The frustration of FFXI and SE's ploy

This is a followup rant to this earlier post about SE and FFXI wasting people's time. You can read the first part of this rant here: http://ascule.blogspot.com/2008/09/respecting-time-and-lack-thereof.html


So, last night we did ZNMs again... Tier III mob, and we didn't wipe this time. However, out of all the mobs, we only got one drop that someone actually wanted. This is really taking things too far SE. Let's see how much effort was put into this:


1. Farming the zeni necessary to buy the pop items. This is at minimum 6000 zeni for Tier I, II & III
2. Actually going out to kill the Tier I & II mobs
3. 14 people spending 3 hours to pop and kill these mobs for a total of 42 man-hours



Ignoring points 1 & 2, even looking at just item #3, that's a lot of people's time spent on this mob. Let's put it in perspective... Assuming the US Federal Minimum Wage rate of $6.55/hour, that's $275.10 of productivity spent on getting this one item. The very least they could do is have the drop rate be reasonable instead of this crazy low drop rate that leaves everyone doing ZNMs feeling discouraged at the end of the night.

(Just for comparison, the China minimum wage is $0.138/hour. To accomplish the same thing hiring players in China would have cost $5.82. Is there any question as to why there is a gil farmer/RMT problem?)


Similarly, on Sunday night, we had 3 Nyzul runs with... absolutely no drops. 6 people, 1 1/2 hours wasted and logging off discouraged.


The reasons behind the low drop rates is simple... SE wants to keep people playing FFXI for as long as possible. Almost all "endgame" events are designed to make you keep your subscription going for as long as possible. For example: the time limitations on how often you can enter Limbus & Dynamis, the limits you have on the number of assaults or campaign ops that you can do a single day and more. Would it really break things that much for SE to at least throw people a bone? Let's say they changed Nyzul such that a boss fight would give a 100% drop of an armor piece... a group of 6 people would still be spending 30 straight runs (or 30 days) of farming armor before they each got one full set. Additionally, the drops would not necessarily match up with what is wanted, so a little bit more time would be spent on it. Or people could end up working on multiple sets, bringing the amount of time "invested" in this activity to up to 3 months. The very least this would do is allow people to move on to something else instead of spending months or years at one repetitive activity. It would also free up assault tags to either: Do other assaults, accumulate assault points for Salvage, or even help other people do their assaults! As far as I know, very few people have actually "completed" any single event. They either grow frustrated and quit, or too many people lose interest and the event disbands.


Instead, by making it probability, they're allowing statistics drag the time out instead. 1 month stretches out to 4 months, 3 months to a year... and meanwhile, while you're stuck doing one event, you don't have time or resources available to do a different event, or help someone out, or do something fun, level another job or just goof around experimenting with other things. Adding new content to the game no longer matters as people do not have time in their schedule to actually try it out. WotG zones are empty except for people doing campaign. The [S] NMs remain untouched, and nobody (at least on this server) bothers to try the campaign ops, or to invade a beastmen territory. Instead, due to the way the game is set up, you end up going to the same event week after week, month after month, year after year. It's gotten to the point where people have been going to same events for 3, 4 years.

That's no longer a game. It's a job.

Puppetmaster - Most complex FFXI job?

I think I have a pretty decent understanding of most FFXI jobs. The jobs I've played to sub levels I know how to play, or how to effectively sub. Most other jobs are fairly straightforward with clearly defined roles such as tank, DD or healer, and I have a decent idea of how to effectively use hybrid jobs such as BLU, RDM, DNC, DRG, and force some hybrid jobs like SAM/DNC. I've even played with BST a few times (though I think only taru should be BST since it's soooooooooooooo cute watching them run away from a mischarmed mob!)

PUP on the other hand, still confuses the heck out of me. Just looking over the sheer amount of attachments that they have, the different manuvers, frames, heads, and how you can make am automation behave based on your own behavior, or putting up different manuvers or gear... and all this at level 1! It seems really complex... and it seems to have a high amount of potential.

BLU is complex enough already, from having to choose your spells for the right mix for the job, to choosing between different traits, subjobs. Add onto that the issue of equipping not just yourself, but your puppet with the right attachments and put up the right manuvers, it's easy to see why people don't understand PUP are afraid to invite them to parties. Still... I'd like to see more PUPs in events to see how they work!

Is there a PUP out there who would come and show the job off?

Back and doing crazy stuff already!

My DSL came back sometime on Saturday, and since then I've somehow managed to get pretty busy pretty quickly again.

Let's see... what did I do...

- Managed to get killed twice in Einherjar!
Ok, so one of those times was basically the boss looking at me, and everyone else that the boss looked at went down as well, so that part wasn't too surprising. What did catch me by surprise was being targetted during the one giant pull. This happened before during Dynamis where near the end of a big pull, I end up being targetted by mobs as soon as they wake up. As far as I can tell, this is just based on the face that curing generates hate either doesn't dissapate, or does so very slowly. As a Dancer, I usually end up spamming Divine Waltz to keep my party healthy. Doing so cures a lot of HP over time, but mobs do not pay attention to this compared to Provoke and flash until someone on their hate list has been cured by a lot. I think I had a BLM in my party, so that explains that.

- Promy as WHM/SCH
This is kinda weird... I don't know why I felt like it, but i brought out my WHM after... over a full year of not playing the job. I just felt like playing it when Connie mentioned needing help for Promies. WHM was my initial job that I took up to 30 in order to unlock BLU. I had a good mix of equipment from leveling SCH to 37, sO i was actually decently equipped. WHM/SCH was a good combination too, with Light Arts helping a little for MP efficiency.

The promies themselves were fairly easy once we got the necessary items to actually win. Anima for both promies, and poison pots to prevent Sleepga. Ironically, between the exp from the missions themselves, and the one ENM we did, my WHM hit level 38 and now I need to go do two more teleport quests!

- ZNMs - Enkidu's Cap
We did 2x Tygers this week. Quite a few people did not have the 500 zeni necessary to enter the area for Tyger... There really is no excuse for this since we have the schedule up at least a week before the event, plus reminders in party chat, and finally, if you're doing ZNMs, you should be farming zeni in the first place! 500 zeni isn't even enough for a Tier I pop item. For every mob we fight, someone has to go out there to farm anywhere from 1-4k zeni. Newcomers are forgiven, of course, but everyone should have some zeni on them and help share the load

Unfortunately, Tyger didn't drop much of consequence... first pop we nearly lost when both Frodo and Wuwu went down, but Connie stepped up and did great in blood tanking the doggie while everyone basically kept him alive for almost 10 minutes before Fro & Wu were able to take over again. 2nd Tyger was very smooth, but the only interesting drop was Enkidu's Cap, which went to me since... well, nobody else had it on their list ^^;; Personally, I put it up there just cos I hate having incomplete armor and I wanted a full Enkidu's Harness set! (I even have a full Scorpion Harness set... probably the only full set across all servers!)

Enkidu's Cap is pretty decent... DEX+3, AGI+3, Accuracy+8, Ranged Accuracy+8 and Subtle Blow +2. Overall, it replaces my O-hate permanently so I don't have to look at it anymore! I still find it kinda funny that my "endgame" armor seems to come in on specific slots. So far, I have 3 head pieces (Enkidu, Homam and Denali) and two hand pieces (Enkidu and Homam), but no other slots.

- Crazy party for Nyzul Isle
After a super-long 14 hour day, I felt like doing some Nyzul... plus I promised to take Connie sometime to give him a taste. We also grabbed our new LS member... (forgot how to spell the name) and put together a pretty crazy party. We had BLU/SCH, DRG/RDM, SAM/DNC, WAR/NIN, PLD/WAR and THF/NIN. Three non-traditional hybrid job combinations, and three "traditional" jobs. The basic idea is that I was to main heal + support with both Teia on DRG/RDM and Zuzu on SAM/DNC backing me up.

We ran into a few big problems... first is that people were careless and ended up aggroing a bunch of mobs unnecessarily (Mousse anyone?) With me as the only sleeper, it's really hard to keep a party alive while sleeping 3+ mobs ^^; Not going to name names, but people should know better ;) Second problem is that we ran into a series of crazy hard floors. Chariots are hard enough on their own, but we got Chariots + Gears. Got a series of Eliminate Enemy Leader floors which prematurely ended both climbs. Connie did great for his first time through, and we introduced our new people to the AP tradition of wiping for no good reason. :D

I still think that crazy job combinations can handle Nyzul. Just need more experimentation to figure it out :)

Offline

Fast post... my internet is dead at home. I'm completely offline, soooo... that means no events, and I'm not updating the other blogs!

Zurar has graciously taken over the ZNM blog. Nain has taken over the Limbus blog as well, so those two are taken care of. For the time being, I'm completely out of FFXI and all the events... it's kind of a relief really ;)

Anyway, for Nyzul, this week looks really empty. Utaru, Kurai & I are all out. If you all want to go do it tonight, that's up to you. So far, you have Ghiren, Zurar & Ashle who will be around. For replacement members, we have:

Flayer - Has already agreed to come... just send him a /tell and let him know what's up. Have him come RDM/WHM
Zerofaith - SAM/NIN. Wants to come, but is inexperienced. He'll be waiting for a /tell too

Additional backups:
- Lazymashi - We've gone before... may or may not be on
- Vertiigo - I think we've gone before. Utaru said that he would like to farm armor too

Stratagy wise, follow Ghiren. He knows what to do and has lead our Nyzul before!