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Yeah, despite the fact that the difficulty associated with gear-swapping was not in any way intention on SE's part, at least by community standards, there was a significant amount of homework, preparation, and attention required to play at the top level. For all the dismissal of it being sooo easy, there were an awful lot of players who weren't very good at it. So to me that begs the question, are these people just underestimating their own level of skill, or are they sincerely unable to recognize their own skill deficiencies? The classic Dunning-Kruger paradox.

While I think that's true to an extent, I think that was one of the many aspects of FFXI that played to compulsion and neuroses rather than legitimate enjoyment. It's like having a gambling addiction. The thrill of winning and losing is what makes it engaging, but it's still not really fun, and losing just plain sucks.

The most fun I ever had in XI, and I know the same to be true for many, was in taking on legitimately challenging encounters, even if it was only, as you say, trying to stay in the margins of survival. Unfortunately, that was really not incentivized properly in regular play.

100% agree.

XI wasn't necessarily a "difficult" game. Especially when it came down to game mechanics (theorycrafting excluded). Most melee classes were completely faceroll, and battles were stationary 90% of the time. Most of XI's difficulty was due to your reliance on other people, which was a double-edged sword. XI was the only MMO I've ever played where people would literally fall asleep in parties.

The only "hard" part of the CoP missions was 1. getting in a static and 2. having the right job in the static. If you had the "right" job and you were in a static that needed that job, CoP was merely long and grindy.

We finished it in about three months, and completed the two hardest missions - airship 6-4 and final boss 8-4 -- on the second try, five minutes after the failed "dry runs" we'd planned out.

When I joined my static (we started on Ouryu), we took an inventory of our current jobs and subjobs, saw what we had and what we needed, and decided that everyone would need to level up at least one job to level 40 or level 60 so we'd have the optimal setup. By then my BLM was 40 already, and I was asked to get it to 60 for the airship fight.

It became a point of pride for me after that to take my BLM into the airship fight at 60 cap. I helped many people over the hump - someone who had failed it ten times was able to get past it finally on the run I went in. It wasn't just that I knew that fight and was able to do my own job, but I was able to direct traffic a bit and keep everyone calm too. Quite a few times we won on our "dry run" because I'd rehearsed it all so much with everyone else.

This was 2005. When I started with my CoP static, I think my highest job was 70 WHM and I was fresh out of my Maat fight and had just joined my first endgame shell. I was still wearing a mish-mash of AF and Errant because a Noble's Tunic cost ten million gil.

You didn't need certain jobs to beat CoP, it was just easier with specific setups. Since we planned far enough ahead, we were able to level up the "easier" jobs with a minimal amount of pressure since they only needed to get to 60. Couldn't leveling jobs be factored in as part of a strategy?

I was on black mage. How was I not having fun?

Maybe some people find the challenge fun. For me, the fun was in gradually unlocking the story, putting the pieces together, and then finally getting to go to {sea} and start unlocking the mysteries there. The fun more or less ended when I found himself in an HNM grinding the same dozen NMs in {sea} week in and week out.

It was easy drop it already, most people beat it with that setting, because it was the most optimal setting, like any boss out there, there is an optimal way of killing it, now if you go out of your way to discard such ways or methods and do it your own way, then pat yourself on the back, but that does not make it "Harder" you made it harder, like when you play an RPG and you do low level runs... Does it make the game harder ? Yes! Is the game hard ? No... You made it hard by handicaping yourself HUGE DIFFERENCE!

lol going out of your wy to make it difficult? No Im sorry but do yo know the definition of "going out of your way" to do something? the example you gave about beating an RPG at lower levels of ppl who beat the original FF with an all white mage group, THAT indeed would be called challenging yourself or "going out of your way" to make it hard... but if youre playing the game normally, not spending minute sin an area grinding to over level yourself, and only participating in the fights you run into trying to get from point A to point B then youre playing the game normally.. and while playing it normally if you still see game over screen at every other boss. Id say its definitely a hard game on its own (as opposed to a game where you could beta the whole thing just tapping X with your butt and the only way youd see a game over screen is if you literally stood there and TRIED to die.. which would be the case with a few games i could name)

now since you like to use the term "going on of your way" let me give you an example of doing JUST that in regards to FFXI. A great example of going out of your way would be taking the hours or day required to level the "correct" jobs, jobs that you dont even give a crap about, for the sole purpose of beating CoP/making it "easy" doing all that JUST for one set of mission is the very definition of going out of your way... now if you already had those jobs levied PRIOR to CoP then by all means yes, use them, but if you start leveling them JUST to do that, then you are indeed going out of your way.

Comparing a team of lvl 50 vs a team of 60 is a whole other argument, what i was referring too where teams of the same levels but with different class comps, and if SE had intended for X content to be beat in a certain way, they would have buffed/nerfed/adjust said content to be done that way, for that is what they do, when something is not working as intended they nerf or fix it AV is a prime example.

I almost spit coffee all over my monitor...

AV is a prime example of how not to design an encounter. It wasn't beaten by a normal alliance of players by any other means than exploit with the exception of the merc'd group of kraken club wielding DRKs. AV was broken and it was never fixed. Adjusting the level cap doesn't quite count as buffing/nerfing/adjusting an encounter.

Difference in difficulty is one thing, but straight-up impossibility is quite another. XI had a huge problem with class balance. Certain classes were just straight-up better than others, and that becomes an issue once you've leveled your job to cap only to find that it's useless. To this day, some classes are significantly better than others, and it boggles my mind as to why anyone would even bother leveling any other class than what currently pushes out the highest DPS.

XI easymode? No strategy in the boss fights of XI? WTF game were you playing?

While you're talking about something that is related to what I said, I just want to clarify that you are not disagreeing with anything that I've said.



Though this, I disagree with, or rather, I can explain. Because it's fun? Or at least because the class's concept is cool?

Was i talking about encounter design ? No ? Then i don't know what you going on about, i have stated countless times that AV should never be used as the mesuring stick for difficulty on encounters. What i said was that AV for example was beat using ways that where not the way SE intended for the encounter to be beat, and they fix those ways so that they could not be used anymore... True or false ?

That's entirely untrue. When I resubbed in July, I watched countless BSTs solo abyssea bosses. Show me another DPS class that can do that as effortlessly as them? That's the sort of better that I'm talking about.

When I stopped playing in 2010, THF wasn't invited to anything because they couldn't put up numbers like SAM could. Lots of this had to do with gear, sure, but if you're creating classes that are clearly better than others, why put them in the game in the first place?

Yes. But the "function" of THF never was to deal the highest damage, was it?

Actually, yes.. you are. Buffs and nerfs are direct consequence of encounter design. Think about that for a moment. You say it should never be used as a measuring stick now, but in your post you said it was a "prime example". Make up your mind.

Bottom line: They didn't fix AV. After they removed the exploits, it was still broken.

THF's other function was hate control - many of their abilities are about applying extra enmity to tanks, and removing it from other players. A good SATA WS on a single mob would ensure hate was glued to the tank until it was dead.

These days, THF/NIN is one of the preferred tanks in Abyssea seal/gem parties. (NIN/DNC and MNK/DNC are acceptable too.) A THF/DNC can solo many NMs just about as effectively as the BST can. Since the mechanics of Treasure Hunter are less ambiguous and now we know that multiple THFs can stack on extra TH and the longer they fight the monster the more TH goes on it, it's not uncommon to have a couple of THFs whacking at a NM the entire HNM fight to get that sweet sweet Treasure Hunter 10 proc.

All valid points, but since he was talking about THF being invited to things I assumed he meant endgame activities.

As for the TH10 stack.... something something, placebo, something...

I wouldn't really say that TH was demystified. You can say that you saw a shiny proc and you're told that TH has raised a level, but there is no solid info on exactly what that means.


Edited, Dec 23rd 2012 1:15pm by FilthMcNasty

The problem is, no one knows exactly what increasing TH level does. Almost everyone agrees that the trait (ex. TH1 sub trait vs TH2 ect.) is more potent, but beyond TH6 proc the results are so varied even on large sample sizes that it's not even considered worth it.

SE is always trying to be super secretive and can't just come out and say something like "Increasing TH to level x gives you a chance to receive any drop. Increasing to level y increases your chance of receiving the more rare drops by a certain amount. Increasing to level z increases your chance of adding a bonus drop slot." sh*t can't be as simple as that with them for some reason

You can always come back and kill some time before 2.0! I think the Abyssea collection is on sale for $10 or so on Amazon right now.

Leveling isn't the same either. It's a joke to get all 20 jobs to level 99 now. I mean, I did it. 300,000 exp/hour isn't unheard of in a particularly rocking Abyssea party, and 100K/hour is more or less the baseline in a bad party once all the lights are capped.

A prime example of SE fixing and encounter when they felt it was not being completed as they envisioned, or as they intended SE will fix that rather quickly. That is for all that i used AV as an example, i was never discussing the mechanics or the design of AV, i was talking about how SE will fix an encounter if it was not working as intended.

They never fixed the exploits ? I am not talking about balancing the encounter, but i was under the impression that once it was beaten using an exploit it was patched.

Well i guess i worded my argument wrong, when i mentioned AV i was never implying that it was a great boss mechanic boss fight or anything along the lines, i was referring to how SE was quick to fix the encounter when it was being tackled in a way they did not intend the encounter to be tackled, now if that means the encounter was still insanely stupidly hard and mind boggling badly designed is another story.

Hopefully SE has learned from PW and AV and will not bring an encounter like that into ARR.... The game really does not needs the flack they got from those 2 encounters.