October 2025 Version Update

Player activity is important to create a sense of community. If you only ever see your linkshell mates/friends/random characters wandering around the town once a week, it makes the game seem (and actually be) dead. If people are online more often, there's more activity in game.

"not if you only log in for 1 second for login points"...

Well, the first step to getting people to play is getting them to log in. Then "oh well, while I'm online, I'll do XYZ..."

Since you're online, someone has a chance to ask you to group up for Ambu, or help PL their new job, or craft them something, do a synergy for them, etc...

I thought maybe it was more business related like we need funds to develop xyz but have to show proof we're making things that make us money to get people put on the project, but that is good perspective too.

I'm on Quetz atm Garfield

Well, that's the thing - there's no way we can know that. It's obvious that they are, but logically they're an objectively poor way to gauge player engagement. Average time spent online would be better, though people trying to avoid POL would skew that. Presumably idle time is trackable, deducting that from online time would make a pretty good measurement.

But it's easy to picture upper management - the brilliant folks who thought every project should use blockchain and there's no market for turn-based RPGs among western gamers - just deciding that daily login = engagement = long-term customer, no daily login = disengagement = likely to unsubscribe.

Because nobody who plays MMOs could possibly be busy for nine hours a day five days a week for some reason and just too tired to do the Odyssey-Sortie-Limbus gauntlet those evenings.

They did this with Delve: people capped out their loot and deactivated until next patch as there was nothing to aim for. Delve was the first event that was truly not gated in any form where you could cap out within a few days.

I don't know the population situation on Quetz, but I'm on bahamut, the 2nd largest server behind Asura that is also now locked down to prevent unnecessary overcrowding due to Asuras closure.

Idk if you remember how ambu used to be but on bahamut before the increase in instances we would easily have 30min wait times on the busy days, to the point groups would disband if the waits were too long. It's gotten better with the extra instances but even still we can hit 5-20min waits in the queue on like update day when there's heavy traffic, I can't imagine Asura is any better.

Even sortie at its start had congestion issues.

On asura einharjar has people botting the entry point in order to get in.

Using that 10hr sortie grind as an example, people would just bot it while asleep or at work and with limited instances I imagine it would become unplayable during certain time slots. Ody Sheol as well. Limbus was completely redesigned because the old limbus was, if someone was in say apollyon SE, no one else could enter that zone until they left. Instead of making hundreds of instances they made it open world.

Giving the players freedom from daily and weekly limits would come at a cost. We are already evaluated every what 6months on the cost to maintain the servers to SE? And the only way SE could fix this new freedom would be to spend more increasing the instances and data server size.

(Imho) yes, it is excessively punishing, even so much so that I (and others) say we don't need EP loss at all. The sense of danger didn't come from exp loss alone, it was packaged with new zones, enemies, missions or quests that added a sense of mystery. The draconian EP loss on death didn't bring it back that sense of danger (desirable or not), it just added annoyance.

If you break it down the punishment for dying always a time penalty and you already get multiple tiers of time penalties for dying in FFXI. You'll have to rebuff, you get weakened, travel time after home pointing... (not a comprehensive list). EP loss is just another tier on top of the pile.

And no, (Imho) deleveling shouldn't be a thing either. Overall it doesn't seem to be a very common mechanic in MMOs. You already get punished by exp loss, effectively increasing the time it takes to reach the next level, once you reached the final level you get rewarded for your effort by securing your progress.

Would you also advocate for losing gear progress, maybe deranking your REMA or Odyssey gear for dying too many times?


You're completely disregarding that your multi box experience is easy mode compared to the one of a solo player, even if you refrain from using gearswap.

I've spent 2+ years on each of Phoenix, Odin, Asura, Bahamut so I know the big server problems well. Ambuscade definitely needs to be given an extra zone or at the very least decoupled from legion. Einherjar has always been a disaster, too. Sortie is in pretty good shape by comparison, 3 zones that are busy during prime times but never close to full.

If the 9 rooms for Einherjar could be any chamber + 1 dedicated to Odin there would be almost no congestion.

So you already know what kind of congestion awaits if they would remove the limits and the measures they would have to take to fix it. Which given how old ffxi is and their limited dev resources isn't realistic.

Do a /sea for apollyon and temenos at various times of day and tell me how full they are on Bahamut

The issues with congestion are almost all around old content with poorly designed instance layers.

As someone who single boxes pug groups and plays vanilla (I don't even use windower) I'm on the side of the fence that the EP loss and deleveling are a non-issue. Those who think it is idolize their ml50 too much imo. You gain EP doing sortie, farming segs, climbing Limbus as a side bonus, and if you make excessive mistakes (ie dying) then you have krt or bibiki bay to fix your mistake and reconsider playing a little more safe the next time around. Or are you going to go on the side of it's your party members faults for the EP loss vs multi boxing?

Edit: I literally asked my friend to bring his ml50 to apollyon to die not once, but twice to see the EP loss for raise3 and raise1. And we laughed as the scorpion resisted his elegy and how long it took him to die.

What are you getting at here? SE took every precaution they could to prevent congestion, making it open world vs instanced, limiting us to only 3 trusts to prevent a mireu scenario. If they left the trusts to 5, people would have less reason to group up and if there were too many we could become unable to summon pets. And making the NMs open combat as opposed to trigger pops like abyssea or escha or peculiar foes prevented that kind of congestion having to wait for the group ahead of you to finish.

We had to wait turns to fight cloudy on release.

The reason limbus isn't overflowing is because the rewards aren't ody or sortie level. The EP gain isn't better than krt or bibiki or thickets. Af+4 was a stop gap to bring the defensiveness of the old armor sets closer to ody/empy. I imagine if they gave much more desirable gear then limbus would be a lot more full.

We were talking about if they removed the daily entry to sortie etc which absolutely would cause issues, maybe not for the smallest servers but they have to design these around the largest servers.

Hey I know games that have your gear deteriorate the more you use them and deteriorate further on death.

Let's have that and have your REMAs break if you die and don't go repair them, that also punishes you if you die.

Come on, seriously defending XP/EP loss on death? What is this, 2003?

It was the single most hated mechanic in the game back when the original XP cap at 75 was some 75k and eventually even after several nerfs to the XP you needed to level, was finally removed from XP.

Then literally the same thing is added to an EP grind only a bot would love out of some ill conceived notion of pandering to the "classic-XI" enjoyers, and we have people defending it? Smh.

You can defend literally anything else in the game, not this.

It's not just the concept of "EP on Death" that's the real problem.
In itself, out of the context, it can work. I don't see it as a big game changer either way.
What makes it very problematic is the strange synergy it has with all the other EP issues.
There's many, and you would only need to solve a few of them, not all, and suddenly the EP loss on death wouldn't be that problematic

1) The 2% EP loss on death, has no cap (unlike the XP one)
2) The curve of EP needed becomes too steep after a certain point
3) The EP per kill is too low
4) The Master Chains requirements are unlike all other chains and too steep
5) There is no source to boost EP gain other than COR roll
6) The level difference between current ML and current target level is too strict, furtherly lowering EP per kill and creating annoying situations in party.

Solving just a few of these, would make the situation so much better and consequentially the EP loss on death less cumbersome.

I'm fine with EP loss on death. If you are the type of player who is willing to grind past ML30 legitimately, you probably enjoy that sort of activity at least a little. In that case, topping back off after a string of deaths doesn't seem like a huge deal: you shouldn't be dying all the time.

Below 30ish, the 2% is just irrelevant. Undoing an hour of group exp at ML30 would take dozens of deaths. At 75, the capped 2400 loss was equivalent to around 13 deaths per hour of exp.

Yes, the curve gets nasty as you get to ML40-50. However, ML40-50 weren't intended to be something that everyone bots or buys just to have. If you weren't altering the perceived cost with those tactics, you probably wouldn't be at a ML where you're that concerned about the loss on death.

Final note is probably going to be seen as a hot take, but yolo. If you're dying so much that the EP loss is causing you grief, adjust your ****ing strategy. Dying has consequences in pretty much any game from the same era, console or otherwise. Yes, it's 2025, but you're choosing a game that still retains many aspects of earlier design. There are plenty of modern MMOs if that's your priority.

On all my ML50 jerbs (which is not all of them, just a couple that I care about more), I die all the time because I bring them to Gaol, Sortie, Limbus, bla.

Recapping is a non issue between Segment runs, Peach Power, or simply going to help other people exp here and there. And I play maybe 8 hours a week lately, due to work.

I found that the small constant drip of EP in all the relevant modern content is more than enough to keep a decent buffer. If I dip too low I just grab a bunch of noobs and help them get some decent EP/hr for an hour or two. The loss isn't that huge.

Unless your only experience of Exemplar Points is soloing 15k ep/hr with trusts running a bot... but then the issue is clearly not the EP loss on death.

I mean I don't have an issue with re-gaining EP at ML50 either, but at the same time that doesn't mean the death penalty is all bueno.

Both can be true at the same time.

I will say the EP gain on trash mobs in Limbus is quite high, high enough you can get ML30-35 just doing Limbus without specifically focusing on EP.

Not all bad. Just NMs don't have any EP while trash mobs do, which is very weird.

I have a dream where the content gives rewards based on the effort that was given. A utopia where players can give effort and bear fruit from the time given. All players of varied skill sets will be rewarded, and the risk will be elevated for the sense of enjoyment. A place where, when the NMs are killed, rewards are given, and people are joyful from the experience. Where the try hards and the have nots can play in unity.

The constant failure of SE is always swept under the rug, but no longer. I want content I can tell my friends who quit to come back to. I want SE to get players to come back to the game. I want SE to work on getting new players. I want a SE not owned by SE

ML was supposed to just be a side grind in a game that's running out of stuff to grind long term for outside of something like a prime or more remas, course players will be players and consider it a requirement to cap it out like everything else. The penalty is there both as a call back to the old days and as a way to keep you grinding, cause what else you going to spend time on these days if you're so bored you legit(bot) up to ML50? Really if they'd move foil/fruit down to level SJ51~53 there'd be little need beyond the base stats to go above ML30 which is when the grind starts to get really bad.

The modern game is better in that you can at least get XP while doing something interesting.

The xp loss at ML40+ is pretty harsh particularly if you're solo and can't get a raise. Couple this with a long fight that has a high probability of dying and no tangible personal rewards (not sure raising a bad drop rate to a slightly worse drop rate counts) for doing it, I don't see the content being particularly relevant for a large percentage of the player base.

I enjoy the challenge of things, but finding 5 others on the same schedule who are willing to time sink some challenge when they get nothing either is harder than the actual content...

I do not see the issue with the EP loss, it’s very minor. I HP all the time, and I don’t care. I wouldn’t mind actually if it was 10x higher either. But at the same time, I actually agree that doing the content (limbus, NM, full sortie clear…) should reward more, and EPing should as well, this also should be more engaging, but SE doesn’t want us to EP in a fun way, ex: mobs don’t kill you (they might eat your food or give you evasion down wooo), they just stare at you pretty much, the only content that was engaging was ***down pretty much (looking at you with that fancy AE strat in t he nest). But either way, it’s a game and it’s no big deal either way.

Omen swarts run: ~20 EP per kill, 120 mobs = 2400EP per run
Sortie: A-D Bosses = ~630 EP, E-H bosses = ~1600 EP, E fodder = ~220EP, F fodder = ~240EP, G fodder = ~270EP, H fodder ~300EP
Sheol C: 7F fodder = ~150EP, 7F Agon = ~230EP. Dont have lower floors in my log, I was only able to get these because someone died and they were getting EP again. Its undoubtedly lower on the lower floors as the targets are lower level.
You're not getting good EP in these events.

Limbus is respectable EP for a party of 6, I think I was doing 80k/hr.

So one hour of limbus will get you your homepointed death back. And yes, sometimes things go wrong and your only out is to home point.

If you "spent" thousands of hours "working" on ML50 for your character, you can spend another 30 minutes getting back the EP when you make a colossal *** and have to HP. Maybe you can learn a lesson from this. Probably not though, because you can just turn on your bot again and cover a couple dozen more HPs.

You got 25m EP, but getting another 50k is totally out of the question? Please. It's .2% of the grind you just "did".

Man who spent hundreds of hours grinding a miniscule amount of stats:

Just because I am stupid and grinded it doesn't make the quote wrong

We just want respect from our crack dealer

"botting EP is bad"
also
"who cares about EP loss you can just bot it back"

Clearly, you don't RP farm. Death is inevitable, unless you expect to clear every boss when RP farming

This adds up to... dunno but I want to say 20-30k per run on an ML50 character, more if you're lower (and/or if you bother to sync at entry, which some groups do). For a 30min run it's not bad at all, and again it's a lot higher if the entire group is at lower MLs.


I RP farm solo with trusts on all t3 and 4 NMs with no deaths. The trick is the right job+trusts combo, and engaging only when there's 3-5 minutes left.

_{Also lol at telling Thorny he doesn't do this or that.}