Asura Inflation - What's Going On?

I mean yeah, clearly you don't. I'm trying to explain to you how a battle you thought was a simple reskin that should take 10 seconds involved dozens of changes and an absurd amount of design and coding and you still insist that content can be generated by dragging a slider.

The Incursion example is another hilarious one, because it's presumed that they just used the stock level scaler tool they already had to scale the mobs up from Ilvl 123 -> 143, when in reality they most likely designed 20 different versions of the enemies in there for each level. Sure, maybe this was just add 2000 HP, 2 VIT, and 25 attack per level or w/e, but I personally don't believe this is a built-in function of the FFXI engine that you can just input an enemy and a new level you'd like it to be and it will spit out a perfectly balanced version of the new level. Especially not so for NMs, which are involved with basically every bit of content anyone would have any interest in running.

Say you do create a new version of Limbus, Einherjar, and MMM using this system and somehow manage to not *** it up. You still need to add rewards now. If you "create" all this content and the only reward is EP, this forum would explode from all the pissy comments about low effort content and how they're not gonna do it out of protest because SE are lazy ***.

Because they have none of the source code? SE has it.

I'm not saying it would take 10 seconds, but it is hardly a *** ton of effort given they had all the assets (models and textures) and all the animations and all the code, etc. and I'm not even suggesting they make anything that takes as much effort as Lilith BC would have.

Pretty sure even current devs are handcuffed by said source code, it's also called speghetti code for a reason, as them doing even basic tweaks on one thing would break something entirely unrelated very often, and that was with the original dev team.

This also doesnt account for again, team is a 3rd to 5th of even its escha era size, this game is a side project so aside from a bored dev doing all the development/playtesting and then introducing it, it's unlikely to get done cause that's time better spent elsewhere

September 2023
Square Enix has lost almost $2bn in value since Final Fantasy 16 launch
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/square-enix-has-lost-almost-2bn-in-value-since-final-fantasy-16-launch

November 2023
SE profit down 58% year-on-year
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/square-enixs-h1-sales-get-a-5-bump-as-profits-plummet#:~:text=The%20executive%20reportedly%20said%20that,in%20value%20as%20a%20result.

"Making a profit" doesn't mean ***. SE is not in a great position right now.

That only highlights why they'd not put anymore money/time than is needed into anything XI related

IDK, this seems to imply that you think it wouldn't take that long:


I mean I don't think Lilith HTBF would take 10 devs 3 years to make, though it's ironic that you're paying these 10 devs $33k/yr for their efforts. I do think that the process of generating content, including battles, items, servers and queues, KIs, dialog, etc. is a lot more involved than most people give credit for. Especially when re-doing old content, since strategies have evolved GREATLY since the content in question was released, and populations have declined. I remember my linkshell Einherjar runs involving 30 people cowering in the corner while our tanks tried not to pull the entire zone onto us, and then trying to pick off mobs while managing the crowd control. Trying to turn that into an event a single player can do with trusts, or a group of 3-6 friends can do with a small party, is a complete mess.

I cannot stress enough how encounter design, especially in a game like FFXI, is way more complex than how many stats the mob has. If you haven't realized this, please play more FFXI. The way the community approaches Odin HTBF, Alexander HTBF, Lilith HTBF, Omen bosses, Dynamis [D] bosses, Sortie bosses, Master Trials, Gaes Fete NMs, and Odyssey Gaol bosses could not possibly be further from each other. This is because of the way they were designed.

If you level scale old content it will not work without re-designing it. They will either be impossibly difficult or insanely easy, I guarantee it

The current XI devs have no *** clue what anything within the source code is.

XI devs are literally part of other modern projects so they can work on stuff thats keeping with the times instead of focusing on archaic 22++ year old code.

Just driving though, don't mind me.

No it doesn't.

If you want my genuine belief, granted they had all the assets (models, textures, animations, etc.) I'd say a single dev could spend a week to plan the idea for the BC, a week to assemble and adjust the assets (omg colour existing gear purple!), a week to program the logic, and a week to test. As I said before, testing would be the hardest to do without a team that plays FFXI, and take the longest time.

As I have said numerous times though, even doing something like Lilith is beyond what I'd expect. Look how dumb the Adamantite armor bc content is and look how people chase that carrot every single day. That is easy content to produce and implement but gives people something new to do at least. I got 2 bodies in less than 10 kills each though so I don't do it anymore.

I'd rather have that than literally nothing.

It's actually fairly complicated and a lot of the time is eaten up with team discussions and arguing about lore / drop rates / power level / difficulty etc, especially if you work for a company like Square Enix. They can't even have content tested without being put into waiting list slots for BD3 testing teams.

It's easy to make some garbage and throw it at the wall and nobody does it or it crashes the server, it's hard to make something that is actually good, stable and long lasting to make the money spent worthwhile.

Considering how small the dev team was on XI it's actually pretty amazing what they added in the time of Matsui.

Think that's in part why they got so much done, when they had the full team it seemed like everything was coming slowly, and things just felt more rigid in regards to taking in player feedback since it was their only big MMO, once attention shifted elsewhere the team had a bit more leeway to add/change things

Thats the title of FFXIs new expansion

FFXI: Literally Nothing

Release Date: Everyday

How many man hours would you argue peach power took to do?

A thousand. Wrong question. How many SHOULD it have taken. Too much red tape.

Cause it should've taken maaaaaaaaaany less than it did. 500 hours of which went into designing that *** garbage armor when it should've been 5 minutes and they still got it wrong.

(If they stopped paying 47 people to pretend to oversee pointless decisions they wouldn't be able to lie about having no budget to do anything with)((They need to hire an efficiency manager to rework that whole company from the ground up))

It woulda take 5mins to reuse the icon and add some stats. It should have been 150 meva really :\

In a happier alternate world, the 20th anni surprise and capstone content was Abyssea 2.0. Outdoor zones, full alliances, lots of excellent options for Prime progression.

We live in the bad ending timeline, though. Womp womp.

The enormous buildup for 'valhalla', only for there to be no zone was a complete flop. Squandered the perfect opportunity to have an escha/abyssea style re-color or an existing zone redone for endgame.

SE would just be better off being the first company to open source this cross-platform PS2/PC game, already. Fans will do a better job ....but the thought of 1,000 different private servers based on their public release does terrify me.

They could add Dyna D zones for Valkurm, Buburimu, and Qufim that have 2hr entry limit, mobs are level 140 and give 2k EP per kill (so you kinda need to be ML30+ on DD to be able to do them well) and low chance of dropping updated accessories. Nothing more. No pop items, bosses, etc. Just an EP zone with a low farming element to it (that also benefits taking THF!).

Tell me this would take years and 12 devs to develop Maletaru.

Yeah, I'm sure SE wants to get rid of one of those carrots that keeps people subbed and expedite everyone to ML50.

Even just something basic like neo VW woulda sufficed imo, but nope, heres a livestream that only JPs get to really enjoy. I get the games on the backburner but they really dropped the ball on that

To be fair I don't think anyone stays subbed cause they're excited about ML50. A small subset of people buys MLs and for the rest it's a nice bonus if they ding during other activites but they ignore MLs as content.

I don't know if many people still do peach power regularly so you could count that as MLing I guess? Personaly I'd probably stop after I got the armor even if I had a multibox to farm the entry item.
SE completely shat the bed on that one.

Gotta keep in mind Japanese employment rules, JP companies cannot lay people off they don't need anymore. Which means they have a responsibility to keep their job skills useful. They also can't just hire people short term.

Maintenance mode doesn't mean an end to updates as it would for a western company, it means a hibernation while management above Yoshida and Fujito decides what they want to do. Cause we have been through this before. Abyssea was supposed to be the end, and we got seekers and rhapsodies since then (as well as regular patches adding stuff like ody etc) when the management had faith in Matsui.

Ultimately from a business standpoint, a producer like Matsui leaving is a big confidence check and currently they are obviously not feeling it (although they have enough faith to keep funding it to keep running so he can try to prove himself). They goto budget meetings every year, so mid 2024 is when we will see if this has changed and Fujito has gained enough trust to get more money.

If he does, he can bring the staff back and start doing big stuff again.

I see it as: Fujito takes over, management are unsure if they should put a lot of money into the game now. Basically he is an unproven project leader. Yoshida sees Fujito wants to carry on with the game and adds support to him, he takes the developers into XIV short term to give them job training in new engine while working on an XI raid (this keeps the devs emotionally attached to XI still while still working on XIV) and invigorates XI sub numbers because obviously XIV players come try it now. Yoshida didn't need to add an XI raid to XIV, and you can take that as him possibly trying to help Fujito.

This boosts revenue and shows management Fujito can run the game successfully, keep it profitable and that it has growth potential.

Matsui said he intended to stay working on XI till retirement in 4-5 years, but instead he gave it to Fujito. You have to think that if Fujito decided to stick with XI he has plans more than just maintenance.

I think this idea would take the resources they have (guessing 1-5 devs, each part time) about 4 months to have production ready.

The problem is either the drop rates are utter ***or everyone has the accessories they want on day one. So you spent 3 months making 1 days' worth of content (nobody gives a *** about new EP mobs)

This is why I always suggest that people put their ideas in these threads, because it shows (IMO) how difficult it is to design something properly and how easily critical people can tear your ***apart. I hope that this would provide some sympathy for SE, who have this kind of audience to please, but I'm sure nobody gets that. I guarantee you if SE released this content as you described it there would be a thread on ffxiah talking about what a turd this content is and how disappointed everyone is.

Disappointed yet still doing it. Ain't gotta be good. Gotta have shiney.

Not understanding design year one is very much different than year 20. You ain't gotta keep an addict addicted with flashing lights and higher highs. Just another shitty grind to keep their sunkcost in their brain.

You don't target explorers, socializers and killers you only need target achievers.

I suggested it was capped to 2 hours per day. You get 1k per mob with level sync to a low mlevel char so dunno what the problem is. Guessing you don't really play.

4 months for all 3? Ok, spend a month and add one a time. This would be way better content than Peach Power.

2 hours a day is more than most people farm ML as is, you've just doubled ML gain speed while adding extra rewards on top

balance check failed, you don't want more content you want easier progress