Matsui: "Don't Throw Away Your R/M/E Weapons Yet"

I feel like there just aren't enough NA players left. I've always avoided pickups like the plague, I like doing content with the same people. We work well together and it's more fun. However, a lot of these people have quit(especially since adoulin).. and now LS list is dwindling.

I don't really want to pearl everyone who asks for one, because having LS chat overrun by ignorance would take away from my enjoyment. I don't want people coming to events that can't follow basic instructions, and I don't want to pearl people that won't have a role(2 song brds, subpar DD, etc).

A few years ago, this wouldn't have been an issue. Now, there isn't enough to choose from. Some shells on my server have taken to pearling anything they can even remotely justify having. More power to them, but I don't want capability of doing content at the price of having to deal with people I won't enjoy playing with.

There are probably some people who don't see this as a problem, they recruited at an optimal time and ended up with a combination of players that still play and work well together. That's great for them. However, at least on my server, most shells rely heavily on mules and/or players significantly below their leaders.

Mules are great. The majority of good endgame players have a mage mule, and that's awesome for alliance dynamics. However, if you asked all of them, I'm sure most would much prefer to play one character at events. Furthermore, mage mules are generally not as effective as real mages. Very few people want to be main healing all the time on their mule. Even less want to have to do midfight BRD swaps, especially while performing other duties involved in the fight.

I'm sure a lot of people reading this know a few quality players, but I doubt many of you know 18 that are on frequently to tackle this content without relying on mules. Higher tiers may even require more than 18 to be defeated before rage, some of which won't get credit. It's just shitty. This style of content worked before abyssea because there were three times as many players and half as many mules. After abyssea dissected many of the large groups, people quit, etc.. it's just not the same game.

My shell's only managed to kill the mobs we have because I personally have 8 characters, and a couple other members have 3-4. The strategy is lacking enough that we can still manage this many, but it's very taxing on the players multiboxing heavily.

I want to fight something that's more challenging than assembling the group for it and doing a 5 minute briefing. I want the hardest part of a fight to be the actual fight, not finding enough people with the exact jobs needed and capability of listening. I want unique strategy elements, not more accuracy buffs. I really hope I'm not alone here.

Just some various thoughts going through my head about it. Sorry for the long-winded post, I know it doesn't really matter to most of you, was just thinking out loud more than anything.

You're not alone. I don't wish to return to the days of 2hr "waiting" sessions either. It'd be nice if SE setup things to be tier-able based on how many people you could find. Finding 5 other competent people is way easier, and in many cases more practical, than getting 17. 6-man versions could even just have crappier droprates or be used for "clear-progression" in case someone wasn't able to log on and lagged behind the main group.

Making buffga/songs/rolls go across parties in an alliance would go a long way as well.

I like this. Summed up well. Part of the reason, I think, the last thing the game needed was 2 more jobs.

The thing that still *** puzzles me is that they had viable low-man content with Skirmish yet they chose to render that almost completely obsolete within a month of its release with the introduction of the Delve rewards. Yeah, people can still choose to use Skirmish as a stepping stone towards their participation in Delve, but the rewards are so great and the effort is minimal enough that blowing tens of millions of gil on Skirmish parts is absolutely not worth it.

It's almost like before Golden Week, the devs handed the monthly update responsibilities to the 2-week old intern who then proceded to unintentionally release the July-August update rather than the planned minor April update.

It makes no sense!! AFKWNFIOHFWKQJHF

Delve was intended to be released alongside Skirmish (in the original Adoulin VUp) - which makes even less sense in my opinion

They want us to use Skirmish etc as "Stepping Stone" content except people can kill TIV-V Delve NMs by SV zerging them so no one is going to bother with that nonsense

The progressive ladder will not work as an overarching concept in FFXI
(Although it works very well in the context of one system as it does in Delve)

Skirmish feels like a complete waste of time.

Maybe there are a few pieces from it that are completely unique, I must admit that I didn't pay attention beyond SAM, but seeing how you can just go in delve with NNI stuff (not even Salvage II) and still do good enough (***, majority of people with me were even lower), I don't see the point.

You summed it up well, I don't understand why Skirmish was released at that point, for this reason.

Not gonna happen, but it'd be too nice if they a) made Skirmish pops as common as Delve Shards/Rock and b) allowed mobs in Skirmish to drop plasm instead of... see? Skirmish is already obsolete enough that I can't even remember what the "currency" there was called. And of course Ghastly Stones from Skirmish should be replaced with Airlixirs. Then there's still be viable and somewhat fun lowman content to do. More fun than most COR/SMN/PLD and DD/thf fights anyway. Once ppl have unlocked the KIs for all items, I don't see NMs being farmed too much unless we figure out a secret mechanic to get 10x as much plasm per kill.

People will stop with the DD/THF nonsense in about two weeks if not sooner

The only reason to bring DD/THF is to bore raged NMs to death

It's the only way PUGs are going to kill half of this ***. It's not going to stop unless SE goes through with one of their rage adjustments.

It's stupid, boring, and easy. It also works, and that's all that matters to a lot of people.

They will most likely go through with one of the rage adjustments - they hate it when we progress through content faster than or in a manner strikingly different from how they envision it

People are also going to want to start farming NMs inside the fractures (due to their extremely high drop rates) - and for that to be a mathematically efficient strategy you need to be able to kill fast

My shell stopped with the /thf nonsense after the first day. Just kill everything normally shrug, never gets to rage. Having a full compliment of the new weapons helps of course, farmed like 7 of em today, not counting the ones people bought with points.

has any post you've made in the last week not been bragging

we've gone over the strats plenty in this thread, you arent the only person who figured out you can rotate brds

Most groups don't have the player quality your shell commands

The NMs will probably become faceroll-able once their respective gimmick mechanics are figured out. The only real obstacle I see are the fracture Naakuals who are probably mostly a DPS race to beat the timer.

Once you "figure them out" this seems to be the case

Wamoura essentially drops dead once you figure out how to remove its DT

Break the Orobon's lanterns and toss Scherzo on your DDs and the Orobon is pretty inconsequential

Gnat apparently needs to use the enfeeble reflection move to keep at bay etc

(Cracklaw's DT is based on how long it has been since you last MBed it or something)

Is there soomething special to breaking the Orobon's lantern? Or does that just happen after a certain amount of dmg?

We don't rotate bards, just one bard with 4 songs. Heck didn't even have a cor on today for me;; Still easy long as players are up to snuff. Most strats are figured out anyhow yah? Pugs might get them to rage but still doable. Pretty much VW 2.0 with improved loot system now, peeps shouldnt' be complaning, but instead out farming!

Dunno about the lanterns, they just broke early on.

Critical hits

I started our DD party with Rogue's + Hunter's (BRDs did Madrigals and Scherzo) and our 2nd DD party stayed back until the lanterns broke (it can use Mayhem Lantern with the lanterns up at which point you might as well all waypoint back and start over if you fail to stun it)

After they broke we gathered while the PLD held it briefly - I did Attack and Accuracy rolls while the BRDs did SV song rotation (March Minuet Madrigal Madrigal Scherzo - we only had one Derpabard but our non-Derpabard had Carn go figure) and the SMN did Diamond Storm

It died right as I was beginning to apply the second round of rolls

(Mac's group apparently does not rotate BRDs but even given two BRDs with 4 songs I'd probably have them rotate just because they can)

people are complaining because the content isn't enjoyable, not because we aren't capable of/aren't doing it

My main complaint with Delve is not that it's not enjoyable - it's just that two weeks ago I could log in and almost be overwhelmed by trying to determine which of the several available events relevant to improving some aspect of my character I wanted to dedicate my playtime to.

Now I log in and hope there are enough people in my Linkshell online to do Delve - or else there's no reason to play and I might as well log off.

It's just not a healthy content environment.

That would be your opinion, this is the most enjoyable content since abyssea(before it became boring) to me. Though I can sympathize for those that have to deal with pickup groups for this kind of event, has to suck.
edit: was in response to comeatmebro

I don't think it's good that most of the only relevant gear comes from Delve, but I can't truly say that I have had any fun lately with old content or even adoulin content besides the Naakuals/Skirmish.

except you still need to beef up the dd to stupid levels of atk/acc to do ***, which is great if you're one of the few ls with dedicated brds, but shitty if its people rotating 2nd/3rd/8th chars in and out of party

i've said before that it'd be more enjoyable to me if i had more resources available, but most of the playerbase doesn't have an active roster big enough to do these without relying on PUGs or mules

(i havent gone to any delve nm and failed to (eventually) kill it, i havent used PUGs.. we've done most of them without rage or barely into rage.. i just dont like the amount of people required because i'm on a lower population server and we'd basically need a LS teamup to not have to rely on everyone multiboxing heavily..)

I wanna say it might be fun till we figure out all the gimmicks at which point it's VW without temps and terror (which is good). I don't see it not beeing about buffing DDs to stupid lvls, tho. The only difference as of now is that groups (at least the fractures groups I've been in) use up to 3 plds to hold NMs. Beyond that the group look suspiciously like VW / Prov groups.

Thanks for the intel, Sylow. Was hoping it was just crits and not some direction based crit like Imps/Qutrub. Wanna tackle that Orobon soon-ish to get the dagger.

How much faith do we have in SE about not obsoleting all these augmentable items next update? I'm seriously wondering what to use the Airlixirs on cuz I'm wondering if a weapon or piece of armor is gonna be obsoleted faster.

Most of the weapons are already "obsolete" as a result of the "progression ladder" model Matsui has attached himself to

I get that, I guess I'm just wondering how easy we expect to get the Delve Naakual weapons and if the next wave on content will be just as easy to unlock. Either way, does this mean you'd use your Airlixirs on gear over weapons for now?

Just use sushi or pizza, debuff evasion, use madrigals. We are killing stuff without minuet, just using haste and mads, along with sushi.

Pickup groups are like a box of chocolates, you dunno what you gonna get.

But yeah I enjoy the content, can't get enough of it lol. Want to kill the mega bosses already. Got shark down to 95% lol, seems doable. For now just practicing on it and testing this and that.

better phrased than what i was trying to say, i'm in basically the same boat except that we can do it basically anytime if 3 of us play more characters than we're comfortable with and stretch our attention spans.. which pretty much kills the fun anyway

also we need a delve thread

this aint got ***to do with REM