20. Arebati have only ever done RNG strat but that's still a fun change of pace especially after hover shot got added.

But for 22 jobs in the game throughout all of my time in Ody I think I've succeeded in V15/V20 fights with all 22 of them being used where the jobs had a specific and purposeful role that felt like it mattered that they were there for what they brought to the table but if SJs were allowed that list would be less than 12.

I think that odyssey in general made people use tools they haven't in a long time, like rng using shadowbind. I think that lacking subjob increased the difficulty because people lost crutches they've been favoring for years, non-apoc drk really feels it when last resort is on cool down vs a minor degrade for hasso users and no change for hasso+apoc.

Also it kinda shows why this content should never ever see subjobs. Right now if you level a decent comp it can succeed and do well in odyssey. Now let all 6 of those players sub the same job (drg, nin, run) the encounters change entirely, physical threats to backline players can waste an action to throw up shadows, magic threats are by and large a single element, let's just let everyone reduce it by 30% themselves(by the way, permanently between valiance and vallation), and like afania brought up "enmity control" why waste a song, or bring sch to heal if you can just reset your own enmity and have a whm healer for cureskin.

Who cares about meaningful depth, that is only there in theory. People will only use the easiest and most cheese way to grind. If they wouldn't force you to be creative, then almost none would be creative. We have evidence of that from 20 years of this game existence. Off meta setups were used only when it was necessary. Ib4 you will say, that without locked sub job you could still use same creative strategy as without sub job. That is true, but it would work only if you are static/pug leader or you go with friends. SE wanted to create job diversity at fundamental level for Odyssey, not only because you can't take same job again, but also because some key abilities are hidden for main job, because you cant sub it. So you can say whatever you want about theoretical depth being limited by lack of sub jobs, but the truth is, if you give FFXI community all the options available with limitless possibilities as deep as ocean, people will dry it out to toddlers pool size and choose single best working setup and don't want to hear about using anything else, so I 100% agree with SE reasoning here.

But it doesn't. PT denial strat was already available to BST without SJ lock, so the variety always exists. People just choose SMN over BST either because 1) it's more efficient or 2) more people has SMN - I don't research enough to know the exact reason but I think it has to be one of them.

Locking SJ only blocks the playerbase from using the most preferred choice so they have to use the 2nd best choice. It doesn't add more choice than what's already available.

If the best choice is strongly favored then the better solution has always been buffing the 2nd and 3rd best choice so they are more equal. So choosing the 2nd or 3rd choice isn't a huge loss and become the viable alternative.


It's more fun to choose to use certain job in a content because its ability is useful in such situations, less fun because some of the options are being taken away so we are forced to use different options.

If a game presents me a puzzle to solve, I prefer to come up with my own solutions from a wider variety of, I don't enjoy solving a problem with limited choice because the game already eliminated some of the options available.

I guess the real problem here is that in MMO space, once a strat is being discovered by the top end community, everyone else will copy that same strat and turn it into "meta". Despite other viable/competitive strats are available they are all ignored, so it feels less varied than it really is.

Unfortunately for people that enjoys theorycraft and experiment, who doesn't care about "meta", it's probably going to be less interesting if they want to try something, but can't.

Edit: @Baniak I already know and agreed about this MMO problem :p. I was only explaining why some people aren't happy with SJ lock and the fact that SJ lock actually doesn't create more variety. It only changed meta using a forced way.

Its because Mewing works from SJ as good as from main job.
More people have SMN or /smn exactly because BST was never needed if SMN was taking double duty as Conduit machine. Again your options and depth is only theoretical. FFXI players (and Im talking about most players, shouts and pugs, not few off meta parties you can do as pug leader using mostly your friends or authority) will only look for diversity when it's forced on them.


No it's not. It's your Utopia. Regular player will never be able to join pugs on non meta jobs, unless you make non meta choice part of meta or at least a solid and common alternative. You can't expect people who want to play BST or PUP to always make own PUGs and try to convince people around them, that some alternate strategy using their jobs is viable. Just forcing those jobs to be a part of meta for at least one event is very good. People can at least understand how some previously off meta jobs work and what are their strength.

In a perfect world, with all jobs being perfectly balanced and all players having access to all of them etc. you could preach limitless options being better solution for higher diversity, but we are not in perfect world.

Isn't conduit nerfed post 2018? So even if SJ is available Odyssey I don't think SMN has way more advantage in mboze fight.

It should be /SMN being nerfed in this case. An offensive JA really shouldn't land as sub in the highest content if every other offensive spells suffer from resists. The problem here is SJ being way too effective, not the SJ system itself.


=.= Man.....you are rewriting the exact same thing that I said and inflated into 2 long paragraphs....


I even tagged your name in the end and repeated the same point again so you wouldn't miss my point, and somehow you still missed it...

This sounds like a personal preference of yours, because I actually think it's quite fun and engaging when fights are designed in a way that challenges a player to come up with a different approach instead of what has always been done. But anyways, mostly every single fight in the game has some limitation or penalty imposed on it for doing the wrong thing (or strongly discourages you from doing something), so the game already limits your pool of possible solutions for clearing it in some way. It's simply more pronounced now because the event literally tells you up front we are taking this option away. It would be no different if a monster countered your strategy with some other annoying TP move, you would still be forced away from using a particular strategy or method.

Using your puzzle analogy and applying it to something recent like Sorte, look at the way the bosses have been designed. There are some that you can't (shouldn't) burst helix on, because it will transfer the debuffs and kill your tank. There is a mechanic that discourages repeated WS abuse, because if it wasn't there, people would just abuse repeat WS like Savage Blade. One boss responds harshly if it receives water damage. H boss particularly increases reduces his damage taken if you DONT proc him within in certain period of time. In other content like Omen, Thinker uses Pain Sync, which discourages or limits you from how you fight the boss. Some of the bosses in Omen also heal from skillchain damage or while readying a tp move. Bumba responds unfavorably to being healed the wrong element, which punishes players who repeat this mechanic too hard. Is it less fun because those options are taken away or you are forced to respond to the battle conditions differently?

In all of these cases, players have to find other ways around that impediment instead, but just because you're limited in what you can and cannot do, that doesn't necessarily make it fun or not fun. The fun part comes in completing the challenge regardless of whatever the roadblock is, not in choosing what to do about it. Because players nowadays are only going to pick the top/most successful option and ignore all others. It's like a road that you travel on every day to work. If suddenly that road becomes unavailable, you still have to get to work, just find another route. Support Job restriction in Odyssey, while feeling forced and limiting, doesn't necessarily make it less fun, it should motivate people to find the best of their jobs and make the best use of it.

On top of that it's WAY easier to implement limited options to force diversity, than to implement benefits for certain approaches that will encourage diversity (that would be Afania's ideal solution afaik). It requires much more development and planning to predict all the possibilities with everything being available and design significant bonuses, especially when we are limited by various cap numbers. With limited resources it's pretty obvious SE would rather choose to put limits on us and polish and balance scenarios we are left with.

Yeah Odyssea fights are not "challenging", except maybe Ongo and that's really just a communication / coordination challenge. You absolutely do not use jobs in "new and interesting ways", you go with a specific template for each clear and it's the exact same jobs over and over again with the DD changing. They are BS not because stats or moves, but because without a SJ we are forced to approach each fight in the same way.

The only situation where it gets "unique" is triple NM RP farming, and that's due to the single use job lockout, which I 100% support. Having to fight the 2nd and third boss without access to BRD/GEO/WHM/COR is what makes people look to stuff like BLU for healing and SMN for haste buffs.

People are just afraid their achievements will be "cheapened" if more people were allowed to climb the same mountain.

Which in all honesty is a valid concern, if that were to happen soon after.
But here we're talking about such a long time since the release and since those achievements were obtained? Do we really care that much if someone has it easier to obtain what we struggled for 1+ years ago?
Maybe I'm the strange one, but given a large enough window of time I don't really care that much honestly.

Quite the other way around, I was advocating for that to happen to bring into Odyssey more people who simply ignored the content so far, for whatever reason.

It never is, in the grand scheme of things. It's a common theme in MMO's without PvP content, once a player gets to a point many immediately want to block other players from reaching that same point. Without a ranking system, leader boards or other ways to show off, they are limited to using gear access instead. Look how crazy people were about the FFXIAH points system, until it broke that is.

Gets a bit into Bartle's but basically if competitive players can't find a way to compete they end up creating one instead. And that kind of zero sum competition is toxic to a cooperative PvE multiplayer environment.

I will always be for greater accessibility, more play options and a wider set of successful strategies. Basically I always want less battle limitations not more. If that means some folks can get stuff "easier" then me, no problem cause I'm not competing with them in the first place.

But FFXI always challenge player that come up with different approach with SJ available though. It never needed to lock SJ to force different playstyle.

Look at aeonic NM in 2016-2017, people mewed and SATAed them, nuked them, melee them, PUP tank them, shoot them, SMN burned them....Of course out of the above strat SMN burn is the most OP one and replaced the remaining strat as meta after it was discovered. But that's balancing problem, not SJ problem.

So I just don't see how having SJ available somehow make the player choice narrower. In most cases it's job balancing narrow down the choices, not SJ availability.

I meant it's one thing to say locking SJ is an easy way to make the fight feel different somehow(which I agree). It's another to say SJ system is the reason behind "meta" in MMO. It was never the case.


Boss mechanics are the puzzle itself, not the puzzle pieces that I can use to solve the puzzle.

Using one of your example if there is a boss that prevents WS spam. My first reaction would be "time to build a DPS focused build with zero WS". I would start brainstorming the ideal DPS build. Get a karambit, build a martial art/dps tp set, and debate between the ideal SJ: Should I sub MNK for this or a different SJ to maximize my DPS focused build? What about /DNC for haste samba + steps, does it beat /MNK? This kind of debate can probably worth 3 pages of discussion on ffxiah lol.

Except with SJ locked the last part of the decision making process and discussion is completely gone. It stops after "get Karambit and build a martial art set". Then there is nothing more to discuss nor brainstorm when it comes to build optimization.

DD changing is itself a pretty great thing already, instead of 3x WAR with Naegling for everything. Its not about playing various jobs in new way, its about playing various jobs at all and acknowledge and use their advantages. Fights might be similar, but its completely different experience to ranged attack Arebati and play around hover shot, shadowbind and balance enmity to ignore TP moves, than melee attack Kalunga and playing around positioning, dealing with various TP moves and proccing !! Also beside Ongo, Mboze is also completely different fight.

Just because you may have done the content with cookie cutter copy/pasted setups does not mean that other groups didn't use different jobs in new and interesting ways. There are multiple setups and strategies to clear most of the Gaol fights. I will grant you that these have become more strict with V20 and may become even more so with V25. But the V15 era allowed for a huge amount of variability in setups to clear fights. Before Gaol, when was the last time you brought THF as a tank/DD and not just TH for Ou/Dynamis? Or brought BST to anything at all that wasn't botting exp to RMT? Or used NIN to magic burst from the back line?

He can't see me say this so he'll tell you he invented all those strategies but doesn't use them cause after all the workshopping he settled on the one he found fastest.

The most creative and unique not like the other girls player ever. Would never dare resort to what you think is best.

What this really means is if you can't just spam Savage Blade w/ a MS WAR and kill the thing in 1:30 or less then GTFO.

Players (Well NA and EU at least) will only use the path of least resistance and most familiar strats unless Naegling is pried out of their cold dead hands. The JPs on Odin are the people who always are coming out with some crazy off the wall kind of stuff and nobody ever goes, hey, I think I'll try that, that looked sweet. They just watch w/e Xolla or Kaggra upload and go wow those JPs sure are crazy but I'mma just Savage the hell out of this Dargon.

Well I guess the exception being Sortie and I think the original BST/BLU TP denial strat on Mboze. You have people watching how they beat Amimon and just adding it as the next testament for strategies and nobodies gonna stray too far from that path for a very long time.

Most people don't want to be creative, most people just want to read the strategy, set up their auto-buffs and auto-ws and then receive easy clears while pretending they were born and raised on 1337 st. If the fight requires any more thought than that it's too hard and oppressive. If there's any amount of work or grind to doing content it doesn't work with a casual play-style. If people can't just play their one mid at best DD job content isn't inclusive enough.

Gaol so far has been fine (not amazing or great but also not terrible), V25s could change that and SE might have to take corrective action. But don't pretend that V20s are this monolith of difficulty preventing people from their shiny blue R25 augments. Groups that wanted to clear V20s cleared V20s, some were done in like the matter of a couple weeks to a month, others took 3-6 months, others just finally finished their last clears after chipping away at it for a year and getting that last little push they needed from MLs or Empy +3 (literally I think another NA group on Odin just got Bumba V20 access in the last 2-3 weeks).

Yes the SJ lockout isn't a fun or interesting mechanic for everyone, but neither is random Aura effect, nor are just slapping adds into every fight. But it's what we got and what we have to make do with.