SE Wants You To Bring Along "gimp" Players...

This. Oh so much of this. While we all want to be good at it, this is still a game. At the end of the day we are supposed to have been entertained, and feel as though we accomplished something or at the very least feel like we didn't waste our time. Id rather enjoy the experience and make little progress than get a clear having a terrible time. The one thing about this game at launch was we enjoyed the journey, not just the destination. If we as a whole went back to this approach, the new content would be as fulfilling as that first lv 50 or first sky god kill felt.

Amen. All of my '+', you can have.

Even though I see good points from both sides of the coin I think it's has not being mentioned that the system of advancing in FF is harsher to begin with if for no other reason that the moment that you finish with parts of content you have no reason to come back to it.

Honestly I disagree in putting the blame on the players whether they are proactive and go for it or more "lazy". It's SE's responsibility to keep the content relevant so players that are going through it not having a hell of a time to advance without mooching and the more experienced/advanced ones to feel challenged.

The Delve content in my opinion seemed like a good idea in the sense that you had challenges for all kinds of players but it failed in the execution and ends up with a few people doing the bosses and the rest struggling or just buying wins.

SE has specifically stated that players who find Delve content too difficult should complete the previous content first in order to prepare themselves. If players are not geared enough for Delve, then Skirmish, NNI, Salvage II, Odin II, and Legion content is all still challenging for their level of progression. It's relevant because it gets them geared to the point where they're ready to do Delve. Delve gets them ready to do Delve Bosses.

Good game design doesn't mean everyone gets a free pass to the end without playing the middle. The system works as intended, it makes content that is not beatable without appropriate gear so people have a goal to work towards. Players who want to skip relevant content and skip to Delve bosses are missing the entire point.

The struggling is the challenge, the few who are doing the bosses have worked their way up to them through previous achievements followed by trial and error. They didn't stand in town waiting for shouts, then show up under geared and unmotivated waiting for someone else to get them through.

The whole point of a challenge is rising to it, not getting carried, or complaining and waiting for the bar to get lowered.

There's nothing wrong with the system. It's functioning properly at the moment.

The biggest bottleneck at the moment, is that Wildskeeper Reives cost too much Bayld. Sure, the more dedicated players will and have already gotten 100k bayld and completed all 50 of the ops to do the reive and to be able to lead runs into Delve, but those dedicated players come in waves (about every 2-3 weeks).

If the Wildskeeper Reives costed less bayld, you would see more runs being attempted on a weekly basis and not just a once a month basis. SE already said they plan to lower this cost by half or so. This will force more Wildskeeper runs per server. The players that have already completed them, will run them again for fun, sake of completion, or gear in turn helping the newbies get wildskeeper clear and allowing them the KI to make their own plasm runs.

This still comes down to whether a person is lazy or proactive in getting ***done that they need done. A lazy person can't expect they are going to get somewhere in life on the coattails of others while bitching the entire way through.

Next update they're making WK reives 50k base, which can be further decreased with coalition ranks(like now).

That would be ideal of the game weren't in the sorry state it's in from years of Abyssea/Voidwatch style content where anyone could theoretically come back from quitting and be able to compete on even ground with the stalwarts if you had half a brain. SE has tried to flip the switch back to a style of content we haven't seen since late TOAU in an era where the population has been gutted due to aging and a differing philosophy of game design.

The way XI works today isn't very different than how it worked back in '05 but what has changed is the available pool of players to choose from and thus your ability to progress up the ranks to Delve Bosses or whatever the top tier content is.

You've got the best players who use any available tool to optimize performance and these individuals rarely have time to baby or go on backtracking adventures to gear up people who aren't armed to the teeth with the greatest gear money/time can buy. You can't get Odin or NNI going? I did that crap ages ago and I dualboxed two characters while doing it.

Suck less.

And this is predictable behavior. Why? Because likeminded people will congregate together to complete goals just as they did back when buying expensive bots was a thing. What has changed is now you've got a void where the "not quite top tier but not scrub tier" linkshells used to be caused by the paradigm shift in content creation wedged between the timeless sea of bads.

I daresay that Abyssea destroyed the middle class.

So for the player that doesn't know the damage formula by heart yet isn't drooling HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE there is an identity crisis going on that I feel leads many people to lash out and complain. Where is your place? Is it among the elite who will call you out on not using tools to optimize performance? Is it among the scrubs who think PUP and BST can somehow through magic complete Delve bosses? Who think bucking the mainstream just for the hell of it is fun?

You could make your own LS but that would require most likely picking up a ton of bads and today's content doesn't support that style of gameplay (throwing legions of bodies to win content), hoping you can get picked up by the top-tier groups (either through buying a slot or coming on a non-essential job) or forever resigning oneself to never touching the top tier content period. See where the problems lie?

Most of the "old" content Matsui wants done is for 3-6man groups yet the Delve content wants 18 people in sync. It's not conducive to building unit cohesion and it results in the current dynamic of people just throwing themselves at the Delve plasm farms or getting plowed under by NMs like Tax'et or Chapuli until they logout.

I see your point there and I do agree the struggling should be the challenge but good game design gives options. SE always states this and that but it never takes into account how the players. Having played for 7 years now and went trhough most of the content with the exception of meebles, I'd say at this point SE has given the least amount of choices as far as itemizing goes. Which makes it harder for most players to go through it.

The options are NNI, Einherjar, VW, Abyssea, Sea, Sky, Limbus, Meebles, Colonization Reives, Salvage, Salvagev2, Skirmish. Most of which is solo-6 player content.

The idea is to have all of that gear before you get the Delve weapons/gear.

And again though they are false choices up to a point because for the delve weapons/gear you'll be support.

I see where most are coming from, and personally on Bismarck i can this for almost fact that its bull crap. Go do your Skirmish, go do your salvage or whatever. When you offer your self as a DD they dont ask for your gear, they ask for your weapon. Thats the bottleneck. Doing everything prior will help but it will NOT get you invited. Doing a boss clear and having a Blood Bath Axe will get you an invite. This is the truth. Every time i offered my service it was whats weapon, even people that dont know me, they dont care about my gear,only the weapon. So yes it will help you as a player but previous content will under no circumstances help you get invites. Its REM99, Delve, or Mega Boss Weapon or GTFO.

Anyone that says this is bull and not the case. Share what your smoking cause we all wanna jump into that world too...

Well, yeah that's mostly true. At one point it was R/E/M/S(kirmish) weapons being allowed into runs as DD. Now, R/E/M/S is practically irrelevant. If you didn't hop on the train early enough, you either have to have a friend/LS to tag into delve with or a support job to go with a random PUG.


REM99 can mostly gtfo as well until the dmg update.

However, doing that older content WILL make you a better player that delve can't do/has no time for. That's the moral to take away from all this.

That's the biggest problem with the weapons being so far and above previous ones (and, by corollary, the content being designed for weapons that far above current ones). A gap was necessary to kick the "content level" model into action, but with the gap being so large that the playerbase feels it's too risky even to bring the "next best" weapon to current content (even plasm farms with no NMs!), it causes problems.

Either the content should have a slightly wider margin for error/DPS or there should be more weapon types to bridge the cap between previous content and current content. They're purportedly working on the latter, but Skirmish seems to be their solution and given the strangely difficult method for entering Skirmish (which is far more complicated than Delve, which offers significantly better equipment), I'm not sure yet how well it's going to address the problem.

You can get in delve farm with a skirmish weapon until you have enough plasma to buy a delve weapon. And skirmish is really really easy to do, literally anyone can get it done.

Ah yes, I forgot about Skirmish v2. That will most likely fix the problem as long as item availability to enter Skirmish is improved upon. Those weapons are currently a very big upgrade at Ghastly Stone +2 augment. With a "+2" weapon version coming out in the Skirmish v2, I can see the weapons reaching that of NQ delve weapons and possibly surpassing some of them with maxed augments.

Skirmish is fun, i might be one of the few that actually really enjoys that content. But my question to you would be, would you invite a skirmish weapon player to T4/5 boss fights?

Friend had over 100k plasm, couldnt get a single invite to a boss fight so he sold all via airlixirs. Plasm farming is cool if you have something to use it on. Dont get me wrong people have the option of leveling a job hey detest and join shouts that way, but how many people will do that?

P.S. For anyone not done skirmish you should, it is fun, if not for its dated ways and very affordable now

I have always been amazed by how intelligent the XI community can be, especially when compared to other communities, and I am loving reading these Delve debates. But I see a trend, and i have to point it out.

Not to discredit anyone's hard work, but the one's saying "do skirmish", how many of these people have done skirmish, upgraded their weapon, all for the sake of Delve? I call BS. That's all.

Here is what happened: These people were the first to equip pearl gear. When everyone else got it, it was then and only then deemed the flag of a gimp job. They got empy gear, E. weapons, did VW, then SKIPPED straight to delve. They worked for it, but they are also the ones setting the bar, and the ones saying what doesn't cut it when they themselves did the content in the very same gear the majority has now. Idk, i just see a lot of double standards and hypocrisy.

In the end: we're all responsible. If you're not happy, fix it. The top tier players hold no responsibility to gear your jobs. Take initiative like they have, and git 'er done!

I did. Less than 1 hour and you get a weapon that serves you well enough till you have the points for the delve one.

Quiet you! I had a good thing going! >.>

I would assume by your wording you have the KI, what if the people who want KI but wont get invited cause they dont have a Delve weapon. Someone please tell me you see something wrong with that logic lol

I'm just putting counter arguments out there which i believe are valid. I have all my KI so its not me being bitter lol. Well thats a lie still missing a WKR KI to make 3/3 but thats minor detail lol

Done some bosses as crobaci drk, hell, even a Kurma as crobaci run just for fun.

ultimately we the players can't mandate what kind of pleasure people will or will not get out of the game, but that doesn't really matter

what matters is that we should not have to decide such things for other players, which is why choosing this particular patch of sand in which to draw a line is a really disheartening thing for se to do

yeah your server is forgiving, Bismarck is cutthroat lol

Love the avatar lol Had to say it xD

I did Skirmish. Two runs, got H2H and GAXE. Used Ninza to farm Delve on MNK. Put together my own Tax'et run for KI clear.

Ninjedit: That being said, I would allow a Skirmish player to tag along on a KI/Plasm run for the mere fact that they care enough about being geared to put some time and work into obtaining something that will be irrelevent to them in a week (after they get Delve weapons replacement). The dedication is what would make me think these players are atleast somewhat competent to hold their own at NM/Delve events.

I think this is the biggest issue. People's taboo about starting a party. They are just scared to do it. They wanna be lead not lead. This i believe is the fundamental problem here.

That's the biggest problem, for sure. However, it's a dog eat dog world out there in Field/Delve content where everyone needs to have some form of leadership mentality to make decisions on the fly without requiring someone else to tell them what they need to do. Everyone should be researching how to kill NMs/farm Fracture/Delve before they do it. Everyone should have a map up of what the zone looks like so as to not get lost and pull aggro and die. Everyone should know the weaknesses and how to exploit them without being told. That's the style of gameplay we are at right now. It's not enough to just be told anymore, people actually have to research on their own for utmost efficiency.

As I type this, I'm in a Tax'et run in which the leader refused my friends skirmish SAM. Sadly, there are douchebags and idiots that make some of the suggestions I've seen irrelvant. People have completed previous tiers of content to get into delve, yet are refused because they don't already have a Delve weapon.

Happens way to often, atleast on my server.

I think you've got a point, but at the same time, what are the alternatives? If everyone could easily conquer everything, we'd only be exchanging a group of frustrated and angry players for a group of accomplished and bored players. If SE kept rolling out new thing after new thing each month (they can't, anyway) then you change both those unhappy groups for the "I worked too hard to get this and now it sucks!" crowd.

I'm on board with what you're thinking, only I do put a little more on the players - the ones not satisfied with who they are but unwilling to do the "necessary" prerequisites. If everyone that "can't" fight delve bosses were otherwise complete, good players, there would be enough people for them to band together and take on the tougher stuff. But they're not - too many are the "I'm level 99, I pay SE, I should have gear" types.

But the problem of the too-high requirements for simple things. "I can't get a delve weapon because I can't get a KI, I can't get a KI because I don't have a delve weapon." I don't know - it's like LB10 with people never going back. No idea how to tackle that, but, we're all 99 now, right?