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WoW The End of an Era summary in terms of both people and progression, 2 weeks before TBC What Became of BG? after a year of WoW, how are things? Moving On leaving the biggest part of our lives behind, and hoping for something better FFXI FFXI Outlook on the brink of quitting The Promathia Problem a reponse to Sundi's weak claim that everyone hates Promathia Five Values five changes that could repair tons, and cost little |
FFXI Outlook - 11/05
Largely inspired by Thott's Writings
from EQ and WoW, I've taken it upon myself to try to document FFXI's problems.
My focus is endgame, since endgame is what makes or breaks an MMO, and since FFXI's
is broken.What I mean by broken, is that there is no sense in the reward gained for the effort required. Looking at any set of encounters in the endgame leaves one scratching his or her head. Another veteran of FFXI, well-seasoned in endgame, wrote I really
don't see how [Tiamat, Jormungand, and Vrtra] are any different from the other
kings Nidhogg, KB, and Aspi... Or even Kirin. And yet they drop almost nothing
compaired to them. Hell even Fafnir drops better than those four, and people
have killed Fafnir in 15 minutes while I've never heard of any of those being
killed in under 50 minutes (and most take hours). It takes a large amount of
people and a great deal of skill and team work (more than the other HNM kings)
to defeat any of them. These are among the toughest mobs in the game, and repop
just as often as the other HNM kings, but the reward for killing them is less
than most of the others? I just don't see how this makes sense. I can understand
not having abjurations drop from them to make them more unique, but really at
the same time I think that if they're able to take down such a difficult mob
don't they at least deserve more than what often drops? Maybe a really rare
chance to drop abjurations, or at least give them a good deal of other equipment
to drop, and make it so we don't see "You find a fire crystal on Tiamat"
after a long fight. :\ Really don't understand how Fafnir will always be a 100% drop on some good items while something like Tiamat can drop absolutely nothing. -Ruekenshin
If I was King, I'd run things similar to what people are saying.
I would remove Adamantoise completely from the game, BC99 Turtle has the same drops (egg, and then some).
I would remove Behemoth completely from the game, BC99 Behemoth has the same drops (hides, tongue, and then some). I would move Fafnir to an 18 man ENM with an increased drop rate on his gear. I would change Aspid, King Behemoth and Nidhogg to daily pops, which would have the effect of massively flooding the game with their drops and maxing people out very fast. I would released Cursed 2.0 that makes the current line of gear absurdly underpowered, allowing the new Wyrms to be less of a chore, as well giving the kills a sense of tangible accomplishment. Flooding the market with the current line of abj, in a normal MMO, would not be a negative thing because the nature of MMOs is to constantly advance and get stronger and better looking gear every few patches. Its assbackwards that the playerbase should covet gear that are two years old in a MMO. Sea, in all honesty, should have been mirroring sky and the 3 wyrms should have been mirroring Faf/KB/Aspid with cursed 2.0 in an almost identical setup. Nobody would have complained if Square had just copied their last expansion, its a good system. -Xavier If the game undergoes a reshaping which strongly rewards the effort of endgame players, I can see both the game becoming a classic and myself playing for another number of years. My anxiety began right after we killed our first Kirin, July 2004, when we would put 100s of man hours into 3kings each day and receive nothing. From then, especially with the release of CoP, it's been all downhill. I, along with some of my closest friends - whom have kept me playing amidst the frustration - am giving it until the next expansion to be resolved. |