Had enough of SE "probability" BS

ok, that's the last straw. I was originally going to put together a post about AP having fun, doing things together with mission friday and tease Vanh about coming back. Instead, mission friday turned out to be a complete disaster.

What I had in mind was that we'd get together, go out and farm items together, fool around a little and make some progress and at least complete the Fei-Yin fight.

What happened was that everyone ended up basically on their own at different stages, and were either waiting for others to catch up, or trying to catch up. People went afk, logged out and came back later, or were struggling to stay awake in a 5 hour ordeal. What made things worse was the completely fucked up random probability of items dropping, turning what should have been an evening of fun to people getting bored, frustrated and going to sleep without a single thing accomplished.

I just spent Friday evening running around alone in a bunch of zones one-shotting low level mobs for 5 hours straight. This expansion is complete BULLSHIT. This isn't a game. It isn't even work. Work is productive, you get things done. This is some idiot's fucked up excuse to put a completely fucked up, unnecessary grind instead of actually using their imagination, or stealing someone else's idea to put together a challenge. This is nothing but a time waster, just like the original Genkai 1, just like the collecting of items for WotG missions. There is no challenge. There is no intelligence. There is no gameplay.

This sorry excuse for "gameplay" is evident in everything that FFXI offers. Sure, there's an initial challenge in figuring things out for Nyzul Isle, Salvage, Dynamis, etc., but once the challenge is overcome, any possibility of a reward is all based on "luck" or "probability" instead of actually giving solid rewards for figuring things out. It's all just a scam to draw out more subscription dollars instead of creating real content.

It's bad enough that this sort of random reward system is present throughout FFXI endgame... but this is simply a MISSION that players are trying to do. It isn't some crazy, powerful weapon... it's content that we actually paid for. Paid a high price in real money. I already covered what a rip-off I think this expansion is, but I was already suckered by SE in their whole "preorder the expansion" bullshit. I'm not falling for that again. Next time you go to the movies... just think... they could have also asked you to mop the floor and clean the toilets for the price you pay for your tickets. Actually, cleaning the toilets would at least have been a better use of time compared to this.

Sure, at SOME point in the future, they will put an update together that says "adjusted drop rate for X item" in order to appease people, but by then, 99% of their subscription base would have gone through it anyway, and this would be an empty gesture to show that they "care for the community."

I'm sorry... I have better things to do with my time... for example, watch CSPAN, read the tax code, watch paint dry.

I think at the end of this month I have some serious thinking to do, along the lines of a certain Vanh taru.