How Could SE Realistically Improve Modern FFXI?

Modernize the servers, UI and graphics.

A new expansion every 2 years.

No content time locked.

Get a new stfu team.

That would only be a start, it's a dream I sealed away in a buried coffin already, so I don't bother thinking about it anymore.

The reason I preface some of my statements with this would be a good idea but we aren't going to get it anytime soon is for 2 reasons.

First and most realistically, this dev team will not be doing anything fast probably ever again. Manage your expectations or prepare to disappoint yourself over and over again. I think people that unsub are doing it right because they know what they want, and it's not this. Big time kudos. When I burn out, I take a break.

The 2nd reason is that we currently have multiple end game pieces of content. The devs think or at least want to think that we are provided for right now. "Look most people don't have a finished stage 5, looks like we are in no big rush to do anything else." Yes this is hyperbole because they are clearly aware of our discontent. But by the numbers why do they need to push out more content when most people haven't finished odyssey and they certainly haven't finished sortie?

That both events are generally run as dedicated 6 man statics points the finger that finding a group that fits your schedule is the oldest and greatest enemy this game will ever encounter.

Six person statics were a thing even when XP grind was the whole game.

But yes, if you don't have an Ody static and you don't have a Sortie static.. not much "endgame" you're actually doing.

A lot of long time players stopped out of lack of interest in daily 1hr grinds.

Ody is fun up to v25, then it's bash your head on a wall for months hoping for stars to align that a lot of people just will not do.

It comes back to two things:

• Do you enjoy the battle mechanics - this is 90% of the game.

• Do you have people to play with that you get along with.

If you have both of these things, the game has a lot to offer.

If they added upstairs boss gadgets to the teleport network and dropped the Prime muffin requirements by 80% I know a ton of people who would resub immediately. That seems like something achievable with minimal dev work.

Players might miss the truly engaging content of running from corner to corner, but 1.7m muffins instead of 8.5 means you could run at a more relaxed 2-3 times per week, reforge some armor, and still be ready to upgrade once you get the psyches.

It would also help the static situation. If people feel they can go less often without missing out, it means people who enjoy Sortie can run with multiple groups on different days, and also less pressure to hit 8/8 or 9/9 on every run.

They won't do it, though. Wasting players' time in Sortie is the point, though it's beyond me why they think that's a good idea.

It's a good idea because the metrics say it is.

Too many people do it no matter how obscene it is. You know 5 people who "would do it" but there's 10000 who already do it.

They think far reaching carrots and purple glowing gives people ambition and keeps them engaged for longer. What they don't seem to understand is it's frustrating to a larger group of people than it is motivational. I suspect this may be a cultural thing (but may also be wrong)

They have metrics and have been at this a long time, usually when I think something seems insanely stupid, there is a reasonable explanation. I struggle to accept they are so disconnected they don't see the sub numbers dropping and veteran players quitting because of it, but I really have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that it's the right approach. I'd have figured give people toys to play with they can reasonably obtain and it would keep them engaged for longer, but I guess they see it differently. I'd love to know why.

They won't change it because they architected it this way from the start. Don't forget the basement enrage fiasco and that they doubled down on it before backing off. Clearly their vision is different and I doubt a single thing will change about it.

I'd also venture their emphasis is on newer players doing lower tier content than it is the veteran players, they are larger in number.


The difference was you could reasonably make progress in a PUG, outside of a few jobs. Sure, some DD jobs sat with their flag up rotting for hours, but others would get invites almost instantly. You would be slower, riskier than a static, but you could reasonably make progress towards your goal especially when exp was slower/capped off.

Sortie and Ody PUGs are wildly inconsistent in comparison.

It was also a different time of life for most players. I've said it before: if you have that 1-2 hour slot nightly to commit to something, you need to appreciate how fortunate you are. The majority of the player base is at least 40 with a number of other commitments, the game needs to be architected in a way that appeals to people or it dies. It doesn't have to be trivial or easy, but sucking down 1hr of time to do the same thing on repeat for 6-8 months isn't a challenge, it's just a time sink when people are in a phase of life where time is limited.

Yes, but it's more than 6 people.

The reason Sortie is a problem, and something like Aeonics aren't, it literally just because of the time sink.

A solid group can complete an Aeonic weapon in 5 days. Zitah and Ruaun can easily be done in 1 day. Reisin can be troublesome with some of the mechanics, but if you bang it out, you could actually clear all 3 in 1 day.

Yes, you have to have a solid group and be geared well enough to participate, (or get mercs) but its doable.

Sortie, You need to participate 100%. You need to be present. And you need to be present for Run after Run, Day after day with a 20 hr lockout. If you earn 50k a day (which is pushing it) You need to run 170 Runs for 1 weapon. Then add in Phychs and stones.
You literally could do every Aeonic and still have time left over.

Compare this to Irdis and Epio, there is a 6 month lockout with Coalitions, and while its a grind, its not an hour grind, daily with a static group of 6 people who all need to be on point. Plus Epio and Irdis are well worth the wait. Plus you get several other perks for doing all that work, several useful accessories, adoulin Ring upgrade, trust etc, so its not all for 1 item for potentially 1 job. (yes you need H-P, but you can AH those or Ambu etc)

Now compare this to master levels. yes, 50 is a big cap, but you get incremental boosts along the way. And while sure, the stat boosts aren't big, they add up, and the SJ levels all help. So there is no real push to say i need to get to 50. Where you don't get anything special with the weapon outside of Sortie until stage 4?

Honestly, those weapons should be Way more over powered than they are for the effort. And per usual, they made stupid options for some jobs. Sorry, but i don't care about regen on a Whm weapon, and while yes the MAB is shiny, how often is a whm nuking, Or Meleeing and then nuking. Sword? Yea, that's basically a reskinned Sakpata sword with a different buffs, and still won't beat Naegling.

IF they made the Bonanza Weapons the Prime weapons, that would be more in line with the challange.

But pair +2 earring rate, with Needing 8.5Mil currancy for 1 weapon, when again, you literally can upgrade every piece of Emp up to +3 for 8.8mil all for the price of 1 weapon, that for many of the jobs, aren't great choices.

Its too much steady WORK, for 1 item. And that's the problem. Needing to make this game a second job to get am item. We all work for a living, we don't want to pay to work a 2nd job with this game.

Ya wanna give a Carrot? Make a system where if you run Sortie 7 times in a week, you get a +2 earring box. That would keep people doing sortie more consistently then working on a weapon would. Set up 7 Roes. Set the first one which is enter sortie, upon entering you complete and earn a small amount of Gall, 100, 500, nothing major and 1k Exemplar points. Completing the one, unlocks the next, follow for 7 entries, and the final entry gives you a +2 Box. Hell, could even be a +1 if they wanted to make it "harder" And have it reset on conquest. Or hell, even have a +1 daily. That wouldn't be overpowered at this point.

Just being realistic, people don't want to do endless content over and over for a carrot at the end of a year. They want to do work and get "paid" now. And at this day in age, that's not really unrealistic. Have a big shiny at the end, but give more along the way that's guaranteed for both casual and hardcore players alike.
People appreciate feeling like their work has a purpose so small rewards along the way goes a long way at keeping people hooked.

I think you forgot about beads

Definitely still doable if you're a nolifer, can do beads in 6 hours and aeonic clears in under 4. Not touching the rest of that rant, though.

Beads can be done solo so its not too bad. No need to organize with 5 other people everyday for months, that's more dedication than I give to my actual job lol.

Do like 5 DI a day, which is pretty chill, then you'll done in 10 days, less for your 2nd+ aeonic.

It sounds like the bigger issue is how unrewarding daily Sortie is, based on the rest of your write-up.

Earlier in the thread, we've established that Sortie needs to be addressed in 2 ways:
1. Make it offer more rewards.
2. Make more ways of getting Sortie rewards outside of Sortie (retune old content).

What other rewards would you like to see in Sortie and what older content would you like retuned?

Short of it is that the events where there's checkpoints/rewards/ solo options along the way, typically are better received than those that require extended group dedication.

Didn't forget beads, but those can be done in leisure while earning some domain points.

And yea, i agree with your comments. Add a daily reward, like a guaranteed +1 maybe make it guaranteed to the job you are on or something (i know that's been a complaint too)

Add Gallimuf to Copper vouchers, or hell add a conversion for Conquest points into Copper vouchers while we are at it.

lol

yea yea i get it, that would allow the RMT access to this ***more then the real players. There's no winning.

The ship has sailed on conquest points. You might not be a KRT bot but you're wearing a KRT bot's uniform.

The winning solution was for SE to make content that allowed more than 6 people but scaled in a way such that it didn't encourage leeching. That's a very high design bar, so they didn't. Neither Sortie nor Odyssey are designed in a way that they could be reasonably opened to alliance without throwing out the whole game's balance. They don't have resources to fix it.

But, you can still do the content. If you feel like the grind is too long as is and half of it would be reasonable.. guess what? It's less than half the grind to make a stage 4 prime, and they're still a huge power boost! If you feel like the grind for empyrean armor is unreasonable, then I don't know what to tell you, because it's already by far the best effort:reward ratio of any recent content.

If you don't enjoy the gameplay, and only enjoy the power gain, then that's kind of it's own answer. There are different games out there, if you can break the conditioning.

I think the grind for Emp armor is perfectly reasonable. Sorry if that came across the wrong way, that's what i've been focusing on instead of making a weapon.

I do like sortie, a lot, and i like the gameplay of it, outside of running all over the map repeatedly. I just personally don't have an hour a day to get with a group and play that.

As for CP, i think just talking about a currency that i haven't used in ages. I know there's some crafting that can be done for lower gear, but outside of that, CP is basically dead.
Maybe they could loop that into Teleport costs or something, That way it wouldn't impact adding money in any way.

This is absolutely the truth. If you apply half the solutions people proposed here, I would have quit the game 6 months ago along with at least half the people I play with, maybe all of them.

I think reducing the muffin requirement for weapons sounds good on paper, except you either:
-Are still restricted by Psyches, meaning there's no reason to do Sortie anymore (other than lol+2 earring chances) OR
-Lower psyche requirements as well, in which case I'd already be done with every prime weapon I want, and would also be strongly considering quitting at this point

I like the idea of RoEs to incentivize people to go more often or give smaller bite-sized rewards.

I have held off on responding here since I clearly disagree with the majority opinion here, but once again I'm baffled by the fact that somehow everyone wants to run Sortie with a chill group and yet these people can't group up with each other and have a chill group. Just go 2-4x a week and if you have a prior engagement, take the night off and don't worry about it. If you have 8 friends and all routinely have engagements where you can't get on...that's perfect, because the other 2 people can fill in those spots? Unless your jobs don't line up to the point where only 1 person can play a specific job, which...doesn't seem like a game design issue?

IDK...it sounds a lot like the Ody problem, the entire population complaining that everyone only wants to do 13k seg runs and V25 bosses...but if everyone is complaining about that, shouldn't there be a giant population of people looking to do low-key seg runs and V15 bosses...? The 2 and 2 just don't make any sense to me.

With both it feels like FOMO though. "I don't want to waste my ody tag on a 9k seg run so I won't bother going" "I don't want to bother with Sortie because it's going to take too long if I have to skip days, so I won't bother going". If you want to play 2x a week, just go 2x a week. If you all want a system where people can come/go without a hard 6-man static going 7 days a week, just...do that...

I also think it would be a good idea to allow people to store up more tags (for both) but...stop letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and just start earning some muffins. You're making the FOMO problem worse by intentionally missing out.

I think adding teleports between the bosses in Sortie would be a really good idea. I think they should do this and reduce the timer from 60 minutes to 30, no other changes necessary.

I salute people who didn't grind their ML and I actually feel bad for the Sortie every dayer's 6 monthing for 1 item.

Imagine respecting the dev that made this gameplay loop

They could have made mobs extremely hard to kill. Old style exp requiring coordination, MBs etc. But they made it so that mobs yield crap exemplar, while being easy to kill. It's almost as if they designed it for RMT bots.

No almost about it guy. Not "like they did this". They did do it.

Still pink.

5 DI a day for 10 days is presuming theres isnt anyone there DPS checking the dragon or speed killing for their 100 DI daily.
5DI a day is also the time it takes to do one Sortie and one Sheol.

If we become more "reasonable," it's necessary to understand that COVID-19 and the war caused significant inflation in many sectors.

Unfortunately, "it's no longer possible to develop content solely with the monthly subscription we pay in FFXI." I would address it this way:

Before even start: Obviously, all of this would come with a new upgrade to REMAs, to break absurd metas and restore the identity of various jobs.

Option One

An area like "Escha" could be "Escha Cape Terrigan," priced at 25 USD annually. I would release it in the second week of December so that our mature players, who are on holiday, can enjoy it.

1. Five teleports: North, South, East, and West. Once you unlock them all, you can call your "Mount" to explore. Why not add more teleports? To encourage people to explore the area and travel in groups with their "Alliance."

2. Enemies: Genbu, Suzaku, Seiryu, Byakko, Kirin, Voidwrought, Aello, Uptala, Kaggen, Akvan, Pil, Nidhogg, Aspidochelone, and King Behemoth. I would place x4 ??? for each one, with a difficulty similar to Odyssey. They will have stats balanced for 12 players, but you can face them with anywhere from 3 to 18 players. "The stats will always be fixed and won't adjust." You will need approximately Odyssey R0 gear + Ambuscade weapon as a "minimum" to avoid embarrassment.

To summon the enemies, you will Sky, VW, and some high-level craft items.

3. There is no time limit to access the area, but you will have a 18-hour cooldown after killing each boss. This gives you time to do other events, such as leveling up in this area, which will give you 7.5 times more job points than other areas with "Apex-Mobs" and 5 times more master points with "Locus-Mobs." They will have exceptional respawn rates and will be immune to any AoE damage spells. These mobs will scale depending on the number of people in your party; the more you have, the greater the exp booster will be, cap at 12.

Option Two

Launch an area similar to Escha, as mentioned above, and a battlefield like Sortie/Odyssey every two years for 45 USD. The open-world area would have no player limit for facing the content, while Odyssey/Sortie would have a cap of 12 players, with rules that no job can be repeated, and support job buffs will be AoE:

The two parties must meet the following setup: X4 (Flex), 1 Support, and 1 Healer. The reason for this is to ensure variety and make the event more straightforward, focused on killing enemies and bosses without too many complications. In these battlegrounds, you will need at least Odyssey R15 Gear and a max-rank REMA to perform appropriately.

The 7th guy whos left out to solo Sortie for an hour:

This would make Sortie infinitely more tolerable for me.


I think you are missing the forest for the trees here a little bit. The number of people isn't the issue, it's pulling those people together on a semi-regular or nightly basis at the same time across a period of 6-8 months and keeping it together. If you're in the same static for months or years, that's awesome, seriously, but that's the minority. I can't even count on both hands the number I know of or were in that lasted less than 3 months if not less due to reasons we've discussed before (life, work, kids, etc). When one person leaves, it turns into a cascading effect that ultimately results in the group disbanding. Maybe not 100% of the time, but enough for there to be a pattern, and that's not even accounting for burnout which is easy to do with Sortie.

Also, if there are 8 people available, that's 2 people who don't get to show up. Are they supposed to get on at the same time and hope there is a slot open that night? Are they supposed to just twiddle their thumbs or gamble with a PUG?

I get that there are steady, consistent statics and they represent a lot of people who post here, but I would argue it's a significant minority. Tailoring content to people who can fit a 6-person static in their life at this age of the game is dumb. The 300ish accounts going inactive daily before free login says that whatever they are doing now isn't working, too. I also get this will not change and the proper way to do it is what Thorny said earlier, but they lack the resources, so we get a half baked solution, but I also think it's worth recognizing it is a shitty implementation