Asura Inflation - What's Going On?

Can confirm that attending statics is difficult as someone working and in college.

As if this is any different from literally ANY other extracurricular activities. How is this any different from my hockey team, my softball team, meeting with my workout buddy?

Or even circle jerking

I disagree, Elitism is fine in an mmorpg.

To use an analogy, Elitism is like a group of people forming a football team and taking it super seriously and following all the rules etc. Then another group forming a messabout team and just messing about while drinking beer.

If the people in the first team don't wanna play with the messabout groups that's ok, both can exist.

The problem in XI is that the content is so complicated, difficult and "free" (you can literally fail in 10 seconds if you're not geared / knowledgeable and you rarely see this on most mmorpgs if you meet the gearchecks) that it's hard for the messabout teams to even do anything serious at all, so they want to join the serious groups but not align to their standards.

The thing for serious teams to keep in mind of course is that you should always try to build some fellow players you think have what it takes to be useful to your groups, or you'll just run out of people to invite over time.

Also there is this idea that if everyone can't do the hardest content they are going to quit. Problem there is that they will 100% quit when there is nothing left to do anyway. People will just skip everything and go right to the top stuff and do that till they have all the stuff and then quit. This is why people who are serious players who invite a friend of relative and help them get all the best stuff and do the hardest endgame asap see them quit.


If anything there is a real argument that keeping players from higher tier content has higher retention than allowing everyone to do everything. Cause that mountain left to climb is a reason to keep grinding out gear and getting stronger.

There's Elitism and there's Elito-sadism.

Some of the arguments here could be rephrased like "well my daddy paid for my education so *** the 2 billion people in the world who can't afford it, not everyone should have everything".

100% agree. Clearing difficult content is not a reflection on someone's quality as a player but more an indication they can play well with others and were willing to dedicate enough time to reach that goal.

I may be done with Ody in XI, but I play XIV and WoW in a super casual fashion. Could I find a group to do Ultimate/Mythic raids? Sure. Do I want to put in the time and effort needed to be successful at it? Hell no! If it's not in duty finder, I ain't doing it, and some weeks not even that.

I don't consider myself either noob or elite. I just have characters with different goals, different effort invested, and different results.

No it's cancer and kills games, period because games are a business not a charity. You have all been talking about what you feel is good for you, I've been talking about what is financially good for an online video game.

Because unlike those other examples, video games exist as entertainment. In this case customers are paying money to a company, Square Enix, for a product. In return for those subscription fee's Square Enix provides entertainment in the form of an online video game. The subscription fee of the elitist is the same as the subscription fee of the casual. Elitist's make up ~10% or less of a player base, SE can nuke every last one of them and the game would be perfectly healthy if not more so. Casuals make up 40~50% of the population, if all the casuals left SE would shut the game down.

Here is a better way to understand it. You and your friends all pay $100 for tickets to see a baseball game. Everyone arrives at the stadium but instead of being allowed to watch the game, everyone has to play a skeet ball minigame and only the top ~30% are allowed into the stadium. All the other paying customers are told to "git gut noobs".

This should never be a games response to paying customers.

I would really love for you to quote someone saying anything even remotely close to this, because I think you are projecting hardcore right now.

It's just people gatekeeping, they got theirs and then pull the ladder up afterwards. It's one of the more toxic elements of online gaming communities. If SE allowed all the more casual players to get those V25 clears, it would take away from the exclusivity to them elites.

modern games have matchmaking to incentivize people to socialize and help each other. ffxi obviously does not. that doesn't equate to elitism or gatekeeping you keep describing, though. just human nature.

How are they "pulling the ladder up"?? The goal doesnt change, the challenge doesnt change.

Elitism is the mistaken belief that because a person possesses higher skill, time or both, they should be allowed more access to a product then those of lessor skill or time. The dead giveaway is exclusionary reasoning, reason why someone should not be allowed access to something.

"Person X should not be allowed Y because they aren't good enough for it."

It's a death sentence for online video games because customers are voluntary and can just take their money elsewhere. Aristocrats, which is what elitist's act like, can only make up a small faction of any population because they self select to only be the top percentage, the rest are just mundanes.

You operate under the mistaken notion that FFXI exists to serve a small percentage of top players. The reality is that FFXI is a business that exist to serve the majority of players.

Wow and FFXI are both ultra elitist and are 15/23 years old, this is just not true. There is space for both kinds of games, Elden Ring and Palworld can both co-exist.

Also I kind of get the impression people are trying to make real life comparisons too much here, which is silly. On XI you can be a 14 year old rl loser, play 10 hours a day and take it super seriously and end up being an elite player. Or back in the day running the best ls on the server and having 24 year old engineers begging to join your ls.

MMORPGS are liked so much by so many people because they reward you for what you do, instead of who you are.

Oh I missed this part. That has been found to be very untrue.

Earlier I describe the four general categories that players will fall into with respect to content exclusivity. The only two categories that will actively seek to "climb the mountain" are skilled + time (Tier 1) and skilled + no time (Tier 2). The unskilled + time (Tier 3) will attempt but are incapable of ever getting there, and the unskilled + no time (Tier 4) won't even try. Those bottom two groups represent at least half the gaming population.

This separation is why modern MMO's will release content with the intention to be exclusive, then six to twenty four months later will nerf that content in same way. The intention is to provide a challenge for Tier 1 and 2 players, knowing that Tier 3 and 4 are still busy with the stuff you released a few years ago. Once Tier 1 and 2 clear the content and your getting ready to introduce the new content, you reduce the older contents difficulty so Tier 3 and 4 can clear it while Tier 1 and 2 move on to the newer stuff.

this is what i mean, though. as a business matchmaking systems ensure that content doesn't die because people don't want to help each other. its in their best interests to have people of all skill levels play together in some content, but not all. if you had to PUG savage or extremes no one would do them.

It is true, you just haven't realized it yet because so far SE has used new content to statistically nerf older content. Several times now they've released semi-easy to acquire gear that made older content easier.

The most recent example is Odysesa gear vs Dynamis D. Dynamis D was the "elite" content, specifically wave 3 farming / weapon unlocks. When it was time to make it more accessible, easily acquired Gaol gear arrived with stats that significantly increased power level of even Tier 3 and 4 players. The effect of this was to nerf Dynamis D difficulty without you even realizing they did.


There is no PvP in FFXI, it's all PvE. We are discussing the relative difficulty and therefor accessibility of that E.

Currently there is a group of elites that wish to keep that older E exclusive to themselves and force Tier 3 / 4 players to crawl through broken glass to access it. Granted this is largely because Odyssea Gaol has crappy design with hard gates, where as better designed content is soft gated.

are you referring to the yells with "veteran" or R25DD in them that are common now? i see that more as a monkey-see monkey-do kind of thing where they don't really adequately describe what they want from a player because its easier to just type vet or r25 and pray they can keep up.

You know what, you're totally right. No game like that could ever be successful or become popular. /s

If your goal is to appeal to the wider audience of the masses and retain as many players as possible this is true, XIV was made to do this. However games are very much like many other things in life and not everything has to be made for everyone.

FFXIV is like chicken wings.
FFXI is like fire alarm burn your mouth off and call an ambulance chilly wings.

FFXI wasn't made to appeal to everyone or retain everyone that tried it, it was made for a hardcore group of animals that like burning their mouths out.

No online game ever has, while several have died from being so.

Diablo IV is a good recent example. Was released and had a really high initial population, lots going on. But too many people were getting to cap and doing the highest tier content, there was nothing for Elites to call their own. The developers heard them, then starting nuking the entire game from orbit. Difficulty sky rocketed, the top content become far more exclusive and players started to walk away from the game. Multiple patches and "Seasons" later, it's a ghost town and Blizzard is laying off people left and right.

Subscription based games like FFXI are driven by mundane casual players. Those players need to feel like they can make progress. They can tolerate hard gates for a limited period of time, but eventually they'll grow tired of being unable to participate and walk away, taking their subscription money with them.

This is another thing you are wrong about, FFXI is full of casual players. It's a perception thing, you only see what is around you. It's like wealthy people living in nice neighborhoods thinking everybody else must be living like that too.

ohh boy now we got class warfare in the mix.

What exactly do you think elitism is?

It's a very human reaction to create social groups. Throw in some sort of measurable hierarchy of competency and groups will start self organizing based on that competency. There is no organization on the planet, real or virtual, that didn't self organize into a class system.

The only question is if that system tries to be inclusive or exclusive. Stating that it's "good" to have a "you must be this tall to ride" sign outside of content is exclusive and unhealthy in the long term.

Of course Monty Haul "everyone gets a participation trophy" isn't fun either. Which is why the concept of time limited exclusivity was found to be the best compromise. Content is initially exclusive but is designed to become more inclusive after a period of time. Odyssea Gaol V25 is the only thing that hasn't happened to yet, likely due to SE slowing down development and thus there not being a significant power jump anytime soon.

Me, when I see people eat NQ food in my groups.



You aren't helping with this Ambu Vol.2

I will always be for maximum inclusivity in non-free entertainment. It's how healthy communities form and thrive.

My life has enough personal challenges and accomplishments that the idea of a virtual video game trophy having more then transitory meaning is well, quite weird. If anyone here genuinely thinks that anything you've done in FFXI has real value or meaning, please for your own mental health, unsub and go outside. This is just a video game, it's entertainment.

yes but they don't have to clear the hardest content to be happy playing the game, most people playing XI are progression junkies but they don't have to be at the top. Many are happy playing solo and doing their thing, they don't care someone else is better than them.

many activities can be reduced to "just entertainment" if you want to. some people assign value to being able to put the most basketballs through a hoop, others to being able to count cards in poker, or whatever. just because you place value on some things above others doesn't mean everyone else has to. maybe beating Bumba isn't the pinnacle of human achievement, but that doesn't mean it has no value.

By that logic the game should have died when Relic weapons were released, and several times over since then. Hell, when Mythics were released you couldn't even start one until you'd done all the other current endgame content.

You keep saying R30 players want to feel like they're better than everyone else, but that's BS. SE could hand out free R30 at the login moogle next month for all I care - I did Odyssey because doing it with my group was fun and the experience was memorable.

If going from v20 > v25 clears was as boring as making a Prime weapon, I wouldn't have bothered. R20/25 is enough to trivialize all other content, so the time investment absolutely isn't worth it unless you enjoy the journey.

Asura inflation is so bad, threads about Asura inflate into something completely different than intended, at a near 100% rate