Segments Are Pain

They can't do that as they've been programmed to get 10k segments or there's no point in going.

Couple that with their aversion to leading a group (because they won't get those 10k segments)

Come to Jesus with a debrainwashing, but it's not going to happen.

The people are not going to fix themselves. That's not how it works. In anything. Anywhere. Ever.

Collectively, this is the rock and the hard place. Odyssey is too masochistic for the general populace. But you can't turn down the masochism. It's an impasse.

oh you

this popped into my head and now I can't picture you as anything else

Grouch, no. Informative despite your wish to remain oblivious, yes.

Being mad at the messenger does nothing

Offline FFXI if SE could afford it.

The goals of FFXI are storylines, unlock subjob and trusts, LBs, weapon skills, relic weapons, NMs and many secret things. Forget the endless endgame content. It's for money and the director needs to find a new hobby.

Really duty finder will be great for old content and make them relveant again like, Walk of echos and delve and Incursion etc, but they need to remove entry requirement, or make it needed once.
People mostly want to waste time having fun not always stressed out for 15 min to win against a boss.

I don't think that game engine is capable of that function, but you can try a request on the OF and wait for something you might never get what you want. It has something to do with their budget and there's a difference between modern-day programming and legacy programming. FFXI the entire engine just needs to be reworked by just hired programmers who know how to code it.

As someone posted, there's more than 50% play solo, so I think an offline version would be more fit for the whole fanbase of the series.

IDK...while I think it would be nice from the perspective of game preservation, I think single player FFXI would be awful.

The content is either piss-easy or totally impossible for a single player. This is mostly because it was designed to be done with 6 human players (or more) at a certain level. This means for a single-player game they either need to re-work the entire trust system to make them like real players or re-design all of the encounters. In either case...good luck balancing every fight in the entire game for all jobs, from WHM all the way through to BST, PLD, PUP...it would be an absolute train wreck.

A lot of the "value" in this game comes from grinding. Grinding MLs, grinding REMAs, grinding jobs, merit points, grinding fights with awful drop rates. So you either keep all that grind and then you have a ball-numbing grindy game, or you remove it and then you remove the dopamine hit when you finally get that amazing drop.

All of (current) endgame is totally imbalanced for a single player. See above point, you either have to make it absurdly easy or insanely difficult, and also GL doing it for all jobs. How do you implement some of the most interesting strategies (TP denial, kiting, specific job setups with specific subjobs, etc.) with trusts? Are you going to control the trust kiting the boss while also controlling the one debuffing, the healer, and 2 DDs, plus the one managing the adds? I think the most fun fights in this game are the ones with complex strategies and that can't be replicated single player.


For me, the best parts of this game are the memories with friends and the complex and difficult to execute strategies for the best fights, plus the creativity of coming up with the job setups for those strategies. I don't think a lick of that translates to a single-player game.

"Duty finder" would never work in FFXI, the equip systems and inflexibility of jobs required (or thought to be required) are way more complex than WoW, FFXIV, and their ilk. Population issues aside, there's no way you could randomly slap 6 idiots together and successfully complete anything that wasn't already braindead easy to complete. This game requires too much thought and planning to put strangers into a group and expect them to win.

I'm skeptical single player FFXI is even in consideration, how would they justify a sub fee for a offline game?

Yes, a working duty finder would have been easier to implement if they didn't postpone it for this long. You can argument as much as you want that it's too complicated or pricy to implement, it's not going to solve the problem.

Other approaches could be nerfing content, buffing/adding trusts or treating the current way of party lead as what it is, a job. Means add incentives for leading a party like ingame rewards, free mog wardrobes or no sub fee next month/refund current month. Of course such a system will not be easy to implement either if you want to make sure RMT and multboxers can't abuse it.

At the end SE will have to weight their options because those survey results will be hard to ignore.

Idk, I think treating players like adults and respecting their time would go a long way to helping with people's reluctance to form and lead parties.

I think the obnoxious mechanics, the stress put on certain jobs that have to pull a lot of weight in every content, buffers healers and so on, has a lot to do with it.

I get that certain limits are put in place to stop people from clearing content "too quickly". Those limits can exist without obnoxious mechanics and nerfing the very power put in the hands of the players in the first place, whether that be buffs, debuffs, or powerful glowing magical weapons.

Let the players have fun, and they are more likely to want to do it and include others.

Put in place obnoxious mechanics that annoy everyone that does the content and people are less likely to want to do it.

Shocking way of thinking, I know.

Guys there is no duty finder because there are trusts. The effort is already spent and allocated.

If you want to find other people, you need to put in the work. There is no techbro app that is going to help you get over your social anxiety or lack of interest in other people past a resource. That was the point of the MMO in the first place, to give you a safe space to play with other kids across the globe. I understand WoW and FFXIV let you have an extra layer of swipe right that you think is normal, but the reality is that you are avoiding making friendships and social groups that you can also do content with you, if you build them.

Mercs are the credit card, swipe right version of friend groups.


Super easy to ignore. That survey was literally them saying, we don't want to do our homework, please tell us what you want and then we'll give you what we want to give you. After 2~ years of no updates, you will take it. Maybe we'll prioritize the things you asked for first, if we were going to give it to you, so it looks like we are responsive.

We can split the difference on their intentions, but those will be the results. As a person who just wants more content to play with my friends, I will be happy.

Sorry so I'm really confused...what should they remove? REMAs? Debuffs? Buffing jobs? Fetters? Procs? Auras? I'm really not following your train of thought. Should they allow parties of 6 DDs to clear all content, because nobody wants to play BRD, GEO, or WHM?

I guess that would solve the problems, technically...

I don't really have an answer, and no I'm not saying make all content face roll with 6 dds. I am not a game designer.

I do see where people that think playing whm, for example, is obnoxious are coming from. I don't mind it myself.

I know it's basic, but if you remove the road blocks, we all know they don't have the dev team to re-make content fast enough to keep subs up.

We've seen what the intended mechanics for Aminon are. No one does them.

The intended mechanics for Bumba are not even known. No one does them.

Good design?

Does it matter if people quit because they can't do or don't want to put up with content under the current circumstances or if they quit because they ran out of content?

As no ones going to address the why, no, it doesn't matter why

Problems with this mindset:

1. Making the highest content faceroll removes the drive for players to improve. If you can get the highest gear easily, you lose motivation.

2. SE tried using less obnoxious mechanics. Players used anchor, react, gearswap, and everything else to make them meaningless. So, now you get the worst.

3. If you want casual content, you can do casual content. You can take 17 of your buddies to go screw around in Dynamis-D or omen. It doesn't matter how bad they are. Nobody has to try hard. You'll still make some gil in dyna, you have a shot at some drops.

4. Some people legitimately want challenging content. The people who have taken the time to optimize their character and become as strong as they possibly can deserve something that uses their strength.

5. Stress is a matter of perspective. If you are stressed by playing WHM or buffer(I am not sure how a buffer is stressful, but whatever), then don't play them. The goal is to have fun. Personally, I'd rather have to think a little than just mash a WS macro, but different strokes for different folks. It's not like we're talking starcraft 200 APM; healers still top out around 20-25.

The issue is that if the hardest content provides increased player power, that's always going to be an incentive that pushes casual players towards it, complaining about the difficulty the whole time. This is true in any game, not just XI.

The v20 > v25 jump is fairly well designed in that respect, as the power increase from r25 > r30 is modest, and anyone actually doing the climb is going to have a rough idea of how much time and effort v25 will take for their group. I know a few people who hit r20/25 and looked at the next tier and just said "nah, I'm good".

Where Ody's design drops the ball is by gating non-RP progression via Moglophone II's, which makes failures or mistakes incredibly punishing for new groups who don't have the gear to farm segments well yet.

Several problems with that mindset too.

* I am biased here, have said before I don't enjoy Ody v25, T3+ specifically, so I don't do it. I will say I have seen a lot of friends quit because of the, imo, overly tuned difficulty of the V25s. Again, biased.

* Assuming your player base cheats and therefor putting in mechanics that assume cheats are being used only incentivises more cheating. Case in point, who here has a ML50 job they didn't bot their way to. I have some, all botted. The last thing a game should be doing is incentivising cheating, imo.

* Agreed. As I said, I don't do Ody. I do enjoy Sortie so I do that. I think the Sortie progression is really well made and allows you to learn and go from 1 boss to 2, 4, 8 and so on. The fun and challenge is in the improving the character to be able to do that. Others don't like Sortie and that's fine.

* Hm, that is subjective. SE have said that "content to challenge players with Prime weapons" are the new master trials. The completion rate of the two newest master trials currently sits at 0%. Zero clears since release, which was 6 months ago now? If that is, and I don't know you tell me, your idea of challenging content, then I disagree and so does the vast vast majority of the player base. If your player base dislikes content enough to completely ignore it, that's on you as the designer not the player base. I don't think the designer of the master trials likes seeing a 0% completion rate on them and a handful of attempts. Would that time not be better spent on some other content?

* Agreed. I main whm, for example, among others. If I didn't have yagrush I would find it annoying.


On topic, segs are fine. Quit whining about not getting 10k+, make your own group and deal with it. Can't make a group? Solo. I don't care, quit whining.

For those there are master trails. "Elites" haven't been able to beat it despite easy mode. I think that indicates that the number of players that crave extreme difficulty are in the minority and probably make little to no impact in terms of subscriber numbers.

Master trails asside the current diffuclty seemed to hit the sweet spot for the "elites", they had their time at the sun, they are done with odyssey. I don't see a reason why not to adjust the content now so it meets the capabilities of more casual players other than gatekeeping.

3 player entry requirement, alliance content, Multi hour duration event and 3 day lockouts all not casual friendly at all imho. Wave 1 points for SU5 upgrades, which is probably where a lowman casual group would spend most of their time, are abysmal.

As far as the groups trying them have said the new master trials aren't just hard, they are unwinnable. Everyone who's tried them so far seems to have come to the same conclusion. I can't comment firsthand, because I refuse to grind Sortie for primes and it seems unfair to call it unwinnable when I lack the strongest weapons.

I don't think you can use them as a fair example of people refusing to engage with difficult content, Bumba V25 was beaten in much less time and so were the rest of the Odyssey bosses. Difficulty is important, but it should still be achievable. There should be clear progress and the ability to recognize how and why a failure occured.

This assumes the current elites are the only people who will ever be able to clear V25. Otherwise, leaving it as is gives the folks currently working through V20 or gearing up to challenge V25 a goal to strive for. If it were made much easier overnight, the only new players doing it would be the ones currently refusing to do V15/V20. The folks currently working at it would lose their chance to earn success through their progress.

It's casual friendly in the sense people keep asking for casual friendly: it is alliance content that doesn't need anywhere near an alliance to achieve success and earn rewards.

It seems you're more interested in solo content, and that's a perfectly valid desire.

I see this a lot and I don't agree with it one bit. SE didn't introduce ML to encourage botting, they didn't introduce knockback to encourage Anchor, they didn't introduce gravity to encourage Tako, etc. This is just the excuse used by people who want to justify their cheating IMO.

You know how many ML50 jobs I have? 0. You know why? Because ML are not required at all for any content in the game and, frankly, they're part of the reward for doing stuff. If I had ML50 I'd feel like I was (partially) wasting my time doing content which rewarded EP. I really feel like people need to stop viewing ML50 as a goal they need to hit (and therefore a goal SE set too high, to encourage botting) but rather a reward they get for playing the game.


I partially agree with this one, but also disagree on some points. I'm sure the designers are probably disappointed that the content hasn't been cleared yet, but I also think that a large part of the problem is the reward: it's just a cosmetic item. If the master trials gave ZOMFGWTFBBQ good armor or weapons, they would be much more likely to have been cleared by now, IMO. Part of the reason only a tiny percentage of the community even tries master trials is because the only rewards are bragging rights, essentially. With fewer people trying them, there's much less discussion about it, fewer ideas being attempted, less experience being thrown at it, etc.

I do think it's still possible that these MT in particular have some mechanics that are so random/obscure that the community hasn't figured them out which could be considered bad design and/or they're too overtuned (assuming 4 stage 5 primes or something) which could also be considered bad design. We won't really know until someone clears them and/or SE comes out with some statement explaining what's going on here. I don't think the fact that they haven't been cleared yet is necessarily a sign that they're poorly designed though. I think it's a combination of factors. Final consideration: if they do require primes and/or extreme levels of gear, that further stratifies the people who can even attempt to clear them. The fact is there are vanishingly few players at that level, especially these days. It's not terribly surprising they haven't been cleared, TBH.


I'm sure I would also dislike WHM if Yagrush didn't exist, but I don't think it's fair to judge a job while ignoring a crucial piece of its kit that SE put into the game. Yagrush existed and was in the hands of hundreds of players before SE really started putting in spammy AoE debuff stuff (and we started getting so much haste to give mobs infinite TP).

If gathering 3 characters (players) for an event is too hardcore for you, you should play Shenmue or something. This is an MMORPG, it's not unreasonable to ask you to find 2 other characters to enter an event.

As for multi-hours, you can leave whenever you want. Go in to dynamis [D], kill the boss, and leave after 15 minutes, nobody's forcing you to stay.

Lockouts are standard in every MMO in the history of MMOs. It's an economy-balancing issue. You either have to nerf the *** out of the drops or give it a lockout, or you risk tanking the entire economy (and people complaining about burnout).

Wave 1 gives a shitload of points for Su5 and Wave 2 is even better. Both are incredibly achievable by a modest group of players. The only "tough" enemy you need to kill to farm all of W1/W2 dynamis is a single statue boss who does ***for damage and has no dangerous TP moves at all. I'm willing to bet than a single player could solo the entire thing with nothing but trusts, on multiple jobs.

I agree. At the same time, if the argument is "well you're cheating so SE is doing worse things because of it" then that just accentuates the cheating doesn't it?

I know Thorny made that argument, but I wouldn't make that argument.

Even if we were to say SE added unavoidable mechanics because of cheaters and it made the game more difficult...you're still cheating to make the game easier so I'm not really sure the justification holds water.

"I'm only using Tako because SE put haunt in the game"

"I'm only using GS because SE gave Gaol mobs punishing TP moves so I have to be in DT 100% of the time"

"I'm only using Tako because SE put a time limit on this battle"

"I'm only using Anchor because SE gave Gaol mobs knockback"

"I'm only using Tako because SE made the maps really big"

"I'm only using GS because SE equipsets don't go fast enough"

...Whatever excuses you can come up with, you're still using programs to make the game easier. That's fine, you can play however you want, but I don't believe, personally, that the design choices made by SE justify cheating. I suppose you could say they "incentivize" it but...how exactly would you dis-incentivize cheating in a video game?

Aiming is tough, using an aimbot in an FPS/TPS game is incentivized because you get kills and they add incentives like winning matches, plus they designed the game to make it hard to shoot your opponents!

I will attack my own argument though: SE could've taken the approach of WoW where they allowed third parties to develop whatever tools they wanted and permitted all this stuff, but then you end up with the hellscape that is WoW raiding with 100 required addons and encounters designed assuming you're going to have addons telling you how to do all the mechanics, where to go, assigning people to roles, and an outside raid leader calling the shots (because normal mechanics aren't challenging once you have third party tools to do them for you). No thanks.

Lockout from salvage has been pretty much none existant for quite a while now and alex prices are fine where they are.
Lockouts are one, not the only, tool to slow down player progress and buy devs enough time to prepare the next content.

Once the content train progressed several events forward there is no real justification to leave those breaks in place, in particular not if they don't work on new content.

So ML50 is possible without botting. That's the counter argument. I don't think it is, not realistically.

Your argument seems to be you don't need it, and that's fine, but that's not how a game works. If you tell players you can get another Str+10 by going from ML40 to ML50, they're going to want to do it.

If you then say, ah, going from ML40 to ML50 is twice as hard as going from ML0 to ML40, they're still going to want to do it. Because str+10, or acc+20 or any of the stats. These are not small bonuses and out weigh even merits.

I see your point with taking it too far, that's a good example. I think XI's engine doesn't lend itself to that kind of large scale guiding though.

Nor do I agree with making aimbots and, say, gearswap equivalent. Both cheating, sure, that's where the similarities end though.

And I don't want to get into another third party tools debate, been beaten to death.

My point was if the argument is made that SE only did things because cheating, then it also follows "if you assume cheating, then it's ok?" I don't agree with either those statements, btw.

It's like saying content is designed around swapping gear. Doesn't matter how, just swapping. If it's designed around that, then it's literally part of the game design to do it.

I agree, the part I disagree with though, is that content was designed around cheats. The fact that you can complete all the content without cheats means that it isn't designed around cheats. The same couldn't be said for gear swapping, for example.


It is absolutely possible without cheating. It's not even difficult. All you need to do is put up with being bored. I have ML46 on my BRD and I haven't done more than maybe...an hour or two of ML on BRD ever. Obviously I've never botted ML on it, or been in a party with someone who was botting ML.

Not that anyone should bother, but that's beyond the point.

I think it's rather disingenuous to say ML give 50 STR and 50 acc/atk, because that's only true if you're comparing from ML0, which is unrealistic. It's near impossible to be ML0. I think it's more realistic to compare ML50 to something that is more casual or easy to get, like ML30, 35, or 40. When making these comparisons it's more like 10 or 20 STR which, while not totally insignificant, isn't important.

I beat Mboze on my ML20 DRK
I beat Arebati on my ML12 SMN
I beat Arebati on my ML22 RUN
I beat Ongo KI#1 on my ML13 NIN
I beat Ongo KI#2 on my ML5 GEO
I've done extremely well on various Ongo battles with my ML18 BLM (I swapped jobs before I killed it on BLM)
I beat Ngai on my ML0 GEO
I beat tons of bosses on my ML27 RDM
I've done loads of NMs on ML25 BRD

ML are a complete joke that people who don't know how to play put way too much emphasis on. +10 STR will not win you battles and if you think the reason you're successful is because of ML, or the reason you weren't successful is because of a lack of ML, you're mistaken.

Int for Ongo is probably the most noticeable and useful of ML bonuses in Odyssey.

ML50 will grant you 50 STR, not 10. It will also give you 500HP. If you're gonna say 500HP is a nothingburger, I'll say you're full of ***.


Now having said that, I'll agree that you dont need ML50. But anyone saying ML25 is a bridge way too far, I'll say they're just lazy. 8 hours of EPing from ML0 at 100kEP/hr (A very bad group without a COR) will still get you to ML20. This is not a high baseline. 8 hours 150kEP/hr (a solid party without cor) will get you to ML25. ML20 is a very reasonable expectation.