Dev Tracker - Discussion

I usually unsub for summer so I can do outdoors stuff and it's about the time I start thinking about coming back, but if I honestly take appraisal of whether I want to spend my time and money on XI any longer, this is one of the main things I keep coming back to and thinking it's best for me to just do something else. It was such a stupid decision to drag things out and intentionally handicap players that it, and their initial decision to double down on that absolutely idiotic enrage ***in the basement, makes me question if it's the type of thing I really want to support and keep doing. Not finishing the last few v25 bosses will always bug me but I think after seeing that start up then fizzle out so many times, it's best to just move on.

It's less those things individually and more the cumulative decisions that they represent. That combined with the fact so many of my friends have quit.

I also found the cap really infuriating when I was running Sortie nightly and I was with some regularly over capped going in. While farming items for ilvl Empyrean gear isn't hard, it's not fast either, and there were a lot of times I simply didn't have anything to upgrade because I didn't have time to go do Aby to upgrade something I didn't need yet. There was no reason they couldn't have increased the cap to...anything else. 140k? 210k? 500k? Even 1m would've had minimal impact in the long run especially when you consider their original vision of keeping the basement enrage in. We went from being able to store currency to upgrade 10 pieces to +2 to only one piece before we hit cap.

I get the need to keep players from buying S4 or S5 primes on day one, but this was just a slap in the face to intentionally and excessively handicap players. Ruau was right. I read a lot of other boards on MMOs and games, it's a common theme you hear people complaining about devs not listening/doing anything/etc, but I can usually see some logic and reason behind decisions made there even if I don't agree with it. I struggle to comprehend these two decisions in particular and it makes me think XI is best left in the past for me from this year on.

Which items aren't already NPCable Starstones?

Starstones and sapphires. Everything else, including pysches, can be sold for anywhere between 3k to 5k. Granted, they'd need to sell for 10 times that to hold any kind of monetary relevance if that's the route they're going for...

I swear Sapphires are already NPCable, but not at home to verify

Nope. I thought the same thing, and had to check when I saw this thread. Vendors want nothing to do with your sapphires and inexplicably blue crimson starstones.

Are the *drite stones NPCable already?

They will happily buy my 40ish Acheron Shields and thousands of prize powder though.

All drites can be sold to npc

We'd known for years that empyrean armor upgrades were coming. Why hadn't you upgraded to 119 in that time? I don't understand why people would expect SE to make a change that has little or no effect in the long run. We're the ones who waste our time, not them.

My pet theory is that Fujito's a closet 75-cap mega stan. Only, he doesn't have the resources to actually make XI Classic, so he's doing what he can to bring the relentless grinds and lack of respect for player time so prevalent in that era to modern XI.

Please look forward to it.

I agree 1000%. He also gives Red Mage, literally every development opportunity under the sun. (See newer RDM Group 2 Merits).

He gave RDMs wardrobes. He's a hero.

k.

Is this the ffxi version of “he made Thriller”?

If you min/maxed a RDM before Wardrobes exist, you had 8 inventory or less that was not gear and you got to move weapons in and out of your case/whatever you chose depending on what you were fighting. Carrying pop items was great. Hope that drop didn't hit the floor because you were busy playing the game instead of sorting your inventory.

QoL isn't massive for everyone, but the current era of FFXI is a lot less annoying than previous eras for me. I remember doing dyna solo or duo when they reworked it every day for a relic. Doing the same thing with a group for Sortie isn't some unexpected punishment. I guess they didn't make Sortie shitty enough at first so you felt like when they reworked it, that it was amazing QoL for enough people.

Except in dyna you can pick who gets what loot thanks to the treasure pool. Imagine doing dynamis and all the armor was personalized loot drops.

>>Kill Duke Berith
>>Char with RDM lv1 "Hey I got Chapeau!"


I'd be willing to bet that the angst from the playerbase hunting down Sortie earrings would be alleviated by a not-insignificant amount if earrings loaded into treasure pool. And theres no reason they cant since the ???Earrings are a usable item, similar to frayed pouches and REMA stone cases/boxes which have no problem going into the treasure pool.

Yea, I think this is a change I can get behind.

There could be. If they have to choose between the party loot system and the direct drop system for a given mob, party loot wouldn't be effective. They would have to roll everything based on number of members present(if you automatically get the amount of loot a full party gets, you'd encourage people lowmanning rather than bringing a full 6). If that applies to starstones and sapphires, you frequently have a pool over 10 items and it autosorts instantly.

If they can do a hybrid system and keep the upgrade items as personal loot but still have a direct pool, that's not an issue. It might allow mercing, but it's not going to hurt longevity in this case. If there is a cap to the number of items in a shared loot slot (they split dyna into multiple), it makes it a little trickier to implement. Since they're limited to the droprates on the very common to ultra rare scale, there is some consideration about how the droprate can be scaled. Likely the simplest method is to keep the same droprate as current while making 1-6 slots based on number of party members[we know they can alter drop slots in real time due to lilith].

Either way, I doubt they'll do it. I believe the argument that giving someone a random +2 earring may encourage them to try out that job and keep them occupied. Motivations get tricky, if a person in your group has a low augment +2 for WAR, are they ruled out of lotting any WAR ears until everyone who wants it has a low augment? That may demoralize them from the content, this way there is always a chance. The arguments and theft that PUGs may have to deal with when a +2 war earring drops may cause extra GM work, and then there's the last second loot pools. To be clear, I am fully in support of a change like that, I just doubt it'll happen for these reasons. [Feel free to exchange WAR for whatever you perceive to be most desirable in any of these examples.]

Leave these as personal loot? Theres already existing systems that permit treasure pool and personal loot to co-exist:
HTMB
Microcosmic Orb
Geas Fete

This sounds like a personal issue for the group to decide whats best for their group.

So.... what are people thinking, is he just gonna make the Sapphires and Starstones NPC-able for like 534gil and 1248gil?

There is clearly a specific system in place for incursion, sortie, master trials, not sure what else.. that's factoring treasure hunter into loot then distributing it to each person in party. Without knowing how SE implemented it on the back end, it's hard to be sure whether they can easily do both or what the limitations are.

They could have added a flag to mobs that results in all drops being handed out via this system rather than to loot pool. If this is the case, they would need to refactor to have both loot systems coexist. The flag could be applied on each individual drop, which might result in issues with the max number of drops when you split the cases into 6 possible slots. They could both be seperately enabled, which wouldn't be a problem at all.

Again, I think it'd be a good change. I just don't think we'll see it.

Honestly thinking SE gonna do the right thing

50k muffins for sapphires and 100k for Starstones

Awesome work SE with balancing your game. you listen to your playerbase while not having to move the goalpost. good job...

haha man its so *** sad that they will *** this up

4 to 10k

Yep the player base wants:

Either
Sapphire x 5/10 = Emp +2
Starstones x 5/10 = Emp +3

or

Sapphire/Starstones convert to Galli

But no we get GIL ><

Gotta wonder what the thought process is to even bother with making this change in the code. Like of all the things, this is what you chose to spend the extremely limited time/resources on?

When you finished your first weapon, how far behind were you on galli before you could finish?



I think what they should have done was add 2 augments to the gear. One you could increase with sapphires and the other with starstones.


The change they are actually making is just a nod to players who have already completed all of their gear already. Gives them at least something for their troubles.

That or they saw that I just tossed 6 stacks of sapphires and they wanted to make me feel bad for not hoarding.

SE thinks the muffin grind is perfect as is, and they don't want to change it; But they also don't want to be seen as ignoring players.

Allowing you to sell excess stones for gil is a metaphorical cheese sandwich: It lets them say they responded to player requests without actually changing anything that matters.


No, what they should have done is had *ites be the primary driver for Prime weapon upgrades and left muffins for armor upgrades or buying extra rocks or earring lootboxes from the goblin.

Consider: If stage 3 had launched as 50~100 Octahedrite and 10k muffins, they could have left the damn 100k cap in place and it would have been a minor inconvenience rather than something people quit the game over.

Yes, that means players could eventually make progress on more than one weapon at a time, but SE could have tweaked the *ite requirements to account for that, and players would still have a hard upgrade lockout with psyches.

But, no. Womp womp.

This guy simps so hard for the shittiest loot-rewarding event ever added to FFXI.

That includes Monstrosity.

This would be a great idea, but it's not addressing 'what do we do with all these extra sapphires and starstones'. That's all SE seems to be willing to do so in that context, I think my idea would add longevity to the event even for people who don't care about prime.

I remember getting chrono trigger on Jamaica ave in queens from a store named Jasons' was a nice toy store. I thought SE could do anything and SE was the best company on the planet. Years later here we are with SE's only ability is to trigger me now based off how far they have fallen.