Asura Inflation - What's Going On?

i don't have t3 and beyond v20+ clears yet and i'm fine with it, haven't been motivated until recently to get it done. for some of us, empyrean +3 fills the void very nicely as an alternative to doing odyssey.

i don't want any nerfs to v20+ difficulty either, just a more engaging way to rp once you get the wins as the biggest hurdle is already overcome.

This is similar to a problem that teachers face in the classroom: how do you make the curricula difficult enough to challenge the brightest students in the class while not leaving the rest of the class behind?

Frankly, I'm not sure what the solution is other than tailoring multiple different lessons/levels of difficulty...like Odyssey vengeance levels.

IDK, if you think anyone who has a pulse and a keyboard should be able to complete all of the content in the game, then we just fundamentally disagree on game design. If they made V25 NMs easy enough for 6 random PUGs with R15 gear able to clear it in a month, it would be done in a day by the group with V25 gear, and then they'd quit.

I think it's a lot more nuanced than all this "gatekeeping and all customers with a sub should be able to participate" nonsense lets on.

Everything you've said can be summed up as Elitism. That was a plague in MMO's and something all the newer ones attempt to avoid. Basically you are the bad guy billionare arguing that the lower working class needs to "know their place". Except in a video game where people pay for entertainment.

https://massivelyop.com/2021/03/11/vague-patch-notes-the-sneering-elitism-of-the-mmo-term-welfare-epics/

https://kaylriene.wordpress.com/2022/07/04/raiding-content-difficulty-and-elitism-at-the-upper-echelon/

Essentially I am very much anti-elitism after seeing how destructive it can be, it literally kills games. As an interesting note, it's been found that lower difficulty over time results in a healthier more robust community. If all the "elite" players left FFXI tomorrow, it would start growing again and become a healthier game.

My only issue with the state of the game, as it stands, is that almost no one is willing to grind through the lower tiers, as you say can be done. I've only recently come back to my character since 10 years ago. Needless to say, trying to play catch-up is a struggle. I'm at the point on several jobs where I can be a contribution to v0-v5, but only just barely. Beyond that tier, I'm 100% a leech. I'm happy to grind through and work up to the higher tiers, but even on what I believe is the highest populated server, finding others willing to do the same (whether at a similar gear level or not) has been almost impossible. Unlike Saevel, I won't claim gatekeeping, but just pure disinterest due to the lesser/non-existent reward at the same cost of entry.

IMO, if full-clearing a tier reduced the cost of entry for that tier relative to the difference in reward between that tier and the next, I think you would see more willingness for people to do previous tiers than you currently have. This isn't a means of earning more rewards by spamming more lower tiers, but rather to allow someone who has cleared a tier to earn the same rewards at the same cost to entry by doing the lower tiers as they would by doing the same tier they're currently on. This would then create a system where higher tiers are more time-efficient due to not having to spam them as many times for the same RP, but lower tiers are equally as seg-efficient by having costs reduced linearly upon clearing the full tier. It wouldn't totally alleviate the issue, but it'd certainly help.

The current state of the game very much feels like "Pay this merc for your gear. Now you can grind for the stuff you already have."

You're still just providing opinions. Instead of evidence to support them, you've linked a couple of random blogposts to showcase that people who do not play FFXI agree with an argument vaguely reminiscent of your own being applied to games with continued development.

It's hard to directly comment without knowing more specifics; but Odyssey is generally going to be one of the last bits of content to attempt. If you are truly incapable of contributing above V5, you have numerous upgrades you can obtain solo or in small groups from Omen, Dynamis, HTBC, etc. You can work toward applicable RMEA. You can farm in Sortie.

You can get fully overequipped to contribute in V15/V20 without any augmented Odyssey gear. So, a reasonable gameplay progression is still to start at V15 or V20 not V0 or V5, but it requires that you exhaust other content first.

I do wish they had tapered it out more than they did, I was disappointed to see them say v25 was the final update and after doing/fighting v25s, I don't see how they could increase it more than they have.

I think the content system is something they could have drawn out the difficulty a little more and scaled it slower, as well as possibly add new T4 mobs. The whole system seems like something ideal for a game with reduced dev resources, they can scale stats/behavior/adds with the content difficulty and reduced dev workload, but they made the ramp up to it really progressive instead and capped it off at v25.

When the content was introduced, the initial limit was V15 and everyone was expected to farm segments then clear V5->V10->V15 be cause you could not open the next tier without having already cleared the previous tier.

That was going for awhile, then they introduced V20 and that is where some of the silliness started. Still we all had V15 clears so could just clear then one at a time, then farm V20 RP to upgrade our gear.

Then they finally introduced V25 which had really dumb mechanics as stumbling blocks. We all had V20 clears so again just walk through them one at a time, then farm RP.

The first two groups were able to keep up with the content, the last two did so also but slammed into a wall at V20 and has to rely on the kindness of strangers. V25 is such an annoying pain fest that nobody wants to carry people through it.

It's why I'm for loosening the mechanics of the V25 fights, make the regen from the 2nd add not as severe. Allow SJ's to expand the number of possible winning configurations. Limit the randomality of aura's as it really sucks to be doing everything right, then get denied a win at 40% because the "wrong" aura poped.

This gets to the heart of the problem, IMO. The population of people who should be doing V5, 10, 15 are skipping it and going straight to V20 and V25. This causes players like this one to feel like they have to buy clears because there's no bridge between V0 and V20+. Then if they buy their clears, that's one fewer person for the next guy to climb with.

As I've stated a bunch of times, I think the problem is most of these people (speaking generally, not about anyone in particular) are asking for the people who already cleared to drop down a ladder instead of building a scaffolding themselves.

It's fundamentally not an issue with the design of the content, but with the players' lack of willingness to engage with the content as designed, and the meta's insistence on efficiency and skipping the grind.

it's kind of a defeatist attitude toward the lower tiers, though. no one wants to lead and risk failing, thus no one wants to join. sometimes you gotta take initiative if you want to improve your character, and this is certainly harder than it used to be, but not impossible.

also i don't think elitism is what's the problem here at all, rather that people are conditioned by the merc culture that dominates yell. we've been collectively passive enough to allow it to pervade almost every aspect of the game, and its up to us to change that if we want to. #asura problems, but reflected elsewhere too, especially here on ffxiah.

While I'm not asking for V25 fights to be made easier, I do agree with this and it's what I've been trying to say I would be fine with (even though I'd prefer they would incentivise people with clears to do the content more). It wouldn't kill SE to make it a bit easier (and Sortie should have been harder in ways other than running about and doing the same thing every single day) for weaker players.

I see things like this:
10% of players are elite and did V25
10% of players have done some V20s and V25s and actively want to finish the rest but can't find the people to do them due to poor game design, but are skilled and geared enough to do them if they could (I'm in this group)
10% of players have done some V20s and V25s and are happy to finish the rest whenever
20% of players are scrubs that buy or expect to join V20/25 clears but aren't really geared or skilled for it
50% of players are pure casual and did little to no Ody anyway

Also with what Saevel is saying (and I hate to agree with him) - this causes people in the second tier to quit, and I know many myself, leading to there just being more % in tiers 3 and 4 and 5 and making it increasingly harder to clear the content. If segs were easier to get and attempts to clear less costly then the difficulty need not change.

Don't you think this just feels really backwards though? Doing new content so you can easier clear several year old content? It irks me a bit.

This isn't FFXI specific, this is something that exists in every game ever created. It exists in sports and real life jobs. It exists anywhere there is a hierarchy of competence. In the absence of such we get a hierarchy of birth, aka the old aristocracy.


It's too easy to dismiss or denigrate the bottom grouping of the gaming population, we should never do this because they simply have different priorities. They are not bad players, they simply have put their effort / energy into different things, likely not related to this video game. There is a reason low effort mobile gaming is so popular.

Here is how this impacts us and why Elitism kills games, FFXI is a video game owned and operated by a for profit company. SE does not produce and run FFXI out of charity. To keep the servers running they need subscriptions, subscriptions means players. The mistake of the Elitist is to think their subscription fee is worth more then casual Fred, it's not. Designing and running content for the upper 10% means excluding the bottom 50%, even though both represent the same business income. If the bottom 50% are unable to participate in a meaningful way, they take their subscription fee elsewhere to where they can participate. That happens for long enough and the servers get turned off.

You can wipe out the top 10% of players and the product will still be profitable, you do the same to the bottom 50% and it gets shut down. Because unlike real like, participate in FFXI is voluntary.


FFXIV handled this in a very novel way. There do exist crazy hard fights called Extreme, but those fights do not drop ultimate super gear. Instead the reward is cosmetics. The top 10% of players can do that content and get rewarded with shiny unique cosmetics they can show off, while the bottom 50% isn't being denied power growth.

What about the segment that cleared V15 when it was new, but then gave up on Ody after V20-25 due to ‘random aura = random win chance’ RNG annoyances?

You're over simplifying the discussion to tear down a straw man. Noone is saying at release all people should be able to do all content, but that over time they should (as has happened with all other content!) and that Ody V25 feels a bit overdue.

Yes, they have gotten easier with Mlevels and Emp+3 (don't agree with prime weapons), but arguable not by enough. Personally I don't think quite long enough has passed that V25 all the way to Bumba should be made easier, but certainly after another 6 months or so max.

Part of the problem here is also that Sortie is lazy and ***design. If they want to kill FFXI eventually they should just release a non-online version where you can do everything with trusts eventually and give it up.

This comes back to the need for segs and risk-avoidance so not playing with random puggers. I think they should allow us to make more segs or reduce entry so you could have more attempts to win. Keep it high for RP farming but not clears IMO.

The four groupings I gave where what the MMO industry uses to evaluate player participation. They found it's a combination of skill and available time. People with high skill and high time will always be on the leading edge and clear content before anyone else does. Those with high skill but low time will also clear content, just at a slower pace. The next two categories lack the skill to clear the content on their own and will never clear it without assistance. Those with time but no skill can just keep plugging away and eventually they'll get lucky and get carried. Those with neither time or skill will just walk away.

I'm also not talking about grinding stuff like RP or muffins, that's a different discussion. I'm only talking about the players and their ability to meaningfully participate and make progress. Odysea Gaol hard restricts progress through the clear requirement, while Sortie only does that at the T5 weapon level. Gaol V25 has been around awhile, and those players that were going to clear it have already cleared it. Everyone else is just relying on the kindness of others to hopefully get a clear. The hard gate has served it's purpose and needs to be lowered to let those other players through. This can be done statistically or mechanically, I favor mechanically as the games statistic progress is glacially slow right now.

I think the fundamental flaw in your proselytizing about how 100% of players need to have access to content is it's predicated on the idea that the entire population WANTS to do all the content. If you're a casual player who gets on every 3rd night for 45 minutes after your kid goes to sleep to experience Vana'diel again, you're not pissed that SE won't allow you to clear V25 T3 NMs or Bumba.

I think of the 10/10/10/20/50 that K123 proposed, only ~20% of them are frustrated by the current system, not 50%.

Casual people who play randomly aren't being frustrated by running out of content, they have enough content for decades with no updates.


I truly don't understand how the "poor game design" is the fault of you not being able to find people to do them. What part of the game design is preventing you from finding players to complete NMs? The fact that segments exist?

The cockblock of segs is a major problem as people have been saying, yes. If entry was free if you had clear, I'd happily join people to help for free and for fun. If you need me to use 3k segs out of the 9k a day I can farm if I spend 30mins doing other content, I don't have enough until I have my clears sorry. Then when I do have my clears, I have no motivation to farm segs! This is the problem I still can't understand you can't see.

I guess then you're saying that on Asura, there don't exist 5 other people who need the V25 clears, are capable of doing it, and play during your times? And so you absolutely must rely on the assistance from people who've already cleared it?

The same thing applies to people who need V15 or V20 clears. They insist that there aren't enough people who need it and are capable, so they need help from the people who've already cleared it (via SE changing the mechanics of the segments) otherwise they'll never get it.

I think this is just patently false and it's a meta/socializing issue. I see what you're saying, I just disagree that it's a game mechanics issue.

My stance has always been that all content should be available to all paying customers, eventually. At first only the tier 1 players get it, then the tier 2, then the content gets nerfed either directly or through newer content rewards making it significantly easier, and everyone else gets it. Delve is a really good example of this, clearing those bosses before iLevel was a major acomplishment.


I can see the argument on V25 Bumba, but the T3's are past due to have their mechanics adjusted towards more inclusion. Personally I've always hated random mechanics. Players should reasonably know what's going to happen next and be capable of formulating a strategy around it. The crazy regen at 40% is what causes most of the problems as the wrong aura then means you lose.


Content wise it's definitely crappy design that greatly favors mage setups and running around in a giant circle. You easily spend half the time running from point A to point B. Reward wise it's really well designed, though it could use improvement. Someone without high skill but who has time can solo their way to a tier 4 weapon / empy +3 upgrades. It will take a ridiculously long period of time, but it's doable. They will can have progress every time they play and that is the heroin that keeps people paying subscription fees. Progress is directly tied to skill / time investment with the only hard gate being the T5 weapon upgrade via HM Aminon fight. Though I really wish we could use multiple-stones instead of muffins for empy upgrades.

I wouldn't be surprised if they formulated the regen around the idea that players would use 3 KIs for clears, with one of them aimed at killing the add to reduce it. They removed the add respawning, which was in effect for v20, and added that crazy regen if both are out. They obviously didn't update the way procs work, which for a few of them presents the real problem, but I suspect this is what their thought process was. We had more than a few losses sub 10% that would've been wins without it.

Despite what I said earlier, though, I agree. The biggest issue with v25 for me is how many things they throw at you for which there is no mitigation or solution, you just lose due to factors that gear/skill can't reasonably accommodate for. You can, with effort and a good group, push through this eventually like I said earlier, but I'd rather it be the type of difficulty where you can come up with a semi-consistent strategy and win most of the time if your group is good. I think v20 was closer to this and seemed to be a more fair challenge even if it had a few elements that were still bogus.

Pop the add ki 1, kill the add ki 2, win ki 3 is supposed to be the intended way, absolutely

Or some mild variation using an add as a tp battery

They're all very simple (not easy, simple) approached as using all 3 ki except bumba. Bumba is just bad design and/or broken.

I think this is part of it TBH. For a while my group was struggling mightily with Ongo trying to smash through auras/WC resets and hope for a "lucky" 1 KI fight. We switched to 3 KI, taking the time to kill the add, and then won shortly after.

Everyone is quick to blame SE for designing impossible fights without putting an iota of thought into how they can bypass or overcome the "luck".

I think the only fight where you absolutely cannot win (without insane positive luck) based on a bad aura or 1hr or w/e is Bumba. Even that is probably because we're still forcing a specific strategy and it might be easier/more consistent with a yet-undiscovered 3 KI strat, or a different strategy overall.

Wouldn't be the first time the players did the exact opposite of what the devs intended, it happens all the time. This is part of the frustration but also the joy of playing FFXI: the devs generally don't tell the players ***, we just figure it out as a community and throw something together. The mystery is part of the appeal

It was poorly implemented because you can only bring in a job once, don't get SP's back between fights and the adds have ridiculous HP. If the adds had much less HP or we could bring jobs in multiple times, then this would of been a viable strategy. The aura not reseting between fights just kiboshed any attempt at this.


My point was that everyone who was going to get T3 V25's clears has already got T3 V25 clears. Those remaining who still need them won't be saved by any amount of magical "power of friendship". The only option is to either lower the bar so that they could pass, or introduce another ridiculous power jump. I just don't see SE doing the later for a long time.

Pls explain why they need "lots of free time"? Its not like you can farm segs all day long, and once you have sufficient segs, you can do Gaol at your own pace.

"Lots" isn't the right word, just very consistent free time. Progress in Odyssea Gaol requires six people to work together and repeat a strategy until they can do it without thinking. They need to agree to meet at specific times and execute the event until they clear each boss, and so forth. This is especially true for the multi-KI bosses with lots of moving parts, Tree / Tiger / Bird (single KI but lots of moving parts).

For people with little to no real life commitments, this isn't hard to do. For those with careers, children, medical issues, or pretty much anything the majority of Homo Sapiens have to deal with, it's difficult.

I was gonna keep arguing, but I suppose people wishing SE would make v25's easier isn't really that different from me hoping they reduce the Prime grind someday.

Both are desires to avoid a huge grind and neither's gonna happen.

The game is what it is. Nothing in the game requires Primes, ML50, or R30, so there's no shame in skipping content if you aren't willing to jump through the hoops SE has in place to get it.