We're trying to bring the ZNM event to a close at this point. The content itself is mostly outdated with the gear in it being replaced by easily obtained Abyssea gear. Fuuji intends to replace it with VNMs (and is planning on starting the event earlier) with the intention of working on the "Empyrean Weapons" that SE sold us with the new Vision of Abyssea mini-expansion.
Wait... what? You mean it's not just farm rare/ex items for 3-4 cheaply assembled cutscenes and go do a final battle that has some sort of trick? Oh wait... it's much worse then that. Instead of farming a few rare/ex pop items, you have to go farm... tons of pop items to farm even more pop items to pop even harder mobs to get the rare/ex items... and do it 50 times per weapon you're interested in.
And that's just the beginning.
After talking to Fuuji last night, I decided to finally take a look at what these "Empyrean Weapons" were all about... what it would take to make one, as well as which one to get. I kinda went at this backwards, thinking about what weapon I might potentially want. The draw of these weapons appear to be their very high damage ratings with relatively decent delays, and the potential that they will grow to all the way to level 99 through "magians and other methods" as SE stated.
Job wise:
SCH - No point in a high damaging staff. I don't melee on SCH, and my staff skill is embarrassingly low!
COR - High damage gun would be fun. However, my COR's equip is pretty sub-standard when it comes to shooting, and I have no marksmanship merits. That's one of the big reasons why I use Coffinmaker on COR. I'd be hesitant to give up the accuracy bonus. It is also one of the reasons why I tend to default to Leaden Salute on COR even though it does less damage compared to Slug Shot
DRG - Potentially a good choice. As a DD, higher damage is better. I generally do not have accuracy issues on DRG due to the job's accuracy bonus trait. However, I really don't use DRG that much! The DD role is too simple for me to be entertained with in FFXI for long periods. I'm not sure if it is worth putting effort into a job which I don't use that often
DNC - Considered this for a while... normally it would be my default choice, but for a DNC, the main thing that I'm looking out for is the ability to hit (accuracy) and the ability to get more TP. Damage is a secondary concern. Ideally, I'd have two "occasionally attack" daggers for faster TP gain and simply WS more if I'm in a DD role
PLD - While tanking on PLD generally requires +enmity, sometimes I do break out my Organics to have fun with Vorpal Blade. However, in tanking situations where damage is a component, I usually try to use Atonement spam there, so again, TP gain is more of an issue.
BLU - If I'm doing my job fully on BLU, I rarely swing my sword but instead am constantly casting spells. Furthermore, Chain Affinity would also meant that I would almost never hit 100% TP, especially if I every finish the merits I want there. BLU damage is based on blue magic skill + stats + accuracy, so sword damage wouldn't do much good.
So... not looking too good. The sword at least would be useful on two jobs. For DNC, I think I'd rather be focusing on gaining as much TP as possible. The polearm for DRG might be the one that makes the most sense. However, I rarely use DRG as is... not sure if it would be worth doing.
The Empyrean Trials
The trials for the weapons are fairly standard in format, just varying in the details. They generally go:
- Kill a bunch of lottery pop NMs
- Kill a bunch of Tier II VNMs
- Collect 50 EX items from Tier IV Abyssea NMs.
The first is a pain... lottery pops aren't interesting to do and mainly involve staring at the screen. If you're lucky, you might end up spending 1-2 weeks taking care of these requirements. The second would take longer, but at least the fights would be somewhat interesting and you have potential for some interesting drop items. At this point, Tier II VNMs should be easily duoable or trioable, though doing it with a party/alliance would of course, be more fun.
The third item is a pain. We're talking about 50 EX items from a Tier IV Abyssea NM. This means that in order to even pop the NM, you need to have killed at least 8 NMs before hand and gotten the necessary pop items/key items to pop the next tier. That's also the minimum since the pop items are not a 100% drop from the previous tier. What's even weirder is that the Tier IIIs are key items, so... well... I'm not quite sure how that works.
Finally, the Tier IV you have to kill only has a chance to drop... maybe two of the item you need? So... rinse, repeat a minimum of 25 times for one person. And these are mobs that take an alliance to kill, so multiply the time it takes to do this by the number of people you're doing it for.
Of course, once the level cap hits 99, we'll probably be able to do it a ton faster instead of having to go hunt NMs for 18 different people. We're still looking at a minimum of... (25 + 25*8)*6 = 1,350 kills for a party of 6 (or 4,050 kills for a full alliance!) That's minimum... remember that the mob probably can drop 0-2 of the various items, so... multiply that by how unlucky you think you'll be! Assuming that you can kill one NM every 30 minutes, you can kill a maximum of 8 mobs per week in Abyssea (assuming the default 20hours/stone, 30 minute stone), meaning that it will take 169 weeks to get all the items for a single party(or 506 weeks for an alliance of 18... also known as 10 years!!) Maybe you know a way to speed things up, but there will still be overhead like travel time, gathering time, etc.
Long-term FFXI
There's one big unknown at the moment... that is, how will SE update this, and the rest of FFXI? The release of FFXIV just around the corner (supposedly in just over a month's time) is another factor here. How will SE handle this?
Well... let's think of how they will handle it from a business point of view. No matter how much you think that they will be loyal to the fans, or that they won't do silly things, at the end of the day, SE wants to bring in money and the decisions that SE makes will reflect that.
Currently, FFXI actually brings money into the company... barely. SE can do a few things to improve this like stop spending as much money on it. i.e.: Reduce the support staff (when was the last time you actually talked to a GM? Or talked to someone on the phone? Or gotten anything more then a stock reply on email?), reduce development costs (Hello mini-expansions and content that an unpaid high school intern could probably put together!)
If FFXI stops bringing in as much money as it did before, SE will have to either reduce costs by taking even further steps (consolidate servers, basically put the game on life support) or simply shut the game down. FFXIV is an interesting point in FFXI's life. Basically, if FFXIV pulls enough players away from XI, SE will have even more incentive to reduce the amount that they spend on XI.
On the other hand, if FFXIV flops, then SE will want to keep XI active just so that they can continue to draw money from the paying customers, as well as to claim that they have something in the MMO market. Sequels do not always succeed. EverQuest 2 and Asheron's Call 2 were good examples of games which did not do as well as their original game. If anything, I can't think of a single MMO sequel which has actually done better compared to the original... Lineage II maybe?
So, SE has every incentive to keep FFXI on life support. Basically, keep whatever player base still stays with XI entertained enough that they keep paying the monthly subscription. You can see that they are basically stretching their existing content out as long as possible and throwing in randomish content to keep people entertained. WotG was released... 3 years ago now? And we still do not have a conclusion. In fact, most people have given up on bothering with this content since there hasn't really been any reason to do so.
FFXI on long-term support
Which... brings me to back to the Empyrean weapons. At first glance, it almost appeared that SE wanted everyone to do the weapons since they advertised it as being associated with the first Abyssea mini-expansion, kinda like how the first three mini-expansions were presented. However, if you look closer at the quests and requirements themselves, you'll see that the effort to even get to the first level 80 phase isn't a minor undertaking. Who knows what the next few trials to get from 80-90, then 90-99 will contain.
While a part of me was hoping that SE would eventually adjust the requirements for these quests, I realize that SE really has no reason to do so. The next update will be when SE is hoping for an exodus of people from XI to XIV, leaving only the FFXI loyalists still playing. For SE, there is every incentive to make things take as long as possible so that loyalists will always have "content" to play. Just think about how long it has taken for them to finally adjust the dynamis drop rates... It was only after they had enough other time-sinks in the game that they bothered to do so. For Empyrean weapons, they have every incentive to keep things as convoluted as possible to keep the hardcore subscribing while they spend fewer and fewer resources updating XI.
Thoughts?
As a side note... I noticed that nearly all the FFXI blogs I frequent, including people who play with us, haven't really updated in months. Even my own blog, which used to update about twice a week, has gone to a once every 2-3 weeks schedule.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
DRG relic completed, Abyssea exp, job stuffs, FFXIV
I guess Dynamis probabilities worked in my favor last week!
6/6 on DRG relic armor. That's the 5th complete set of relic so far with BMO/CTR and more importantly, +4 inventory spaces! Currently missing the PLD body and back pieces for my last job. I'm also missing only a couple of pieces for WHM, BST & PUP, all jobs that I would have considered leveling if not for the level cap increase.
I'm not too hopeful of being able to complete the PLD set given the stupidly low drop rates of these items, especially considering that we've been going after these items in every Dynamis for as long as I can remember. I'm also not very hopeful of completing my DNC relic +1 pieces. Funny thing is that I'm only missing the relic -1 feet & hands which are not the super-rare Tav pieces.
In any case, Dynamis seems to be wrapping up as an event. With almost everyone at level 80 now, the event itself is becoming a joke at how quickly we plow through the mobs. Unfortunately the drop rate for the things we need is also a joke since we're barely getting any drops at all now (yes, with TH4) and rarely anything people actually want. With new events and new items popping up now with Abyssea and Walk of Echos, I wouldn't be surprised if interest in Dynamis started to taper off. Unfortunately, there are still lots of items in Dynamis that have attributes that can only be obtained via Dynamis. Many of the newer jobs like SCH & COR for example, have job-specific buffs that can only be found on relic armor.
Abyssea exp
Nice part about Abyssea exp is how quickly you can finish a job... The bad part is that it really requires a dedicated amount of time to do.
This past Saturday, we did yet another Abyssea exp alliance... 9am - 3pm Pacific time. I managed to take SCH from 17k into 75 to capped at 80 plus two merits in that time. This was the 3rd job I took to 80 (or near 80) using Abyssea, and 2nd last job that I have to complete. My COR is my last sub-80 job at level 77 and will likely be completed next weekend during another Abyssea exp session.
The draining part about Abyssea is simply the time it takes to do. Even in a properly executed Abyssea exp alliance, you're still looking at spending at least the first two hours getting into a proper chaining position where you can expect chest drops and time extensions, as well as the exp rate to increase to a reasonable amount. It really makes it tiring to actually do one of these sessions, but the alternative -- spending many more days exping in various parties in different locations -- is even more painful to get a job to 80.
Still... I can't imagine doing this all over again for all 6 jobs for the next level cap increase.
Job Stuffs
Since getting more jobs to 80, my perception on my jobs has changed somewhat.
* Dancer
Still overall my favorite in terms of soloing and healing capability. The ability to do heal people outside my party has made this job even more powerful, though I am disappointed that Healing Waltz does not work. The changes to the job itself haven't been really that useful -- I rarely use Presto and Climatic Flourish is amusing, but overall not something I would really use for damage. The biggest change has really been Sekkinoki since that gives DNC/SAM a lot more damage dealing potential. DNC/NIN still wins for overall survivability and damage reduction in nearly all situations.
* Paladin
Native Phalanx and that new Divine Emblem job ability have really enhanced the ability of a PLD/NIN to tank. However, the nerfing of the RDM enmity spells has also severely crippled a PLD/RDM's ability to hold hate. PLD is no longer my #2 favorite job simply due to this, though I still like tanking in PLD/NIN situations.
* Blue Mage
BLU was my first job due to the flexibility and capability of the job, going from anywhere from heavy DD to magical nuker, debuffer or even a full-time support job. The main reason why I avoided playing BLU was due to the support that it required in terms of Refresh. This update gave the spell Battery Charge, a 4MP/tick Refresh that lasts for 150 seconds. Yes, that is higher compared to the RDM Refresh spell, and pretty much means that I almost never run out of MP on BLU anymore.
BLU also got some other interesting spells, including a new full-strength Haste spell that lasts almost twice as long as the normal Haste spell, a new healing spell that also increases attack & magical attack, a regen spell and some more magical nuking spells. Furthermore, BLU/RDM gains the ability to Convert, meaning that a BLU could effectively go on forever. However, I haven't dared to actually use BLU/RDM for anything yet given the amount of hate BLU already pulls simply from doing damage and casting healing spells
Since the update, I've actually been pumping my merits into BLU. Just one more upgrade to Assimilation, then I can move on to completing Enchainment, Chain Affinity Recast and Physical Potency. BLU may end up being the 2nd job I actually finish meriting!
* Dragoon, Scholar
Both of these jobs are now 80. Neither has really gained much from the update. The most I can say is that DRG/SAM can now WS a little more often, and SCH/RDM can now Convert and never run out of MP.
FFXIV
The Final Fantasy XIV beta has started up, and I popped in for a quick look. Pretty much nothing has changed. It's still just as laggy and slow as before. It's also just as pretty as before, graphics looking like they are taken out of a CG movie. However, gameplay is pretty horrible and boring still, with no direction for plot, no guidance and... well, considering this is the second time I played through the opening sequence and it *still* took me about 20 minutes to figure out how to get out of the very beginning area... (it's not obvious and there's a gate preventing you from running directly out) You should see the shouts of people asking basic things like how to fight or form parties! (actually, how do you form parties? I still don't know how to properly do this)
Except for the opening cutscene, there really hasn't been any real NPC dialog, with everyone I talk to so far giving very generic, forgettable statements. It's as though someone turned off the storytelling element that SE used to be good at? Also, I thought that SE added a "new player" tutorial/set of quests in FFXI recently... years after the game launched... You'd think that they would be applying the lessons they learnt to their new game? I haven't seen anything resembling a tutorial or anything to teach you how to do anything in XIV. Keep in mind that this game is supposed to launch in less than 2 months.
Still.. it's amusing to see hundreds of people camping rats like NMs :)
6/6 on DRG relic armor. That's the 5th complete set of relic so far with BMO/CTR and more importantly, +4 inventory spaces! Currently missing the PLD body and back pieces for my last job. I'm also missing only a couple of pieces for WHM, BST & PUP, all jobs that I would have considered leveling if not for the level cap increase.
I'm not too hopeful of being able to complete the PLD set given the stupidly low drop rates of these items, especially considering that we've been going after these items in every Dynamis for as long as I can remember. I'm also not very hopeful of completing my DNC relic +1 pieces. Funny thing is that I'm only missing the relic -1 feet & hands which are not the super-rare Tav pieces.
In any case, Dynamis seems to be wrapping up as an event. With almost everyone at level 80 now, the event itself is becoming a joke at how quickly we plow through the mobs. Unfortunately the drop rate for the things we need is also a joke since we're barely getting any drops at all now (yes, with TH4) and rarely anything people actually want. With new events and new items popping up now with Abyssea and Walk of Echos, I wouldn't be surprised if interest in Dynamis started to taper off. Unfortunately, there are still lots of items in Dynamis that have attributes that can only be obtained via Dynamis. Many of the newer jobs like SCH & COR for example, have job-specific buffs that can only be found on relic armor.
Abyssea exp
Nice part about Abyssea exp is how quickly you can finish a job... The bad part is that it really requires a dedicated amount of time to do.
This past Saturday, we did yet another Abyssea exp alliance... 9am - 3pm Pacific time. I managed to take SCH from 17k into 75 to capped at 80 plus two merits in that time. This was the 3rd job I took to 80 (or near 80) using Abyssea, and 2nd last job that I have to complete. My COR is my last sub-80 job at level 77 and will likely be completed next weekend during another Abyssea exp session.
The draining part about Abyssea is simply the time it takes to do. Even in a properly executed Abyssea exp alliance, you're still looking at spending at least the first two hours getting into a proper chaining position where you can expect chest drops and time extensions, as well as the exp rate to increase to a reasonable amount. It really makes it tiring to actually do one of these sessions, but the alternative -- spending many more days exping in various parties in different locations -- is even more painful to get a job to 80.
Still... I can't imagine doing this all over again for all 6 jobs for the next level cap increase.
Job Stuffs
Since getting more jobs to 80, my perception on my jobs has changed somewhat.
* Dancer
Still overall my favorite in terms of soloing and healing capability. The ability to do heal people outside my party has made this job even more powerful, though I am disappointed that Healing Waltz does not work. The changes to the job itself haven't been really that useful -- I rarely use Presto and Climatic Flourish is amusing, but overall not something I would really use for damage. The biggest change has really been Sekkinoki since that gives DNC/SAM a lot more damage dealing potential. DNC/NIN still wins for overall survivability and damage reduction in nearly all situations.
* Paladin
Native Phalanx and that new Divine Emblem job ability have really enhanced the ability of a PLD/NIN to tank. However, the nerfing of the RDM enmity spells has also severely crippled a PLD/RDM's ability to hold hate. PLD is no longer my #2 favorite job simply due to this, though I still like tanking in PLD/NIN situations.
* Blue Mage
BLU was my first job due to the flexibility and capability of the job, going from anywhere from heavy DD to magical nuker, debuffer or even a full-time support job. The main reason why I avoided playing BLU was due to the support that it required in terms of Refresh. This update gave the spell Battery Charge, a 4MP/tick Refresh that lasts for 150 seconds. Yes, that is higher compared to the RDM Refresh spell, and pretty much means that I almost never run out of MP on BLU anymore.
BLU also got some other interesting spells, including a new full-strength Haste spell that lasts almost twice as long as the normal Haste spell, a new healing spell that also increases attack & magical attack, a regen spell and some more magical nuking spells. Furthermore, BLU/RDM gains the ability to Convert, meaning that a BLU could effectively go on forever. However, I haven't dared to actually use BLU/RDM for anything yet given the amount of hate BLU already pulls simply from doing damage and casting healing spells
Since the update, I've actually been pumping my merits into BLU. Just one more upgrade to Assimilation, then I can move on to completing Enchainment, Chain Affinity Recast and Physical Potency. BLU may end up being the 2nd job I actually finish meriting!
* Dragoon, Scholar
Both of these jobs are now 80. Neither has really gained much from the update. The most I can say is that DRG/SAM can now WS a little more often, and SCH/RDM can now Convert and never run out of MP.
FFXIV
The Final Fantasy XIV beta has started up, and I popped in for a quick look. Pretty much nothing has changed. It's still just as laggy and slow as before. It's also just as pretty as before, graphics looking like they are taken out of a CG movie. However, gameplay is pretty horrible and boring still, with no direction for plot, no guidance and... well, considering this is the second time I played through the opening sequence and it *still* took me about 20 minutes to figure out how to get out of the very beginning area... (it's not obvious and there's a gate preventing you from running directly out) You should see the shouts of people asking basic things like how to fight or form parties! (actually, how do you form parties? I still don't know how to properly do this)
Except for the opening cutscene, there really hasn't been any real NPC dialog, with everyone I talk to so far giving very generic, forgettable statements. It's as though someone turned off the storytelling element that SE used to be good at? Also, I thought that SE added a "new player" tutorial/set of quests in FFXI recently... years after the game launched... You'd think that they would be applying the lessons they learnt to their new game? I haven't seen anything resembling a tutorial or anything to teach you how to do anything in XIV. Keep in mind that this game is supposed to launch in less than 2 months.
Still.. it's amusing to see hundreds of people camping rats like NMs :)
Friday, July 16, 2010
Abyssea - Current impressions
I'm sure that by now everyone actively playing FFXI has already discovered the craziness that is Abyssea, so this is mainly a post for those who have retired from XI, or are taking a break :)
Abyssea & the level cap
Back when the level cap increases was first announced, the first thought I had was how painful it would be to exp all my jobs to cap, and that I'd probably end up dropping most of them in favor of my favorite one or two jobs. The 60-75 stretch is the most painful for me simply due to the high amounts of exp required. The amount of exp for 76-80 does increase, but at a reduced rate. In total, you end up needing almost 200k exp to get from 75 to 80. By previous merit party standards, this is still a long time, about 9-10 hours assuming an average 20-24k/hour rate.
Well, Abyssea pretty much turns exp around and makes it a simple one night/afternoon affair. This is how it works:
Abyssea has an initial time limit of 90/120 minutes depending on entry conditions. Killing mobs inside Abyssea gives you the possibility of dropping chests which may give exp, temp items, augmented items, cruor (the currency used in Abyssea) or more imporantly, time extensions. There is a semi-hidden "chain" factor in play here -- the more mobs you kill that are the same type, the higher the probability that a chest will appear. There are also other factors at play here, such as how the mob is killed (WS, magic, or something else). As you kill more mobs from the same family, your exp/mob killed will also increase. Initially you might get about 80-120 exp per kill, but as you kill more and more, this will go up gradually. For CTR's initial run, we peaked at 610 exp per kill, and yes, we were killing at merit party rates of one mob every 20 seconds or so. Also, the amount of exp you get isn't affected by the number of people.
Yes, this means that exping with a full alliance is what happens inside Abyssea. In fact, it is ideal since more people = faster kills.
The trick to Abyssea exp is that it takes quite a long time for you to "ramp up" in experience, chest drop rates and time extensions. The first time we did this, it took about 70 minutes before things started to noticeably improve. However, once they started improving, things really took off. We were in zone doing this for about 4 1/2 hours when I went from 17k into level 75 to 16k away from level 80 on BLU. That's about 48k/hour including the initial 1 hour ramp-up period, and we could have kept going except that it was already nearly 2am Pacific and people on the east coast were starting to see the sun rise. People have gone for 9+ hours, and many people have already capped all their jobs and merits in this system. One Abyssea exp session would bring you from 75-80 easily, and I can see this being the way people level all the way up to level 99. However... I also wonder about people being in Abyssea for 9, 12, 24 hours... wasn't there an article about how FFXI makes people physically sick some time ago? Is someone writing Yahoo! about this new development?
The only downside to Abyssea is the time it takes to ramp up. While this is awesome when you have 5, 6, 10, 12 hours to exp a bunch of levels, if all you want is 10 merits, or if you don't have that much time to spend in game, Abyssea simply wouldn't be worth it. The initial ramp-up time would cut down on your exp/hour since the really good exp only comes from when you've been doing it for a few hours. If you're capping merits, taking a break to go spend them would mean that you're resetting your Abyssea exp "chain" and have to ramp-up again. The other possible downside is that if you join an Abyssea group that isn't successful, you'll lose your time for the day and have to wait for more entry stones to pop.
Still... if not for the discover of Abyssea exp, I probably would not be considering leveling my other jobs. Right now, I've gotten DNC & PLD to 80, COR to 77 (through traditional means), BLU to 79, nearly 80 through Abyssea and plan on taking DRG & SCH through weekend Abyssea sessions to hit 80.
Abyssea & armor
Cruor is the new type of currency inside Abyssea. You get it by simply killing mobs or opening chests. As you can imagine, cruor is extremely easy to get with exp alliances, with a single session easily netting over 40k cruor.
There are three sets of armor that can be purchased with cruor, one for light melees, one for heavy melees and one for mages. These are all level 78 pieces and each piece is relatively cheap, 3k for most pieces, 5k for the body piece. And... most of these pieces easily replace almost all reasonably obtained level 75 gear in the game.
Yes, we're talking about Askar, Denali, Goliard, Enkidu, most Hachiryu, Homam and other pieces being basically replaced by gear that can be bought cheaply with easily earned currency. You can even buy these pieces off the AH too! Yes, there are people who will argue that such-and-such piece has 1 more str, but for most people, this basically levels the playing field. Someone who hasn't played the game for years can simply pick up the expansion and be on 90% equal footing to someone who spent the last few years collecting endgame gear. I'm guessing that future expansions will contain gear that will blow these pieces away, making the old "endgame" pieces obsolete unless SE makes up some funny new system to accommodate them. (Trials of the magians for armor anyone?)
The funny part is that many people are complaining about the design of the new armor.. I don't see anything wrong with it! I think it looks cute! See!
(This is the Aurore Doublet set, light melee for DNC, BLU, COR, THF and others)
Abyssea & NM drops/time management
On a side note, Impact has been poking some NMs in Abyssea too, most notably the Thew Bomblet NM. This is an ammo item with Str+2 and Attack+8. It was surprising easy to get with a relatively high drop rate and fast repop time for the ??? to pop the NM. However, it still sells for quite a bit of gil, which is a little surprising when you first look at it.
The thing about Abyssea is that there are tons other NMs, as well as quests and other things to do. By limiting us by the amount of time we can actually spend in Abyssea(30 minutes every 20 hours, stackable), SE has put an artificial limit on how much you can get out of the expansion. Do you want to go farm NMs? Go explore? Go learn BLU spells? or go exp? It's really an ingenious method of controlling how much people get out from the expansion. People are basically encouraged to go do other things between their Abyssea sessions.
In theory, this will also let SE stretch FFXI out over a longer time since... well, we're basically rationed by SE how much time we're allowed to spend in Abyssea.
Abyssea & the level cap
Back when the level cap increases was first announced, the first thought I had was how painful it would be to exp all my jobs to cap, and that I'd probably end up dropping most of them in favor of my favorite one or two jobs. The 60-75 stretch is the most painful for me simply due to the high amounts of exp required. The amount of exp for 76-80 does increase, but at a reduced rate. In total, you end up needing almost 200k exp to get from 75 to 80. By previous merit party standards, this is still a long time, about 9-10 hours assuming an average 20-24k/hour rate.
Well, Abyssea pretty much turns exp around and makes it a simple one night/afternoon affair. This is how it works:
Abyssea has an initial time limit of 90/120 minutes depending on entry conditions. Killing mobs inside Abyssea gives you the possibility of dropping chests which may give exp, temp items, augmented items, cruor (the currency used in Abyssea) or more imporantly, time extensions. There is a semi-hidden "chain" factor in play here -- the more mobs you kill that are the same type, the higher the probability that a chest will appear. There are also other factors at play here, such as how the mob is killed (WS, magic, or something else). As you kill more mobs from the same family, your exp/mob killed will also increase. Initially you might get about 80-120 exp per kill, but as you kill more and more, this will go up gradually. For CTR's initial run, we peaked at 610 exp per kill, and yes, we were killing at merit party rates of one mob every 20 seconds or so. Also, the amount of exp you get isn't affected by the number of people.
Yes, this means that exping with a full alliance is what happens inside Abyssea. In fact, it is ideal since more people = faster kills.
The trick to Abyssea exp is that it takes quite a long time for you to "ramp up" in experience, chest drop rates and time extensions. The first time we did this, it took about 70 minutes before things started to noticeably improve. However, once they started improving, things really took off. We were in zone doing this for about 4 1/2 hours when I went from 17k into level 75 to 16k away from level 80 on BLU. That's about 48k/hour including the initial 1 hour ramp-up period, and we could have kept going except that it was already nearly 2am Pacific and people on the east coast were starting to see the sun rise. People have gone for 9+ hours, and many people have already capped all their jobs and merits in this system. One Abyssea exp session would bring you from 75-80 easily, and I can see this being the way people level all the way up to level 99. However... I also wonder about people being in Abyssea for 9, 12, 24 hours... wasn't there an article about how FFXI makes people physically sick some time ago? Is someone writing Yahoo! about this new development?
The only downside to Abyssea is the time it takes to ramp up. While this is awesome when you have 5, 6, 10, 12 hours to exp a bunch of levels, if all you want is 10 merits, or if you don't have that much time to spend in game, Abyssea simply wouldn't be worth it. The initial ramp-up time would cut down on your exp/hour since the really good exp only comes from when you've been doing it for a few hours. If you're capping merits, taking a break to go spend them would mean that you're resetting your Abyssea exp "chain" and have to ramp-up again. The other possible downside is that if you join an Abyssea group that isn't successful, you'll lose your time for the day and have to wait for more entry stones to pop.
Still... if not for the discover of Abyssea exp, I probably would not be considering leveling my other jobs. Right now, I've gotten DNC & PLD to 80, COR to 77 (through traditional means), BLU to 79, nearly 80 through Abyssea and plan on taking DRG & SCH through weekend Abyssea sessions to hit 80.
Abyssea & armor
Cruor is the new type of currency inside Abyssea. You get it by simply killing mobs or opening chests. As you can imagine, cruor is extremely easy to get with exp alliances, with a single session easily netting over 40k cruor.
There are three sets of armor that can be purchased with cruor, one for light melees, one for heavy melees and one for mages. These are all level 78 pieces and each piece is relatively cheap, 3k for most pieces, 5k for the body piece. And... most of these pieces easily replace almost all reasonably obtained level 75 gear in the game.
Yes, we're talking about Askar, Denali, Goliard, Enkidu, most Hachiryu, Homam and other pieces being basically replaced by gear that can be bought cheaply with easily earned currency. You can even buy these pieces off the AH too! Yes, there are people who will argue that such-and-such piece has 1 more str, but for most people, this basically levels the playing field. Someone who hasn't played the game for years can simply pick up the expansion and be on 90% equal footing to someone who spent the last few years collecting endgame gear. I'm guessing that future expansions will contain gear that will blow these pieces away, making the old "endgame" pieces obsolete unless SE makes up some funny new system to accommodate them. (Trials of the magians for armor anyone?)
The funny part is that many people are complaining about the design of the new armor.. I don't see anything wrong with it! I think it looks cute! See!
Abyssea & NM drops/time management
On a side note, Impact has been poking some NMs in Abyssea too, most notably the Thew Bomblet NM. This is an ammo item with Str+2 and Attack+8. It was surprising easy to get with a relatively high drop rate and fast repop time for the ??? to pop the NM. However, it still sells for quite a bit of gil, which is a little surprising when you first look at it.
The thing about Abyssea is that there are tons other NMs, as well as quests and other things to do. By limiting us by the amount of time we can actually spend in Abyssea(30 minutes every 20 hours, stackable), SE has put an artificial limit on how much you can get out of the expansion. Do you want to go farm NMs? Go explore? Go learn BLU spells? or go exp? It's really an ingenious method of controlling how much people get out from the expansion. People are basically encouraged to go do other things between their Abyssea sessions.
In theory, this will also let SE stretch FFXI out over a longer time since... well, we're basically rationed by SE how much time we're allowed to spend in Abyssea.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
More update impressions, glitches
Update has been out for a while... here are some randomish pictures and impressions.
One of the new job traits that came out of this release is "skillchain bonus" which is given to DNC & SAM. This happens when one of the jobs close a skillchain, and the resulting extra damage shows up. Here is an example of me closing a darkness skillchain for more than what my weaponskill did. In this case, it was a 16% increase in damage compared to normal.
Abyssea is buggy! If you level sync inside abyssea, you'll get some additional exp compared to spreading the levels out, but the difference isn't that much. We're talking about a 10-15% difference between a level 80 person and a level 75. However, the funny thing is that if you do level sync, for some reason whenever you kill a mob, you might get the level up animation completely at random. In this case, none of us were actually leveling up to level 76. I think I was actually level 77 at this point and we were synced to 76.
This one is funny... I R0'ed and DC'ed right in the middle of a MMM session. It was enough of an R0 to kick me out of FFXI, but I managed to get right back in from POL instead of having to quit the game. However, once I was in, my auto-translate was completely screwed up and everything that was in auto-translate came out with the same Japanese phrase
Now this is a fun one... inside Abyssea, you can sometimes get chests that will appear after you kill mobs. Some of these chests are huge, such as this one over here that is much, much bigger than a taru! It can probably hold 3-4 tarutaru bodies!
This is what I call cutting it close :)
Other Impressions
So far, I'm finding that I'm liking the Abyssea aspect of this update a lot... I guess we're kinda getting what we paid for here. The time/stone constraints aren't that big of a deal really. 1 1/2 hours for an event is a significant time, enough to make progress, but not enough to really burn out on doing it like Dynamis. The rewards from this event are interesting too, making it a possible exp area, as well as a good point system that allows you to buy armor like Einherjar instead of hoping for lucky drops.
The level cap raise to 80 hasn't been quite as painful as I feared. Managed to get DNC up to 80 fairly quickly, and of my other jobs, I've gotten PLD to 78 and COR to 77. Allied Rings help a lot, and the new potential places for exp have helped, plus of course, MMM.
What is kinda annoying, however, is how the new equipment is basically making a lot of older gear obsolete. The Enkidu armor set that I got through ZNMs is basically going to be completely replaced by the Aurore Doublet Set. The Perle Hauberk set would be good for DDs, and replaces Askar as a much easier to get set of armor. With the level caps going higher up in the near future, I'm wondering if it is even worth doing events for the generically good pieces of armor?
I mean, there are certain situational pieces that will always be good... for example, I don't see them making a replacement for the RDM hat or THF gloves, nor do I see them putting "enhances jig effect" on a generic piece of armor... (though wasn't there talk about an "AF3" line in the higher levels?) However, multi-job pieces that have the usual suspects... accuracy, str, haste, MP, cure potency, recast time, etc. such as Hachiryu, Homam, Nashira, Enkidu, Askar, Goliard... I wouldn't be surprised if there would be an easy to obtain level 88 piece that blows them away, making it pointless to do those events.
Another interesting thing is the "trial of the magians" developments. As expected, they expanded the paths even further. However, what disturbed me was how they changed. If I had actually spent more time on this, I would have been aiming for the Athame with "occasionally attacks twice" through the VNM route. However, the "solo" route which "merely" involves killing thousands of mobs develops into a dagger that "occassionally attacks 2-3 times" which is a much better dagger for DNC. Given that these daggers are only at level 80, would this mean that the future weapons will change even more? Could someone spend weeks, months on one of these trials only to end up with the wrong weapon?
Surprisingly, FFXI has gone from a fairly static place where you know what you'll be getting to... well... having a lot of uncertainty and... to an extent, excitement. Definitely a strange time to be playing XI, and who knows what the future brings.
Other Impressions
So far, I'm finding that I'm liking the Abyssea aspect of this update a lot... I guess we're kinda getting what we paid for here. The time/stone constraints aren't that big of a deal really. 1 1/2 hours for an event is a significant time, enough to make progress, but not enough to really burn out on doing it like Dynamis. The rewards from this event are interesting too, making it a possible exp area, as well as a good point system that allows you to buy armor like Einherjar instead of hoping for lucky drops.
The level cap raise to 80 hasn't been quite as painful as I feared. Managed to get DNC up to 80 fairly quickly, and of my other jobs, I've gotten PLD to 78 and COR to 77. Allied Rings help a lot, and the new potential places for exp have helped, plus of course, MMM.
What is kinda annoying, however, is how the new equipment is basically making a lot of older gear obsolete. The Enkidu armor set that I got through ZNMs is basically going to be completely replaced by the Aurore Doublet Set. The Perle Hauberk set would be good for DDs, and replaces Askar as a much easier to get set of armor. With the level caps going higher up in the near future, I'm wondering if it is even worth doing events for the generically good pieces of armor?
I mean, there are certain situational pieces that will always be good... for example, I don't see them making a replacement for the RDM hat or THF gloves, nor do I see them putting "enhances jig effect" on a generic piece of armor... (though wasn't there talk about an "AF3" line in the higher levels?) However, multi-job pieces that have the usual suspects... accuracy, str, haste, MP, cure potency, recast time, etc. such as Hachiryu, Homam, Nashira, Enkidu, Askar, Goliard... I wouldn't be surprised if there would be an easy to obtain level 88 piece that blows them away, making it pointless to do those events.
Another interesting thing is the "trial of the magians" developments. As expected, they expanded the paths even further. However, what disturbed me was how they changed. If I had actually spent more time on this, I would have been aiming for the Athame with "occasionally attacks twice" through the VNM route. However, the "solo" route which "merely" involves killing thousands of mobs develops into a dagger that "occassionally attacks 2-3 times" which is a much better dagger for DNC. Given that these daggers are only at level 80, would this mean that the future weapons will change even more? Could someone spend weeks, months on one of these trials only to end up with the wrong weapon?
Surprisingly, FFXI has gone from a fairly static place where you know what you'll be getting to... well... having a lot of uncertainty and... to an extent, excitement. Definitely a strange time to be playing XI, and who knows what the future brings.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
June 2010 update impressions
Whee... possibly the update with the biggest impact to FFXI has arrived. With level caps being raised to level 80, this update has the potential to totally change how we play the game (or even IF we play the game).
First off... here are my impressions on the new content.
Abyssea (or more specifically, Visions of Abyssea)
The plot for this so far is pretty simple and straightforward. There's an alternate dimension which looks like our world, but where there are tons of tougher beasts that have basically beaten civilization to the point of collapse. Some of the interesting changes to the world:
- The sky is a different color (kinda explained in the cutscenes)
- There are no crags, at least not in mea. So, if you think about the FFXI storyline, Zilart and stuff never existed? Quite possibly there aren't any cities and all that are left are refugee camps
- Lots of weird/different mobs, in addition to reskins of the mobs we know of. There are some giant-worm creatures around, and some weird floating things. I think there were some released screenshots of squid-type mobs from sea around too.
Some random screenshots of Abyssea:
I'm under the impression that SE developers are not exactly sure how they want DNC to develop. At lower levels, it is a buffing/curing job with a focus on -enmity. At 75, SE gives us +enmity gear, and even +enmity merit abilities. At 45, then later at 80, SE turns around and gives us DD abilities and traits. It'll be interesting to see how this ends up working for DNC.
Blue Mage
I didn't pay too much attention to the BLU enhancements at first, but closer examination shows that BLU actually got quite a few interesting enhancements. We now have our own native Refresh (self-target only), a full power haste to replace Refueling, and a interesting cure and buff move that not only restores as much HP as a Cure IV, but also enhances attack for whoever we cure.
Besides the new spells, BLU/RDM is now an interesting possibility for BLU, essentially giving us an unlimited MP pool to do damage. Finally, BLU is very much more effective against VT or lower mobs. In Abyssea, all we've encountered so far are T & VT mobs, other then the NMs, so BLU might end up being a very effective job for this area. I'm quite curious to see how BLU ends up at level 80.
Paladin
PLD didn't receive much in terms of enhancements, but due to the enmity nerfs that probably targeted RDM/NIN tanking, PLD/RDM has become significantly weaker when distance tanking single mobs.
I was talking to Kelhor about this and how this might affect our strategies for various events. Basically, it boils down to PLD/RDM only working for events where you use bar spells to generate enmity. For single-target tanking such as Oryu or JoL, PLD/RDM isn't as effective anymore. The most likely solution to this would be PLD/DRK, which still has a decent selection of hate tools including Stun, the Absorb-* series of spells and the various job abilities like Last Resort and Souleater.
Personally, the nerf to PLD/RDM has turned me off from exping on PLD. For starters, I'm really not interested in leveling DRK from 1-49. I don't even have DRK unlocked!
Scholar
The new Libra ability looks quite interesting. By showing everyone's enmity as a % of the top person at the enmity list, it should make things like HNMs safer. Just check enmity levels once in a while, and if some DD is too close to the hate cap, have them back off. I'm not certain if this works in alliances, but if it does, then I'd definitely want a Scholar along for the next time we do Tinnin or Tyger.
I'm also highly amused by the outrage that people are expressing about Accession not working with Haste. I guess most of them are WHMs hoping to be able to cut out their haste cycle. I'm even more amused that SE bothered with this since it seems to me that it would take even more effort to make an exception to Haste. It feels kind of strange... I mean, I guess they want people to be stuck doing haste cycles?
Personally, I haven't been playing SCH much lately. I leveled it mainly for the nuking capabilities to help out in Limbus, and because the AF looked cute. This is probably going on the back burner and might not see the light until much later
Dragoon
Conserve TP is a job trait that only three jobs get, Dragoon, Dancer and Ranger. I'm surprised that Samurai didn't get it, but I guess they don't need it? With Sekkanoki coming down to level 40, DRG suddenly becomes a lot more interesting for DD since DRGs can, in theory, get more TP faster, and WS more. Maybe DRG can get closer to SAM for being a top tier DD job.
Personally, while my DRG is entertaining, I generally don't like going to events as a DD simply due to the lack of control DDs have over the flow of an event. You're just one of the cogs in a wheel, there to do one thing only. If things go wrong, DDs can rarely salvage things
Corsair
I'm highly amused at the new movement speed roll, and the new attributes of rolling a 11. I guess running across a zone won't be as big of a chore anymore! However, I am also appreciating movement a lot more due to the long distances we have to run around in Abyssea. Given the time limit in the zone, I'd say that a BRD or COR who knows when to use the movement speed buffs is a huge benefit to Abyssea.
With Caster's Roll and the level cap at 80, COR now gets an interesting role in a PLD/NIN tank party. With the Fast Cast of Caster's Role and the Refresh of Evoker's roll, COR/WHM might become a viable replacement for a BRD in a pinch. The ultimate tank party now becomes 2x PLD/NIN, WHM, RDM, BRD, COR for maximum Refresh and best speed for Utsusemi recasts!
Finally, COR/WHM also gets Haste now at level 80, further reinforcing this and BRD/WHM as the ultimate support jobs.
Personally, I could barely afford to level COR to 75. I don't think I can afford to pay for 75-99, given the amount of exp and how long it would take, so COR is likely to be the last job I'll touch.
Other stuff
Just some thoughts on other things...
Level cap quest - I'm amused at the requirements... 3 merits + 5 kindred seals. I was joking with some people that there would be a quest and that it would be 10 merit points. I guess SE gave us a break there! I had 7 merits saved up for exactly this possibility so I'm happy at how easy this quest was to finish.
Level cap increase - Talint has an interesting blog post about the level cap increase concerning the amount of exp required to go to level 80, and of course, to level 99. He also talks about the sheer contempt that SE has for their player base. I'm in full agreement over the contempt that SE, or at least, the Final Fantasy teams have towards their player base. Those who read my blog know how much I didn't like FFXIII. There's a big reason why I haven't played the FFXIV beta for over a month now.
SE has reduced the rate at which the exp for the next level increases. I was fully expecting level 76-77 to require 46,000 exp, 77-78 to require 48,000 to hatch the previous pattern between 70-75. Instead, they are increasing it at a rate of 500 more per level, which... is somewhat more tolerable. If we take an average rate of 20k/hour (taking advantage of things like allied rings, level sync, etc.), it would be possible to go from the beginning of level 76 to barely level 80 in 9 hours of straight exp.
Ya, 9 hours -.-
Not counting overhead of gathering people for a party, or seeking
Or finding a camp. At least with the adjustment of the "distribution and level of certain monsters", there are new possibilities of places to exp. However, I don't see this opening up anytime soon.
I'm not quite sure if I want to take multiple jobs up to 99 right now. The thought of having to do 9+ hours of exp just for one job is already... painful. If I were to take PLD up, I'd have to level DRK as well to be fully effective. BLU might be interesting to take up, though I'd have to go spell farming again...
We'll see what happens in the next couple of weeks.
Hmm... how much does it cost for a leech spot in a SMN burn again?
Other "non-update" stuff
Some more random stuff :)
Fuuji put together a group to do Fiat Lux, the stupid Shadow Lord campaign op. The party was: RDM(Fuuji), SCH(me), Tristenn(DRK), Mday(WAR), Cron(SAM) and Vanh(BRD).
First off, this isn't an easy BC ~.~ Annoying hate reset moves meant that I ended up having to choose between letting people die, or pulling hate and dying myself. I died three times in the BC, twice with RR2 up, and I had to use a Hi-Reraiser simply due to running out of MP for Reraise. We also had to have Vanh sac-pull the extra summons the the Shadow Lord brings up, sacrificing more tarutaru in the name of drops.
Anyway, it was a relatively long fight, but at the end of the way we managed to win thanks to Tristenn holding Shadow Lord while we were recovering. We ended up with complete crap as drops.
At the end of the day, the worst part about this BC wasn't the fight itself, but the wait to get in. When we arrived, there were 7 parties already there waiting to enter, so we got in line behind them. Only one party can fight at a time, so this ended up being over an hour of simply waiting there, unable to do anything else in game while waiting our turn. When we finished up and left, there were about 15 parties in line.
To make things worse were the complete jackasses who would arrive, jump ahead of the line and enter ahead of everyone else. Yes, the Cerberus/Hades server has complete assholes. I blisted them and will make their names available if people want. These are the absolute scum of the planet and deserve to be hung upside down from their toenails while people beat them up with rusty picks. These are the people for whom I hope that hell truly exists. If you know of someone who jumps lines, you had better give them a huge /slap, warn them never to do this again or else cut off all friendship with such people
Oh ya, GMs are completely useless, but that won't stop me from entering GM calls as many times as I want. After all they are supposed to be customer service.
In other news... I tried out my Novio earring on some mobs for some fun damage
First off... here are my impressions on the new content.
Abyssea (or more specifically, Visions of Abyssea)
The plot for this so far is pretty simple and straightforward. There's an alternate dimension which looks like our world, but where there are tons of tougher beasts that have basically beaten civilization to the point of collapse. Some of the interesting changes to the world:
- The sky is a different color (kinda explained in the cutscenes)
- There are no crags, at least not in mea. So, if you think about the FFXI storyline, Zilart and stuff never existed? Quite possibly there aren't any cities and all that are left are refugee camps
- Lots of weird/different mobs, in addition to reskins of the mobs we know of. There are some giant-worm creatures around, and some weird floating things. I think there were some released screenshots of squid-type mobs from sea around too.
Some random screenshots of Abyssea:
The last pic is where the crag of Mea is supposed to be.
Some things we've discovered so far:
- Mobs have some weird aggro rules... some mobs that don't aggro or link will suddenly either become aggressive, or summon reinforcements after you kill a bunch of them
- There are random ???s scattered around the zone that ask you to feed them various items. I assume that these items drop from the mobs around the area, and maybe it'll pop a NM
- There are chests in the zone, some of which appear after you kill mobs, some of which are simply there. They have different opening conditions, and can do anything from give you Cruor, restore your HP to... make you glow funny. Also, some of the chests are Mimics which enjoy eating tarus
- Speaking of Cruor, this is a new currency system. I guess you can think of it as similar to nyzul tokens since you can use it to buy the new level 78 armor sets, or to buy temp items or teleport around the zone. In the various zones are these weird stone waypoint-like devices that you have to activate. We activated one last night that cost 400 cruor, but I think that this is on the high end for cruor cost as this was all the way across the zone, and it was labeled #8
- There are a bunch of NPCs near each entry area which have some quests... no idea how to complete the quests, but at least a few of them are fetch quests or HELM quests.
- There are also no exp chains, so it doesn't matter how long it is between kills. However, your body does seem to have some weird glowing that increases when you kill faster. No idea what that does. There are random mobs around that seem to glow and give higher amounts of exp (400-500 for a single VT kill)
- There are also NMs around the zone. We found a little rabbit in La Theine that hits for 4-500
- Abyssea is a dangerous place for tarutarus. In the two times I've gone in so far, both times had over 100% taru fatalities, with tarus usually dying a couple of times
Personal feedback:
- 30 minutes every 20 hours is just... stupid. I do hope that this is a temporary measure to reduce the load on the server. 30 minutes is barely enough to walk out of the area, and forces you to basically skip over all the text that the NPCs give you. The most you can save up is 90 minutes, and that is waiting for 3 days. I'm feeling quite ripped off by the $10 price. Maybe we should give a condition to SE that they can take our monthly payment from us, but only use the money during the time we are logged into FFXI? The rest of the time they have to give the money back to us.
- On the other hand, I can appreciate the trickery that they've used here. 30 minutes means that it'll take at least a couple of weeks before we've entered the zone enough to start figuring out what to do and what the trick is. In WotG, people figured out how to sign up for campaign and start doing campaign ops within a few hours of release. Just imagine what WotG would be if we could only enter WotG zones for 30 minutes a day! They would have extended the life of FFXI by at least 3-5x and could have put off developing FFXIV!
- The reuse of the zone just sparks of complete laziness... Come on! I'm sure you can hire some unpaid interns to create new textures, or at least lay out the zone differently? I mean, you don't even have to pay them!
- I'm liking the idea of using Cruor for buying the new gear. It comes easily even if you have no idea what you're doing and just running around killing things
I'm cautiously optimistic about Abyssea. It's a new area, new rules and a place to explore. The time limit is what goes against it, making this yet another "twice a week" event instead of something you can go do on your own or whenever you want. If I want to go in and explore, I can't do so if I want to do this with friends in a party situation. Doing quests isn't something to do solo too, unless you want to abandon doing this with a party. I guess a schedule would have to be worked out
Walk of Echos
REALLY flimsy plot here... a moogle declares that you can enter this super-secret zone? Erm... okay... I guess the zone looks pretty at least. 1000 gil entry fee, no big deal, and you get to see some pretty zones. At least they weren't lazy this time around. Maybe they found some unpaid interns!
Some random pics:
Up to 36... random... people can enter one of the zones at any one time. You get 30 minutes to do whatever you want, and there are no claiming rules for mobs. Also, the mobs move fast, and pretty much patrol the entire zone.
The one we ended up entering was full of antlions (#3 I believe). There were a few ordinary sized antlions running around which a party was able to dispatch, but also running around was a giant one that very quickly ate everyone in zone!
This... feels like a level 80+ place. I wouldn't want to touch the big one without a full alliance (maybe two alliances) and without level 80. It hits hard, fast and felt like fighting something like Tinnin or Tyger. Also, it wasn't just one giant antlion, but multiple running around in the zone. That's also only on the first level. I read a report that a THF managed to flee down 4 levels before getting demolished by the mobs at the bottom.
The good news is that there is no exp loss in Walk of Echos. The even better news is that there ARE skillups, so... maybe this will be a good place to go skillup your weapons after you SMN burn to 80.
Other thoughts on this new feature:
- Entrance needs some work, maybe better positioning. In Xarc, close to a well known BLM-burn location means that people going to it would probably lag the BLM party there. Not very nice placement
- Xarc[S] also means that the giant flying dragon will get many more snacks as people zone in (or try to teleport out) and get eaten in one shot
- Not sure how good this reward system is. The notes imply that the people who contribute the most will get rewards. However, it also says that there is a lotting system... More people trying to get killshot on mobs? It's annoying enough in campaign...
- Not being able to "lock" a zone has some dangerous issues too. To take on the big mobs, we'll probably need some sort of strategy and have to work together in an alliance. However, any joe who walks into the area can zone in, aggro the whole zone and MPK people who are actively trying to get progress
- Plus there is the lotting issue... Just imagine entering a Dynamis, going to arrange to kill the bosses then have some random person zone in, lot all the AF and coins and proceed to run around the whole zone popping every mob they can
Holding off on Walk of Echos at the moment. Unlike Abyssea, the 'recast' time for this event is more reasonable, 30 minutes in, then you can re-enter in the "next vanadiel day" with the only cost being 1k gil. If anything, this might end up being a decent skillup area even if nothing else comes from it.
Other update thoughts
Here are just some random thoughts that came through my mind after exploring the update and reading up on things.
Dancer
Big update for Dancer which addresses some of the biggest weaknesses of the job. Being able to use Waltzes on people outside the party should go along way to changing how curing DNCs are used. This really has the potential to put DNC as the #1 curing job for larger events. With proper cooperation from WHMs, MP should no longer be an issue for long events.
The only problem I've run into for curing DNC + WHM combinations is that most good WHMs consider themselves the main healer. What will frequently end up happening is that both a DNC & WHM will heal someone at the first moment that they see damage being taken which ends up wasting MP & TP. Since a DNC's heals are instant, the DNC's heals will generally hit first. In that kind of duo-healing situation, it really needs a WHM to take a backup healer mentality, focusing on removing status effects, giving buffs and curing only when necessary as a backup curer.
The addition of Divine Waltz II at a higher level will help tackling AoEs. I think my moogle expansion hat with the -waltz recast is the better choice here compared to Waltz potency from relic since it gets me back into curing. Plus, I believe the HP cured/second is actually higher due to the reduction in timer
The other enhancements to DNC are all oriented towards dealing damage:
- Native dual wield - While this does increase TP gained, the big win on dual wield is that it increases damage-over-time
- Skillchain Bonus at level 45 - This is very interesting because SAM doesn't get this until level 78! Is SE expecting DNCs to skillchain more? Testing shows that this seems to be about a 15-20% boost in damage. People who /DNC at 90 should be able to take advantage of this. If you close a darkness skillchain, the darkness damage ends up being higher than your WS damage.
- Conserve TP & Sekkanoki with /SAM - With these two abilities, even a curing DNC can actually weaponskill even more frequently without worrying about not having TP to cure. I already WS when I have 5 finishing moves or meditate ready for use. With Sekkanoki, I can WS even more often to contribute more damage, and more importantly put evasion down on more mobs.
- Critical Attack Bonus & Climatic Flourish - Not exactly sure what these two do yet, but they appear to have to do with more critical hits. Critical Attack bonus is only available for WAR, THF & DNC and has a description that it improves power of critical hits. Climatic Flourish is supposed to "allow you to deal critical hits". If these stack with the skillchain bonus, it could make a DNC focusing on DD do even more damage.
Blue Mage
I didn't pay too much attention to the BLU enhancements at first, but closer examination shows that BLU actually got quite a few interesting enhancements. We now have our own native Refresh (self-target only), a full power haste to replace Refueling, and a interesting cure and buff move that not only restores as much HP as a Cure IV, but also enhances attack for whoever we cure.
Besides the new spells, BLU/RDM is now an interesting possibility for BLU, essentially giving us an unlimited MP pool to do damage. Finally, BLU is very much more effective against VT or lower mobs. In Abyssea, all we've encountered so far are T & VT mobs, other then the NMs, so BLU might end up being a very effective job for this area. I'm quite curious to see how BLU ends up at level 80.
Paladin
PLD didn't receive much in terms of enhancements, but due to the enmity nerfs that probably targeted RDM/NIN tanking, PLD/RDM has become significantly weaker when distance tanking single mobs.
I was talking to Kelhor about this and how this might affect our strategies for various events. Basically, it boils down to PLD/RDM only working for events where you use bar spells to generate enmity. For single-target tanking such as Oryu or JoL, PLD/RDM isn't as effective anymore. The most likely solution to this would be PLD/DRK, which still has a decent selection of hate tools including Stun, the Absorb-* series of spells and the various job abilities like Last Resort and Souleater.
Personally, the nerf to PLD/RDM has turned me off from exping on PLD. For starters, I'm really not interested in leveling DRK from 1-49. I don't even have DRK unlocked!
Scholar
The new Libra ability looks quite interesting. By showing everyone's enmity as a % of the top person at the enmity list, it should make things like HNMs safer. Just check enmity levels once in a while, and if some DD is too close to the hate cap, have them back off. I'm not certain if this works in alliances, but if it does, then I'd definitely want a Scholar along for the next time we do Tinnin or Tyger.
I'm also highly amused by the outrage that people are expressing about Accession not working with Haste. I guess most of them are WHMs hoping to be able to cut out their haste cycle. I'm even more amused that SE bothered with this since it seems to me that it would take even more effort to make an exception to Haste. It feels kind of strange... I mean, I guess they want people to be stuck doing haste cycles?
Personally, I haven't been playing SCH much lately. I leveled it mainly for the nuking capabilities to help out in Limbus, and because the AF looked cute. This is probably going on the back burner and might not see the light until much later
Dragoon
Conserve TP is a job trait that only three jobs get, Dragoon, Dancer and Ranger. I'm surprised that Samurai didn't get it, but I guess they don't need it? With Sekkanoki coming down to level 40, DRG suddenly becomes a lot more interesting for DD since DRGs can, in theory, get more TP faster, and WS more. Maybe DRG can get closer to SAM for being a top tier DD job.
Personally, while my DRG is entertaining, I generally don't like going to events as a DD simply due to the lack of control DDs have over the flow of an event. You're just one of the cogs in a wheel, there to do one thing only. If things go wrong, DDs can rarely salvage things
Corsair
I'm highly amused at the new movement speed roll, and the new attributes of rolling a 11. I guess running across a zone won't be as big of a chore anymore! However, I am also appreciating movement a lot more due to the long distances we have to run around in Abyssea. Given the time limit in the zone, I'd say that a BRD or COR who knows when to use the movement speed buffs is a huge benefit to Abyssea.
With Caster's Roll and the level cap at 80, COR now gets an interesting role in a PLD/NIN tank party. With the Fast Cast of Caster's Role and the Refresh of Evoker's roll, COR/WHM might become a viable replacement for a BRD in a pinch. The ultimate tank party now becomes 2x PLD/NIN, WHM, RDM, BRD, COR for maximum Refresh and best speed for Utsusemi recasts!
Finally, COR/WHM also gets Haste now at level 80, further reinforcing this and BRD/WHM as the ultimate support jobs.
Personally, I could barely afford to level COR to 75. I don't think I can afford to pay for 75-99, given the amount of exp and how long it would take, so COR is likely to be the last job I'll touch.
Other stuff
Just some thoughts on other things...
Trials of the Magians - Supposedly they lowered the requirements for these quests. For my trials though, I didn't see any differences. I'm aiming for the "occasionally attacks twice" dagger. I'm currently on the "kill black triple stars x3" trial, and it really is a trial given the annoying pop conditions for this trial. I'm not sure if/when I'll actually work on this. It's very frustrating to spend hours (at half an hour at a shot) to not get any pops. Furthermore, they did add more trials to further upgrade the weapon past level 75. It seems that the new trials require even more drops from somewhere else. Not looking forward to doing this, but I know I'll have to in the near future
Level cap quest - I'm amused at the requirements... 3 merits + 5 kindred seals. I was joking with some people that there would be a quest and that it would be 10 merit points. I guess SE gave us a break there! I had 7 merits saved up for exactly this possibility so I'm happy at how easy this quest was to finish.
Level cap increase - Talint has an interesting blog post about the level cap increase concerning the amount of exp required to go to level 80, and of course, to level 99. He also talks about the sheer contempt that SE has for their player base. I'm in full agreement over the contempt that SE, or at least, the Final Fantasy teams have towards their player base. Those who read my blog know how much I didn't like FFXIII. There's a big reason why I haven't played the FFXIV beta for over a month now.
SE has reduced the rate at which the exp for the next level increases. I was fully expecting level 76-77 to require 46,000 exp, 77-78 to require 48,000 to hatch the previous pattern between 70-75. Instead, they are increasing it at a rate of 500 more per level, which... is somewhat more tolerable. If we take an average rate of 20k/hour (taking advantage of things like allied rings, level sync, etc.), it would be possible to go from the beginning of level 76 to barely level 80 in 9 hours of straight exp.
Ya, 9 hours -.-
Not counting overhead of gathering people for a party, or seeking
Or finding a camp. At least with the adjustment of the "distribution and level of certain monsters", there are new possibilities of places to exp. However, I don't see this opening up anytime soon.
I'm not quite sure if I want to take multiple jobs up to 99 right now. The thought of having to do 9+ hours of exp just for one job is already... painful. If I were to take PLD up, I'd have to level DRK as well to be fully effective. BLU might be interesting to take up, though I'd have to go spell farming again...
We'll see what happens in the next couple of weeks.
Hmm... how much does it cost for a leech spot in a SMN burn again?
Other "non-update" stuff
Some more random stuff :)
Fuuji put together a group to do Fiat Lux, the stupid Shadow Lord campaign op. The party was: RDM(Fuuji), SCH(me), Tristenn(DRK), Mday(WAR), Cron(SAM) and Vanh(BRD).
First off, this isn't an easy BC ~.~ Annoying hate reset moves meant that I ended up having to choose between letting people die, or pulling hate and dying myself. I died three times in the BC, twice with RR2 up, and I had to use a Hi-Reraiser simply due to running out of MP for Reraise. We also had to have Vanh sac-pull the extra summons the the Shadow Lord brings up, sacrificing more tarutaru in the name of drops.
Anyway, it was a relatively long fight, but at the end of the way we managed to win thanks to Tristenn holding Shadow Lord while we were recovering. We ended up with complete crap as drops.
To make things worse were the complete jackasses who would arrive, jump ahead of the line and enter ahead of everyone else. Yes, the Cerberus/Hades server has complete assholes. I blisted them and will make their names available if people want. These are the absolute scum of the planet and deserve to be hung upside down from their toenails while people beat them up with rusty picks. These are the people for whom I hope that hell truly exists. If you know of someone who jumps lines, you had better give them a huge /slap, warn them never to do this again or else cut off all friendship with such people
Oh ya, GMs are completely useless, but that won't stop me from entering GM calls as many times as I want. After all they are supposed to be customer service.
In other news... I tried out my Novio earring on some mobs for some fun damage
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Show & Tell - COR edition
Whee... been a while since the last show & tell. Probably because there wasn't really much of anything to show!
Anyway, here are some semi-fun screenshots of things that came up recently.
First up, the anniversary/adventure appreciation thing came through this year. Here are my latest stats:
Hmm... I'm starting to think parties are hazardous for my health, given my KO-Party ratio.
Now for some fun shots on Corsair! Here's my record damage so far for a Slug Shot!
Not too shabby! Of course, this is totally cheating! Against Chigoes in Salvage... I can rarely break 3k, while Zyn was throwing out 6K WS's xD
No, I'm not doing Salvage... I just went along with Kelhor's group for fun. Salvage actually looks like a pretty fun event to do, but the reward drop rate, the cost of upgrading and the hassle of maintenance was too much for me to bother with it as an actual event. Still, it is fun to do for fun!
(wonder if anyone will notice what is wrong with this screenshot)
And... more COR fun stuff!
5/5 on COR relic. I don't have the accessory yet, but at the very least, the visible pieces are all complete! That makes my 4th completed relic set, the other 3 being BLU, SCH & DNC. The last pieces of PLD & DRG still elude me :(
Finally, one last COR accessory:
Adulation turns into the Novio Earring, which has Magic Attack Bonus +7. That should go nicely with my Quick Draw and Leaden Salute damage. I haven't had a chance to test it yet, but overall I have a fairly decent nuking set on COR. I really should find some time and go try it out. Leaden Salute is already more consistent for high damage compared to Slug Shot, so this should push it even higher. Part of the problem is that I don't really have a decent gun on COR yet. I'm still working on unlocking my Coffinmaker xD
and that completes my Jailer of Love collection! I picked up the other pieces in one fell swoop last October in my HQ Lootwhoring week.
(and yes, I know most BLMs would kill for a Novio... I still feel kinda weird for having one and not being a BLM. At least I have BLU & SCH which also benefit from this!)
That's it for this round of show & tell!
Anyway, here are some semi-fun screenshots of things that came up recently.
First up, the anniversary/adventure appreciation thing came through this year. Here are my latest stats:
Now for some fun shots on Corsair! Here's my record damage so far for a Slug Shot!
No, I'm not doing Salvage... I just went along with Kelhor's group for fun. Salvage actually looks like a pretty fun event to do, but the reward drop rate, the cost of upgrading and the hassle of maintenance was too much for me to bother with it as an actual event. Still, it is fun to do for fun!
And... more COR fun stuff!
Finally, one last COR accessory:
and that completes my Jailer of Love collection! I picked up the other pieces in one fell swoop last October in my HQ Lootwhoring week.
(and yes, I know most BLMs would kill for a Novio... I still feel kinda weird for having one and not being a BLM. At least I have BLU & SCH which also benefit from this!)
That's it for this round of show & tell!
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Yes, I still play FFXI
I know that a lot of people who no longer play FFXI actually read my blog. IM messages from them, as well as email and comment posts from former FFXI players (or XI players who are "taking a break") come in pretty regularly. Well, for those watching, I *am* still playing FFXI. However, I'm more in a holding pattern compared to my past activity level.
Why? Simply put: Level cap increase
I noticed that a lot of people have actually popped out of nowhere after SE announced the level cap increase and upcoming content. Old-time people I had never met before suddenly showed up and started to go to events. I guess all the announcements got their attention?
For me... well, the level cap increase meant a few things:
- Lots of exp to grind for all my jobs, and subs
- Current content in the game will likely change and either become irrelevant, or possibly significantly easier
Exp
I'm not really looking forward to exp grinding. Usually by around level 68, I'm tired of exping and just want to finish the job off to 75. That's also why I usually go on a binge to exp from 68-75, wanting to get it over as soon as possible and get on to using the job in events. With the level cap increase, that means that I have to exp... currently 6 jobs even further and spend time on it before I can take them to events. (subjobs are just as bad. I get the urge to finish them at level 30 or so)
Faced with the prospect of millions of exp to level 6 jobs from 75 to 99, I've pretty much given up on exping any other jobs. I've also taken the defensive stance of... well, focusing on only the primary jobs that are useful and I enjoy for exping since there are a number of my jobs that I simply don't play very often. So... no posts about new jobs, and I haven't really done anything special with my current jobs. I guess I might be able to put together another fashion show in a couple of months if drops are willing :)
Content
For game content... SE has added quite a bit of new game content, the most recent update adding "VNMs" which I've talked extensively about, and more WotG missions. VNMs actually looked like an interesting system, with significant reward and might be fun to actually plan strategies around. I actually was interested in gathering people to explore different strategies. However, the level cap increase is also making me wonder at the possibilities of tackling VNMs (and other events) when we are a higher level.
Running ZNMs is a pain. Here is a little rant about coordinating big events:
- Babysitting people through zones that they've been to a dozen times
- Making sure people go farm zeni for pop items... or even to access the battleground
- Making sure people get rewarded as appropriate to their contribution
- All the paperwork behind things
- Getting people to show up
- Getting people to show up in time
The last two are a huge annoyance with me. If you disappear without giving your event leaders some warning or reason, then we are stuck with some tough decisions. If you don't show up for an event, we have to basically REPLACE you. This might mean having someone change jobs, having someone bring out a mule to fulfill your role, or recruiting someone to take your place. If we can't count on you to show up for events, then we can't plan on having you for a big fight. That means for planning purposes, I can't include you in the alliance and basically have to find someone who *will* show up to do the job. More people = more stuff to get, lines for important items will get longer and we spend more and more time doing an event instead of finishing it and moving on.
(Yes, events *can* end. Limbus, & Nyzul isle are two events that have been successfully completed on my watch)
That also means that when distributing rewards, I will weigh contribution accordingly. Someone who shows up consistently, does a good job and contributes positively will get their items before someone who only mails it in. This also means I will weigh absences negatively as well. Someone who tells their leaders about RL obligations and other things of course gets more understanding compared to someone who disappears without a word. Someone who simply does not show up for an event is off meriting or doing something else would get even less consideration compared to someone who simply misses an event. If you join an event, it is a commitment to put in your contribution to help the group, not to show up only when it benefits you personally.
That said, running any large-scale event is a lot of work. VNMs looks like something I'd be interested in possibly running, and we've had success at low-manning it with a simple alliance of 12. However, the level cap increase is making me wonder at the possibility of doing it with even less. Less people = less stuff to get before the event can be finished. It also means more personal responsibility and accountability from the people involved. The right group of people would be able to smash the event, get everyone their stuff and move on quickly. Needing too many people would mean delays in starting, people being able to "mail it in" due to needing bodies. With the level cap increase around the corner, I'm betting that many events that we currently do would be doable with a competent party of 6 people. For VNMs, I'm already confident of taking down Tier 2s with 3 people even with the current cap (without using the possibly GMable "pinning" trick that Kanican figured out). A level cap increase would probably mean that the right group of 6 people who smash through VNMs (and any other content that currently takes an alliance) and be done with the event much sooner.
The prospect of coordinating fewer people to smash through an event and keep the event short is the #1 reason why... basically, I've been in a simple holding pattern in FFXI for the last few months!
Why? Simply put: Level cap increase
I noticed that a lot of people have actually popped out of nowhere after SE announced the level cap increase and upcoming content. Old-time people I had never met before suddenly showed up and started to go to events. I guess all the announcements got their attention?
For me... well, the level cap increase meant a few things:
- Lots of exp to grind for all my jobs, and subs
- Current content in the game will likely change and either become irrelevant, or possibly significantly easier
Exp
I'm not really looking forward to exp grinding. Usually by around level 68, I'm tired of exping and just want to finish the job off to 75. That's also why I usually go on a binge to exp from 68-75, wanting to get it over as soon as possible and get on to using the job in events. With the level cap increase, that means that I have to exp... currently 6 jobs even further and spend time on it before I can take them to events. (subjobs are just as bad. I get the urge to finish them at level 30 or so)
Faced with the prospect of millions of exp to level 6 jobs from 75 to 99, I've pretty much given up on exping any other jobs. I've also taken the defensive stance of... well, focusing on only the primary jobs that are useful and I enjoy for exping since there are a number of my jobs that I simply don't play very often. So... no posts about new jobs, and I haven't really done anything special with my current jobs. I guess I might be able to put together another fashion show in a couple of months if drops are willing :)
Content
For game content... SE has added quite a bit of new game content, the most recent update adding "VNMs" which I've talked extensively about, and more WotG missions. VNMs actually looked like an interesting system, with significant reward and might be fun to actually plan strategies around. I actually was interested in gathering people to explore different strategies. However, the level cap increase is also making me wonder at the possibilities of tackling VNMs (and other events) when we are a higher level.
Running ZNMs is a pain. Here is a little rant about coordinating big events:
- Babysitting people through zones that they've been to a dozen times
- Making sure people go farm zeni for pop items... or even to access the battleground
- Making sure people get rewarded as appropriate to their contribution
- All the paperwork behind things
- Getting people to show up
- Getting people to show up in time
The last two are a huge annoyance with me. If you disappear without giving your event leaders some warning or reason, then we are stuck with some tough decisions. If you don't show up for an event, we have to basically REPLACE you. This might mean having someone change jobs, having someone bring out a mule to fulfill your role, or recruiting someone to take your place. If we can't count on you to show up for events, then we can't plan on having you for a big fight. That means for planning purposes, I can't include you in the alliance and basically have to find someone who *will* show up to do the job. More people = more stuff to get, lines for important items will get longer and we spend more and more time doing an event instead of finishing it and moving on.
(Yes, events *can* end. Limbus, & Nyzul isle are two events that have been successfully completed on my watch)
That also means that when distributing rewards, I will weigh contribution accordingly. Someone who shows up consistently, does a good job and contributes positively will get their items before someone who only mails it in. This also means I will weigh absences negatively as well. Someone who tells their leaders about RL obligations and other things of course gets more understanding compared to someone who disappears without a word. Someone who simply does not show up for an event is off meriting or doing something else would get even less consideration compared to someone who simply misses an event. If you join an event, it is a commitment to put in your contribution to help the group, not to show up only when it benefits you personally.
That said, running any large-scale event is a lot of work. VNMs looks like something I'd be interested in possibly running, and we've had success at low-manning it with a simple alliance of 12. However, the level cap increase is making me wonder at the possibility of doing it with even less. Less people = less stuff to get before the event can be finished. It also means more personal responsibility and accountability from the people involved. The right group of people would be able to smash the event, get everyone their stuff and move on quickly. Needing too many people would mean delays in starting, people being able to "mail it in" due to needing bodies. With the level cap increase around the corner, I'm betting that many events that we currently do would be doable with a competent party of 6 people. For VNMs, I'm already confident of taking down Tier 2s with 3 people even with the current cap (without using the possibly GMable "pinning" trick that Kanican figured out). A level cap increase would probably mean that the right group of 6 people who smash through VNMs (and any other content that currently takes an alliance) and be done with the event much sooner.
The prospect of coordinating fewer people to smash through an event and keep the event short is the #1 reason why... basically, I've been in a simple holding pattern in FFXI for the last few months!
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