Relapse

Back from NBcon and some long discussions about our linkshell's future in the world of Vana'diel. Into the fire that is Test Server data and findings regarding new gear!

Some of the WS options sound pretty appealing, not to mention the COMPLETELY RIDICULOUS speculation on a WAR body with outright Damage-To-TP on it. Stacked with Ret? I'd be pulling down something like 40tp on a proc. There's a nice WS belt, blah blah blah gear. The most relevant issue is the Empyrean trials.

1500 plates of heavy metal. Every Empyrean shares the trial. No more splitting NMs and no more selected targeting. Every sword, axe and shield shares the path with harps and katana and guns. HOW LOGICAL. There was a dat found of a Metal Plate Pouch. The description implies it carries a SINGLE iron plate.

Hvy. Metal Pouch
A pouch containing a sheet of heavy metal.

Of course we don't know anything about where they come from yet since to my understanding none of the accessible Voidwatch fights have loot or anything, not to mention them being fucking HARD. Reports of 400~ melee hits on non-blocked paladins and 650+ everyone-else abound. Clearly the time of "We want to get away from requiring full alliances for content" is long over. Time to rant without all of my facts straight.

Abyssea was a shot in the arm. New concepts, new methods and mechanics, completely unreasonable gear and weapons. It was a paradise where basically any group of any size could be successful doing just about anything (much to my chagrin at times). Still, it was a lovely boost to general interest and it gave us all something more to do; There was basically always a new content patch visible on the horizon since that Vana'fest or Fanfest or whatever the eff it was called where they announced this stuff.

Even when Heroes hit and we had an uncertain future ahead of us, we at least had Heroes to occupy our time with. We whetted our appetites on creating weapons for almost everyone, we put together multiple gear sets across many many jobs. We feasted and ate like kings. Then Voidwatch came out.

It was a content patch, not an actual expansion, so it was met with (to my memory, which is selective) no fanfare. It was just put in front of us, SE grunted and walked away, and we made due. Rather, we were supposed to, but Voidwatch actually sort of blew. Most of the gear that came from it was either too situational to be worth the effort or outright useless. "Side-grades" might be too complimentary of a term for some of the awkwardly-statted body pieces.

Now we get a new level cap, new tiers of Voidwatch and a smattering of basically-useless gear with some nice gems thrown in. Of course, there's also new BCNMs that might have the good stuff. There's also new Walk of Echoes. There's also unfortunately Voidwatch which, in the worst design method, requires (to my understanding) you to completely clear the current tiers of boring content. Forced grinding sure is fun.

I'm a bit torn. I loved XI pre-cap-raises, and I feared the worst like so many others when the new stuff got announced. Then it came and I really enjoyed it. And now I'm afraid again because of some questionable decisions, not even getting into the kerfluffle that is ClickandBuy and all of the out-of-game bullshit attached to playing anymore.

It feels like we have the RotZ devs back, which is entirely possible since SE moved the imaginative and successful Abyssea team over to the unenjoyable scrapheap that is XIV. So instead of the guys who came up with the systems and had the vision and knew what they were doing, we get a basically ripped-off version of the same deal only with sort-of ridiculous stats.

Gear with STR/DEX/VIT8 Attack 16 CRIT RATE -8% on WAR/PLD/DRK/BST/SAM/NIN? Seriously guys, why not just make it DRK/SAM and get on with it? An AGI15 sword with haste on it that you show a paladin wielding? Yeah, because a job that already (easily) caps gear-haste really needs AGI15 on a weapon instead of being a Joyeuse or an Almace/CDC weapon. Hand-to-Hand3/Subtle Blow-10 earring? (Or was it a ring? Regardless~) You're back to the "Throw a dart at a spinning board of stats" method, it seems.

I'm not sure how to parse all of this. This doesn't seem exciting. Adding new content that is explicitly hard and doesn't even offer anything particularly interesting (barring a select portion of gear which I mentioned, which we still don't know the actual source of) isn't fun. Scaling back Abyssea's refreshing mechanics isn't fun. Voidwatch is the express lane of the expansion, the Chinese Black Market rip-off. Instead of fighting lesser mobs and hitting specific triggers to get items and Key Items required for progression we just wait a day and request clearance.

Instead of feeling like we've conquered a zone, we've instead gone to a handful of glowy spots and fought off reskins of monsters we farmed for months. The only affixed story comes at the end of all of the current content (which is much like Abyssea, and I'm not saying that in a bad way) for now and while I hope it goes places, it is REALLY hard for me to give a fuck about it when you bury it beneath layers and layers of needless shit. Cockblocking in the form of outright denying us from touching the new content is similarly needless.

We've seen the timeline. It doesn't look like it's going to get much better. We don't know what Last Stand is yet but if the data mined years ago holds up, it'll be the Endgame, lore-wise, for FFXI and likely be attached to Voidwatch since that whole idea (and Abyssea's) are wrought with worry over the decaying barriers between dimensions. Voidwatch 3 isn't something I can find myself excited for.

No planned expansions worries me because the next updates might actually be the last. It really does sadden me to think that the game is only on the decline now; There might never be another Vana'fest, there probably won't be new expansions ever. We're probably rolling quietly and boringly to our deaths. I'm not even sure what to be angry with, though the list is pretty long and firmly rooted in the "XIV was a shitty idea/SE's dev teams basically blow" camps. Most of THAT blame falls on the shoulders of the guy who decided it was a good idea to rush an MMO and then be too proud to admit it was a failure and a hemorrhaging moneyhole. A year after the "beta" test that was a glorified restricted demo and yet to make a red cent? Yeah, keeping pulling people and money away from the proven projects to recount for your shitty decision.

This whole thing stinks, and WoW just seems to keep getting better and better. At least they remember to include all of their classes in the updates, not that I'm bitter or anything.

Edit: Chuchill pointed out on BG that Hiromichi Tanaka is billed as the FFXI Director again and he's also the original Director of the game and worked on the original CoP stuff. This is my surprised face.